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Misc: Thoughts, 15th Nov, ‘21. Gonna go a bit stream o’ conch on this one!

Very poor nights’ sleep. Appalling headaches. Multiple doses of co-cocodamol ineffectual. Head-ache, or top of spine/base of skull-ache? Physical or psychological?

Eventually fell asleep round 3+am, only to wake around 5am from kaleidoscopically psychedelic dreams of cartoon based anxiety! Some character, like an offshoot of my imagination (or a facet of me?), as a paranoid genius psychedelic cartoonist.

A whole showreel of this stuff plays out visually, rapidly and intensely, in my mind. Very much in ‘the mind’s eye’. Way too complex and rapidly evolving to be captured or replicated. Very very VERY powerful stuff! Alarmingly so.

Got me thinking and worrying about illness, most specifically psychological or mental health. And relation to modern diseases, from Covid to ‘bi-polarity’, & my current medicated self: adalimumab, citalopram and co-codamol…

[Pic?]

I’ve been off the citalopram anti-depressant about a week. Through my prescription lapsing/laziness. Are the whirling visions/headaches symptoms of addiction and withdrawal?

Feel like I must get these meds, my script rather urgently, today!

The bonkers psychedelic cartoon dream thing of this morning was incredible. I kind of wish I could harness the talent or power of what I was imagining. But it strikes me as a forlorn hope. As it was a maelstrom of multifaceted divergent weirdness.

It was like a combination of r crumb, that Zappa clay-mation guy (name? why is the name Travis Bickle coming to mind… that’s the Taxi Driver nutter, right?) and Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations. But also totally unique. Part of the idea was that it was totally uncorked, unrestrained, (out of control?); so wild and varied as to bewilder and frustrate categorisation …

And there were disapproving antagonists, who ‘belonged’ to a fuzzily ill-defined community. The psychedelic nutter artist was like that aspect of me that simultaneously doesn’t want to be caged by definitions and yet seeks approval for the depth, range and intensity of its evolving ‘visions’.

[Pic?]

This was some seriously powerful shit! That had (has?) me properly freaked out! What’s with all this psychedelic maelstrom stuff? When I’m straight… what’s the deal with my neurological-biochemical psychological set-up right now, that it’s suddenly gone so intensely hyper and volatile, and, frankly, a bit scary?

Writing all this down puts me in mind, I knoweth not why, of that saying about folk being ‘scared of their own greatness’. An idea I’ve always poo-poo’ed (that brings to mind a Lord Melchett scene from Blackadder Goes Fo(u)rth!), but that seems apt to my mind in context of this mornings Krakatoa of mental and physical weirdness …

I took a lateral flow test yesterday, cause I’ve been coughing, had a sore throat, and have these clanging chimes of doom headaches. But, as ever, it came out negative.

On the one hand that’s good. But on the other, I feel something is definitely amiss. Mentally, or physically. Or both!? But then again, perhaps not!?!? I suppose that’s the mystery of life! One really never quite knows exactly what’s happening, or what it’s really all about…

[Pic?]

If I could capture the powerful range of expression in the art I dreamed about. But making dreams real? Or believing what one dreams to be either ‘a messsge’ or ‘sign’… is it not oft said that that way madness lies?

At one point the somewhat enraged frustrated ‘artist’ character in my dream says ‘what do I have to do to win your approval?’ Which touches on another deep well of psychological angst!

I’ve been kind of opting to ‘go with the flow’ of life lately. Is it just laziness? Or is it also, at least in part, a fruition of a process that I feel has bought me the hugest degree of inner peace and happiness I’ve known in years?

Surrendering to ‘what is’, and not hankering plaintively after what imagination – or other mirages of the mind; whether that’s my own mind or society’s – sometimes suggests, has, or so I’ve been increasingly believing, really helped change me from a mass of quivering jelly like neuroses to a reasonably calm happy individual…

Well… here-endeth-the-musings… for now at least!

All Things Must Pass, George Harrison’s post Beatles debut, is actually his third solo album. His previous albums, Wonderwall Music (1968) and Electronic Sound (1969), are both rather obscure oddball affairs.

So, in a way, this set – originally released as a triple album! – is actually his first ‘proper’ solo album, despite its precise sequential position in Harrison’s own catalogue, and regardless of its relation to that most famed of pop groups he had formerly been part of.

As much as it might be taken to signify George’s own personal guru trip vibes – he seems to have been the most susceptible of the group to the burgeoning Eastern mystical schtick – the albums’ title is inescapably just as much or more so a reference to the ending of an era. That the demise of a pop combo could assume such self consciously Wagnerian weightiness is at the heart of issues I have with both this album, The Beatles as a whole, and post-Beatles solo doings by any of the former Fab Four.

Until I bought this 60th anniversary (!!!) reissue I’d only ever heard the single My Sweet Lord. And it was so underwhelming I felt no desire to look any further, despite the hype around this album. But then I’m the kind of ornery curmudgeon who feels The Beatles, whilst mostly very good and occasionally superb, are seriously overrated. So I viewed the popular critical acclaim for this album with deep suspicion.

Anyway, enough contextualising. On to the album itself. In our times – I’m already a dinosaur for having it on CD – three vinyl discs have become two CDs. Given the enormity of the original release, at a time before double-albums were to become commonplace (and a byword for bloated rock or prog-rock self-indulgence), it’s not as hu-yowj as the format suggests it could be.

Indeed, CD 1 is just shy of 40 minutes, and disc 2 just over an hour. Did it ever really need to be a triple-album. Is the fact it was put out in that form emblematic of a need to ‘flatter a groaning self of sense importance’? * Not, I hasten to add, on Harrison’s own part, necessarily. But on his behalf, most of all by the dreaded biz.

But what is enormous – as well as former Beatles’ egos and their properties – thanks to producer Phil Spector’s patent ‘wall of sound’ production aesthetic, is the sound. I’m not quite sure what I make of this aspect of the recordings. If the music were suitably monumental, then this sonic aesthetic could be very effective.

But with music that’s actually quite modest, the woolly-ness of the sound is in danger of just sounding rather self-consciously portentous. The mood of much of the music here might’ve benefitted more from the openness and clarity George Martin is famed for, a style whose legacy lives on in much contemporary music (the sound of Beck’s Sea Change album springs to my mind, for some reason).

All Things Must Pass, the title track, is easily one of the best numbers on the album. But it’s hardly an earth-shattering song, it’s just merely good. Sadly, to my mind, the long-shadow of Beatle-mania, casts its doleful spell over things. Desperate for something post-Beatles to worship, this is perhaps one of the easiest projects those besotted with their Liverpudlian heroes can shift or project their affections on to.

Had this been the sole release of an unknown, I think it would barely have registered a ripple of interest or notice anywhere in the music world. It only manages to bluff it’s way on to ‘top 100 albums of all time’ type lists because it’s by a former fab-four fella.

For example, I Dig Love, from almost anyone but a former Beatle would be, in all honesty, pretty laughable, perhaps even risibly or contemptibly so. But the near religious awe accorded The Beatles elevates passé hipster patter to neo-mystical profundity.

Ironically I’m a sucker for such retro argot. And I, um… dig it. But not so blindly as to mistake fairly mundane incarnations of it for sublimity. Am I being hypocritical, when I find the phunky filosophising of James Brown far more compelling?

By the time we reach Isn’t It A Pity (version two) – one of a couple of extra tracks on this anniversary reissue – I feel that, as mundanely pleasant as it is, I’d need to be buried under a wall of opium smoke to mistake the reverb-drenched sonic palette for genuine grandeur.

When I wound up shelling out excessive amounts of coin for a number of Marcos Valle’s albums of the early 1970s, many moons ago, I didn’t feel robbed. But this – costing about around about £16-17 when I bought it a day or two back – is, like it’s production aesthetic, and the regard in which both it and The Beatles are held, irritatingly over-inflated.

It’s ok. It might even be pretty good. But it’s far from sublime, or essential. It’s merely decent reasonably run of the mill 60s-70s pop. So I do feel rather cheated, disappointed, and overcharged. I suppose it might be so popular in part for being an example of how run of the mill music can achieve super-stardom status.

One of my favourite tracks at present is opener I’d Have You Any Time, a song co-written with Bob Dylan, that has a very slight tinge of jazziness in some of the chords. Maybe with further listening ATMP will grow on me? But for now? It’s alright. No great shakes.

And indeed, listening to it again the following day, it is growing on me. Particularly the first little clutch of tracks. Given my history with My Sweet Lord – I’ve had it as a vinyl 7” single for donkeys years – as mentioned above, it says something about the overall quality of this album that this song, very Harrison-esque without being as strong as Here Comes The Sun, or While My Guitar Gently Weeps, etc, is perhaps the strongest number on offer here.

Whilst I am digging this album much more on day two, partially because of the fact that my car stereo is better (!!!) than the mini-CD-player I first listened to tree tree EU V this on, even this improvement in audio quality doesn’t make the last four or so turgid bluesy jams ant more appealing.

These last few tracks are a bit like some of the out take extras on certain Eric Clapton records from the early/mid seventies. Not such a surprise when one realises that it was at the sessions for ATMP that the Derek And The Dominos band coalesced. But where Clapton and co. manage to milk something with character and personality from such familiar territory, here it’s less inspired.

All told? A disappointing album that doesn’t live up to the hype. Merely ok. Certainly not great. I like the more downbeat slightly melancholy stuff best. It’s a register Harrison seems best suited to. Stuff like Wah Wah and I Dig Love has period charm. But also does sound both dated and naive.

I suppose ATMO is worth checking out but it’s a long long way of being essential listening, in my view.

* This is a rather lovely – and, importantly, accurate quote from A. Partridge, From The Oast House. Look it up online and the delish spooneristic switcheroo is undone. Riddle me that, nutters!

PS – Some might think it churlish of me, but one of my favourite things about this album is it’s period visual aesthetics. The cover is excellent. The inner gatefold image of this reissue, a triple album style picture of George dwarfed by the leafy greenery of his mansion gardens, is sublime Harrison had taken that hipster hippy-Jesu look to a level of near perfection at this time. It’s just a pity that, unlike Brazilian maestro Marcos Valle, the music doesn’t match the genius of the look.

There’s something almost hideously gauche about pop stars attaining supposed enlightenment or nirvana when the hideous beasts of mammon and the music biz have elevated them, via ultra-capitalism and the cult of celebrity, to levels of wealth that facilitate footballer style acquisition of palatial homes.

It’s more obscene than enlightened that folk such as Harrison can gain a privileged access to such dwellings as Friar Park, whilst 99.9% of humanity are condemned to live and die as drones packed into the cellular hovels our society deems fit accommodation for the hoi polloi.

Hmmm!? Not sure about this film. The constant wibbly-pibbly soundtrack, and the near constant mumbling of the dialogue… These do not add up to the grandeur or gravitas that this movie seems to assume it has.

‘I confess, it’s wearing on me…’ says Roy McBride, Brad Pitt’s character, at one point. This is about halfway through the film. An hour in to two hours. And boy do those hours feel long. Damn right, Roy. Me too!

Numerous elements really grate, such as the frequent references to Christian religion/belief, the themes of relationships (all of which seem strangely neutered), and the total lack of credibility in the quantum leap from Mcbride’s very believable getting digitally ‘locked out’ at one point, to the totally bizarre way in which he hijacks the Cepheus, not long after.

To me, even though there are some strong visual moments, this is a mess of a movie. And not a very compelling ness of a movie either. Something to be endured, rather than enjoyed. It has the feel of Christopher Nolan, i.e. pompously self-important whilst actually not very interesting.

So, Pitt finds Pops (Tommy Lee Jones). Dad’s lost it, and killed all his crew. Dad then opines that he must not fail, but must continue to seek… ‘To find what science tells us doesn’t exist’.* Eugh….

It comes over like something written by a teenager. A cosmic tantrum dressed up as if it were deep. ‘Why go on? Why keep trying?’muses Pitt, as he drifts, lost in space. But then he quite literally ‘sees the light’. Uuuugh… spare us!

This film seems like a big budget reminder of how solipsistic modern culture is continuing to grow. Other characters drift in and out, including some played by Donald Sutherland and that rocker’s daughter, who played Aragorn’s elvish chick. Who are they? I simply don’t care. That’s modern cinema in a nutshell. A vacuum where one might hope for character or humanity.

Best avoided, in my view.

* This reminds me of that joke about the search for intelligent life in outer space… cause there’s none here on Earth. Ba-dish!

I haven’t read this book, so this isn’t a book review. Indeed, successfully resisting the temptation to buy any books at this Topping Books author talk was a major achievement!

I have one or two Max Hastings books, such as Overlord and Das Reich (which I haven’t read, as yet). I’m interested enough to have been seriously tempted by Operation Pedestal. But lack of fundage and beaucoup de books means I must resist! Read not spend!

Sir Max Hastings (eugh, I’m not a fan of such class-laden honorifics) being a very establishment journalist – former employer of Bojo the Clown! – raises some issues for me. But most big name military historians, e.g. Anthony Beevor, are cut from the same tweedy public-school cloth.

Still, he proved to be an entertaining public speaker, mixing in some WWII documentary footage (from the IWM archives), and even voicing some of his quotes ‘in character’ (Cockney ratings and Churchill included!).

The story he told tonight, and that he tells in far greater detail in his book was/is fascinating. Basically bringing this particular re-supply of Malta off, and not losing the island, was more about a shot in the arm morale wise than strategic goals.

And it was equally important to prove to the US and Russia that we weren’t as pathetic as some of our misadventures up to that point, from the fate of the BEF to the failed Norway campaign, might make us appear.

I think I will get and read Pedestal at some point. But I’ll wait for a cheap used paperback. Simply ‘cause needs must. I flew solo tonight, as well. Usually Teresa accompanies me that these talks. But not this time!

The talk itself was enjoyable. And the venue, the Lighthouse Auditorium, Ely, was new to me. I’d estimate it was both full and that there must’ve been about 200-250 attending. A fun little evening out.

Soooo… Sunday, and the main vice is looking and working great. I’m very pleased. I sanded off some excess wood-filler (the white stuff!), along some of the seams. The flat work surface is fab!

The side of the bench, or the rear face of jaws that face out towards work/me are less contiguous. But the new insertion is better/truer that the former side of the bench itself was.

I put a nice meaty large-ish jaw on the front/opening face. So hopefully I can clamp up big chunky stuff! Because my bench is made of pine floorboards, it’s not as heavy as might be ideal. And despite all the stuff – five full toolboxes filled with hefty toolage! – certain things can still make the whole bench move a bit. Which is obviously annoying and disappointing. Still, this is my first ever DIY workbench. So it’s hardly surprising it ain’t poifeck!

A second Fuller 3 & 1/2” clamp sits clamped in to the main vise; a useful addition to and extension of what the main vice facilitates.

In other less happy news, my two home-made plane handles have both failed. And both in exactly the same weak spot. What one might want to call the Achilles’ heel of the plane ‘tote’, albeit it’s actually midway between the ‘ankle’ and the ‘toe’! My knob is faring fine tho’!

More Knobs!

Another knob. This one’s from a harder, denser wood. Mind, it’s not my knobs that’ve failed thus far, but my ‘andles. The wood is from a load of evergreen for tree type wood we got off Freecycle, for firewood. I wish I knew exactly what kind of wood it is!

Making these is great fun. Now I’m into the sanding and varnishing stages. Sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, sand, varnish, and so on.

Looking for movies on Prime I saw Pacific Rim. It’s not at all the kind of thing I’d normally want to watch. I’m not a fan of Guillermo del Toro, at least not what I’ve seen by him. And modern sci-fi/monster movies? Naaah!

But call it my woman’s intuition, or whatever, I thought let’s try it. It is as dumb as I worried it might be. And it is like a Playstation Game turned into a movie. Another modern trend I’m not very keen on.

But, in its favour, first it’s just good silly old fashioned matinee movie fun. Second, it’s visually stunning enough to make up for its dumb-ass silliness. Too many modern movies like this rely on visuals, and do that quite well, but still fail as films ‘cause they’re so awful in just about every way possible.

This suffers from some of the most egregious of the faults of so much modern film entertainment, with the boneheaded reduction of human culture to a muscle bound masculinity that’s apparently totally unaffected by any form of post-Enlightenment waves of awareness, from Feminism to Woke.

But ironically it’s not regressive, so much as hyper-modern. It’s a complete and bizarre paradox of our times. A form of ultra-contemporary moron-ism, that attempts to shroud itself in anything from allusions to religion (Stacker Pentecost!? A scientist called Gottlieb, German for ‘God-love’!?*) to cyber-spirituality (the whole ‘drift’ thing’). And it’s incredibly infantile

I can’t say exactly why, but in this particular instance I just let my inner child enjoy the spectacle of the film. And that’s ultimately what it is. A spectacle for children (whatever their actual age). And a fairly fun one at that.

* God-Love’s ‘other half’ – mind-meld in ‘the Drift’! – is Newton; so science and religion can resolve their troublesome real world issues in the dark and watery neon-lit imaginarium of cinematic CGI!!! Nuts…

Damn, it’s hard to be patient! I had to refrain from hanging guitars on these for about 24 hours, as last time I wasn’t patient it caused the fixture to work itself loose. So I had to do the whole job all over again!

This time I achieved patience. And patience was rewarded! the guitar pictured above was one I recently bought locally, for about – if I recall aright? – £13!!! And with a gig bag! It’s a smaller sized classical, handy for taking into schools.

The room as a whole is way too cluttered. Plus the back wall these guitars are hanging on needs a lick o’ paint! But it’s great to have hit these guitars off the floor, where we’re forever having to move them, or worry about knocking and damaging them.

I’ve spent a good chunk of today working on my workbench. First I had to clear everything off it; both the top, with the clutter that accumulates on that, and the base shelf, where I now store wood and several tool boxes.

Once cleared, I up-ended the bench and had a couple of goes at finding a new position for the vice. Formerly the vice was dreadfully out of square. On my second attempt of today, after a failed first try, I decided to radically rework the cutaway I’d made on my original attempt at mounting the vice, yonks ago.

Rather annoyingly I didn’t document the various stages. A pity, as quite a lot of effort and work was entailed. I used the layered or laminated nature of the workbench top to work back to a complete new plank, hoping as a result of achieve a squarer mounting. And it seems to have worked.

Next I need to ‘build back’ to use a modern political. 1 catchphrase, simultaneously filling in the excess I cut away, and providing the clamp with a wooden back face. I’ll also attach a wooden front face as well. But that might have to wait till tomorrow.

The floorboard timber I used to make the rear face of the clamp is the same stock of timber the whole bench is built from, out of an old Victorian town house. I cut it to size, routed out a recess to accept the rear face of the vice. Drilled two holes to screw it in place. And finally planed it flush to the bench surface.

As anyone who knows me well will realise, I’m a man of many vices. As well as the nice old blue Record vice, I have the red Fuller one pictured above. That’ll most likely get bolted to a block of wood, for use clamped into the Record vice. Compounding my vices!

And a bit later… after watching Pacific Rim, I couldn’t stay away. And went back and added a wooden (ply wood, in fact) front jaw. see pics below!

Tragically all my plane handles I made recently l – I used both my Handyman planes, flattening stuff on the bench/vice – have broken. The dark wood one was too dry and brittle, and snapped off and was re-glued repeatedly. The soft pine wood one was always going to be too weak. I need to start over with these bits, and do them in a much denser stronger wood.

“What happens if people discover the greatest story ever told is a lie?” *

Well, duh… plenty of people have known this all along. And it doesn’t require a preposterously Byzantine conspiracy, predicated on the notion that there’s any sense in the gumbo of nonsense that is Christianity in the first place, to get there.

The Life of Brian is sooo much better in how it deals with the whole Christianity thing, rightly lampooning humanity’s bizarrely persistent gullibility: ‘Blessed are the cheese-makers’; ‘We’re the People’s Front of Judea, not the Judean People’s Front’, ‘What have the Romans ever done for us?’ etc.

‘Seek the truth’, says the strap-line in the poster/DVD cover above. Not here, f-f-f-folks!

But first, let’s go back to that opening quote: I assumed that by ‘the greatest story ever told’ this film is referring to the same story sold under that name by George Stevens et al, in the 1965 ‘sword and sandal’ epic. Just like the awful religion we’re skirting around here, all of this is freighted with unexamined assumptions.

My route out of this blind-alley rabbit hole, an increasingly common one, perhaps especially since the 1700s, or thereabouts (but actually from a wellspring of scepticism as old as humanity, gullibility, and active questioning minds themselves), was rational free thinking, and evidence based reasoning.

One doesn’t need a cornball conspiracy theory movie – or do we? – to debunk blatant preposterousness-ness-ness… I really cannot be arsed wasting my time critiquing a movie that not even the powerful talent and charisma of Tom Hanks and other decent actors can rescue.

And poor Max Von Sydow. From Ingmar Bergman to Conan, Minority Report and this. How the mighty are fallen.

Like religion itself, this movie is, in my opinion, 1) at best, a pointless waste of time, best avoided, and 2) at worst, a cynical exercise in making money from the ignorant masses by feeding them a toxic mix of baloney and conspiracy.

Nothing to see here. Move right along.

* I believe this is a quote I lifted from the movie. I forget who says it.

Most of today has been given over to the dull but necessary chore of paperwork/admin. I had several piles of paper in numerous locations. I got most of it sorted. Sooo boring!

We already have two guitar hangers, on the wall at the head end of our bed, his ‘n’ hers! But there are still several guitars w’oot hangers. So I’ve put two more up.

As usual, drilling holes in our walls is a right pain in the arse! It’s easy to do. But the resulting holes are very messy and ragged. So I’ve had to mix a bit of plaster filler to help cement the wall-plugs in place.

The Polyfilla info’ says it’ll be dry in 60 minutes. I gave it more like two or three hours before I screwed the fittings in place. But I’m going to leave actually hanging any guitars until tomorrow. Give it 24 hours to really go off!

At end of play the hangers are in place. But I need to be patient, and wait till tomorrow evening. Before I test their strength by actually hanging guitars on them. On occasion in the past I’ve been told eager, and they come out of their holes. Don’t want that!