I can't let August 27th go by without posting you see. Today we're all 10 years old, and while I wasn't able to go to the picnic, and admit that I therefore hid from reading all about it a bit to avoid getting sad, I'm SO pleased you had one. And I hope you were socially responsible enough to conceive at least one more Sinister child sometime during the day. Without getting all metaphysical on yo ass, my life's changed fairly radically in the last 3 years, being stuck in the house n all with illness, but it's not all bad. I've learned lots about me, and the people I love most dearly in the world, and a few I lost but still love, still all come from Sinister. Isn't it WEIRD? I started this thing on a bored Wednesday afternoon and thought it might be "fun" for a bit, and here I am 10 years on, hardly ever posting, peeking at you all when I'm not too scared it'll make me sad for what I can't do now, but still with my whole life (for all life is is people, then music) gravitating around that odd little decision on a Wednesday afternoon. Isn't Wednesday usually the day when *nothing happens*? I owe a lot of you a lot of mails, and at some point you have to admit that you probably won't send them all, but it won't stop me trying. I hope those who were waiting 2 years ago will take this as a cheery wave, I'm still here. And Sinister's still here, which is *very* strange. Even the mailing list archive it still squirreled away in a perfumed draw at Miss Honey's Sinister Mansion, and ONE day I'll bring it out, slap it on the web, and receive emails from 40 of you, all of whom were beaming 15 year olds posting your hearts out in 1997, and all of whom are now top-drawer international lawyers and CEOs of major companies, begging me to remove their postings. Which I won't! Because what you were when you were 15 was lovely. And someone will sue me... So, today I'll be on and off in the #sinister chat channel, with auntsadie, if I can wake her up, and if any of you who used to come along to chat remember who she was. The irony is that she remembers all of you and will happily repeat back what you said to her 7 years ago. Auntsadie has a very long memory. It's on the undernet irc network, and you connect to the room #sinister. It's still there! I was reminded of this fact when someone told me a few of you still went. So I'm going back to it right now, to say happy birthday to whoever comes and have my own little picnic. WITH SCONES. Honey xxx +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
On Saturday's beautiful morning I stuck "Tigermilk" on. It is the first record by Belle & Sebastian. Some of it sounded callow to me - 'Expectations', for instance. Murdoch' bid to write songs to make wee timorous beasties feel better; was it flawed, was it strained, did it work? I don't know - yet even at those moments I could feel an authority, a sense that it would have worked at the time, for those people, because of some kind of assurance, some kind of faith, in where the voice was coming from. The LP improved. I marvelled at the distant sound of the piled-up guitars of 'You're Just A Baby'; a kind of magic that record has, a conjuring of time, rock authority. I thought of the old ilx thread about 'I Could Be Dreaming', and thought for the nth time of the comic tweeness of its bids for violence. Then I switched it all over to a better stereo. And 'We Rule The School' rustled and breathed - I could hear the air around the microphone, the dust-motes drifting past the piano. It seems a miraculous wee song, as it did in July 1999, when this LP first started making sense to me. 'Wandering Days' was almost a come-down after that, somehow not as fantastic as it was on Steady Mike's gear, in the early hours of 1.1.2000 and provoking me to exclaim about its Bowieisms. 'Mary Jo' seemed almost best of all. I guess I don't need, here, to explain what it sounded like, or why I might have liked it. But when he started singing 'for night to follow day' I could see the shadows and light of the gone years, the sun setting over ATP 2000, the bottles of gin we never finished, the promises some of which we never fulfilled, the ways the time wound up. Some of it all made me want to see Dot To Dot again, at times. Well, maybe not all of Dot to Dot. Garth Crooks reported. Then I went out, and walked the old way alone past Cecil Sharp House, which the wee kids and me among them always used to marvel or chuckle at, its curious proximity to our folksy picnic. The hill was claimed, today, by so many. The picnic in the shade, under trees. Archel handing me a can of stout. Stout giving me his raspberries. Ian A. is correct, really, about naming names - you might always name the wrong ones, or not name enough. A few highlights. The names have been removed to protect the absent. Talking about poetry, with a poet. Talking about Brussels, with a Eurocrat. Talking about our back catalogue with an ageless Joe Meek fan. Talking about long-gone band plans with LA's finest expatriate. I am struggling to remember her slogan - 'Gama Gama Go' / 'Hey Ho / Gama Go'? Maybe it was Rama, or Dhama, or Llama. Oh, yes - talking about writing books, not something I do a lot of really , with a Foxgloves collector. Listening to the Yorkians, the Yorkies, the Jorviks, making their own acoustic soundtrack. Watching the Goth Frank Baron try to take pictures of footballers. Listening to Visitors #1 singing behind a branch. Staying out alive till the last of the sun. An actual request for a solo Lloyd Cole number, no daily happening this. The slow hill down into patient sunset; the smog smudged over the skyline, the gauze cooling the pastel houses. The paving stone where my editor chalked 'Are You Feeling Sinister?' for others to follow in May 1998 . The uncanny menu connaissance of the waiters at King's Cross noodles, the streets feeling darkly metropolitan. Entering the disco to nothing less than 'Wandering Days'. The Studio 54 DJ starting his set with, what less than 'The Boy With The Arab Strap'? The folly of the boos over his hardly premature ending, obscuring the magic of 'Do You Believe In Magic?', the great cry of 2003, 2004. The better quality disco than any other disco I have been to in a while. So good that they then played 'The Boy With The Arab Strap' again. Yes - that good. That reminds me - I got Sylvia Plath to compose this the other day: Here is my honey-machine, It will work without thinking, Opening, in spring, like an industrious virgin To scour the creaming crests As the moon, for its ivory powders, scours the sea. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Moody friends. Drama queens. Your life? Nope! - their life, your story. Play Sims Stories at Yahoo! Games. http://sims.yahoo.com/ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ 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 +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+
participants (2)
-
honey＠missprint.org -
P F