Sunday 9 June 2013

It's a long voyage back

 
 
 

 

 
 
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As well as being the title of a really good post-apocalyptic 1983 novel by a certain George Cockcroft (aka Luke 'Dice Man' Rhinehart), 'Long Voyage Back' neatly summarises recent events in the continuing strangeness of my oddly symmetrical life. The most significant event to report, in a literal and unabashed manner, is that from the end of August I will be employed here rather than here (I also had an offer from this institution to consider, at one and the same time, but... not this time around I'm afraid). As natives of our fine city know to be true, staying in Glasgow has a lot going for it just now... including a new Pastels album, and even glorious sunshine of late. Gasp! Anyway, I'm not sure how I truly feel about being a 'Professor'. I mean, I'm just unbelievably grateful to have another (local) job to go to, let alone a promotion to boot. The status of 'Professor' has always appeared rather untoward and, well, a wee bit brash to me. I tend to think of Indiana Jones, or rather his eccentric Scottish father; you know, the bit in that film ('death by seagull'). Still, I've been in this game so long now perhaps it was about time to step up, collect the medal, and move on, especially as there was no choice... what with the redundancy clock ticking away in a hurried fashion (June 2015 was the end-date, not so far away when you sit down and think about it). Sigh. I do fear for my immediate colleagues who will stay on, as well as staff in other parts of the University that do not especially have a technologically-focused remit or interest. Anyway, a day-return train to Paisley got me thinking and remembering: aged 17 I ran away from the East coast to the West coast and studied at the 'Tech' for two years. It was, in many ways, the intellectual-making of me; the School of Communist Studies in the guise of Applied Social Sciences. And now I am returning, some twenty-five years later. Gulp. It's a lifetime, for sure, but as my brother recently reminded me there is a big part of us that will always be 17, not least when we hear new music that makes our fingertips dance and our frowns turn upside down. So this is the soundtrack of our new found success, a C86 tune that was recorded just yesterday but harks back to a time when a cassette-tape could change your cosmological everyday world. And yes, I must try and write here more often, I know this to be true.
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Just Handshakes - 'Cut and Run' (3.16)
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Friday 29 March 2013

Does love sit cold until you put it somewhere?

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Fieldnotes #261
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In a time almost forgotten the rusty big wheel will spin onwards; rotating left then right until a faint buzzing 'click' hints at a new start, a new fashion for 'Diamond Jim' to wear like he means that kind of business - a way to unlearn centuries of pretended, dastardly, evolution I suppose. An ill-fitting bolt coils right, a sugar-spark lifts the groove and a melody is unleashed upon a knowing world full of Lévi-Strauss wonder. But how much time is time enough 'in the field?'. It is not so much the length of stay, one suspects, but more the memories that travel back with you in a beaten-up wooden box to a lonely due-South port. How best to convey and account for the rituals, habits and customs that become part of a wider identity that is first assumed and then ultimately taken-as-read? The senses are well-trained, hoping against hope, to absorb, consume, digest in a faded-blue notebook with the aid of a knife-sharpened HB pencil that tucks behind an ear that should know better: the sights, smells, tastes and a delicate velvet touch that can know few intimate boundaries. This calls for an emotive description that is much less Geertz and altogether more Douglas; the foods the odours, the language, the dirt... a required vividness combined with a sensuality and sense of place/belonging. Ethnography is indeed many things and 'easy' is not one of them; but privilege certainly is.
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Throwing Muses - 'Two Step' (4.35)
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Saturday 2 February 2013

We're caught up in denying it all

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An adolescent gull calls out playfully and performs seemingly impossible moves even a limber gymnast would baulk at. A light breeze from the East forces you to flutter-shut your tired twilight eyes. Once awoken, in a glimmer, you can't help but notice the way they just slip into each other's curved bodies; she gazes up at him with pounding hearts in her eyes whilst he just stares out, arms entwined, appreciating the serene beauty all around. It just seems so natural, so easy, relaxed. Is it really just like this, how it is meant to be? Contentment and happiness abounds as winds pick up and the Captain calls from below for more çay. Thinking out across this stirred, sweet water, willing the sound of summer to approach in gradual yards and inches. They may be homeward bound by now, but a significant part of this happy couple is forever attached to the constant rippling and movement of this historic oceanic floor. It seems as if a whole shifting world beneath wishes for a future that may hold them good. If the outcome might be wished upon stars, and worked for in a hard-earned August sweat. It's the effort that may be their undoing, and the familiarity of self, other and I.
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The Mary Onettes - 'Evil Coast' (5.35)
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Band / Label / Images / The new album, 'Hit The Waves', is out on March 12th. :)
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Friday 11 January 2013

I wanna know where you are

 
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Where next? It's a gradual approaching essence. Small steps of glamour. An idea of what might yet be. Apropos the virtues of leaving solitude and longing beside a lipsticked glass at the bar come closing time. Fateful strides around this town at 2am, in certain company, witnessing a falling chimney pot and sirens all guns blazing. Mirrored, battered souls reflect much more than just shadows of a former self. The promise of lurid dancing streetlights familiarise this unknown terrain, such new cultured surroundings. In truth, it's a stability and comfort not known for sometime. And this is a good thing, right? A jagged left turn here leads to a contented right turn over there (checking for a green man first). Yes, one geography bleeds into another around here although your maps and markings all indicate this could be the way forward. So please march on; do not be afraid to take his hand again.
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Wild Nothing - 'Golden Haze' (3.26)
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Pay a visit. Buy 'Nocturne' (2012). Touring England in March.
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Sunday 6 January 2013

This voice is ours







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It did not have to be this way. This maddening, quickening sense of urgency; a golden-rushed incident detailed, laid out to rest, among the leaves. A flickering finger stubbed out in the jaded mildew of the year just past. A crashing cymbal cascades off a distanced, challenging cliff. It is out of the traps and away down the distressed tattie driel; there is no mistaking that sweet thud of hope being filled to the brim with wine and roses (for all). It explodes; a thick shard of glass skims past you, lightly grazing your left cheek. The blood trickles out weaving edgy patterns as it flows; and you - on his table - know what comes next. You care not, however, for this. is. the. jet. age; a time when it isn't so much what you know as what you don't know. Nil (by mouth) for the one who threatens to jump. It is everywhere and incessant: this useless information that calls us to judge or be judged. A mocking cruelty covers this land; believing makes it easy. Or easier, you reflect with a tap to the head. All we need is a moment to stop the clocks and look up, remembering who we are and what we could be to each other. What is it we do best? Can you even remember? Let's engage, smile and hold on, my sweetness. Above all else, and with the best will in the world, do remember that sometimes I don't like your tone, either.
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DIIV - '(Drunn) pt ii' (2.47)
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