The wind howls outside and it lashes down with rain but I’m safe here, in this non-outside place called home, with a copy of William Blake’s “The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell” and a bag of dried figs. The figs taste very nice indeed as I systematically, with an absent-minded determination, devour the whole bagful and the book tickles my mind, vaguely, throwing sparks here and there as I let it stride across (and at times beyond) my comprehension and imagination, sparks that might ignite flames of creative disposition if I fail to keep close enough watch on the kind of thoughts that sometimes clash in a fruitful manner. Fortunately much of it boldly marches where my capacity to understand fears to tread. This of course leaves plenty of space for personal interpretation, opening vast new (undesired if peace of mind were to be maintained) areas for creativity to take root in. “The Marriage” can be read here in its’ entirety, and dried figs are available at your local supermarket. Both are warmly recommended and both probably should be consumed in moderation, to avoid constipational developments of spiritual as well as of physical nature.

What about Muse then? Not one of these endlessly-pursued beings but the band Muse? Well they visited Helsinki last week, kicking off their world tour and I was there, quite unexpectedly, with a friend, after his girlfriend-at-the-time-of-purchasing-the-tickets, a few months ago, had upgraded her status to an ex-girlfriend by the time the actual date of the show drew near. So he had a spare ticket, he offered it to me and I took up his offer, with slight hesitation and somewhat mixed feelings. This is because I used to love Muse’s first two albums and listened to them convulsively at the time “Origin Of Symmetry” was released. It co-incided with what on hindsight was the worst period of my life so far and that album, along with “Showbiz” provided a perfect soundtrack to my downfall and overall splinteredness.

After things got better inside me, as they usually do at some point, hearing those albums gradually started to raise feelings of unease and unwanted anxiety in me and they faded to background in my personal playlist, with new favourites taking their place, and with “Absolution” being such a vast disappointment to me musically. The honeymoon was over and very soon the whole love affair with Muse seemed to be over. A few years later, on purchasing my first mp3 player, I loaded the two albums on it but every time it threw up a Muse song on random play mode I felt uncomfortable and soon removed the albums. The songs I’ve heard from their later albums have sounded ok but failed to move me much so I haven’t felt the need to keep myself up to date on what Muse are up to.

And now I suddenly found myself sitting at Hartwall Arena, waiting to hear what Muse has up their sleeve on 2009. The last time I saw them was on Absolution tour on 2003 and they were brilliant and the show was breathtaking. So I sat and waited, sat, waited and waited some more. They were late, first half an hour as announced and then another half an hour, unannounced. The crowd cheered every roadie who peeked from behind the curtains or quickly checked something or other on stage. I was getting tired and frustrated and the effect of several glasses of sparkling wine I’d had was starting to seriously wear off. Also, in their haste, the tour crew had clearly forgotten to put up any kind of instruments or amplification on stage, only three towers, disguised as skyscrapers.

Then, finally, the intro started to play, the windows of the skyscrapers started to light up, one by one, looking ridiculously impressive and getting more impressive by the minute as all manner of mind-boggling visuals happened until things reached a crescendo, far beyond the boundaries of describability and moderate pompousness, or at least that’s how it felt at the moment, and the band started to play. Since it was undescribable, below is a YouTube videoclip of it, mostly failing to show what it was like, like, Really.


So did I like the show then? Not really, no. Of course it looked very stupendous and all, but it also was too big and noisy and booming, lacking the nuances they used to have when they played in smaller venues. It was all very stomping and hard and stadium-sized. They have an impressive back-catalogue to pick good songs from but they mainly chose to pick the noisiest ones and it started to get a bit mind- and ear-numbing after a while. The visual side was overwhelming but, not being familiar with all their albums, I found myself feeling relieved after they’d finished with “Knights Of Cydonia” and we all got to go home. And although I’ve been complaining now, I had a big smile on my face when I left, and not only because I could leave. It had been a nice evening anyway and my friend mr. Piippo had enjoyed it in absurdly large manner.

Muse will probably never achieve the kind of renewed significance in my life as the likes of Marillion and Genesis have brought with them on coming back after years of neglect on my side. It was good to define their current status in my life though: the feeling of unease no longer rides on the back of songs like “New Born" and I’m able enjoy them again if I choose to, without the emotional baggage. Which is nice. And here’s the video for said, and brilliant, “New Born”:

Another lonely Sunday evening, tinged with sadness and the promise of a rainy week ahead. I planned on reading a bit of the new surprising sequel to Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker-series but found the mission quite impossible while this mood lingers. So I wrapped myself around “Leaving Eden”, an album by Antimatter I had almost forgotten about but now rediscovered to be a perfect soundtrack for this season. Listen to yourself, and find yourself utterly unable to disagree.

I noticed today, in passing, that autumn is ablaze. I also noticed that usually I hardly notice such things at all but today the amount of ablazeness stopped me in my morning tracks, at quarter to seven AM, with the natural light still very much absent. A huge maple tree amidst flickering shadows, surrounded by several bushes of some sort or another (one can hardly be expected to smoothly identify various types of shrubbery now can one?), lit from above by a solitary streetlamp, leaves emblazoned with variations of green, yellow, amber and red. I stood and I stared, astonished by the beauty, or if not quite then slightly captivated by the beauty anyway, for a full minute, or at least half a minute which felt like a full minute, before hurrying onwards and forgetting all about it for the rest of the day.

But I’m looking forward to encountering the colours again tomorrow morning.

The days of autumnal beauty are always fleeting, always few, always just leaving, and always strictly numbered. If the rains refrain from falling and the air is crisp and still, it’s not altogether impossible to notice, in passing, that maybe this autumn time isn’t so bad after all.


This picture is not of the tree I saw but just something I found on the net, and although it has its’ merits, it’s nowhere near as amazing as my private autumnal maple tree in it’s secret and unphotographed location.

RECENT EXPOSURE TO WRITTEN WORD:
“Memoirs of a Master Forger”, by Graham Joyce, using the elaborately made up penname William Heaney, who is also the main character of the book, seemingly making it an autobiography of sorts. The identity of the author wasn’t a secret as such, since the book was published in United States under Joyce’s own name (and a different title), but clearly some effort went into fleshing out the Heaney character nevertheless, with a proper author bio planted around the net and even a blog. The blog started before the book was actually published but I read it only after I had read the novel and didn’t really identify the blog’s writer with the man who I got to know from the book. The book, on the other hand, was quite a treat to read and I was sorry it was over so fast. Graham Joyce writes in a gripping and straightforward manner but easily slips into a more eloquent mode when needed, his characters are intriguing and convincingly outlined and their dialogue is interesting and intelligent. And the protagonist claims he can see demons, describing his encounters with their smoke-like essence in a prosaic yet chilling way. The storyline falters a bit towards the end in my opinion and the actual ending leaves the reader standing out in the cold when a warm “come on in” would have been needed, but all in all it was a good and enjoyable reading experience and I look forward to reading more of his novels.

I’ve read other books as well. “The Hippopotamus” by Stephen Fry was entertaining, mostly because the way he puts words together is so delicious and rich. The story develops interestingly at first, in form of letters secretly sent by an undercover ex-poet (now too embittered to write anything decent anymore apart from dirty limericks) on a mission from his sick goddaughter, to unearth curious goings-on at an enormous country mansion. See the link above for more plot details. As the storyline advances and opens up, it takes a bit of a nosedive, as in my opinion so many books unfortunately tend to do. Maybe I should pick up something by Terry Pratchett for a change, he was always good with endings if I remember correctly. It’s been a few years since I last read a new Discworld novel.

Another haunting and undescribable novel from Russell Hoban: “My Tango With Barbara Strozzi”. Maybe “undescribable” isn’t the most fitting description here since M John Harrison does a pretty good job of describing what happens during the novels’ course, in the link above. Hoban’s writing is something I deeply identify with and draw considerable reading pleasure from. I’ve written about him and my admiration for him on several occasions in this blog already and feel no need to repeat myself now, except for lamenting the fact that I’m starting to reach a point where there are no new Russell Hoban novels left for me to read anymore.

It’s Sunday evening, the weather forecast promises a skyful of sleet for tomorrow, the irritatingly useless new acoustic Marillion cd is playing in the soundsystem, there’s ten apple pastries cooking in the oven for me to exclusively gorge on in a moment,  and The Loved One lives in another city now. So nothing much to rejoice about, not right now and not in the near future either, with the possible exception of the pastries.

Here’s the breakdown:

1) Sunday evening
Sunday evenings are, at the best of times, the most favoured visiting hours of Lady Melancholia, what with the week all wrapped up and a new one looming shapelessly in the horizon, sometimes in an unseemly manner. Given the current circumstances of 50% of the population of our household now having relocated elsewhere it looks like Melancholia’s visiting hours will be extended indefinitely.

2) Skyful of sleet
Not among the Top 100 of my Favourite Weather Conditions by any means. And as the first cut naturally is the deepest, every year the most shocking time is the first time an icy white and sloshy substance spews down from the clouds in an unnecessarily solid reminder of upcoming wintery unpleasantness. As an added bonus it seems to take place on an Monday this year. Wahey.

3) An acoustic Marillion cd
I’ve always instinctively hated the idea of doing acoustic versions of previously written songs. I don’t know where the feeling stems from but it’s been with me as long as I can remember and doesn’t look like going away without radical alterations of attitude on my part. Last years’ “Hindsight” by Anathema didn’t change that and “Less Is More” by Marillion won’t change that either. The album is horribly long-winded, boring and doesn’t contain a single song I’d rather prefer to hear in an acoustic version than in an original more electric form. This hasn’t stopped me from buying a ticket to their acoustic show in Helsinki next month though. It’s still MARILLION, no matter what they choose to do this year. But there really should be some kind of penalty to keep bands from doing albums like this.

4) Apple pastries
Consumed by now and very tasty they were thank you very much. My mood was temporarily improved a fraction because of them but now the plate is empty again.

5) The Loved One living in another city
She moved a week ago to Turku because of her studies at the local university. It’s a 2 hour journey on a train or a bus and she returns to Helsinki for the weekends so it’s not the end of the world but it’s not the most delightful thing ever either, especially on a Sunday evening like this when she’s just left and we both face a new week spent in a much more solitary manner than what we’ve been accustomed to lately. We spent a lovely weekend at Turku, moving her stuff in and exploring the new surroundings a week ago and on Sunday I boarded the train to Helsinki, eyes a-moist and not sure what lies ahead. Miraculously we both survived the first week and the reunion was joyous so this arrangement doesn’t look  like being an entirely awful one, as we both get more time to ourselves, for her to study useful things at the university and for me to study useless ones on the internet,  and the time together will probably be even sweeter now when it’s limited to weekends. Still, I’m subject to regular bouts of melancholy now, a lot more than I’ve been in years.

I also have more time to examine things of interest, like a Wheel of Emotions, or how the Latin word “malum” translated stands for both “evil” and “apple”,among other meanings (like “fuck”), adding curious and thought-provoking new viewpoints on the subject of Original Sin and the possibilities borne of simple mistranslations of The Bible.

“Hmm”, he thought, regarding the empty textfile on the computer screen with a frown of furious frustration and futile fiendishness. “This empty white sheet of a textfile of shining untouchedness vividly puts me in mind of virgin snowfields, still innocent of footprints or any other signs of human presence. Surely to write upon it would be to mercilessly deflower its’ beauty and to bereave it of infinite possibilities only an empty document unsoiled with words can hold. Therefore I must cast aside all these guilt-ridden visions of a blog that has insistently remained unupdated for the past three weeks. I must admire the integrity of this pure whiteness and relinquish all thoughts of Writing With Intent. I must withdraw my fingertips from the nearness of a keyboard and I most definitely must stop referring to myself in third person for therein madness lies, amongst countless other undesirable developments and complications.”

Thus he thought, and generally failed to act upon these thoughts almost completely. Feverishly tapping away in a frenzy of outpouring words was he, gripped by inspiration in a tender stranglehold, fully utilising his own more sophisticated version of a touch typing technique where the eyes seldom break visual contact with the keypad and both index fingers are used to the absolute max, producing whole words in a matter of mere minutes, cunningly leaving the remaining eight digits of his hands to gather strenght for other purposes.

“Hmm”, he thought again after a while, thoughtfully. “I still haven’t stopped referring to myself in third person. What now? If one were to switch to first-person narrative all of a sudden would one risk losing the plot altogether and perhaps become an unreliable narrator? And would it really matter since one is the sole and only character in this? And isn’t it a stride further down the path towards madness to, when talking about myself,  replace “him” with “one”, an expression traditionally reserved for inbred monarchs on the brink, for cross-eyed kings of times gone by with their crowns tilted in peculiar angle upon their heads? One thinks one’s grandeur is splendidly magnificent and one’s scepter is almightily omnipotent?”

“No,better not start messing  with different kinds of narratives at this point”, he concluded, in a thoughtful manner, with a bit of a royal flourish to it, or so he fancied. “Although the innocent whiteness may now but a fleeting memory be, despair not, for the blog actually seems to be in for a new entry, and thus the guilt of not updating will diminish for the time being, and here’s a picture of Mad King Lear. And a link to a collection of biographies of various mad monarchs.



Actually I set out to write about very different and a lot more serious things altogether. There’s been a major change in my life recently and I wanted to put down some thoughts about it, but this is how the writing seems to have turned out for now. I’ll tone down the silliness factor on the next post if possible.