off we go!

Well, by tomorrow this time, I will be cozily nestled in the Hotel Cosmos, Amsterdam, NL. The Architecture exam is done, the Theater paper turned in, the trash taken out, the dishes washed, the everything in order…. Now I just have to fall asleep early enough that Im not a complete walking zombie as I take the early morning bus to Liverpool Street Station – 5:15 AM. Awesome. But it means I arrive in Amsterdam early enough to do something interesting before falling asleep, most likely eating and buying a map. But hey, Ive got 13 hours in-transit to sleep, right? Apparently I should be reading Jane Eyre during this time as well, but seeing as there are no more copies in the IES Library and no bookstores are going to be open at 5 AM in the morning, well, I think I might just have to pass. Hm. Ill look around tomorrow at Harwich port. Maybe they have duty free copies or something.

Yesterday I went to the London Zoo! I was worried that I wouldnt end up visiting since an adult ticket costs 16 pounds and they dont give student discounts. Lame huh? Well, luckily Stephanie’s parents decided to go to bath and lend her their travel passes = free entry! Im eternally in-debt. We got there a little late, due to some pretty serious wrong turns and mis-guided map reading, and only had about 1.5 hours to peruse the animal action. I saw lots of birds, even more reptiles (including the largest iguana Ive ever laid eyes on and a Komodo dragon – cool), some monkeys, a lot of creepy night animals, and my personal favorites – otters and merecats!! I have pictures as well, will post them this evening on Facebook. It was a particularly beautiful fall day, maybe a bit cold, and Im glad I got out of my death-hole room for a little while to smell the roses, er, poo as it were. I really like Zoos. Despite everyone’s issues with them (animals are treated poorly, are not given enough room, etc… etc…), they do a lot of good at keeping biological diversity from going down the oil hole and give little boys and girls (like me!) the incentive as a kid to learn more about how they are affecting the world and exactly who they are affecting. Zoos rock. Its going to be a very zoo-ish week, with the Amsterdam Artis Zoo/Aquarium/Planetarium/Everythingatarium coming up on Friday. Yay!

Mom: I got your article about Mushrooms in Amsterdam. Interesting, yes indeed. It is really sad that governments cannot realize the difference between physical and mental effects of drugs. How many people have killed themselves after drinking too much alcohol while really depressed? Sleeping pills? ADHD medicine? Yup. But everyone likes to pick on the psychedelics because so very few people have tried them. Oh and, in my opinion, they break down the structure of the capitalist society by showing people the idiosyncratic way of their passive lives. Sorry, just had to throw that one in there. But seriously, if you think about it, you can drink, smoke tobacco, take speed, and sleep. Drinking is social and allows business deals to go down without paranoia and people can still go to work the next morning with an asprin and bottle of Evian. Tobacco, you can smoke all you want and you’ll still do work, maybe even more work! Speed (aka ADHD meds), I think is self-explanatory. Sleeping pills? How else can we get to sleep in a world built around stress, money, problems, deadlines, blah blah blah…. Oh, and for those chronically ill folks in California who are no longer able to contribute to the wonderful Capitalist machine that is America, well, they can smoke some weed I guess…. Sigh. Amsterdam, you have failed us. Not that I was going to Amsterdam in the hopes of ingesting kilos of magic mushrooms, but the principle still stands. Some British girl, with a history of mental illness/depression, takes some mushies and realizes her life sucks, then acts on her thoughts. If she had been alone with a bottle of vodka, do you think she would have come to any different a conclusion? Or how about in 5 years when her Dad dies from a heart attack and she no longer has anyone to talk to? Yeah, its totally the mushroom’s fault. Bullshit.

But, as I said before, Im getting a little riled up for something that isnt going to affect my happiness at all. Personally I know that doing mushrooms in a foreign environment with lots of cars and random people and things that could go wrong is a terrible idea and would end up with me crying in a corner, or at least talking to a wall for 6 hours. Not fun. Im a little confused why it was such a big deal to buy and consume mushies in Amsterdam in the first place by so many peoples. Oh well. I guess their European…. On a different note, I am excited to visit a country where the government is a little more understanding about human nature (albeit via the insane amount of taxed-revenue they suck out of the soft-drug and sex trade in the Netherlands). Humans like to get messed up, its a fact of life. Even if you dont do the usual spectrum of intoxicants, you still get out of your head once in a while, there’s no denying. Some do it by excersizing, alot through sex or masturbation, gardening, meditation, prayer. Ok, so the last three don’t “mess you up”, but you obviously arent doing any of the normal “sustinance or money making” things that you do under a sober conscience. Amsterdam realizes this, though because of capitalism, human nature is preyed on to an excessive level, a bit like, say, Las Vegas, though not quite so flashy. Yes you can have sex for money, yes you can smoke weed while drinking coffee in a little shop down the street, yes you can buy nitrate poppers, peyote, etc… but it still stands to reason that this city exists, the people there are said to be some of the nicest in all of Europe, the kid down the hall claims some of the most beautiful in all of Europe, one of the more wealthy industrialized nations, and hasnt had a war in god knows how many years. Right on Netherlands, right on.

The agenda while I am away includes (for those of you weirdos back home with maps and your vicarious badges): Artis Zoo/Complex, Hortus Botanicus, Rush Records, Midtown Records, Vondelpark, Tweede Kamer, Grey Area, Jazz Cafe Alto, Red Light  District, Albert Cuyp Market, Agoria @ The Sugar Factory, Modeselektor @ Club 11, Amsterdam Sex Museum, and possibly (if time permits) Boom Chicago canal boat tour. Obviously Im not doing the tourist thing while Im away – stating this outright ’cause I dont want to have to answer millions of questions about the Van Gough, or the art gallery, or the canals, or the blah blah blah…. Yeup. This is David’s trip, and there wont be a whole lot of churches, castles and portrait galleries if he can help it (that said, I do enjoy art galleries, just no as much as funny animals and Europes largest Cycad).

Till next time!

David.

the now, the then, the today, the what?

Another weekend, another bunch of newness. Ah, tis the life to be constantly involved in the uknown. Its crazy to think that things are only going to get more involved as time goes on here. Next weekend Amsterdam, a possible excursion to Romania (yeah, stay tuned on that one), then an entire month of David and himself (and possibly Sarah – if you are reading this, where are you!?). Yeah, its coming to the close of October here, midterms this week and all, but I’ve still got a little over 2.5 months before I see the familiar faces back in grand ol’ rainy NW.

Thursday night I saw my first bad play in London. Everything besides the play itself was fantastic – the scenery, the lighting, most of the actors. But the script, the setting, and the accents………. oh boy. I cant believe a director would choose to cast such a thing in England. It was called “A Member of the Wedding” and followed the troubled activities of a young girl with some sort of mental disability in what seemed to be the 1960’s American south. Weird? Oh yeah. Especially since only two actors got the accent right, and one of them wasn’t the main actress. This made watching/hearing most of the play painful and really distracted from the plot (what little there was of it). Most of the actors had a rather odd/flat English accent with a twange on certain words. One didnt even try to do the southern thing, he just spoke lower and slower. I guess that about sums up the south, right? :-/ The story didnt move, there wasnt really a point to the play besides “people’s lives are messed up and in the end you just have to accept it” and to top it off, there was the usual racial-side-plot that never seems to do anything but rehash America’s wonderful past. A lot of the play seemed rather arbitrary to the actual narrative, the characters were stereotypes and for most of the play I was antsy, uncomfortable and hungry (which is why I spent 2.50 pounds on a bag of nuts at intermission and ate the whole thing (it was huge) in under and hour). So yeah, dont see this play. I cant even remember who it was by. The staging though was immaculate and there were some really awesome rain storm effects with actual water and realistic lightning flashes. Props to the set and lighting designers.

On Friday night, I continued the downward slope (though not quite as terrible in terms of what I went there to see) at Plan B, a club in lovely Brixton, where a favorite producer of mine named ILS was spinning for his new CD’s record release. Im not too sure how he got wrapped into playing this venue for his release, but it was a really bad decision. The club had a huge main room that was bumpin’ British R&B, 2step  house, and hiphop for all the Brixton residents (the area is, more or less, the Harlem of London), and this tiny basement room (could have fit, max, 70 people) where ILS was to spin. Strangely enough, this itty-bitty space had a rockin’ Function One sound system, which in my experiences never fails to impress. Impeccable bass response, crystal clear mids, and maybe slightly overzealous highs (problematic since I forgot my ear plugs at the res hall……. stupid!!!). But the system and ILS were the only saving graces of this night. The warm-up DJ could have been taking a poop with iTunes rockin the decks and nothing would have sounded any different. She didnt mix one track, and those that she tried, she gave up about 3 seconds in and just cut it over, making the rest of us wait for the intro to build into the actual track. LAME. I could have rocked that place in comparison to her (well, in comparison to a lot of DJs, but we’re not gonna go there…haha!). And most of her tracks were just the current trendy NuSkool breaks hits, with the random (really random) big-burner thrown in to mess with my impression. She must have been given a few tracks by some drunk big-name or something one night. It was painful to hear her mix them. ILS was the shiznit though. His mixing wasnt amazing, but at least he did it. His track selection wasnt the best Ive ever heard, but at least he had flow. What really made him stick out (besides following such a disaster zone) was his attitude. He brought three big bottles of shampagne into the booth along with a arm load of flutes and gave out drinks to anyone he saw really rockin to his set. He also brought a 100% smile, a cool MC, and a whole ton of energy. I have to give it to the man, he made that crappy little room seem (for an hour, that is) like a fun, vibey, basement rave. I got a couple track names from him, spent a bit talking with him afterwards, and really enjoyed myself. I couldnt believe that the club gave him an hour to spin, for his CD release party!!! LAME #2. The DJ after him took a poop with iTunes as well, this time rockin’ a 2-step house and lounge mix. After ILS???? Oh yeah, there were some smart ones planning that night. Needless to say, it cleared the floor and me and David (guy in my program) left shortly after. Wooooooohooooooo. At least it only cost 5 pounds (though I was dumb and bought a 4.80 drink – never again.)

Last night more than made up for all the pain and suffering of the last two days. Atomic Hooligan @ Herbal (thats what the flyer claimed the headliner was, any way). We get there, me and Stephanie, and right off the bat – awesome. Only 8 pounds with my student ID, the lady at the front desk was all smiles, the club was full of fog and crazy lights, small and vibey, with two rooms, lots of people at 10:30 PM, and seriously good warm up DJs. Yup. It reminded me of this little place I began my electronic days at in Minneapolis called Tabu. For all y’all that know this place (aka Christine, Leon), Herbal is a little bigger, but just as intimate. The best DJ of the night was suprisingly NOT Atomic Hooligan, but an unknown called “Rico Tubbs”. Rico is my height, skinny, very goofy looking with long white-boy dreads and a silly grin. And he can mix like a god. Dude rocked so many tracks that I had to whip out my camera and record bits. It will take me decades to find all the ones that I was just like “daaaaaaamn” to. And he read the crowd like a book. There’d be moments of funky goodness disco remixed madness followed by some low-end bass burners, and then a bit of acid-squelchyness, built into some crazy grungey Electro insanity. And the whole time he’s up there like Bassnectar’s bastard child with bad teeth, bobbin around, flingin’ his hair all over the place. The girl before him, “Lady Waks,” was seriously on it as well. Between the two, I think only 2 tracks crossed over (aka repeats), and Rico did some wicked splicing with one of them so it really wasnt the same track. Atomic Hooligan though……. These big-shot DJs really need to take some time off, learn how to program and flow again, and get to the club at least for the DJ before their’s set. That or make sure every track you have in your bag is a white-label dub plate special that nobody but your mom has. I think Hooligan played 5 or 6 of Rico’s tracks, which made everything a little anti-climatic. He wasnt reading the crowd very well and it seemed a little bit like a “best of Fall 2007 breaks” show. He did some rather cliche stuff with CDJs like cueing the downbeat of the incoming track and pressing the button to the beat to hype the crowd, then dropping the beat. Yup. Seen that a million times before. He even had the ubiquitous MC as well, who did a whole lot of nothing in a lovely Jamaican-British accent (at least over here, that whole cliche is legitimized). That said, his set worked OK, and the crowd in their 2 AM drug-addled state (lots of freakz on the floor for his set. weird how they just sort of come out of the woodwork for the headliners. no wonder these DJs have so much support, everyone’s out of their heads for their sets) ate it up like chocolate covered carmel corn. I danced like a fiend, Stephanie had a great time at her first breaks show, I only spent money on a single Red Bull, Herbal rocks, and overall – a good night out. Too bad I managed to lose a ten-pound bill on the way home………………….. Gr. Have I mentioned that I hate money? Well, I do. A lot.

This week is short and I have no real classes, only a midterm exam for Architecture which is going to be true to the IES program (i.e. very easy) and a paper for Theater which I have about a quarter done already. Im kinda proud of my Creative Writing midterm story, only 1000 words, but I think its one of my better-crafted stories and contains enough understated meaning to put a highschool English class to sleep. Maybe Ill let y’all read it, if you want. Let me know and Ill email you what Ive written this semester. If you havent read my stuff before/dont know me that well, Ill warn you in advance. I write edgy stuff and lately its been a little depressing for some reason. No worries though, Im actually in a pretty solid state of mind these days. Besides eating half a bar of 70% cocoa chocolate along with a mug of green tea today and watching 1.5 seasons of Weeds in the past 4 days, Im pretty on top of things and managed to write my story, plan my Amsterdam trip, finish my Arch diary, see two shows, a play, and draft my theater paper this weekend. Oh, and I cooked a butt-load of Kale and rice tonight. It was good, but i might have eaten too much and well, Kale is mostly fiber and vitamins, so….. you do the math. The chocolate didnt help either.

If you havent yet (and this is more for those of you my age or similarly inclined), check out the Showtime drama “Weeds”. It is super addictive, well acted, original, and engaging like nothing Ive seen before, besides “Six Feet Under,” which no longer exists (sad!). And if you dig hard enough and dont mind loading times, you can watch all three seasons online, like I do, though I dont recommend doing so if you have ANYTHING you really want to get done. It wont happen, or at the very best, itll happen every 30 minutes when you have to wait for the stupid slow IES server to load the next episode……..

Till next time (aka before A-dam),

David.

and the new continues

Its been ages, it seems, since the last time I was on here. Ill give you a little of this and a little of that, as I have been terrible about spewing my thoughts as they come, and now everything has that hazy glow that memory lends our past experiences….

Something I didnt talk about last time, two weeks ago I saw the most amazing theater, ever. If you have a chance, and I really hope they tour now that the show is over here in London, GO SEE “A Dissapearing Number” By Complicite (Simon McBurney’s troupe). Complicite is a performance theater collective, and if you dont know anything about performance theater, go find out. Its the most realistic and creative approach to directing, acting, and relating with/to a piece of art I have yet to see in the weird world of theater. A Dissapearing Number follows series of intertwined lives, most importantly that of Indian mathematical genius, Srinivasa Ramanujan and his relationship to G. H. Hardy. This in itself could have made an interesting story, performed on stage. But, McBurney et. al. chose to dive into the deep end and produce a play that represents the very concepts Ramanujan was working with, i.e. infinity. If you know me, you probably have had a discussion or two about this and my varied obsessions with everything it entails. Simply put, I love infinity. It is the last frontier, the great unknown, and so far mathematics is the only area of study that has really caught the bug. A Dissapearing Number shows the beauty of mathematical infinity, how it applies to our every day existence, our conception(s) of death, and the idea of nothing (or zero). I particularly loved watching the passive observers around me become either more and more wrapped up in the play, or completely miss everything and leave with a lovely blank look on their face. The play was fast paced, full of stimuli (the most complicated and technically advanced set and lighting collaboration I have yet to see on the stage), hard to swallow concepts, and really really good, emotional acting (I was holding back, rather unsuccessfully, tears by the end of the show). Backing the production was a sound track and live tabla playing orchestrated by the one and only Nitin Sahwney. I was really excited to see the tabla played in person, as I have only heard recordings. It is by far one of the most versatile and complicated percussion instruments I have ever seen played – each tone is produced with the slightest movements and a seemingly infinite variety of damping, rim shot, and poly-finger rhythms…. And it operates using the Hemholtz resonator! Woohoo…. Sigh, I wish I had been able to try out more instruments as a child, I really think Id have latched onto hand percussion. But yeah, go see this play, or at least do some reading on infinity. I could spend all day describing both, and I dont think I would do either justice. I think the reason it impacted me the most was that it dealt with death in such a refreshing and slightly nihilistic manner. There is this scene at the very end when the main actor is pouring out his wife’s ashes into a river in India and the visual image of the ash pouring out onto the stage is just so powerful, combined with the idea that while we know some things never end (such as the number 2.999…..), we have no idea what will happen to us when we die (and here McBurney dwells for a moment on the concept of zero, the lights dying as the last ashes fall from the jar). Is zero, absolute nothing, a comforting concept? I have come to accept nothing for what it is, but the events of the last 3 years have been so intensely present in my mind that suddenly during this scene I was once again overwhelmed with the pure loneliness of human existence. More than ever, I truly believe that the only truth we can understand in this instance of human-sensory reality is that there is no truth besides death (that and mereological nihilism, but thats for another day and not completely unrelated). The rhythmic background of the tabla, like the background of mathematical patterns in our conscious reality, built to a great crescendo during this scene and the two forces together…. yeah. I guess you just had to be there. Go see it.

But hm Ill finish this tomorrow. Roommate is going to bed and the sound of the key board is not very conducive to sleep-getting.

Its Wednesday now, and I am sitting in the IES computer lab because (and I do this quite often it seems) set my alarm for 8:15 PM last night and missed my morning class by an hour…. I have been sleeping an awful lot lately, which is strange because usually when my alarm doesnt go off, my body wakes me up anyway. I think its due to the weird schedule I run on here, with 4 days off I have time to switch my body clock back into David’s late-night mode, and then the 2 days of class when I have to get up feel foggy and unreal…. But I like it this way. I am more active at night and plus, when would I go out?

So last Thursday I saw Rhinocerous by Eugene Ionesco, which once again was heavey on the philosophy and taxing on the soul. It dealt with Nihilism and how someone who doesnt really believe in anything can continue to live surrounded by people who are completely ok with unreality (i.e. religion, work, trivial pursuits, etc…). It was weird, and very absurd (considered ‘theater of the absurd’), and I liked it! Everytime I come out of these things thinking more than I would having seen a movie or surfed the net, it is worth going (even though it the last thing on my 12 hour Thursdays). Rhinocerous was incredibly well acted, and the use of sound and lighting to convince us that there were actually rhino’s running around on stage was very good. There were actually some modeled rhino puppets at some points that were a bit small to be convincing, but otherwise looked rather real. I dunno, it was sort of like in that movie by M. Night Shamaladisonfasnd (sp?) where you actually see the alien in the end and it kinda ruins it for you, but at the same time is too real looking to ruin the movie…. This play has rekindled my passion for nihilist philosophy though and I spent a good 3 hours on Monday night reading about Mereological Nihilism and its connections to quantum physics. Really, really interesting stuff if you want a bit of a reality check and a philo lecture. The short and long of it is: mereological nihilists take the quantum idea of parts, that everything can be broken down into parts, including atoms, nuetrons, nuetrinos, and so on and so on to infinity. Therefore, nothing exists and nothing is whole or apart from anything else. This includes our minds, bodies, etc… We are actually connected in some manner to everything else (aha! hippies rejoice!), and the ‘objects’ we see and touch in everyday life are actually just the almalgamation of parts, the coming together of a series of parts, that we (via our poor sensory tools: eyes, ears, mouth, nose, touch) understand as whole, binary objects (i.e. is there, is not there). So in a way, nothing exists, but in another sense, everything exists. And science has proven this! At the subatomic level, particles are jumping in and out of existence randomly, chaotically, and nobody knows why or how. Tests have been done on one particle a distance away from another, and strangely the other is affected, though there it was not subject to the same test (Im really streamlining this here, so dont hate me if you really know what is going on). Quantum physics has pretty much described mereological nihilism verbatim, though many q.physics peoples are still searching for that one ‘quantum atomic whole’, or the actual indivisible atom. This doesnt exist, in my opinion. How can you have finiteness in an infinite universe? Just doesnt make sense.

In about 45 minutes Im heading over to get my weekly dose of free curry. There is a man at a nearby college called ‘SOAS’ (not too sure what it stands for) that gives out free curry and rice every week day at 1 PM. And its really good too! Im not kidding. He’s Hare Krishna and is trying to promote vegetarianism. He rides up to this huge line of college kids, homeless, various Indian people, professors, and randoms on a little bike with a huge wooden container built onto the back, opens up two coolers, one filled with curry, the other with rice, and sometimes other people join him with free sweet bars, fruit, and this and that. Its really amazing how good the curry actually is, and how much everyone gets (the line is probably a good 300 people long some days). There is a little donation jar and I put between 50 p and 1 pound in each day, which is a lot more than most do. I think that he puts whatever he has available in the curry, and whatever was in the reduced food isle the night before (shops drastically reduce prices on food that is about to go bad or just slightly overripe) because every day it looks and tastes a bit different. One day there were lemon peels, another there was ramen. Some days its more curry, some days its more lentil. I really feel good about eating there too – I save money, give a little to someone providing a real service, support a cause I am privy to (vegetarianism), and boycott the insanely overpriced commercial food places most people go to get lunch around here. I bet he is actually doing noticeable damage to certain places that normally would get 300 customers, especially if half these people would be eating meat if he didnt provide the free meal. Very cool. At least there’s something I agree with them crazy Hare Krishnas about.

This past weekend I finally went out to a party that felt like home in the NW. People were actually raving, the music was really really good and creative, and I danced so hard that I am still a little sore. In retrospect I shouldnt have been so suspiscious of going out, since the line-up was just too insane to end up ruining my night again. Rennie Pilgrim folks, if you EVER have a chance to see him, especially if he is with MC Chickaboo, DO IT. This man has been called the godfather of the modern breaks movement, and rightly so. Everything he played was new or personally remixed and so absolutely filthy and funky in all the right places that, even though I was on nothing but a redbull and lots of water, there were times I had to sit down and just breathe. Now thats a good night out. Heaven nightclub was rammed with people, but for once they were actually dancing. I had too many of those moments, where you look at someone and start to trade moves back and forth, to count and was completely drenched in sweat walking out at 5:30 AM. The main room was all psytrance, which kinda sucked, but I didnt go down there much as the breaks room was just too insane. That room was crazy though – psytrance is super fast and people really sweat hard to it. It felt like a tropical jungle in there and with all the fog floating around, it really looked like it too. Must have been about 100 degrees for most of the night. I cant imagine what it must have been like for all those crazies on E…. Heard some lovely, growling dubstep in a little bar-lounge room by a DJ called Guadi. Check him out too if you ever get a chance. Does some cool isht with a little FX box that Id never seen before. Phil Hartnol, one half of the famous Orbital, was there too and I was really pumped to here what he had to spin…. Sadly he is no where the DJ he is producer and his set was full of mediocre mixes and rather poorly programmed electro and tech house. That said, I danced to most of his set and enjoyed it, but compared to JDS and Rennie, mang itd be hard for anyone to step up. Was cool to see him though. I found it a bit funny that Rennie ended his set with a ridiculous remix of Orbital’s ‘Chime’ (which by the way if you know where I can find this, please please let me know ASAP) as Hartnol was getting ready behind the booth. Too bad the man himself didnt play any Orbital, that would have been coooool…..

Ok, this one is sufficiently long and rambly enough. Ill check back sometime this weekend, but definitely before I head off to……………………..Amsterdam!!!

peace.

Monday monday monday

Ive officially been in London for a month now, as of this past Friday. It feels like it too. At first, walking down the road to S. Kensington station was exciting. I couldnt believe that I was living in an area where just about every building I could see at any one point was more than a hundred years old. The white and black wrought iron flats, the quaint little pub, the private gardens, and the double decker buses. Everything was exciting because it was not America. And I thought to myself then, that if I ever got bored with these surroundings, I would be in dire need of a reality check. Well, maybe so. London is growing on me in strange ways. I am still completely enamoured with just how much happens in this city on a weekly basis. I could go out if I wanted to, every single night of the week, and see someone who would headline (solo) a bill in the states for 20 bucks. I could go to a street market 5 days a week in 20 different places. I go spend a lifetime going to museums. Seeing plays, dances, operas, musicians. It is a BIG city, and I like the creative sorts of things that such a congestion of people create. But the negatives slightly out way the positives (depending on the day I guess). It is always noisy. My room is 4 floors above a 24/hour bus stop and one of the busiest roads in Chelsea. I have had to wear ear plugs every night since I got here just to fall asleep, no matter how tired I am (this is more due to my weird inability to fall asleep unless it is completely silent and dark, but Ill blame it on the city for now). It is always dirty. London is scared of bombs, unnaturally scared. And so, there are no trash cans anywhere outside of major congestion areas, and even then very sparingly. This means that everyone just throws trash on the ground. I have a picture that Ill post tonight or tomorrow that shows just how ridiculous this can get at night. Albeit, they do pay a incredible team of people to wander the streets with brooms and garbage bags at all hours and pick up our trash, but it all just seems really counter intuitive, and VERY un-sustainable. And along with the ground, the air is filthy. I blow my nose every night, even those days when I dont leave my res hall, and the Kleenex looks like I just wiped the goo under a dog’s eye off (gross!). I think it has a lot to do with the Tube trains and how the exhaust doesnt really go anywhere and hangs in the tunnels and hallways just waiting for the rest of us to breathe. Its also due to the insane amount of cigarette smoking that goes on here – you thought America was bad? Id guess that about 60% of the people my age in this city that I see walking around smoke. Its probably not quite that high, but they are everywhere. You cant walk two feet (or even open your window) without smelling it. London is crowded and there is no skyline. I miss open spaces and I miss seeing the sun set behind hills and mountains, not ugly cement buildings. But, the city grows on you in a weird way and I remember coming back from the Lake District and feeling as though I were home, the bad and good all wrapped into one big familiar bag that I am starting to fit into a little more each day. Thats not to say Id ever live here, but that I understand this place and it doesnt freak me out quite as much as it used to.

This weekend I did the club thing twice, which was fun for once! Went to Egg on Friday night and Turnmills on Saturday night, both clubs worth checking out if you are ever in the area. The best part about Egg was watching a guy from Italy by the name of “Raiders of the Lost Arp” do a live set with gear (not just Ableton!). He began really simply with a beat machine and some effects and suddenly started layering these beautiful jazz chords and sweeping arpeggios (by hand, mind you) and it all built into this incredible tech-electro house kaliedescope. By far the highlight of his set was this insane build up and then sudden break down into a glitched-out, bassy remix of Parliment’s “Tear the Roof off the Sucker.” Yeeeeah! It was cool. And I closed out the night to some wonderfully mind-screwy acid-house in a little upstairs room.

At Turnmills I saw a whole slew of peoples: a three hour set by Shapeshifters, Yousef, and Peter Goodings. Dimitri From Paris was there as well, by we got going really late and I missed his set completely…. Feel stupid about that, but normally I get to these things and nobody is there. I guess I went too far the other direction this time. I think 11-11:30 is the perfect time to arrive in this city, at a club that is. I have no idea how it works at a rave. Most likely a lot later!! Yousef was good, but there was a lack of energy in his room and he was playing sounds for a much different space (too edgy and building for a small club side-room). Gooding was booooring and too Baeleric for my (and most other peoples’) tastes. The Shapeshifters blew my mind though. They began really funky, with lots of disco remixes and big bass-globbered edits. This turned into diva-house, which lead to cheesy electro stuff ala David Guetta and friends, which then turned into more edgy electro which I dug, and finally the sort of ethereal, minor-keyed warbling tech house (think Milton Jackson meets Joris Voorn) around 4:30 AM. I am still mystified as to why England has such a ravey-reputation. The scene here must have been a lot more about the drugs back in the day, because people really dont dance much. Yeah, they do the groovy side-to-side thing and the hands in the air deal, but no real experimentation, no creativity, no real breakers or funkers. I miss that so much about America. Our scene is about the drugs, sure, but people are still creative and you get so many more dancers who are there to find out what their body can do and excersize, not what their minds can take and escape. But yeah, the Shapeshifters are an insane mixed bag. I enjoyed a good 80% of their 3 hours, which is really good considering I was super worried they were just going to bang disco-house remixes for the whole time. In particular, keep your eyes peeled for an electro-tech remix of Daft Punk’s “Around the World” and a bubbling (yes, yet another) deep house rendition of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” So yeah, I guess they played tried and true house winners, but they did it in a way that didnt feel commercial. Props to the Shapeshifters!

Yesterday I felt strange and ate a bag of Werthers and almost an entire bag of cheese potato chips. Sigh. I realized that I am going down the same path I did at the beginning of my Sophomore year, single again and distanced from most of my friends. I treated myself like crap and I cant start doing that again. I got out of that rut by putting forcing myself to structure the things I wouldnt normally want to do (and which were causing me to escape into food, and other things). This meant making a day-to-day list of things I needed and wanted to get done, since I cant seem to do school work in any reasonable manner any other way. Ive been using these weekly lists since highschool and they work wonders. I just feel a little artificial doing it, as though I really dont care about the school work (and actually, I dont and Im cool with that now) and have to be my own parent all the time. Sigh. If I had a piano, I wouldnt be indulging. Its true, when I stop being creative, I start being excessive. I guess its my subconscious way of filling up unused mental space by pushing all the reality away. Who knows. In the end, I caught myself really fast here (and by that I mean, after eating lots of brown sugar out of my kitchen raw, a tub of Ben & Jerry’s the other week, followed by two nights drinking, followed by three chocolate bars during the week, a Toblerone in an hour, two more nights of drinking, two bags of Wurthers and a bag of potato chips over a weekend…..) and Im done. Seriously, done. All the usual effects of such indulgence have started showing (those of you who know me well, know what these are) and I really dont feel like crashing and rebuilding again. Not this time. I hate the world I have submitted myself to for the past three years, this academic jail where I have to fight with myself for long term goals versus short term happiness. I want both, and this English/liberal arts thing really isnt the path for me. Im going to finish it though, because I wouldnt have started it in the first place for absolutely no reason, would I have? Sigh. But really, I ready for the long hall. I woke up today and yeah, Im ready. No more of this half-thinkin, only feeling crap. It only leads to less thinking and less feeling. If that makes sense. :/ Rambling!

Im getting really good at making curry. This weekend I made enough to last me through Thursday probably, and it tastes amazing! Try it, all you need is a lot of onion, as many other veges as you want, some meat or tofu, coconut milk, curry paste, and rice. SO GOOD! SO EASY! And relatively healthy for you as well.

This week is more of the same. Ill play poker tonight, hopefully win some money (since I won last week, Im only going to use money that Ive won to play). I have class, will see another play (an experimental piece called Rhinoceros), and on Friday am going to what should be the best party (its the best line-up Ive ever seen for a one-night party) Ive been to in a long time called STIR @ Heavens. And its breaks (Rennie Pilgrim, JDS, Aquasky, Phil Hartnol, Hybrid) too, so maybe Ill find some fellow dancers!! I think I might also go to an art exhibition about sex, and see a movie about black youth culture in the 1970’s for my British Youth Culture class. Another week…..!

ok

The Lake District is a strange and wonderful place. Strange, because it is so old-fashioned and proud of it in an almost creepy way. Strange also because everyone makes a living off of sheep. SO MANY SHEEP. Big fluffy white ones, little scraggly black ones, sheep with horns, sheep with skinny necks, sheep in the mud, sheep in the rivers, sheep in the ditches, in the roads, in the town, on the sidewalk, in my hair, in my bed…. etc. Wonderful, because it is so absolutely stunning – imagine the most picturesque/quintessential rural England scene, give this scene to Tolkien, Thomas Kinkade, then to Ansel Adams and I think you might get close. That said, I think the slightly depressed, negative feeling I have associated with this region after all was said and done is biased due to circumstances I had complete and typically David-ish control over. Read on.

My first mistake on this venture was taking a coach. The train, by the time I got around to booking things, was about 70 dollars round trip. The coach was 40, and so I chose the latter. It began just fine lots of nice, fast moving highways through big cities Id never really given much thought to (Birmingham has some amazing architecutre), and then suddenly, about halfway into the trip,  traffic stopped and the drivers (there were two, though one did all the driving and the other did a lot of talking, strange) decided that taking little country back “highways” was a great alternative. Maybe if your the sort of person that enjoys 4 hour rollercoasters and puking into paper bags…. I felt utterly gross during this portion of the journey and spent most of the time in a sort of naseous stupor, trying hard not to look out the window. At one point the whole bus stop so fast that I fell out of my seat. The co-bus driver person remarked in a Cockeny accent, “Chicken!” and I saw in the dim headlights ahead of us a little brown hen scurry into the bushes. This was quite possibly the only time I smiled during the latter half of the journey and it struck me as so funny that I made a bit of a scene trying to stifle laughter.

I arrived in Keswick around 9 PM where I stayed the night in a quaint little hostel next to an equally quaint stream home to lots of ducks who made lots of noise the next morning as I ate breakfast next to a window looking outside. Lovely. I had a terrible meal of strange potato-vegeburger and chips (aka french fries, though the give you enough that it could be an entire meal and each fry is the size of a cigar) at a fish’n chips place, the only eatery open in Keswick after 9 (even the pubs close down at 9!). I attempted to save half of my chips for later, but tasting them the next day was really not a good idea and I ended up throwing them all away.

The next day, Saturday, I boarded a bus to Buttermere, a little town about 10 miles away by road where I was to stay the next two nights. This cost an insane 4.50 pounds (as much as a day pass on the London Underground) one way, but having no other option but walk (see farther down) I paid the fare and 30 minutes later ended up in Buttermere.

The hostel there was not open for check-in till 5, so I stashed most of my stuff in a drying room (for boots, etc…) and ventured off on hike #1 – Buttermere to Hay Stacks. I had read about this walk in a Bill Bryson book, who claimed that it was this route that made him into an obsessive English “walker” (this is what someone who enjoys hiking up and down mountains and fells, dells, what have you is called in the UK. Walking.). About 7 miles long, the route began easy enough around Buttermere lake and then suddenly climbed a good 2000 feet in a mile, up into the clouds, and all around a series of smaller peaks called Hay Stacks, and then back down again, by the lake, and into Buttermere. Bryson was only half kidding when he said the views were stunning, but it wasnt anything too life changing. It was cold and winding and very rocky and after meditating on the highest point I could find, my head just touching the mist above, I figured I should head back down before my fingers fell off and my knee completely stopped bending. I had read online from some demonic person’s rinky-dink walking website that hiking boots are sorely overrated. Oh yeah, sorely is the key word here. I took this advice and did all my walking in a pair of cross-trainers. As I was walking along the lake that morning, I met a local women who needed to talk (and I ended up fulfilling that need ) and mentioned that most people wear boots when “hikin’ d’fells”. I assured her that I knew what I was doing that I would be just fine, and she in turn gave me a weird look. 15 minutes later, I somehow said goodbye and continued my walk. By the end of that walk though, I was hurting, everywhere. I have this chronic knee problem that normally only flares up when I run because I have a really bad arch in my right foot and my running shoes dont give the right support on that leg. Guess what I was hiking in?? Haha…. yeah. Going up was oddly ok, and walking on flat ground was fine as well, though a bit stiff. Going down was an entirely different matter and hurt so bad that I swore rather loudly coming down from Hay Stacks and got a few stares from fellow walkers in return. Back in Buttermere, I still had 2 hours to kill before the hostel opened up, so I stretched a little bit, massaged my knee, and tried yet another climb, this time a set of maybe 600 stone stairs up the side of a giant hill. At the top of said hill, I found absolutely no path and lots of sheep poop, took a few artsy pictures of myself, and turned back. Considering this situation, I have no idea what I was thinking. Excersize is like sugar for me – I dont stop until I have completely overstepped any sense of pleasent return and regret it in retrospect. The way down these steps was absolute hell and I returned to the hostel close to tears, hungry, lonely, and worried that I would have to spend the next day amusing my stationary self in a town consisting of a pub, a hostel, a hotel, a cafe, 10 homes, 10,000 sheep, 100 cows, and a few chickens. The Hostel was full of 30-something year olds and their significant others that night, and I dejectedly took my shower (I forgot soap, shampoo, and a towel, though I bought the latter in Keswick, a super light dry-wicking camp towel which is actually pretty freakin awesome) and dressed in the room alone while people milled about down in the lobby talking, laughing etc… On top of this, I learned that I had two option for my meals, the pub in town (i.e. fish’n chips, steak, beans, potatoes) or the in-hostel dining room, complete with a tasty looking menu of italian food I had no idea how to pronounce. As the pub was down a hill, and I could barely make it down the stairs from my room, I decided to eat at the hostel. A single meal, no drinks, no appetizers – 5.50 pounds (eq. 11 dollars). It wasnt that good, and I was still hungry afterwards…. And they couldnt have rubbed the lonliness factor in much more, placing a little place-card on the table which read “Reserved for David Hvidsten, party of 1.” So I ate by myself and read Wuthering Heights, a suitably dark and melancholy book for my mood that evening. After dinner, having nothing else to do, moved my one-man band up to the lounge and read while old couples got drunk and talked loudly around me, and finally decided that I was tired and had enough of Heathcliff and Cathy et al and moved into bed. Before though, I wanted to stretch really good so that I might have a chance at hiking in the morning. As there was someone alseep in my room already (6 beds) I did my routine outside the room in the floor lobby to the delight of my fellow drunk hostelees, exclaiming such things as “my, I thought you were playing dead!” and “a bit late for excersizin’ eh, mate?” and “you ok then?” as they stumbled by. I cant imagine how their bodies felt in the morning, hung over and stiff. Maybe I am just a physical failure, needing 10x more upkeep than most 35 year olds do after 10 mile hikes up and down mountains. Who knows. In any case, my response minimal and I fell asleep wondering wether or not I was too hopeful in a weekend by myself in the middle of nowhere.

Sunday was a much, much better day. I woke up sore and catching a head cold, but more or less rested. Breakfast, thank god, was free (though from 7:30-9 AM….) and I was ready to go by 10. I ended up walking farther than I had the day before, though none of it up hill, and my knee was just fine, though stiff and slightly tender on the side by the end of the day. I walked close to 12 miles, around two lakes, through two ravines, and another little town. It was sunny as well, which put me in a very pleasent mood and I actually enjoyed my alone time, talking to myself and wondering at this and that. I took a break on a little slate-rock beach and did my stretching routine much to the awkward amusement of various elderly hikers (apparently nobody below 50 walks the horizontal paths). One lady and her ridiculously hyped cocker spaniel even stopped to talk, mid-streching, and told me more than I will ever need to know about all the different walks and routes around us. The lakeside paths that I took were really marshy and I ended up with soking, muddy running shoes by the end of the day, which did wonders for my already sore and chaffed feet… But I was content, it being sunny and I being able to walk. That night I accepted my fate, ordered another overpriced meal, sat alone, read more Wuthering Heights, and then realized that I had scheduled my coach home two hours before the first bus left Buttermere back to Keswick. I asked the silent teenage attendent what he would do in my situation and he replied that I should walk to Keswick. Realizing that this was indeed my only choice, I planned the route, packed my bags, stretched and set the alarm for 4:45 AM.

The walk to Keswick, as I had it mapped out, was just over 7 miles long. Most of it was on roads, so I figured I was giving myself a decent bit of leeway. It was still dark out when I left, but incredible with a clear sky of stars and a moon that was almost as good as the sun at dusk. Everything was completely silent and almost dream-like. Every now and then Id have to scare a sleeping sheep or two off the road with my flashlight, who would start up and scamper into the ditches baaa’ing like I was about to murder their children. I had to climb a pretty steep mountain pass about 2 miles into the journey, atop which I was rewarded with the sun just peeking over the first mountains. This was worth getting up and walking and all that my knee hurt, I thought then. It was absolutely stunning. But, as usually happens with me, I became a little too content with my situation, took a wrong turn without realizing it, and suddenly ended up next to a crossroads reading sign that said “Keswick 7″. Freaking out, I tried in vain to find my place on the map, and in the end convinced myself that I was only a little bit off my original route and the sign had to be in Kilometers. This was at 6:30 AM by the way. So I doubled my speed and tried not to worry about it, though the more I looked at the map, the more I realized that I was truley 7 miles from the station. At this point my legs were getting tired, from 3 days of hiking, and my self slightly exhasperated and desperate. I tried hitchhiking, the whole thumb and everything (how exactly do you hitchhike??), but nobody stopped, and as the minutes ticked by I kept walking faster and faster and by the time I reached the Kewick city limits I was a sweating, painful, mess of not-thinking-only-walking David who wanted nothing else but to reach the bus station in time and not have to wait who knows how long for the next one (if they would even have let me on!). I ended up reaching the station at 8:20, my coach left at 8:10. I had walked what I know gather about 12 miles in just over 3 hours, and I was SO angry that I just sat breathed for an hour on a bench by the station. Apparently the 570 to London, the ONLY bus to London from Keswick, comes once a day, at 8:10 and so, sufficiently screwed, I bought some food (starving by this point having only eating a snickers bar and some orange juice on my walking marathon) and took the next bus to Lancaster giving up all hope of returning home via my original ticket. The bus to Lancaster cost 9.50 pounds (or $19), the train from Lancaster to London? Ahem. 64.50 pounds (or $129). Yep! Good ol’ public transportation. And one way too! I asked the guy in Lancaster over and over again, is this the cheapest way for me to get back home, and why I couldnt use my return ticket on another coach? His answer, yes this was the cheapest way, and no, I missed my bus therefore had made void my return ticket for that time. Sigh. The train back would have been very pleasant (and in the future I will only take trains as they are so much smoother, less vomit-inducing, full of things to read, people to watch, and faster) if I had intended on taking the train, had used soap and/or shampoo in 4 days, hadnt read the newspaper detailing everything I had missed during my 3 days romp in the woods concerning Burma, handt spent a combined total of 113.50 pounds (or $227) on transportation, hadnt walked 35 miles in three days, and had stretched that morning before heading out…. BUT in the end, I stumbled through Euston station, back to S. Kensington, into my room where I blew my nose and saw black for the first time in 3 days. That night I proceeded to win an 8 person game of poker, recapturing 4 pounds of my missing funds, and staying up a total of 20 hours, asleep before midnight. This morning I woke up with a full-on head cold, realized I had no food in the kitched and that the strange Russian girl across the hall has/had been stealing my Spirulina powder. Lovely.

So…… yep. That was my first experience really traveling in a foreign country on my own, and I cant say it was terribly successful. Things to do differently next time: 1. Dont go alone. 2. Wear hiking boots. 3. At least bring soap. 4. Book a TRAIN months in advance. 5. Bring something other than Wuthering Heights to do when bored. 6. Plan any and all walking routes before hand as though you were writing a doctoral thesis. 7. Plan all travel times and routes according to each other, making sure you can make each one in time and that they do not over/under lap. 8. Smile more. 9. Dont worry so much, you are just as good of company as anyone else.

Im back!

Ill write more later, but just to let anyone know I survived (barely) the weekend in Cumbria and have the wallet/foot wounds to prove it. I probably walked a good 30 miles over three days, though today was by far the most intense. Lets just say I missed my bus home by 10 minutes even though I woke up at 4:45 AM…… Yeah. That said, the Lakes District area is absolutely GORGEOUS. I was blessed with some beautiful weather on Saturday and there were times when I had to stop and pinch myself – the area around Buttermere looks like some rural Eden taken from Tolkien’s imagination. Saw lots of sheep, a bunch of cows, some chickens, read Wuthering Heights, and lost more money than one should ever need to push for a weekend hiking in 3 year old running shoes (which btw is NOT a good idea, no matter how much the hiking boots cost, three days of extended hiking in New Balances will demolish your feet).

Im sure its a combination of having walked 13 miles today, getting up so early and not sleeping, or being back in London/having to spend so much money getting back to this rather infernal city, plus the incredibly sad and disturbing state of affairs in Burma, but I dont feel very well today. I won an 8 person game of poker this evening (and 5 pounds!) but even then, the things I do on a weekend here seem trivial and almost wasteful when put in context with the rest of the world. Should I feel guilty about my actions when others are dying for no reason, but that the rest of us are too human to stop what we are doing and activate? Its this dammed inability of ours to communicate feelings due to the loneliness of each person’s thoughts. So often I wish that we were all telepathic, one giant world of individuals thinking as one (would it work like that? Now there’s a sci-fi story). Yes, people went through similar tradegy in America years ago (and in Britain, many many years ago) to allow me to travel without fear and to spend money on chocolate ice cream (etc… etc…) but for what? That we might sit back in patient reverie while the rest of the world catches up? Sigh….. If only GW had chose a legitimate country to invade (sarcastic). I sure hope the UN (why isnt every country a part of this organization!!?!? I hate humans sometimes (a lot of the time)) flexes their biggest muscles on this Burma issue. Unlike India, there are not millions of people to protest with, nor a government with industrialized morals. Unlike so many other countries that have accomplished similar feats of independence, the people of Burma are relatively helpless, though I hope to everyone’s gods that the image of Buddhist monks dying in the streets will strike some sort of international moral spear in the hearts of so many competent industrialized world leaders…………………….. Ahgdaoisdjg! I give up. More tomorrow (plus hopefully long-overdue pictures) when I am not quite so strung out.

G’night.