Mellows' Musings

tumbl?

2011-10-31T20:13:00.000+02:00

Stewie to my blog (in fact Stewie to blogs everywhere):

"How you uh, how you comin' on that novel you're working on? Huh? Gotta a big, uh, big stack of papers there? Gotta, gotta nice little story you're working on there? Your big novel you've been working on for 3 years? Huh? Gotta, gotta compelling protagonist? Yeah? Gotta obstacle for him to overcome? Huh? Gotta story brewing there? Working on, working on that for quite some time? Huh? Yea, talking about that 3 years ago. Been working on that the whole time? Nice little narrative? Beginning, middle, and end? Some friends become enemies, some enemies become friends? At the end your main character is richer from the experience? Yeah? Yeah? No, no, you deserve some time off."

So, in an effort to delay opening Materials Science and Engineering (Callister, 2007) aaaaaannd give my blogging attempts a refreshing douche, (and also, if you read this Mel, because you said so) I've made a tumbl: http://mllwsmsngs.tumblr.com/

bye bye now

Hey everyone! Come see how good I look!

2011-05-28T17:57:00.000+02:00

In an effort to keep my Spanish synapses firing, I started writing a little story called Juan y el Gato in Applied Maths a few weeks ago. I'm going to keep working on it as I practise, with the obvious consequence that it'll start off very sounding pretty retarded and eventually grow into a beautiful example of written Spanish at its absolute finest.

Here's how it starts:

Juan tiene un gato. El gato se llamo Quixote y el tiene orejas blancas. Los lunes ellos paridan delante se casa y toman leche o un bebido. Después caminan por la puerta y Juan hace desayuno.

Compelling stuff...

"composed on a cellphone at 3 a.m."

2011-04-18T19:15:00.003+02:00

A name in a face and a hazy idea
Moving out (further out)
Like ripples chasing ripples
Being replaced from above,
Sucked in from below.

Barely away (and unable to stay)
And wearily, wearily:
Forgotten.
But, recalled by the patterns
That you left
Is something new in your place
And someone new to forget.

And now you;
Unlooked for (almost unfound) you fell from the sky
Dying - to make your ripple
On the softening surface
Of anxious awaiting
That is wavering - wild -
The master, the medium, the score...
And yet nothing at all.

I couldn't sleep the other night (a lot of my little poems seem to come about that way) and with the thoughts running around in my head and not enough interest to get up and find a pen and paper, I recorded these lines on my cellphone.

I don't have a title for it, besides what I already wrote, but if I had to give it one... nah it doesn't need one.

Reading Journal, Pt. 2

2011-01-22T18:48:00.000+02:00

I thought I’d read more books since I last did this, but unless I’ve forgotten something, this is the complete second entry in my reading journal.

Henry David Thoreau - Walden

I started reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance early last year, but the continuous philosophical meandering wore me out at about half way. It just felt that too often things were said merely for the sake of saying them; wild comparisons were made with no purpose but themselves. I felt I was trudging through a book in which the author was conjuring wild ideas at every corner, in what seemed to me a vain hope that some of them would come out sounding profound.

Well Walden is also a deeply philosophical work, but is perhaps more in tune with my cords. There was still a lot of purple, and endless pondering on this or that lake, but every so often a passage would bring out an idea so perfectly that it kept me going. Some thought would burst out and already feel at home, as if it had been obvious all along. A deeply profound thinker, Thoreau produces some serious nuggets of wisdom. If you have the vigour to plough through it, and even a hint of disillusionment with ‘modern society', the powerful musings in Walden will keep you thinking long after you close it.

J.R.R. Tolkien - Unfinished Tales

I’m an ardent Tolkien fan. That kind of sums this up. If you haven’t read The Silmarillion and aren’t passionately interested in Tolkien’s world, this won’t interest you. It’s a collection of stories – some just fragments and some nearly complete – based around events in and around Tolkiens three major novels. Quite a lot of it has already appeared in smaller, less complete form, in The Silmarillion, but the new angle on the story of the children of Hurin has made me consider getting the latest book touched up by Chrisopher Tolkien, The Children of Hurin (what else), even though I’ve now read the story in two different forms. It’s a far more tragic story than either of his two most well-known works, and if you have a taste for fantasy and the stomach for Tolkien’s huge imagination, it will definitely appeal.

George Orwell - Narrative Essays

To be honest, I can’t remember anything much about this, but it’s here for posterity’s sake. Two of the short stories that I remember most are his well-known Shooting an Elephant (content self-explanatory) and Such, Such Were the Days, which deals with his not-much-loved time at school.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon - The Angel’s Game

Zafon’s earlier novel, The Shadow of the Wind, is definitely one of my favourite books, passionate about Barcelona as I am, so I jumped on this when I saw it. It’s a sort of prequel to the The Shadow of the Wind, and presents Barcelona with a similarly dark and mysterious attitude. It’s also about a novelist, this time trying to write his masterpiece. The mysterious surroundings to this attempt begin a twisted story of love and crazy novelists from the past, and at some stages I was actually a bit confused as to what had happened, as Zafon weaved far more mystical aspects into it than his previous novel. I didn’t enjoy it as much as The Shadow of the Wind, but it’s still a great tale, especially for those of you who (like me) enjoy digging around in nuances for what the hell is actually going on.

Stieg Larsson - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire, The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

I injured myself kiteboarding a few weeks ago and when I landed on my bed from which I barely moved in the next few days, I found Stieg Larsson’s trilogy neatly stacked next to it. I’ve tried thrillers before (Truth being one) and haven’t often been impressed with the fast-paced, ‘modern’, style a lot of them are written in. But I was quite immobile, so I decided to dive into them.

My main comment about the trio would have to be this: intriguing, gripping story, with interesting characters. But: Horrible to read. I’m not sure if the translator is at fault, or if Swedish just doesn’t lend itself to being anglicised, or if it’s just that Larsson is some sort of pedant, but these were not fun books to read. It was more pronounced in the second and third books, but so often I found phrases and metaphors being used countless times within a few pages. As an example, something like ‘kicked the bucket’ would be used again in again in a few passages dealing with someone’s death. Or sometimes a fact would be explained so tautologically that it became tiring just to finish the sentence. “She shot him dead, with her gun, and the bullet killed him, so that he was no longer alive, and and and…”* Anyway, I still enjoyed having read them. They were great stories.

*neither of my examples actually comes from the books, but at times it was that bad

John Steinbeck - Of Mice and Men

I don’t really have much to say about this, short and well-known as it is. I have a vague memory of having it read to me in a classroom many years ago, but on my revisit I didn’t recognise much beyond Lennie’s predilection with carelessly shaking small animals to death… It’s an extremely touching story, which offers up some of the most heart-wrenching dilemmas following Lennie’s unintentionally disastrous actions.

Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers

A brilliantly fresh look into the way the world’s people work, with the ultimate message that chance and circumstance play a far bigger role in success than intrinsic ability. Gladwell has a great way of cutting to what’s important and manages to find awesome correlations in some of the most arbitrary things. For example, the countries that generally show the most deference to the authority are exactly the countries with the worst plane-crash records… It’s a quick and easy read and will have you thinking about your own successes for days, as well as how to optimise the chances of any progeny you may leave (hint: it’s a gamble to get them born as close as possible to January 1, without letting their birthday slip over into December of the previous year.)

Franz Kafka - The Trial

I think I need to read this again. I don’t think he fully got Kafka’s message, which was exacerbated by the fact that the book wasn’t finished and I was left after chapter End wondering what exactly had happened. A deeply disturbing work, it follows K.’s absurd and futile trial, in which he is buffeted from place, never even told of what he is accused, or if he is even accused at all. As I said, I need to read it again; perhaps I was a bit unfocused the first time around.

Erich Maria Remarque - All Quiet on the Western Front

Probably the most harrowing read of my life. Remarque’s famous novel paints a shocking picture of trench-life during ‘The Great War’, from the German pee oh vee. Paul Baumer and his school friends are whipped straight from their school-class into the senselessness and depravity of WWI. They adopt to quickly the routine of life on the front, surviving their stints in the trench where possible and making the most of their time further back from the lines.

Never has the utter senseless of the whole affair been made so clear to me, and Baumer’s narrative seems at times remote until some event brings back with the full force the horror of his situation. One of the touching scenes is Baumer’s meeting with his mother on his few weeks of leave; on her death-bed, she is given a small chance to see her son again, but before long he his whisked back to almost certain death.

One-by-one the narrator’s friends are plucked from him, until right at the end, in the only paragraph of third-person narrative, Remarque’s voice pipes in for a soul-emptying finale.

The Future of Music

2011-01-16T12:25:00.002+02:00

Recently I got my hands on something I’ve wanted to try out for quite a while: a turntable. The first step in this acquisition was, weirdly, the Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd vinyls I bought while in London. Then I sat with these unplayable discs of plastic for a few months before finally getting my hands on something with which to play them. I stumbled across a second-hand JVC auto-return turntable and quickly put it into use spinning up my records, which by this stage had swelled to a further twenty. Some I bought for almost nothing and included a few more Pink Floyd, along with Talking Heads, Supertramp, R.E.M. and a bunch more random album. The others were given me by my grandparents, whose own record-player had slipped unnoticed into a coma. The most interesting of these are the soundtrack from The Jungle Book as well as one from the BBC, chronicling all their most important broadcasts from 1922 until 1972.

So for now my main objective is to get a few more records under my belt and, fortunately for that desire, I see three golden opportunities on the horizon, namely the new albums on their way from Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Explosions In The Sky. Besides being some of the most exciting album releases of the last few years, they’ll give me an excuse (and a reason) to get some more vinyl in my stack.

Music

2011-01-10T22:44:00.001+02:00

It’s been a while since I did one of these, so I’m going to have to look quite far back to dredge up the albums and songs that have most impressed (upon) me in that last year-and-a-bit. I’m not going to a do a top-ten list; perhaps I’ll do one at the end of 2011 (what with Radiohead, RHCP and Explosions In The Sky albums on the horizon) but for now it’s too cluttered and also my time frame is too arbitrary for an ordered list to make sense, so prose will suffice.

The Big Two for me this past year would have to be The National and Arcade Fire. A close third would probably go Sufjan Stevens. Somehow these three slipped by my focus previously; sure I’d listened to them quite a bit, but none of the three had ever grabbed me before like they did this past year. First was The National, whom I saw at Latitude Festival in England. It was easily the most powerful act of the festival and still when I listen to their songs I’m transported back there. That and their new album, High Violet, made them my definitive band for 2010.

Then Arcade Fire. I’ve somehow never given them the attention the rest of the internet has, but the release of The Suburbs, changed all that. I found myself wondering how I’d managed to overlook them before. Their online video, ‘The Wilderness Downtown’, remains the most awesome thing I’ve yet discovered on the internet. It’s a music video of sorts for We Used To Wait, and if you haven’t seen it yet, do yourself a favour and watch it. It’ll change your mind-set of what a music video is. Last in my list of obvious misses is Sufjan Stevens. This it wasn’t as paradigm-shifting a discovery, more a slow exploration of a wealth of new music. It started with his new album, The Age Of Adz, and then Illinois. Since then I’ve been ploughing through everything he has to offer. I’d have difficulty picking out favourite songs, but Chicago is probably the easiest to recommend.

Now onwards to less obvious favourites. Beach House’s new album Teen Dream was a great surprise, despite the suspicious album name. They offer something similar to The XX, but with slightly more ‘pop’-ish sounds and more eerie vocals. Then, with a far less dreamy sound, Scottish Frightened Rabbit, who were also at Latitude, quickly hooked me with their new album, The Winter Of Mixed Drinks. Again I wasn’t expecting too much from that album title, but it quickly won me over. The vocals are less jarring than Glasvegas, but remain very interesting and expressive, especially in Things and Swim Until You Can’t See Land.

The other big album of 2010 for me was Gorillaz’ Plastic Beach, which probably isn’t very surprising. There aren’t any obvious hits as big as Clint Eastwood or Feel Good Inc., but as an album I far prefer it to any of their previous releases. It’s a great album concept and the balance between different genres keeps it interesting while not flooding my ears with too much hip-hop. Stand-outs for me are Rhinestone Eyes and Stylo (with a music video featuring Bruce Willis). Some Kind Of Nature (with Lou Reed) is also brilliantly devised.

The last things that really grabbed me in 2010 were the philharmonic and string quartet covers I found of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin (London Philharmonic Orchestra) and Radiohead (Vitamin String Quartet). Combining the novelties of modern rock music with the grace of classical instruments; granted it doesn’t always work perfectly, and I often find myself waiting for the lyrics to jump into place, but it’s a great and slightly less demanding way of listening to some of my favourite music.

Lastly, and leastly, there are a couple of albums that didn’t do too much for me. Wolf Parade’s new album, Expo 86, didn’t live up to the expectations of At Mount Zoomer (which didn’t either live up to the expectations of Apologies). It’s still a nice album and perhaps I’ll still warm to it, but I still felt let down. Vampire Weekend’s Contra was a decent album, but it didn’t grab me like it seems to have grabbed huge swathes of Last.fm. It just doesn’t seem to offer too much new after their first album. They were also at Latitude, but I skipped them for Jónsi and Grizzly Bear.

Kings Of Leon, who already scuppered themselves (in my view) with Only By The Night, have really sunk the ship with their latest, Come Around Sundown. Where their previous album was at least ultra-catchy, this new album does away with both their original ‘southern-rocker’ charm and their MTV-catchiness. There’s nothing wrong with the album, per se, but it just feels a bit pointless. It has no soul. Finally, dear readers (and I can say weird things like that because no-one’s ever going to get this far), I have Kanye West. His new album, with a title too long to mention here, which seems to have taken so many by the balls, really didn’t interest me all that much. Sure, he brought in Justin Vernon and did all sorts of clever new things, but to me it still just sounds like a huge ego shouting at a microphone while said ego’s huge stockpiles of cash pay clever people to do his work for him. Thanks for listening.

The Telephone Prayer

2010-12-13T10:24:00.000+02:00

And slaves we shall be
For thee, my Lord, for thee.
Convenience hath descended forth from Thy hand
Our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands

...

Catch-22

2010-12-05T15:13:00.001+02:00

He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.

What I've Read

2010-11-06T20:26:00.000+02:00

Staying in a residence with two hundred mobile distractions built in has never made it easy to find time to read; for some reason it isn’t regarded as being as sacred from distraction as studying and watching movies are. But I’ve figured it out and have started reading a lot again, so I thought I might keep a mini-reading journal, and what better place to keep it than here.

I’ll do it in instalments, rather than posting each time I finish a book and I’ll start off with what I remember from the last month or two. Also it seems these are going to be more reviews than anything, because I’m probably going to overthink it, but let’s pardon this maiden voyage and see how it goes.

Jared Diamond - The Third Chimpanzee

I’ve read two of Diamond’s other book, Collapse and Guns, Germs and Steel. A lot of what he wrote in those is repeated in this; except it’s the other way around because this came a good few years earlier. Evidently there were some areas that he wasn’t quite satisfied with yet, so he decided to expand on them in books of their own. So although this is a brilliant book in its own right, I can’t recommend reading it after reading the other two. In between the fresh parts, fresh as they were, there was – for me – a lot of tedium.

Harper Lee - To Kill A Mockingbird

Believe it or not, I read this for the first time a few weeks ago. I don’t know that I can add anything to this that hasn’t already been said, except this is the kind of writing that I would love to achieve and that I believe is in some ways attainable (not necessarily attainable for me, just attainable). Scout’s narrative is organic and flows and weaves itself between tangents before grabbing hold of the plot again.

Richard Dawkins - The Ancestor’s Tale

Only the second Richard Dawkins book that I’ve read (the other being The God Delusion) but already his style of skirting and occasionally puncturing the edges of religious dogma felt familiar. This fascinating accounting models itself on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, with the pilgrimage starting at humans and journeying back not to Canterbury, but to the beginning of life. As it goes on, more and more distant cousins of ours join the pilgrimage, each with its own contribution to the story of evolution. I’d always wanted to know exactly how we are related to each other animal, and, for instance, how many ‘greats’ separate me from, say, a leafy sea dragon (195 million). Certainly the best book of its kind that I’ve read so far, The Ancestor’s Tale is a must read for anyone interested in the myriad topics it touches on.

Bill Bryson – Neither Here Nor There

I wouldn’t compare this with A Short History and The Life and Times, but Bryson’s account of his travels through Europe worked perfectly for me, as I happened to be following a similar path through Europe when I read it. He travelled through most of Europe and, as he does, took a rather cynical view of everything he came across. A lot of these were accurate, but equally often it was plain that his negative view was merely there because it’s funnier. However, the parts that really stood out for me were when he climbed over himself to sing the praises of certain places, especially Bruges. He used the word ‘perfect’ no less than nine times in the few paragraphs he devoted to the town, and his descriptions of the northern lights gave me goose bumps. For the most part, it’s a very entertaining read, made all the more so by experience of the places he describes.

John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy Of Dunces

After describing to someone my joy at reading Catch-22 (see below), I was swiftly recommended to read this. This is a very unique story. I don’t really know how to describe it. Essentially, it’s a collection of bizarre events, mostly perpetrated by the fat, Fortuna-praising, bus-fearing, modernity-mocking slob of a protagonist, Ignatius Reilly. And he drags through 1960s New Orleans a trail of confusion induced in (amongst others) a policeman, an ex-vagrant, a tycoon, a hot dog salesman, a gay and a pornographer.

Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina

“Considered by some to be the greatest novel ever written…” So says the jacket cover. As far as the concept of a novel goes, I would have to agree. This book is so real, so alive, so intricate. It achieves so much and explores so deeply. It really is something that simply must be read. Tolstoy effortlessly weaves together the threads of all the characters’ stories, creating a world vibrant with realism. Nothing is contrived; every tiny encounter, every passing thought and every chance conversation has its place and together they draw the reader into their primary focus, love. Anna’s physical, lustful love is doomed to fail where Levin’s pure, ‘Christian’ love perseveres. Never has a simple contradiction been so painstakingly and exquisitely wrought as in Tolstoy’s penultimate tale of love.

Joseph Heller - Catch-22

I saved this for (almost) last. Grand as Anna Karenina is, Catch-22 is nirvana for me. Never before have I enjoyed reading something this much. And I don’t expect to do so again. Line for line, paragraph for paragraph, this is unbeatable. I have never laughed so much, nor been so enthralled, at anything. Jumping around between Yossarian, Major Major Major Major and whichever other bureaucratic nightmare happens to catch his gaze, the narrator brings together a story so poignant and ridiculous, it’s no wonder it’s become an icon. Almost every sentence is rippling with humour; in fact just one can recall everything that makes Catch-22 great: “He would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; if he didn't want to he was sane and had to.” Up until this stage, Nineteen Eighty-Four, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Shadow of the Wind were vying for my top-book-spot, but I think that Catch-22 has now irrevocably claimed it. I’d love to go on but I’m probably embarrassing myself. It helped also that I read this while travelling through Europe, so I expect the two experiences will be firmly tied together If you haven’t read this yet, leave this pathetic blog, pack away your laptop, shoot your librarian and get yourself a copy.

The Bible

I’ve started reading The Bible, on a bit of whim. I’m very far from finished, the books above having taken preference, but from what I’ve skimmed so far, and from what I’ve read from third parties, my main comment would have to be this: it’s very similar to something like Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, but more difficult to read and, unsurprisingly, too inconsistent to take seriously.

No time for good music (alias We Used To Wait)

2010-11-02T20:53:00.001+02:00

On the way to the beach this afternoon, I was ecstatic to hear Arcade Fire’s We Used To Wait on MFM, the university radio station. Like ~~almost~~ every radio station in South Africa, ours is a firm adherent of terrible music, so to hear something like Arcade Fire was an awesome surprise. But then something terrible happened. The driver, unaware of the agony he was about to cause me, leaned across and changed to South Africa’s pre-eminent spewer of crap, 5-FM, where Chris Brown or some equally talentless yoyo was having an abortion.

Unable to look anyone in the face after what had happened, I curled up against the window and feigned sleep. I’ve thought about this before, but I think often people just don’t have time for good music. Much easier just to listen to the latest off the production line than to take your attention off your Blackberry for the duration needed to appreciate music of a slightly higher order. It was ideal that this happened with this particular song, as it has a very similar message to mine. With all our modern conveniences and luxuries, our culture of instant gratification (just like this blog is quicker to read – and write – than, say, a novel), the focus needed to enjoy anything more complex is getting rarer and rarer.

That is, until it gets a lot more airtime on the radio or MTV. This was made clear to me on the way back from the beach when a Temper Trap song came on (nothing on Arcade Fire, but well within my ‘good music’ umbrella) and everyone in the car started singing happily along. So ‘we’ can enjoy better music, but only when we’re forced to. So if I go back to the beach in a week, after We Used To Wait has had a bit more airplay, I imagine it’ll be greeted by the car at large with much more enthusiasm. I’ll bask in the irony for a bit, and then go back to brooding.

A Working Definition of Greatness

2010-10-01T11:17:00.000+02:00

A lot of things are good. In fact, this essay might even turn out to be good. But only once in a while does something truly great wade its way out of the mire, nudging this very essay aside on its way out. But how can we recognise this truly great works? By what sign do they show themselves off?

A working definition that I’ve just designed involves a bit of subjective imagination. Picture yourself being responsible for the genesis of one of these rare marvels. Put yourself in the boots of whichever genius wrote or composed or designed something, and then ask then ask yourself whether the boot fits. Can you even picture yourself achieving what was achieved?

I’ll explain what I mean with an example. Take Rowling’s Harry Potter series. I won’t claim that I could have written what she wrote, or anywhere near to that. However, I can imagine writing it. Take a chapter or a passage from the book, and it isn’t beyond most people’s reach. Now for the superlative: Heller’s Catch-22. I can’t imagine having brought it to life. In every single sentence I’m aware that what I’m reading is miles beyond my own limited abilities. And that is a huge difference.

Of course the matter of greatness is very subjective, but that’s part of the point. A subjective test for a subjective matter. Examples that are constantly waving their flags of greatness in my face (apart from Catch-22) are Coleridge’s Kubla Khan and the game-changing album The Dark Side Of The Moon. Or perhaps Beethoven's 9th would be an even better example. With both of those, and lots of others besides, the boots of the creator simply don’t fit. Try as I might, the very concept of their creation evades the limits of my various faculties. And that is why they may march forth, and proudly proclaim themselves as great.

Vanishing Horizons

2010-09-25T12:40:00.002+02:00

I'm about to get started on the grander version of my 12,000 word journal. I'm just working on a suitable opening. As importantly, I've decided to use the experience of writing this journal as a prototype for trying to write a novel.

It will be set in the closing years of the Spanish Civil War and I have some vague ideas about the kind of style I want to give it, as well as the timeline and main characters. I'm going to leave it at that for now and pay more attention to it after I've gained the experience of writing this journal.

A changing mind(set)

2010-09-07T20:13:00.000+02:00

I remember years ago, when my primary school years were in full swing, we were often bombarded with information on the dangers of smoking. The presentations were very effective and caused me to immediately swear never to touch a cigarette. My friend sitting next to me was more sceptical and assured me that no matter how strongly I felt against smoking then, things would change as I got older. I believed him in a way; who was I to know what kind of attitude my future self would have?

However, about nine years have passed since that fateful decision and my attitude towards cigarettes has yet to waver. If anything, it has probably strengthened. But what I’m highlighting here is not my opinion of smoking but rather the fact that my friend’s scepticism was wrong. He thought that as I got older, I would, in a sense become a ‘different person’; the archetypal ‘teenager.’ His opinion was that the teenager that would spawn from my pre-adolescent innocence would have completely different priorities and attitudes. And I had to believe that maybe there was truth in what he was saying; perhaps I would be a completely different person in a few years. But secretly I was still determined that I wouldn’t give over to something as senseless as smoking.

I think this is interesting. In the years since that day, I have changed out of all recognition in almost so many ways, as one does in one’s formative years, but I didn’t just forget who I was. My opinions and attitudes and worldviews changed, but I didn’t throw everything out the window. I just used the cigarette thing as an example, and what I’m saying probably sounds extremely obvious and unrevelatory, but I think it’s interesting nonetheless. We change, but we don’t forget.

There and Back Again

2010-08-16T15:41:00.004+02:00

I've pretty much finished my 12,000 word epic of my month in Europe. I'm just brushing it up but I'll try post portions of it on here. With some pictures too I think.

My main idea is to print out those 12,000 words and use them as a basis for a longer, more lavish, less summarised 'story' of the trip. That is, I want to take what I've written, part by part, and now re-write it not as a summary of events (which is what it currently is) but as how I'd like it to be if I was telling the story.

I considered naming it Alice's (or Chris's) Adventures in Wonderland, which is suitable, given the absurdity of most of Europe, but instead settled on There and Back Again, in homage to The Hobbit. It's also less obviously a parody, which is hardly the point anyway.

Basically, a friend of mine (Rich) and I went to Europe for 36 days. We took a Contiki tour through Paris, Switzerland, Antibes/Nice/Monaco, Florence, Rome, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Munich, Heidelberg and finally Amsterdam. Then we stayed on in Amsterdam for a bit before a going back to London, where we relaxed for a few days and then went to Latitude music festival.

It was an amazing 36 days and left me deeply changed, which is why I've devoted 12,000 words to describing it. It reads a bit like a summary of events, more than a story, which is what it should be. But that's not gonna change until I do the handwritten version, which won't be coming up here anyway. So enjoy.

Homage to 'Homage to Catalonia'

2010-04-07T13:44:00.004+02:00

This is an extract from an investigation I did last year, the title of which was:

'How was the social revolution in Republican Spain destroyed by means of the May Days of 1937?'

After limping through years of political turmoil, July 1936 signalled the beginning of a fundamental socio-political shift in Spain. The colossal ideological conflicts sparked one of the most violent civil wars in history. The Spanish generals (Nationalists) rose against the government (Republicans). This ignited a widespread social revolution in which the workers parried the military uprising. For example, the workers of Barcelona defeated the local Nationalist rising within three days (Souchy, 1937, 1). This social revolution ended rather abruptly ten months later in a few days of violent infighting, centred in Barcelona and known as the May Days. In this tragic event, comrades in the struggle against Fascism opened fire on one another, resulting in 400 dead and 1,000 wounded.

This analysis focuses on the political scene along with the key events at street level. The role of the each political organisation is dissected; chiefly the CNT (Anarchist trade union) and the PSUC (combined Socialist and Communist Parties), in addition to the smear campaign against the POUM (revolutionary Communist Party).

The outbreak of the war caused an unprecedented level of international clamour. France sought to support the Republicans but Britain persuaded her otherwise, being determined on non-intervention (Thomas, 1961, 258). Germany and Italy feigned non-intervention whilst investing vast amounts of energy, equipment and personnel in the Nationalist war cause. The USSR was ostensibly neutral but supplied the Republicans with equipment and tacticians (Thomas, 1961, 263) with Spain’s considerable gold reserves as payment (Peirats, 1977, 2; Thomas, 1961, 310). The USA was firmly neutral and Mexico alone openly provided support, supplying the Republicans with a limited quantity of arms (Thomas, 1961, 260).

There was a spectacular galvanisation of the proletariat throughout the more liberal provinces of Spain. Following Anarchist and Socialist ideals and bolstered by trade unions such as the CNT, the working class removed the bourgeoisie from power and, to varying degrees, initiated collectivisation of industry and agriculture, introduced wages based on need and in some cases abolished money altogether (Souchy, 1937, 1; Thomas, 1961, 171). There was also a more brutal facet to this revolution: in many cases, any person suspected of having Fascist sympathies was put to death – perhaps more than 80,000 in all of Republican Spain (Thomas, 1961, 173).

The Communists in Barcelona were initially devoted to the revolution but as the Republican war effort came to depend increasingly on the USSR, Stalin ordered an end to the social revolution; he wanted authority in the hands of the Communist government. Thus, the Communist parties and trade unions began to engineer a series of events – small anti-Anarchist actions at first – that provoked the workers of Barcelona and led ultimately to the May Days.

On the afternoon of May 3rd 1937, three truckloads of Asaltos under the leadership of the PSUC Chief of Police entered the Barcelona Telephone Exchange with a mind to displace the trade unionists running it. They entered unhindered but were stopped in one of the lower levels by armed workers; each public facility had a store of arms, the Telefónica included. There was no legitimate reason for the police to enter the building, so it is almost certain that this was contrived from the start as an instigative move (Bolloten, 1991, 1; Souchy, 1937, 7). This was naturally denied and the event was completely distorted in the Communist propaganda organs and foreign media (Orwell, 1938, 169-75). Violent fighting ensued and all sides scrambled to erect barricades.

The CNT demanded the removal of the PSUC Chief of Police responsible for the provocation but this was to no avail – it is has been suggested that by punishing the deserving officials, the violence might have been completely avoided (Bolloten, 1991, 3).

The following day the CNT proposed a provisional council ‘in which no one who had belonged to any of the previous governments should participate’ (Bolloten, 1991, 12). This proposal implicitly excluded the Communist officials responsible for the initial provocation but the regional President, afraid of Anarchist control, instead requested that the national government in Valencia take control and provide police reinforcements.

Fighting in the street worsened while the CNT desperately urged the workers not to react to any provocation – much to the disappointment of the more revolutionary workers and factions. The central government soon announced its move to take control; this satisfied all but the CNT, which lamented Catalonia’s loss of autonomy.

Various CNT politicians and the Minister of the Interior then began a furious scramble to restore peace in Barcelona before the troops’ arrival from Valencia (Bolloten, 1991, 85-7). This was successful and calm reigned on the morning of the seventh, with only occasional shots coming from the centre of the city. The workers, eager to break out of their strongholds, began to dismantle their barricades and return to work and the city seemed able to breathe again. Nonetheless, there were continued complaints of police officers harassing and arresting civilians.

The 1500 Asaltos arrived that evening to no resistance; the workers had literally lain down their arms (Souchy, 1937, 30). This large Valencian force, considerably abler and better equipped than the troops on the front, was therefore wasted on a showy parade of power in Barcelona, while it could have been contributing to the anti-Fascist struggle.

The CNT officials were happy that the fighting was over but were wary of their impending doom; the Communists, aided by the Asaltos, caused further disruption in Barcelona and the surrounding towns, overthrowing Anarchist cooperatives and dismissing representative town councils.

In the aftermath to the May events, the government blamed the CNT trade union and specifically, due to its vulnerable standing, the POUM. Its members were accused of being Trotskyite traitors in Franco’s pay (Orwell, 1938, 154; Thomas, 1961, 453). The same was printed throughout Europe, regardless of the fact that it was a complete fabrication, as Trotsky himself attested! Thus, the trade unions were stripped of their power and the POUM was declared illegal (Orwell, 1938, 117). The Communists had gained the power they sought – while appeasing Stalin. The revolution, set in motion ten months earlier, now came to a grinding halt. The proletariat had lost their revolutionary fervour and dug in for a losing battle against Fascism, if not for egalitarianism.

Get Rich Quick

2010-01-19T13:29:00.004+02:00

A friend and I decided to get rich quickly in November last year and so we decided to make a pop-dance song, along the lines of those plastered all over MTV these days. We made the lyrics quite quickly but then ran out of interest before we could get to patching together a nice dance beat. So I've decided to upload the original lyrics and if anyone has the energy to make a dance beat for it, I'll give you half of the millions that the song is bound to make.

Have a look:

It's obviously difficult to describe the subtleties of the song, but the lyrics are dynamite. Enjoy.

Edit: I can see it's quite hard to read but it is still just legible.

Music of '09

2010-01-11T14:29:00.005+02:00

The two releases for 2009 that did it for me would have to be Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest and The xx's debut album. There were others too; Fever Ray's self-titled album I quite enjoyed, along with Volcano Choir's Unmap, though it could hardly compare to For Emma. Riceboy Sleeps' self-titled debut is also well worth mention. I haven't yet got through some of the more recent releases that I'd like to, such as Noah And The Whale's and Phoenix's new album, but perhaps they'll join my list when I do. Other music that defined 2009 for me, but that wasn't released in 2009, include Sigur Rós, Miles Davis, splashings of classical music, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and its ilk, Glasvegas, Pink Floyd's pre-Dark Side Of The Moon albums and, more recently, Bob Dylan.

I wasn't really caught up in the Animal Collective craziness, nor was I tricked by Lady GaGa's succubus-like attempts at world domination.

Backwater

2009-12-11T18:41:00.006+02:00

Standing back with mind wide open;
Eyes shut tight.
Feeling this with fingers clenched;
No one here.
Looking in with body drenched;
Soul in flight.
Beneath the water sinks a tear
For your histories are broken.

Floating back, the past is near.
Find the path that someone chose
To ask, Was this forever wrong?
Now fingers drip with sweat and dew
And the falling water plays a song,
But the worry never shows
For only this can heal you
As the truth begins to clear.

Tracing back with steps of thought;
Pacing through with thoughts in blue
Until your mind and spirit join
And the water stops its turns
Of your compass – like a dirty coin –
Which says, Other pasts have not come true
(A message bleeds behind the burns)
This is not the path you sought.

© Chris Arderne 2009, all rights reserved.

This is the first time I had a specific goal when writing something. I wanted to create a feeling of actually being there with someone/as someone who is considering his/her past...

Life Goals

2009-10-31T10:28:00.004+02:00

I never really wanted to be a rich person; I want to be well off, but I've never had a desire to be very rich. Until recently. I have now come up with three very good reasons to be rich, in ascending order of possibility.

Firstly, there is a place in California where you and your friends can go fly aeroplanes. What happens is you hand over your cash, get a bit of training, presumably in a simulator or something, and then you climb into a little plane with a co-pilot sitting behind you. You and your friends then fly around zapping each other with lasers and the co-pilot only gets involved if something dangerous is about to happen. I cannot for the life of me think of anything more fun, so that is goal number one.

Then, once I've had my fun and am getting a bit older, I want to buy a Jaguar. It doesn't have to be the best Jaguar, but I want a Jaguar. An XK would do. That's goal number two.

Finally, if I'm really rolling in dough, I want to save up until... until I can buy MTV. What I would then do is shut it down. Or convert it into a kiddies show. Or something. And I would be hailed as a hero and that is goal number three - to destroy MTV.

The World isn’t much without us

2009-09-13T13:52:00.005+02:00

In this age of our spirit
Our fire is nigh gone;
Unkempt by its keepers,
It now wavers through the night.
Wanting fuel –
Promethean heat!

And we must
And we can only
Try until the epiphany
Dawns. Then we
Can half undo what
We to our own spirit have done.

The heat would be given – our souls to tame –
This time not too little; never too much.
Lead us to glory, once our fire has shone
In the deep throne of its eternal reign.
With a flicker and the heat of a touch,
The stops are gone and the fire roars anon.

I've been writing this a little bit at a time for the past while and I'm not particularly happy with it but there you go.

Welcome to the Machine

2009-08-07T12:51:00.001+02:00

Here's my final Toastmaster's speech from the end of matric in 2009:

Our grade attended three days of community service at local schools before the recent holiday and I found the experience to be thoroughly worthwhile – for myself at any rate. Some of us organised libraries and cleared soccer fields; others built a vegetable patch – I was lucky enough to be amongst those who taught. There is no way three days of concerted teaching will make a tangible difference to anyone’s life but, as we shall see, I have hopefully stepped on the wings of one boy’s butterfly.

My three ‘colleagues’ and I were assigned to a Grade 8 class of surprisingly few pupils – only twenty or so all told. I quickly settled in with a table of four learners who seemed to be the most capable English speakers. They greeted me with generous smiles and eight years of educational baggage.

The disparity in ability between the diligent and the disinterested testifies to the negligible input of the teachers. The ones who were dedicated showed some signs of aptitude but the others were sorely incapable. One boy was completely illiterate – how can any self respecting educator allow a boy to sit in his class, hopelessly incapable of participating in even the most basic of tasks?

I struggled my way through the language barrier and spent a full five hours walking them through the basics of geometry, a bit of algebra and some truly rudimentary unit conversions. They literally had no concept a kilometre and it took some serious head bashing to get them to convert centimetres to metres and so on.

I mean no offence to the pupils and in some areas they showed surprising flair. I intend merely to illustrate the teachers’ obvious disinterest in their pupils. I really felt for these children but it’s completely hopeless; even with a determined and continued effort – for which I have not the inclination nor the energy – there would be little I could do...

That all said, there is a slim chance that I will have allowed one person to shirk his bondage to relative poverty. One of the smarter of the class’s pupils and certainly one of the bigger fifteen year olds around, he told me of his aspirations to attend a real school and in everything we did he seemed determined to impress.

I want to stress again that most of the boys were very eager and tried their best whenever I gave them a task, something scarcely seen at Woodridge. But this boy seemed to possess far more than his fair share of enthusiasm and one way or another, he has a better chance than most in his situation of making something of his life.

When I told him the next day that he was being considered him for a scholarship position, I felt he could almost cry. I had never seen, nor do I expect I will see again, such a look of contained, but almost boundless, hope and happiness. Reliving that moment brings goose bumps to my skin; the honesty and purity of that optimism seems impossible among the material joys of modern life. His overwhelming joy frightens me too; I fear for his unknowable disappointment if it doesn’t turn out as planned. I stressed that he should not be too optimistic but I still fear that his spark of hope will be dispassionately extinguished.

And so, fellow matrics, on the verge of stumbling into the real world, welcome – welcome to the machine.

2009's Resolutions

2009-06-13T23:28:00.009+02:00

At about 11:50 on the 31st of December 2008, while everybody else was duly inebriated, I did something a bit odd. I sat down on the beach - all four kilometres of it completely deserted - plugged in my earphones and sat down to right some new year's resolutions. As the results below will testify, this wasn't as successful as I might have hoped but I hadn't ever written resolutions before so it wasn't a complete waste of time. The light house at that time of night was absolutely beautiful but unfortunately I had no camera. I soon walked back home and heard Kings of Leon's 'Sex on Fire' blaring from all around and cursed MTV under my breath.

I'm copying these verbatim from the little piece of paper on which I wrote them. I'm aware that this is more of a to do list than a list of resolutions but that's how it turned out. I've also omitted some; that seems fair.

'Learn a new word every day (& use it).'

I mentioned this already. Check, sort of.

'Do a back roll [on a kiteboard].'

Check.

'Do some sit ups.'

I was doing a few but read that they're bad for your back, so doing push ups rather. Check.

'Get back into drums.'

Well by some stroke of fate a drum set appeared right outside my room but then it left soon after. Still up.

'Be a good friend.'

Check I hope.

'Write something amazing.'

I suppose this blog is my makeshift attempt at addressing this resolution but I have more ambitious desires.

'Read: philosophy, language, politics, economic, religion.'

It's coming.

'Form a political/philosophical viewpoint.'

Umm... Well... Not yet.

'Risk something.'

This is relative, but relatively speaking, no. Not yet.

'Read the bible.'

I'm an atheist but I'd still like to read it. It's very popular I hear.

'Design/develop/create/construct something.'

This is in the pipeline.

'Use a cellphone less.'

Yes I suppose. No. No I don't but I will.

'Survive in the wild.'

Scratch that one.

'Do [climb] the cockscomb [mountain] in one day.'

I'm still going to do this; I need to wait for winter to come though.

'Cycle to Jeffrey's Bay.'

I cycled across the Karoo instead, which is about seven times further, so check.

'Take a beautiful photo.'

Well this is subjective but still incomplete.

'Don't get sunburnt.'

Check!

'Keep this in case I become famous.'

We'll see...

2009!

This is where I stopped.

Soon receding, rerun

2009-06-08T21:11:00.014+02:00

I lay in bed the other night with thought's running around my head, as is so often the case and eventually I hopped out, grabbed my pen and paper, and this is the result:

Found of the finder – so started and dressed;
Recently homed in’s de plume.
And one, being not always there kept,
Needs depart, to digress, and too soon!
So to mark it you run through
Places neither heeded, nor used,
Onwards without – sans care; untopped!
Essentially a rite, so made for the yous,
Maybe recalled, soon receding, rerun.

Albums that changed my (musical) life (in 2008)

2009-05-28T18:01:00.009+02:00

Last year was a revolutionary year in music for me. I entered 2008 with very little to show for myself music-wise. I was happy listening to Arctic Monkeys and Billy Talent. What follows is a list of music that only really entered my repertoire in 2008: Radiohead, Pink Floyd, Tool, Metallica, Explosions In The Sky, Mogwai, Sigur Ros, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, The Postal Service, Death Cab For Cutie, Nine Inch Nails, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah... Drift intercepted? Those are just a bunch of names I've pulled off the top of my head to emphasise the naive and destitute state in which I began 2008. And to illustrate how far I've come in a year.

So this list will not be a list of my top albums of 2008, as many (most) of the albums were not released in 2008; rather, it will be a list of the albums that I discovered in 2008 that most affected my musical tastes. I will always hold a special place for these albums in my playlists. I will buy these albums - when I can afford that kind of thing. So, with no further pomp, let me begin the heart-wrenching process of picking the top ten. Or in this case eleven...

11. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

This only just made the cut. I think I'm cheating a bit in including this, as I didn't step into 2008 completely oblivious to Clap Your Hand Say Yeah's existence. But this band introduced me to lots of the indie music that I've since come to love. This album showed me, before Radiohead or anyone else, what a bit of creativity could lend to music. So it made a place in my list on the skin of its yellow country teeth.

10. TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain

I suppose TV On The Radio was another band that I discovered early in 2008 that really broadened my horizons. Though very wacky and experimental, the songs are still awesome and never tiring. Staring At The Sun (from Desperate Youth) is still one of my favourite songs. I'm still easing myself into OK Calculator; I don't see myself ever loving the album but it has some interesting tracks.

9. Snow Patrol - Eyes Open

I know Snow Patrol has become pretty mainstream - even more so since A Hundred Million Suns - but Eyes Open (along with Final Straw) is a beautiful album that still moves me. Every song is a winner for me but if I had to choose a favourite, perhaps Set The Fire To The Third Bar would be it. I'm not so impressed with A Hundred Million Suns but Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands is pretty good.

8. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

This was released last year and I was immediately sucked in by its beautifully haunting sound. Vernon manages to create such an atmosphere when you listen to his music - you really just need to set some time aside to listen to it and get lost in his snowy forest cabin.

7. Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

This isn't even my second favourite Floyd album but the fact that I enjoy it signifies some very serious character development from a few years ago when I remember listening to The Great Gig In The Sky and thinking it abhorrent. This album grows on me every time I listen to it. Each song presents something new and I think it is amazing that Floyd managed to create something as brilliant as this practically right off the bat.

6. Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane

This album wooed me in a similar way to For Emma; from the very first listen I found myself amazed at the imagery that Chad's unique voice conveys. The songs manage to be at once eerie and catchy. I've since found his older albums, Skelliconnection and Infiniheart and love them almost as much.

5. Metallica - Metallica

I couldn't quite decide which Metallica album would hold this spot. It was really between this and Ride The Lightning and I almost copped out and chose the live S&M album... I'm generally not a lover of metal but Metallica just has such a clean, powerful sound that it seems to rise above many other bands that are perhaps too 'noisy' or undefined for me. Songs like For Whom The Bell Tolls and Nothing Else Matters manage to bowl me over. And the Unforgiven songs are all amazing.

4. Tool - Lateralus

The title song of this amazed me immediately. I hadn't had any listening history with progressive metal/rock, but the effort and thought that went into Lateralus absolutely amazed me. It was one of the first times I listened to heavier music and loved it. The music in the song just seems to have been so intricately engineered and the lyrics are at an intellectual level above and beyond most anything that I'd heard before. Played in the regular order or in the alternative order I covered in a previous post, it all seems to have been designed very carefully. The move from Schism to Parabol to Parabola is awesome. Pushit from Ænima is also unbelievably powerful.

3. Radiohead - In Rainbows

I couldn't figure out whether to include OK Computer or In Rainbows, as they remain pretty equal in my esteem. I had both for a moment, but they didn't amaze me in different enough ways to justify that. So I used In Rainbows but OK Computer could easily have substituted it. I could listen to this album hundreds and hundreds of times (I don't) and still not be bored. Each song is unique and interesting and each has a story. Every time I listen to this album I find myself amazed at the atmosphere created by these songs. They are catchy; they are beautiful. I get lost in this album whenever I listen to it properly and have difficulty finding my way out often.

2. Pink Floyd - The Dark Side Of The Moon

This album is brilliant. Need I say more? Definitely. I think this is probably the best album ever. To make a progressive concept album of this creative calibre and have it attain astronomically high sales? That is brilliant musicianship. That is Pink Floyd. Every track on this album is absolutely astounding. Almost every song could be my favourite ever. The whole thing is so poignant and the escalation from song to song is silky smooth. Listening to this album is an exercise in humility; one realises one's inferiority to these extraordinary people. It is also a harrowing experience because one can't be sure that something of this level will ever be created again. But one can hope.

1. Explosions In The Sky - The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

When I first listened to this album I could not believe that such beautiful music could be created. I was removed from where I sat and taken somewhere else. I tried to study listening to this album but I just could not focus on the book in front of me with the pinnacle of post rock in control of my senses. The experience had (and still does) a transcendental quality that I don't think can be replaced. From the opening chord of First Breath After Coma the pure sonic brilliance that is this album is in control. Once your cerebellum has survived the ecstasy of the following three songs, it is presented with Your Hand In Mine. At this point, your brain is likely to simply shut down, being completely unprepared for this level of audio awesomeness. This is, in my mind, the most emotive musical creation ever. Note, however, that I still rank The Dark Side Of The Moon higher in terms of musical brilliance. But this trumps that album for me on the basis of beauty.

Please have a look at my Last.fm page to verify what you've read. Or if you have your own Last.fm account, why not see if we're compatible? :)

There you have it. The story of my music. Perhaps a description of the posters on my wall would go some way to contributing to what I've written above. Pink Floyd's 'back catalogue' adorns the short wall, while the longer one is shared by: Radiohead's OK Computer poster, Tool's 10,000 days poster and a live Metallica collage poster. For a South African it is difficult to get my hands on the posters of less internationally established bands but if I could get an Explosions In The Sky poster easily I wouldn't hesitate!

I'm soon to be getting a set of hi-fi speakers, probably the B&W DM602.5 S3. I am almost jumpy with excitement. Any guesses as to the first song I play?

Trans-Karoo cycle

2009-04-27T22:14:00.006+02:00

A week or two ago I went to the Karoo. Then I got on my mountain bike, cycled 85km and went to sleep in a school hostel somewhere. Then I woke up, got on my bike and cycled a further 80km. Then I got off, slept and drove to Cape Town, while the rest of the team struggled on for a further 300km or so.

Before the event, I thought I would be relieved to be able to throw in the towel three days early but once I got embroiled in the cycling, I was very sad to see the more serious cyclists continuing without me. For the previous two days I had struggled through what was perhaps a greater distance of cycled than the sum total of my previous years of existence. I was thrilled! I've yet to do my psychology dissertation but I'd look to like into this to find out what caused me to enjoy the tortuous event. Dopamine or something?

Evidently they wanted us to turn right...

Some photos

2009-04-14T11:08:00.010+02:00

I just wanted to share two photos of mine that I quite like. The first I took about three years ago of my cat and it got a surprising (for me) amount of appreciation on deviantART.

The other I took more recently. I spotted this silhouette on the horizon as the sun was setting and felt compelled to capture it... I'm quite pleased with the result:

If you want to see my deviantART gallery, hop over here.

Pilot

2009-04-07T13:25:00.013+02:00

Well I'm on holiday with very little to say. I actually thought of something witty to use as my first post but, due to the human condition that someone once perfectly described, I promptly forgot. Umm, that's ironic... Perhaps I'll get better at this... And so you understand that I don't value my own opinion that highly, I started this blog on the whim if this blogger. I didn't want to.

It is with anguish that I think about this year's Reading Festival... Regardless of the fact that the tickets had sold out before I could blink, I wouldn't have been able to go anyway. But still. Radiohead, Glasvegas, Bloc Party, King Of Leon, Vampire Weekend... While at Cokefest we have Snow Patrol and who gives a shit else. I won't be there either.

I'm still hoping that Red Hot Chili Peppers will release a new album one day, though it seems unlikely. Muse is also due for a new album methinks.

I had two realisations that really left me feeling empty. First, I realised that I will never be a jet pilot. That seems obvious but I suppose a time comes when you realise that you really, simply, won't be a jet pilot. That's sad. Plus my eyesight, at about -5.25, is way off the mark. Still though, I read that there's a place in California - perhaps Fran could enlighten me - where you fork out a couple of hundred thousand and play laser-quest in small trainer aeroplanes while a co-pilot prevents you from killing yourself. I now have re-invigorated interest in becoming rich.

My second disheartening realisation was that I shall never see Pink Floyd live. Nor The Beatles. Those are logical impossibilities. I'll hopefully see Red Hot Chili Peppers and Radiohead live though, and perhaps Metallica and even Muse. Unlikely that I'll ever see some more indie bands live though, like TV On The Radio or Clap Your Hands. It's also unlikely that I'll ever see Tool live. And I have to deal with the fact that I'll probably never see Explosions In The Sky live... 'Tis a sad lot for us South Africans.

But such is life.