The Knife - Live At Terminal 5

Treasures on the internet.

Everything comes full circle

I don't know if they say what you do on the first day of the year is something you will do for the rest of it, but mine felt like it. On the 1st of January, 2016, I jumped on a plane and flew back to London, to play music at an event that saw Dixon himself headline it. For the rest of the year, I did a lot of both. I travelled and I played music. Sometimes I even did one to do the other. It was exhausting, but worth it, and I have the miles balance to prove it.

People tend to focus on the negatives. Often, I'm guilty of this vice as well. Perhaps it's the sense of comfort that it offers, having a good moan and a lack of projected hope for whatever is happening in the universe. 2016, apart from proving to be a merciless predator, was also a year that proved to the world that anything can happen, that things go round in circles. The planets, history, life. We may be entering yet another period of uncertainty and change, triggered by populist and emotional choices, but ultimately the point is that we do what we can, and be the best that we can, under the circumstances and within the context we have been placed in. 

And 2016 wasn't all that bad; lots of great things happened, like many of my close friends getting married. I started a new job and I turned 30, and my loved ones were there to witness it. We travelled. We danced, we laughed, we played music. We travelled, we ate, we danced some more. 

July 23, 2016. Sitting on top of a hill in a field somewhere in Cambridge, with fireworks going off in the summer sky and David Bowie's 'Starman' playing on the speakers, and thousands of glittered spacemen singing along in unison and admiring the 2016 Secret Garden Party spectacle. Under the same sky.

January 2nd, 2017. Sitting in a cafe (a real one, that serves coffee) in Amsterdam, and the same song is playing. Another circle. So here's my wish for the new year. May 2017 be a good one, and find us all feeling more complete and peaceful, with each other but above all, with ourselves. 

"He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile"

Heart of Darkness

"It is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence — that which makes its truth, its meaning — its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream — alone. . . ."




Our moments are our own.

There the dance is

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is

http://www.coldbacon.com/poems/fq.html

The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness

AKA playing cupid.

An interesting experiment, which might lead to the chemistry of 'falling in love'. But staying in love is a completely different story.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/modern-love-to-fall-in-love-with-anyone-do-this.html?_r=2






The experiment involves standing on a bridge and staring into each other's eyes for 4 minutes.

The consolations of art

The brilliant mind of Alain de Botton does it again: finding meaning applicable to our own daily lives, in the works of great artists.

http://www.thebookoflife.org/edward-hopper-revamps-motel-chain-train-carriage-and-diner/

"Hopper discovered that – even when others love us very much – some essential part of us is always alone.

It is this recognition that makes his paintings so compelling. And indeed, it is by addressing loneliness that art can be most therapeutic: consoling us and reassuring us that estrangement and sorrow are normal, that we are neither very strange nor very shameful for experiencing them. Sad and lonely art allows us as viewers to witness an echo of our own griefs and disappointments, and thereby to feel less personally persecuted and beset by them."


Excursion into Philosophy, 1959

2015.

I don't believe in years. I believe in days. Every day can be different, if you want it to be. Don't wait for 365 days to pass to notice changes or try to achieve something new. Start today. Today we can be here, tomorrow we may not. There is no way to know. Knowing you tried is what counts.

Work to become who you want to be, in 2015 and every day.

We are all extras in someone else's story

“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.”
― Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception

All together now

Some art for the day.








I'm also playing Corsica Studios on Saturday. I'm excited.

Summer

Long summers, short dresses, cold drinks and hot bodies.

This is one of my favourite sets, ever. Any Paul Kalkbrenner set that starts with Dockyard and is followed by Since 77 does it for me. Sometimes you need to start with a couple of big tracks, to put yourself and your crowd in the mood. It all depends on the moment.

So, in two days, I'm leaving (on a jet plane) for a while. I haven't felt like this in ages. "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall", according to Jordan from The Great Gatsby, but of course there's some irony in that (note the word 'fall'). But life for me? It starts all over again tomorrow.

And summer starts the day after that.