Rough Notes on a Rainy Day

Ahey.

A sleepy-eyed blogger am I this afternoon, after staying up late to watch 'Searching for the wrong eyed Jesus' with at my friend Jenny's house. A fine film, a deliberately strange, dreamlike exploration of the American South from the perspective of one Jim White, an alt-country type who left the south and then came back, 'to get closer to God'. We meet prisoners, preachers, gun-toting bikers, miners, cops, born-again burger-bar proprietors and a host of other wild, weird, worrying characters who together attempt to explain why this region has produced art and music of such authority and power. The answer isn't stated so much as evoked. Poverty, intense, almost manichean religious belief, dark history and geographical isolation are all factors. White puts it more simply - 'its in the Blood'.

Anyway, that, a snatched 6 1/2 hours sleep and a morning spent squashing a cushion with the Zen Group mean I'm a tired hombre. The snow has gone, replaced by a gloomy drizzle that has kept me indoors. I've been trying to make the most of things and check out storage depot prices so I can begin to sort out a place to stow my junk while I'm away. Looking at my bookshelves and cd racks, I can probably do with getting rid of much of it, but sentimentality makes this a tricky exercise. Like the character in Hi-Fidelity who organises his records autobiographically, stuff tells me who I am.

Going to see 'the Songs of Nick Drake' at the Dome next week. Its an all-star tribute to the guy, curated by Joe Boyd, so it promises to be good. Looking forward to basking in gorgeous Robert Kirby string arrangements and get a nice solid hit of autumnal Englishness before I leave. Also planning to go to the Museum of London at Docklands, mostly for the London, Sugar and Slavery exhibition, but also to get a bit more historical context about London in its role as an Imperial centre.

Got a look at the Peace Corps' Krio language manual the other day, which made me look forward to getting stuck in to learning it. Apparently Krio is NOT a pidgin, but a lingua franca, and it contains words from over 20 African and European Languages. Cool. Also, decided NOT to take my guitar with me after all, basically because it would be too difficult to stow on the plane and I'd only worry about losing it. Also it would probably be an unnecessary distraction. So, rather than strumming chords I shall while away my spare hours writing words...