hi I'm 19-40 years old and I enjoy despair
Mat has set up a new office - on the other half of his double bed. I tell him he is flying in the face of received wisdom, which has it that those who work from home should keep their workplace and their living space completely separate. He points out that all he has to do to get to work every day is roll over. Not that it will help with his latest moneymaking scheme: washing people’s cars. Friends’ cars, mainly. He’s not sure if he’s going to add the service to his company website: 3D visualisation and wash your car for a fiver. Nor has he washed a car yet (save his own). Too distracted by Yahoo personals. His latest prospect closed her introductory paragraph with the time-honoured phrase: I just want to be happy. I said I could picture her screaming those words at the end of the relationship, towards his fleeing back. ‘I just want to be happy!’ Honestly, what kind of insight does that phrase give us into someone’s soul? I enjoy doing enjoyable fun things. My dislikes include misery and pain. I think it’s very important to keep breathing…
My likes include really miserable music. Really, is there anything more uplifting? On Tuesday I went with Dave to see Silver Mt. Zion. That’s a band, not a landmark. Support came from Carla Bozulich, once lead singer of the equally obscure Geraldine Fibbers. She did some kind of murky country rock thing that was slow to get going but triumphed eventually. It was like watching something being dragged reluctantly out of the darkness. Into more darkness. And then massacred in a maelstrom of guitar noise.
Black Heart Procession, the other support, were a bit MOR in this context, like a Gothic Supertramp. But Silver Mt. Zion were fantastic. They’re a collective of sorts, based in a squat in Montreal, so I was surprised by how much the lead singer, Efrim, dominates. He looks like a cross between Jesus and Frank Zappa; like a cult leader traumatized by the responsibility of looking after his flock. He yelps all the world’s pain over music that swells from melancholy ambient into something quite ferocious before dying down to begin the cycle of misery again. And in between songs, he’s even funny. You had to be there, mind.
It was a bit of a contrast to our recent visit to the Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh, in that we were not the only ones there older than nineteen. There were some very young people there though, including a guy I only ever saw from behind, whose fringe came down past his chin on both sides so that, from the back, he looked like his face might be entirely covered with hair. Only Dave saw Wolfboy’s face, in the lift at Mornington Crescent tube. He had an impression of teeth. Enormous jutting teeth. The music at the Pink Toothbrush was good, but if I’d danced I’d have felt like a performing freak (enough that I was breathing the same air as these people). So it was refreshing to encounter someone who really did belong in a circus. Or a band.
Though actually, it seems I have nothing to worry about. An online test doing the rounds currently has informed me that my real age is nineteen. Because I like tiramisu, apparently.
My likes include really miserable music. Really, is there anything more uplifting? On Tuesday I went with Dave to see Silver Mt. Zion. That’s a band, not a landmark. Support came from Carla Bozulich, once lead singer of the equally obscure Geraldine Fibbers. She did some kind of murky country rock thing that was slow to get going but triumphed eventually. It was like watching something being dragged reluctantly out of the darkness. Into more darkness. And then massacred in a maelstrom of guitar noise.
Black Heart Procession, the other support, were a bit MOR in this context, like a Gothic Supertramp. But Silver Mt. Zion were fantastic. They’re a collective of sorts, based in a squat in Montreal, so I was surprised by how much the lead singer, Efrim, dominates. He looks like a cross between Jesus and Frank Zappa; like a cult leader traumatized by the responsibility of looking after his flock. He yelps all the world’s pain over music that swells from melancholy ambient into something quite ferocious before dying down to begin the cycle of misery again. And in between songs, he’s even funny. You had to be there, mind.
It was a bit of a contrast to our recent visit to the Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh, in that we were not the only ones there older than nineteen. There were some very young people there though, including a guy I only ever saw from behind, whose fringe came down past his chin on both sides so that, from the back, he looked like his face might be entirely covered with hair. Only Dave saw Wolfboy’s face, in the lift at Mornington Crescent tube. He had an impression of teeth. Enormous jutting teeth. The music at the Pink Toothbrush was good, but if I’d danced I’d have felt like a performing freak (enough that I was breathing the same air as these people). So it was refreshing to encounter someone who really did belong in a circus. Or a band.
Though actually, it seems I have nothing to worry about. An online test doing the rounds currently has informed me that my real age is nineteen. Because I like tiramisu, apparently.
posted by martin at 4:08 AM
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