This has been a Belle & Sebastian free week, more-or-less. I wrote the first few lines of a song but, as usual the first few lines are as far as I get: I'm getting better at getting better, I'm getting faster at getting worse, Perhaps it's not you I need; Perhaps I just need a nurse. If one day I get over myself, And get some resolution, Then the drinks can go down Another drain, And leave me a simple solution. For the moment I'm not much willing; Old ways are too convincing, But these are temporary measures, Before my next attempt at living. I'd call it something pithy like 'they, themselves and this' but, the hell, it's too selfish and maudlin a little dirge to deserve further development. And I actually do have a life, but it's just a rather boring one and, of course, boredom is much easier to sustain in reasonable comfort than highs are. Mundanity isn't really so bad. I loved the Robert graves poem posted by Elizabeth Daphyn today. currently: reading *The Sunday Telegraph* and *Dog Days in Soho* watched *Accident* with Dirk Bogarde (highly recommended) listening to modern American music like Adams, Bill Frisell and a really good one called 'Charley's Prelude' by Louis C. Singer: it's got the same tune as a Gainsbourg song I saw a great two-screen video piece in Edinburgh yesterday, entitled 'Turbulent' by an Iranian woman (now living in America) called Shirin Neshat. On the one screen, a man stands in front of a microphone facing the camera. Behind him is an all-male audience, dressed in white shirts. The man proceeds to sing a 13thC sufi love poem to a gorgeous orchestrally backed melody. As this stops, one's attention is drawn to the other screen by a rhythmic muttering, and we see the silhouette of a chadored woman. The stuttering gets more intense and turns into a richly musical wail, that becomes a melodic cry, and the lights rise just enough for us to see the camera whirling a pan round the same auditorium, but this time it is empty. Back on the other screen, the man and his audience continue to stare, mutely. Electronic overdubs and delays are gradually transforming the woman's wail from devastating loneliness to a rich and beautiful battle cry, which is passionate, intense and powerful in the empty room and somehow more aligned with the cosmos than the world: her staccatto intonations sounding like galloping horses, dying away, into silence. In Iran it is currently forbidden for women to sing in public. there seems to be an 'autumn thread' spinning. I hate the end of summer, but I like the onset of winter: the season of wading through woodland leaves; the ghost-story season; frost; open fires (for those still lucky enough to have them) and cosy nights indoors... and mulled wine! So I try to find an autumn poem, albeit a rather sombre one: *The Golden Leaf* by Kathleen Raine: The floating of a leaf that fell A wounded star upon the tide Out of the world, free in farewell, I saw - not able to withhold The vanishing moment with my sight

From the lock of living heart,

And down the rapid nerves, the light Plunged, where the thundering stream of blood Engulphs each mote within the eye, Upon the dark pool of my thought Turned slowly, sinking into the past, Then poised on a reflected sky. P.S. I think (from evidence elsewhere) that the poetess was in love with the idea of a man who lived by a waterfall next to the sea. This man existed, but he was real and not quite her 'idea' of him and he did not love her in return, for he was a manic depressive homosexual who cared only for the company of nature for the larger part. Of course, my interpretation stops short when I realise that she wrote the poem quite some years before she'd ever met the man to whom I refer. Incarnations of ideas are generally elusive Not very 'on topic' this post Gordon +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead 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 +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ ++++++ ++++++ ++++++ August 27th Sinister Third Birthday Red Underwear Day ++++++ ++++++ ++++++ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+