I have never been carol singing. At 5am, that seems peculiarly significant. Occassionally, I sing Away in a Manger in the style of a Home Counties seven year old, but I don't think the two amount to the same. Of course, it is too late both in the day and my life to begin visiting houses, song book in cold-numbed hand, so I will have to accept that the experience has passed me by but, yes, its absence is a felt non-presence, as it were, in the pre-dawn of this Christmas Eve. One day, we'll all die. That's a sad notion, isn't it? It troubled me more when I was younger than it does now, probably because my brain has sand-bagged the sense of tragedy into a corner for my own safety. I should be more absurd, but I'm not. Recently, I have been listening to lots of music. I go in waves of interest and disinterest, but at the moment I have been spending as much non-existent money as I can muster on CDs and records. I bought a Serge Gainsbourgh CD. He's crap, isn't he? I fail to see how singing in a raspy French voice can in any way elevate his brand of music above the status of flaccid easy listening. Rod Stewart, on the other hand, isn't crap. Or Cat Stephens. Or Hope Sandoval. Or Johnny Cash. A little bit of somebody else's humanity enshrined on record. Music to invoke existence's magic strikes me as being the only stuff worth listening to, and the only art worth seeking. But then I'm always trying to recapture a state of childhood bliss, of a sort. In Tower Records yesterday, there was a young girl in front of me, about nine, and her face was covered in red blotches, while her voice had the rough tone of an adult. She could barely reach the counter, but her eyes glittered wisely, and sadly. Her shoes were dirty, and the laces had lost their little plastic caps, exposing the ends which had already begun to fray at the tips. I thought that if we could build ourselves on an untarnished child, gaining understanding and experience without destroying the wonder and spirit of joy that comes from times we don't remember, we would be doing alright. I have been spending lots of time in churches, because they are epic, and they're ours. I'd like to remember that sometimes, pitching human majesty against that of the stars. Think of all the heroes and the dignity and rage of the sea and our own lives. Nothing is eternal, but does that make our lives less grand? I'd like to see platforms dotted around the globe like a web of beacons, with people standing on them, shaking their fists and laughing and crying at the world stretching beneath their feet. Star-gazing not shoe-gazing. That would be nice. Which makes this splurge quite circular. From nothingness to being, and from transience to raging, raging. I'll be quiet now. Happy Christmas to one and all. Ruvi. +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+