flagrant delire

i feel strange. i am neither happy nor sad. there are plenty of things i should worry about, and plenty of things i suppose i ought to be cheerful about. but i'm rather non-commital at the moment. i don't feel like everybody else.

"a presence that disturbs me with the joy
of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
of something far more deeply interfused,
whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
and the round ocean and the living air,
and the blue sky and in the mind of man:
a motion and a spirit, that impels
all thinking things, all objects of all thought,
and rolls through all things."

~ excerpt from lines composed a few miles above tintern abbey by william wordsworth

as you lay in awe on your bedroom floor

couldn't blog last night because i ended up sleeping over at my best friend's house at the last minute, but i'll make up for it today ....

happy 50th morrissey !

__________________________________________________

it hasn't been that long since i first started listening to the smiths, truth be told. i only started to get into them at the end of year nine, which was less than two years ago. i have been listening to them, and solo morrissey, heavily ever since.

the first song that i ever heard by the smiths was - bar a cover of how soon is now which was the theme song of charmed back in the day - probably what difference does it make. i heard it, and london on a compilation i bought in year 8, but i didn't actively seek out any more of their music for a while.

when i did, i can vividly remember the first three songs that i downloaded - how soon is now, heaven knows i'm miserable now and last night i dreamt that somebody loved me. out of all of them, it was the last that hit closest to home. it was the last song out of the three that i listened to the whole way through, as i was initially put off by the extended piano intro.

____________________________________

but once i lay down and listened to the entire song in stunned silence, i realised that this was a band that was completely unlike anything i'd ever heard before - the band that has had the biggest impact on my life before or since.

__________________________________________

excessive flashpoints beyond all reach

i watched the joy division biopic control this afternoon. i'm not sure if i like it or not. the pacing was slow, and i feel like it only really scratched the surface of ian curtis's life. by the end, though, it was terribly moving. the masterful use of my favourite ever joy division song, atmosphere, in the closing scenes made it all worthwhile.

"i wish i were a warhol silk screen hanging on the wall. or little joe or maybe lou. i'd love to be them all. all new york's broken hearts and secrets would be mine. i'd put you on a movie reel, and that would be just fine."

more human than human

i'm a huge fan of the film blade runner. this halloween i'm dressing up as the roxie hart to my best friend's velma kelly, but next year i'm being pris.

"i've seen things you people wouldn't believe. attack ships on fire off the shoulder of orion. i watched c-beams glitter in the dark near tan hauser gate. all those moments will be lost in time ... like tears in rain. time to die."

___________________________________________________________________________________________

with your triumphs and your charms

i feel awful. why does everybody else have a montgomery clift except me

before you start you're already beat

i've always been so preoccupied with warhol-era edie sedgwick that i never realised how enchantingly beautiful she was in the last years of her life.

the passing of time leaves empty lives

being a psychology student means i accumulate a lot of irrelevant knowledge about scientific studies. i recently gained an interest in stanley milgram, who is infamous for his studies on obedience (look it up, the results are fascinating). one of his lesser-known projects examined the ‘familiar stranger phenomenon’.

familiar strangers are people that you see most days of your life, but never interact with: people that you might have seen for years at the train station, whilst out walking your dog, or at the gym, but have never even said hello to. in an innovative study, milgram took photographs of people on train platforms during rush hour, and then asked commuters to look at the photographs and circle the people that they saw almost everyday of their lives but had never spoken to. the typical commuter in new york city knew about four familiar strangers.

milgram became fascinated by this strange phenomenon, referring to them as a “special kind of frozen relationship”, and noting: “we spoke to people in station after station, and this is what they told us. as the years go by, familiar strangers become harder to talk to. the barrier hardens. if we were to meet one of these strangers far from the station, say, when we were abroad, we would stop, shake hands, and acknowledge for the first time that we know each other. but not here.”

______________________________________________________

for you i was a flame

though i'm rather blind
love is a fate resigned

memories mar my mind

love is a fate resigned

over futile odds

and laughed at by the gods

and now the final frame

love is a losing game.