a-Muse-ing

A little grouchy today as I have been up since 9am obtaining tickets to see Muse at Earl's Court in December for Bob and I. Alternating between the phone and the internet, I eventually succeeded in loading the Gigs and Tours landing page and getting 2 tickets online for £30 each. Slightly on the pricey side but worth it - their last gig of the year. Tickets sold out for this date in 15 minutes flat. Good job by me :)

Also eagerly anticipating the F1 tomorrow. But I will say no more for fear of jinxing it. Anticipate a full lowdown tomorrow. Until then.

House party tonight!

final whistle

Urrrrrrgh. This word neatly sums up my mental state, having gotten in from Creation at 2 and hit the sack at 2.30, then having my alarm needlessly wake me up at 7.30 when it's orchestration today, not composition. Meaning I got up a little too early. Urrrrrgh. We had a choice of 9.30-10.15 or 10.15-11 today. I managed to get to the bus stop at 9.10 but the sodding bus didn't come till 9.30. So I surreptitiously went to the later class, on Ravel's Gaspard de la Nuit, forfeiting the earlier one. (on Takemitsu's Litany) Was a really good lecture, albeit a short one, on expressive use of registers and suchlike.



Creation was ... interesting. It was packed to bursting point, especially in the VIP room, and there wasn't really much room to do anything in Act 1. So we (me and Bob) wandered around for a bit, dissociating ourselves from the badminton club guys, and found a slightly more veritable proposition in Act 2; indie, rock, metal. I had my Muse shirt on, and of course the best thing was when they played Plug In Baby; some girl in a white top looked at me and smiled, and to be sure I would've gone over and followed up if I didn't already have plans with Fi. But I didn't, so I left it. About 12.30 the 'indie' room turned into some kind of crap funk parody of James Brown, which was truly dreadful. I think it would be less painful to have my testicles pierced. So we ventured back up to the 'foam party', which wasn't a party at all, but a huge jet squirting out bubble bath stuffs in the main Act 1 area. The jet had a small radius as well, so hardly anyone got bubbles. Slightly disappointing. Between 12.45-1.45ish, we just alternated between the two rooms. Managed to blag some cab home with another guy to make the fare cheaper.



On the way past Halo, Bob asked if I wanted to check it out sometime with him. For those not in the know, Halo is a recently opened club in a church. I might be wrong, but I think that's really blasphemous/sacrilegious. After all, do you want to be the guy who can boast: "Oh yer guv, I pulled this fox in a church"? You might as well talk about doing it doggy-doggy in the pews or vestibules. It should be closed and soon!

the Creation

Lectures were ok, particularly Herrmann. Managed to ask out a girl in Aesthetics as well - am seeing her Friday night. Result. Later on tonight is, of course, the badminton social. My hopes are set at a suitable level after the last social, (although there should be more ppl at this one) particularly since Creation is far too mainstream for my liking. It is, in effect, a place where you go clubbing if you don't know anywhere else. But it might be ... passable. I'd better go make some dinner, just finished my work for the night :)



Work progress:

Composition: Rock opera: 2/14 songs (5 mins/30 mins)

Herrmann: 1000/4000 words

Dissertation: 0/6000 words

Analysis: Stupid little table haven't even started yet

it's not the grandeur of your weathervane, but the size of your cock

Bored. 520 essay words has now become 940. This would cheer me up a little, except my tutor for this essay is also the same as my tutor for my dissertation. In short, I have to find 3,000 words in 9 days. Arse. Had a beautiful KFC last night with my winnings from the Portsmouth v Spurs match. Thoroughly boring piece of football, I might add, but who cares when you win some money.



I feel depressed today, and I don't know why. Perhaps it is because I overslept a little and have gone about today in a zombie-like state, performing such irregular feats as:



- Leaving the front door open without even knowing it

- Falling asleep in my only class today

- Brushing my teeth twice

- Attempting to make coffee with instant noodles



I feel these will validate my point somewhat.

OAPs

Demand has possessed me to paste an old post here, as apparently the link to March's page is down (I can't find anything wrong with March, though...)

--------

Evening: OAP home. Arrived 30 mins late due to taking someone to the train station. Not bothered about it, because I wasn't in the mood to play particularly well or come over as particularly artiste or inspiring. In fact today I don't give a flying fuck if the pensioners hated me playing. I'm just pissed at everything. The best thing about the OAP home tonight was tricking a pensioner into thinking it was 10.30pm when it was 7.30. She looked really worried, muttered something like, "oh dear, I'm up far too late, my bowel movements are going to be unsynchronised now" before rushing off ... presumably to go to sleep. It's sad. I never want to be an OAP in Britain, where the highlight of my day is either

1. counting the number of bowel movements I make in any given week,
2. feeling the adrenaline rush as you get a bigger trolley than normal while at Safeway's, or
3. realising the bus driver overchanged you and you didn't tell him

In fact just on the subject of buses OAPs are the biggest hypocrites ever. They're forever moaning about how the current generation has no respect for authority, no morals, blah blah etc., but hmmm??? I wonder who it is that's always stood up there at the front of the bus perched on his/her zimmer frame chatting away to the driver like a monkey on Prozac. Fuck's sake....

shuttling along

Badminton was all right. Started out with a 0-15 drubbing, then won 15-10, 17-15, before losing 8-15. Was all right, not brilliant - I started out quite well then lost it in the last half of the 3 hrs when I got tired. Think I was also gripping the racket too hard as I've done a chunk of my right thumb in. Pain.



Succeeded on Friday in getting 3 tickets for Joss Stone, who's playing at LUU on 7th Nov. Should be quite good. Lost £15 on fucking football bets yesterday cos Arsenal won 3-1 (not 2-0, 4-0, or 4-1) and Man City won 1-0 (not 1-1, 2-0, 2-1) so coupled with a new tank of fuel for the car and some new clothes, I'm rather poor at the moment. Darr.



Badminton ppl: Social on Weds 20th, 8pm - Library + Creation (free)

progress

Gone from 320 words of my essay to 520. It has to be 4,000. Slowly but surely... I will get there. That's about all I have achieved today, but it's better than nothing.



Also have some money on Man City v Chelsea and Arsenal v Villa for later.

natural high

Just woke up. Went out with Bob and Vicki last night to New Inn, then Majestyk later, as Vicki works there and put us on VIP for free. A huge DMX track had been installed in the centre of the dance floor, which was interesting ... good thing there were only a few hundred ppl there. Left Majestyk about 1.30 since Bob was getting increasingly tired and Vicki had gone off somewhere with some ppl from work. It was a cool dry night, so we thought we'd walk up City Square, past Creation, Leeds Met, Halo, and Parkinson Steps and onward toward Headingley.



We were almost approaching Bourbon/Creation (carrying a new addition to the traffic cone family, I might add) when we saw a girl, crouching in a shop window, crying her eyes out. Since nobody else bothered to stop and help, I sat down next to her and asked what the matter was. She said that she had been in Creation when some Pakistani bloke had knocked her drink out her hand, so she asked him to buy her another, so he hit her, then she hit him back - but the bouncer only saw her hitting him, so he dragged her roughly by the hair outside, and she couldn't even let her friends know what had happened, and she didn't know where she was. Then she just sank her head into my chest and completely lost it for a good half minute. We offered to walk her home since she was clearly scared and alone, and she agreed. Managed to make a few traffic cone jokes on the way to take her mind off it, and luckily, as fate would have it, on the walk back to her place, we happened upon a group of guys - one of whom, it transpired, was one of her flatmates. He seemed suspicious of us at first but she told him everything, at which point his expression changed completely, and they all shook hands with us.



Caught a cab not long after since we actually couldn't be bothered to walk all the way into the village - got in at 2.30, hit the sack at 3.

these are the days

In the midst of preparing a presentation, simultaneously writing two essays, (4,000 and 6,000 words) remembering I had a tutorial with the Head of School, and reading my butt off, I managed to fit in time to chill out and watch some trashy TV with Dan. The sort of TV in which there only ever appear to be 3 types of adverts - the insurance kind, the compensation kind, and the "we-can-give-you-a-six-pack-in-three-weeks" kind.



Today's rant, then, is about compensation culture, a term so widely used that you'd think it would connote disparagement about the state of today's society. These adverts, with their 'no win no fee' promises, lure people into thinking, "Hm, John Smith tripped over and got 5 grand out of it, I wonder if I could try the same thing." The result is a dangerous cocktail of all kinds of people trying to do anything to make a quick buck, whilst simultaneously making "more dangerous" the most innocuous of pastimes. (cycling in the countryside, children playing with conkers) This is not, I would imagine, modern living, in the truest sense. It is living dictated by an appallingly quasi-totalitarian Government, which strangles the various freedoms of the public with ridiculous levels of bureaucracy. It is fallacious to argue that we are progressing as a race because we are outlawing innocent pursuits that have preoccupied the young and old alike for centuries. So we have a paradoxical situation in which we are informed by nanny-state Labour government that our children should "get more exercise", but with all the usual political fluff attached. Healthy, safe, responsible, mature, exercise. You can almost hear the Health Department slipping on their Pied Piper clothes. Repeat after me. Dangerous activities such as conker fights are bad for your health. The alternative is, of course, the couch-potato lifestyle which so many children adopt and turn into obese illiterate next-generation brats.



Nobody ever wins in Britain anymore.

ironies

Silence is deafening
Love hurts
The richer you are the poorer you are
The poorer you are the richer you are
Quiet is the new loud
Unfashionable is fashionable
Voluntary is obligatory
Total knowledge eludes all
Counsellors very often need counselling
Torture may be pleasurable
To be blind is to see
Rock superstars often cannot write good music
Fast food tastes good
If you really love someone, you'll set them free

quitter

Can't be fucked to go out. Just been down the pub and far too tired. Not to mention 9am start tomorrow.

SATB is BATS re-arranged.

This is the text that I am writing music to for my contribution towards the Liturgical Choir. Besides being valuable experience it's also something I could put on my CV, not to mention my other projects, all of which are now listed on my newly-launched (hopefully more professional-looking) website. The choir has slightly more female voices than male, hence SSAATB. Thankfully the requirement is that it only has to be 2-3 mins long. Thinking about going out tonight somewhere but I've just had a huge meal. Likelihood of getting wasted is getting slimmer, whereas the opposite is happening to my waistline.



Leeds Music Ppl: Anyone know where I can get a good recording of Brahms' Fourth Symphony? Pls drop me an email...

psalm 75

This is the text I'm setting music to for the Liturgical Choir.



1 To thee, O God, do we give thanks,

we do give thanks to thee;

Because thy wondrous works declare

thy great name near to be.



2 I purpose, when I shall receive

the congregation,

That I shall judgment uprightly

render to ev'ry one.



3 Dissolved is the land, with all

that in the same do dwell;

But I the pillars thereof do

bear up, and stablish well.



4 I to the foolish people said,

Do not deal foolishly;

And unto those that wicked are,

Lift not your horn on high.



5 Lift not your horn on high, nor speak

6 with stubborn neck. But know,

That not from east, nor west, nor south,

promotion doth flow.



7 But God is judge; he puts down one,

and sets another up.

8 For in the hand of God most high

of red wine is a cup:



'Tis full of mixture, he pours forth,

and makes the wicked all

Wring out the bitter dregs thereof;

yea, and they drink them shall.



9 But I for ever will declare,

I Jacob's God will praise.

10 All horns of lewd men I'll cut off;

but just men's horns will raise.



People really should give the Bible another chance.

a decent man dies and everyone wants a piece

Our once-proud nation really has come to something when people just cannot leave the poor Bigley family alone. I feel compelled to speak on the matter since I want to find out why people find it necessary to 'indulge' in one family's ultimate nightmare. The psychoanalysts had it right when they said that it's the indeterminacy, the not knowing, of what was happening to a captured loved one, that really screws you up. But the outcome is now clear for all to see, and people just can't leave the family alone to grieve privately.What really makes me bloody angry is people are always quick to jump to rash conclusions instead of deploying some sense of rationality in their thought processes. For instance:

Ken Bigley is dead. Therefore I must watch the video of him being beheaded and post messages of sympathy on forums around the world because that is what I aspire to - others seeing me as a genuine caring individual. If I do this then I feel I will make the world a better place. By sticking my nose into matters that don't concern me I am simultaneously satisfying my own curiosity and absolving my soul from guilt. Never mind the fact that his family probably want to be left well enough alone. Never mind the fact I'm sticking my nose in matters that don't fucking concern me. I'll just do what I want along with the rest of the trend-followers because I believe it's right to show grief in a proper way.

This is a mawkish, irrational, pathetic, (in the original sense of the word) fundamentally flawed argument in at least 6 places, and I don't have the energy to expend in order to list them here - you can probably see them for yourself.

If you care to cast your memory back, the exact same thing happened with the Soham murders of the two young girls. A horrific case, to be sure, but does it justify some families making a day trip to Soham in order to express their own flawed sympathies? What I think we are seeing, in sociological and anthropological terms, is a cultivating sense of fashionable grief, if you may excuse such an initially seemingly idiotic phrase. Consider: a case of national significance appears in the media. (which controls national thought anyway) The usual human emotive reaction, a primal one, is to sympathise internally. But what this national extrinsical outpouring of emotion illustrates is that in much the same way as it has become fashionable to go on pub crawls and fuck your liver over by the time you're 30, it has also become fashionable to jump on the National Bandwagon (Trademark) whenever anything of significant national interest occurs. In all honesty, I think 80% of the people expressing an opinion of the Soham murders didn't actually care a shit for the feelings of the murdered girls, their families, or anyone's feelings. They just did it to make themselves feel good and to try to project themselves further up society's own extremely-fucked-up hierarchy. And that is why fashionable grief is here to stay.

it's better in the matinee

Productive meeting with the composition group on Thurs morning. (well, one of them at least!) Only by good fortune did we bump into another of the girls in the group. Turns out we are worrying far too prematurely about the Stockhausen presentation as the tutorial was supposed to focus on the Webern orchestrations. The tutor said it would be ok for me to do a big-size rock opera and have it count as 2 small pieces. If I do about another 9-10 mins of film music then that's all my composition done for the year ... joy. He was attempting to impress upon me the importance of starting the opera with a libretto and making use of the father/daughter interplay which Verdi does so well. Not quite sure what he's going on about since that wasn't my scenario anyway. Sounds illegal at any rate.



Found out that one of the girls, Gemma, comes from down south too, and in fact lives in Surbiton, right next door (almost) to Kingston where I went to grammar school! What a small world.



Pleased to see from the Q awards on TV that Muse picked up the gong for Best Live Act, and so they should. They are brilliant :)



Will now try to sleep for a couple of hours before the Suzuka GP qualifying at 1am, followed by the race at 6.30am. They have had to postpone qualifying since Typhoon 22 wreaked havoc across Suzuka on Friday/Saturday. Quite difficult to keep track (no pun) of things since Japan is 8 hrs ahead. Money on Button, Sato, and Raikkonen. Fingers: crossed. Prediction: rain, zzz..... Outcome: zzz....

a serving of badminton

Exhausted after badminton earlier. It was great, a really good workout which I completely needed after the long summer break - I think the last time I played was in late July with my old man! Well, around the time of the entry 'Ronnie Scott's and Shuttlecocks', at any rate. Enthused that I can still seemingly smash hard and win points. Good stuff.



Bob and I hit The Eldon to watch Liverpool v Chelsea, but it was packed, so we went 3 doors down to The Pack Horse. A cheap roast lunch and a beer later, we were all set. Sadly I lost £20 on Man Utd v Middlesborough, but what are you gonna do.



I have to meet a few other ppl in my tutorial group for Major Comp. to discuss the content of our presentation, which has been decided for us by Mic - it's some piece called Kreuzspiel by Stockhausen. Sounds hardcore. Progress on the rock opera is slow primarily because I am attempting to race through this book in time to return it on the 5th. At present I am now on page 105. Or I could just flip it the middle finger and re-borrow it at a later date.



Feel unbelievably tired - not sure whether the badminton has knackered me or whether it's cos I didn't get up till 11. Therefore, am unsure if continuing to read the book will be worth it as I may gloss over the material. Just ate another largish meal - pasta (boiled to fluffiness!) & sauce - so I am well and truly feeling in a sleepy mood. (Or maybe it was swigging that 58p cider that did it ... )



Leeds music ppl: If anyone is reading this who knows how to download the Analysis prep (Beethoven's 5th, all mvmts.) from the Naxos website could u email me and let me know? Thanks



Nobody on the run, nobody on the beach. The sun goes down alone.

music in literature and contemporary poetry

Manically reading a set work today as I have to return it on the 5th, since someone else has placed a hold on it. The book is 480 pages long and I have presently advanced just 65. So I have 415 pages left to read in 3 days, or 128 a day, or 10 an hour every hour I'm awake. I suppose I could always re-borrow it, as it were, but if there's 40 ppl in the class and all of them want to read it, that's 40 one-week loans ... uh-oh.



Having upgraded my credit card, I am amusingly credit-card less, since the bank have suspended my old card, and the new one hasn't yet arrived. (was posted on the 28th) Am looking forward to the extremely low interest rate of 9.9% afforded to me, exactly half my previous card. Only minor niggle is 0.25% cashback instead of 0.5%, but I don't care.



This is a poem by Robert Pinsky called Ginza Samba.



A monosyllabic European called Sax

Invents a horn, walla whirledy wah, a kind of twisted

Brazen clarinet, but with its column of vibrating

Air shaped not in a cylinder but in a cone

Widening ever outward and bawaah spouting

Infinitely upward through an upturned

Swollen golden bell rimmed

Like a gloxinia flowering

In Sax's Belgian imagination



And in the unfathomable matrix

Of mothers and fathers as a genius graven

Humming into the cells of the body

Or cupped in the resonating grail

Of memory changed and exchanged

As in the trading of brasses,

Pearls and ivory, calicos and slaves,

Laborers and girls, two



Cousins in a royal family

Of Niger known as the Birds or Hawks.

In Christendom one cousin's child

Becomes a "favorite negro" ennobled

By decree of the Czar and founds

A great family, a line of generals,

Dandies and courtiers including the poet

Pushkin, killed in a duel concerning

His wife's honor, while the other cousin sails



In the belly of a slaveship to the port

Of Baltimore where she is raped

And dies in childbirth, but the infant

Will marry a Seminole and in the next

Chorus of time their child fathers

A great Hawk or Bird, with many followers

Among them this great-grandchild of the Jewish

Manager of a Pushkin estate, blowing



His American breath out into the wiggly

Tune uncurling its triplets and sixteenths--the Ginza

Samba of breath and brass, the reed

Vibrating as a valve, the aether, the unimaginable

Wires and circuits of an ingenious box

Here in my room in this house built

A hundred years ago while I was elsewhere:



It is like falling in love, the atavistic

Imperative of some one

Voice or face--the skill, the copper filament,

The golden bellful of notes twirling through

Their invisible element from

Rio to Tokyo and back again gathering

Speed in the variations as they tunnel

The twin haunted labyrinths of stirrup

And anvil echoing here in the hearkening

Instrument of my skull.

hair today, gone tomorrow

Need a haircut as I am in considerable danger of transforming into a Yeti. I think the last time I had one was around my birthday! I made Ben sick yesterday by showing him a piece of A4, on which was three short pieces for cello and piano by Webern. Short is an understatement. The shortest one is 9 bars long! My task is to arrange the 3 short pieces for solo cello and 7 or 8 others in a contemporary ensemble. And this is the truly sickening bit - it's worth 6.7 credits. (1/6 of my major, 40 creds.)



Who cares any more? Who restrains?

You know that I don't love you, but I never did,

I don't want you, and I never will.

Cockpit? Crappit!

Forgot, in all the excitement of the first days back here, to let you know how Tues night went. Two words: it sucked. It was much busier than normal, which we can attribute to naive Freshers trying out new clubs and so forth, but there was no excuse for the pants selection of music. Where was AFI, NFG, RBF, Less Than Jake, Av Lav, Lit, The Atari's, and others?! Nowhere to be seen. Instead the DJs appeared to be content with maximising ticket sales by playing stuff they thought everyone would like, at the risk of alienating their usual crowd. Stuff like Blur and Pulp, singing about how everyone is common and the same. Even the metal room seemed to have gone commercialised (Korn, Limp B.) instead of playing their usual Rancid, NOFX, Finch, etc. The only plus of the night was the usual cheap entry fee and cheap drinks. Something to nullify the tedium and aural pain with.



Comedy was provided earlier when we went to Drydock about 9. Being "£1 a pint" night there was of course a massive queue outside, (maybe 40-50 ppl?) so we tried to steal a march on them by going around the back and climbing up there. Of course, one of the staff drying glasses saw us, who in turn alerted a bouncer, who ordered me and Dan down. Bob managed to climb over before the bouncer caught him, but not before losing one of his shoes in a seemingly-impossible-to-retrieve location. Bob was thrown out about half an hour later when he ordered something at the bar and asked the bar girl if she could get his shoe. What a wally ;)

wired

Got a parking ticket today as I woke up late, so rushed to lectures in the car, parking with my front wheels on the diagonal stripes at a pedestrian crossing. At least it's only £30 - tickets back home are £40. Small consolation. The bastards.



Lecture was very interesting, on the subject of Bernard Herrmann and his early work in radio and melodrams. Everyone says how Herrmann's main influences are the 20th century English traditionalists (Vaughan Williams, Walton, Delius) but I think there's a bit of Wagner and Ravel in there too, judging by the sequences and half diminished chords chucked in for good measure...



Badminton social later. Think I will be indulging in whisky shots for my cold, somehow.