Blog Noise

I've been thinking to you a lot lately. Addressing, only superficially, those immediate tasks at hand

(called life),

my mind drifts toward you and thinks words to entertain you. Masterpieces formulate at inopportune times. Like just when I'm falling asleep. Or even more frequently: an hour before the alarm is due to chime the start of my day.

Oh brother! Why now?

I can't be bothered to pull myself away from the dark warmth.

(or warm darkness???)

of the pre-dawn.

The masterpiece atrophies in the groovy little recesses of my brain, lost in the intestinal resemblance of a maze that is my brain.

with a little help from my friends

Do you remember Dolphin shorts? They were it in the 1980s. Meant to be kit for runners, but became a craze across the land. Fat girls, thin girls, fat boys, thin boys, adolescents, young adults, even the the middle-aged with little predilection for activity. Everyone had to have Dolphin shorts. I don't remember my pair ....

or pairs?


My mom wouldn't cater to the whims of fashion. She is classy. Dolphin shorts weren't. She knew it. If I had a pair, it was a plain pair; probably dark or light blue. The really, really cool Dolphin shorts were the stripy kind. The retrospectively tackiest of all. Vertical white stripes and some-other-colour stripes showing off how really very cool you were. I seem to remember a little dolphin on the lower right hand corner, but I could just be inventing this.

Who doesn't remember the Beatles' With a Little Help From My Friends?

Who thinks of a pair of orange and white striped Dolphin shorts when the Walkman randomly selects With a Little Help from My Friends ?

I do.

Am I hopelessly mired in the 80's?

Talk

The little old lady with a scarf ‘round her head and tied in a knot beneath her chin shouts out ‘good morning’ before she has even fully boarded the bus. Her off-white winter coat is off-whitishly coloured with age. She pushes her walker flush against the partition that separates the driver from his passengers. She chatters away with the driver who seems to know and indulge her.

“I meant to tell you: I took the C1 the other day and the driver was so rude ….”

Her conversation fades into the background because the accent distracts me.

From the look of her, I’d assumed she was British. But, that accent, it’s American, isn’t it?

I think how I’ve been here long enough that the accent no longer phases me. The novelty of the English accent is a thing of the past. It’s normal. Not an accent at all, really.

I think how I’ve been here long enough that sometimes I get confused by soft American accents. The American accent is normal to my ear. The English accent is now normal to my ear. When an American speaks softly I scratch my head and wonder which normal the speaker is from.

The little old lady confuses me because she looks so very native. The accent in the way she speaks is incongruous with her scarf around her head and walker and ungodly hour that she has boarded public transportation.

I think about my crap ear and how New Zealanders always throw me off. South Africans of English descent can be tricky as well. The Afrikaaner influenced South African is easy. Australians: depends on the person. Some are dead easy. Others hide in a cloak of kiwidom. Canadians hit or miss.

I think how I am unmistakable. Sure, I’ve adopted phrases or words or slang. I supposed the accent has been somewhat tempered – soft; but not the typical clipped English of an American expat in the UK. I think how the sound of my own accent would surely make my skin crawl if I could really hear myself.

Sometimes, a bad ear can be a good thing.

Wayne's World

Somewhere along the line into Waterloo, someone thinks “Wayne is gay.”

The fast approaching B&Q indicates that the graffiti proclamation of Wayne’s
(a) sexual orientation
or
(b) light-hearted, jovial nature
is on the outskirts of Wimbledon.

I’m not fast enough with the camera.

Egyptian Artifacts

I have something special with Mohammed al Fayed: an affinity. One of those bonds resulting from a multitude of coincidences that in their entirety make you question the whole coincidental nature of coincidences.

Mr. al Fayed owns the Fulham Football team; I support Fulham.

Mr. al Fayed is a foreigner scratching out a living in the UK. Me too!

Mr. al Fayed is bald. As is My Man.

Then someone told me to check out the sphynx's heads in the Egyptian hall at Harrod's.

Now I'm not so sure about that special something we had. He's either a cheekier monkey than I gave him credit for and is having a damn good laugh at his own boldness and put-on cockiness (in which case, I'm smitten); or he's just another utterly self-obsessed twat.

Youth

NB: The secret to this post lies in the fact that I am in IT, where, it is popularly believed, boffins reign supreme.

I might have alluded to some change.

Might have. Did.

It panned out: the victory, the glory, the moving on up, the bigger salary, better bonus, longer hours, getting used to a new groove, scratching your head and wondering when they'll figure out you're just winging it.

Winging it well enough for now.

Everyone seems happy. It's all in control.

For now.

There's a new starter. A grad. A young buck, all keen and eager and green behind the ears. I welcome him. Ask him, how goes it. Ask him about his background.

"Really? American literature? You specialised in Faulkner? Interesting! My major was English literature."

The young buck seems to get excited by my little tidbit of personal information.

"Wow. It's great to know that someone really high up is artsy."

If I'd been eating, I'd have choked. If I'd been drinking, I'd have spat. Not having been doing either, I laughed in the young buck's face.

I might as well have spat ...or slapped him. He got all flustered.

That's right: what do you do when someone really high up laughs at you?

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I ...." Don't know what to say. " ... I'm not at all artsy."

Strike

My locker didn't open this morning. I'd been having trouble with the key, but hadn't made the time to request a change. The girl behind the front desk produced a master key, and promised to have maintenance look at the dysfunctional mechanism that was keeping me from my workout. She then wasted 30 of my morning workout minutes trying to locate a temporary locker. I followed her from what was supposed to be one vacant locker to another -- only to find that the gym's records aren't current: some gym enthusiasts are getting their storage space for free. The bitches!

Authority to repossess the what are supposed to be vacant lockers lay with the manager who would be in after 9. It was only 6:30. They promised that someone would call me later in the day to sort out the locker situation. In the interim, no locker and a risk to my possessions in an unsecured locker room.

My annoyance was about to grow. Standing on the treadmill, I slowly unwound the headphones from around my walkman. I pushed play. Nothing happened. God damn little fucker just stopped working. When I bought my portable music player, I had been foresightful enough to tell the cheeky Apple fuckers to shove their insurance offer up their ass.

That's how the day started. That's how the day progressed. And I've got my period.

Really, honestly I am not a bitchy person.

The Man is heating up his dinner. Something about him sometimes annoys me: he refuses to learn how to set the timer on the oven. I suspect his meal is burning. I'm not inclined to say a word.

Right now, in this very moment, I am a beyatch.

The gym never called. I wonder if my locker will open tomorrow.

White Noise

I've put my walkman on random.

I realise I should stop thinking of it as a 'walkman' -- it is, afterall, an ipod. I wonder if portable music devices will ever be anything but 'walkmen' to me.

I am, once again, commuting. It is no surprise that my mind wanders. I am standing and holding the overhead railing. I wasn't lucky (aggressive) enough to get a seat, or even one of those spots where you can lean against a solid structure: the closed doors, or the little glass partitions at the end of each bank of seats, or the end of the carriage. Consequently, I sway with the rhythm of the train as it jostles its way underground to the next station. The next random song comes on. The man in front of me is also listening to his walkman (also an ipod). The woman in front of the man in front of me, she too has a walkman (an ipod). I survey the carriage for walkman/ipod devices. More than half of my fellow commuters are only partly here, like me. They are partly in a world of their own choosing.

I wonder what music is playing in the train right now, at this very moment. Is my own selection representative? Muse, Madonna, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Kanye West, Outkast, Chico Buarque, Gal Costa ...

... even Marc Anthony ... Do I dare admit it? No, no, better not ...

Kelis, Lauren Hill, Amy Wine(Whine)house, Fiona (Whine) Apple, Suzanne Vega, Tori Amos

Ug. I need to delete her. The experiment to see if I would like her has not worked.

Mozart, Coldplay, Portishead, Lily Allen, Bjork, Eric Clapton, David Bowie ....

I wonder if all the sounds in all the ears of all the commuters in my carriage were turned up, would it be an unbearable sound? Or would there be so much sound of every pitch and colour that it would drown itself out and be silent? Is silence white? If so, what does black sound like? Would the confluence of every sound possible in the world drive a mind crazy? Could the human ear cope? What about our poor canine friends?

How can I have all these thoughts? I recognise them for what they are: passing. I will be too lazy to think more on these thoughts once I step out and onto the next platform.

I think about how I once had a similar thought: a thought about buying a recording of silence so that on the tube when I don't feel like listening to music but I also don't want to hear the noise of the hurtling train, I could put on silence, and all would be quiet. Or black (or white?).

I remember I considered myself clever for having such an original thought. I mentioned the idea to a colleague who pointed out that very concept was used in all sorts of musical equipment, including some fancy headphones that are on the market. I wasn't so clever or original afterall.

Remembering this previous episode with previous thoughts, I remind myself I am not original, and this makes me remember a book by Milan Kundera that begins by denying the originality of an individual gesture.

Which book was it?*

If you can't even have an original gesture, you surely can't have an original thought. It's all just built up on top of previous gestures and thoughts. You are not original. You are small. A dot in the universe.

I think how some people would find this train of thought depressing.

I find it liberating. It takes the pressure off.

*The Internet tells me it was Immorality. The Internet even gives me the quote: A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person’s instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations.

Bussing Brazilians

Listening to the banter behind me made me think about the preponderance of Brasilians on early morning London buses.

Funny how there are always Brasilians on the bus.

The most recent banter was low and hushed, incomprehensible yet familiar. Brazilian Portuguese is, through too-complicated-to-explain-here circumstances, an old friend. I don’t speak it. I’ve not studied it. But I used to be surrounded by it. So I recognise it, usually.

It’s melodious and twittering. It’s sing-songy with occasional moments of high pitched shrieking. It’s a language destined to be put to music. It’s the language that added more music to music. I want to close my eyes and die to Chico Buarque lulling me across to the other side.

When I hear Brasilian Portuguese on the bus, my heart goes out to the speakers. It’s an illogical fondness, but I don’t care. Listening to them makes me all warm inside.

Except this morning, when it was too low and too hushed for me to be able to eavesdrop properly.

That’s not very Brasilian: to be speaking so quietly.

More hush hush whisper whisper mutter mutter.

Speak up, dammit!

Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to turn. I saw a man of Chinese origin and a nondescript Caucasian.

Hmmm. Not very Brasilian looking. But Brasil is full of Japanese people. Maybe that man is Japanese-Brasilian.

My heart of hearts knew that this was not the case. My heart of heart suspected that I had misidentified the ‘Brazilians.’

A slip of a sentence confirmed my suspicions: “Whatchya gonna do?”

Whoopsie. There goes my Brazilians on the bus theory.

Just then, as if to give me the credit I was due, three dark-haired women twittering and sing-songing away boarded the bus. Bless them.

On a topical note: The Man is having Rodizio tonight.