Category: Random

I’ve had my conversation, and it went – I suppose – as well as could legitimately be expected. You hope for more, you expect less, and you pray that you don’t get kicked too hard. Today’s been generally hectic, but for the first time this week I feel like I’ve actually accomplished something. I wrote my first review for the BBC Film website: “Fly Away Home” [Video | DVD]. I will of course let the world know when it’s up on their site. As the first non-survival-related activity that I’ve managed to complete for quite a while, I can’t help but experience a slight upturn in my spirits.

Dear Mr Quayle, It has come to my attention over the last few months that you bear a certain amount of animosity towards me. As we know from our studies of ancient texts, vengeance stimulates vengeance, and without an external party to steer one towards justice and equanimity one can – I’m afraid – only reciprocate. But this does neither of us any good. Can you not look around you at all you have and, from such a position of success, take pity on those of us forced to battle each day for whatever crumb of self-respect we can muster? Can you not take strength from the size of your home, or your salary, or from your acknowledged potency, intelligence and wit and – recognising that you have won any perceived battle between us – be gracious? Yours, tongue firmly in cheek, Tom Coates.

I’m feeling unhelpfully nervous this morning. I have an important conversation to have which I want to be completely relaxed for, but I’m not. It’s an absurd conversation to have – it won’t get anything accomplished (or at least I doubt very much that it will) – but I decided that I needed to have it, and here I am. I’ve got to do it now.

What I did last night: I’m going to let Davo do all the hard work of explaining what happened, so I can just say ‘thank you’ to him and Nick H. for indulging me and momentarily pulling me out of my current funk.

I finished reading The Music of Chance in Bristol on the weekend. It’s one of those books about pushing your life all around you until it collapses and you’re finally left with nothing of any value. It’s an intelligent pornography of self-destruction, later debased by books like Fight Club and Invisible Monsters. I heartily recommend it.

On repression: If you don’t have anything good to say, then don’t say anything at all. That’s how the old saying goes, is it not? What if there are things to say, good things, but you can’t concentrate on them? What if the one thing that you can’t talk about is the only thing that you really want to talk about? What if it pushes everything else out of the way? What then?

I read a lot of Freud when I was at University. Repression is what you do when the impulse or desire or memory or truth bubbles up from within you, but is stopped from entering the conscious mind by the super-ego – the part of the brain that stops you becoming the slave of your basic impulses. The thought remains immanent – just below perception, and bubbles up in strangely symbolic dreams and eruptions of irrationality in your everyday life. Like cryptic, confusing posts on a weblog. Like writing that doesn’t go anywhere.

Sorry about the paucity of updates. For a variety of reasons I don’t really feel like I can talk about much at the moment. Everything will be back to normal in a couple of days. Promise.

I’ve had better days.

The train from London to Norfolk is like Heart of Darkness – the further you get towards Norwich, the louder beat the tribal drums, the more fear enters your heart. I have to do this next week. This week, however, I took the train from London to Bristol, and the effect is quite different. It feels as if a weight has lifted. Passing Bath, fresh from a storm with the sun low in the sky, all the buildings arranged around the hills sparkled. Everything seemed open and friendly, everyone calmer and at peace. When I arrived at Temple Meads, my friend Rachel was busy and couldn’t pick me up. So I walked into town, down past the river and down to The Watershed. Everything was fresh and bright, people even move more slowly. I walked up Park Street to the Starbucks and sat and read The Music of Chance and listened to Ella Fitzgerald until I was picked up. Calmest I have felt in months…

Weirdest coincidences (2): One of the guys working at Arehaus at the moment is one half of the circlemakers.org crop-circle collective that won Guardian Site of the Year a while back.