This afternoon, I’ve taken it easy. I slept for an hour (all this waiting for the baby is getting to me, and I’m lucky if I get more than five hours a night’s sleep). Since then, I have been reading the paper and listening to music.
Bix Beiderbecke
The Mountain Goats
Jimi Hendrix
I wonder why I picked them. Bix, sure, I always listen to him. The Mountain Goats ‘Get Lonely’ – I love it, but don’t listen to it if you feel the least bit depressed or you may end up crying into your wineglass. Jimi Hendrix – gosh he was good, but I don’t often listen to him. I wonder what will appeal to the wandering fingers next.*
Tomorrow, also an easy day. I have to take my car to be serviced in the morning and pick it up at lunchtime. I am having my hair cut at 4 o’clock. I’m babysitting for a friend in the evening (she is chairman of governors at the school where I’ve just left the governing body. Her children are delightful and it will be a pleasure).
The rest of the time, weather permitting, I will be photographing the china for our next auction. I will enjoy that; I like taking pictures of inanimate objects. I am no artist and can’t capture the ‘soul’ but I can do observation and stuff like that.
I hope you have had a good weekend too.
* Cole Porter
That was a nice day..I spent my entire weekend cleaning the flat from top to bottom (not sure what got into me) and sorting my attic out..and hauling tons of stuff up there in an effort to declutter my home..and trips to the dump….my back is killing me this morning…every time I get ‘physical’ these days, my body protests. Darn – I am only 40!
Today I have 2 classes, then a nasty leg and bikini wax, then some retail therapy.
Please post your piccies of the china!
Enjoy the day – hope your weather is better than ours…yukky rain and mist.
No photos today, it’s pouring here.
I haven’t done any housework, except the basic hygiene stuff, for a couple of weeks. The cobwebs are obscuring the windows. I broke a glass on the carpet and swept up as many dog hairs as shards of glass.
Pfft. It’ll get done. When I’ve nothing better to do.
You are a model of virtue and deserve the retail therapy.
Have you get the ebay bug? Are you auctioning your things there?
I spent my weekend going to a place near here.. just walking around in tiny villages with paddy fields on either side,and ancient Buddhist caves to climb to. The setting was a valley in the middle of a series of hills.. all impossibly green, with clouds flirting at their will, and the freshly washed yellow-green of leaves wherever u see..
These caves were made between the 4th and 2nd century BC!
Didnt take any pictures at all.
Came home tired , and slept at 1030 hours! woke up at 0900 hours. Am still tired!
Banana – no, we are professional auctioneers. The china doesn’t belong to us, we are selling it on behalf of clients. We will have a ‘live’ sale at the end of October. We have such a tiny specialisation that we only have two auctions a year.
How do we know – that sounds idyllic. The antiquities in India are just astonishing. I remember the first time I saw rice growing; I was on a coach trip from Chennai to the temples at Mahaballapuram and the guide must have thought I was quite odd, because I wanted to know about local agriculture.
Sometimes, when one relaxes, the tiredness one has been too busy to acknowledge just comes rushing in and takes over. I hope you feel more rested now.
As it never went online, here’s what I wrote about Get Lonely for t’local paper:
Over his last two albums, John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats has dealt with some fairly harrowing autobiographical themes: teenage drug addiction, and his relationship with an abusive stepfather. Now, with his tenth release, Darnielle adopts the equally harrowing voice of an abandoned, heartbroken lover, teetering on the brink of madness. The result is quite possibly the bleakest “break-up” album ever made.
Over a series of understated, deceptively gentle, largely acoustic arrangements, Darnielle’s high, cracked voice relates a series of scenes which see his protagonist lurching from bad to worse, in a kind of numbed-out, post-traumatic daze. In “Wild Sage”, he stumbles along the roadside, before falling over and lying there, bloodied and immobile. At other times, he simply wanders around his home, displaced and desperate, not knowing what to do next. By the album’s closing track, “In Corolla”, his despair has reached its ultimate, tragic conclusion.
Although these twelve songs certainly exert a grim fascination, it is difficult to imagine anyone actually playing this album for pleasure. In particular, if you’re looking for music to help you through your own break-up, then you are strongly urged to stay away.
We spent the weekend re-organising rooms. Up until now we’ve had all three kids sleeping in the same room. Got the space, it just seemed like a good idea. But the little girl is getting older, so it seemed like another good idea to split them up. What a palaver, think I would have preferred to babysit the school chairman’s kids!
Mike, thank you for that. I wonder why I am so drawn to the album. It is the unsentimentality of the lyrics, perhaps – there is a lack of self-pity, just a simple description of his increasingly desperate state of mind. Maybe it’s the same quality that makes one go to see King Lear or Othello. Or read Crime and Punishment.
I also do feel, very much, for men, who so often don’t have, and are unable to look for, the support to help them through their problems. On the whole, women are more able to talk about their feelings and are expected to be more emotional. Blokes are supposed to cope. John Darnielle’s character can articulate his feelings, but only in private, he avoids contact with people and the album rings true to me.
I do worry about those unlucky stray dogs bleeding on the highway though. They have no options.
God, I’m a miserable bastard, aren’t I.
Boy, I feel for you there. One has to start by making such a mess and can’t stop until it’s all been cleared up. Glad it’s all done now, had to be sooner or later.
That’s an interesting and thought-provoking perspective, z – thanks. It’s an album which I think I might need to revisit, now that the initial shock of it has died down.
Mike, that’s a very generous comment. Of course, you appreciate that I speak from a position of total ignorance, don’t you. I don’t often listen to anything later than Britten.