Appropriately, just as I'm starting to catch up on my Six Feet Under video backlog, a wonky Google search has led me to the home page of the Cemetery Research Group based at the University of York (UK). Its contextual information page outlines the state of the art as far as UK cemeteries are concerned, with the rather startling information that "there is no statutory duty to provide burial space: as a consequence, provision tends to be ad hoc and is largely unco-ordinated at any level - parish, district, regional or national."
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 22:03.
Received 0 comments so far.
Piero Manzoni, the Italian conceptual artist, created ninety tins of merda d'artista (artist's shit) in May 1961. Each contained 30 grammes of the genuine article and was sold at the same price as gold. The Tate Modern art gallery has just paid £22,300 (approximately $33,500 or €33500) for Can 004
Displaying a stunningly inept understanding of biology, a representative of the Tate calls the series "a seminal work". Even better, Manzoni's wish for the cans to "explode in the vitrines of the collectors" has slowly been coming true. At the last count, over half of the works have done exactly that.
You couldn't make this stuff up, could you?
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 21:50.
Received 0 comments so far.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 21:18.
Received 0 comments so far.
I'm browsing around Ghostly International's website and thinking that they've achieved a nice balance between classy and cute. If you have a broadband connection, or plenty of patience, choose the high bandwidth option for the slinky background music (hint: use the music controls bottom right to switch from the default track, Dabrye's excellent The Lish, to some other equally interesting stuff).
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 15:16.
Received 0 comments so far.
In this week's Table Talk article, our AA is waxing lyrical about his visit to the Piazza Navona, with its sculptures by Bernini, when he spots a mime statue.
"If Michaelangelo seemed to release figures from inside the stone and Donatello made ones that looked as if they had been turned to stone just the moment before you entered the room, then Bernini conjures figures that could only exist in stone. Flesh and bone couldn't support them. These aren't people realised in marble, they're stone compressed into humans."
"... let me tell you, a mime statue competing with a Bernini plumbs the very depths of human shallowness... There was the Bernini, an image of man's aspiration to achieve and think and feel things that are bigger, more permanent and profound than his own corporeal life, as sculpture that expresses that our reach may yet exceed our grasp. And, in front of it, there was a man whose only aspiration was to imitate a dead thing in nylon, the measure of his talent being the ability to do absolutely nothing for as long as possible. Here, in one frame, was art that transcended nature alongside art that belittled and humiliated both art and itself. One beggared belief, the other just begged."
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 14:01.
Received 0 comments so far.
I'm watching the World Cup match, surfing, chatting, eating, drinking and staring idly out of the window, in varied combinations. A neighbour has strung up some compact discs over their vegetable patch to frighten the birds away. I speculate that they might be Phil Collins, Lighthouse Family or Dire Straits. Prol, quicker of wit than myself, suggests Cat Stevens.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 12:34.
Received 0 comments so far.
"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light, not our Darkness, that most frightens us."
Words of wisdom from Nelson Mandela.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 12:16.
Received 6 comments so far.
Maybe I should be allocating a little less fear to the big intangibles and more to the everyday mundanities over which I have more influence.
Just had my first ever heart-in-mouth spilt-cup-of-tea-next-to-PC moment since the new PC's arrival back in January. Thankfully, SO thankfully, the liquid went in the opposite direction and the only casualty seems to be the mouse. The older PC has a few spashes on its case, but it looks superficial. The cream carpet isn't looking too good, but then it never did (we inherited it when we bought the house and never got round to changing it).
By supreme irony, what was I settling down to do this morning before the World Cup final? My first backup in six months...
Posted by Hg on Sunday 30 June 2002 at 09:31.
Received 0 comments so far.
charms. sweet angels - you have made me no longer afraid of death.
My greatest fear used to be death. All other fears (nuclear holocaust; losing my wife, family or close friends; becoming ill) were merely a variation of this basic theme. I feared death because it meant change. The death of my grandparents would be a reminder that things don't go on forever, everything has a natural lifespan. The death of my parents - hopefully many years from now - will be the end of the one constant source of unconditional love available to me. My own death was black, unknown, terrifying; a surrendering of ego too monstrous to comprehend.
Over the past few years, life itself has changed. My grandparents died over a period of several years and I discovered that although I couldn't see them any more, the memories were as alive as ever. Family and friends have been through serious illnesses, upsetting in some cases and harrowing in others, but out of the despair came calm strength. Nieces and nephews keep appearing and watching them grow provides a source of - there is no other phrase for it - sheer joy. A friend died - someone inspirational enough and vivacious enough for it to matter, yet not quite close enough for it to be heartbreaking - and I finally saw death for the merely mechanical process that it is. Then September 11th: appalling, outrageous, terrible, but a reminder that life is precious and there's no time to spare.
That boyfriend-of-an-undertaker thing that I posted a few weeks ago says it best. In acknowledging the proximity of death, we treasure life. I am no longer afraid of death. I value death. It reminds me that I have to enjoy life. Now my greatest fear is not realising my potential - for whatever - while I'm alive. I'm hoping that's not quite the same thing.
Yes, thinking about Big Themes at the moment. What do you fear most?
Posted by Hg on Saturday 29 June 2002 at 23:19.
Received 3 comments so far.
Leila (Arab) has been a collaborator with Björk and an interesting artist in her own right on her two albums. Check out the 'Treats' section of her website, which contains some interesting downloadable stuff, including several home-grown bootleg mixes of Aaliyah tracks. Personal favourites are The Sound Of The Resolution and One In A Loud Million. New tracks are being added ocasionally, so keep checking back if you like what you hear.
Posted by Hg on Friday 28 June 2002 at 19:43.
Received 0 comments so far.
A few days too late, I had a clearer moment of clarity: to network, in its widest sense. Embarrassingly obvious really.
Posted by Hg on Friday 28 June 2002 at 18:17.
Received 0 comments so far.
I'm out of circulation for most of the day today. Inspired by Mike's recent success at comment-whoring, the ongoing lively debate in the nooks and crannies of not.so.soft (almost a mini-MetaFilter in its own right) and my own enjoyment of feedback on this site, I'm going to ask you to create some content for me.
Taking my cue from a regular feature in the Friday ES supplement to London's Evening Standard newspaper, tell me something about yourself that you've never admitted to anyone else before.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 27 June 2002 at 08:15.
Received 6 comments so far.
The day is over
Head nestles into pillow
Limbs heavy like lead
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 26 June 2002 at 22:27.
Received 0 comments so far.
Blood on the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.
Blood screams the pain as they chop off her fingers
Blood'll be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union
There's blood in the streets, it's up to my ankles
Blood in the streets, it's up to my knee
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
Blood on the rise, it's following me
I finally started to see the point of The Doors during 1987, having studiously ignored them for two or three years while one of my school friends vainly tried to get me interested in them. They were muddy, sixties, retro, American. I liked modern, European, difficult, angsty. Then a college friend played me Peace Frog and I began to realise that there was more to this Jim Morrison guy than met the eye.
Once I was played Morrison's posthumous, jazzy, spoken-word album An American Prayer, I was hooked. On paper I found a lot of his poetry rather pretentious and over-wrought, but the voice transformed it completely and the music blended seamlessly with it into something infinitely greater than the sum of its parts. Fifteen years later, it's still one of those albums that I can't dip into - I have to play the whole thing.
Currently enjoying The Doors' fifth studio album, the egotistically titled Morrison Hotel, played very loud in the car. It's probably my favourite album of theirs, though L.A Woman would come a close second. It's a perfect soundtrack to a sunny June morning, ideal for drowning out the sound of your strategic telecom partner crashing to the ground around you...
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 26 June 2002 at 22:13.
Received 0 comments so far.
A few weeks ago I came across the notion of the single vocational verb. Since then, off and on, I've been trying to work out what mine would be. I seemed to be stuck, unable to get past the final two: to connect and to communicate.
This morning, I had a moment of clarity: the reason I can't choose between them is that I don't need to. These verbs are actually two sides of the same coin. The connection is the process and the communication is the result. Technology first, then information. Switch on the TV, watch the programme. Link, exchange.
EM Forster's Howard's End is one my favourite books, in part because of its dominant theme of "seeing life steadily and seeing it whole". It's that old theme of taking responsibility for your actions and their consequences again. The book's aphorism is "Only connect", which for years has been my motto. However, I think I'm going to have to revise that to the much more personal "Connect first, then communicate".
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 26 June 2002 at 20:25.
Received 2 comments so far.
As usual, when I got up this morning the radio in the kitchen was tuned to the vile, music-for-the-lobotomised easy listening station that my beloved enjoys over breakfast (mystifying, given the excellence of her musical taste in so many other areas). I listened to the DJ laughing at a story about a company in Bosnia (I think?) that has resorted to paying its employees in pigs because cash is short.
Maybe I'm being over-sensitive, but his complacent chuckling - with its characteristic British "aren't foreigners funny?" undertone - made my blood boil. How unthinking, insensitive and downright shitty is it to laugh at someone else's hardship like this?
Put yourself in those employees' shoes. Your economy is fucked, you're grateful to have a job at all, your employer's fortunes look uncertain and due to a lack of hard cash you're being asked to support your family by being given live animals for slaughter or barter. And then some over-paid, over-privileged, under-informed dimwit laughs at you and says "hey, that's really cute... pigs, huh... gosh, what will you wacky Bosnians think of next?" Wouldn't that make you feel really good?
Sometimes I despair.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 26 June 2002 at 11:39.
Received 2 comments so far.
Over at Positively Mental, Jo writes about nuns and in doing so causes a smile to cross my lips.
Several years ago, I found myself in a nun's office, discussing life, the universe and everything. (No, I'm not going to tell you how I came to be there, it's more fun to keep you guessing.) We got onto the subject of smoking and she told me a joke - maybe not the funniest one in the world, but the sheer unexpectedness of it, the sharpness of the wit, made me laugh.
A man entered a church, clearly twitchy and nervous, and approached the priest. "Is it OK to smoke while I pray?" he asked. The priest looked at him with a gentle smile and said "No, my son, regretfully not - but you may pray while you smoke..."
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 25 June 2002 at 22:11.
Received 0 comments so far.
I heard on the radio this morning that UK mortgage lenders are taking the unprecedented step of calling for interest rates to go up, to cool the increasingly overheated UK property market. They believe that people are taking on commitments that they can't afford, leading to fears that the market will slump.
I don't know enough about the economy. One day I will buy a big fat book called Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About The Economy In Four Thousand And Twenty Six Easily Digestible Pages and will better understand the global pros and cons of interest rate fluctuations.
Until then, here's a layman's view: maybe, if the mortgage lenders are concerned about potential defaults on payments (not to mention the untold misery caused by mortgage repossessions), those same organisations could show some responsibility and lend a little less money to customers in order to mitigate this risk?
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 25 June 2002 at 16:34.
Received 4 comments so far.
You take your eye off Chemistry for sixteen years and look what happens - a whole new element appears and then disappears while you're not watching. Probably just as well, whoever named it certainly didn't involve the marketing department. (Via Fairvue Central, via Prolific.)
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 25 June 2002 at 11:30.
Received 0 comments so far.
"Why do memes start? What makes someone reproduce, repeat, repurpose what they see elsewhere? Why do some things spread and not others?"
Old joke. Still funny.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 25 June 2002 at 09:53.
Received 0 comments so far.
Posted by Hg on Monday 24 June 2002 at 12:33.
Received 2 comments so far.
"Holland is the result of immigration. It's a city-state - a harbour, not a nation. There's no such thing as Dutchness. One of the oldest towns in the Netherlands, Leiden, decided to track down the genealogical records of ten important families. None of them came from the Netherlands - all were from France, England, Germany, Eastern Europe. Are we denying people the right that we claimed for ourselves two or three centuries ago?"
The Dutch author Marcel Möring, of German descent himself, comments on the rise of anti-immigration politics in the Netherlands and Europe.
Posted by Hg on Monday 24 June 2002 at 12:24.
Received 7 comments so far.
Also during last night's typeface research, I came across a site called 625, which has a section devoted to the history of BBC TV 'idents' (on-screen identities, i.e. the graphics and logos used between programmes). Nostalgic stuff, I would imagine most UK readers can find reminders of their childhood here. My personal favourite is the flash version of the 1970s BBC1 clock.
This site is of historical interest, but I came across a more contemporary collection called The Ident Zone that covers the idents of the current UKTV channels in more detail. (UKTV is a joint venture between the BBC and Flextech, a division of Telewest, and its station portfolio includes UK Gold, UK Horizons, UK Style, etc.) When you focus on these images as design works in their own right, they're really very well done - great use of colour.
I'm getting back to my roots this weekend (i.e. off to see the parents) so I'll leave you to ponder these two sites in my absence. I've done a quick cross-platform check of the new banner graphic and it's good in IE6, almost imperceptibly broken in Netscape and Mozilla and more seriously broken in Opera. Looking at my stats, those affected are in a minority (nearly 90% of you browse this site with IE) so fixing it will have to wait for a couple of days. [Update: fixed, let me know if you believe otherwise.] See you soon.
Posted by Hg on Friday 21 June 2002 at 17:36.
Received 1 comments so far.
"Porchez feels that the differences in vowel and consonant frequency in different languages make for different needs in letterforms. An American, for example, who tries to find an "a" on a French keyboard will be surprised to note that it appears in the same place as the "q" on an American one. The reason is that French is awash in q's and a little short on a's. According to Porchez, the Le Monde typeface takes note of such differences and reads better in French."
While I was doing some research on typefaces last night, I came across this interesting summary of the work of Jean-Francois Porchez. Fascinating to learn that the same man is responsible for two significant French typefaces - those of the Paris Métro and the newspaper Le Monde.
My friend is going to Paris this evening for the weekend and I'm jealous. I'm surprised at how strong my feelings have become for the place.
Posted by Hg on Friday 21 June 2002 at 17:28.
Received 1 comments so far.
England's World Cup defeat at the hands (or should I say feet) of Brazil was all my fault, I have to confess.
A couple of weeks ago, when I changed the colour scheme of this site to red and white, England won. Last night I was doing more tinkering with the look of the site and I decided to design a banner logo (see above). This morning, I was absolutely horrified to see that my selected typeface appeared to be the same one used on the Brazilian players' football strip. Then we lost.
So now you know. I've been directing the fortunes of the England team through sheer design and layout, clearly playing with dangerous forces that I don't understand.
Fonts are bad, kids. Just say no.
Posted by Hg on Friday 21 June 2002 at 08:29.
Received 7 comments so far.
If you own the recent 2 Many DJs album - I know for sure that at least two of you do - here's a tip from a friend. There is a cut-up, vaguely electroclash-style mix of Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head hidden at the beginning of the disc. Play track 1 and, as it starts, press your 'seek backward' button (not 'previous track') and you'll see your timer display start going into minus time.
The track is 4:15 long, hence the rather cryptic "-04:15" at the beginning of the track listing on the back of the CD case. Once upon a time I would have scrutinised each record/CD sleeve so closely that I might have spotted this myself, but these days they tend to get thrown in the car's glove compartment without so much as a second glance.
Sneaky to put the hidden track at the beginning for a change, huh? Is this a stunning piece of news that will change your life forever, or am I weeks (if not months) behind everyone else and the last person to know?
Caveats: doesn't seem to be possible with Windows Media Player (Windows XP) or KDE CD Player (Mandrake Linux 8.1); will possibly only work with genuine original CDs, not copies.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 20 June 2002 at 20:08.
Received 2 comments so far.
"It is said that women love with ears. To say more this is typical not only for people! Songbird males sing the songs only for attraction of females. For the same purpose grasshoppers cricks, frog male croaks, male cat yawls in march and etc., etc., etc. It is not worth to mention the pop-stars. They are one of the most favorite category of men among women... And yea, they sing mainly about love!"
This fascinating extended essay by Anatoly Protopopov examines the mechanics of love. I haven't read the whole thing from start to finish yet, but I've been dipping into it for the past few days. Still undecided as to whether it's a rambling work of genius, a futile attempt at classification that veers unsteadily towards madness or simply the product of a culture or mind very different to my own.
Whatever, a great read. The translation from the original Russian article is technically competent but gives it a surreal edge that is pleasantly difficult to escape. We like words here at hydragenic.com, as you may have noticed. Especially other people's, used in interesting ways.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 20 June 2002 at 18:33.
Received 0 comments so far.
As I hinted a couple of days ago, I've been feeling a bit down since the start of the month. Throughout May I had to deal with two or three issues that I've been pushing to the back of my mind for several months. Having (mostly) addressed them, I was expecting to feel happier and more settled, whereas in fact everything unexpectedly went a bit flat and I've been struggling to muster any enthusiasm for anything at all.
I threw myself into my work for a quick fix of adrenaline, but I knew even as I did it that this wasn't a long-term solution. What I really need is to "pull myself together". As Mike recently commented, this is often the most spectacularly unhelpful advice that anyone can be given. However, I have to qualify that statement. You can't say it to your friends, family or loved ones, but you can say it to yourself if you say it with self-respect and believe that it is achievable.
When I consider the things that our friend had on her mind in comparison to the stuff that has troubled me recently, I am embarrassed. While I'm not exactly making a fuss about nothing, I am certainly viewing molehills as mountains, and mistaking the gentle undulations of the tea in my cup for a raging storm.
When I've finished typing this, my right hand will grasp my left arm firmly in a symbolic gesture of "getting a grip". Equally symbolically, I will go to the kitchen, pour a half-full glass of water and reflect on the fact that I am privileged to live an easy, comfortable life. Having done these two things, I will go about the business of getting on with it, remembering as I do that my happiness and contentment depend solely on me and it is wholly within my power to achieve them.
Positive affirmation: I am hydragenic. Confident in the face of adversity.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 20 June 2002 at 11:16.
Received 1 comments so far.
I drove home late this evening. The sky was smudged, brooding and magnificent, like a Constable painting - grey, purple, brown, cream. The sun hung below the clouds, casting lengthy shadows. Everything was slower, airless, muted, cushioned. Is this contentment, or just a trick of the light?
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 19 June 2002 at 21:27.
Received 3 comments so far.
"...but music is reflection of self, we just explain it
and then we get our checks in the mail, it's fucked up ain't it...
that's why we seize the moment try to freeze it and own it
squeeze it and hold it 'cos we consider these minutes golden...
just let our spirits live on
through our lyrics that you hear in our songs..."
Greatly enjoying The Eminem Show.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 19 June 2002 at 17:57.
Received 4 comments so far.
I'd like to share a couple of information resources that I've found quite useful recently. Prodigy is a GP-focused information service from the UK's National Health Service. The guidance section is particularly good - detailed, objective, factual advice about medical conditions, with plenty of supporting information. As it's mainly aimed at doctors rather than patients, it avoids feelgood waffle and concentrates on informing you and letting you draw your own conclusions.
Moving from the body to the brain, The Gallery Channel is a similarly waffle-free, factual, tell-me-quickly guide to art exhibitions, galleries and individual artists. It's UK-based, but the information that it provides is global. Nice clean design, no fuss, does what it says on the tin. Lovely.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 19 June 2002 at 11:37.
Received 0 comments so far.
The things that I do don't give me pleasure. The things that give me pleasure, I don't do. I may be managing an adequate impersonation of a fully functioning human being, but frankly I don't get life at the moment.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 18 June 2002 at 19:59.
Received 3 comments so far.
"Beck was left staring at a rap-sheet at World Tournament France four years back when he was sin-binned for stud-checking Argentine centre Diego Simeon."
The BBC Online World Cup site parodies American sports writing. Funny though this is, I felt a bit guilty about considering posting it, not wanting to propagate the stereotype of the sneering British laughing at the stoopid Americans.
However, then I noticed on a related page that "many American's are expected to watch their first-ever football match". C'mon guys, you can only make fun of someone else's writing style when you've mastered the basics (basic's?) of grammar yourself.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 18 June 2002 at 17:06.
Received 3 comments so far.
Yet another week's AA Gill quote for you, on the subject of book festivals:
"Authors (and me) sit in the green room waiting to go on, literary lions about to be eaten by library Christians. We try to second-guess the questions. '"Where do you get your ideas from?"' sighs one seasoned campaigner. 'They always ask that. The bastards.' We sit and frown, trying to remember where our ideas came from, what an idea is. 'The best idea I ever heard,' he continues, 'was a lady author who said she got them from www.bookideas.com. And then someone asked her if anyone could log on. No, she said, it was a professional service and you needed to get a password from your agent."
Posted by Hg on Monday 17 June 2002 at 16:43.
Received 0 comments so far.
The Sam Taylor-Wood exhibition was great. There were more video installations than I was expecting, with most of the straight photography encountered towards the end of the show. Her video work seems to deal primarily with heightened emotional states, often examined through humour, whilst her photography has more of a formal, posed quality to it.
As we immersed ourselves in a nine-hour eating and drinking session immediately afterwards, culminating in the remarkably tolerant bar of a Bond Street hotel at 1am - and thus the resulting hangover from hell for most of yesterday - I haven't had much opportunity to reflect on what I saw. I ordered the exhibition catalogue by mail order (so I didn't have to carry it around the restaurant and bars afterwards), which I'm looking forward to seeing.
Otherwise, it's a beautiful sunny day and I appear to be rushed off my feet again. I'm hoping that the former is an indication of a summer-long trend and that the latter isn't.
Posted by Hg on Monday 17 June 2002 at 12:49.
Received 0 comments so far.
I finally got round to watching my videoed copy of the first episode of Six Feet Under last night. Compulsive stuff - knife-edge comedy, an alternative view of death to the usual TV-friendly sanitised portrayal, pathos, bathos. I haven't been so gripped by television since, erm, the final episode of Angel (Series Three) on Thursday evening.
As Angel sank to the bottom of the ocean in his metal box, Connor/Stephen stared bitterly into space on the deck of the boat from which the coffin had been pushed and Cordelia ascended to the great Prada store in the sky, I screamed, ranted and raved at the TV set for a good minute. How could they end it like that? Easily the best cliffhanger that Joss Whedon has produced.
I also caught twenty minutes or so of Big Brother, which I haven't otherwise paid much attention to. The camera focused on new girl Sophie for a whole ten minutes - her tics, twitches and grimaces were utterly captivating, her (facial) body language so at odds with the apparently light-hearted comments that she made.
I bought Ms Dynamite's new album yesterday lunchtime. I've only played it once so far, but I'm disappointed. It's almost pure R'n'B, there is almost no trace of the ragga-driven UK garage background that got me into her in the first place. I'll listen a few more times and maybe write a review.
Busy day planned. Meeting up with friends later to see the Sam Taylor-Wood exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, then on to Covent Garden for drinks, convening later at a highly recommended Indian restaurant at Aldgate. For now, I need to make myself presentable and get ready to watch the England vs. Denmark football match.
Posted by Hg on Saturday 15 June 2002 at 09:24.
Received 3 comments so far.
Anyone else been getting frequent spam regarding 2000-year-old hunza bread?
<PRIMADONNA>DO I LOOK LIKE THE KIND OF PERSON WHO HAS TIME TO BAKE THEIR OWN GODDAM BREAD?</PRIMADONNA>
Excuse me, it's been a busy week.
In other news, I'm glad to see after years of viagra- and penis-extension-related spam that sexual equality has finally been recognised and I am now getting offers of products that will lift and firm my breasts.
Posted by Hg on Friday 14 June 2002 at 19:51.
Received 0 comments so far.
"You cannot fix the problems of today with the same thought process that created them yesterday" - Albert Einstein
Great quote from the footer of a business associate's e-mail message. And on that philosophical note, I think it's time to go home and get myself a life (or some sleep, more probably).
Posted by Hg on Friday 14 June 2002 at 18:26.
Received 0 comments so far.
She was in her late eighties when I first met her and she turned out to be one of the most inspirational people who I've ever had the good fortune to know.
My parents-in-law were both teachers and my wife and three of her five siblings followed in their footsteps. My mother-in-law first met her thirty or forty years ago through work and, despite their twenty-five year age gap, they quickly became close friends. She was a gifted teacher, full of verve and energy. A devout Catholic, she never married and chose instead to devote her life to helping others.
Most people, finishing work at sixty, look forward to a contented retirement. However, her only contentment came from action. "What's the programme?" she would regularly enquire, when everyone else merely wanted to relax. As one stage of her vocation came to an end, another began: she moved to Rwanda to continue her mission to assist and to educate. She described it as the happiest time of her life. Whenever she returned to visit England she seemed distracted, clearly longing to return to Africa. She loved the directness and lack of cynicism of the Rwandan people.
I had heard so many stories about her that meeting her shortly after our wedding was a potentially daunting experience. In person, however, she was almost comical. She was a small woman - the top of her head was barely level with my chest. She had the demeanour of a little mouse, scurrying here and there. She also had a twinkle in her eye and a mischievous sense of humour. Never afraid of saying what she thought, she told me that I was too tall, that our niece was a demanding child and that I ought to consider myself a very lucky man.
When civil war tore her beloved Rwanda apart in the mid-1990s, she was forced to return to England and consequently we saw much more of her. She saw a lot of herself in my wife, who, in turn, never forgot the long-standing kindness that had been shown to her family. When she was diagnosed with cancer, we made a conscious decision to see more of her.
The more I learnt about her, the more I respected her. Having no husband or children, she gave everything she could to other people. Her family took advantage of her generous nature, but still she gave more. She signed her lovely house over to her nephew and moved into a small 1930s flat, which was crammed with mementos of her life. It was a sparse, shabby mess of plants, pamphlets and photos, but each object held a fascinating story and we loved going to see her.
She visited my wife's school occasionally for extra-curricular events. She particularly enjoyed the public speaking contests. Despite her years (or maybe because of them?) she had an easy, natural rapport with the pupils. After her visits, they always made a point of asking after her and she after them. (I later discovered that she had personally financed numerous students through college over the years, one of whom I actually met.)
As the cancer took hold, she found it harder to cope with the physical demands of life, but her vitality never left her. She stayed with us over the Millennium Christmas and New Year period. Despite the fact that she could hardly stand, she insisted on coming into the kitchen to give me "moral support" as I prepared the Christmas dinner. She admired my cheap but effective vegetable peeler, commenting approvingly, "very good, no waste," in her brisk, clipped tones.
For a couple of days between Christmas and the New Year, she had to return home to see her own relatives. Clearly not looking forward to it, with a roguish smile she outlined her plan: "I'm going to move ALL of the spare chairs into the bedroom, LOCK the windows and turn the heating UP - hopefully they'll last about an hour and then LEAVE."
For years, ever since the extent of her health problems had become apparent, she had insisted that she would outlast the twentieth century. It was probably inevitable, then, that in early 2000 her cancer took a turn for the worse and she was soon hospitalised. During a period of respite, she returned home and wrote us one of her wonderful letters. This extract is typical:
"After getting excited to think I was at last GOING OUT OF THE HOUSE again and 'walking' (= shuffling!) around for 30 seconds, I collapsed into the nearest chair, puffing like a steam train and decided it was 'NO GO!'. The spirit was very willing but the flesh weak."
She was soon back in hospital. Realising that the end was near, one Tuesday evening we visited her. She was clearly in pain and as hospital resources were scarce she was getting almost no attention. She had been placed in a geriatric ward, when she should have been receiving specialist cancer treatment. We speculated that she had probably specified "NO fuss."
Watching her writhing in agony, my wife noticed her name spelt wrongly on the marker board above her bed and snapped. She charged into the nurses' station and demanded that appropriate pain relief should be administered immediately. Reluctantly they complied and as the drugs kicked in she was able to whisper to us. Her main concern was whether Inez, one of my wife's students, would be able to get the university place that she wanted.
This was the last thing she was able to say and she lapsed into an agonising battle for breath. She clasped my hand and I realised that she was fading. I had never seen anyone so close to death - in fact, I had feared and avoided my grandparents' final days and had always felt this to be unresolved business.
She fell asleep but carried on breathing. We were two hours away from home and had to make a difficult decision. Knowing how strong she could be, we chose not to stay with her - we had no idea how long we could have been there. However, the next morning when we phoned the hospital, we found out that she had died a few hours after we left.
Characteristically, her last words were an enquiry about someone else's welfare. Her parting gift to us had been the privilege of witnessing, calmly and without fear, the end of her extraordinary life. Her flesh finally grew cold, but her spirit lives on in our memories. I have no idea whether we'll ever join her in the place in which she believed so fervently. However, if we meet her again it won't be a moment too soon.
Posted by Hg on Thursday 13 June 2002 at 21:43.
Received 2 comments so far.
Just like you're never an ex-alcoholic, only a reformed alcoholic who no longer drinks, it seems it's also impossible to be an ex-workaholic.
It was just a nostalgic little sip, a supposedly preventative reminder of the bitter sensation in the mouth, the thumping head and the aching bones. It was meant to dissuade rather than encourage, to prevent rather than cure. It's a fake promise, a fool's paradise, an illusory nirvana. Real life is elsewhere. But when the adrenaline is pumping to your brain, the hot, sticky blood coursing through your veins, who could resist?
As I dance with Medusa I will screw my eyes tightly shut and pray that I am not seduced by her words, distracted by her gaze and turned to stone.
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 12 June 2002 at 20:49.
Received 0 comments so far.
...
[Hg makes the urgent inhalation noise of a man who has resurfaced for a long overdue intake of breath, in preparation for diving back under the waves...]
Posted by Hg on Wednesday 12 June 2002 at 13:00.
Received 1 comments so far.
The W3C, responsible for the co-ordination and development of web-based technologies such as HTML and CSS, released Amaya a couple of weeks ago. Although it may seem like the world needs another browser like it needs a hole in the head, this one is aimed at developers and includes a built-in web authoring environment. If you create or edit web pages, this is why you might be interested:
"With the extremely fast moving nature of Web technology, Amaya plays a central role at the Consortium. Easily extended to integrate new ideas into its design, Amaya provides developers with many specialized features including multiple views, where the internal structural model of the document can be displayed alongside the browser's view of how it should be presented on the screen... An important benefit of Amaya is that it implements W3C specifications very carefully. This allows Web authors to make sure they are producing correct markup, which is easy to maintain or re-purpose for other devices."
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 11 June 2002 at 12:11.
Received 0 comments so far.
A couple of Paris-related notes to self, for future reference: the café-tabac scenes in Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain were filmed at Les Deux Moulins at 15 rue Lepic. Must have walked past it several times already, next time will actually go in. Also, the Le mur des je t'aime on Square Jean Rictus sounds interesting.
Posted by Hg on Tuesday 11 June 2002 at 11:51.
Received 0 comments so far.
"Sharpen your pencil, iron your crispy white shirts, set the alarm clock, relish the challenge, listen, be fulfilled, make an impact, take a risk."
I'm a dedicated employee, good corporate citizen, dynamic and proactive professional, etc. (Mostly, anyway - everyone has their bad days.) But I'm not good at mornings, particularly not Monday mornings. My version would be more like "Sleep through the alarm, cut yourself shaving, miss breakfast, get stuck in traffic, despair at the voicemails, be horrified at last week's task list, make a coffee, take a break."
I am just no good for anything till about 10am and even then I need an hourly dose of caffeine until lunchtime to keep myself fired up.
Posted by Hg on Monday 10 June 2002 at 18:32.
Received 5 comments so far.
"Radiological dispersion devices consist of conventional explosives wrapped with radioactive waste which can be found in hospitals and industrial plants. BBC science correspondent Tom Heap says such materials are much more widely available than weapons-grade material, and are kept in conditions no more secure than the average high street bank."
Great - not only is this appallingly lethal material kept under such apparently lax conditions, so are my life's savings. This gets better.
Posted by Hg on Monday 10 June 2002 at 18:08.
Received 0 comments so far.
Guimp - the world's smallest web site.
Posted by Hg on Monday 10 June 2002 at 12:50.
Received 1 comments so far.
The week's AA Gill quote, from a review of London's Zuma restaurant. He starts off by talking about the Tazmanian tiger (an extinct marsupial that he describes as a "mangy, inedible, child-munching, ugly, foul-tempered, smelly, Australian dog thing with a bumbag"), digresses onto the effects of Viagra on American literature and then unexpectedly swerves towards a line of thought that has been on my own mind a lot over the past few weeks too.
"I don't know why I'm writing about all this. I don't really care about Tasmanian handbags and literary willy-enhancers. It's all displacement - I'm actually afraid of dying. It's this nuclear-war thing. I can't understand why you're not all petrified about missiles in the subcontinent and the world ending. If you grew up in the 1960s, there's a horrifying sense of déjà vu about it. We all thought we would die in a nuclear war. The cold war and mutually assured destruction were truly awful. And this is more serious than the Cuban missile crisis.
"It all seemed to have gone away; for the first time in history, we had a weapon that we resisted using. But now it is back, and you all seem to be looking the other way. I am properly, really, tearfully, sleeplessly frightened for my children."
Quite. I can't help thinking we should all be doing a bit more protesting than we actually are.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 09 June 2002 at 21:56.
Received 0 comments so far.
Al's Review Archive was one of the first music-related sites that I found on the net when I started surfing in 1994. Al Crawford reviewed his favourite and not-so-favourite albums of the 1980s and 1990s, covering a lot of the industrial and alternative (but rarely 'indie') stuff that I enjoyed. If names like British Electric Foundation, Clock DVA, Josef K, Laibach, Panasonic, Severed Heads, SPK, Throbbing Gristle or Win mean anything to you, you could spend an awful lot of time on this site.
The archive wound down at the turn of the century and since then Al has been promising a bigger and better Mark II version. I'm sending telepathic vibes to him as I type, because I've waited this long and I'm not giving up now.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 09 June 2002 at 20:24.
Received 0 comments so far.
I've had this great Dead Poets Society link sitting on my desktop for a couple of months. More carpe diem stuff.
Posted by Hg on Sunday 09 June 2002 at 20:08.
Received 0 comments so far.
"Sometimes it was awful. I felt as if [the fans] would get hold of me and I'd never get away again. It was as if I was going to be crushed. No one who has experienced facing a screaming, boiling, hysterical crowd could avoid feeling shivers up and down their spine. It's a thin line between ecstatic celebration and menace."
I've been wanting to write something about Abba ever since I started this blog and now The Guardian has published a very interesting retrospective critical appraisal of them. If you're at all curious, I recommend every single word of this article.
Abba was the first group that I ever got into, around the age of eight. They had everything that I needed - an interesting history, a cute blonde, a nice logo, a hint of exotic Scandinavia and, obviously, great songs. I still remember watching the video for SOS on Top Of The Pops as the defining moment that got me interested in them. I remember going to the local Woolworth's Littlewood's department store and paying some ridiculous 1970s album price (79p?) for Arrival. The rest of their recorded output followed just as quickly as my pocket money would allow, establishing an obsessive music-buying trend that persists to this day.
They produced a steady stream of hit singles but their popularity waned and by the early 1980s they were finished. I carried on listening to their music, partly because I didn't see why I should stop just because my tastes were moving on (I can dine on haute cuisine and still enjoy an ice-cream cone) and partly because it had become so dark that it fitted in with all the other moody teenage stuff that I was listening to.
I still think they're fantastic. Money, Money Money is a Brechtian triumph, Dancing Queen transcends camp and is a thing of pure joy, Summer Night City still encapsulates the appeal of a balmy night in London, The Winner Takes It All is the epitome of bitter-sweet, The Day Before You Came was surely the direct inspiration for Pulp's Something Changed and The Visitors works well as a metaphor for impending nervous breakdown.
I was going to hold off the retrospective music stuff for a while, but it seems I just can't resist. Nor has it escaped my attention that Troubled Diva's latest curiosities refer to Abba, Coldcut and M/A/R/R/S. As I didn't consciously write any of this in a deliberate response to his post, I can only assume that we're in one of those damn meme things again.
Posted by Hg on Saturday 08 June 2002 at 23:41.
Received 6 comments so far.
"...something happened in that place, Justine. Something changed. Amidst the most unspeakable ugliness, the hate turned into love. Love for a son. I'd forgotten what that was like... Hate's not enough, Justine. I have found that love is far more powerful. It took me this long, but I've finally learned that much. I just hope it's not a lesson learned too late..."
I watched the Benediction episode of Angel (Season 3 Episode 21) on Thursday evening and I just watched it again on video this evening with my wife. Although it's relatively slow-moving, I thought it was excellent. The actor playing Angel's son Connor/Stephen (Vincent Kartheiser) is superb - his other-worldliness is totally believable and I can't wait to see the presumed confrontation between him and Angel next week (I haven't read the spoilers, so no comments that spoil the surprise, please!).
I was also really pleased to see Holtz's revised worldview, as expressed in the quote above. I've wanted to believe all along that he was fundamentally a good man and that he was capable of seeing how Angel has changed.
Not real people. Must try to remember, they're not real people.
Posted by Hg on Saturday 08 June 2002 at 22:49.
Received 1 comments so far.
I plundered the vinyl vaults again this morning, aiming for the stuff further towards the back of the wardrobe that I don't play very often. With your entertainment, education and edification in mind, I sat here dutifully with a pot of tea, a turntable and a PC, arranged the records into chronological order and typed up the following real-time thoughts as I listened...
Colourbox had a somewhat slow start on 4AD Records with the release and subsequent re-release of their Breakdown single in late 1982 and early 1983. However, towards the end of 1983 the eponymous Colourbox 4-track EP appeared and it was clear that they had arrived. 'Groundbreaking' and 'under-rated' are much abused terms in musical criticism, but I can put my hand on my heart and use them here with conviction. They often used a similar relentless drum machine pattern to labelmates X-Mal Deutschland and (early) Cocteau Twins, but layered it with warm, rich synthesisers (think of a more sparse, dubby Blue Monday), black female vocals (more reggae than soul diva) and - crucially - sound samples, creating an ambience that was without peers.
The four tracks on this album captivated me at the time and they still do. Many of the effects that they used sound very dated when considered individually (though interestingly, the 1983 NYC disco synth stabs that characterise Shotgun resurfaced again on Missy Elliot's most recent album), but the genius is in the way they are all stitched together. In most cases, they go left where you expect them to go right. On Keep On Pushing, for example, the Roland synth burbling fades to the background and for a minute we get to listen to a speeded-up phone conversation. This EP contains the seeds of the rest of the 1980s and most of the 1990s rolled into four songs.
Their later work included the heart-wrenching Arena ("I don't know what I'm a-gonna do, but I don't wanna be alone in this arena"), the studio trickery of Edit The Dragon (a great track to demonstrate exactly why stereo was invented), the gorgeous four-dimensional dub of Baby I Love You So and the totally unselfconscious creation of The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme (which encapsulates sports TV programme theme tunes everywhere and is still unmatched, in my opinion, by anything that New Order or The Lightning Seeds have contributed to football). As half of M/A/R/R/S, Colourbox went on to chart fame with Pump Up The Volume, one of the most infectious singles of the 1980s. Then they disappeared without trace, just as they had the world at their feet.
The sleeve of this EP features a colour negative image of two horses copulating and the vinyl label contains a picture of a small child vomiting. This uncompromising nature is part of their lasting appeal.
Next up, the 12" single version of Propaganda's Dr. Mabuse, released in 1984. This was the second release on Paul Morley's ZTT (Zang Tuum Tumb) record label, which was a phenomenon in its own right. Named after a phrase used by the Italian Futurist movement of the early twentieth century, its chief legacy was to introduce the world to the Art of Noise, Propaganda and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Its appeal was based on a combination of Morley's deliberately pretentious (but nevertheless highly enjoyable) sleeve notes and advertising copy - the Propaganda album sleeve quotes Barthes and Moretti amongst others - together with Anton Corbijn's photography and Trevor Horn's sublime production skills. I assumed that ZTT was dead and buried, but I'm pleased to see that it has a website. On reflection, I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything less.
The Propaganda single sounds fantastic. From the sound of the spinning coin at the beginning to the whispered "Maaabuuuuse" at the end, it's exactly as I remember it. I'm not sure whether this is because it truly is an excellent, timeless piece of music or whether it's more because I can't get any critical distance from it. However, as I play their 1985 album, A Secret Wish, I begin to realise that it's the former. These are classic songs - if not terribly profound - matched with classy production and an avoidance of overly contemporary sounds that might have made them sound dated. The brooding synthesisers and Germanic vocals might sound like proto-electroclash on paper, but we're really talking about a starker version of the Pet Shop Boys' sound here. A Secret Wish is available on CD from Amazon right now and a compilation album called Outside World is being released in July (if you buy the latter direct from ZTT there's also a version that includes a DVD of their videos).
The Three Johns are a can of warm supermarket lager to Propaganda's chilled vintage champagne. John Peel used to be very keen on them, as far as I recall. I've selected their 1985 single Death of the European, which reflects the mid-80s Cold War zeitgeist with its Berlin theme ("shaved his head, a Euro-US crop, tattoo, tattoo, Postdam on his forehead, in the mirror it reads Madstop..."). I can see why I liked this - a simple, driving guitar rhythm, oblique political lyrics, the odd n-n-n-n-n-nineteen style sample dropped in for fun. The b-side is notable for a great cover version of T-Rex's 20th Century Boy - faithful but without the irritating Bolan feyness. I've enjoyed hearing this again, but I probably won't play it for another ten years.
I remember reading about Jacobites, an ongoing collaboration between Nikki Sudden and Dave Kusworth. Their 1985 album Robespierre's Velvet Basement attracted me purely because of its title (by coincidence it looks like it was re-released on CD earlier this year). I bought their single Pin Your Heart (To Me) and although the title track itself is a jangly guitar pop classic, I found the B-sides so awful that I never actually bought the album. This Amazon page has a few samples that reflect their sound quite well - a shambolic, charming mixture of Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and pub singalong. I don't think I've suffered by not having them in my life, but again, I've enjoyed hearing the single once more.
MC 900 Ft. Jesus' album Welcome To My Dream was released in 1991. I bought it on the basis of an ecstatic review in a music paper and almost immediately wished I hadn't. It's a typical slab of early 90s agit-hip-hop, basslines alternating between moody and funky, with perfunctory scratching (the most irritating musical sound ever, if done badly), drawling vocals and a sleeve with Mr. Jesus looking menacingly at you like a pouting Gary Oldman. I suppose I have to be fair and say that on tracks like Killer Inside Me he predates Eminem's lyrics by five to ten years, but I'm just not drawn into this album in the way that I am with Eminem. Also, 23 Skiddoo were doing this kind of music ten years earlier.
The only track that I liked when I bought this album, which still sounds good now, is the pre-trip-hop The City Sleeps, the story of a casual night-time arsonist armed with matches and kerosene ("a simple turn of the wrist will suffice, to open up a passage to paradise"). Actually, as this track progresses it's very good indeed (I told you this was being written as I listen). When he avoids the hip-hop clichés, he's capable of some great writing: "the match makes a graceful arc to the floor and time stands still as I turn for the door, which explodes in a fireball and throws me to the street, I hit the ground running with the flames at my feet, reaching for the night which recoils from the fire, the raindrops hiss like a devilish choir...". I'll have to play this one again and try to be in a more charitable frame of mind.
My beloved often confuses Coldcut and Colourbox - understandable, because both excel at genre-crunching. I selected Coldcut's What's That Noise? album from the vaults. Whereas Colourbox's EP (though not their later stuff) sounded like it was recorded on planet Mars, this sounds incredibly modern for something recorded in 1989. Like Colourbox, Coldcut's appeal was, in part, their eclecticism. This album features Lisa Stansfield (they invented her, as far as I remember), Yazz (ditto, though with considerably less longevity), reggae artist Junior Reid (who later collaborated with the Wu-Tang Clan) and The Fall's Mark E Smith. Doctorin' The House reminds me just how good acid house was, even in a radio-friendly lite version like this. (I nearly pulled out Theme From S-Express from the vaults too, but I've listened to that more recently.) The production is credited to 'Coldcut for Ahead Of Our Time' and never a truer word was spoken. This sounds absolutely brilliant and I think I'll be playing it a lot over the next few weeks. It's like Basement Jaxx, making allowances for the twelve-year difference.
The Shamen were originally a guitar group, then they suddenly 'got' house music in the late 80s. Their In Gorbachev We Trust album is brilliant, something else for me to find and play. I've pulled out the 12" single Pro>Gen (sic) from 1990, which was the start of the end as far as their artistic credibility was concerned. Their founder member Will Sinnott had tragically died, they had recruited the rapper Mr C (of the infamous Ebeneezer Goode single) and in my opinion it was all downhill from here. Pro>Gen sounds dated, repetitive and not terribly interesting. It certainly suffers from being played immediately after the much more adventurous Coldcut album.
Finally, we end as we began, with some 4AD white-boy funk. The Wolfgang Press also progressed from guitars to electronica and also, in my opinion, peaked in the early 90s before passing into terminal decline. I've picked their 1991 single Time, a slab of deep house repetitive beats. This one has stood the test of, erm, time quite well. I had remembered it as an instrumental, but actually it has the usual obtuse WP lyrics ("I follow time... it's full of loopholes"). The production is nice, all the elements separated quite well - reverberant without being cavernous. It's mostly bass-driven, but a high-pitched motif darts in every now and then to keep things balanced. The alternative mixes are called Timeless and Dark Time, which actually sum up its appeal very nicely. This is the kind of track that I could put on repeat and enjoy in the background for an hour or so without getting bored.
This has been fun. Mostly I believe in looking forward rather than backward, but sometimes it's good to remind yourself where you came from and what you did along the way. If you're interested, I can do more of this (there are a thousand other slabs of vinyl in the top of the wardrobe, just let me know). Maybe I'll even work out how to do MP3 files from vinyl in the near future (in the comments for an earlier post I have asked for software recommendations, if anyone can help) so you can actually hear some of this stuff.
Posted by Hg on Saturday 08 June 2002 at 21:34.
Received 4 comments so far.
Hg's Amazing Syndicolour Blogpost
A few administrative notes for the curious. Earlier this week I realised I was a bit fed up with how dreary the hydragenic.com colour scheme was looking in the new-found sunshine (didn't last long, UK readers, did it?), so I changed the burgundy to a brighter red. On Friday morning, I realised that by changing the background grey colour to white I could create a partly ironic but mostly affectionate Saint George's flag colour scheme as a token of support for the English football team. (Finally, I'm reaping the rewards of the painful conversion to CSS earlier this year - the whole site was changed within about thirty seconds.) Having done this, two unexpected things happened: firstly, they won and secondly, I decided I liked it better without the grey.
Next, I started to get interested in RSS, which is an XML-based content summary and syndication protocol. In order to present an RSS version of hydragenic.com, I had to turn on titles for each individual post within Blogger Pro. Although I've previously ignored this feature because I simply didn't want it, I decided that if I was going to create titles I may as well use them on the page, so here they are (for the uninitiated, we're talking about the words 'Hg's Amazing Syndicolour Blogpost' above). Also, I've implemented an RSS 0.91 feed at http://hydragenic.com/hg_rss.xml. I've put a permanent link to this at the bottom of the left-hand menu, in case you have no idea what this means now but want to come back to it in a few weeks or months.
So, what's RSS all about? Frankly, I'm only beginning to figure it out myself. It allows other parties to take what I'm writing here on hydragenic.com and include it in their own sites, if they so wish. This aspect of RSS isn't that interesting to me at the moment, though as ever I reserve the right to execute a complete volte face at a moment's notice.
It also allows people to use a newsfeed application to aggregate content from multiple sites and to get notifications when new content is posted. This is the side of RSS that I can see being most useful to me personally, because trying to keep up with the ever-increasing number of interesting blogs out there is becoming something of a hassle, to be honest. Also, YACCS users will find that they can use an RSS feed to get notifications when someone posts a comment to their blog (see the related question 14 in the YACCS FAQ).
If you want to experiment with RSS, my advice is to download a free reader (I'm currently using FeedReader for Windows, but plenty of other readers are available for various platforms); you can progress to something a littl