Gardening

We come in from an evening out, an anniversary to be precise, and we settle down in front of Gardener's World for a bit of peace and quiet before retiring early through exhaustion and difficulties with the world. Now some berk (perhaps all gardening berks) starts talking about the dead heads of some fucking flower or other as being 'lovely...so architectural'. Sorry what the fuck is architectural in the dead head of a flower? Eh? Can we go back to classical Greece here, or can we once more pronounce, THERE IS NO THEORY TO GARDENING.

Planet Rock

I will admit I have become rather a devotee of Planet Rock. This may be simply that we have acquired the worlds most expensive radio, and that it comes in components, which is most satisfying, but also a certain affinity with the wailing and moaning and latent violence of the 'rock voice' and all that goes with it. I find I can actually listen to Journey records. What's more I find myself, if I listen long enough, discerning the genre in a fresh way, for it is no longer a case of whether I like it or not, that time has long gone, it has become a case of 'isn't it interesting that.. whoever made 'Breaking the Law...Breaking the Law!' is singing exactly the same song as 'The Boys are Back in Town'.

The essence is certainly gothic, there are rambling, lonely, horny, alienated males in groups, even if they are females. And no matter how crap they are, and they are extraordinary loyal to the tribe. Where else would you get Rick Wakeman and Keith Emerson and Jon Lord and every other idiot chewing the cud over the pleasures of never doing 'Smoke on the Water on Ice'.

Meanwhile, I'm reading Keef's biography 'Life' and thrilled that it's a bestseller (illustrating that........you answer that question). It's also amazingly good.

Dave Hickey

So I rise and I put on my big fluffy bathrobe (possibly the biggest and fluffiest bathrobe that this crazy world might provide, which is why Julie bought it with joy) I draw the blinds against the bright winter sun, fix myself a drink which includes orange juice, and sit in my big old armchair to soak in Dave Hickey's 'Air Guitar' (which I am due to talk about tomorrow). Air Guitar is probably the loveliest piece of 'theory' I have ever come across, precisely because instead of the usual inquisition in to language, that concentration on truth and maths which can get very tiring after a while, no matter how much you no longer fear depression and death in the name of the revolution, Hickey inverts the whole procedure. He makes criticism precisely about language, not what it means, that is taken for granted, but the deft and delightful manipulation of it. He even calls his essays 'stories', which reminds me of my old friend Jon Buck who used to call his architectural drawings 'pictures' in those young days when the truth would more often than in these days inadvertently out. No wonder Hickey talks so much of musicians and opens the volume with a quote from Keith Richards, although he would probably have preferred to open with a riff by Keith Richards, but then again that is the point, he has to write it like that riff, and he does it all the time- he plays 'air guitar' with words.

Browne Report

The problem with the Browne report on university funding, which I understand only through the pages of the LRB, is that it conflates the notion of education and business. Education may help you in business, just as reading Machiavelli might help you, but business is not the point of education at all, it can never be about 'jobs' and if it ever becomes so, and it is becoming so, you might argue you have lost the point of education all together. This is simply because jobs come with necessary boundaries, they tend, unless you are very lucky, to demand complicity with whatever system is at work. Education is independent of all that nonsense. Lose that independence, and you're in trouble.

Short story

If I were sitting in the sunshine of a 1944 afternoon, knowing I was going to bomb the shit out of people I didn't even know over Germany that evening, if I were the bomb aimer (USA) or the captain (UK) and knew I had control of this flying hunk of death delivery over the 'target', and if were an intelligent chap who was browsing Nietzsche that afternoon with thoughts on bigger things and the abyss of it all, wouldn't it have been a temptation to drift that baby right over that cathedral and blow that to bits? This is a short story that has to be written.

(Bomb aimers had charge of US planes over the target, this was unthinkable for the British, where the captain was always in charge)

The Renaissance

Feeling quite cheery having completed my Renaissance powerpoint for tomorrow. The problem with powerpoint is it has created 'Powerpoint Man' an arsehole who thinks puting 2+2=4 on a powerpoint presentation makes a radical point. Most of those people are in management. However be assured I'm not doing that.

Trying to do the Renaissance in fifty images was however quite a task, they did more in a couple of hundred years than the Romans would have done in ten thousand, if you are thinking arty farty stuff of course. Soho Gordon said to me yesterday that when he was studying architecture in Glasgow they had five lectures on the Ancient Greeks and one on the Romans. A bit snooty I reckon, the Romans are underrated, but architects like the arty farty stuff. Meanwhile, Tim said to me yesterday that is all about the pronunciation of Renaissance: either RenAAsance or RENNIEsance. Quite smart I thought.

Ghastly

Feel fucking ghastly, felt so ghastly yesterday I had to sooth my soul by crawling in to The White Horse BEFORE catching the bus for afternoon tutorials. Those behinds surely raise the spirits. What is this ghastliness, these aches and pains, these creaking joints, where have they come from? I worry this may be 'it' from now on.

Today I woke up early anticipating the ghastliness and lay there with Julie watching the sun come up. Now that was nice. I also thoroughly enjoyed instructing the First Year on Le Corbusier a few hours later, but then, as if via creep, the ghastliness returns. Maybe it is retribution? Maybe it's lack of exercise? No, I'll keep to my dosages and it will bloody well go away. No revolutionary should be afraid of death or depression.

So am I the first to notice a girl wearing her knickers outside, over the top, of her leggings? It was certainly confusing on first sighting but maybe an entirely predictable consequence of the now universal legging/jegging bottom tight phenomenon, where you might as well wear neither for all the decorum these items provide.

And Cheryl fucking Cole, who forgot to put on her skirt for Saturdays XF show, she now stares at me from the billboard at the end of the road with an album called 'messy raindrops' or something. What's that about?