Rong radio.

Loved this. Scooched over a precariously ambitious serving of curry after circuits tonight, cloyed sweat still matted to me like mango chutney to a naan, FourDocs played out an award-winning Three Minute Wonder. Hip poet Benjamin Zephaniah doing a sterling performance to a cam in a cab:

http://www.channel4.com/fourdocs/film/film-detail.jsp?id=65565

Great stuff. We’ve all been listening to the Rong Radio, Benjy. We’ve known it for years, of course, but we don’t seem to be doing much with the knowledge. In fact, I do rather think I’m getting comfortable with my status anxiety. After twenty years of idly enjoying myself, I still have no idea how to make much of a difference to anything, of course, and am still clinging to the vain hope that something, some day, will make its mind up to happen for me. So I won’t have the on going agony of having to choose.

Attaboy – make a difference. It’s rather beginning to seem that my values are degrading as I get older; too much rong radio. Fatness grows in the head, as well as the tee shirt, I think.

But, while I’m killing time in my thickening womb tank of apathy, if there’s one immaturity I am fairly stubbornly happy to have carried from the beginning, it’s weirdly introspective joy of making music and daydreaming about the Next Album Project. And, by jingo, it’s happening. After six years.

Had an impromptu dinner at the revamped Spyglass the other night, to celebrate Caroline’s handing in of the latest epic installment of diploma work. Mark and Sarah joined us round the table, as part of their Real Blummen’ Actual Week Off celebrations and as the evening lengthened we found our table rounded by a whole number of folk.

Tim Colthup and I spent the whole night talking music. He’s back into it – finishing a long-awaited album in the same freakin’ apartment we locked ourselves into twenty summers ago to go music creative mad. We’re both as excited now as we were then. Nothing’s moved on and I couldn’t have been happier than right then, jabbering with grins in the old Ocean. Why do we lose ourselves in it so?

All thirteen tracks I’ve decided on for my own new collection are up and spinning together here in the studio – around Actual Paid Work – and I’m just loving being in the right place again. That’s just what it still feels like. However stupendously pointless that right place has always always appeared to be.

No, don’t be nice. You’ve not heard the rubbish I’m recording yet.

It’s never going to get on the radio, that’s for damn sure.

Gay.

Interesting that, in a week where the word ‘gay’ was polled by UK teachers as by far the most used term of casual abuse in the playgrounds of Britain in 2008, I found a rather interesting comment on a BBC web article.

I couldn’t sleep lastnight for some reason. Ended up getting up to write down some ideas that came to mind, unhindered by the normal daytime crap. Haven’t looked back this morning to see if they will turn out to be the usual night time crap. But before the ol’ bean turned to creative matters, I had been randomly thinking about this little post, left by someone called ‘Sam, a Brit abroad’, in answer to a piece about the Bible’s attitude to homosexuality. It was a neat summation of the two views held by believers on the subject – a subject otherwise seen as absurdly moot by most people in the country.

This morning, in a not-surprising late starter for us, we were listening to the Radio 4 joy that is In Our Time and they were discussing the philosopher, Kierkegaard. And jeepers, we even understood it. More than that, it even appeared to make sense to us. But this ‘father of existentialism’ actually had a very personal view of Christianity… no, I’m not about to reveal he was gay. He saw the need to sometimes embrace opposing ideas if we are to attempt to understand things beyond ourselves. A necessary tension.

Trying not to behave like too much of a smug arse because, after all, I have no study to back this up at all, it did make me think how much I’ve thought over the years that faith is a long succession of impossible balances. That, if you feel impelled to make a declaration of faith in something – atheist or believer – the road you’ll have to walk is a daily one of tension. Of holding a long series of impossible balances in tension. If you care. In simple terms, could be desire/duty. Fulfillment/sacrifice. Certainty/Open-mindedness. Hope/Reality. Responsibility/Submission to events. Trust/likelyhood. That’s the high-wire act of faith. ..It rather comes down to what you’re choosing to put your faith in, but when that distinctly un-impirical idea starts to make a bonkers kind of sense, you’re beginning to get it. I think.

I can only measure to the end of my nose. Beyond it, I need to accept things may sometimes look contradictory in plebby human language, that aren’t in the bigger cosmos. We surely have to keep measuring what we can, to enlarge the world of certainty as wisely as possible – Duh. I want to know what the hell a graviton really is, baby; we might finally get proper flying cars and stuff. But accepting that even a long-awaited Theory Of Everything, will in no way tell us everything, is just honest. What we choose to think beyond the nose ruler is another, very personal, matter… Oop – there I go again, holding my impossible philosophical tensions with casual diffidence.

..Yep, I agree. Impressively deep stuff. I think I thought a lot of other deep stuff at three AM too, about how the spectrum of sexuality is not simply about desire but identity, of course. Interesting how our desires can be our labels, outwardly and inwardly. “Hi, I’m Bob. I’m a transexual Star Trekker. That’s me. What I want is who I am. And it demands a LOT of wardrobe space, let me tell you…”

I think I also came up with some clever analogy about how that sexual spectrum could be seen as a circular colour wheel – but a cylinder of brightness as well as a flat rotation of inclination.

See? Smart-sounding at three in the morning. I suspect it’s as helpful to daily life as a pair of men’s jeans three sizes too small – all bollocks – but there we are. Not about to devote a lifetime of study to it. But I did go back to this comment here and think, after reading the usual cartoon like responses to a religious article, this one somehow had the tone of voice of someone who in some way actually got what a God attitude might be to being gay:
“I’m 37 years old, an evangelical Christian(the kind who that believe you can “know” God personally/for real), and a struggling celibate. I knew for sure I was gay at 13. Unmistakable gay feelings etc when still a pre-pubescent junior. I became a Christian at uni, and then two very real worlds collided. No doubts about the person or reality of God. Nor of his love for me. Nor of my sexuality. My spirit (and mind)has always leaned towards my staying celibate – but my heart and emotions want what most do, a settled, loving relationship. I read the Bible several times – all of it,and as a student too – none of the points raised are new to me. Following that collision c20 yrs ago, daily I try to work through the reality of my own personal ‘collateral damage’.” Sam, Brit abroad.
You might have no idea where Sam is coming from here, but to my mind, there’s nothing playground gay about it.

News travels fast.

So many giant things seem to vie for attention if you ever have the misfortune to turn on the news, but it’s often the small things – or the individuals – that seem to really affect you. Or you feel able to respond to meaningfully.

I wanted to chew over the situation in Gaza one more time; find a way to shake the tree of it. Throttle the frigging life out of it. But somehow the will seeped out of me.

I wanted to explore why I’m so instinctively hoping for Obama – despite his conspicuously vague Actual Policies – for the indefensibly trivial, worldly, dreadfully politicianal reason that he’s such a natural orator. He’s black, and he’s funny. Aparently. But is it enough? Why does it feel like enough? Please let it be enough.

I wanted to cry for little Shannon when they actually found her alive. But there’s nothing more to say there, is there.

I wondered too about the untimely – call it early – loss of Anthony Minghella. He surely had so much creative work still ahead of him. Someone who championed British film and British creative talent – what a sudden loss. What a fabulous selection of films to leave mankind in your wake. Makes you think too.

And, considering I’ve just sent another shipment of artwork to Shanghai, I’m sure I could certainly be exploring the growing challenge of China – Tibet and Ten Downing Street’s moral vaguery, or the world’s new favourite trading buddy’s backdoor to Burmese oppression. It’s a tickler, isn’t it?

Hey, and where would anyone even start with the state of the economy in America, or Still President Bush’s declaration that the war was worth it, or… or a thousand other stories. Big and impossible.

Nope, much as you may wish higher things for yourself – a nobler application of one’s self – your brain will always tell you what’s really important to you. The ol’ subconscious lets you know, you know? Makes clear what you’re really giving a fig for.

Lastnight I dreamt I was offered a lift by Richard Hammond and Jeremy Clarkson, on the lookout for a new presenter for… oh, shite. I’ll just leave it there; you get the point.

I need to get OUT…

Beer.

Zot. Brugge Zot – that’s the stuff. Zot means ‘fool’ in Flemmish Dutch, apparently, so I took to it instantly. Though, I should confess straight up that I only took a couple of sips; we may have just spent the weekend in a beer Mecca of sorts, but I clung to a series of trusty stems of vino while we were there. I didn’t even make myself sick on chocolates – though they are in fact currency in Bruges.

Yes, we made it. Spent the whole time wandering around cobbled streets, gazing at gables and cornices and public spaces. I think I should basically be doing Caroline’s Urban Design diploma with her, I so obviously know so much. When we weren’t ambling, we were sleeping the said of the undead in room.

Nothing more interesting than that to say. Everyone with a vaguely Dutch disposition seems to be unambiguously friendly and effortlessly tri-lingual. But I couldn’t even be bothered to do my bad accent comedy routine.

Traveling by train is kind of cute and St Pancras is a joy, especially compared to Bruxelles Midi, which is a sort of apocalyptic bunker.

And now we’re back. Planning ways to spend money we just don’t have on going on holiday for the rest of the year.