Diggin

Music: The Hold Steady are taking over my mind yet again after dominating my stereo last year. Stay Positive is less immediate than Boys and Girls in America but that same manifesto of making people understand the live-saving power of great rock ‘n’ roll music. The lyrics are more oblique but they still work and my early prediction is that his is likely to become my number uno albumo over the year.
I’ve been trying to find more good music for writing this week and this seems to have split down two avenues. One is high-quality, beat-driven indie-hip hop, notably J Dilla’s Donuts and The Bake Sale EP by The Cool Kids. The former is sketches of genius from a sadly-missed producer while the latter is just a really great piece of summer driving music.
The other avenue the choices went down is somewhere around the drone/shoe gazing area. My Bloody Valentine EPs have filled the spaces between the neo-classical pieces of Eluvium and the dreaming drones of Stars of the Lid, the true sound of dreaming.

Films: It’s actually been relatively quiet week, mostly because I’m absolutely knackered and can’t seem to pull up enough energy or time to sit and watch a movie.
I do have a number on the list that I will be getting too in the coming, quieter week, including In America and Shock Corridor while Tom and I, on his return from the USA, will take in the Kinski-goes-crazy trip of Woyzeck in a continuation of our Herzog exploration.
The best thing I did manage to see this week was the pretty wonderful Imagine documentary on Annie Liebovitz, Beth and my favourite photographer. Watching her at work was nothing less than awe-inspiring but the scene when she breaks down when talking about her late lover/muse, Susan Sontag, brought me to tears too. A pretty great piece of documentary filmmaking from the ever-improving BBC institution, always better when Yentob just stays out of the way.

Books: I started The Rabbit Omnibus by John Updike, among my favourite short-story authors around, but couldn’t seem to get into it, likely because of a dual issue with the intimidating stature of the author and the busyness of my week. I needed something lighter and Muscle for the Wing by Daniel Woodrell covered that base nicely. A well-told neo-pulp novel concerning a group of interweaving storylines and troubled pasts, it canters along really nicely to a wonderfully bleak ending that seems entirely in keeping with the down ‘n’ dirty action of the rest of the novel. Highly recommended.

Other: I have to say that beer has proved a key component of my past week. I’ll likely need a dry week now to let my body recover but overall, it has cooled and calmed when needed and spurred and driven when I partied on a barge in Battersea. Right now though, the thing I think I love the most, is my bed.