Your Soul's Been Bought, and You're Inwardly Crying

I sat down with my housemate to watch tv today, and she didn't even bat an eyelid at this quote: "George Clooney has been such a part of showbiz life for the past 30 years, it's hard to conceive of a time when he didn't exist."

I turned around expecting a glance in empathy at the ridiculousness, but nothing came. Have to get out. I've also had bad dreams about arguing with her, which presumably come from the distant thought of what could happen if I really told her what I thought of certain things sometimes, not that she's not nice, and I'd ever want to offend her. I'd love to help her. She's a loveless 34 year-old, a casualty of this culture, and through her I feel I'm constant witness to its ways and false dreams.

Then after this, back at the Clooney-fest, at the show-stopping quote of "a lot of people don't remember that George was married for a few years", I actually felt her associating herself with him through this hideous piece of hack television and comparing her life with his. Meanwhile her gay friend was arranging a date on the internet and cringing in a cliched camp fashion at the same time at the dreadfulness of it all. Where did it all go wrong? My housemate said she fancies Simon Cowell tonight too, whilst messing about talking to dickheads on match.com. Cowell is a spiritual paedophile. He commits dirty acts in the dreams of youth. My housemate is the essence of the respectable professional who funds his actions. If she had kids they'd be the next generation of male hairdressers. I can see the monster sprouting new branches all the time.

I love this house, but sometimes it dawns on me that I'm in the wrong place. Is anyone in the right place?

It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people doesn't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand

Something happened to me today on the walk back to half moon house, and I vowed I'd meet someone beautiful who could help me get a friend back. I don't know yet if that's a healthy thing to have vowed. I've not known what part of my morality was in question over the last few weeks, just that there was something that went wrong in something I did with all good intentions (I'm not a person who has any bad intentions or any conceit), that brought everything we'd ever shared into question. Everything has been in question for me personally too since it happened, my background, my tendencies, my whole personality and my creative tendencies, and for the fist time ever I've thought of class issues. The difference in status and duty in a friendship between someone who's rebelled for their liberation, "higher thoughts" and maturity, and someone for whom it's come more easily, almost by birth (my friend / ex-friend was at least brought up in a more open and sympathetic emotional/intellectual environment). Did I feel this implicit duty to quieten myself in relation to my friend in order to protect her due to inferiority, and did this cause the problem? Did our relationship always have the seed of this problem, and should I have realised it beforehand? Ironically, something born out of beauty and innocence could have also been in danger through too much of it on my part, after all, I was the elder of us, by far, and should have been aware of it. Nothing truly comes together at the moment though, it's just a severe bout of self-consciousness, an emotional nightmare, in which my whole creative self moves towards a positive conclusion, fuelled by the loss of somebody I love, and the questioning by her of the very nature of that love, and I think I have to let all these thoughts pass before any positive insights come. At the moment my most positive gesture is in silence.*

In other news I've not heard from the university yet. The Indelicates gig I went to on Friday was something I identified with completely, like I haven't done in many gigs over the last year. It was individual poetry, uncompromised intellect and fantastic music. They should be boring, but are totally enthralling, an uncompromising musical and poetical vision drifting lonely in an alternative culture of half-felt, ego-fuelled notions. Not that I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm still spending money on the rent in Cardiff, when of course I should be saving. And the moon for the first time since I've been in Cardiff (or maybe it's just the first time that I've noticed) is not sitting perfectly on the horizon at the end of our street, it's just moved slightly to the right.

*This is not a romantic relationship issue, it's a friend issue.

Meet Me On Half Moon Street

The title for this blog comes from a song by Tap Tap, the other band of Pete and the Pirates' singer Tom Sanders. Check them out... I also use that title I think as when I’m out at night in Cardiff, invariably coming home from a gig, walking back down the long, straight road to my house, if the sky is clear there's usually a low moon that looks like it's sitting there at the end of the street, which I can follow right to my house. There was one last night, and it made me sentimental. I'm soon to be leaving Cardiff for new adventures, and the memory of the moon on the long walks home will always stay with me. I'll probably never again have as perfectly a placed moon to follow home at night!

The impulse to write my own blog here came when I read my friend Connie's this morning. I often pop on to see what she has to say at (continuing the moon theme)
http://merelythemoon.blogspot.com/. This morning I read her latest news and followed a link from her page to a page from Laura, who I know distantly in Cardiff as the singer from yet another band worth checking out - Silence at Sea. Connie lives across the Atlantic from Laura and myself in Cardiff, and a love of DiY Pop music made the triangle.

It went like this...I fell for Connie's band The Bossettes when I found them online a few years ago, and Laura's band, Silence at Sea were one of the first bands I fell for after starting to come regularly to Cardiff from the mountains of home. (Knowing that music like that was being made was one of the major things in making me want to come here from home.) Connie used to do a radio program called University Underground in Pennsylvania. One day I sent her a song from Silence at Sea, which soon after she played in her program, and it made my day today to see that Connie and Laura have since become good friends, sending each other handmade items in the post and all. The magic of DiY Pop and the internet!

This blog is also in thanks to Connie for some helpful advice that she and her boyfriend Jason gave me recently.