NOT THE PRESSURE VALVE

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2010-03-09T17:05:00.001+02:00

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A TUESDAY OF SORTS

2010-02-23T22:16:00.001+02:00

On Tuesday evenings I like to underachieve on many fronts. I tend to mooch around the apartment, insignificantly, wondering what’s for dinner while knowing full well that it’s entirely up to me what’s for dinner, or is there a dinner at all. As the prevailing weather conditions do not exactly encourage repetitive visits to the grocery store, it’s sometimes imperative to draw open the hidden cupboard of imagination and creativity if the more prosaic and not so metaphorical cupboards of actual foodstuffs have been discovered to not contain anything much. As was the case today.

So on Tuesday evenings I sometimes like to prepare a most exquisite dish known as The Soup Of Bleakness, where all kinds of things found from around the kitchen are placed in a saucepan and cooked in boiling water until the Supper is Ready. Tonight I was faced with an almost record-breaking shortage of possible ingredients, so the soup turned out to be exceptionally bleak. The imaginary aspects seriously outweighed the nutritional ones and as no cornucopias are available for purchasing online at the moment, only option remains, to visit the groceries any day now, and ruin the perfectly barren emptiness of the fridge.

On Tuesday evenings I occasionally also like to list things, like this:

RECENT ENCOUNTERS WITH BOOKS:
“Come Dance With Me” by Russell Hoban. Not his best book but gripping enough to make me outrageously prolong my lunch hours and coffee breaks at work, in order to finish the book as soon as possible and see how it ends. It ended very much in a manner a Russell Hoban novel often ends, and was a pleasure to read. Now starting on “Deeper” by Jeff Long. Here’s what the author himself says of the book. I enjoyed the chillingness of the first part, “The Descent”, but am not sure about this new one yet. The further I read it the more it reminds me of the way Dan Simmons’ Hyperion/Endymion novels slowly fell flat on their literary faces and good ideas got overwhelmed by not so good ones.

RECENT ENCOUNTERS WITH WINE:
Lest I forget. I can’t be bothered with pedantic listing of wines anymore but these ones were too good to just let go like that.

Pata Negra Gran Reserva, a most curious and surprising red wine from Spain. Tight and crispy, yet deep with possibly hints of cherries and vanilla. Went really well with an unusual pairing for spanish red, a food not containing meat at all but sweet potatoes, feta cheese and roasted onions. Will definitely be bought again. Needs food though, the taste was a bit too much on its’ own, in all its’ nose-wrinkling and tongue-flinching glory.

Steinschaden Grüner Veltliner, a delicate and fruity white wine from Austria. Had depths to it seldom found on white wines at this price. Accompanied gruyere fondue with relaxed sureness and gave nice contrast to the pinot grigios and verdejos of late. Will be bought again and tried out in different settings. Clearly one of the very best whites I’ve had for a long while.

A HECTORFUL MONDAY EVENING.

2010-02-22T21:21:00.000+02:00

On Mondays I like to feel a bit unconnected and do my best to not be on the best of moods. In solitude I fume, in a directionless and vague manner, and I might also sulk, in moderation and for no apparent reason. After a while I usually get a little peckish and might then pull out a forgotten, dusty tin of something-or-other from the top shelf of a kitchen drawer, hoping the contents would turn out to be edible. Tonight it was smoked canned mussels in oil and tonight it wasn’t something suitable for human consumption.

On Monday evenings I also like to dig out music that I used to like but have long since totally forgotten about. Tonight it was an album called “Herra Mirandos”, released on 1973, by a Finnish singer-songwriter Hector, whose career has spun over way too many decades and whose discography consists almost entirely of albums I assume to be so hideous and horrific to the ear that it’s hard to find proper adjectives to describe them. Of course I can’t be sure because I haven’t listened to them all, and, heaven forbid, never will too.

This has never stopped me from loving bits of “Herra Mirandos”, though. The album starts with an intro called “Ekhnaton rakastui aurinkoon” and then proceeds on to the awesome title track. After that it’s mostly downhill all the way till the end, of the album and of his entire career.

So, here’s those two wonderful tracks, and now I’m off to dig deeper into the kitchen drawer. There must be something interesting and non-toxic I can eat in there.

ALTERNATIVE SOURCES OF WARMTH

2010-02-17T21:06:00.003+02:00

Since winter clearly refuses to subside it might be a good idea to see if some allegorical alternatives for warmth are to be found from the world of music. First, the “Direct Personal Involvement”-section:

Sinisthra is currently writing new material and listening to a skeleton recording of a tune we’ve been dabbling with fills me with an undeniable sensation of warmth and general feelgoodness. I’m seriously itching to fit it with some lyrical content once the actual melody lines for vocals surface. This might take some time yet since it’s practically impossible to make rehearsals happen on as regular a basis as I’d like them to happen. So there’s some sourness to the warmth derived from this.

L.A.M.F. had a meeting yesterday where we agreed to try and write an albums’ worth of music, and if decent enough songs start appearing, see if it would be possible to release an album. This naturally warms me up a bit, but since I have no creative input in that band to speak of, it doesn’t exactly set my soul on fire. Plus, in case we actually manage to come up with an album, there’s the additional nuisance of trying to find someone to release it too. I’m not anxiously looking forward to adding another unreleased and unfinished album to my list of recorded works, alongside the perpetual-and-daily-hurting-thorn-on-my-side Sinisthra album that was started on July 2008, and the ridiculously prolonged The Puritan album, for which I recorded my drum parts on November 2006. So there’s only a limited amount of warmth derived from this too.

Moving on to “Music Not Including Personal Involvement, Making It Potentially Enjoyable In A Genuine Way”-section:

The “Template For A Generation”-album by Darwin’s Radio has been slowly growing on me, until today it suddenly bloomed, as the song in the middle, “Breathe It In”, took off, and at the same time also sunk in. The main thing that’s been keeping me from hailing them as brilliant has been my mild dislike for the vocals that are a bit on the weakish side. The singer used to be in a Rush tribute band and I’ve never been a fan of that school of singing. Today I read from their web page that this singer has now upped and left but the band has decided to carry on and find a new guitarist/singer. To me, this is good news and I’m looking forward to hearing what they come up with in the future. Listening to this album makes me feel indisputably warm inside, shame about the YouTube link below cutting off before the song reaches its’ climax.

The new Tuvalu album has been the best thing lately, though. I preordered it as soon as I found out they were releasing new music, and got a free mp3 download with it. This has been blasting away on my car sound system for two weeks now, causing delicate situations in the traffic as I sometimes can’t help tapping my foot to the grooviest parts of their music. The album is absolutely brilliant, to put it mildly. Tuvalu is in my opinion the most significant band singing in Finnish for ages, only CMX has had an impact similarly strong on me. This thing definitely warms me in a most definite way in the midst of bleakest winter.

ENOUGH ALREADY!

2010-02-15T20:46:00.006+02:00

The slow, slow ascent (or is it descent?) towards Spring. Wavering, then stumbling, grinding to a standstill, numb and frozen, cancelled. The frost abides, victorious, with arms outstretched and fangs agleam. Its’ triumphant howl echoes across the desolate landscape, I came and I truly conquered and everything you dared to hope for now lies motionless under a mass of ice.

What a change from the mild-mannered and polite start of December.

We have these winters to emphasize the inevitable and proper summers, I know, although their inevitability has been questionable to certain extent, and not-for-granted-at-all for the past couple of years. Nothing questionable about this here winter we writhe in the grip of right now though. The temperature has stayed well below zero non-stop for the last 50 or so days, with no sign of relenting, and the amount of snow has entered the realm of ridiculous and cannot be comprehended anymore, let alone measured by normal humanly means. This must be the type of proper winter our grandparents so fondly misrecall whenever someone seems to be listening, of the kind they used to have, and effortlessly endured, at least several a year in their time, and I hate it, verily and fervently and by now without exception. The first week of stabbing coldness was even slightly exotic, in a way, but the novelty soon wore off, and now it’s just unbearable and apparently neverending.

It’s easy to slip into believing this will never pass. The days are brighter and longer now, whiter, but also fiercer and mutilatingly cold. How could something of this magnitude cease? Maybe there’s never been a Spring and it’s only a distorted memory, of a foolish dream.

On the other hand:

Time for Spring I say!

THE PERPETUAL VAGUE GUILT OF A NON-UPDATING BLOGGER.

2010-01-28T22:57:00.001+02:00

I feel vaguely guilty, almost daily, for not updating this blog as often as I’d like to. And my initial reaction, every time I feel that twinge of guilt, is to do something else, or to focus on something enormously unnecessary, or to just stay motionless in whatever space I happen to occupy, monitoring my thoughts and emitting a slightly worried sound every time one arises or passes by. One thought, that is. Although it’s not always “one thought”, sometimes thoughts flap by in vast flocks, sometimes they surface in a suave team of carefully selected participants, and sometimes they hobble along in quiet solitude, not exactly sure were they entitled to exist in the first place, or has there been a misunderstanding somewhere. Sometimes they fail to appear at all, irredeemably and in a most comprehensive manner. Those times are peaceful times.

But peace never lasts.

My peaceful existence was interrupted abruptly a few minutes ago by a ringing phone. The caller presented me with an unsurpassable chance to really take control of my life (well she didn’t actually use that expression to be precise) and join a “sock club for men”, presumably with an option to start receiving an absolutely smashing pair of socks (or just one sock?) every month until the end of all time. For a stunningly reasonable price. Alas, my intelligence momentarily eclipsed, I let the unsurpassable pass and politely declined the offer, clearly against my better judgement, and will now never know what I will be missing on from now on, every month, until the end of times and possibly beyond. Would those socks have been amazing? Would the act of wearing a pair of those socks elevated me to another level of understanding and illumination? Would some of the socks have been embellished with pretty colours and/or decorations? Would I even have received a pair of socks entirely free of charge?? A multitude of questions, wildly stampeding across the barren desert of no answers.

But back to the vague guilt. Maybe I’ll find it easier to update more often and expel the guilt more regularly if I start segmenting and subtitling things, like I originally did. Then it would be just like filling out a form, nifty and practical. “What pissed me off today: everything; what filled me with joy today: can’t remember, maybe nothing did.”

RECENT REASONS TO NOT FEEL ENTIRELY NEGATIVE:
We’ve been putting things together with my old band L.A.M.F. for several months now and tomorrow we’ll play a gig in Helsinki. I’m pretty excited about it. I’d never have thought it would come together again this easily. It’s been nice rekindling old friendships and the atmosphere is relaxed and smooth because this time we are under no pressure to succeed and make the band bigger. There’s been a cross-swell of emotions as we reminisce about “the old times” but no hard feelings have arisen, at least none so far. We had a fair bit of turbulence between us way back then but way back then was 15 years ago. I hope the gig goes as well as the rehearsals have went. And I hope I can be bothered to check out the few cover songs I’m supposed to check out and play tomorrow, at some point before actually getting up to perform. This might not happen. Then again, I’m pretty confident I’m able to stumble through a Sex Pistols song without proper knowledge of how it goes, wouldn’t be the first time.

Here’s us performing on Finnish tv programme called “Jyrki”, back in 1996, all sleek cheeked and lithe.

RECENT REASONS TO NOT FEEL PARTICULARLY POSITIVE:
I haven’t had the time to cook proper weekend dinners for awhile and last weekend, when I finally had the time, was faced with a surprising and unexpected case of “if you don’t use it, you lose it”. Suddenly I wasn’t able to prepare edible dishes anymore and this wasn’t discovered until the food was already served and nothing could be done about it. My lemon-sprinkled chicken breast stew with spinach and rice emerged from the oven entirely not tasting of spinach and suppressingly tasting of lemon, with the chicken tasting of nothing at all and the whole grain rice tasting just bad and way too al dente.

The next evening I aimed to redeem myself with a seemingly safe choice of beef tenderloin and honey covered root vegetables. I must have been abducted or gotten caught in some sort of a time warp in the middle of it all, because what I now brought from the oven to the table was a selection of seriously undercooked beetroots, carrots and yellow turnips, accompanied by a presumably medium+ filet mignon that in reality was far beyond well done. It was horrible and serious cracks appeared in the polished area of my self esteem where cooking skills are kept, or rather the sad remains of those skills as it now seems.

RECENT EXPOSURE TO WRITTEN WORD:
The boring and long-winded Black Sabbath biography “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath” by Joel McIver where the author endlessly recites the cities the band played in and the songs the albums contained. If there is deeper content within those lists it’s hidden so deep I haven’t spotted it so far. I’ve never been much of a Sabbath enthusiast so I’m not that familiar with their career but I’m sure a lot more gripping tale could have been woven from their mishaps and undertakings. The book presents them as jovial and talented fellows but also gives an impression of a bunch of simpletons who quit and rejoin the band on a regular basis, and, during the eighties, slowly transform the band into a laughing stock with an endlessly changing line-up, weak album releases and a dozen unwisely chosen singers.

The good thing about the book was that it made me dig out my almost forgotten old Sabbath albums. “Master Of Reality”, in particular, is utterly brilliant. I also checked out some of their live performances on YouTube and was delighted to discover, amid all the silly prancing and bouncing around that Ozzy Osbourne’s later day stage presence mostly consists of, some serious gems. Look at the energy and passion of this one, shot in Paris on 1970. “The mighty Sabbath unleashing War Pigs”, says the description, saying it all.

DECEMBER AND JANUARY MOSTLY SORTED OUT TOO. JUST LIKE THAT.

2010-01-17T21:24:00.003+02:00

After a neatly sorted out November things went into a bit of a hyperdrive and suddenly I no longer felt the desire to update this blog, nor had the time to do so even if I wanted to. After having sacrificed many a free evening on the altar of driving school during the past autumn, in a feverish and at times ridiculously remote hope of someday acquiring a proper drivers’ licence, things finally reached a conclusion of sorts as I actually got one just before christmas and was smacked on the face by the brutal fact that I now was entitled to drive a real motorised vehicle in a genuine traffic environment, on an open road, among other cars! All this before I had reached my forties!

So I went out and did what I now was entitled to, and continue to do so on a daily basis, boldly facing up to insanely demanding challenges like changing lanes smoothly and finding my way to my actual destination, without the engine dying every single time the lights go from red to green and I release the clutch without revving the engine enough, and without driving 20km per hour slower than everyone else all the time. Herculean efforts I have only partially succeeded to overcome so far, with the aid of my dauntless and tenacious 2008 Suzuki Swift 1,3 GL, pictured below stuck in a snowbank on my doorstep.

I have also actively rehearsed with two bands these past several months. Sinisthra played a gig in Helsinki a few weeks ago, to the general satisfaction of many of the people involved I’d say. It’s still roaring, it’s still writhing and it’s still reasonably full of fire, with just enough songs good enough to make up a show long enough to keep the listeners happy enough to stay and maybe nod appreciatively. It’s good to be part of something like this. Here’s some pics by Tina Solda. On some of the pics we occasionally look like a real rock band that plays gigs regularly, releases records and might even be interviewed by music press, instead of a bunch of oiks from Lohja who strum their tunes in constant fear that someone spots out how wobbly it all sounds and how unlikely it is that we all finish the song at the same time. The magic of photography.

The other band is my old punk band L.A.M.F., of which nothing much exists in the internet to link to. We put out some albums back in the 90’s, did the rounds with variable success for a few years, and then it all sort of imploded. The times changed, the personnel changed and the overall interest waned. Now we are resurrected, at least temporarily, and it feels mostly good to be back. We’ll be playing a gig at the end of this month in Helsinki, and maybe more gigs later on. I’ll write more about this later if I happen to feel like writing more about this.

WELL, THAT’S NOVEMBER ALL SORTED OUT, THEN. HERMES, TOO.

2009-12-02T21:14:00.006+02:00

I was hoping, in a delicately guarded and inconspicuous way, that if I stubbornly just ignored November then it would just sort of go away. And whaddaya know: it did. Here we are, right as reindeer and cute as a mutton, it’s the 2^nd day of December in the year of 2009, praise be, and the November of this year is duly taken care of, truly sorted out and verily filed away in an appropriate manner, neatly and tidily, with curiously warm temperatures all around and a pointedly comprehensive absence of snow. Yes, it was a suspiciously good one and being now firmly in the past tense makes it even better. December always shines in more soothing and comforting colours than its’ predecessor, even if those colours mostly consist of different shades of gray. The days may grow darker still as we tumble down the last remaining weeks of the year, but the spirit grows lighter as the pendulum slowly starts to swing towards springtime.

Whoops. Did I momentarily slip into the realm of Overtly Optimistic Tree-Hugging Hippie Bullshit there? After all it’s only 2 Dec and there certainly is plenty of time left for all kinds of unpleasantness to occur, weatherwise. Well, let it occur, I’m content at the moment, hugging my tree of November-gone-past.

Here’s some trinkets of information I never knew I didn’t know until I found out, to further enlighten the dark season:

THINGS I WAS PREVIOUSLY UNAWARE OF:
Hermes, a member of the Greek pantheon, the messenger of the gods and so on and so forth, is also a patron of a stupendous amount of different go-getters and never-do-wells, and of things and ideals of steeply conflicting qualities. According to an educational book I’m currently reading he was “definitely the most talented of all gods. His inventions include alphabet, lyre, scales for both music and weight, mathematics, olive tree farming and boxing.” He was the patron of both people who write and recite poetry and people who punch others with fists which must have caused a lot of delicious situations as lifestyles and ideals clashed (“He’s our god!”, “No he’s bloody not!”, “Yes he bloody fucking is!”) in those mythical times of ancient Greece when persons were still only two-dimensional and couldn’t have opinions that disagreed with their chosen lifestyle or belief system.

An inebriated, pugilistic poet of modern times has become almost a norm these days but somehow I doubt that athletics mingled much with thieves, or poets with merchants back when Hermes held sway over his colourful bunch. With the vast crowd of gods and demigods hanging around the pantheon, couldn’t they split and share the duties more evenly? Ares had only the bloodlust and slaughtering to take care of, surely he could have taken the burden off his fellow Olympian a little by adding, say, wrestling to his repertoire?

Here’s what Wikipedia says about Hermes. He was also a psychopomp, among all his other duties, which must have been entirely awesome even, and especially if, you didn’t know what is required of a person bearing such title. He probably invented Hermesetas the artificial sweetener too, being the god of inventing and all, although I couldn’t find any facts to support this supposition of mine.

Pictured above is Hermes with Athena, by Bartholomaeus Spranger. He looks like a twat (Hermes, not Bart. I don’t know what Bart looks like, presumably Flemish) in his baseball cap and definitely is not my god, whether it was music, literature, travelling or olive tree farming I happened to dabble with. Althought the psychopomp part is quite cool.

IN PRAISE OF MUSE AND DRIED FIGS

2009-10-28T21:31:00.002+02:00

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”:

HAIL DIVINEST MELANCHOLY, ETC.

2009-10-25T20:48:00.000+02:00

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.

BRIEFLY ADMIRING THE AUTUMN COLOURS

2009-10-21T20:57:00.005+03:00

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.

A LOOK AT THE STATE OF THINGS

2009-10-11T20:49:00.004+03:00

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.

OF CABBAGES AND KINGS. WELL NOT OF CABBAGES AS SUCH BUT A BIT ABOUT KINGS ANYWAY.

2009-10-06T20:32:00.003+03:00

“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.

VENTING SOME FRUSTRATION, PROBABLY VIA THE VALVE CONTROLLING PRESSURE, OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

2009-09-13T15:54:00.004+03:00

Quoth Plato: “Wise men speak because they have something to say; Fools because they have to say something.”

My major guideline in writing this blog has always been “if you can’t think of anything worthwhile to write, start writing anyway”. If Plato were to surf the web, anxious to, say, find out more about Sinisthra, perhaps the philosophical aspects of regular coughing, sputtering and coming-to-a-standstill-for-months of the engine that powers Sinisthra, and the allegedly fascinating music the band claims to have recorded and hollowly threatens to release any year now, and click a link leading here, he probably wouldn’t hesitate much in deciding which one of the definitions in the quotation above would suit me better. I boldly stand behind my thesis of firmly allowing form to override content when the amount of content on supply is insufficient. This concept has proved most fruitful during the years and is summarised in the title I, much to the dismay of others involved, forced upon one of the early demo-cd’s of Sinisthra (still called Nevergreen back then), “Empty Banalities Adorned With Dashing Eloquence”.

Content is wildly overrated in my opinion. Of course it helps if you have a blindingly brilliant idea to start out with but in no way it is essential to have one in order to come up with something that seemingly has one. You just write whatever comes out, review it, remove or replace the most obviously crap lines until what is left passes on as decent. Then you repeat the process as many times as necessary to make the text look shiny. The possible meanings and allusions then may or may not be there and it doesn’t really matter whether they exist or not, especially in something as abstract as a song lyric. They might surface later. There might be revelations, a few years down the line, of the “so-THAT’S-what-I-meant-with-it” kind. And since it’s not possible to control in any way how other people read into whatever, it shouldn’t be the headache of the writer how the writings are perceived.

It’s a bit harder to apply this method to ordinary prose but not impossible at all, as everything contained in this blog entry clearly demonstrates. Almost 400 words written so far (according to the “Word Count” feature of the program I’m using) and none of them planned beforehand. I’m just whiling away the Sunday afternoon, writing whatever springs to mind and trying to ward off the frustration gushing forth from the seemingly bottomless well of unfulfilled and stalled musical aspirations. The Puritan album project I’m part of has lain dormant for over a year now and doesn’t look likely to reactivate itself in the near future. I’m pretty ok with the situation since my involvement with it wasn’t so intense to start out with, with no artistic input apart from playing drums. I miss the company of mr. Hynninen the vocalist of The Puritan and look forward to working with him again at some point, after his current activities of singing with Spiritus Mortis and releasing a solo album relent a little.

The major thorn in my side is the endlessly prolonged Sinisthra album project though. It recently became clear that we are forced to put things on hold once again, probably until the end of the year, just when I had, in a somewhat naive manner, gingerly envisioned it getting finished before autumn. I’m happy about the recognition and attention, not to mention income mr. Joutsen the singer of Sinisthra is in the receiving end of, fronting Amorphis. He surely deserves it and the amount of talent he possesses would have dramatically gone to waste were he to have stayed only a singer of an obscure smalltime band from Lohja. Sometimes it’s just a bit hard to come to terms with the cold facts and the slow working pace his main involvements force upon the progress of our mutual little hobby that is Sinisthra. I sorely need to get this album off my back and have been needing it for a good while by now. I know I will, eventually, but until that happens the songs will run in circles in my head, in a turbulent flow, drastically eroding my peace of mind. The hardest part is the waiting part, the lying low in a pool of inactivity, and it doesn’t help to have a radio playing in the background as I write this, rotating “House Of Sleep” and “Silver Bride” on an hourly basis.

Oh well. Things happen when things are bound to happen and I need to come to grips with that. I might as well wrap this up with another fitting quote, this time by the stunningly enwigged officially-appointed-by-British-government poet Thomas Shadwell:

“The haste of a fool is the slowest thing in the world.”

PS. This link, unequivocally and invariably, leads to “Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century”, the one-stop blog spot for your Nineteenth Century Mustache needs! Phew! Pretty essential stuff.

WITH FAKE GOLD I WILL PAY FOR YOUR FORGED DIAMONDS, O AUTUMN

2009-09-09T19:08:00.010+03:00

As summer rain slowly gives way to autumn rain and every morning is darker than the one before I still find myself with nothing much to say. We are entering the (supposedly) most depressing time of the year when the flapping sound caused by the wings of summer is irretrievably receding into southern distance, migrating away, according to the laws of changing seasons and other such weakly justified nonsense. On the brink of a new, not-so-anxiously-awaited-for season it’s appropriate to quote V.A. Koskenniemi, the ”second greatest Finnish poet of all time”:

PROLOGI
Tuolla ikkunoissa -- nään sen kyllä --

on jo kaikki ruusut kukkineet.

Viime yönä kuuran kimalteet

ensi kerran kiilsi kattoin yllä.

Lähtee onnellisemmille maille

kesä tenhovoimin, luomistöin.

Surmaa halla harmain syksyöin

kaiken, joka nuoruutta jäi vaille.

Poissa kaikki laulajat on puiston,

poissa, paennehet etelään.

Tänne yksin istuen ma jään

varaan jonkun köyhän muiston.

Lähtee korkealla kurkein kuoro

yli kattoin ylhään vapauteen.

Päiväin pitkäin painoon uupuneen,

koska, koska lähteä on vuoro?

That was a prologue of his first, 1906 published collection called “Runoja” (Poems). His poems haven’t been very widely translated to English I think and I’m not going to start trying either. His lines are way too delicate and subtle for me to mutilate. Here’s a little background information of him in Finnish. History has placed him somewhat in the shadow of Eino Leino, hence the expression “second greatest”. The two poets had a bit of a rivalry going on back at their heyday, mostly generated by the press instead of the poets themselves, much in the same way that music press nowadays loves to create and then nurture artificial conflicts between pop bands.

I was aware that Koskenniemi wrote the lyrics to Finlandia Hymn but beyond that his works have remained unexplored to me, until one typically humid Spanish afternoon a few months ago when I was idly leafing through a magazine on the terrace back in Fuengirola. They have a publication called Olé-lehti there, for Finnish expats, designed to make life easier on foreign coast for people mostly on their “golden years”. Amidst the light and sunny articles of tanned and smiling people and various embarrassing columns struggling towards humorousness I spotted, very very out of place in that context, a columnist quoting some deeply chilling verse about Death sitting at the head of a table and the overall futility of, well, everything. Impressed by the bleak dark quality of this text I wrote down the author’s name, to examine his writings more closely in the future, in a more fitting location where the temperature isn't over 40 degrees celsius most of the time, effectively making any attempt at reading sombre things next to impossible.

When I got back to Finland I popped in at my local second hand bookstore and acquired a lovely 80 years old volume of V.A. Koskenniemi’s Collected Poems, for a ridiculously low sum of money. I haven’t found the particular poem about Death yet (the book has over 400 pages and one doesn’t gulp down collections of poems like one might gulp regular novels) but it doesn’t matter since there’s plenty of other verse filled with solemn beauty and sharp insight to enjoy. He was clearly a man of tremendous talent and vision. And his wife Vieno was part of the same family tree as my fiancée so naturally my poetic ambitions and abilities by this are enhanced and greatly underlined.

Or undermined.

Anyway, I plan on savouring slowly the fruits of his poesy on the cold and lightless months that lie ahead. As autumn leers behind the corner, graciously baring its’ fangs, only barely tolerating the last remaining sunny days, safe in the knowledge of things to come; Autumn, already impatient, vindictive and ferocious; Autumn, eager to usurp the throne and Reign with a capital R. I’ve never seen much good in this special season and the jewels it seems to grant to some people. How on earth is lesser amount of light and warmth in any way preferable to greater amount of light and warmth I fail to comprehend. It’s like choosing canned beef over filet mignon, or pink t-shirt over black, or Exodus over Genesis.

But I can’t be bothered to complain. Whining and whinging won’t stop the autumn from arriving and sulking and moping about it probably won’t prevent the inevitable either. So bring it on, Autumn! I’m at least 25% better prepared than on most autumns past and my loins are fiercely girded. Bring it fucking on!

OF THE POET WITHIN, AND HOW TO KEEP IT PROPERLY STARVED

2009-08-27T20:35:00.002+03:00

Ho hum. I dimly recall, a while ago, writing something to the effect of sorely needing to update the blog more often. This intention clearly falls into a category labelled ”ideas somewhat removed from actual everyday reality”. Although it’s not been exactly hectic of late, I’ve still been moderately busy, or at least busy enough not to have felt like sitting down to see what comes out once I start typing. The days are taken by the dayjob, not irritatingly but time- and energy-consumingly enough to prevent any longer periods of sitting down and doing some thinking (often required to some extent before actual writing). And since I finally got around to acting upon my long-time resolution to get a drivers’ licence any year now, the evenings are engulfed by theory lessons on the knacks of steering a motorised vehicle, and a nervous-ish anticipation of actually getting behind the wheel of one (this will happen tomorrow, for the first time).

So apart from driving school textbooks I haven’t read anything much lately. I ordered a couple of books by Stephen Fry from Amazon.co.uk, as well as several other books too, to frown at me accusingly from the bookshelf, looking pointedly unread and forlorn. I will deal with these books in due time. I was forced to turn off Amazons’ ”e-mail notifications on special offers”-option to put an end to ex tempore purchases, but not before facing the fact that it would be impossible for me to carry on without Stephen Fry’s guide to writing proper verse, called "The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within". My inner poet has peered cautiously from behind the sturdy bars of its’ dank and unlit cell for years already, and occasionally I’ve thrown in a half-gnawed bone, or a loaf of stale bread, maybe a small cup of sour wine, thus keeping the poet from withering away completely. There wouldn’t be much point in keeping a dead poet locked up within. But now, at some point, after having carefully consulted the guide book first, I might serve the inner poet a proper meal for a change, and maybe even let it briefly glance at the sun.

Actually I already had An Idea For An Epic Poem, this morning while sitting at my Throne Of Poesy (i.e. toilet) at 6 o’clock, which has often proved to be an excellent time (and a place) for coming up with declamatory off-the-wall ideas. At 6 o’clock my corpus may already be partially animated but my thought patterns most definitely have not reached their normal dull functionality yet so fruitful are those precious and frail morning moments when it comes to unexpected springing up of ideas. Many a song title has descended upon me on similar moments in the past (like ”My Sweet Nothing” and ”Closely Guarded Distance”). This mornings’ idea was ludicrous enough to require further development, a twelve-song cycle involving months of the year and days of the week randomly combined (”February Monday”, ”October Sunday”, etc.) and the outcome of such combinations. February Monday differs greatly from, say, July Monday and the colours and emotions contained within should provide interesting contrasts and a lot of unintelligible poetic blather and general redundancy. If I ever get around to constructing it properly.

But now this here August Thursday is delicately starting to settle into slumber, waning and lessening into the inevitable August Friday and a lot I planned on saying remains unsaid. Like the adequate and elegant use of swearwords, and Finlands’ Second Greatest Poet of all time. Maybe next time, or the time after that.

Hmm. This didn't have much to do with the title of the post. Oh well.

PROG ROCK, LITERATURE, PICNICS, BOTTLED WATER AND ANCIENT LEWDNESS, ALL ROLLED INTO ONE!

2009-08-16T15:45:00.004+03:00

My last post, advertising the magnificent new IQ album, sparked response from various people who contacted me using various methods, just to tell me they liked it too. I appreciate this and am aware that enabling comments on this blog would make it easier to leave feedback on such matters. Still, since I like to maintain the illusion that I’m only writing to myself and don’t really want to find out who or how many people actually read this blog, the option to comment will remain unavailable. It’s easier to voice opinions to an audience unseen. But I’m always glad to share something I enjoy, which, when it comes to music, isn’t very often.

I finally got around to reading ”Paperweight” by Stephen Fry. Mr. Leinonen thrust the book upon me sometime last year and have refused to take it back on the several occasions I’ve tried to return it on the grounds that I’m absolutely never going to read it no matter what. Now that I actually am reading it, I’m very glad that in this case my definition of ”never” turned out wildly inaccurate. The kind of language mr. Fry uses is a pleasure to read even though I have to consult my dictionary every dozen or so words which is at times frustrating since looking a word up doesn’t automatically add it to my vocabulary. Sometimes I check up the same word for several days in a row, only to forget the meaning by the time I come across it again the next day. This can be very exasperating, but repetitio est mater studiorum, as the latin-speaking folks of times gone by were supposedly in the habit of saying in certain situations, most astutely.

I don’t know if they had a latin equivalent to ”forgetting is the father of frustration” but if they didn’t they clearly hadn’t thought things through properly and weren’t so astute after all. Examining the writings discovered on the walls in Pompeii might shed some light on this topic. Maybe they were too busy depicting various scenarios of sexual intercourse on their walls and had no time to think up witty and quibbly follow-ups to proverbs already established, those lusty latin libertines.

And now onto something else, seemingly unrelated but still cunningly interconnected to what I’ve been talking about so far. A year ago, everything was awesome as a new spring water called Plup was launched in Finland, with plenty of hullabaloo and expensive advertisement. Stefan Lindfors designed the container (it’s hard to call something like this a bottle) and a most exquisite and irresistible design it is too. This is what is says on their webpage, among other things: ”PLUP encourages consumers not to return the bottle, but rather to re-fill and re-use it. It’s highly durable and suitable for heavy use, such as hiking or boating.” Turns out Sunday afternoon picnicking doesn’t count as ”heavy use” but rather falls into a category of activities harder and more demanding than hiking or boating. And how do I know this? Because last Sunday, for a nice and cosy picnic in a sunny and lovely park, I had packed also a refilled Plup-bottle (or a container). After all the food and wine had been consumed, the refilled Plup-bottle (let’s agree it can be called a bottle, with certain reservations) remained untouched so back to the watertight picnic-basket it went, with other containers, and two paperback novels.

On returning home I discovered that all the 0,4 litres of water originally contained in the Plup-bottle were no longer in the Plup-bottle, due to a flimsy cork that clearly isn’t capable of holding liquids, but at the bottom of the watertight basket, with the paperback novels, one of which was this aforementioned ”Paperweight” by Stephen Fry, borrowed from mr. Leinonen. 4 dl is a surprisingly large amount of liquid when it’s in a pool somewhere it isn’t supposed to be, or in this case, absorbed into pages of a book. Plup might preserve the environment and the Baltic Sea but it failed to preserve the readability of a common paperback novel. So into the litter bin went the Plup-bottle and quickly towards Amazon.co.uk went I to get a new copy to replace the ruined one, shuddering at the prospect of mr. Leinonen finding out and wreaking merciless havoc upon my poor thoughtless person.

Summa summarum (as the romping Roman rascals of Pompeii might have said in between painting pictures of giant phalluses and reckless orgies on their walls): A new copy of ”Paperweight” was acquired for an excessively lucrative price of 0.01GBP plus postage (although the old copy, after having dried up, doesn’t look completely ruined either), I still like the design of Plup but will not buy another bottle of it (ungleefully sharing this resolution with a lot of other people too because according to this link Plup has flopped in a major way), the new IQ album continues to be excellent and I really need to find out more about the sensual way ancient Romans preferred to decorate their surroundings with.

OF THE RISKS OF LISTENING TO NEW MUSIC

2009-08-08T13:03:00.001+03:00

My dayjob is at times a solitary affair and a whole day might go by without a single word exchanged with anyone. Sometimes a day might go by without any contact with other human beings. Which is absolutely fine by me because I can then indulge in old Genesis albums on my mp3 player, and, on occasion, gingerly check out some new music too. A while ago I bought a copy of a Classic Rock Presents Prog magazine on an airport newsstand to have something to read on the plane. It was ridiculously expensive, packed in a colourful cardboard wallet that went straight into the litter bin and including a sample cd of the artists featured in the magazine that almost went straight into the litter bin too. Almost, but not quite. Thinking that some of those bands might emit sounds to please my battered auditory organs I saved the album for later use.

This ”later use” normally means briefly listening to bits of the hapless cd with mr. Mäkinen the guitarist of Sinisthra, in a very prejudiced manner in a car while driving to band rehearsals, before tossing it out the window accompanied by disbelieving cries of god that was some crap excuse for music. Although recently we’ve become more environmentally aware and instead of throwing the cds out the window they now usually end up on the floor of the car, allowing easy access for wiping your boots on, spilling the overflow from cans of energy drink and sprinkling bits of potato crisps that miss the mouth or spray out of there because of the outrage caused by hearing bad music. Many an album full of undeniable musical aspirations and a large amount of effort clearly invested into making the grandiose artistic visions come true have received an unjust and hurried verdict of being utter garbage after a hasty listen to the first 30 seconds of some of the songs. And many an album undoubtedly will in the future too, in a bigoted and anxious-to-condemn circle of elitist know-it-all music critics contained in the car on its’ way to Sinisthra rehearsals.

The better way then, to get properly exposed to new music, is to listen to it alone in a peaceful place, in my case at work with the headphones. I seem to have misplaced the Classic Rock cd but, prompted by it, decided to finally check out Dream Theater and their new cd ”Black Clouds And Silver Linings”. I liked the title of the album and as the first song started it sounded reasonable enough but by the time the vocalist made his entrance I strongly disliked it already and as the song finally finished I firmly hated it, with all the unnecessary but somehow still very cliched and predictable twists and turns of the arrangement, mediocre metal riffs and vocal melodies and the ridiculous pretentiousness of the lyric that was probably supposed to be a touching story about a person surviving a car accident, or something like that. I listened to the album a few times and found nothing I could enjoy. All the ”prog metal”-stuff I’ve ever heard I’ve found repulsive to me and this definitely was no exception. I then decided to try out their ”Images And Words”-album and see if it would fare better in my ears, being heralded as their classic and best work. I hated it even more and after two songs saw no reason to waste my time any further on something that clearly is not suited to my tastes at all. Disillusioned, I didn’t listen to anything for days after that.

Yesterday, I put on the new IQ album called ”Frequency”. It’s being hailed as their best album by the critics, and this is curious for a band that’s been in existence for some 25 years. I dimly recall giving their 1985 album ”The Wake” a spin years ago, not liking it at all and dismissing IQ as another forgettable neoprog band that never amounted to much, with a slightly irritating vocalist and very outdated-sounding material, like Pallas and Pendragon. All this has changed on ”Frequency”, and as I gather, on all their albums for the past 10 or so years. As soon as the store on their website is up again I will order some of their older cd’s because this new one is simply superb and it really made my day. The last time I was this impressed by an album was probably when The Mars Volta released ”Bedlam In Goliath” and ”Frequency” by far surpasses the impact made by that album. It has all the elements of classic prog that hit the soft spot in me but possess an individual voice strong enough to lift it above bands like The Watch who, despite putting the all-too-familiar pieces together in a way cunning enough to make them enjoyable to me, still only put together pieces originally invented by someone else, mostly Genesis in their case. The influence of Genesis is quite evident in what IQ does as well, but they have the advantage of having been at it for so long that they clearly know what they do, how to infuse the influences into your own stuff without sounding too familiar but not too obscure either.

Listen to yourself. Wonderful stuff, and I’m really looking forward to getting their previous albums now.

The risks of listening to new music are undisputable. One never knows what one might hear. More often than not it sadly is something one would have done perfectly well never hearing in the first place, but on a rare occasion good things pop up and make listening to music worthwhile again.

OF THE ARDUOUSNESS OF READING A BOOK

2009-08-06T18:32:00.007+03:00

Sometimes selecting a book to read and actually starting to read it seems to require a lot more than I have in me. The pros and cons must to be carefully weighed out in advance, prior to taking action. Ramifications need to be considered, and often reconsidered as well. Is the effort worth pursuing? There are no waterproof guarantees of quality. A reading experience may start pleasantly enough and then suddenly go sour. What if it’s just not a very good book and I find out too late? Maybe I mistake it for a slow starter and just fight my way through the first 100 pages, hoping it will pick up speed as it goes along, and then it doesn’t? Rarely have I had the nerve to abandon a book if I’m already some 100 pages in, no matter how boring it turns out to be. Then I’ll just have to finish it because it’s too late to quit, and this tribulation might drag on for weeks at worst. It might be one of those ”every serious book needs to have at least 750 pages”-kind of special tribulations, with every even vaguely interesting detail of the plot already given up and spilled out on the back cover blurb.

To avoid these tragedies I usually like to do some research before purchasing a book. Usually but not always. I’ve had some books by Umberto Eco and Roberto Calasso lurking in the bookshelf for several months now, unread and peering at me accusingly every time I’ve approached the shelf. ”The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony” by Calasso felt insanely interesting because of the review, and turned out to be so horribly long-winded a non-starter that I was forced to drop it before its’ tediousness had crushed me beyond redemption, after having read only 15 pages. We clearly didn’t meet up under favourable stars, me and the book, and I plead guilty. Maybe some other time, but most definitely not during high summer and a therefore radically shortened attention span.

Warm climate calls for easy reading, so mostly it’s been wine magazines and autobiographies lately, of Tori Amos, Rene Magritte and H.R. Giger, respectively, with only the Tori book digging a bit deeper into the artists’ background. Giger’s images brought welcome shivers to a hot summer day in their feverish yet chilling depiction of unpleasant things but failed to impress me deeper. Actually I found some of his concepts, like a sexually insatiable biomechanoid with only one leg, one arm and not much else, a bit silly rather than chilling and that’s probably not what the artist intended in the first place. Magritte’s paintings, on the other hand, tend to captivate me for long, long moments and I enjoy their drier coldness and dispassionate objectiveness immensely.

”How to Travel with a Salmon” by Umberto Eco I was able to wade through, a complete book, taking a lot of time and skipping only a few chapters here and there, but then again it’s a collection of light and satirical columns he used to write for a newspaper so there was not much effort or concentration needed (on my part). Unfortunately I found the essays to be of highly variable quality, with sharp insight and astoundingly aptly crafted and entertaining sentences and witty observations giving way, as the book progresses, to what feels like empty banter and tiresome prattling too closely associated with local (Italian)culture and bygone (late 70’s-early 80’s) times (when the texts were originally written) to be universally interesting anymore. The outrageously exaggerated remarks and over-the-top satire at times felt brilliantly timeless and the next moment horribly dated but the marvellous moments still outweighed the yawn-moments. Somewhat.

Since it’s technically still summer and novels with actual storyline are still out of the question I now juggle with Michael Palin’s diary ”The Python Years” and Stephen Fry’s collection of radio broadcasts and whatnot called ”Paperweight” and remain undecided on which one to let fall open in my hands.

Oh well. Here’s an Emergency Yodel Button (in Case of Emergency I suppose), and below is a picture of my wee nephew and namesake, mr. E.Virta of two and a half years of age, in an extremely focused state of concentration, determined to explore the contents of his nostril as thoroughly and as exhaustively as he deems necessary. With numerous blissful years of not having to worry about reading matters still ahead of him.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT FORGETTING

2009-07-31T16:28:00.004+03:00

The house we build for our memories to inhabit sometimes is a large one, with rooms and floors aplenty and countless closets and cupboards, some of them placed there on purpose in the original blueprints, and some just having materialized there at some point, unknown to us and without our consent. These unintentional spaces are necessary too, dark and crowded corners to give contrast to the airy and cosy living rooms of the mind, to complete the peaceful and harmonious surroundings for our momeries to dwell in, and to thrive in.

But what does it matter where our memories live if we never visit them? I can’t hold memories in my head, they leak out and disappear, vanish into ether, or at the very least change shape and derange as time goes by. My being consists of things I’ve experienced, feelings I’ve felt and thoughts I’ve thought and although I don’t actively need to revisit them during my daily routines I’d still very much like to keep them somewhere safe where they can remain untouched by passing time.

And my mind definitely is not such a place. It is capable of carrying the most basic and profound recollections of experiences that have shaped me but all the nuances tend to fade away and entangle with other similar memories. These nuances are what gives hues to colours and depth to flavours, the ability to remember little details surrounding the Big Things. These nuances add flesh to an otherwise barren skeleton of the Self and breathe life into shapeless clay the lasting memories are moulded of. So these nuances are pretty fucking important, come to think of it, and these nuances are so easily and quickly forgotten, unconstant and ephemeral, that they need a warm and secure home.

The house of my memories therefore needs to be made of words. And these words need to be written down regularly enough to maintain a sense of bigger picture and to contain as much of what I might like to revisit in the future as possible. This occurred to me as I skimmed through some of my past blog entries recently, surprised at how soon the everyday things get forgotten, and how much delight they can bring later on if I was fast enough to write them down in the first place.

Thus, a conclusion: I need to update this blog more often. Each entry testifies that the past was not just shapeless and grey blur. Reading about what a particular sunset looked like and how horrible a specific wine tasted brings the original memory back, sometimes vague and sometimes sharp, but back nevertheless. And that’s what matters. Most of the things that feel too prosaic now are not so in the long run. Especially if I adorn them with adjectives fascinating and colourful enough.

This might be a good place to include a picture of me and The Loved One, on a moonlit beach after an unforgettable late night dinner in an exquisite restaurant. Just in case I forget, and because it was lovely.

SURROUNDED BY SURREALISM WITH NOT ENOUGH TIME TO SUFFICIENTLY SURRENDER TO IT

2009-07-25T16:31:00.003+03:00

There’s currently an exhibition called “Surrealism & Beyond” at Tennis Palace Art Museum in Helsinki and I was mightily impressed by at least a dozen paintings they have on display there, as opposed to my normal “easily unimpressed”-mode where I find maybe 1 or 2 items per an exhibition I visit slightly interesting, hastily shuffling through room after room full of paintings artists have shed their passion and agony into, for casual viewers and thankless ingrates like me to quickly glimpse upon while wondering what the gift shop might have on offer.

This exhibition was something else and I strongly recommend it to just about everyone. ( Just as strongly as I recommend the Kalevala exhibition at Ateneum I’ve seen twice now and have entirely failed to write anything about in this blog although I found it very intriguing and inspiring. It’s still on for several weeks before it’s replaced by a Picasso exhibition). The first artist to catch my attention was Joseph Cornell. I had never heard of him before and was most entranced by his beautiful cut and paste works. Some of his wonderful collages can be viewed here. A flash presentation of his “visual poetry” can be seen and experienced (if you don’t get lost among the waves of hard-to-locate links) at Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination.

Cunningly placed on top of the stairs leading to second floor of the exhibition was this:

It looked stupendously huge and oppressing, hanging there and sucking in my attention and I was flabbergasted by its’ visual force. It’s a René Magritte painting called ”Castle Of The Pyrenees” and, needless to say, made such an impact on me that I had no other choice than to purchase a book of Magritte’s works at the gift shop. Disappointingly this particular painting is not included in the book but it’s not exactly the only impressive thing he’s done so I’ve enjoyed some quality time while leafing through its’ pages. Just take a look at ”The Human Condition”. Pictures like this pour a generous amount of bliss into the heart of the spectator, whether he wanted it or not. Pictures like this and digging up some background information of them also takes surprisingly large amounts of one’s time if one is not careful. I just realised that I’ve spent hours writing this entry and reading about the things I’ve written about, instead of preparing the lasagne and decanting the chianti I was supposed to be doing so I need to wrap this up quickly now before I starve to death. A lot remains unsaid of what I planned on saying, about the subject of surrealism and generally about how I experience art. Maybe I’ll say it in future blog entries if I haven’t (surrealistically) forgotten by then.

THE UTTERLY UNFULFILLING ACCOUNT OF A SHOCKINGLY SHORTLIVED PINK LUGGAGE

2009-07-19T16:38:00.005+03:00

Me and The Loved One spent an entirely fulfilling fortnight recently over at Fuengirola, Spain, where her father owns a house up on the hills. We had taken a taxi from the Malaga airport when we arrived, but the results were somewhat unsatisfactory, as the streets in Fuengirola are undergoing massive renewal work and the traffic arrangements were a bit on the chaotic side. Meaning the already complicated and hard-to-follow street map was now in full disarray and most of the roads were closed for cars. Our taxi driver wasn’t able to find his way to our destination even though he had a GPS navigator in the car, with us, not very helpfully, fuming in the back seat, feverishly leafing through a pocket dictionary in order to communicate with a driver who didn’t speak a single word of English.

My Spanish vocabulary consists of some 20 words that, when put together in any order, seldomly form an intelligible sentence. The Loved One has a bit firmer grasp of the language, aided by her natural tendency to emphasise her points by flailing her hands about in a very mediterranean manner while speaking. Sadly this didn’t help in finding the right route either, and finally, after many a cul-de-sac, desperate madre de dioses by the driver and a lot of consulting the locals on the streets but mostly by sheer luck, taking some 60 minutes to complete a 20-minute drive, we ended up on the right road and the right house.

This experience didn’t leave us with an exceedingly positive opinion of the local taxi drivers and their competence so, when the holiday was over and it was time to return home, I thought it’s not so bad an idea to walk to the Los Boliches station at the centre of the town and take a train to the airport instead of trying to call a taxi and see whether it arrived or not. It’s a good 20 minutes walk, at a leisurely stroll, mostly downhill all the way. So quite a long one but not entirely lethal by any means as we had taken and survived it a dozen times by then already.

During our two weeks we had hoarded much more stuff to take home than we had the luggage space to fit into, so some new luggage was needed. The biggest problem was a largish painting I had acquired. I didn’t want to remove it from it’s framing and roll it up so the only option was to buy a big enough suitcase for it. It soon became clear that luggage of required capacity wasn’t easily available and the only one I was able to find was from a clearance sale of an oriental bazaar, on the last day of our holiday. It was pink, lovely, of enormous size and hiper oferta at 25€. I loved it unconditionally, even when the handle broke halfway off after I had cautiously pulled it behind me on the streets for some 15 minutes.

Back at the house I fixed the handle with sturdy bolts and we merrily packed our bags. The Loved One had two flightbags to take care of, and I had two full-sized ones, the smaller weighing a bit over 20 kilos and my new pink one 30 kilos. We had reserved plenty of time for the procedure of leaving the premises, this including going through 3 printed sheets of paper with instructions on how to properly turn the electricity and water off, leave everything as desired and lock and bolt up all the doors and gates. Naturally checking and rechecking every detail took longer than expected and eventually we left the house in haste, huffing and puffing because we didn’t have the extra time we thought we would have, with the sun smugly shining in full force and the temperature firmly resting at 30°C.

After some 100m of advancing steadily the handle of my pink suitcase broke off completely. Which wasn’t all that surprising, considering how badly it coped with it’s own empty weight earlier in the day. Matters became drastically complicated because of this and it began to dawn on me that it wasn’t much help if the road slopes downwards when it’s made of all kinds of bumpy materials that keep regularly changing to other bumpy materials, making the tiny wheels of my bargain luggage squek for mercy. The pavements weren’t broad enough to pass all the trees and lampposts with both bags side by side, either.

It soon became apparent that the pink suitcase would be my cross and this was to be my personal Via Dolorosa, with only one station instead of the traditional eight, the Los Boliches Station that would also be the scene of my crucifixion were we to miss our train which became more likely by the minute. Whether the locals jeered at my ordeal I failed to notice for by now I was beyond observing details like that. The wheels of my pink suitcase broke and fell off and for the last part of the journey I dragged a dead 30kg weight behind me with my left hand, the other 20kg suitcase miraculously still surviving with its’ wheels intact in my right hand.

I have no clear recollection of how I managed to drag the bags up the three lenghty wheelchair ramps that lead to the station, just as the train arrived, or how I was able to buy two tickets from the vending machine getting all the required details right and still make it to the train. I had no time to collect the change as I hurled the suitcases inside the crowded train and hopped in, vaguely thinking how embarrassing it would be to collapse and die on top of our heap of crap luggage. The handle of my other suitcase then came off, as I tried to lift it out of other passengers’ way.

But we did make the train, at a sort of near-lethal half-run instead of the leisurely stroll, and a most horrible experience it was, all in all. The Loved One wasn’t overtly amused, and to be honest, neither was I. Not until the sweat had dried a bit later and the muscles had stopped aching a few days later. I believe she is yet to discover the amusing side of it all, and maybe she never will. Maybe there is no amusing side. We’ve only discussed it superficially. But I’ve made a silent vow that in the future, we will take a taxi as often as possible.

The painting is very nice btw.

THE POST-HOLIDAY EXHAUSTION

2009-07-15T14:27:00.010+03:00

Late last night we flew back from two weeks in Spain and I haven't really recalibrated myself to operate properly at home just yet. The house we were staying in has an exquisite garden, cluttered with statues, flowerpots, trees and whatnot, and one morning, while staring at one of the statues, I found it necessary to write this:

THE INCLEMENCY OF THE SUN

She knows she’ll take the step tomorrow, and as tomorrow comes, she still knows she’ll take it tomorrow. The flowers she clutches to her chest won’t have withered by then, and her Mona Lisa smile, half chipped away already, won’t need readjusting either. She is immersed in deep contemplation of the move she is about to make and the sun will continue to set in front of her unblinking eyes, ten thousand times and counting. She is safe, in the shade of the leaves, her hand slightly raising her skirt and gently covering her vulva, to protect it, from life, for life, and no one will ever hurt her again. And she knows she’ll leave whenever she wants to, anytime now, but not today.

PROPER SUMMER IN FULL BLOOM SHOCK!

2009-06-29T16:00:00.006+03:00

Finally the weather caught up and it’s high summer at long bloody last. Since “moderation” clearly is out of the equation what it comes to changes in climate, it’s now ridiculously hot after weeks of below-average temperature and rain. I have a very demanding long weekend behind me, spent in Finnish countryside, at the Loved Ones’ mothers’ summer place, accompanied by various other relatives including my mother. My mother-in-law-to-be is fabulous but unfortunately the same can’t be said about my own mother and the way we interact with each other. Things came to a head on our way back, in a scorching heat, in a car without air-conditioning, with us two exchanging opinions, mine reasonable and hers mostly not, in a mode of conversation known as “shouting”. This episode of raised voices with not much content reminded me of how lucky I am not to live in my hometown anymore and fortified my resolution never to move back there. It also reminded me never to relent in my struggle to rise above the (to me unwanted) qualities so evident on my parents I’m entirely unwilling to let surface in me.

All in all the weekend still held some moments of peace (mostly when my mother was elsewhere) and tomorrow we head towards more peace and tranquillity as we start our two weeks in Spain and the empty house of my future father-in-law.

The Dog is feeling hot hot hot. And the option to comment on this blog proved as fruitless as I thought it would so it’s now duly removed. I might tinker with the layout once I return from Spain, if I can be bothered.

RECENT EXPOSURE TO RECORDED MUSIC:
For the past several weeks it’s been either ”Skyforger” by Amorphis or ”Abnormally Attracted To Sin” by Tori Amos. Both albums are excellent in my opinion and both albums have already grown so dear to me that I can’t really start analysing what makes them so special. Obviously it’s easier for me to be overwhelmed by Tori’s album since it’s, you know, Tori after all, and the album is clearly a lot better than the ones she came up with at the start of the decade. But I’m still deeply impressed by Amorphis too. There are no weak songs on their album, at least none that I’m able to detect, and to hear lyrics that passed through me turned into songs adds a level of intimacy. Brilliant albums and brilliant songs with melodies that stick to my head and refuse to leave. Normally this would be a problem but with these albums I don’t mind.

PROPER SUMMER INDEFINITELY DELAYED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

2009-06-24T15:00:00.003+03:00

So how was my Midsummer? Helsinki turned into a ghost town for the weekend with people heading towards countryside in droves, seeking out mythical, unattainable pastures of calm tranquillity and the metaphorical womb to return to, probably in vain. I knew better and stayed home. It rained a lot, our first floor apartment got infested with ants, the lightbulb in our bathroom reached an almost-terminal kind of point where steady no-frills illumination is replaced by surreal flashing and flickering, just as the shops had closed down and acquiring a new lamp had become impossible, and my computer monitor reached a terminal kind of terminal point where everything that normally shows up on the screen is replaced by utter blackness. We had some pretty decent wines though.

I tried typing on the Loved Ones' laptop, after three evenings of moderately sampling some pretty decent wines, with my frankfurter-like fingers, a thin film of sweat decorating my troubled brow, and in not the best of possible moods. This hapless attempt did not avail to much, apart from solidifying my already deep suspiciousness towards portability in personal computerism. My own monitor continued to stay in the terminal point of utter blackness and replacing the cable didn’t help either. I suppose computer monitors belong to a group of home electronics that, once the warranty has expired, wither rapidly like a non-Finnish person in a sauna, before blinking out of existence completely and for good. In my case the warranty expired on March and the apparatus expired on June so that’s rather rapid I´d say.

I then went out and bought a new monitor, as soon as the stores opened again, some days later. I swore not to get another LG Flatron since the old one was a LG Flatron but I got another LG Flatron anyway. It’s wider and broader and generally more stupendous than the old one and it cost only half of what I coughed up for the previous one, three years ago. If this new one croaks too in 3 years, 3 months time I might consider looking into what other manufacturers have to offer, but until then, or at least for the duration of this evening, I’m happy with and continue to be amazed by my new monitor of expanded specialness and more width than is possible to perceive in one go.

So amazed, in fact, that the typing of this blog entry must stop here.

Still Life With A Skull. How very seasonal in a summery kind of way.