When we arrived at The Oakfield Social Club in Reading, Ben the Plan B promotor told us that Dent May had pulled out of the gig because he or his cohort was ill. Recently, someone had told me they had an exhibition in Reading recently in a place with a boxing ring and I had sloppily mixed up these details with my own life thus;  I tell POlly on the way to Paddington that the venue was apparently 'nice with an old boxing ring or something'. To which Polly said "nice?' and I said shirtily well its better than a crappy bar. But actually, The Oakfield SOcial Club is a crappy bar.  Anyway, if Polly hadn't been there it would have just been me so that was better and following that logic we called Chubby Nest to see if they wanted to replace Dent May. This band of three young men were already convened in Hackney, East London, for a rehearsal so they said yes. 
I went to school in Reading for three years when I was 11. I wasn't expecting to feel any nostalgia for the station or town centre. I felt a something upon recognising the way to the pedestrian high street and a pub I used to play pool in with my friend Lily, but that may have just been recognition. After the soundscheck Polly and I went to buy a bottle of vodka from the off license.  We sat under a statue of the virgin Mary by the town hall and we ruminated on places you end up trying to go outunderage and Reading so that was maybe nostalgia.  I went back to Manchester for a gig in January and was jsut thinking ah here I am back here and taking a gulp of the city air when I heard one voice wailing and another saying 'ye you're sorry now you scumbag' and a silent man pushing anothers face into the pavement while the woman shouted at him for stealing a packet of crisps.  Anyway, back at the Oakfield Social Club things have gotten much busier and there are a number of parties in miscellaneous fancy dress. I ask Ben if this is Plan B's theme to which he laughingly replies, 'No'. Our set passed without much of note, it was totally inaudible on stage. During the soundcheck the soundman explained to us conspiratorially that he had been out all night and didn't have a clue how to work the digital desk. A line check would have to suffice for Chubby Nest but really when it came to it, they and the sparse audience endured over half an hour of feedbacking soundcheck whilst Will, for such was his name, went into meltdown.
I had to get a train at 11.07 to get to Wiltshire. Chubby finally began playing at 10.55. They had played two songs when a middle-aged man stepped up on stage and told them in a calm tone that he 'couldn't believe what they were doing to music' I tried to take him away and he told me "I've dedicated the last 25 years to music and I'm a musician and I can't believe what they're doing.' I don't remember what I said but he went and then a few seconds skipped and I felt aftermath lion raging blood indignation as people started to talk about what had happened. Then it went and I got my train. I hear Chubby had another stage invading critique after that. 

another bellow quote, from herzog. which i am currently reading. which is the first book i have managed to stick at since last summer when i said to myself i must read something other than saul bellow.
"grief, sir, is a species of idleness.
Lying face down on the sofa, Herzog continued to take stock, was he a clever man or an idiot?"


tonight me and beck will take coach to edinburgh, arriving crumpled tomorrow morning. how she convinced me this was a good idea. that we will cage our sleeplessness and chart the effects with cartoons and writings. that travelling in the day would only be a distraction from this. its all about time management with her and i respect that in a girl because it'd be a waste by any other name. iggy pop.
we really shall be pleased to be there.

'
The Times was much stirred by the news of Humbolt's death and gave him a double-column spread. The photograph was large. For after all Humbolt did what poets in crass America are supposed to do. He chased ruin and death even harder than he had chased women....He plouged himself under. Okay so did Edgar Allen Poe, picked out of the baltimore gutter. And Hart Crane over the side of a ship. And Jarrell falling in front of a car. And poor John Berryman jumping from a bridge. For some reason this awfulness is peculiarly appreciated by business and technological america. The country is proud of its dead poets. It takes terrific satisfaction in the poets' testimony that the USA is too tough, too big, too much, too rugged, that American reality is overpowering. And to be a poet is a school thing, a skirt thing, a church thing. The weakness of the spiritual powers is proved in the childishness, madness, drunkeness, and despair of these martyrs. Orpheus moved stones and trees. But a poet can't perrform a hysterectomy or send a vehicle out of the solar system. Miricle and power no longer belong to him. So poets are loved because they just can't amke it here. They exist to light up the enormity of hte awful tangle and justify the cynicism of those who say, ' If II were not such a corrupt, unfeeling basterd, creep, theif, and vulture, I couldn't get through this either. Look at these good and tender and soft men, the best of us. They succumbed, poor loonies.'


both from Humbolt's Gift
Saul Bellow

i lasted one day on the in silence. i spent 8 hours or so over the day. in a room with maybe 8o others trying to observe my breath. the girl next to me whom i was also meant to share a room with for the next ten days had the sniffles or was the only heavy breather in the crowd and me with my minor neurosis for such repetative sounds. this day lasted fr about two months. i wanted time to be slower but it is terrifying how slow it can go. i told the teacher that i was finding it hard; he asked i my mind wandered could i bring it back to breath observation within five minutes? FIVe minutes i thought!? i've brought it back sent it away and wrapped it ornately 500 hundred times in five minutes. i said that i was concentrating on her breath and counting it and he said i could try breathing a little bit harder. as if i needed this incitement to compete. the last straw. i packed my bags at 4.00am the next day when everyone had gone back to the hall, put them in the car in the darkness and went back to sleep until breakfast at 6.30. finally i got to leave after one month or at lunchtime. then i got a twix from a vending machine :)

its hallowe'en and i'm going to drive to herefordshire and join a bunch of silent hippies for ten days. this is unheard of. my youthful rebellion strictly vetoed such shameless new agey tendancies years ago. . but still here i am reverting to type. .
11 drum street was a building we occupied (i could have called it a squat of course). people are still there though i moved out at the beginning of summer. i kept a diary and was thinking of editing it and putting in bits here rather than these dull extracts of the altogether quieter time of it i'm trying to have now. when i say we there was a few that were in for the longhaul and a roll over of longterm visitors/girlfirends and boyfriends etc. anyway, i bring it up becasue someone told me about the silent retreat when i was feeling strung out there; i had a lot of gigs (orchestras and straight ahead work gigs became more of a strain than the obvious and simple matter of performing; trying to look all posh with no hot water, occasional unwanted visitors in nextdoor empty building popping into my head during gigs. well. i don't really like playing in orchestras so i don't mind that i felt out of sync with it) . there wass just stuff going on like there always is. but the place also felt abit like a soap opera sometimes (hmmm) and so i looked on the internet and within about half an hour had filled out an online application form for a 10 day silent retreat in wales. and then they sent an email saying it would be this one.today. i have no idea about it. i've just got to keep quiet basically. and then they won't know that i don't know what i'm doing either.but em forster said ' how can i know what i think til i see what i say'

someone was asking, in my friends kitchen the other night, whether blogs were crap. i said no though i had never read or wrote them but maybe thats more telling than i thought. no one would ever write anything if they were worried about whether people should read it or not, i had said in the kitchen. but then its an oddity that we think that everyone has a right to a voice and then spend most of the time trying to make kate moss say something. anyway, really its becasue i've nothing better to do on this saturday night. i have to drive to cambridge tomorrow for an orchestra gig and my fear about not being able to play the parts and drive there, keeps me in but does not bother me enough to do more practise. and i guess i'm trying to stay in more. this is a very dull read. i'm not sure about blogs.