Post-Halloween Spookiness

I have made friends with a new site called Classic Horror Campaign and they're great fun. Just got a film review up, Carnival of Souls, and they've managed to source a load of beautiful posters and different covers. My favourite is probably the pen-and-ink style black and white one, which doesn't give away anything about the plot with a silly tagline (plus why colour the cover of a black and white film....).

ALSO in conjunction with the Classic Horror Campaign was Frighten Brighton, an event for which I made these beauties:

SKULL AND CROSS-BUNS

60g butter
140g caster sugar
1 egg (recipe says large but I tend to use medium as I feel sorry for the hens)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
115g plain flour
30g cocoa powder
1/4 tsp bicarb of soda / baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
5 tbsp milk
4 tbsp strong espresso

• Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy, then add the eggs and vanilla extract. If it separates a bit dont worry, but you can always warm it very gently until fully combined.
• Combine the flour, cocoa, salt and baking soda, and then sift them slowly into the buttery goo, alternating this with your milk.
• Then finally stir in your espresso. If you can't make 'proper' espresso then the equivalent in instant is fine: strength-wise just go by how much you love coffee!
• Bake at 180'C/gas 4 for about 15 minutes, until they are firm to the touch.
  

This was adapted from the lovely Lily Vanilli's chocolate cupcake recipe: I LOVE the addition of coffee, it gives it such a rich, dark edge.
As the cocoa means they can still be a little dry, even with the addition of milk, I mixed dark brown sugar and some more cocoa with boiling water to get a classic fudge sauce, and drizzled it on top. This can be done after cooking, as I wanted it over the top of my skulls, or about 3/4 of the way through to get an even goopier cupcake.

I was hoping to use marzipan for the skulls, and bake them til they were nice and crispy, but the world had sold out of the stuff as everyone had decided to make their Christmas fruitcakes! So I sculpted them with white icing and glued them on top with buttercream before adding my chocolate drizzle.

Success!

Next plan: get a better camera, my baking is good but the photos are horrendous.

Well recently I have been making gingerbread... Excessive amounts...



For Xmas I'm planning to make several gift-boxes with the stuff, then fill em with other goodies, like fudge or mini chocolate brownies, so when that happens pictures will occur.

But these things also stopped me in my tracks, they're fantastic.

The Monster Within

Freud (or, that Frood Dude, as I will forever think of him) strikes again in our latent fears of being turned into poo. This reminds me of wading through all of the visceral myth and fairy-tale centred writing in my early literature years. Lots and lots of being devoured and what it means to us. What I like about this article is that it extends the complexity even more logically, in an evolutionary way. (Because, among other things, Freud is now a bit old hat.) There is a dragon-like creature in almost every culture, and while the development of RPGs made them more of the domain of creative fantasists, it was once the sole problem of great warriors and and adventurers, slaying beasts and gaining national notoriety.
I'll be honest, there's not a huge variety of more classical dragon images readily avaiblable, which says something about at least the internet-dwelling percentage of population and their continued fascination with them. And even some of the cheesier hand-drawn depictions have something fearsome to them. This is the perfect predator we are looking at, and even in the modern world, their is something incredibly fearsome about that.
As the end of the article states, it's only by this mishmash of evolutionary synthesis and mythic imaginary development that we remember our enemies, and ultimately a reminder of how to best defeat them:
"We want and need to feel there’s a monster within us so we can summon its power when necessary. Millions of years as a prey species have taught us that, at times, we must drink the dragon’s blood to survive."

Merry New Episode of Doctor Who

Steven Moffat can do no wrong in my eyes. Unlike Russel T Davies.
It's funny, but after Father Christmas stopped existing, Christmas meant nothing until The Doctor came back. I just need a little magic to rely upon. A little quantum possibility can't hurt either (how else did he deliver all the presents?!)

ReacTIVision

I saw an amazing performance on Saturday, using reacTIVision. The performer had set up his lightbox with a small series of strings on one side as the source of sound. He placed a series of small tiles, which had images known as fiducials on the undersides, on top of the box. The tiles are then 'read' by a camera within the lightbox. The camera picks up the images and the computer distorts the noise accordingly. The performer in question had only fully 'programmed' a couple of the tiles, a few loops essentially, so that the rest of the sounds were less controlled, more unexpected, creating an improvised set, as it were.
It was fascinating to watch the mixture of control and arbitrary noise created by the fiducials being moved on the surface of the box. Even more incredible is the process of programming behind it. It all gets a bit technical for me, relying on the identifying systems set up within the computer to match and calculate the unique ID of the fiducial and then "encode the fiducial's presence, location, orientation and identity and transmit this data to the client applications". It's a great example of realtime at work: such as Wil Wheaton's current experiments in webcam feeds, and similarly it's bound by the technology it relies upon, but with fantastic implications. It could be expanded endlessly, created as a projection, and can employ finger-tracking as well (don't even ask, I've not looked). This has expanded live mixing in my mind: I was always better with grasping a system of symbols. This could be the next step, not only for literal noise experiment, but for dance, for all music performance.
A wonderful meeting of art and technology, which I lurve. If only I could understand either.

Advent Horizon

So, I last wrote a blog post on the first of June. Shocking.

Here are some notes, digested later on, from this talk:

Constitutive Self-Negation

"Abstract: Phenomenology has insistently contributed to the understanding of the irreducibility of two bodily dimensions: the body-as-subject anchoring one’s first-person perspective, carrying out one’s projects and the body-as-object constrained by its immersion in the material world, scrutinized by others. This presentation will unfold the idea that both these bodily dimensions participate equi-primordially to the constitution of one’s being. This may be shown by considering atypical experiences and practices of bodily self-transformation which may first appear as attempted self-eradication, but which may rather involve a form of constitutive self-negation. Following Reza Negarestani who characterizes decay as a “building process toward exteriority”, a radical subtraction from one’s body of the inert elements common to one’s body-as-object (life) and one’s corpse (death) will here be conceptualized as involving two contemporaneous processes: shedding one’s thing-hood and exposing one’s no-thingness. The former attests to the irreducibility of one’s body-as-subject and one’s body-as-object; the latter attests to their ineradicable intermeshing."

I often stare at myself in the mirror because I am trying to see my subjecthood from the outside, my self as other people see me. The person people seem to like and respect, or what it is that makes things otherwise. What it is about my behaviour that means I don’t find work easily. How I project myself. I am trying to become my outer self, to actualise whatever is it that will allow me to function socially. It is not working very well. I cannot relate to the me that everyone else sees, and I cannot transport myself far enough away to see it. As equally as I dismiss the idea that I am amazing, I am confounded that I have not been hired on the countless job interviews I have attended. What do I do at one time that I do not do at another? All I can see is me. I am occluded by myself. I am self-confident to the point that I don’t show it in the slightest. I am not satisfied with my inner being and yet I seem to show an outer attractiveness. I do not feel like my outside self. It is scary.

Perhaps when I am old I will love myself more. Society will not look at me as thin and young and blonde. I will be more of a person and less of a stereotype. I do not like being thin and young and blonde. I am certainly not the thinnest, youngest or blondest. I do not feel like I am that person. But I am often treated that way, or so it would appear to me, when I am spoken to as if struggling.

What am I? Where do I begin? How can I be the good others see in me, and how can I drown the preconceptions I am mired in?

My diabetes has made me forgive my body many things. My shape is mine, and I do not want to harm it anymore, and I do not crash into things with the dismorphia I once had. To be aware of the body seems to help the mind. But why? I used to long for an entirely spiritual existence, a removal from my desires. I felt the purity it might bring me. But I cannot escape my diseased flesh, so I decide to embrace the rest of it too. It is not so bad. My mind is not unnurtured. I am just lagging behind my desires.

This is also lovely although I have never used Posterous. Learn a new thing eh?

Been a long time, been a long time

been a lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.

People keep sending me lovely things, so OI'm slotting them in here, as best I can.

First off, if only I could choose a favourite quote, I'd get one of these.

Secondly, this is one of the best/worst puns in the universe, from one of my favourite purveyors of terrible puns, XKCD.

Thirdomondo, I got to see Sufjan Stevens, and although this video is from the previous night's show in the Albert Hall, it very slightly captures one of the greatest rock and experimental gigs I have ever seen.

Finally, I do enjoy anything that condenses this much knowledge into (just over) three minutes:

Am I Alive when not Listening to Music?

I really loved this album, 100 Lovers by DeVotchka. Highly recommended.
I have been aware of this band for a little while, and they're a very interesting outfit. It's fair to say I have been struggling with finding new music, or music I have been really inspired by. I generally still end up listening to 'Rumours'. It is entirely possible I haven't been trying hard enough, but this, your mid-twenties, is the age when an inherent mistrust in modern music is born. Your mind hardens and you tire of trying to keep up with current trends, as your friends are no longer trying to either. Plus, Justin Bieber and Ke$ha exist. Enough said.
But music has a weird effect on me and aside from bands and albums I cherish, and the few universally acknowledged as timeless by the Western world (answers on a postcard), it's impossible to keep still musically, because artistry changes as rapidly as your tastes, moods and the atmospheric fluctuations causing weather.
An album I loved while reviewing, I might then never listen to again. In the aftermath of watching Juno, I thought Kimya Dawson was a goddess. Now I cannot bear hear soft, twee voice. But I would still crank up Buddy Holly's trembling tones.
Weezer are on tour. I have saddened myself by not buying a ticket. They were the one band left on my list of bands I have to see before I am allowed to die, and I am not going to see them. This is partly due to a complete hatred of their past two albums. And maybe a newborn desire to live out a more decent lifespan, instead of my intended joing of The 27 Club.
But what upsets me most of all is that no band has taken their place as a 'must-see'. There are a few bands I would love to see, if the opportunity arose: I was lucky enough to see the Decemberists just a few nights ago.
But I have nothing left to live for without this goal, and nothing to die for either. How annoying.

Long Live Live Music

How I love being an amateur music journalist, when you get to blag last minute tickets to see The Decemberists at the Hammersmith Apollo in order to review their support, Blind Pilot.
While I heartily support Blind Pilot and the lovely press officer who allowed me to see this show, I was feeling a bit out of sorts and so am not entirely 100% pleased with the review. It was also hampered by the poor sound quality during the act themselves. Very unfair, especially considering the similar nature of the instrumentalism in both bands, which should have been reflected from the start. I find it hard to believe the sound engineer could cock up in a venue like that, or that such enthusiastic bands would fail to do thorough sound tests.
But anyway, this bit here is my excuse to talk about The Decemberists. As with all great timeless acts, their music is hard to describe. I told a friend that a lot of it has a sort of 'sea-shanty' air but to be honest I think I'm selling short the breadth and depth of American music history by saying that. Their roots echo genres that I only have the vaguest idea about, such as bluegrass, but they still retain a large amount of good ol' rock and roll. YouTube has already served me well and allows me not to tell, but to show part of the actual performance:




They OBviously polished off the show with a rousing version of 'The Mariner's Revenge'. The whole audience pretending to be swallowed by a whale was the most fun I've had in a long time. When's the last time you just really, genuinely screamed as if you were being swallowed by a whale? Never.
The whole evening was what I would call a proper rock show. I had thought that as a group they might fall in to the "serious musician" category, coming out, sincerely playing a decent mix of recent releases and top hits (they totally eschewed 'Red Right Ankle') and then disappearing without a word. But Colin Meloy is one of the funniest frontmen I have ever seen. Not just incidentally throwing out witty lines, but being absurdly engaging and charismatic, more at home on a stage than I have ever seen anyone be, let alone a dumpy guy with flattened dark hair, thick glasses and a so-last-season lumberjack shirt. The theatricality made the songs... you could almost tell that if they hadn't been playing the music, they would have been leading the crowd dancing to it. I can't even remember which song it was, but the entire venue was swaying in perfect unison, mirroring the band exactly as they moved on stage. It's this kind of intense bond which can form between crowds and artists that makes a band more than just a group of successful musicians, that makes an live show truly memorable. Gig-goers will be used to the varying types of posturing and hero worship which go on, where even stage-diving or throwing your guitar to the audience merely amp up the persona of 'incredibly rock and fucking roll', but when an artist actually complains about how far away the audience is due to the stage barrier (c'mon, who would crowdsurf on that night?), you feel a little bit more gratification at taking the time, and spending the money, to see these people. And that's part of what music really, really is about. OK?

Brown-noser

I had a spate of watching Derren Brown's programmes recently: some of the recordings of theatre shows and some of the series, 'Trick or Treat'. One of the key aspects, especially in his live act, is usually finding people who are the most receptive to his tricks, or rather, the most open to RHUBARB CRUMBLE suggestion.

This psychological openness is by no means a bad thing, it simply suggests what are generally known as 'left-brained' people, who would often be more creative, intuitive, and emotively driven.

Obviously I immediately wondered whether I fell into that category.

Now, thanks to the internet, I have a rough idea. This is not presciptive or incredibly definitive, but it does give a reasonable indication. Of course, if you're in the theatre watching Derren, you might have a natural proclivity for it anyway, or simply a desperate need to get closer to him.

Also if any part of your mind drifted towards buying some custard while reading this, it's possible you'd be perfect...

*sigh*

I'm not allowed to embed this.

Needless to say, I loved and lost.

Amnesty

Again, I have been a slovenly blogger. I have had a lot on my mind of late, but perhaps not much suitable for print. Not with the image I want for this blog, anyway.

I'm not surehow many look at this page, considering my long silences at the moment, but I have a new scheme afoot, and need your support!

More things soon, when I get the rest out of my system...

Music and Books (not creative, but true)

I'm back on the reviews, Hurray!!!! Here is one.
And I'm currently interning at Penguin books, which is very exciting. I'm in publicity again, although I still want to angle towards editing. Because I am shy and anally retentive.
Still, if you happen to see a press release for a book called 'RUSO and the SOMETHING SOMETHING' by R. S. Downie... I may pigeon hole myself somewhat by admitting to not being very in to historical fiction... Someone hire me; I love books so!

Regrets, healed by chocolate

Well it's been almost six months, and I apologise. Someone came along. Surprisingly, he's still around :) otherwise I wouldn't bring it up.
Anyway, holy cow, I want in.