May 25, 2011
44
Older, older, blah blah blah.
Presents were more of a trickle than a flood, but I'm looking forward to an Apple-y upgrade at some point, and a train trip to Paris to see some Anish Kapoor. It is, as Private Eye never fails to point out, grim up North London.
On the day, we -- meaning Ian and YT -- lunched at Rhodes 24, roughly halfway up one of the City's tallest skyscrapers, albeit still a dwarf by Manhattan standards. The building used to be known -- back when it used to be known -- as the NatWest Tower. That undistinguished high street bank vacated the premises sometime in the 1990s after damage from an IRA bomb -- but the brand remains embedded in the building's DNA since it has the NatWest logo for its cross section. Apparently no-one from generations younger than mine has any fucking clue about this and they all look blank at any mention of the place.
Food was typical Gary Rhodes mod brit gourmet rehash, unexciting but perfectly decent, and well served by its killer view. The wine was excellent and the coffee fine.
Afterwards we sauntered to the Barbican to visit the Laurie Anderson/Trisha Brown/Gordon Matta-Clark exhibit, which was sometimes a bit up-itself-avant-gardey, but also rather wonderful. I was a bit taken aback by just how disorientingly exciting I found the Brown wall walking perf, having expected very little; and Matta-Clark's excised chunks of derelict Bronx floor were splendid. The highlight though, weirdly outshining its arid surroundings, was Laurie's Electric Chair. Simple but magnificent. Love that woman.
Further to previous GarageBand burbling, I've been noodling about with several (for want of a better word) "songs". Unlikely at the moment that they'll see the light of day, but never say never. Most likely to do so -- as of tonight, drunk, and anything may change -- is something currently labouring under the all-too-descriptive title "Mawkish AOR". It has, or at least might wind up with, lyrics even. Those have meandered directionless for a couple of weeks, visiting a number of blind alleys. A brief turn for the morbid and sinister has been long since abandoned, but shorn of that context I still have a soft spot for the cheap melodrama of this finish:
I don't remember the pain
The bruises on your face
The tears, the blood stains
The gory suitcase...
I never leave a trace
Well, really. Who does?
Posted by matt at May 25, 2011 11:00 PM