Last night I went to bed at 8. That’s pretty easy to do in the woods at this time of year. The sun is long gone. It is so quiet.
At midnight I was woken up by a catflap. An unfamiliar loud noise. I had already taken the ticking clock from the bedroom. Being so solitary is unfamiliar. I’ve been in London a long time with my head to a main road.
Lines in my head. Big chunks of prose and verse, things I want to be comfortable with.
Midnight to 6am, I don’t think I slept at all. I couldn’t switch my head off. At home I would have solved it with sleepydrink. But no such solution. I tried counting, breathing, rolling. I tried madness. I tried anything that might work. When the alarm went off at 6 I was totally unrested, just a little bit annoyed that time had happened so fast.
Morning happened. Somehow I was up and filling up the autofeeder cos I’m not gonna be back until tomorrow afternoon, I’m a yo-yo. This is worth doing around what’s possible just as if I had time it would be restful. This time it isn’t. I’m banking it for next time.
I thought it would be glorious listening to Kid A up to town. I was listening to Radiohead back when Pablo Honey and The Bends happened. Loved OK Computer too, but never quite got to liking Kid A. Knackered with no sleep up through Surrey it just felt like I was listening to the gateway to Coldplay. Some guy falsetto wingeing. Disappointing. They recently soundtracked Hamlet up in Stratford. They’re still current. I’ll probably listen to it a few more times before I move on like I did with Kendrick Lamarr.
I think it’ll take about 80 albums before this top 500 settles though. There are gonna be unusually highly rated albums that don’t warrant it. Let’s imagine there were 30 people in the selection committee. Every one of them a muso. So every muso you know almost deliberately overrates one particular obscure album. It’s part of the language of being a muso. “Oh you’re not aware of Manillo: Carpet Lobster? You haven’t lived.” I’ve been guilty of such things before, I was obsessed with Plastic Beach for years to the extent I had it reflected back at me by someone who had already heard me singing its praises.
The top few picks of all the Rolling Stone committee would have been promoted up the list artificially. So far no U2 and I’m willing to suspect we won’t see them until after 100 because of the free iTunes debacle – the committee is mostly the age that had their ITunes shuffle derailed by Apple forcing Bono on everyone. Apple somehow shouldered the hate onto the artist. This helps me remember that this list is a subjective list. “Best band in the world,” said Rolling Stone in the nineties. But they fucked up with social media in a new way. They’ve been referenced in the blurb for high rated albums. But we won’t see them for a while. Some rock cooking though, Bruce Springsteen next up.
But … this is the wittering of a man who hasn’t slept. I can’t think of much else but my soundscape. I’m gonna be up and down a lot in the next few days. Gonna really enjoy sleeping in my own bed tonight, with all the road noise. I’m not even gonna need sleepydrink.
AlBarclay 