So, last weekend was Reading Festival, where I'd been asked to take pictures for Lucha Britannia, a group who does Mexican Wrestling with a fetish twist. It went like this: Friday arrived at around 9pm, set up tent in Guest Area, amongst a bunch of Northern lads. I wandered around for a while, took some pictures of Babyshamble's singer, who played a surprisingly good set all things considered. Then back to my tent to talk to the lads there. It was quite good, but a bit lonely. Shock horror - discovered as I went to clamber my way to sleep that I'd forgotten my sleeping bag - on the train? At home? Who knows. Not me! I just shivvered most of the night.
The next day I was over the the Lucha camp back-stage at the alternative tent. First up we had our parade through all the campsites, with a guy on stilts, someone banging a drum, wrestlers and fetish girls in full outfits. After that we met up with a band called British Sea Power, who wanted to incorporate some wrestling into their promo video for the festival. It was quite silly and ended up on the BBC, although they edited out the part where one of the guys from the band ran into the ring when he wasn't supposed to, and was dumped on the ground pretty hard by one of our guys.
After that a few hours of wandering around backstage, gawping at the likes of Henry Rollins and Jack Black. Then we set up the ring in the middle of the tent, and I watched everyone prepare for all their stuff and tried to stay out of people's way. The show went well, bout followed by act followed by bout followed by act followed by bout. The acts were - a lady who was done half in zombie make-up, who pushed feathers stuck on needles through her skin, then a girl who sat a guy down and tied him up with string that she'd had kept up inside herself; then a guy called Crazy White Sean who hammered a nail through his man-bits and lifted up a 5kg weight.
After the show we had some celebration, and a guy fire-whipped a bunch of the people. I was talking to someone who'd lost their shoes, so offered a piggy-back along the metal sheeting they put down for cars to drive along. I took three steps and the next thing I knew I was face down in the mud in a puddle of red. I'd managed to step on one of my own laces, and wandered off to the accident and emergency place they'd set up. They suggested I have some stitches but I didn't like the sound of that so made do with steri-strips, which didn't last the night. I spent most of sunday bleeding down my t-shirt. It wasn't until I got home that I realised I probably had a broken rib, because the pain in it got worse and worse as each day went by.
Because I'm so clever,
But clever ain't wise
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Monday, 11 August 2008
Only Skin
Last week our picture window produced a half-word
Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird
We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
And pant and labour over every intake
I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace
Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place
Said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"
Then in my hot hand
She slumped her sick weight
We tramped through the poison oak
Heartbroke and inchoate
The dogs were snapping
So you cuffed their collars
While I climbed the tree-house
Then how I hollered!
Cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two
Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew
There are two resounding elements in my life which take up most of my internal energies - the time I spend doing nothing is filled to the brim with these things. They are the diametric opposites of perception and existence - emotion vs. reason. I hold no esoteric or theosophic-tinged beliefs; I don't believe in any sort of afterlife, or higher power. I find the notion of "humanity in evolving to greater perfection" as described by Theosophists (the group who attempts to combine all religious and spiritual beliefs into one thing) to be a recurring theme throughout all spiritual and religious beliefs, and one which is massively offensive.
Let me elaborate (because, this is my page, and I get to rant about whatever the hell I want, and to hell with you if you disagree). It seems to me that the history of religion can be divided into three parts: in the first part, people had no other way of explaining the world (which is fair enough). In the second part, people had no other way of explaining their social status (which is clearly a tool for controlling populations - see the missionaries, the spread of catholicism, or the way the communists maintained orthodox Russian Christianity after the revolution). In the third part, people couldn't face any other way of explaining the lack of meaning in their life, and that is where we are now. More than ever religion is a choice people make rather than a culture they are raised into. To know there is an alternative is inevitable in Western society, but as we've become more and more individualised as a society, so the desire to belong has increased.
The sense of belonging isn't in any way limited to religious interests, but whereas goths or football supporters or rowing enthusiasts maintain a certain lifestyle, religious belonging only asks that you donate your mind to the cause. As our lives have become easier, and we have more and more time to spend (but less and less money to spend in that time), we become aimless - as time without money is wasted time, by the standards of our commercial culture. We desire something greater than the humdrum boredom of doing nothing; we require something greater than this is just how it is to make sense of why we should keep breathing. And we seek a sense of belonging, a knowledge of higher truths whether it's in the music we collect, the films we have seen, or mystic knowledge. The belonging comes from the shared knowledge - how easy it is to start a conversation about music tastes, or football, or cooking. There's an immediate sense of bonhomie, as if you both have access to a backroom lexicon.
I think the truth is that we are in the most part incapable of truly understanding how alone we are and how meaningless life is without applying negative emotions to those things. We live, and die, and the universe keeps turning as if we'd never been there before - but why must that be a bad thing? To accept that we are just as we are, that there is nothing more, it should be the most freeing sensation in the world. But it is not, and I do not know why. Hence, emotion. It is fair to say that I hold no spiritualist beliefs at all, but still, love, emotion, concepts of fairness and right and wrong persist in me.
For example, it has often been the case that romantic emotional attachment has lead to nothing but sadness and frustration for me, yet this has never stopped me from avoiding romantic attachment - in fact, it has made me try harder and harder to find a sort of romantic perfection. It seems to be, the harder I try, the harder i fail. I have been rotten towards romance in the past; perhaps, this is karma? Or perhaps bad luck. Or perhaps co-incidence. I flick through the various options in my head, looking for one that will provide some resolution or explanation to help me cope with what happens to me, and why bad things happen to me when I try to be a good guy.
Ultimately I think it's just a case of definition. Shit (which, really, can be anything) happens.
Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird
We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake
And pant and labour over every intake
I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace
Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place
Said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view"
Then in my hot hand
She slumped her sick weight
We tramped through the poison oak
Heartbroke and inchoate
The dogs were snapping
So you cuffed their collars
While I climbed the tree-house
Then how I hollered!
Cause she'd lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two
Then, saw the treetops, cocked her head and up and flew
There are two resounding elements in my life which take up most of my internal energies - the time I spend doing nothing is filled to the brim with these things. They are the diametric opposites of perception and existence - emotion vs. reason. I hold no esoteric or theosophic-tinged beliefs; I don't believe in any sort of afterlife, or higher power. I find the notion of "humanity in evolving to greater perfection" as described by Theosophists (the group who attempts to combine all religious and spiritual beliefs into one thing) to be a recurring theme throughout all spiritual and religious beliefs, and one which is massively offensive.
Let me elaborate (because, this is my page, and I get to rant about whatever the hell I want, and to hell with you if you disagree). It seems to me that the history of religion can be divided into three parts: in the first part, people had no other way of explaining the world (which is fair enough). In the second part, people had no other way of explaining their social status (which is clearly a tool for controlling populations - see the missionaries, the spread of catholicism, or the way the communists maintained orthodox Russian Christianity after the revolution). In the third part, people couldn't face any other way of explaining the lack of meaning in their life, and that is where we are now. More than ever religion is a choice people make rather than a culture they are raised into. To know there is an alternative is inevitable in Western society, but as we've become more and more individualised as a society, so the desire to belong has increased.
The sense of belonging isn't in any way limited to religious interests, but whereas goths or football supporters or rowing enthusiasts maintain a certain lifestyle, religious belonging only asks that you donate your mind to the cause. As our lives have become easier, and we have more and more time to spend (but less and less money to spend in that time), we become aimless - as time without money is wasted time, by the standards of our commercial culture. We desire something greater than the humdrum boredom of doing nothing; we require something greater than this is just how it is to make sense of why we should keep breathing. And we seek a sense of belonging, a knowledge of higher truths whether it's in the music we collect, the films we have seen, or mystic knowledge. The belonging comes from the shared knowledge - how easy it is to start a conversation about music tastes, or football, or cooking. There's an immediate sense of bonhomie, as if you both have access to a backroom lexicon.
I think the truth is that we are in the most part incapable of truly understanding how alone we are and how meaningless life is without applying negative emotions to those things. We live, and die, and the universe keeps turning as if we'd never been there before - but why must that be a bad thing? To accept that we are just as we are, that there is nothing more, it should be the most freeing sensation in the world. But it is not, and I do not know why. Hence, emotion. It is fair to say that I hold no spiritualist beliefs at all, but still, love, emotion, concepts of fairness and right and wrong persist in me.
For example, it has often been the case that romantic emotional attachment has lead to nothing but sadness and frustration for me, yet this has never stopped me from avoiding romantic attachment - in fact, it has made me try harder and harder to find a sort of romantic perfection. It seems to be, the harder I try, the harder i fail. I have been rotten towards romance in the past; perhaps, this is karma? Or perhaps bad luck. Or perhaps co-incidence. I flick through the various options in my head, looking for one that will provide some resolution or explanation to help me cope with what happens to me, and why bad things happen to me when I try to be a good guy.
Ultimately I think it's just a case of definition. Shit (which, really, can be anything) happens.
Monday, 4 August 2008
Surfin' Dead
I was just bored and idly browsing wikipedia about China.. then I remembered about the Chinese embassy bombing. And then I did a bit of searching. I know it's old news and stuff, but a guy I know works for Navy intelligence, or used to but now works for the UN. So, there http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_the_Chinese_embassy_in_Belgrade is a fairly detailed report on the Chinese embassy bombing. What he told me was that, rather than "the wrong map" or whatever, it was because the locals had recovered the wreckage from a f117a (Stealth Fighter) that had crashed in Kosovo and had turned it over to the Chinese to sell to the Russians (or whatever something along those lines). http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9905/02/kosovo.01/ is the closest I could find to much mention of the plane crashing - there are a few sites that sort-of say it, but the BBC etc.don't really have any sort of news stories. And it's hard to find much of anything about it. You would think that, as the invisible plane was at the time still quite a big news story in itself, there might be more out there about one being shot out of the sky. And the dates add up. So, here's one for the conspiracy nuts.
Yeah you're a high-rev hauler with all four on the floor
But your a-bone's busted and you're through the door
So do the dead, juice the Coupe
Come on the livin' dead, ooh you're in the soup
Yeah you're a high-rev hauler with all four on the floor
But your a-bone's busted and you're through the door
So do the dead, juice the Coupe
Come on the livin' dead, ooh you're in the soup
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