Chicken gulasz, autumn, snails and wigs

OK, so the flu doing the rounds at work (people are dropping like flies - flies with the plague, but flies, nonetheless), and I have had a general feeling of crappiness the last couple of days. I tried to head it off by taking Nightnurse before I developed the full symptoms, but this seeems to have dragged it out rather, without the descent into aching joints, head, etc. I have bought myself chicken gulasz from North Ealing Supermarket, in the vain hope that mixing it with rice will invoke the spirit of a Jewish mother and cure me of this affliction - and, of, course, reminding me of this Sendak book from my childhood.

Autumn has also appeared in London with a vengeance. Darkness descends at 7ish, and the general drizzly gloom has now also arrived. Which makes me quite happy. I do enjoy seeing lights in this kind of weather, be they car headlights, the lights on the motorway, streetlights, or even Acton in the distance from the Central Line. The snails were out in force on my way back home tonight - usually I have to dodge slugs on the way back, especially if it has been raining, but tonight there were masses of snails. Every step was filled with fear as I ventured along Madeley Road, the next could be followed by a sickening crunch and an overwhelming sense of guilt. How do snails survive in the modern world? I read an article over the weekend questioning how humanity will evolve given the radical changes in our circumstances over the last 2000 years - but this has also had an impact on other species too...

This makes me laugh a lot....

Recent Things

Stephen Fry on bipolar disorder
Soviet Music
Lee Perry in the studio
One Man Star Wars
Sabadaba

Another six days

without a post. Some parts of the world manage to have a conflict within this timeframe. I can't even bear to post a couple of sentences. I guess spending a lot of my time at work staring at a screen of text doesn't particularly help in terms of encouraging me to write. In fact, I even struggle to watch TV of an evening (this used to be my refuge from reality in the evenings). Reading books is almost impossible apart from on the Tube. Even music has dropped off - I listen on the way to work, but not at home any more. Generally I have to go and lay in a darkened room, like a Jane Austen heroine who has had an attack of hysteria.

Records that changed your life

There has been much discussion on the various DJ message boards around the net recently about the record(s) tht changed your life. That rendered you speechless and had a fundamental effect on you musical taste, so here are mine:

The Clash - Sandinista (I have been into this in a post before)

The Upsetters - Super Ape (Space age lo-fi dub)

James Carr - The Complete Goldwax Singles (Reignited my passion for deep soul - utterly peerless)

Funkadelic - Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow (Deranged acid-rock-funk)

Eddie Kendricks - Girl You Need A Change Of Mind (Disco is much much more than YMCA, Bee Gees and Abba)

Willis Jackson - Nuthern Like Thuthern (Oh my God! Jazz you can dance to!)

Moodyman - Black Mahogani (Oh my God! Dance music that sounds like jazz!)

Serbian news

Kulcha

Recent reading & listening:

Paul Kriwaczek - Yiddish Civilisation - absolutely enthralling and very well written history of the other Europeans from the destruction of the Temple to 2006.

John McGahern - The Collected Stories - Irish writer who is actually good.

Paul Auster - Collected Novels 1 & 2, Collected Prose - forced myself to get these after hearing so many good things over the years.

Herbie Hancock - Mwandishi - shockingly good deep, expansive, electronic jazz fusion post-Blue Note and pre-Headhunters. Nice.

Plus the usual Miles Davis and Charles Mingus.

Oblewanie domu

in Peckham last night. More Poles (I think) than I've ever been exposed to at one time before. Certainly more Slavs than I've been in a room with since Petrozavodsk. And not a hint of gloom. Smiles all round. Not a single thought of suicide. They did claim, however, that the Poles experience extremes of happiness and misery - maybe the effects of joining the EU have dampened their fatalistic nature - although the Portuguese are, of course, still obsessed with 'fado'. I had always thought that the Polish nature was unrelenting gloom punctuated by short periods of slightly less unrelenting gloom and drunkeness.

I have to admit that I was slightly disappointed in certain ways - after several tequilas I was expecting rousing choruses of Polish folk songs (if they can become rousing), deep philosophical pondering on the nature of the Slavic soul (this did start, but the more I think about it, the more I become convinced that it is merely a romanticisation of those aspects of the human that psyche that generally constitute 'being a bastard' in the UK).

More later when I have my lunchbreak - in the meantime, thanks to Maciej and Nadia for the party...

Attributed to Rabbi Harold Kushner

"Rabbi, if I give up drinking, partying all night, chasing the opposite sex and over eating, and start coming to Synagogue regularly instead, will I live longer?"

"No. It will just feel longer."

Silentium

Она еще не родилась,
Она и музыка и слово,
И потому всего живого
Ненарушаемая связь.

Спокойно дышат моря груди,
Но, как безумный, светел день,
И пены бледная сирень
В черно-лазоревом сосуде.

Да обретут мои уста
Первоначальную немоту,
Как кристаллическую ноту,
Что от рождения чиста!

Останься пеной, Афродита,
И слово в музыку вернись,
И сердце сердца устыдись,
С первоосновой жизни слито!

Osip Mandel'shtam, 1910

Translation for non-Russian speakers here.

A week away from blogging. I've had nothing to say, really.

Harlem 1958

this is an incredible photo by Art Kane - you can get more information about those featured in it over at harlem.org.

This insomnia

is becoming annoying. I have been asleep - I went to bed at 11.30. I am exhausted after doing the smallest amount of manual labour at work. Then a drunk passed by singing. And woke me up. And now I can't get back to sleep. My body is more than willing, but my mind just will not give up. I am concious of how slow my reactions are becoming - Playstation is simply impossible, and I can't focus enough to read properly, so I am reduced to surfing whilst listening to some dreadful show about comediennes. And I don't even have the Discovery Channel to expand my mind whilst in this state. I will probably be up for hours now, and in no state to go to work in the morning.

Monday night jazz

while waiting for the bath to fill - Charles Mingus - Black Saint and the Sinner Lady:



Genius. And with liner notes by Mingus' psychotherapist. What more could you want...

POSK

or the Polish Cultural and Social Association, despite its 1960's-style Communist-gloom architecture still seems to be the centre of the ever expanding British Polish community. I had a glorious meal in the cafe there earlier today - grilled sausage with mash, pickled red cabbage and cucumber and dill. Bliss. They even now have English-speaking staff (which I'm sure they didn't in my youth). All for a fiver - less than you would pay for some reheated muck in a pub these days. If you are a Londoner, go - it is five minutes from Ravenscourt Park Tube.