It's Just Noise

So i went to see Kieran Hebden of fourtet fame last night. Him, and a 60 year old jazz drummer. It was actually amazing. He seemed to build music out of noise. And all his music was noise. Bleeps and Blips and High piercing shrieks that filled every possible thing and yet felt astounding. And the drummer, steve reid, grounded it. I mean ok he was hard core jazz drummer so it want exactly 4/4 but he gave the music a tempo and a rhythm that supported the crazyness of Hebden's outpourings.

I think close to one of the most exciting gigs have ever been to, not necessarily the best, but the most groundbreaking. And i realised that this is what Jazz has become, it doesn't sound like jazz, but it thinks like Jazz. It is mad and powerful and tries to be change how we percieve music and noise. Parts of this gig had me laughing and cheering at the sheer reckless power of what they were doing. Which is how Kerouac describes Jazz concerts in On The Road, they are mad are crazy and they crowd cheers and shouts when something seems fresh or new. So that is why a 60 year old black jazz drumming legend loves to play with a skinny guy who looks a little bit like my brother and does crazy electronic things that dont quite make sense. Because it is Jazz, it doesnt sound like it, but it is driven by the same ideals.

The gig was part of the tryptych festival the slogan for which is It's Just Noise. Which seems very apt, so i purloined the slogan for a title and a poster for my wall. It also made me realsie that music is just noise. And noise is just music. Physical art is stuff, stuff is art. Words are poetry and poetry is just words. I know this has long been know by lots of people as it's the basis behind all found art and Duchamp and all that but it never really made sense to me untill last night. Art is only art because people say so. I get it now.

So that is that.

And to end the book listing fun, here are two (long) lists:

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Unto This Last - John Ruskin (you could easily replace this with Sesame and Lilies, or On
Art and Life, just definitely need to have /some/ Ruskin)
Le Deuxième Sexe - Simone de Beauvoir
The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut (again, you could probably have the more obvious
Slaughterhouse-5 or Cat's Cradle, but Sirens was the first one I read, and I think it's
well underrated)
On Love - Alain de Botton
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Love in the Time of Cholera is an
acceptable substitute)
The Color Purple - Alice Walker (I'm named after her you know)
Le Petit Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Dhammapada - Buddha
Philosophical Investigations - Wittgenstein
Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (I love dystopias. I nearly said Nineteen Eighty-Four, or
Fahrenheit 451, but BNW juuuust edges it for me - today - as perhaps the least obvious
and most enjoyable of the three)

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A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth – if you read this and don’t love it, never ever tell me you read it.
Hey Nostradamus! – Douglas Coupland – I think this is my favourite because it’s his least surreal – it’s Coupland just writing about real-life stuff.
Girlfriend in a Coma – Douglas Coupland – his apocalypse obsession at it’s best.
The Colour Purple – Alice Walker (also The Third Life of Grange Copeland) – these two definitely helped me understand why race is such a massive issue in the US
White Teeth – Zadie Smith – just cause it’s really good
Wild Swans – Jung Chang – why China scares the shit out of me.
Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell – ignore the casual racism and this is a fascinating book about destitution – not a common topic!
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath – this just has to be here. I love it when poets write prose.
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence – so I’m a dirty fucker. Sue me. Amazing book.
The Cider House Rules – John Irving – also see ‘The World According to Garp’ – both are really really interesting and a little bit crazy.
A Hole in Texas – Herman Wouk – just cuz it’s a bloody good read and I think you’d like it. (it won a Pulitzer if that helps satisfy the need for ‘greatness’)
Jung: A very short introduction – Anthony Stevens – OK so anything about or by Jung would do – I just think everybody should read his ideas. The man was an absolute legend.
Atonement – Ian McEwan – in my ‘book of books’ I described it as ‘totally engrossing’. God I’m cool
Wormwood and other stories – Poppy Z. Brite (also see Lost Souls and basically everything she wrote) – was obsessed with her at 15 and her writing is genuinely brilliant. My favourite one is ‘Original music for voice and piano’
Atomised – Michel Houellebecq – another filthy one – always makes you sound just a little bit cool to have read contemporary French fiction.
Beloved – Toni Morrison – (also Paradise) similar issues to Alice Walker, but she’s more of a ‘great’ writer. Tough going but worth it.
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – Read it and be afraid.
A Quaker Book of Wisdom – Robert Lawrence Smith – cuz even scientists should read about spirituality now and then.
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain – I love Twain and this is the classic. – also Pudd’nhead Wilson.
Penguin Dictionary of Epigrams – is there a more interesting book in existence???
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller – I couldn’t be the only one to not put this on my list could I?
Ishmael – Daniel Quinn – definitely in the ‘made me think’ category.
Saturday – Ian McEwan

It may be that i will try and bring all these list together and actually discuss them a little bit. It depends how much i need to procrastinate. Oh and a link i found from my friend's livejournal which shows that the universe truely is fucking cool!

Birthday Letters and Rioting

I went into a second hand book shop the other day. I was bored and looking for phiosophy books, something to tell me the world is not deterministic, that free will does exist. The smell of old books was powerful, dusty and dry. I failed in that search, but bought Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters instead.

Read it all, very quickly, powerful stuff. Sometimes stark, but always full of feeling. It's him finally talking about his realtionship with Silvia Plath and it's really very beautiful. It turns out it mirrors and talks about Plath's work alot, so i have to find and read her journals and poetry and then read Birthday Letters again.

I havn't ever read poetry before, not a whole book anyway, and never so quickly. When i was home last time i flicked through an anthology of English poetry and found some cool stuff in there too. Maybe it'll make me a better writer, maybe i'll just read some interesting stuff.

In an entirely unrelated issue i didnt know about this. Its weird how these big events can entirely pass you by, and you have no idea they could happen. New york lost its power for one night and it went mad, ripped, burnt, stole and fought for a night. They woke up in the morning to find that they hadn't solved anything, they were still poor, ignored and angry. They did now have a TV though, although they didnt have a job, because someone had destroyed their shop. It reminded me of New Orleans, why on earth do people react like this? Why do we feel the need to go mad as soon as societies norms are subverted. I suspect sociologists have suggested an answer, i also suspect they would have missed the point. I dunno it's wierd.

But talk about a silver lining, loads of kids in the bronx went and nicked turntables and mixers and hip-hop happened. Thats awesome!

Little People

From where I am sat in the library i can see two different building sites. Both have tiny people wondering about on top of six story buildings. They provide a nice source of amusement, watching them.

I wonder if they are watching each other, are they jelous of the other building? or proud of it? or do they not care? Do you think they are afraid to fall of, there is no safety rail and it's a long fall down. Maybe they are hungry, tired, drunk, bored, angry or pensive. I like that on one building they have put safety netting on the scaffolding in alternating colours, blue then yellow then blue then yellow horizontal stripes 10 ft wide. I wonder who did it like that, maybe it was an accident, maybe a builder thought it'd look pretty. I love the way the tower cranes move, huge and, well, towering. They seem to appear and never be put up. How do they build them? Magic i suspect.

In other news i got phone call from Nick today (the skipper of the boat that i going to brazil hopefully with me on it) it was the first time i have really chatted with him. We discussed Visas and Innocualtions and serious travelling round the world type stuff. It was jolly good and got me all proper excited again. Which means i have spent the last few hours reading about brazil's many diseases and piracy problem (no shit piracy = serious issue!), and the cape verde islands' visa issues. Its all rather fun. Any way as a result i am still 500 words short on my last ever essay! Last ever, awesome.

Rambling post, procrastination does that.

In The Multiverse All Novels Are True

So i was reading the arts books etc section of that paper and saw a review of Andrew Crumey's new book Sputnick Caledonia. I have never ead any of his stuff, but i remember thinking htey sounded awesome a year or two ago. His most recent won the Northern Rock foundation writers award. Which is quite cool.

Crumey is has a PHD in physics and is generally a bit of a dude. The person interviewing him, an author who's name i have forgotten suggested that if the other worlds hypothesis is correct, then all novels are true.

An Open Multiverse according to Wikipedia:

There are an infinite number of regions of space the same size as our observable universe -- an infinite number of observable universes, that is. This infinite set (which must contain, among other things, an infinite number of identical copies of you, the nearest of which is about 10^10^29 meters away, and an equally infinite number of not-quite-identical copies) comprises the level-I multiverse.

This is not robust physics, it is closer to religion. It is not scientific in that it cannot be disproved and it fails to answer any questions. But it's a really cool idea. It's is reasuring to think that every time you fail at something you suceed in a different universe. However. It is at odds with something i have been trying to think about for a few months. It is easiest to explain this by starting very small:

First an assumption that i make: Everything is made up of atoms. There is nothing more than the physical world. No god, soul, spirt or ghosts only atoms.

The behaviour of these atoms is regular. It is goverened by the interactions of the constituent parts, the behavior of electrons, protons and neutrons. The fact that we do not understand the behaviour of these perticles does not mean they do not work in a regular way, simply that we do not understand it. As Einstein said "God doesnt play dice" there is no chance in this system everything is regular (Pedantic note: Dice dont work by chance anyway).

Our minds, bodies and conciousness is a result of atoms. If atoms behave in a regular fashion and we are concious because of atoms the rules that govern atoms must govern our conciousness. Every decision we make is governed by this, the interaction of trillions of atoms is phenomonally complex, perhaps too complex for humans to ever comprehend. However it follows i think that from the very moment of the big bang i was going to exist. There was no doubt as the path of every particle is ultimatley predictable. Free will exists granted but it is a product of this regular movement of particles.

If any creature could understand this action of atoms, and were to have a full inventory of all the atoms in existance at one single nano second of existence they could map forward and backwards through history.

This is a poweful idea, and one i am not very comfortable with. I have yet to see anyone prove it wrong, except by saying "there must be something else", in my mind there isn't of course if you believe in god or souls or spirits feel free to discount my whole argument as meaningless.

A multiverse cannot exist if there are no other possibilities, if the current state of the world is the only possible world all of the multiverses would be the same. Unless they started differently. Though i have no idea how to deal with starting. Except to suggest they never did, "the big bounce" theory suggests the universe occelates between expension and contraction over a very very very very very long period. Infinty is however too much of a headfuck to try and deal with today.

but still "In The Multiverse All Novels Are True" is a really cool idea. Imagine every character you ever read about existing somewhere in the infinitness of existence. Awesome.

Books part three

So in the original email i sent round i upset lots of people by asking about what makes a person well read. It turns out people think its not possible to have a list of books that does this. I think there is some truth is this, being well read is more a case of reading lots and constantly rather than any set list of books.

Others said being well read simply meant the classical canon. I think it is more than that and i think reading every book on a list of twenty peoples greatest books, classics or not would make a person quite well read. But some people disagree. In which case this list does not constitute being well read, mearly some good stuff to read.

That is what makes this quite interesting, people take it differently, they put their own critera on what is great and what is not. When designing experiments about acceptablity in grammar (my dissertation) it is important not to define acceptable or grammatical. People interpret it differently, use their own critera, think about it independantly; which is why the experiment works. The trick is in knowing how to analyse the data you get, and in understanding that you havnt found any definative answer. Because no such thing exists.

Anyway new lists:

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*100 year of solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
*winnie the pooh - A A milne
*one flew over the cuckoos nest - Ken Kesey
*brighton rock - grahame greene
*adrian mole aged 13 and 3/4 - sue townsend
*invisible man - Ralph Ellison

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War and Peace, Tolstoy
Great Expectations, Dickens
My Family and Other Animals, Gerald Durrell (might not be his real name, but who cares it's just a really cheerful book)
Short Short Stories, Dave Eggers
A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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1. Queen of the damned - Anne Rice
2. Fear and loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thomson
3. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
4. Requim for a dream - Hubert Selby Jr,
5. Dune - Frank Herbert

Books part two

Turns out someone has done somthing like what I am doing, see here

Most of them make sense...

But The Bible i mean whats with that?

Books

Today i started a new project. To get a list off all my friends of all their favorite books, only i dont really mean their favorite. I mean the books that people think are truely great.

By doing so i want to learn something about my friends, learn somthing about books and have a kick ass reading list for the next while... So here are the first three lists, mine and two others:

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Crime and Punishment - Dostoevsky (Fantastic, compelling account of madness and humanity at its worst)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Pirsig (Novel, Travel, Philosphy, Motorcycles and Self help all in one, who couldnt like it!)

Heart Of Darkness - Conrad (Madness, Humanity and motivations again, but this time in africa with casual racism!)

In Xanadu - Dalrymple (Got to be one of the greatest travel books ever, erudite, clever, history, language, adventure and fun)

Catch 22- Heller (Everyone needs a good searing inditement of war, featuring everyones favorite character name Major Major Major Major)

Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck (Depression era troubles, fantastic prose, characters you fall in love with and a story line to make you weep, full of symbolism and subtlety)

A time of Gifts - Leigh-Fermor (Another amazing travel book, bold travels with brilliant writing and lots of knowledge behind them)

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Herzog - Saul Bellow (a huge, thumping, dense Ulysses like romp by probably THE greatest 20th century American novelist. Getting to the end is a reward. Prose like lava.)

Experience - Martin Amis (Amis' autobiog, beautifully written, touching and very funny. Oxford man.)

Other voices, Other rooms - Truman Capote (Phwoar. One of the few books i've read aloud. Like a thick, creamy pudding. Almost a perfectly told story.)

The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitgerald (an obvious choice? but entirey deserving, i read this book in one sitting in a pub while getting deliciously pissed. I quite fancied myself as Gatsby.)

William Pitt the Younger - William Hague (recent bioography of great and powerful 18th century PM written by a politician (insight), great story at a time of tectonic shifts in european politics, i cried through the last chapter (his death) reaching a crescendo of drama with the "Oh my country, how I leave my country" part! Terrific!)
Wonderful Life - Stephen Jay Gould (good account of the nature of scientific discovery by noted evolutionary paleobiologist, Gould - first read in Oxford amid a time of controversy in the area.)

Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes (each poem in this book can be enjoyed for hours, read aloud. A BIG book. A story of a story of a story. Historically important too.)

Gore Vidal's American essays - solid, well-formed responses to a mammoth
subject. Aided my understanding of composition.

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(The next is slightly edited for spelling and details)

Wait Until Spring, Bamdini - Jone Fante
Teaching Little Fang - Mark Swallow
Marabou Stork Nightmares - Irvine Welsh
The Phantom Tolbooth - Norton Juster
The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman - Bruce Robinson
Train To Hell -Alexi Sayle
American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
Bright Lights, Big City - Jay Mcinerney
Small Gods - Terry Pratchet

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So that is three lists, or call it the first part of a big list. I hope to add to it as people get back to me, if you are reading this and i havn't already emailed you, write a list! Or post one in a comment.