SECRET WEATHER no.1 - a virtual mixtape

(here is a new monthly mix of music to cry or get high to, some books/essays/ poems to woo potential lovers with, and some films/interviews to dive into..its a guide for lazy people or its just a few of my favourite things)




For the EARS:

1.CARL ORFF - GASSENHAUER
2.BROADCAST - TENDER BUTTONS
3.ROCKIN RAMRODS - BRIGHT LIT BLUE SKIES
4.ARTO/NETO - PINI,PINI
5.PSYCHIC TV - THE ORCHIDS
6.ARTHUR RUSSELL - THATS US/WILD COMBINATION
7.PERE UBU - WASTED


For the EYES:

Georg Trakl - Eastern Front (page 24)



For the EARS and the EYES:

Nam June Paik

Harry Smith talking in NY

Querelle by Fassbinder

hybrid nightmare

Only fair:






Dear Cineworld Head Office,


Yesterday evening I, and two companions, paid for three tickets for the 21.20 showing of Jane Campion's new film 'Bright Star' at Cineworld Hammersmith. If I am honest, when I first read about the film I was not immediately impelled to go, however, after a few good write ups, the tickets were purchased and there we were.

'Bright Star' – a film set in the early 19th Century. A subtle and quiet film, with a soft and peaceful rhythm set in a bucolic Hampstead Heath around 1820. 'Bright Star' – a film documenting the brief yet powerful love affair of a poet (John Keats) and a student of high fashion (Fanny Brawne) that commenced nearly 200 years ago. 'Bright Star' – a period piece that slowly unfolds a graceful and delicate narrative of, what is on the whole, quite a sweet and gentle English love affair. So you can imagine my amazement when, during leading actress Abbie Cornish's first important monologue, where she reads a letter from Mr. Keats ( Ben Whishaw), she is accompanied by the bass line of the late King of Pop Michael Jackson's 'Billie Jean'. Interesting, I thought.

Moments later, as Keats' brother dies a painful death after suffering badly at the hands of Tuberculosis, an extreme bout of cheering and whooping and “Go Michael, Go Michael” ing permeated the room. Strange, I thought.
As Keats' own health began to deteriorate and he and Fanny realised that their love affair was coming to a heartbreaking end, an end that spelt out the poet's early death and the start of his love's agonising bereavement, a pivotal climax in the film, a moment where the two hold each other close and whisper odes of love, the slow and creeping intro of Jackson's 'Thriller' rises and as Whishaw moves his mouth it seems as if he is grunting and shrieking and hollering and hooting and then there is the preposterous moment when Whishaw moves his lips to say his final goodbye and says:

'Cause this is thriller, thriller night
There ain't no second chance against the thing with forty
eyes, Girl!'

What is Campion up to? I think. This can't be right.

As I walk out of the cinema I notice the sign on the next screen along:
'Michael Jackson; This is it! '

Last night was like watching two different universes collide and the result was messy. I dont feel like I actually watched 'Bright Star' and if I ever attempted to again the absence of The King of Pop's cameo appearances would probably now leave a gaping hole.

So, Cineworld, this brings me round to the point of my letter. I think that it is only fair that
we are compensated with three free tickets to a film of our choice. We would like to see Michael Haneke's 'The White Ribbon' but I am not sure that film would be shown at a Cineworld (would it?). So perhaps, just an open ticket would suffice.

Please do reply to this letter as issues like these most definitely need to be addressed.

Yours,

Edward Eke.





I now have 4 tickets to cineworld. If only they had an interested programmer.....

okt

working on the launch of O DREAMLAND film society. Keep watching for further details. First event announced soon.

have also invented a new sunday afternoon game.


stay put, EE


Automne malade - Apollinaire

Autumn ill and adored
You die when the hurricane blows in the roseries
When it has snowed
In the orchard trees

Poor autumn
Dead in whiteness and riches
Of snow and ripe fruits
Deep in the sky
The sparrow hawks cry
Over the sprites with green hair the dwarfs
Who’ve never been loved

In the far tree-lines
the stags are groaning

And how I love O season how I love your rumbling
The falling fruits that no one gathers
The wind the forest that are tumbling
All their tears in autumn leaf by leaf
The leaves
You press
A crowd
That flows
The life
That goes

Letter to you two ( after watching all night)

Morning, Friday 9th October 2009

To Benn and Jonas

(letter to be read listening to arvo part, of course!)

i can see it!
watching these films i can see it!
immediate images/breaths of life, joy/sorrow,loss,love regained,faith(when it seems impossible)the poetry of cities and villages and fields which are chambers of nostalgia even if you are a citie baby. of food and celebration, of intricacies of nature and the horrid naked scream of war. its all here and for that i am excited.

Tarkovsky said 'Whatever it expresses - even destruction and ruin - the artistic image is by definition an embodiment of hope, it is inspired by faith'

Yes! and you can see it here.

This is optimism as a power , as a power to expel the miseries of this century that we lived in. we must regard the small wonders of life and for ignoring that (many times a day) i am guilty. But seeing these images changes this for me.

I saw Benn in London today, and it was bright and cold and we sat in the gardens of St Pauls in Covent Garden and spoke about our plans and he showed me his book of Basho and i felt like traveling and thought about the time i spent in japan and couldnt even imagine the japanese countryside - that country, full of electricity and mass media overload! How could it possibly have a countryside!

It is cold in my new flat but it warms me to know that there is work to do. I hope that Lisbon and Paris are as bright and clear as London is this morning.

Will film next weeks event, i am just working out how to express EVERYTHING in 15 mins. They should give me the whole day!

Anyway,

Much love,

E

p.s Have you noticed that Wayne Rooney is growing into a respectable young man, i think that he might have a brain after all.

More news from the banks of the thames

Away above a harborful

of caulkless houses

among the charley noble chimneypots

of a rooftop rigged with clotheslines

a woman pastes up sails

upon the wind

hanging out her morning sheets

with wooden pins

- L Ferlinghetti, 'Pictures of the gone world

I am moved in to a new flat, 2 mins from the last, still moments from the river, w/ high ceilings and red carpets and walls made from some kind of crumbling biscuit..which has made hanging pictures a sport, but i am happy and have a desk that looks across to a church and a (now sadly closed down) legendary recording studio. the main room, we have turned into a workshop/studio with 3 long desks on trestles placed along three of the walls,its cold as we have no hot water or heating yet but i like sitting indoors wearing outdoor clothes and have a constant flow of hot drinks coming my way. there is a pet shop, book shop, film shop, betting shop, cafe and off license below so that is good.

I have been writing many new songs, i will be making recordings soon and in time will let you know my new plans.
Ages ago i wrote a piece for an anthology called Punk Fiction which was released thru portico ( im sure you can get it from their site) - like a fool i didn't read the edits made after the proof read and there were some changes made so in time i will post the correct piece here. do buy the book though,it had a deal where the money went to a cancer charity.

I have also just written for a Berlin based journal. info here taken from Declan Rooney's website:
'Oh, Don’t Get Carried Away'

KP Poetry Journal Volume 1

September 2009

(A zine I am publishing with new commissioned work by Are Blytt, Stefano Calligaro, Hsiao Chen, Sujey Colon, Drawing Guts, Edward Eke, Edvine Larssen, Thurston Moore, Donata Rigg, Ama Saru, Antonio Serna and Susanne Winterling)

www.kunstprojects.com
Declan is a great artist who works in many different mediums. Look at his website:www.declanrooney.com

( connected side note: i have just found that my new neighbour downstairs is a one D.Rooney )

Some more news for you:

Next week i am doing a performance at the Serpentine Gallery. www.serpentinegallery.org

It is part of the Serpentine Marathon series ( so far they have done 'Interview marathon' ' Experiment marathon' and 'manifesto marathon') .
This year is the poetry marathon and i am collaborating w/ the great Jonas Mekas and Benn Northover.

Jonas

Benn


We are doing a performance of Jonas' work 'Requiem for the 20th Century'. We are in the process of working out how to present it, will update shortly.



Also, for those of you in New York Citie
http://poetryproject.org/project-blog/jim-carroll-memorial-reading.html


signing out singing,
ee

JIM CARROLL 1/8/1949 - 11/9/2009

Jim Carroll died on Friday at his desk at his place in Manhattan. He had a heart attack. Its very sad - there was word that he had finally finished the novel he had been working on for so long 'The Petting Zoo'. i hope that that is the case and it is published posthumously. i loved Jim carroll's poems and diaries - it wasnt an originality that made him special - they called him the american rimbaud - but it was the ferocious hard work that he put into his writing and his street-rat poetic that he sharpened and defined from an early age. his teen story is the great american coming of age story. well thats what i think.

read: 'living at the movies' or 'forced entries' or his most popular diary 'the basketball diaries'
listen: 'people who died'

There will always be a poem
I will climb on top of it and come
In and out of time,
Cocking my head to the side slightly,
As I finish shaking, melting then
Into its body, its soft skin
--Jim Carroll, "Poem"
from Void of Course (1998)

out of town

Im in Bretagne, just west of the now ugly St Malo, in a little town called Pleurtuit - sleeping at a B&B on a farm which has the curious added touch of an airfield occupying the rear land behind the house. Each morning i sit eating breakfast in the front garden with all manner of light aircraft lifting a few feet above my head. At 7 am there is a ryanair flight to southern england that feels as if it is going to take the roof of the house with it. The hanger at the foot of the runway houses a number of 2 seater planes brandishing delicate wings decorated in mustard yellows with deep burgundy stripes or military green with silver stars. They tear into the sky one after another, dipping west almost immediately to travel along the coast. It is straight off the page of a Ballard novel.

At breakfast i smother sweet breton honey on pumpernickel bread. i take this with bitter local coffee and orange juice so sour it leaves my taste buds weeping. The days are spent driving along the coast to small villages, stopping off at flea markets along the way. It is easy and slow here. There is a film festival in october so i hope to return then.

Moving down the country on Saturday, right down at the bottom, to spend a while in Seillans where Max Ernst stayed in the last years of his life
- need to put things in order, have many ideas/projects to be realised fully but lack of time and no patience at all at present
- i. make a grid. ii. fill it

Watching - Beau Travail, Claire Denis
Listening - Screaming Jay Hawkins 'I put a spell on you' and Miles Davis 'Moon Dreams'
Reading - Imagining Reality by Kevin Macdonald

j ~ s ~ a

aaron mckay, pirate, poet, polysexual and soon to be married



JSA
I counted the hours that i had had the pleasure of sitting in the council's plastic chairs. We were certainly up in the teens by now. i stared out the window and a great muted ashen slab of borough wall stared back in.
My officer, Sarah, was a channel 4 documentary's wet dream - the archetypal single mother that bourgeois TV film producers salivate over monthly - all 6 stone, glassy half shut eyes, itching jaw bone and the odour of a primary schools changing room. she smelt as if she had wet herself and as she stared around my midrift and nodded off i wondered what i was doing there.

' Have you found any work then?' Her voice was like a rusty machine gun spurting sporadic nasal whines - her words chugged along in one tone, her voice was an amplified wasp on downers.

'No' i replied

'Have you been looking?'

'Very much so'

'Well, what jobs did you log in on your declaration sheet? were they broad keywords?' She paused and took a few minutes to blink.....

'Completely' i finally answered when she had re-focused

'What were they?' she croaked

'well, let me see...they were, Stuntman, Firearms officers' assistant and Killer.'

'Killer!?' she looked at me as if i was her ex-husband.

'Yes, pest control and all that evil...its not really my thing but i figure i can break them apart from the inside etc..'

She winced. 'Oh'

A long pause.

'How would feel about stockroom at heathrow airport?'

I stared at Sarah. i stared at her long and hard and took a deep breath in from my gut - held it - and slowly let it out. i could smell her all about me - i thought about taking her out of there and plonking her in the local swimming baths but i knew she would turn the water purple so i stood and walked to the door. I turned and watched her head drop and decided i was better off hungry.

dead end

Last weekend TPIA played at the southend fringe festival. we played in this piano bar that looked out across the estuary to some island - i think it was canvey or maybe not - i dont know what was going on but to me it seemed that the island was buzzing away in the distance, alone, no inhabitants , just machinery screaming at each other some kind of post nuclear floating gomorrah oozing black tar and yellow smoke. i stood there for ages. staring.
i quickly snapped out of all that and got some bleach and made some tee shirts.


there was this guy in the corner - he really made an effort



t p i a played solidly and the spirit of the surrounding landscape was definitely heard - you could hear it in the drums - it was swelling in the bass waves -

We drove home in this rickety old van - i didnt mind i was lost in a cloud vodka & badnesses $$- everyone was asleep and i stared out onto the empty A roads and B roads and felt alone


as i rolled about on the floor i found a hole that went straight thru. i stuck my camera on countdown and dangled it under to see what this van was all about and to see how friendly the road was at 80mph. these are the results of my research.







i tried to poke my head down the hole but got an eye full of dust and grit. i wanted to see the mechanics of an aged tour van. id reminded myself over the last week of the mechanics of touring - the long, empty journeys, the rattle of sound check, the catchphrases, the anti climaxes and the unexpected highs. i went on a health kick the week before we started playing, i hadnt looked after myself completely over the last 18 or so months, id started to lose inspiration, memory, focus, drive - everything was a fog but this short tour secured me back on course and i now sit here looking out of the huge open window above my desk onto the busy summer street below and feel alive and thirsty. i have new songs and new ideas and im grateful. im about to begin a very exciting film/music project with a truly inspiring man.

tpia tour 5ive

We had a day off. i spent it nearly being knifed by some street rats in an alleyway near my flat and then met with keating and his brother arr shaan. shaun had come to visit and fed us stories from 'the site' in his hushed kilkennian tones. Ben celebrated his brothers visit by cutting up a variety of his best moves.

1. the tangle shirt ( i have a more explicit version of this particular move)

2. the suicide hump (open window essential)

3. the elephant


Unfortunately B's finger started to bleed for a long time so now i had two invalids on board.

slightly wrecked from the week tpia brothers went to winchester on a sunday evening.




so we played a show - i forgot photos again.
later, our friend ryan threw up in the back of our van into two of those petrol pump gloves you get at gas stations. the huge ones. he filled two. he blamed it on motion sickness. max blamed it on 12 stellas. before it got too 'brits abroad' we were home and i made everyone a pretty psychedelic dinner.

tour - day 4

so after a rather boozy breakfast at bernies, we made our way to leeds.
aaron always disappears in service stations - i now have fresh surveillance footage of where he sneaks off to.



we got a few silks and furs to go to lunch in.




these shades had the shortest life - i bought them at about 2pm....







and by 2.10 they went completely off the radar - i paid £.80p for every minute i owned them



the show in leeds was great. im really enjoying playing at the moment, touring can sometimes become a monotonous drag but i am enjoying this set up and approach...
winchester tomorrow

tour - day 3

ok so we are back in the van and en route to Leeds. last night we played in manchester. the show was great and the people very friendly. the band that supported us were called from the kites of san quentin and are great and you should take a listen..







after the show we stayed at this amazing house somewhere just out of town. this lady below, Bernie, well she likes the idea of opening up her house at 1am to sweaty drunk loud bands to come in and fall all over the shop. of course we were the epitome of princely charm....she had cooked us dinner and got the drinkx and smokex in and we sat up late into the night with her listening to her record collection and getting the dirt on the others who had stopped by -----i wish she lived in every city.i never want to stay in a hotel ever again. and from now on, we only play manchester.

in the morning max the tour manager and i tried to hit the garden swing with a football for a while and then i breakdanced on a trampoline .





now to leeds.

tour - day 2

Last night we played in cambridge at a small venue called the portland. we all enjoyed the show and aaron, the broken armed bass player had real nice stool to sit on. It had a lovely mahogany finish and was very well padded, chrome legs and rubber stoppers - a real beaut.






i must remember to get someone to take photos of the actual shows...

Have a day off today in london, a couple of interviews later and then start work on the cut for the o.r.l.d viral....

tour - day 1

TPIA are on tour at the moment. Its a great feeling playing this music to people and my band are communicating very well.




Today we are in birmingham.

Yesterday Alice designed a template of the TPIA logo and we handmade some tee shirts.

O.R.L.D viral shoot

On sunday my MC family, charles, alice and i threw together a load of equipment and used a friends bar and shot a chroma key viral video for o.r.l.d.....Fun, the guy kept the bar open at student prices and the pavement outside was burning up..












Benj, nivk le sticc, craig templay and marty badford performed o.r.l.d for us

tuesday 12th may

Early this morning i found myself on a stretch of anonymous dual carriageway around park royal. I was carrying camera equipment for alice as she had been asked to do 'making of' for a new rankin/future shorts film. I dropped the cases off, cracked my knuckles, pinched at my new blisters and headed back up the road. the sky began to spit at me, i stared him right in the eye and spat back which in turn came back to haunt me no thanks to a westerly howl of warm storm wind. i stalked the pavement around a corner and could see a row of well known fast food restaurants lined up in a brutish stink of some kind of perpendicular quasi-rugby move. behind them the sky was black and rolling. to my left there was a cinema - i dived in and was met by a group of screaming 7year olds obviously steaming drunk on inset day or the flu scare, you could tell their tongues were rainbow coloured and that they couldnt believe their luck. to my dismay i noticed that there was a only a single parent helpless in the centre of their multi-coloured ritualistic circle and that any film i chose would be ruined by their war cries permeating the entire building.
i had to weigh it up. i did. so i walked in the rain back up to a tube station. i ended up watching a film alone in a cinema in hammersmith. i sat at the front to really soak it up but was paranoid throughout that some throat slitter would be shuffling about in the rows behind me. the film was like warm piss and my murder anxiety got the better of me so i walked out after an hour.

I decided id walk around the local area to my flat. I visited the land that John Dee's house used to stand upon and was surprised to find that the only sign of him having ever lived there was that 'they' had named the block of flats next to it after him.




No blue plaque, no small museum, no nothing. There was some kind of tea drinking contest going on across the road in the church where his body supposedly lies so i walked past that and went and saw Sir Richard Burtons mausoleum.



Going on short music tour in June - birmingham, cambridge, manchester, leeds, winchester......let me know of any good graves to visit---------

FIRE DANCE VIDEO

Here is the video for my single 'Fire Dance'.
It was produced by Charles Key and co-directed by Alice Lillian and I under the three of ours new company Machine Channel.

youtube.com/machinechannel
machinechannelpicturecompany.blogspot.com

pissing in a river

should i pursue a path so twisted
should i crawl defeated and gifted
should i go the length of a river
what about it what about it what about it
oh im pissing in a river
- patti smith

final weekend of april,2009
yesterday it was my birthday or something so i sat by the river with some friends.

a twelve hour stint 4 til 4 in the summer evening on the S bank. my favourite spot in london. nothing beats it. not even a 40 yarder.

so day went somewhere and suddenly it was dead of night and deserted down there. so we hit the beach. but only after we pissed about.

I am as bad at updating my blog (www.edwardeke.blogspot.com) as i am at paying my bills - an art which i have masterfully practiced since my first flat at 17. any thought of that first flat makes shiver. i remember waking one morning to find that my feet were a dark withering green/grey and had developed a cold moist layer of extra something. i wasnt about to find out what that something was. i just went and saw a guy and he told me that i had trench foot. yes. trench foot. I took a look at myself in the mirror, saluted and turned on my heals back to the barracks. that place was a dive, all the windows fell from their frames, we had a one bar heater but were too scared to turn it on, too scared that the sudden change in temperature would send our bodies in to a fatal cramp. after finding some photos recently i remembered how many funny episodes took place in that flat - il dig them out at some point and add the stories too.

I woke very early this morning and took a walk thru the common next to my flat. the sun was above but mild and hazy, it knew how i wanted it - as if he really treats the early morning walkers to an early bird special - not too stifling, minus the prickles, a gentle introduction to what he can do. I walked under the bridge i always walk under. I like to stop directly underneath, eyes closed and and let the shards of the lights make patterns on my eyelids. i stand there and rock like nostradamus did for Catherine De Medici and try go flicker myself into the future. the locals love it. the noise the trains make as they reach the centre is an incredible harsh grind. i have recorded it so many times but it never sounds as good as live.

other news - time keeps getting the better of me so i have pushed the release of my first TPIA single back to June. first week. the video is finished and ready to go and i am very happy with it. co-directed by alice lillian, charles key and i under a new company we have started called machine channel. we are going to be producing a number of music videos, shorts, and experimental films and collaborating with other film makers and artists on a number of projects. the first to be announced soon. this is a scheme that i am very focused on and enthused by.

on another note, i am not using larrikin as my surname any longer. this is because i think its just confusing and restraining. i am using another family name of eke, which has an amusing history, a punchy cadence and sums up my last three years of living..ha.

i love a refreshing new start. i have a lot to tick off the list this year. it must be the new year somewhere, surely.

so. more news is on its way and i will make sure this is updated.

look out for the video in a few days.

E

NEW YEARS MESSAGE

0.Just before the new year a body was found right next to my flat. on 28th december a local guy found a girls body on the rivers edge. She had been missing since the 9th. police had found her passport on the 12th.and on the 28th they found her body 100 metres from where the passport was found two weeks earlier.She was found under the bridge.I walk under that bridge 3 or 4 times a day. She must have lay there while this little town on the edge of london went about their festive plans.

1.In a dream last night i was on a table in one of those large meat fridges you find in the back room of a butchers shop.The walls were falls of thick syrupy ox blood and the room was slowly disappearing. After three attempts to drop the nightmare, and one brief stay in some interim corridor between being awake and being heavily set in dream, i was back in the room, in the real world, not completely sure what that is at the moment, but in a room nonetheless.

2.getting out of the city on NYE was fresh hell. Ushered along the southbank and around waterloo with 250,000 other sheep as if we were the only survivors of armageddon and the police were in a rush. Nearly stabbed, twice. Phone fell under a train not scheduled to depart til 7am. That kind of thing.

3.Its sad and cold here and the police are idiots who spurt unprovoked bile and understand their jobs to be a performance piece in brutal machismo and view the festive season as a time where everyone on earth is drunk and therefore has to be arrested and detested.

4.Im not sure how welcome we are here anyway. Its like that scene in The Long Goodbye when Marlowe says to his cell mate "remember its not you in here, its only your body".

5.There are many positives though and we will make it thru January.

stay clean

EL

fixing my hair in the river thames

The men and women who walk across the major bridges of London; Hammersmith, Waterloo, the ugly looking thing between the Southbank and Charing Cross; these men and women seem to rush frantically to their nothing nothing jobs, soggy worm rolls and their toilet water lunches. I on the other hand, today, being Monday the 15th december, am in no rush at all. I glide across Hammersmith's solid, emerald beast, skip across the southbank's glittering half pipe in all its 8 year old birthday party splendour and find myself along the river at Vauxhall.
The air is cold and spiky, it attacks my nostrils and i manage to spit firmly off the bridge into a passing steelworks chugger. Francis Bacon's greatest hits are over there on Millbank so i decide to have one last look before they bugger orf in January.
The people who go and see his paintings these days, the fans, i suddenly realise on entering the first room, are, on the whole, sweating large industrial size buckets of vanity. This is not an assumption built on the fact that they have rabbits tied around their necks and foxes keeping their sour, jumped up little spindlies from being as cold as their hearts, but the very fact that Francis framed all his paintings in the most spotless, gleaming, polished glass, thus creating the narcissists perfect mirror. They stand there decorating their egos, ruffling their sloane squares with complete disregard for Peter Lacy's distorted face lost in a foggy jungle of thick blue mist.
I read somewhere that Bacon used this glass on purpose to usher the viewer into some kind of of prison of self assessment, to make them quake in their boots of vulnerable meat. Im sure that it has had the desired effect on many fans and punters, but to be honest, in the last 4 months of this show, the majority of these shmucks would be better off in the stinking changing rooms of Brent Cross' Primark.
Anyway, its interesting to see and im back on the bridge freezing, searching for some kind of bunny or graveyard dwelling fox i can stuff my hand up and get warm.
Looking forward to recording over christmas and new year. And performing live too.

CLICK HEREfor photos from the 'timeless, mild, beguiling island of a town' that is Laugharne, home to the 'Laugharne weekend' which i visited last march, to drink,walk,do a reading,present camusflage krokodial,eat, drink,visit the graves,laugh etc, and will try to visit again this march.

//||\\

other things & glossolalia channel utube

my friends at LONDON WORD FESTIVAL (where Camusflage Krokodial, that monologue i wrote last year, was first shown) have created a page dedicated to The Fib - which is a poem based on the Fibonacci sequence. CLICK HERE and go to the Fibber's Gallery at the bottom of the page. Then, when you are ready, you, the very merry public, are invited to submit your own. Go.

also

www.youtube.com/screamingbody14
video diaries and films
i will update the page as i sort thru my computer
there are many videos from pilion to laugharne to texas to

live at the paradiso

so we travel thru the night into the city of red lights..around 3am we stroll up to the top deck and look out at the channel as we skulk across it. the air is warm and fizzing so we open our mouths. we do that and take photos of eachother leaning over the edge. start talking with a guy called mustufa who says he is a moroccan travel agent..i spend a while thinking about what he really meant by that.
we drive thru belgian countryside which we all agree is really fucking dull and arrive in the city at around 8am. we have breakfast, do the tourist thing and then try and get into our rooms for a sleep. the thing is my room isnt ready so i have to sit there, while everyone else sleeps, being 'entertained' by this gaunt freakshow of a receptionist. he shows me his films which are, on a very basic level, just photos that he has lifted off google of animal cruelty. he calls them 'shock docs'. i cant help but laugh violently. i dont even realise im doing it until alice points out that im dribbling all over the mans keyboard.
after 20 minutes of sleep, not sleep really..more just having my eyes shut, we soundcheck and then stock up at the drink shop, which is in between the knocking shop and the coffee shop.
later on we play a show. its the first show with this new live line up and, as i leave the stage, i feel it has gone well and turn to the others and hug them and say " guys, i think that went well..so...you know..well done" they all feel the same and we laugh and shout for hours. i spend the rest of the evening outside by the canal speaking with people and spitting into the water. i dont even see any other music which i regret now as there was some interesting stuff. the only thing i do see is this very tall looking boy with about 10 jumpers on called fyars. he is good and we all nod in agreement as his set draws to a close. we head back to the canal and leave him to sweat it out.
after a few hours we head back to the hotel and catch the final hours of children in need which is pretty fucking out there. benji rolls thru the hotel doors at 5 ish after being removed from a restaurant by our tour manager for offering himself up to amsterdam in some kind of abstract sexual sacrifice.the next morning he puts it down to miscommunication.
anyway, we finally get home and eat pasta at the flat and continue celebrating nothing.

pangames//||\\