Beyond Quirkiness

Monday 1st November 2010

2010-11-01T05:25:00.001-07:00

12:25

So I thought I'd give a review of the Imogen Heap concert I was at last night. I walked into the Arts Centre about 15 minutes before it started, having been at the Terrace Bar drinking Jagermeister with ice, not really getting into the alcohol thing as I'd been drinking champagne all day, and I was a little dizzy from the cigars. Glad to have gotten a seated ticket, I wandered around outside Butterworth Hall for a while, drinking Smirnoff Ice from a bar upstairs I didn't even know existed, so it was kind of a pain that I chose to drink at the more expensive Terrace Bar beforehand. After a while I walked into, or attempted to walk into the concert hall, where I was asked to pour my bottled drink into a plastic cup for fears that I might glass Imogen Heap. Obviously I would never do that but, fair enough, I see their point, if anyone can throw glass that accurately so far away from the stage. The hall was relatively empty, or rather, disproportionately dispersed with people. The balconies were full, and I saw Seaseme Street characters, including Big Bird, on the balcony across from us. I was sat next to this old couple who didn't look like the alternative indie type, I think they, and quite a few others came along just for a night out. Some people didn't have a clue who she was, not being able to sing along with her most famous songs. I overheard one guy say 'I didn't expect her to be this good..'.

Anyway, let's move on. The house lights went out and an ethereal purple aura enveloped the stage, lighting up a 3-Dimensional paper tree, which was the centrepiece. The stage was covered with bizarre instruments; a birdcage, a large thin sheet of aluminium and wine glasses with lemons next to them. What struck me immediately was that Imogen Heap wandered onto the stage straight away, on time, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and just started talking. I definitely recognised her, but I could tell some people thought she was just the sound-check woman or someone who was just introducing the first support band, but no, it was Imogen. So, she introduced the first supporting act, a band called Geese who don't even have a CD out yet, though they were selling their EP in the lobby which I was compelled to buy after hearing them. They took to the stage with a drumset and two violins, and poured out a sound of what I can only describe as a more compelling, more engaging and even more bizarre version of Godspeed You Black Emporer. They did things with violins I wasn't even aware were possible, breaking all the rules you learn in music lessons, especially with this instrument. The violence was in their music and was billowing all around the concert hall. They teased the audience with soulful melodies that sounded a bit like a depressed Vivaldi before the drums came in, bringing the roof down and smashing the land-speed record for pizzicato. And so they played three songs, entirely instrumental, and left the stage, making a huge impression on me.

Imogen returned to the stage once again to introduce her second act, Ben Christophers, a singer-songwriter from Wolverhampton who reminded me of a more soulful Thom Yorke, not to disparage Thom Yorke, I just thought this guy sounded a little less melancholic. However, there was something about his performance that had resonance of the main 'guy' character from the movie 'Once'. As I sat there listening to him I had this impression that he'd been sat in his bedroom for days on end, channelling everything that had gone wrong in his life into his music and then being brave, or perhaps foolish enough to take it to the stage. After his first song Imogen made a quick interruption and told everyone on the balcony to come and stand by the stage. Not everyone did it, but I certainly did. I walked outside, ordered a pint of Carling from the bar and walked downstairs, through the double doors in the atrium of Butterworth Hall and around the corners onto the stage floor. You could hear Christopher's music reverberating through the brickwork, and there was something about it that I didn't want to miss, so I ran quickly inside. He played a few songs, with his guitar terribly out of tune for one of them; an error which he quickly fixed and then decided to play a different track, a track I would argue, was better than what I got from his flawed one. It had the markings of an upbeat Joshua Radin song, which led me to think that if he's touring with Imogen Heap, he perhaps knows Radin as they're an associated act. Maybe they live lives experiencing similar things. Maybe there's something about life in that whole genre that creates this kind of music.

Christophers finished his set and the house lights went up again for a 20 minute interval. During that twenty minutes I wandered outside for a cigarette in the cold, not being sure whether I was breathing out smoke or whether it was so cold I could see my breath in the air. I stood there thinking about Geese, the first support act, and the fact that they didn't have an album out. At this point I decided to go in and buy their EP, just in case they never make it into the indie mainstream, just in case I'd never hear them again. I just didn't want to lose those amazing violin stunts and the effervescent drumming. Walking upstairs to the bar again, I sat down with a bottle of Beck's on some bizarre art-deco furniture; essentially weird cushioned blocks coated in yellow and green fabric. It was then I noticed that Geese were standing a few feet away from me, and it struck me, despite already knowing this, that musicians are just ordinary people with extraordinary creativity. I suppose I'm on the lyrical side of their fence. Anyway, as Imogen was about to come on I quickly ordered another pint from the bar and ran downstairs, spilling about an inch of the drink in the rush. Just as I was walking in, the house lights faded to black once again, and a Halloween-themed cackle resonated through the speakers.

Imogen returned to the stage, this time dressed as a witch, with chaotic hair, a pointy hat and carrying, for some reason, a robot-pumpkin. I don't know what it is with indie fans and robots but there's definitely some correlation there, anyway, I'm not complaining. Now with me standing about five feet away from the stage holding a beer, she placed the robot-pumpkin on her rather atmospheric glass, transparent piano, and started talking. This was something I'm not used to. If you go and see bands like Muse, or even Blue October, there is little, if any, audience interaction. Before each song she went into charming anecdotes about how her songs came about. It says on her Wikipedia page that she most often writes her lyrics in 'the heat of a moment', after something major has happened. But this was not quite the case. The first song she sang was about people who say one thing, then do the other. A song about hypocrisy, but illustrated by Imogen via a story about someone she had over for lunch who wouldn't eat wheat or dairy, etc. She went to lengths to cook him a meal that didn't contain any of the things he had reservations about, but then kicked him out and told him he wouldn't be having any further dinners with her as he had a chocolate biscuit, saying, 'it's just one biscuit'. And so an incredible song about hypocrisy was born. The night continued with stories like this, and we gained great insight into her sampling methods. There were some which seemed quite obvious, such as the high pitched whining sound you get when you move your finger around a wine glass; something she did and sampled right there and then for a song she was about to sing. But there were more significant sampling stories. For instance, she was vague, but commented on the sound of a piece of wood, a 'significant, sentimental' piece of wood burning on a fire. She first let us hear the sound on its own, and it sounded like anything you'd just hear any 5th November. But when the sample was placed into a song, expertly and atmospherically, it brought the whole thing together.

There was another thing that I found rather intriguing. Imogen Heap commented before the start of her main set that the audience would sometimes complain if they turned up to hear songs they didn't know or didn't like. Therefore, she ran a poll before the concert pretty much asking what people wanted to hear at the concert, and the top ten made it to the stage. I thought at first that this would be a little unfair on her, as an artist, being told which pieces of art should be displayed is somewhat self-limiting to the singer's tastes and confidence. However, I was a little awe-struck at how the anecdotes and stories about each song were accompanied with messages of how much she loved each song. The general impression was that she didn't mind playing what people wanted her to play, because she loves all of her songs; if she doesn't like a song she's written, it doesn't make it onto the album. There were several surprises in the night, including a stellar performance, with Geese on the violins, of Frou Frou's Let Go, something I had been singing all day and did not in a million years expect to hear, since half of Frou Frou was missing from the stage. 'Incredible' is not even the right word, I'm not really sure what is, but it was definitely up there in defining moments of unparalleled music. The night ended with an encore, something she was direct about; 'this is my encore by the way, we have to be out of here by 11 so go get a drink, quick!'. Hide and Seek, the main thing everyone wanted to see her sing live, culminated in a symphony of bird-cage violin playing, glass piano melodies, and some excellent work on a key-tar. I may not have been dressed up as a Victorian Pimp or even Big Bird, but I have to say as far as Halloween parties go, this was perfect.

Saturday 30th October 2010

2010-10-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

18:23

Back again. I'm currently drinking Beck's beer, 275ml @ 5% ABV. I'm on my sixth bottle and it's all rather.. mediocre. I'm watching QI but for some reason instead of intriguing me as usual it's boring me. I kind of just want to go to bed but I know I won't sleep. I won't sleep for at least 5 hours yet. I've had problems with sleeping recently. Unless I take 7.5mg of Zopiclone alongside at least 6mg of Diazepam I sleep terribly. It takes me at least an hour to actually fall asleep. I know when I'm actually falling asleep because my head makes random jerking movements in the two to three minutes before the transition between hypnagogia and unconsciousness occurs. During the sleeping hours, the main sleeping hours, that is to say, the first eight or so hours, I have no problem sleeping. But staying asleep has always been my problem, and I always wake up with dread. This morning, for example, at about 10:30am, I was not ready to get out of bed. I intended to stay in bed, but my consciousness was so lavishly perky that it decided to attack me with a tirade of things that 'were wrong' with my life, even though nothing was wrong. I remember thinking, I remember I had to keep reminding myself 'nothing is wrong, so you can sleep for an hour more, nothing is wrong, there are no problems to keep you awake', but it didn't work. So I lay in bed for an hour, until roughly 11:30am, in a state of hypnopompia and ethereal hallucinations and negative fantasies, and eventually got out of bed. And so I get out of bed, feeling like I've had 3 hours of sleep at best.

I go outside for a cigarette, a cigarette that I can only smoke half of because my body isn't used to the nicotine and partially because my brain hasn't completely switched on yet. Dizzily, I try to make coffee and drink it, all this time waiting for that moment where I can smoke a full cigarette, something that actually doesn't happen during the day and the evening because I can't be bothered smoking a full one during that time. I don't know what's going on. I need to quit smoking. I need a Doctor to prescribe me Champix but the various GPs that I've been under the care of have no idea or no care of how to communicate with each other, so I'm not quitting. I want to quit, I want out of this prison, but the doctors are useless. They refer you to support groups or bizarre carbon monoxide tests... seriously, just prescribe me the nicitinoid-receptor antagonist medication and I'll do it on my own. But no, they want to pretend to be so involved, some kind of sick self-gratification that somehow validates the fact they've got unusual letters after their name and their twisted view of the Hippocratic Oath. There are so many problems with everything that is going on medically. You can easily get medications or drugs for conditions you don't have, and by the same token it is impossible to get ahold of medications that you actually need, for real, existing conditions. How do people live in this society?

Saturday 30th October 2010

2010-10-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

14:25

And so I've started blogging again. Not that my life is of particular interest to anyone out there, and if anyone is reading this, for all intents and purposes, this is to track the progress, the crescendos and diminuendos of my own personality. I guess this is because I want insight, or perhaps, I want insight as to whether I want insight. However, if you enjoy reading this, or you have any slight intrigue into what I have to say, you may continue reading. Tomorrow is Halloween, I have a costume; I'm essentially a Victorian pimp with a top hat and a cane, but really I have no party to go to, tonight or tomorrow. I suppose I could go to some random event at the union under the guise that it might be superficially fun, but there's always the money issue. Cheap drinks? I could drink pints; pints are always cheap but for some reason my medication makes me throw up after about 2 of them. Despite this, it can be worth it: to carry on drinking after a fine bit of emesis creates a kind of psychoactive haze through the teary eyes and allows me to consume anything I want with ease, up until a certain point, the 'second' flashpoint where I'll throw up again, so it's all a matter of timing really. Tomorrow is also the Imogen Heap concert at the Warwick Arts Centre. I'm, in some ways, revising for the concert by going through her new album and some of her classics, because I like to be able to sing along, or at least mouth the words in the wall of noise. Never really seen a concert at Butterworth Hall before, so I don't know how loud it'll be. Apparently she sometimes does a cover of Michael Jackson's Thriller.. that'd be appropriate for Halloween I guess, so that would be fascinating to see.

Introductions, introductions.. what else is going on in my life? I'm in my final year of University. At this point I am highly disillusioned with Warwick, mainly due to their refusal to let me retake an exam that I did badly in because I missed the classes for it due to depression. I'm currently collecting all the medical evidence I can so I can write an appeal for the degree awards board at the end of the year in the hopes that they don't automatically downgrade my degree class. In conjunction with this I need to score at least an average of 57% across the board, which at the moment is looking reasonably possible, because I've been attending all my classes and already at this point have a better idea of the shape and format of my modules than I did by May last year. I seem to see the world through two tones of glasses. Optimism and pessimism, I guess you could say, but taken a little further. When I'm in the optimistic mood I will ignore having to wait at the traffic lights to cross the road and ignore the fact that the lid for my bottle of milk has fallen on the floor. However, when I'm in a pessimistic mood I will take that lid falling on the floor as just another thing going wrong and attribute to it some kind of twisted significance in the general scheme of depressing things. You may be pleased to hear I'm currently in the optimistic mindset. Yeah, mindset I guess is the word, rather than mood.

It's reading week after next week, so I'll be back home in Manchester in 7 days, which is, for all intents and purposes, a massive relief. Warwick has become so claustrophobic; it seems to be worse when you don't have the money to go out and get away from the place. And even when you do get away from the place, you're still in the bubble. You're at Terrace Bar and you're very aware of how small the room is, that you're just sitting in this room consuming psychoactive drugs in the form of Jagermeister and Jack Daniels. And you know when you leave that small room, with a head full of enactogenic depressants, you've got to go back and sit in your room where you have two choices; mind-numbing preparation for seminars where the research you'll have done gets dwarfed and melted into insignificance by the tutors' wild tangents and, as opposed to what they tell you at A level, completely not answering the question. Or you can sit down and go on BBC iPlayer, assuming there's stuff you've not seen before, which there usually isn't, or listen to music through uncomfortable headphones because the guy next door who can't even speak English properly tells you your volume is 'too much music man'. I'd really like to smash his face in with a brick. So what's left to do? What cause is left? I realise I sound very depressed writing this but I'm not. At present, I am not depressed. I think being happy, or at least my 'being happy' is seeing all of these things I'm talking about and not letting them get to me. There are some moments, sometimes fleeting seconds of despair about the whole situation, but they pass, you've really just got to let them pass.

So I don't really know how to wrap this up. I suppose there isn't really a right or wrong method. I'm drinking coffee, thinking about going getting a bottle of wine in a minute and some food that can go in the fridge, since the freezer's gone a bit wrong and melted everything I have. Imogen Heap's resonating through my earphones and the sun is glinting through the gaps in the leaves of the tree outside my flat, blinding me slightly. It's generally just another day in a life of living day to day.

Peace out.