... on a Magic Swirling Ship

More weird dreaming yesterday except as usual everything in the dream was mundane , like being in people houses , going for a drink in a small field , being in Oswestry (Oswestry? I don't think I've ever been or ever need to go , not that I have anything against Oswestry). Dreams can be boring at times.

Today I went to get a bit of shopping and now I have a painful shoulder / chest. I did have t take off my rucksack part of the way back, but at a quick estimate the weight of the shopping was about 15Kg which I carried for around two miles. It's amazing how bottles of milk , water and Prosecco do carry some weight.

Anyway this is a short post mainly inspired by the title line that came into my mind. I have been listening to Bob Dylan's "Biograph" this week and I first heard the line when The Byrds played it on "Thank Your Lucky Stars", and that hooked me. When I first heard the Bob Dylan version I was less impressed thanking he couldn't sing or play. I persevered and Dylan's delivery grew on me. The early stiuff sounded rough but the words took you into magic.

Lot's of people still don't rate Dylan, but like Terry Pratchett his sales must be a huge comfort to him. I only ever liked "Mort" by Terry Pratchett , but that's just me , and people tell me that I am missing so much. I did enjoy the TV adaptations and am similar about Stephen King , find most of his books a grind but TV and film adaptations are great and I think the guy is great.

The "Magic Swirling Ship" is a great analogy for our dreams and the places books and music take us and for me that is just a brilliant image. In itself it's meaningless, but let your mind loose on it and it can be anything you want.

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

I had a dream in which a lot happened last night but the only specific thing was me chucking a pint of water over Donald Trump who was sat in a sink. I don't know if it's related to the fact that there are some tea spoons being bleached in a pint glass by the sink down stairs or what, but the dream involved country roads , cottages , buses and the aforementioned incident.

This is my sixtieth post this year , so that is averaging fifteen posts a month , although there is a lot of April to go so I am expecting maybe two hundred posts this year.

This week has seen me listening to a lot of music and realising that I have ten copies of  "Tommy" by The Who in one form or another and the Ken Russell film sort of set a blueprint for decent pop videos with Elton John's "Pinball Wizard" and Tina Turner's "Acid Queen".

I have the original , orchestral and film soundtrack but all my live Who CDs have a live take of  "Tommy" included , including "Who's Next". So it's gotta be Tina Turner's "Acid Queen" to play out with.

So Lazaretto

This weekend I have listened to Jack White's "Lazaretto" on CD and the "Ultra" vinyl version. Side one of the "Ultra" vinyl version is a strange and unusual experience. I think I bought it because it was the first laser etched hologram on the runout groove of a vinyl LP , but I also like Jack White and had heard some songs from the LP.

I have the CD as well whicjh means I can listen and enjoy , but the vinyl album doesn't even play in the normal direction , no matter where you drop the needle , it finds it's way to a closed groove at the start of the record.

The angelic holograms are quite amazing , just because they are. You can't get your head round that these are made of light shining on some black spinning vinyl. I was thinking of doing a YouTube video but my Instagram Post is enough. The hologram was designed by Tristan Duke of Infinity Light Science. He also did the Star Wars Holograms as well. You can check out all the videos and the web site.

Watch the video and be impressed.

Easter Coincidence

It's Easter Sunday and I 'have just started rereading "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson, which I have happily dived into and one of the characters in it is called Oster which I believe is modern Dutch for Easter and I am sure my friend Bas will confirm it or correct me.

There is a lot about the origins of Easter here  essentially in English-speaking countries, and in Germany, Easter takes its name from a pagan goddess from Anglo-Saxon England who was described in a book by the eighth-century English monk Bede.

Ostara (1901) by Johannes Gehrts.
.Spring feasts were held to honour
the Anglo-Saxon goddess
Eostre/Ostara

"Eostre was a goddess of spring or renewal and that's why her feast is attached to the vernal equinox,"
according to University of Sydney Professor Carole Cusack

In Germany the festival is called Ostern, and the goddess is called Ostara.

I always find it odd that the Christian celebration of something so important to them ia avery moveable feast , while stuff like Christmas is actually fixed.

So I wasn't really going to write anything today but I think Mott The Hoople's "Roll Away The Stone" is sort of appropriate, don't you.

Finishing The Outsider

I have finished "The Outsider" and while , for me, it's hardly an "essential" novel, despite being so short it leaves to with a lot of questions. This is mainly because of the barebones format of describing the experiences of the main protagonist. While part one leads up to the murder, and part two deals with the aftermath , it seems he is actually condemned for not crying when his mother died rather than the actual murder, and although he is condemned you don't know whether there is an appeal. There is an afterword by the author explaining why the protagonist does what he does, but you end up with a lot of questions.

That is no bad thing because you then use your mind to try and figure out why things went the way they did. Too often we expect everything to be laid out on a plate, and that's what we get from most books, but this is different. I suppose "Steppenwolf" also left a lot of unanswered questions but that is a positive aspect for this sort of book.

Next up I am going to revisit "The Adversary" series starting with "The Keep" by F Paul Wilson , which was turned into a film by Michael Mann , but just fell into the basic horror box when the actual series is a lot more than that, although it's purely descriptive unlike the recent volumes I've read.

So moving from the worthy almost philosophical volumes to  what academics may see as unworthy horror, but enjoyable. As I write this I am listening to the excellent "Lazaretto" by Jack White and there seems to be a perfect song on there, "I Think I Found The Culprit". 

The vinyl copy of the album is unfeasibly so clever it makes it almost impossible to listen to, so I go for the CD, 

The vinyl copy also contains the first 3D hologram of an angel in the runout groove which yo can see above. I still can't believe that someone actually thought of that , and then actually did it , and it worked.

Reading The Outsider

 I haven't quite finished "The Outsider" and to me it is like something  that would be a set school text. Although the second part of it has taken a very unexpected turn, so I am still turning the pages and not sure exactly where it's going. I am glad I kept with it although I can't agree with JG Ballard's verdict on it though I would not dissuade anyone from picking it up and reading it.

I have finished the excellent "Apparitions" on Amazon Prime and am just surprised it didn't continue, but it then took me into "Harry Price: Ghost Hunter"  which also look excellent and in a vaguely similar vein, so that will be something else for me to watch.

April has not been a good start on the steps front as after two days  I am 5K steps down , that's about two miles, though having said that I did do 20K steps on the last day of March which was about 8.5 miles.

Given the things I've gone over in this post "The Words That Maketh Murder" by Polly Jean Harvey seems a pretty appropriate song.

April Fooled

It's the first of  April , the day before the Bank Holiday and the start of a new Financial Year, and it's been a busy day but maybe time for a lie in tomorrow.

I'm two thirds of the way through "The Outsider" by Albert Camus and am yet to see why JG Ballard thought it was such a great novel, it has forty pages to prove me wrong. It is readable and while it's not exactly predictable there is very little mystery , things happen in a linear narrative Part One dealing with the lead up to the murder and Part Two with the aftermath.

I've been sifting through my CDs today and rediscovered Tonto's Expanding Headband who consisted of  Malcolm Cecil  and Robert Margouleff . TONTO was an acronym for "The Original New Timbral Orchestra" and their work was similar to what Wendy Carlos was doing with classical music on the Moog.

I was recently playing "3+3" by The Isley Brothers and Cecil and Margouleff were producers on that album too.