feeling better

wish I knew why.
glad, though. just plain glad.

Medication

The Spiritualized song, that is. Although...I'm starting to reach the point where I can predict and anticipate my mood swings, and that's bothering me a little bit. By "mood swings," I mean soul-crushing depression. And by "predict and anticipate," I mean "dread," because I can't actually stop them from coming, and I can't avoid them, and I can't find my own li'l way out of them on my own. I'm busy trying to diagnose this myself (presupposing, of course, that it is something wrong with me, and something treatable at that), but I'm wondering if that's not the wrong approach. I...don't know what is the right approach.


Other things I don't know: does my mood shift based on the music I listen to, or is the music I want to listen to shaped by the mood I'm in? How much is the one the result of the other?


listening: haujobb's Frames (the remix album). slowly approaching cEvin Key's remix... That's where I test how music shapes mood. How can I not get a lift out of that technoorganic chaos exploding and refining itself into a beautifully precise percussive mess?

drinking: water. I'm at work, for crying out loud. I'm hydrating before hitting the gym, but I'll probably interrupt this burst of health to get myself a cuppa tea.

reading: game briefs for E3. I do NOT want to go to another fucking E3. I'll be glad to see people there, of course, but for fuck's sake, I'm working the goddamn floor again. I'm too old and too tired and, to be snobbish about it, too fucking long in this industry to be working the floor still. I'm pissed about this.

thinking: I think I just summed that up, didn't I?

the droning engine throbs in time with your beating heart

Some songs pursue me for years on end. They never lose the impact they had when I first heard them, or they shift and slide, so that every time, they transform in shape and meaning to fit new moods, new emotions, new mes. Duran Duran's The Chauffeur does that. That's where I am now, drowning in new romanticism and gi-normous hair.

Nothing to add to that. The music is swimming around me, and it's making a single thread of thought difficult to grasp -- keeps bobbing and dancing and twisting out of reach.

Gibson's Weblog

Did I link this already? I ought to have. Honestly, it deserves a second linking if I did. The man is brilliant beyond words. I'm at that unfortunate phase where I want to write but have nothing to write. Like when I want to talk but have nothing to say. I want to connect but have no one with whom to connect. I've felt this way for years.

Foolish Thing Desire

Title from Daniel Ash's first solo album. I saw him on that tour, interviewed him years later with Kevin Haskins from Love and Rockets. David J was stuck in New York, sick. This was years before Bauhaus reunited for the Resurrection tour. We were just one small college radio station (24 watts at the time), one brief interview among many that day. A nice thing, though -- Kevin and Daniel saying "Hello, this is Daniel Ash and Keving Haskins from Love and Rockets, and you're listening to the Christian Martyr." They recorded a promo for me, specially recorded for my show. Daniel and Kevin playing around, Kevin bursts a balloon with his cigarette (American Spirit) while they're recording. We record several takes, just to be safe. I never get a copy.

I've just gone off for a nice dinner of blackened salmon, mashed potatoes, and much beer. It's got me maudlin, though. Good word, that.

listening: Mazzy Star (She Hangs Brightly, to be specific, and "Give You My Lovin'" to be more specific). This song has too many memories. Drinking cheap red wine with my best mate on my college apartment's balcony, playing the song on the radio and seeing my co-DJ collapsing onto the verge of tears with the power, beauty, and tragedy of Hope Sandoval's voice... "Blue Flower," too -- that was more my song:

Superstar in your own private movie
I wanted just a minor part
But I'm no fool
I know you're cool
I never really wanted your heart

drinking: too much, obviously. Irish Immigrant Pale Ale, two pints -- not enough to have done this to me, but that I hadn't eaten beforehand.
thinking: Maudlin thoughts, shallow blue and grey.
Ah, Hope...

I hate this

I keep unspooling the threads on my sleeves when I'm at my computer. My desk has a little snaggletoothed corner, and it reaches out and grabs threads and yanks them into unsightly little curls. On an unrelated note, one of my cats is falling asleep standing up. that's just creepy.

listening: Half-Gifts -- Cocteau Twins, off of Milk and Kisses.
drinking: some throat-searing ginger tea. I've got a sore throat, and it seems to help. Either that, or the burning pain of drinking it overrides whatever tenderness my throat feels.
reading: Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson -- still. I'm savoring it. Or I'm really slow. Probably more of the latter than the former
thinking: Nothing terribly profound. There's amusing family politics going on right now. It's amusing to me, but if I were closer to the heart of the matter, I'd be offended, terribly angry, and boarding a plane to go break someone's fingers. I've only ever broken someone's fingers once before, and it was unintentional. He tried hitting me (and not maliciously, either -- it was playful), and he got my shoulderblade instead of my MEAT. Broke his finger on me. Shoulda been drinking more milk, yo.

Time to scoop up dead leaves. Maybe I'll snap a photo while I'm at it.

cold, grey day