Observations from a Hill

Further to last night's post re. my take on Eno's Oblique Strategies methodology. Like the twisted, self-authored version I use of the Zettelkasten - "The Twenty" - it is simply a way of extending the range of one's thought processes. In the case of the The Twenty, just like any form of physical note-taking, cataloguing and ordering of information, it helps to fix thoughts and ideas a little bit more firmly in the mind: attending lectures without taking notes is not really attending, after all. But Oblique Strategies is simply a way of chucking in a bit of noise, anarchy and pseudo-randomness into the thinking pot: it is not a recipe nor an instruction manual nor a self-help cult: it's just grit for the oyster of creativity. The functional point is that it gets in the way of and interrupts a stagnant thought process and branches the consciousness out to somewhere else for just long enough for better stuff to emerge from the subconscious mind to the front of ho

  Pictured, my current work in progress: a personal variant on Eno's Oblique Strategies: the creative block unstopper created by him and the artist Peter Schmidt in the mid-late 1970's, and which is still around in many forms to this day; either the original, very rare card sets, the current edition of the that physical set, or various software and online variations on the idea for hardware platforms various. Me being me, of course, I've come up with my own minor twist on the thing, grouping the 100 deliberately obtuse and terse instructions into four differently-coloured, ring-bound sets of record cards, to add one extra dimension to the idea. A random decision in itself, with the grouping of four sets of twenty-five dictated simply by the fact that my supply of record cards only comes in the usual four colours of green, blue, yellow and pink. The colours and groupings have no intrinsic significance, but serve only to introduce a further layer to the 'random' proce

Forty thousand: an interesting number. On the one hand the words make up 66% of the title of "Forty Thousand Headmen" a song by the band Traffic, released in 1968, and which featured on one of those musical staples of the era - the sampler album [vinyl record] - "Nice Enough To Eat", released on Chris Blackwell's Island Records in 1969 at the pocket-friendly price of 15/6d [old money - look it up] here in the UK, and which is still one of my favourite listens to this day. On the other hand, forty thousand years ago or thereabouts, Homo Sapiens was finally left to its own devices as the apex of mammalian development thus far, as most of the other early human species had died out, save a possible few Neanderthal stragglers, who lasted a few thousand years longer. Anyhow, I say this to put into perspective the fate of two other rather more famous record albums, physically essentially similar in nature to Nice Enough To Eat, that are currently deep in interstellar s

Before I consider writing anything at all tonight, I must give a shout out to the great British instrumentalist Mike Dawes, who is not only technically phenomenally talented, but who also understands music and the arts of melody and harmony applied to instrumental guitar utterly instinctively. Here he is, once again interviewed and playing on Rick Beato's channel - again a shout out to one of my favourite YouTubers for producing serious and seriously entertaining material for those of us out here with an actual attention span and a love of music. Check 'em both out. On with the post... All I want to do tonight is voice how staggeringly pissed off I am about the daily, relentless, hysterical criticism of the new government; including from the natural Labour press constituency of the likes of The Guardian & The New Statesman. The bollocks spouted by the right-wing press is as predictable as it is lamentable; but I'm afraid the commentariat of The New Left [look it up] th

Car issues now thankfully resolved. I had both bottom arms replaced for the MOT test the other day [not cheap] and drove home secure in the knowledge - or so I thought -  that that would be that for the next few months. I fuelled the thing up to the brim ready to go and meet Jane at The Stretton Fox Inn just off the M56 Friday lunchtime, went home and parked up for the night. Friday morning came and I made a nice early start, intending to take my time over the journey and have a decent food break at Holywell on the way. On pulling out over the lip of our slightly sunken car park, a very unpleasant metal on metal clunk resounded throughout the vehicle. On driving down the High St towards Rachub Square - a road whose surface quality is more Greek island than North Welsh in nature - I was greeted with more grating and clanking at each hole and speed bump I encountered. So instead of heading onto the A55 East I made straight for my garage in Bangor again. Turns out that I had sheared the

Sorry to burden you with yet another - sort of - cooking post, but it's been a couple of days of getting the car sorted - still alas not quite resolved - which has involved a good deal of physical exercise on my part [not a bad thing] as while I'm waiting for the garage to get stuff done, I simply walk: a habit that I've had since childhood. While living through my youth and college days, I walked. Around Birmingham city centre, along the canals and out to the suburbs; or, as a hungover student, out as far as Dudley along the canal, to ease the pain of overindulgence with a great Madras curry and three chappati at the Shah Bagh restaurant [blog posts passim]: worshipping at one of my temples of spice and flavour and bringing salve to the ailing fool that I was. Walking. The best and least invasive and injurious form of exercise there is outside of swimming. Taking life a step at a time, at the pace most suited to appreciating the world around you. At a pace that suits intro