NYE 2012

It's NYE and I'm alone. You may think it's weird, being NYE an all, but I've decided I would rather be listening to music and playing games than in some noisy bar or club, or anywhere with other people. Later I'm going to make Stir Fry and then I think I'm going to watch Tokyo Story. I haven't seen it before.

Another dream

From what I can make out, in this dream I was at a reunion for people who went to my sixth form. I was there with one of my friends and for some reason we were tripping mushrooms. I remember it was really socially awkward being talking to people who wanted to find out how my life had gone since sixth form and tripping balls at the same time. Then I made a social faux-pas when I thought I recognised one of the asian girls who went to our school, but it turned out it was another asian girl (there were a lot of asians at my school.

The reunion finished around 10pm and for a kick I thought I would take my old 279 bus route back to my old house in Enfield. On the way to the bus stop, still tripping, I saw a gang of kids, and it reminded me of how shit that area was. I got on the bus, but before it could drive off, the kids came on with guns and said they were taking the bus hostage. Then they started shooting people who they didn't like the look of. And the bus had to drive really fat down the A10. The situation reminded me of the movie Speed (with Keanu Reeves).

The gang asked me who I was and what I was doing here. I think it was the mushrooms because instead of replying like a normal person I said I was "a student of history" The kids were like WTF then they shot me in the abdomen. I had seen a lot of action films so I knew that I needed to keep pressure on the wound, which I did. I think we were just past the Cinema on the corner of the roundabout when the police came. They pulled up alongside the speeding bus and jumped in through the windows. Then they killed all the bad guys and the bus was bought to a stop. The paramedics who arrived were actually my parents. Instead of taking me to hospital immediately they spent the whole time arguing. I think one of the asian girls (it might have been the one whose identity I mistook.. I can't remember) drove me to the hospital in her car. Then I woke up.

I've been having weird dreams lately. Also, it's been raining lots. And I'm only updating this blog because I have ESSAYS TO WRITE.... I really need to do that..

Illness

I'm ill again. This makes me sad. I had to miss out on athletics training yesterday, and will probably have to do the same tomorrow. Fucking immune system.

Dream

I've recently been trying to write down some of my dreams. This involves scrawling random words on the back of hands, envelopes, desks,etc. in the early morning, while you are still in the half-asleep-half-awake stage. Last night I had a crazy dream. So, before I forget about it, here it is.

I was taking the first class of a photography module. Although I think it was actually a sixth-form class, because there were thirty-odd people in the class. For some reason, the teacher (female) left, and we started fucking around with the equipment, taking pictures, photoshopping, printing, and so on. I don't know who did it or how, but someone broke one of the expensive SLRs. We decided to write a letter to say that it was malfunctioning to get a replacement. We wrote the letter, but for it to work we needed a stamped sealed envelope. We didn't have the stamp, but we found another envelope that had been opened with the seal on it. One of my friends in the class started copying the seal onto our envelope with ink. I suggested we should use our new photography skills to photoshop a new stamp. We did. The teacher came back and everything was fine.

This must have been a boarding school, because after class we were sent to bed in a dormitory in a wing of the school. The dormitory was huge. There were thousands of multidecked bunk beds. I found my bed in the middle somewhere, and as I lay down I saw goblins on rollerskates handing out pieces of root bark. I took one and ate it. After this point, I don't know if I was having a seperate dream, or perhaps the root bark induced a dream-within-a-dream.

I woke up on a beach. My friend who I had helped with the sealed envelope was there, telling me to follow him up the cliffside. He said we were going to Sainsbury's. When we got to the top, I realised that Sainsbury's was the codename for the compound on top of the cliff on the Island we were on. In the middle of the compound, thousands of people in scuba diving gear were gathered, listening to the leader give a speech. Apparently, we were a few miles from the coast of Chile. Noel Edmonds was the tyrant king of Chile now, having taken over from Pinochet. Apparently we were attacking his compound later today today.

It must have been in the evening or the early morning because the sky was bright pink. Thousands of special forces scuba divers were lined up on the cliff. We jumped into the sea and started swimming the mile or so it was to the coast.

Only a few hundred meters away from Edmonds' compound, there was a commotion. The word came that our covert mission had been compromised. From all sides, Noel Edmonds' squadron of Orcas attacked us. Some of us tried to fight back with harpoon guns, but it was useless. We swam as fast as we could towards the compound while all around us scubamen were being picked off by giant killer whales. We made it, but with heavy casualties. With what was left of the scubamen, we battled our way across the compound to Noel Edmonds' command centre.

We kicked open the door to Edmonds' room, to find... a real estate agent, showing us around a house. I say house, it was more of a mansion. It had eight floors, underfloor heating, a giant living room with a beer fridge (where the remaining scubamen made themselves at home), a swimming pool, bridges, staircases. It was very Escher-esque. We walked out of the house (leaving our scuba-friends behind) and discussed what we thought of it. My housemates said they liked it, but that £77 per person per month was too much for them. We visited a few more houses and settled for normal student accomodation. I remember I was quite annoyed about that. Then I woke up.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Blade Runner is probably my favourite film ever. It's pretty much perfect. I love that it blends film noir with sci fi. I love the atmosphere, the themes, the visuals. I love the acting and obviously that music. I love that everything about it is understated and subdued, that there are no "answers". And who could forget that ending monologue. OK I think I've bummed it enough. Seriously, though, its an astonishing artistic achievement. But for some reason (probably because I hate reading) I never felt compelled to read the book it is based on.

Well I finally finished Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the third Dick book in my collection, and I gotta say, it was fucking sick. I won't bother comparing it to the film. There are a lot of similarities, and a lot of differences. The biggest one is the inclusion of a religion called Mercerism in the book, and the whole post-apocalyptic lifestyle is described in more detail than it is in the film, such as Animal-ownership, 'Kipple' (junk) and Empathy-boxes. There are a few other minor ones, like Roy having a wife, JF Sebastian becoms JR Isidore, and a few more.

But what really matters is the emotional impact both film and book have on me. They both perfectly convey that sense of... I can't even describe it. It's like despair, decay, confusion, emptiness, pointlessness, absurdity, inhumanity, all rolled up into one.


This rehearsal will end, the performance will end, the singers will die, eventually the last score of the music will be destroyed in one way or another; finally the name Mozart will vanish and the dust will have won. If not on this planet then another. We can evade it awhile. As the andys can evade me and exist a finite stretch longer. But I get them or some other bounty hunter gets them. In a way, he realized, I’m part of the form destroying process of entropy. The Rosen Association makes and I unmake. Or anyhow so it must seem to them.

Vibes

Yesterday I read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, the first book, in a compilation of 5, that I am planning to read over the summer. I really enjoyed the book. I liked Phillip K. Dick's bleak vision of the future. The overheated and overcrowded New York environment was presient, given how the book was written in 1965. The sandy Martian colony, where unfortunate people are sent to live out their lives, is a bleak world where people have nothing to do except "chewing" hallucinagenic drugs Can-D and Chew-Z. I especially liked the scenes where the characters have fantastical Can-D and Chew-Z induced trips. But by far my favourite, was the scene in the Strangelove-esque Dr. Denkmal's E(volution)-therapy clinic, where one of the characters is given a treatment which allows him to evolve and experience "Broad, all-inclusive preoccupations?" Brilliant. Toward the end, though, I got a little bit confsed. The book got all philosophical, saying that Palmer Eldritch was god, or wasn't god, and the ending was too ambiguous for my liking.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yFLX9ruBEgI

Bloc part deux

Five-o came and told us the festival was over, due to overcrowding. This made sense, since one of the security had told us that they had sold over 24,000 tickets for an event which was supposedly for 15,000 people. To be honest, I think 10,000 people, even if the venue had been organised properly, would have been more than enough.

By the time I filtered outside the festival site, it was too late for me to get the last train home, but too early to wait for the first morning train. And I still hadn't seen any of my friends!!! I thought it would be too awkward to leave without having even seen them, so I sat on the other side of the street watching the chaos unfold...

Eventually my mates stumbled out, still buzzin', but the night was far from over. 20,000+ people were now piling out and trying to get transport home, meaning there was massive queues for the few transport buses taking us back to Liverpool Street. We got on one eventually, and headed back to one of my friends' houses which is closer than mine (I live on the very outskirts of London, outside the M25). In the end though, as what had just happened sunk in, and realising that my weekend was going to be washout, I decided to nightbus it back home. I got home around 6ish, showered, and went to sleep, disappointed.

I woke up late on Saturday. I jumped on the internet to see what was being said. Pretty much everyone was in agreement: Bloc was the biggest flop of 2012. And now, I had to find a way to avaoid spending my Saturday evening with the rents. Looking through twitter, I saw that a handful of events were being put on in lieu of Bloc. One, hosted by Jacques Green, with Actress and Martyn as special guests, looked good. But it was in South London. Fuck South London. But there was a silver lining: A Hyperdub party, with Flying Lotus as a special guest, around the corner from Liverpool St. It looked like my weekend might just be redeemed. I washed, ate, dressed, and ran to the train station. On the way there, my friends were saying enough was enough; they weren't coming. I didn't mind going alone - I'm such a massive FlyLo fan!

But, by the time I got there, the queue was backing around the street. The Bloc curse!!! I queued for a while, but then I talked to some guy who had been inside, and it was apparently one-in-one-out already. Damn. I walked over to XOYO to see if I could get in there, since by this point I didn't mind paying for entry, I just wanted to listen to some motherfuckin' music. I managed to get in despite the fact it being packed out. The show was pretty good as a consolation prize for a shocking weekend.

Bloc 2013? I don't think so.