I left the South, I travelled North, I got confused, I killed a horse. I can't help the way I feel.

The last few weeks have been so high, so low . . . so strange. I've been all over the place. It's felt good, and also awful. I don't really know how I feel right now, a little more balanced perhaps. Anyway I don't want to publish the details of my entire life on the net. It will suffice to say that it's been a weird two or three weeks.

I've decided I need to get out of this town, I am fed up of York and many of the people within it at the moment. I am travelling back to Cardiff this week for a few days. Hopefully they will refresh and revive me. I'm not quite sure where my head is right now.

Regardless of my mind I have been listening to some awesome new music. Namely Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts double album.

It would be fair to say that it's the most pretentious of NINs albums. It would probably be quite difficult to really get into without having listened to classic NIN albums such as The Downward Spiral, Pretty Hate Machine or even their newest album The Slip (which I should add can be downloaded free of charge from the NIN website) It was marketed as a soundtrack to dream to, and so I was expecting something quite different - maybe a collection of lengthy dark ambient industrial pieces of music. What we are given, rather is almost a patchwork quilt of content, ranging in style, tone and texture. Although the intention is clearly for the album to be set out as four seperate pieces of music, broken up into smaller parts or movements it is frankly quite ineffective, as there is no real continuity or thematic development within any of the four pieces that make them clear movements.
Nevertheless, what you do get is a lot of quality music from a quality musician, and is definitely worth checking out, even if the album's intended 'movements' are ineffectual. As for its label as a soundtrack to dream to, I'll let you come to your own decision.
I will leave you with a little taster (this one brings a tear to my eye - emo I know)




Goodbye! - p.s. contact me if you want to borrow the album!

This week . . .

. . . has been very good indeed.
That is all.

Sleepmakeswaves

Addicted to this album right now - "In Today Already Walks Tomorrow" by Sleepmakeswaves, a relatively new band from Sydney, Australia. If you have time, or are looking for some new music, their album is free to download (legally I might add) on last.fm, I recommend it for anyone who's into post-rock, or even for those new to the genre. The whole album has an insatiable drive to it. What sets them apart from groups like Explosions in the Sky or This Will Destroy You is the feeling of direction and purpose interspersed with the typical (wonderful) dreamy, self indulgent emotiveness of post-rock. What I'm trying to say is that there's a lot more contrast. Anyway, check it out, and see what you think. (And if you like it send me a recommendation back!)

Free Download Link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Sleepmakeswaves/in+today+already+walks+tomorrow

Coney Island

"Anyways, uh let's see what else uh...uh I...It was Coney Island, they called Coney Island the playground of the world. There was no place like it... in the whole world, like Coney Island when I was a youngster. No place in the world like it. It was so fabulous, now it's shrunk down to almost nothing.You see, ahah, and uh I still remember in my mind how things used to be, and uh, y'know I feel kinda very bad. But people from all over the world came here, from all over the wor... it was the playground...they called the playground of the world, over here... anyways, uh, so...but...I...uh...y'know, I even got when I was a...when I was very small I even got lost in Coney Island... but they found me, on the... on the... on the beach. And we used to sleep on the beach here, sleep overnight, but um err, they don't do it anymore, things changed you see. They don't sleep any more on the beach"

Sleep - Godspeed You! Black Emperor

The Magnificent Birth of Future Gareth.

What if you could completely abstract your future self?

As always, when travelling back to a city you haven’t been to a while, new slang emerges, you are confronted with new words and phrases which seem alien. I noticed, on returning to Cardiff in March, that a number of my friends had begun referring to their future selves . . . not really as a form of slang (though this is how I interpreted it at first), but . . . tactically . I heard my friends come out with things like “Oh I’ll just skip work and let future Chris deal with that”, or “I have to go to a funeral tomorrow, but I’ll get drunk anyway, future Matt can sort it out”. This wasn’t just one or two people, but a whole sub-group of friends. At first this seemed strange to me, not to mention irresponsible and maybe even stupid – but the more I got to thinking about it, the more it began to make sense.

I will openly admit that I am awful at forgetting about responsibilities, and having fun. When I know that there is a deadline, or something has to be done, I usually turn down any propositions in favour of tackling the task at hand. Even if I do manage to talk myself into going out, the worry of what needs to be done usually lingers in my mind, tainting my enjoyment of the night. I am one of those people who (I believe like many others), is always looking to the future, basing decisions, such as, whether to go out for the evening, upon whether I will have time to complete particular tasks, or have the ability to fulfil certain responsibilities, if I do go out. I believe this to be a kind of thought process which a lot of people go through.

What I eventually came to realise, is that future Gareth can be a liberating force in these situations. When I think back over the last two or three years – the number of opportunities I have turned down, due to either time restrictions, responsibility, or even lack of money, worries me. If I had disregarded these trivial stock responses such as “sorry I can’t do that, I don’t have enough money”, “I can’t go out, I have to finish reading such and such by tomorrow”, or anything in a similar vein, I believe I would be a much more rounded, richer, and confident personality. The weird thing about ‘Future Gareth’ is that he can only exist if I, or you, or anyone, is willing to completely disconnect the present from the future; to create a mental divider between the two.

I began to realise, that the future Gareth, wasn’t just a run of the mill saying, but, in fact, a complex mental construct... a mental failsafe. In order for this to work, you have to make your future self a complete abstraction of your present self. You might be sceptical or cynical, and pass this off as some kind of pseudo-intellectual way of explaining the idea of burying your head in the sand (you’d be completely excused) – but I’m convinced that this idea is far more psychologically advanced, and indeed, completely different, to just resigning an obligation or responsibility to the back of your mind. The future self, in adopting this process, forces a person into entertaining what is a temporary, mentally existent second self – a twin, a double who is uncanny, one who must become something other than the self – but must by necessity still be the self. Essentially, an alter-ego must be created. An alter-ego who can carry the consequences of irresponsibility, and who the present self can lump guilt upon.

I guess I should admit, that in recent weeks I have begun to use future Gareth as an excuse TO do things, as opposed to conforming to the routine of letting present Gareth reason his way OUT of doing things. I’m not sure that future Gareth is a healthy aspect of my life, for there are certainly echoes of split personality disorder in his creation and successive re-creations. I’m also not sure if he is a sensible one, but, despite these queries, he is a valuable liberating force. I invite you, like me, to let go of your present self once in a while, and let your abstracted doppelganger take the burden – believe me, it feels good, (until you become that guilt ridden twin, and must build another). But really, aside from all that, if I learnt anything whilst at home in Cardiff, it was to use future Gareth once in a while, and to just let go now and then. Life is much more fun that way.
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Demon Seed

The sound of summer so far...

Of Man's First Disobedience and the Fruit of that Forbidden Tree...

Currently re-reading Milton's Paradise Lost, in preperation for the coming term. I forgot how mindblowing some of the description is. So disorientating, and so epic.
This section - Satan persuades Sin to open the doors of hell, in order for him to corrupt mankind.

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook
Of Erebus. She opened, but to shut
Excelled her power; the gates wide open stood

Amazing. I'm not going to deny that much of the poem is rather dull. It can be difficult to get through. But Milton's Satan, and the frequent bouts of frankly amazing description completely make up for it. This is one to re-read. His prose works . . . maybe not so much. The ridiculous names, like Areopagitica, Tetrachordon and Colasterion sound like Mars Volta song titles . . . if only they were as interesting.
-Farewell for now.
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Quiet Please - No Mobile Phones

Sitting in Derwent computer room, no natural light, two other ill looking men, and the mechanical chatter of keyboards. My essay grinds to a halt . . . seven hundred words in and . . . nothing. On the plus side, this summer is shaping up to be a good one. I have (about . . . well, you could say exactly 3 minutes ago) sent off my application to the Study China Programme. A course which consists of three weeks of intensive Mandarin lessons in Shanghai over summer. Everything is paid for, except for the flights. If all goes well I will be travelling to three continents this year. Pretty impressive, seeing as I've only been to two in my whole life. Those being Europe (pretty inescapable really), and North America - having travelled through Canada two years ago. Hopefully I can save up enough money to afford it all.

In other news I have my final (possibly ever) shift at blockbuster tomorrow, which will no doubt consist of an eight hour shift boxing various things up, and packing things away. Although I moan about it, I will miss that place. A customer even wrote me a letter yesterday. Here it is :

To whom it may concern,

Please note, I would like to express my utmost disappointment at the closure of this store. Gareth has always been so friendly, it's a shame.

Sonia 17/04/10

Fairly harmless and to the point, but charming and sweet nonetheless. It is nice to know you'll be missed. Anyway, I must leave now. This room is too claustrophobic, especially on a sunday. Farewell for now
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Enter the Void

Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void theatrical trailer

You have no idea how excited I am about this...

Back to York

And so I find myself back in . . . York, in an unreasonably busy and noisy library. For real, there are men with drills and everything, and a strange kind of outside lift thing which makes a siren noise every time it moves. Granted, that is pretty cool, but it's so damn loud! This blog post is my attempt to stray away from trauling through pretensive books about J.M.Coetzee, and the 'South African Problem' - not that I'm implying that there isn't a problem, but I just can't get into it. I am coming to realise that Disgrace, by Coetzee, is probably one of the most complex novels I've read. It masquerades under this subtle clarity of style, as something straightforward and plain to see. But it raises all these different questions about the characters, questions which contradict each other but have to be considered simultaneously. And the sentences are so simple that you feel inclined to question them. I'm sure there is still a lot going on beneath the text that I simply can't see. Blerugh. I seriously can't wait until this essay is out of the way... you have no idea, this book is frying my brain. Anyway, I will be spending the next week living in the house alone (maybe not something you should admit on the internet?) Already I am convinced that there are many ghosts in my house and that someone must be turning lights on when I'm asleep. Well, hopefully I'll survive. More concerning is the fact of having little human contact. I'll see how it goes.
But for now, back to work.
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