I think I pooed today, I can't really remember. That's weird isn't it? I suppose that would be a partial failure, seeing as this blog is an attempt to elevate the forgettable act of shitting to a critical level of importance.

Today I was at a seminar debating the relevance, importance and accuracy of 'The Hardcore Continuum', which is the idea of a sort of autonomous, morphing, time-line of UK dance music from Acid House to Bassline. I left after the first session, not out of any sort of protest, but simply because I had already arranged to make some music with a friend.
  Of what I saw, It was a really interesting debate, both for the ideas within the discussion, and the field of ideas that the discussion takes place within. One of the big problems for 'The Continuum' is that people who make and listen to dance music are generally against their music being critically analysed. In fact, it seems to me that music lovers in general are less prone to wanting to understand their passion critically, as well as emotionally.
  As someone who thinks and writes a lot, that seems strange, but actually, I write a lot about art, but much less about music. My academic study has always concerned art, but I too tend to see music as something I respond to in a more basic way, rather than the intellectual satisfaction that I can enjoy with art and the theory surrounding it.
  Maybe art is how I express my critical ideas, and my time studying art placed it in the spotlight of my thinking. To navigate art for me is to overcome initial recations; often dismissal or cynical disdain. Once this is acheived I can enjoy art both aesthetically, and critically, though it has to be said I often prefer (a confusing term, since it implies a value judgement) art that serves less of an aesthetic, emotional purpose.
  With music I still base my listening patterns on what I respond to, emotionally and physically. My recent appreciation of minimal techno was a critical overcoming of a basic prejudice (four to the floor always left me cold), but I still like the music because I can respond to it, I am not analysing it. That said, I certainly listen and make as wide a range of music as I do art.
  Should I change my attitude to the appreciation of music? I was engaging with the seminar and the ideas they presented, but unlike when I talk or write about ideas in art, it did not seem an essential part of my musical existence.

Would criticality help my appreciation/production of music? Or is all critical debate about both art and music simply a game of language played by people paid to play it (K-Punk), musicians who can't earn enough in a post-material music business (Kode 9), and idiots who are neither paid to play theory, music, or art (me)?

  I don't really believe that, and I'm definitely not going to stop thinking critically about things. K-punk writes about a wide range of topics, and he certainly defines music as an important element of his critical thought. Kode 9 could probably make enough money from his various projects if he needed to.
  I suppose the truth is that being critical about music is just another thing to do; another distraction, like being critical about art; or making music, or making art, or playing table-tennis, or being critical about table-tennis.

On the train back through the ravaged carcass of east London (a perfect setting for a discussion about UK dance music), I was reading John Gray who writes this about our post-industrial society,

"The function of this new economy...is to entertain and distract a population which - though it is busier than ever before - secretly suspects that it is useless"

I walked for two hours, along the river Lea, around Victoria Park, then west on Regent's Canal, and back to Cambridge Heath to get the train back home. It was a two hour round trip, and for one and a half of those, I desperately needed a shit.

I got home and pooed my little bottom off.

I had forgotten about writing this blog, and then found this image

which was way too weird not to post...

The patron saint of England is Saint George, so therefore what ever you think, the true patron saint of England will probably still be Saint George.


The idea of nationhood is deeply flawed, and one thing I like about living in England (if this isn't a weird paradoxical irony) is the fact we can be ashamed of being English.

While we debate what 'Englishness' might be, Mypsace goes and hits the nail on the head. It is a picture on the internet, promising to give you a digital camera if you click on Tony Blair's face.

I was shitting
and reading
about place and memory.

It was a long article,
and a loose shit.

When I arose
it had formed itself
into two coherent snakes,

like how fragments of memory
form a sensible history.

I had two shits today. one firm and large, the other ephemeral and bitty.

I had some ideas for t-shirts today. They will be white t-shirts with biro slogans on them. I will charge £5 for them. Here are some slogans

Camden is a prick

∞

Infinity was shite.

Art is ping-pong

Psycho walk, wanker's ringtone

I have a new toilet book. It is called, 'Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals'. In it, John Gray outlines, in various ways, the idea that humans are not above any other animal and that the idea of humanity is an invention. It is an attack on liberal humanism and is rather wondeful. Like any nihilistic view of the world, it is true, but ultimately unbelievable. To live as a human is to think and act as a human. We cannot transcend our humanity, even if it is by trying to deconstruct humanity itself. We all end up eating, we all end up shitting. You cannot stop hunger, you cannot stop your bowels.

However, this dos not make the book any less brilliant, and superbly cutting, so I may quote bits of it for a few weeks. So, quote #1.

'Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world'

There is a beautiful melancholy in those words, though I'm sure Gray would deny it. I love the idea of the world as a crestfallen romantic, full of the inevitability of it's own passivity. Acutely aware of it's existence as a miniscule event in a causal chain.

God, I had shivers all day. yesteray I had to take painkillers, it was like it was all up in my sinuses.

When people say that, "you see everything upside down, but then your brain turns it the right way up", what do they mean? Is it nonsensical? Like that conversation about "your colour blue isn't the same blue as my blue". Or does it have a physical process attached to it?

Chaos is ignorance mostly, but sometimes chaos is just chaos, maybe.

I read an article about a woman whose Father killed her Mother while I took a dump. I was unaffected by the article. I ingest a lot of information in a day. Most of it is horrific in one way or another (protester death, capital failure, imperial aggression, Gambian presidents), and most of it is understood without an emotional reaction being elicited.
This information overload forces me to have an opinion about many things that do not affect me, directly or indirectly. This means that I have quite abstract ideas about morality, death (of 'others') and political action.

Perhaps if opinionated people read less, they would be less irritating.

Early day motion. Carried.

I played a gig last night to about 4 people. The promoter was angry at me for not bringing more people. On stage I spoke about the end of music, I said you should think of (popular) music like you thought of free-running, or 'Parkour'. Then it wasn't so hard to see it as an extended fad, rather than an essential element of mainstream culture.

You wouldn't expect your Mum to like Parkour, or Tesco to sell Parkour equipment.

Maybe we should think of music as something with less intrinsic 'cool' value. The bands that followed me last night were cool. A girl was at the front for one band, singing along with the words. That is cool (for the band, not the girl).

Maybe think of music as stamp collecting. A niche past-time rather than a creative activity. The bands last night certainly weren't creating.  As a crowd, we all had the feeling that we had heard the songs somewhere before. To some people that was reassuring, maybe to some it was exciting, but to me it seemed like an inaccurate historical re-enactment, with everyone assuming generic roles.

I'm not sure how this change could be reversed. Sales of recorded music hit their peak in 1999, when I was 14 years old. Co-incidentally, I began spending almost all of my money on CDs (often singles, for £2.99) at that point. My teeange object fetishism perfectly synched up with the industry's ability to sell music-objects at a high mark up.

I did a shit. Blah fucking blah.

WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?