It was the only inexplicable event, so far, this year. When I moved to a new flat, the rest of those last weeks of summer were spent in a horrible way, incomprehensible to anyone else. A trip to Berlin - my one chance to leave all my boxes as they were, the white walls left perfect, and white, and reflecting all the houses around - came to nothing, and I was cast into a kind of limbo of washing teacups and folding sweaters. Staying up till five, listening to old music I found, not getting out in the day and to the sea, despite immaculate skies, and closing my windows to keep the August wasps out.
After three weeks of this (of nearly this) I woke up to the fact that it was a Friday evening. The windows on the wasp-free side were giving away signs of people preparing for things they might want to do. The past week had been a surprise of rain, autumn winds, music I heard that I'd neglected looking up before, completely new things. This Friday, things were back as they had been. Stuffy, domestic, calm, and rather empty. When you're so alone with yourself you're aware that nothing that happens to you will be noticed by anyone. In this state, at six o'clock, my clock radio, the ugly piece of white plastic showing the time where I couldn't see it (under the bed), went off into radio mode, where it never is, where it wasn't set, where it couldn't have been, very loudly too, and was suddenly playing me Arabic girl chanting with a presenter voice hurrying different tracks along as if he couldn't play enough of them - and they sounded brilliant. It was just voices, and excitement, and clips of different ideas. Pop tunes cut before they got boring; an absurd world that you'd like to stay in. On my stereo at the same time was my newest record of all (one I'd forgotten to follow the links to), Position Normal, Goodly Time, and the track was "Bubba Dum": unearthly melody-radio singers competing to be on the beat, now snatched somewhere they hadn't belonged to but where you wanted them to be.
I'd like to dedicate chat écoutant la musique to all the listening to music that we do.
The Muffins - Why Pursue It is the first song. It's another one of those sounds with a multitude of ideas tucked into a form that one wants more of, and can be completely happy not to be in control over. They were an American band that seem to me to have wished that they lived somewhere in Kent, slightly earlier on in the seventies.
After three weeks of this (of nearly this) I woke up to the fact that it was a Friday evening. The windows on the wasp-free side were giving away signs of people preparing for things they might want to do. The past week had been a surprise of rain, autumn winds, music I heard that I'd neglected looking up before, completely new things. This Friday, things were back as they had been. Stuffy, domestic, calm, and rather empty. When you're so alone with yourself you're aware that nothing that happens to you will be noticed by anyone. In this state, at six o'clock, my clock radio, the ugly piece of white plastic showing the time where I couldn't see it (under the bed), went off into radio mode, where it never is, where it wasn't set, where it couldn't have been, very loudly too, and was suddenly playing me Arabic girl chanting with a presenter voice hurrying different tracks along as if he couldn't play enough of them - and they sounded brilliant. It was just voices, and excitement, and clips of different ideas. Pop tunes cut before they got boring; an absurd world that you'd like to stay in. On my stereo at the same time was my newest record of all (one I'd forgotten to follow the links to), Position Normal, Goodly Time, and the track was "Bubba Dum": unearthly melody-radio singers competing to be on the beat, now snatched somewhere they hadn't belonged to but where you wanted them to be.
I'd like to dedicate chat écoutant la musique to all the listening to music that we do.
The Muffins - Why Pursue It is the first song. It's another one of those sounds with a multitude of ideas tucked into a form that one wants more of, and can be completely happy not to be in control over. They were an American band that seem to me to have wished that they lived somewhere in Kent, slightly earlier on in the seventies.
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