psyche

When I first listened to Biffy Clyro’s Puzzle, I thought it was just crap for people who get excited by loud guitar music. It’s actually totally amazing. The 4 + 2 + 9 = 15 thing and the way each song subtly references others within the album and the quirkiness and ability to play the guitar without showing off is actually amazing. In fact, it’s so amazing that I literally do not care whether other people like it because I could just sit here listening to it.

Thus, new awesome list: David Gray, Warren Zevon, bôa, The Wallflowers, Biffy Clyro, Badly Drawn Boy.

Awesome.

Pax

I won only one fight during the BYC qualifier (proper results to follow) but Hugh Emerson came 2nd in the U16 sabre and Adam Zethraeus came 2nd 3rd in the U18 sabre (I don’t know how Adam did in the épée but Adam also came 6th in the épée and I’ll link to results later anyway). I felt rather sicktastic afterwards and got quite a bad two-point moving headache which intellectually incapacitated me on Monday and earlier today. This offered me time to re-evaluate something, though…

Going back to Rosebank Avenue, where my grandfather lives and where we lived a long time ago, reminded me of track 9 (or was it the other way round…?). This, predictably, brings me back to The Node. I think I’m going to need to formally define it and strategies for dealing with it if I’m going to be able to continue living.

Here it comes, then:

The Node is an event or concept which I cannot recall but which is somehow linked to many other certain events, concepts or situations in my life. I suspect this because of extreme feelings of déjà vu or nostalgia when confronted with certain events.

Now, what exactly reminds me of it? These are elements common to works of fiction or situations which remind me of …it.

• Suburban gloom
• (Old) computers
• One or many lonely people
• The telephone system

This brought up some funny stuff:

Places like Rosebank and other locations in Greenford where my family have lived have heavy doses of wires and suburban gloom. Council flats with satellite dishes on also remind me of it… hmm. Durston had those old Macs that felt old even when they were new… and the Macbeath Hall in the Haven Green churchy place evoked a feeling very similar to the suburban gloom feeling (in me, I mean).

This leads to my hypotheses. The questions I must ask are:

1. What is The Node?
2. What should I do?

So, possibilities for what The Node is:

1. It’s simply an exaggerated form of nostalgia for places I used to live or technology I used to use (very likely)
2. It’s my subconscious trying to give my life a purpose in the absence of any obvious external source of purpose (quite likely)
3. It’s a repressed memory of something very important (unlikely)

Well, it seems quite clear-cut, doesn’t it? However, I no longer have faith in the truth as a solution. Instead, consider which of these viewpoints it is most advantageous for me to adopt. The first gives me nothing. The second gives me some quirkiness but mostly nothing. The third gives me purpose. Memento, anyone? I’d rather have an artificial purpose than be swallowed by nihilism. I hope I somehow… urgh! I hope this turns out well.

This was Warren Zevon’s final public performance; he died about three months later, I think.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=WhRRWwH3Fro]

Isn’t this interesting? Why did they want to call the internet the intergalactic thingy anyway? To think I wouldn’t have known that had it not been for the Lain artbook, I wouldn’t have know that… I really need to research the history of the internet properly. Why didn’t we get taught this?!

Pax

This morning, while considering the Wired being represented by messed up red pools in shadows in SEL, I looked for my own shadow. Depressingly, there was not enough ambient light to cast a shadow. Dark days indeed… and then in the afternoon the red clouds made me think I was insane.

I have a backlog of three chemistry homeworks to find/do for tomorrow, and I have to plan this SciCast preliminary presentation thing. I am glad that I have things to do.

My electric guitar teacher, David V Miles (link very out of date, but at least I’m not deep linking), is trying to help me play faster by teaching me crazy shred legato techniques which I must practise until I can play them very, very quickly. Maybe when I can, I’ll redo Requiem (again) with some insanely fast solo.

Better start my homework now. Let’s all love Lain!

Pax

If I ever learn to sing well, I’ll sing my songs. However, I think a better short-term solution is to make a slew of instrumental music. I might even learn how to play the guitar well in the process!

To this day, then, Requiem remains the most concrete record of my pitiful attempts to sing. There’s something fitting about that.

Pax

I have completed the video for Requiem in C# Minor and here it is - YouTube, bringer of stuff, brings the stuff![youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0iq4VdFYY]Please forgive me; I’ve never made any sort of video or anything before and I don’t understand how to use iMovie (I think that puts my IQ at around 60 but hey)!The highly nonsensical and cheap lyrics are here:

Verse 1:

Needs of the many versus needs of the few, well

You cover it up and you start anew

There’s nothing more now that I can do

But stand and watch your dreams come true

Chorus:

It’s such a shame he had to die for me to live; I’m sorry

But we always knew that he had nothing left to give; I worry

Everything I used to be is gone and now my soul is empty

And I don’t think that there’s anyone broken enough to help me

Verse 2:

My prayers have been answered and the answer was no

I hate to say I told you so

His days were numbered and the number is up

And I have nothing to lose now but the blood in my cup

Verse 3:

I look for the sunrise but I see night fall*

I listen to your voice but I hear nothing at all**

Why don’t you label me and tell me who I am?

I can’t believe you don’t know I understand

* I don’t have very good temporal awareness

** I’m not just tone deaf…

Pax

I was meant to go for the Guitar-X thing today, but I woke up too late (at 14:34, to be precise). I don’t know what I’m doing or what I want to do. I’m so tired! It’s unbelievable! Nuclear projects were described as “tickling the tail of a sleeping dragon”. Oh no! I am not sure what’s going on, you know. I really am not sure. Ha ha ha! Also, call me retarded, but was the point about Slughorn thinking that Lily was good at potions and that Harry, when using Snape’s textbook, had inherited her abilities because Snape, who had potions with Lily, gave her all the hints he devised? Snape is pretty great. So is Dumbledore. So is Voldemort. All great, really. How great.Sometimes I want to know everything and live forever and meet everyone who died and exhaust everything and just be eternal. Sometimes that’s enough to make me consider religion. HA HA HA, religion. I will live forever as a series of sceptical statements and hopefully scientific achievements. As Elliot said in response to me saying that I wanted to do something significant, “Most people don’t do anything”. How right he was.Pax

Lucifactor - I tried to say Lightmaker, yes. I love the way they did JKR’s website (I’m saying JKR like I used to say JRR for Tolkien). It reminds me of Myst. She will “probably” write an encyclopedia of Harry Potter stuff. I look forward to that. I burnt my hand while incinerating important documents last night. It hurts but it is the only reminder I will ever need of whatever was lost yesterday. Goodbye, past. Hello, future!Until this encylopedia exists, the Harry Potter Wiki on Wikia will suffice. The Myst one is good too.Nick Kellie - the guy taking the course I’m doing at Guitar-X - is going in for a tonsillectomy and so a guy called Les (?) will be taking us for the next two weeks. I’ve learned some interesting things. I had no idea how to make the blues sound bluesy but it appears to be possible to do so (in this case in G) by improvising using the G minor pentatonic over G7 (and the same over C7 but emphasising the important notes of C: C, D and G) and then using D minor pentatonic over the D7. It’s kind of strange. I like it.

Pax

I had my Guitar-X assessment and masked my lack of talent sufficiently to secure a place on the Intermediate 1 part-time course. Hopefully I will actually understand things after this. My instructor guy, whose name I didn’t catch because I’m bad at asking questions, while unwilling to make eye contact, knew a whole load of awesome stuff and could play really, really well. Inspiring (well, not enough to make me stop being so lazy but yeah) stuff.

Pax

GCSEs finished; they were good overall. I can only hope I did well. Seriously. I’m down to hope as a strategy. Down to hope. Also, there was a guitar concert and our illustrious teacher, Prof. Michael Lewin, entertained parents with a humorous side I can’t say I’ve seen before! It went quite well despite several unfortunate incidents (Faraz had a few mishaps with wrong music and such but still managed to improvise something to fill in for a page or so of Bach he’d misplaced without the audience realising).Awesome, you know?Pax

There is an old computer in a basement; it is not particularly dusty but it still exudes a sort of smell (which isn’t really a smell, but smell will do) which heavily implies that it is old. By old I do not really mean aged (although it has indeed aged), but more specifically I refer to that vaguely-defined state of oldness that exists in computer culture and probably in most other subcultures: the computer is a generic old thing and no-one knows precisely what it is but they know that it is from another era.

It had previously belonged to a man who liked it quite a lot and did some useful things and also, like any man, wasted a fairly large section of his life using to pursue things which ultimately meant nothing. Of course, he found out interesting things and his life was better but he also engaged in other things; he dialled into boxes ever so far away and played tricks on the telephone men and women and was occasionally proud of himself. The computer didn’t really remember him as such; certainly were there things on backup tapes still bound to it that had never been overwritten but, in a way that makes me sad, would probably never be looked at - in fact, I can confirm that they never were but, as you now know, they could have been. It now sat humming below the electronics shop. Its hum was permanent because it ran some antiquated but venerated software that required several hours which, according to its system clock, should not have harboured much human activity, for “housekeeping” tasks and so was left on by its more recent owner (a shop employee). It had been superseded by much, much faster machines.

Left behind by someone who found things out. I cannot really convey the strange tightness that I feel in my torso when I think about it; it’s like an edgy nostalgia: it had been left. Dark people in dark rooms had done dark things but found the way. Most left in a bad, lonely way. Others left in a way that was still lonely but they experienced a profound connection to something incredible. They broke many rules and, you know, I wish they would come back and help me but they won’t. I still sort of wait, you know. I sit here in my room at my computer staring at it and hoping something will come, although I know that I really have to make it come. I have to pull things to me.

Now, the light from the character bled into the darkness which might as well be considered part of the bigger darkness of the room. People had sat and done things but now no-one sat; I would’ve taken a melancholy photograph had I been there. No-one remembers the computer! It doesn’t even exist!I made it up! It died alone! I MADE IT UP.

Physics and guitar concert on Monday. Someone knows that I try!

Pax