There is a boy across from me on the train. He uses his iPhone to look at photos. As far as I can tell, they are boring photos of ugly people. Maybe they are friends.
He moves from one photo to another by touching the screen and making a flicking movement with his finger. The phone then moves to the next photo as though it has been 'flicked' across the screen by the boy. It has not. The phone has recognized a movement and has presented an automated response. This technology is gratifying because it flatters us in to thinking that we have total control over what takes place on the screen. When observed, there is actually a negative correlation between what is possible with computer technology, and which parts of it we actually control.
He is also listening to the Kings of Leon. And they are shite.
He moves from one photo to another by touching the screen and making a flicking movement with his finger. The phone then moves to the next photo as though it has been 'flicked' across the screen by the boy. It has not. The phone has recognized a movement and has presented an automated response. This technology is gratifying because it flatters us in to thinking that we have total control over what takes place on the screen. When observed, there is actually a negative correlation between what is possible with computer technology, and which parts of it we actually control.
He is also listening to the Kings of Leon. And they are shite.
I'm at my partner's place in Manchester. I know I'm in Manchester because yesterday, on the same road behind the hospital, I saw three people on their own, in their cars, smoking.
I am sitting in the kitchen of a terraced house with one small window partially obscured by the garden wall. What can be seen of the sky is grey, but it occurs to me that the lack of light is less to do with the environment and more to do with the design of the houses and gardens. The walls of the house are thick, the walls of the yard are high, the windows are small and rare. The design is left over from a time when retaining heat was the central concern of an architect.
I live in a set of 1960's low-rise maisonettes in Bow. In the front room, one of the walls is covered in windows which let light flood in to the living space throughout the day. This design was an attempt to raise expectations and aspirations beyond the simple necessities of working class life. It is lovely to be able to read without turning the light on, to look up out of the window at night and see the lights of the Docklands redevelopment blinking at you and to sit in the morning sun and eat your breakfast. It is also fucking cold. The windows are single glazed and metal framed, and in the winter we will have to cover them with cling film to stop all the heat escaping from the (incredibly inefficient) storage heaters.
This switch from neccesity to aspiration is what Modernist thought acheived for a large proportion of the working class. Rather than building on basic needs, and seeing what could be acheived once those needs had been catered for, needs and wants were reversed.
A cold house with wonderful light.
I am sitting in the kitchen of a terraced house with one small window partially obscured by the garden wall. What can be seen of the sky is grey, but it occurs to me that the lack of light is less to do with the environment and more to do with the design of the houses and gardens. The walls of the house are thick, the walls of the yard are high, the windows are small and rare. The design is left over from a time when retaining heat was the central concern of an architect.
I live in a set of 1960's low-rise maisonettes in Bow. In the front room, one of the walls is covered in windows which let light flood in to the living space throughout the day. This design was an attempt to raise expectations and aspirations beyond the simple necessities of working class life. It is lovely to be able to read without turning the light on, to look up out of the window at night and see the lights of the Docklands redevelopment blinking at you and to sit in the morning sun and eat your breakfast. It is also fucking cold. The windows are single glazed and metal framed, and in the winter we will have to cover them with cling film to stop all the heat escaping from the (incredibly inefficient) storage heaters.
This switch from neccesity to aspiration is what Modernist thought acheived for a large proportion of the working class. Rather than building on basic needs, and seeing what could be acheived once those needs had been catered for, needs and wants were reversed.
A cold house with wonderful light.
Teeming with lice and beetles and children carrying tins of paint bought in expensive European supermarkets.
They dip their hands in and eat the paint off their fingers and what they can't eat they wipe on your trousers and shirt.
It is dark and you can't see them properly and you want to tell them to stop but you feel that it is not your place to be telling off other people's children.
They dip their hands in and eat the paint off their fingers and what they can't eat they wipe on your trousers and shirt.
It is dark and you can't see them properly and you want to tell them to stop but you feel that it is not your place to be telling off other people's children.
I am listening to tapes at the moment. My car only has a tape player and I drive a lot, so I buy tapes from charity shops. They cost almost nothing, have their own special 'sound' (shit and warped, like vinyl only more defunct), and connect me with a period of music that I am not that familiar with. The late 80s/early 90s was the period right before my own interest in music began and seems like, the 'Anxious Interval' between music becoming important to me, and a defined period of music that older people liked. So far, I have Blur's The Great Escape, Paul Simon's, The Rhythm of the Saints, and David Bowie's, Alladin Sane.
It occurred to me that Pop is a philosophically aspirational tool. Pop musicians are basically older, cooler kids who have listen to more music, watched more films, and read more books than you. So, David Bowie allowed you in to a world of gender bending space travel, Paul Simon took you to Africa to throw pennies at musicians, and Blur... well Blur basically took you to Goldsmiths to do a B.A in cultural studies and then to a pub where everyone did coke and talked about how much coke everyone else did and how stupid they were for doing it.
It doesn't mean that it isn't a good album, but with lyrics like,
It occurred to me that Pop is a philosophically aspirational tool. Pop musicians are basically older, cooler kids who have listen to more music, watched more films, and read more books than you. So, David Bowie allowed you in to a world of gender bending space travel, Paul Simon took you to Africa to throw pennies at musicians, and Blur... well Blur basically took you to Goldsmiths to do a B.A in cultural studies and then to a pub where everyone did coke and talked about how much coke everyone else did and how stupid they were for doing it.
It doesn't mean that it isn't a good album, but with lyrics like,
'Other people turn around and laugh at you, If you said
That these are the best days
Of our lives'
That these are the best days
Of our lives'
It isn't exactly whisking you away to the magical world of rock and roll.