Muxtape

Remember mix tapes? The hours that went into listing, organising and recording the perfects songs onto a cassette tape (usually for someone you wanted to shag the bones off of?)

Well, here's the digital version: Muxtape

Shagging not included.

Isabel Fonseca was partly wrong. Those times when one is in the wrong place at the wrong time are very painful. Those times when duty and desire wish you to be in another place make the distance very keenly felt.

On self-exile

"It’s more an idea than anything else...and that’s probably ideal. It’s handy living in the wrong place.” Isabel Fonseca

BA's new Heathrow terminal

Disclaimer: British Airways is a client, but they've not paid me to say this!

We flew in and out of T5, BA's new Heathrow terminal this week to Miami. It was a marvel. The terminal is light and open and not rushed. Everything worked as planned and we flew and flew back with our luggage! The lounge was lovely, the tram to the gate fast and efficient. It is a remarkable terminal. I know BA have had teething problems with the terminal but I didn't experience any of it. Once they've overcome the problems they've had we should be really proud of it.

Cheering thought of the day

'Our civilisation suffers from vital exhaustion.' Michel Houellebecq, Whatever, 1999

Got over myself already

I know. What a moan. Still, sometimes those thoughts need to live somewhere else so they don't rattle around my head. And it has been a crap month in many ways. Saying goodbye to friends, working too hard and too inefficiently, in the cold and gloom of Winter. I'll be glad when the month is over.

So don't fret. I acknowledge the darkness so I can see the light and there's plenty of light indeed.

Reading Alex Ross' phenomenal The Rest is Noise. It's turned me onto some 20th Century music I hadn't considered: Schoenberg, Copland, Mahler. I recommend it highly, although it's a lug of a book.

A snowing day

Gloomy. This quartet of frozen Sundays. The world on the verge of seasons. The soul in an endless Winter.
How can a flicker of green mark such a void? Its hypnotic heart, a taunt, a promise.

Is it my weakness I only hear the dark frequencies, the minor keys, the laments? Hiding away from the shimmering. The world and its furious dance. Yet still surprised by solitude. The recurrent theme, the comforting and abiding surrender.

I wished it away. Was that wrong? To reject what had so embraced me. To reach beyond a realm into the light that filled with wild ideas and aspirations. I willed a change. I tasted it. It frightened me. I diluted it until its bitter drug dragged me back and its withdrawal contaminated the waking dreams.

I feed that darkness, its greed and its demanding mouth, the glimmer of lights that once guided me. The beacon I yearn for flickers and is no more.