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My mobile warbles at me Saturday morning. It's midday and i'm actually awake, but my body isn't working. This is sleep paralysis and it isn't scary, it's just like a natural version of special k. I can't remember much of what i dream about, but sometimes they are very lucid. This time i attempt to reach for the phone but i just...can't...move. It's irritating and a little scary, but i'm usually too tired and dazed to feel fear.
Fifteen minutes later i snap awake and look at my missed calls. It's Pablo. I dial him up.
"Have you read Homer's Odyssey?" he asked me, slowly. Usually when he pauses, he wants something.
"Yes" i lied. "Why?"
"Well, we could do our very own Odyssey. It involves us going from Acton to Brent Cross on a mission to pick up and carry a bookshelf"
I dialled up Multimap. The distance was a sum total of around 16 miles. I've embarked upon wanders of around seven miles that end up with me utterly spent.
"Paul, it's too far. Seriously." i tried pleading with him.
"Ah, howay, the bookshelf will be flatpacked." he said.
I was stuck in a quandry: Paul has only a vague concept of ownership. His sole possessions include a bike, a bedside clock that he stole from his parents and some weapons. This means that if and when he DOES want something, it is usually important enough that he will refuse to back down.
"I'll call you back" i replied and hung up. After chewing on a nearby pencil while thinking, i did some sleuthing and came up with an alternative plan.
"Hello?"
"Dude, i've come up with an alternative plan."
"What is it?"
"There's a HomeBase, like, three minutes from your house"
"Okay then. Let's do that. I'll meet you at North Acton. But i'm warning you, my house is a fucking palace."
I took the 27 bus to Paddington and then hopped on an overground service to Acton Mainline, which was just around the corner from Paul's new apartment. Pablo's been yammering on about his new apartment for several days, making such grandiose statements as "it's the best house EVER" and "i wouldn't shit in the Taj Mahal after living here". As i hopped on the train, i felt a surge of excitement. I was taking the train to a new destination. I was hoping to chug past wide verdant panoramas full of lush green fields and sheep, but instead the train just limped across a kilometre of urban track before wheezing in at North Acton.
Paul showed me his apartment. It is indeed very nice, freshly painted and refurbished. The landlord had obviously gone to Ikea on a shopping spree and then handed the goods over to some competent decorators. The communal garden was the best feature, a wide tract of grass with sufficient herbage to make for an attractive chill-out zone.
Pablo doesn't have a printer so we had to sort of memorize the several streets that required traveling. This meant we were off to a poor start as i am famous for my amazingly bad short-term memory. Paul was also a bit dehydrated and so we ended up squabbling half-heartedly en route, but then we crossed a crossroad bridge in one of the chavvier districts and you could see the entire vista of suburban london unfurling like a testament to the outer zones. The view wasn't exactly stunning, but it did demonstrate just how big the capital really is. It reminded me of the cover art on the latest issue of a local comic.
We blindly stumbled across HomeBase and poked around for a bit. Paul's highly-coveted bookshelf was an on-line purchase only, but i got the feeling he wanted to explore Acton a bit and was also grappling with what the buy for his new house. He kept eyeing up large things made from tupperware - bins, storage boxes, clothes baskets, etc.
"It's Louise's birthday party tonight. Do you want to go?"
I had nothing else planned so i agreed. We hopped on the tube and made our way into central London. We met up with "Funny John" (one of Paul's teacher friends who really was quite humourous) and Kate for drinks at a fancy gastropub in London Bridge. After drinking for a bit and watching the Olympics on the big telly in Trafalgar Square, Paul and I headed to All Bar One to meet up with Louise. By now i was feeling a bit ripe (i was hoping to grab a wash and change of clothes at mine but the time sort of slipped) and somewhat tired. Louise's friends started trickling into the pub and i did some networking. Louise is an undergraduate in Stage Management so she knows a mix of students and actors. They were all in their early twenties, good looking and full of ambitious energy which made me feel a bit old. We ended up at the Astoria, but i bailed after an hour or so as the dance floors were decidedly poor (the main stage was given over to live acts) and it was too loud for me to chat to anyone. I had fun, but wished i had psyched myself for the occasion. But then again, Pablo never achieved his objective of buying a bookshelf so i felt that a kind of equilibrium had been reached.
I am, however, psyched up for Bestival. I bought a tent that opens as soon as you remove it from its protective sheath. Originally i wanted to get the piebald one, hoping it would stand out amongst all the other tents, but the only one in stock was the default "camo" one. I bought it anyway, took it home and spraypainted "CAMDEN" on it with bold hopes to distinguish myself when out on the field.
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This week has yielded some interesting things for me. I've been nudged back into reading Fin de siècle literature thanks mostly in part to chance encounter. The current book i am reading is called "The Walk" by Robert Walser, a collection of short stories, some of which are regarded as great examples of flâneur literature. The book is indeed excellent, because while the script can sometimes be verbose and meandering, it is honestly written full of high definition imagination that only those afflicted with a manic disorder can write down.
I also purchased a book on the artwork of Aubrey Beardsley, a turn of the century consumption in his early twenties. Beardsley was an exceptional graphic artist whose fine line sketchings were so extraordinary in that they fused decadence with eastern art in western settings. This bought him to the attention of the modernist elite who commissioned him to illustrate the fabulously subervise periodical "The Yellow Book". Sadly, his one-time close ally, Oscar Wilde, was arrested in great public scandal. Due to his links with Wilde, with who'm he had sketched the grotesquely beautiful illustrations for Salome's, Beardsley's image was tarnished beyond repair after "the trial" which exposed Wildes homosexuality. This lead to Beardsley dengenerating his talents by drawing less-subtle "erotica" for a living, and hastened his isolation from the art community. Illness such as Beardsley's tuberculosis was seen as a badge of delicate, cultured living. Pornography tinged with links to a named homosexual was seen as unacceptable. Beardsley died before his potential was anything close to being reached.
I have no time for culture this weekend though. I'm still toying with the idea of how best to use the extended break, given that it is a bank holiday. Pablo's special ladyfriend is having a birthday shindig down at TCR tomorrow night, so i may put in an appearance for that. Incidentally, Paul's managed to bag himselve a palatial luxury apartment over in East Acton which will need investigating on my behalf (mental note: bring dip.) I also want to do some minor decoration to my place, work on the new 'beach and generally chill out. If i don't see you before then, have a good one.
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That whole photo thing with Pablo got me watching Blade Runner again. It's a sweet film with a classic storyline and special effects that stand the test of time. mostly. Roy's dying last words are also legendary:
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I've watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those... moments will be lost in time... like... tears..in rain"
Well, i too have seen things you people wouldn't believe. And i'm not talking about disco lasers in space or people playing silly buggers off the shoulder of Orion either. I'm talking about finding a ladies' umbrella, set of keys and a purse with a several cash/credit cards (and half a dozen store cards) inside.
I work on the edge of Southwark and Lambeth, which is a somewhat polarised area. On one hand you have the bankside, a sprinkling of trendy little PA and advertising boutiques, plus the odd BT and government building. On the other, you have some of the most doomed people i have ever seen loiter outside the DSS and on the corner of the nearby offy. Apartment from a spate of tealeafing in our offices a few years back, these underclass don't cause much trouble; it is easier for them to pick up their dole, pool together money for a bottle of white ace and fail silently. But sometimes, they do get up to shenanigans...
I take a shortcut behind our offices down an alleyway i like to call "The Syringe Grotto", so called because it's one of the few modern passageways in London that is a result of bad planning and just sort of happened. As a result, it has no CCTV or even much lighting as it falls between the responsibility of private landowner and council property. The upshot is that the alley serves as a quicker route for me to get to and from the bustop, shaving off valuable minutes in contrast to me looping around another block or so. A few months back, i left work with a bitch of a migrane and a temper to match. As i went around the back our office towards the passage, i saw a guy injecting smack into his cock. I stopped dead in my tracks and wandered how fucked up the veins in your arms/legs would have to be to warrant piercing your wang with a needle full of dragon. I then did a brisk U-turn and alerted security before deciding to maybe stretch my legs and take the longer journey to the bus stop. I should have known better; i'd seen syringes and spent needles on the floor from time to time but somehow masked their unpleasantness from my thoughts.
I also decided to avoid that alleyway like the plague from then on, but i guess old habits die hard. The alley was useful to me, and aside from the odd needle gleaming up at me from the gutter, it was a relatively clean, convenient way to get to where i wanted to go. So i started using the passage again, and up until this morning there have been relatively few surprises (with the exception of finding a single child's shoe and, on another occassion, a post-it note tacked to the wall saying "HA HA HA"). But this morning, i spotted the aforementioned umbrella, purse and keys shoved rudely into the fencing behind our office. The purse had been emptied apart from the cards which indicated that it had been tampered with rather than misplaced. The keychain had a number of sophisticated keys on it. Combine that with the credit cards and you have the possessions of a rather affluent young lady. I wondered if this was the result of a simple pickpocketting or had she been mugged? Either way i was keen to purge myself of this whole affair and so i turned over the illicit booty to the security guard. He's going to the local police as i write this, so hopefully the lady in question will be able to salvage something for the weekend.
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Woke up this morning after a shallow and erratic sleep cycle, probably something to do with me falling asleep last night with a strange feeling of unease nibbling away at my thoughts. Still, i woke up feeling more normalised but also extremely tired which has resulted in rather sporadic performance at work.
This could all be down to working with solvents in an enclosed environment. I've taken down the pseudo-polaroids that adorn the back wall of my living room and have pasted them onto a cheap cork noticebord. I intend to sketch over the photos and then varnish them to create something a little more artistic. I've got dozens of misfired photos stacked up next to the MC-505 and a lot of spare time on my hands now that i canceled the bulk of the freelance projects i was working on previously.
Paul came over on Saturday, bored and a little uneasy himself (something to do with his accomodation plans). I decided to diffuse the situation by playing the music to BladeRunner (a gift from Josh). This got Paul thinking of the famous "Esper scene" and, for reasons still not quite clear to me even now, he demanded that i create a photo of him lecturing in a rally. I had a few lazy hours to kill, so we got to work with the graphics tablet and i showed him a few insider photoshop tricks.
Reverse Stalinist photo trickery aside, my weekend was pretty uneventful. I'm still working on the new vanillabeach, which is rewarding and frustrating in equal doses. I'm currently working on the adminstration and deployment of flash videos that will hopefully unify all the various video formats into a single, one-size-fits-all standard. Basically, it'll be like a crap version of YouTube.
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I saw a Lomo "Fisheye2" camera being flogged on the prolemarket down lower marsh for a pony. They usually cost at least twice that much on-line, so i figured it was a good deal and bought one. The camera provides 170 degrees of viewing on normal camera film by using a really curved lense. The result is like seeing the world through a spy-hole. The package comes complete with a cool little fisheye photo album and the camera itself has loads of neat features like multiple-exposures on a single shot, long exposure option, built in flash and a hotshoe for more other flashes (e.g. colorsplash). I've also started to see more and more shops in London offering Lomographic products for sale. If that wasn't enough, Lomography are now selling re-conditioned Vilia cameras for seventy pounds - my siluet (the slightly more sophisticated successor) only cost me a couple of quid from a closing-down shop. It's the way you sell 'em, i suppose.
Speaking of which, Pablo has secured himself a more honest form of accomodation in the form of a shared flat in Holland Park. He is sharing with Ian, a theatre-usher-turned-thespian who's chest is soon to become famous (i can say no more). Ian has also landed himself a part in a gritty urban gangster film, which stars that guy out of E17 no less. It sounds gripping.
So anyway, Paul and Ian have scored accomodation on the sixteenth floor of an exclusive high-rise dwelling stuck slap-bang in the middle of kensington and chelsea. I am expecting nothing less than the ultimate urban experience and have already starting laying designs on how the flat should look - bare minimalism; a single old settee, large television, stacks of vinyl in flight boxes next to a pair of technics, skateboard minus wheels propped up against the wall with its trucks half-disassembled amidst an array of greasy tools. Paul, Ian, myself and a wildcard friend would spend all evening playing original playstation and sipping from lukewarm tins of red stripe. Ian and Paul would be playing from the settee of course, myself and wildcard would be content to sit on the floor, propped up by the couch or even just the wall. Outside, the panorama of Shepherds Bush would be partially obscured by small clouds and we'd hear some kind of urban dub or jungle being played from the window a few doors down.
Yep, my plan is all laid out. I've just got to find time to tell Paul and Ian about it. They won't mind, Paul's become a "can-do" person in recent weeks.
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Vanilla Beach 2005 ::
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