i heard it said

…you had come back from the dead.

hari krishna,

e x

and really happy

I saw this

at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. more on that later.

it is my favourite thing.

hari krishna,

e x

close watch

la la la. i’ve had quite a nice collection of rather good days recently.

here’s what i got up to the week before last.

my friend Quin needed to buy a suit last week, so i helped him do that. i’m not sure how helpful i was, but it was a lot of fun. it was a really sunny day (the sort that makes heaving Oxford Street bearable because it’s just such beautiful weather). Quin found a really smart suit. he’s very tall; he can pull off a nice grey number. i was really hoping he’d go for the suit & shorts look. one day, that look will get huge. i really hope it’s Obama who makes it happen.

because it was still so beautiful in the evening, we went to Hyde Park.

that’s a nice picture of Quin looking rather jolly in the park.

we saw lots of people doing a charity run. that made me happy & want to do the marathon or something equally ludicrous.
that evening, we shared a nice vegan pie & watched Capturing The Friedmans on DVD.

it’s an utterly amazing film. i do like a good documentary.
it was so expressive. which is kind of a silly thing to say. but the atmosphere- which was such an important part of the narrative- was so strikingly captured & conveyed. media hysteria, family hysteria. it was all told with such a clear voice.
i didn’t immediately pick up on the director’s theme of the staggering fallibility of memory. that only really started to creep in, for me, once a few of the witnesses just appeared to be a bit unreliable. it contrasted very nicely with the rather more overt theme of self-delusion. the sons were treated with great sympathy, but any self-delusion on their part was approached with as much criticism as any instances of police insensitivity/glaring mistakes made by the media.

afterwards, Quin & I had a big chat about it. i felt slightly drained, but not so much that i didn’t want to talk for ages after. Quin is a bloody media genius, so i always enjoy his impressions on films & art.
what struck me most about the film was the contrast between the tangible and the intangible. the family seemed so ethreal- bound up in memories and music, and only ever conducting themselves within a glass film lens. the mother, in particular (and pretty much the most/only sympathetic individual featured), had such a spacey sadness about her. but then, by shocking contrast, were all these brutal & bloody crimes. the very accusations almost became entities in themselves, and the alleged victims’ families became so devestatingly bound up in all these horrible things. there were almost corporeal consequences on the families.
it was very sad. i watched again a few days later.

anyway. i can’t reccomend it highly enough.

(i’ve just got my hands on the ‘bonus material.’ i’m an obsessive digger; as soon as i watch a film i’ve enjoyed, i’ll obsessively start reading up on it. i don’t understand when people say they hate ‘dissecting’ or ‘hacking apart’ films/literature/art/music. as though, by interpreting & discussing it, you detract from some of the enjoyment. why wouldn’t you want to know more? Like TS Elliot said, “When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can’t be much good.” That makes kind of infinite more sense than what I’ve been trying to say.)

it was back to Oxford Street the next day, to buy birthday presents for my very good pal Joe. and then back again the next day to buy birthday presents for my boyfriend. it was odd to be on Oxford Street three times in three days. It really is my 2nd least favourite part of London, after Leicester Square.
But I love buying presents so much.
I fell completely in love with Playlounge- just off Kingly Court, pretty much the only interesting bit of Carnaby Street left- where I bought lots of silly things for Joe & Tim. It’s so tiny. I could spend days in there. I want my bedroom to look just like it.
But yes. I bloody love buying presents. I always spend far more money than I really have, but I just enjoy it so much.

it was a happy thing to go back East after all of this Central faffing.

Friday night was Joe’s birthday. He liked his presents (and a funny card I’d made about sushi) an awful lot, which made me terribly happy. Then we all shook a leg down to the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club.
It was quite beserk.
We started off playing a game of bingo, which was an awful lot of fun & inordinately exciting.
Then these super weird cats turned up. They did this bizarro sermon about the end of the world. There were people dressed as goats, these old women running about (or something), a lad yelling about the apocalypse, and this dead thing. It got rather gorey after a while. But dig, you know? It was odd, but a bit hilarious & it’s nice when things are weird.
Then this stripper chick turned up, who was very beautiful. She had this fabulous birdcage headress on, and lots of feathery skirts. And…ah, then we were all in for a bit of a surprise.
the rest of the night was psychobilly tunes & a bit of jump & jive, which is awesome to have a little dance to.

odd. but fun.

we tried to get into Cargo afterwards. no dice. oh well. The Castle, which is a really marvelous pub round the corner from my flat, stay absolutely jumping until about 5am on weekends. Dig. So we went there for a bit. I bought Joe a pint but he couldn’t finish it. heh.
Then sat up for a few hours, faffing around & bouncing about the flat. it’s nice to have a big night.

(i can NOT stop listening to THIS. A lot of MSTRKRFT remixes sound the same, but this heavy. & John Legend has such a voice on him.)

i felt rather crumbly the next day. eventually, i managed to pack my bags & make my way to the countryside.
it was my boyfriend’s gran’s 80th birthday party on Sunday, so i decided to head down the night before. i love getting on the train, especially on rather long journeys. i did feel a bit rough though, so really didn’t need the bloke sitting next to me to be drinking a beer & eating a big salmon bagel. yeeshk!

i met up with Tim in Bristol. we bought a huge pizza in the all-night Asda & left in the morning.

(i’m so excited about going to Bristol for Dot-to-Dot festival in a few weeks.)

Brenda’s 80th, a.k.a. Brendafest ‘09, was epic. another beautiful & sunny day. lots of champagne on the farm, then a big posh lunch in a hotel.
it felt weird; going from a hell-on-earth party in East London, to a lovely 80th lunch in the countryside.

(i also can’t stop listening to this album. Oh yeah, & I freaking love Spotify.)

hari krishna,

e x

overheard in happy days

Well- just look at me, a savage beast,
I’ve got nothing to sell.
And when I die, I want to go to Hell.

One Day Goodbye Will Be Farewell

Everyone at school is a fucking idiot, and if I hear one more person talk about that Susan Boyle performance of Les Miserables I’m going to puke my balls out.

South Park

heh.

hari krishna,

e x

down with devestation

I keep this

in mind.

hari krishna,

e x

down with dating

best first date ever?

hari krishna

e x

down with the devil

so, i’m not really a ‘film person.’ but i’ve decided i’d quite like to be, or at least try my hand at it. (i’m a bit blue, i need some more distractions.)

i’ve signed up to LoveFilm.com, which i’m inordinately excited by.

also started renting pictures from 4OD. first up i watched Dig!, which I wasn’t too excited by; just didn’t really grab me, at least as not much as i hoped it would.

today i watched The Devil and Daniel Johnston. completely & utterly bloody amazing. a beautifully put together documentary. it reminded me of one of my favourite books, Truman Capote’s nonfiction novel, In Cold Blood; the way that it told a story about one man, and about his whole world. such a strong sense of the society Daniel Johnston was growing up in.

his music is amazing. it’s like opening up one of those little music boxes; just always secret and sad.

hari krishna,

e x

bunny

i had no idea it was a Bank Holiday on Friday.

a very roundabout route got me home from Tim’s on Friday morning.

as i took the long way home, i envied all the people in the queue for Public Life at 130pm. i thought your work must be crazy relaxed.

on the walk back, i bought a Creme Egg for each of my housemates. i only found out it was Bank Holiday when they told me.

must. stop. living in own head.

to prove that the external world, and its plethora of stimuli & temptations, do in fact have some impact on me & my consciousness, here are some things i’ve been liking recently.

green tea

dressing like Donovan

& the eccentricities Heston Blumenthal

awesome!

hari krishna,

e x

catch up?

fa la la. the weather has been grey. drag.
on Wednesday, it was very beautiful. i walked around Bethnal Green & Hackney & London Fields for time; i got really lost. it was so marvellous.

last Saturday, i had quite a smashing day. no-one was in my flat, which made me sad at first, but i had such a nice quiet day, noodling about and doing little fun things. it was so nice to sit in the quiet little bracket which daily life & its demands can’t touch. made all the more beautiful by my lovely friend Quin coming over in the evening. we had a glass of champagne & Quin ate some cake.
we did a cheeky bit of flyering with Frank so that we could get into Feeling Gloomy & Club de Fromage for free, and run around backstage (and run around onstage), and all of that sort of scampering. ooh, and there was a Morrissey tribute act! that got us all excited. we had an absolute belter, & helped carry things about right at the end which made me feel all helpful. huzzah!

we stayed at Frank’s beautiful house in Camden that night. got in at about 6. the clocks going forward eluded us; either way, waking up at 9am was painful. back at the flat, Peep Show DVDs & endless green tea.

Feeling Gloomy is particularly marvelous.

(should have got The Actor Kevin Eldon to do that hip spooky intro bit. he was born to terrify.)

yesterday, some cat shouted “OI! GOTH!” at me. I was surprised. I suppose my look is a bit too intense for Tesco.

i stayed at my boyfriend’s farm last week. it was so lovely. his family are all so warm and lovely, such a great laugh. living on a farm is such a departure from my usual frames of reference. waking up & eating Gran’s homemade lemon cake, petting a dog, looking at a pony. and endless, endless space. like air from another planet.

i miss it terribly when i’m not there.

the day after getting back, i’m pretty sure i accidentally walked into a job interview. (i think i did pretty well, considering.)

the next day, i went to Windsor. this was a lot of fun. i got in a rowing boat with my pals Jon & Quin, and we paddled about on the Thames for about an hour. it was SO chill. i felt like getting out a guitar and singing Donovan.

then the boys ate ice cream & i drank an Earl Grey. we chatted with a monk who gave us books about yoga & vegetarian food. smashing.

last weekend was another lovely one. it was another quiet Saturday afternoon, so I wandered to Bethnal Green for the Affordable Vintage Fashion Fair, hosted by Lady Luck Rules OK. I picked up a very authentic ’60s bracelet (chunky plastic; tasteless, faded pattern; mellow enough to fit in with the Donovan sort of look I’m going for now the sun’s coming out), a beaded gold collar (looks like a sparkly string of Edie earrings), and a handmade wooden necklace in the shape of a paint pot that says Paint It Black. dig!
that night, i worked at the No Pain In Pop compilation launch party, which was in a warehouse & completely noisy & fierce.

i can get kind of blue when i’m not doing things. suggestions welcome.

hari krishna

e x

overheard in london 5

 
Barman: …What was I saying?
Dude at bar: About St. Patrick’s Day?
Barman: Oh yeah! So. I’m covered in blood. I asked Mary- you know, lives across the road, red hair, mad?- to get me a new t-shirt because my green one’s covered in the blood. And you know what she gets me?
Dude: What?
Barman: Five hats. Five hats!
Dude: That’s so weird. Where did she find five hats?

- Aldgate East

hari krishna,

e x