1 It's been another Murakami week: currently I'm in Book 3 of Murakami's 1Q84. Here's a great passage describing a peripheral character Ushikawa
The man's grey suit had countless tiny wrinkles, which made it look like an expanse of earth that had been ground down by a glacier. One flap of his white dress shirt's collar was sticking out, and the knot of his tie was contorted, as if it had twisted itself from the sheer discomfort of having to exist in that place. The suit, the shirt, and the tie were all slightly wrong in size. The pattern on his tie might have been an inept art student's impressionistic rendering of a bowl of tangled, soggy noodles. Each piece of clothing looked like something he had bought at a discount store to fill an immediate need...It was not just that he had terrible style: he also gave the impression that he was deliberately desecrating the very idea of wearing clothes.
2 This is cool - Ed Sheeran is maybe...maybe the nicest guy in the world and he has created this video for Photograph. Tracing his evolution from his baby pictures to now is a great idea. I couldn't help think how much they reminded me of our kids videos. Nice one Ed!
3 Best read of the week outside of the wonderful 1Q84 has been an article I found on Medium about the latest Avengers movie from the Marvel comics people. I especially liked the discussion of story arcs and any article that references Joseph Campbell has got me salivating. 4/5 Been dipping into Spotify a lot this week but the Purdsmobile has also been rocking to Queen. The first two albums in particular have some wonderful prog exploration going on. Given they were finding their way there is a lot of wonderful stuff on those albums that never emerged from that point on. So here are two tracks - one from each album.
Overtime: Can't go past Blues Boy King this week. Let's celebrate a wonderful life with some of that sweet B.B. tone:
"Once we realize that, a few unusual accidents aside, our social networks have the same foibles and biases as the rest of our culture, that leaves a basic question: Is there any value to any of this? Yes. First, there is the privilege of getting to connect to an extraordinarily large group of people, and get a small window into their thoughts and desires. Hearing an unfiltered stream of people shouting their wishes into the vast expanses of the Internet has permanently made me more aware of the humanity of the strangers who tweet at me every day."
2 Sound At the moment we have Rialto channel on a special deal and I'm enjoying watching Jools Holland's Later again. Series 44! Heard this by Agnes Obell and loved it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNsacakNkJ4
3 Sight We live in the Marvel universe. Okay - well I do anyway! My comic obsession started with a preteen attachment to The Fantastic Four, Thor, Spiderman, Sgt Fury and Tarzan. It still has its hooks in me. All of which makes me a sucker for this mash up. Love it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXyGOecaaWg&list=PL8BDEC7368DD28E02
4 Read this - More from Murakami as he's building a picture of his character Aomame:
She had few possessions. She enjoyed reading books, but as soon as she was through with them, she would sell them to a used bookstore. She enjoyed listening to music, but was not a collector of records. She hated to see her belongings pile up. She felt guilty whenever she bought something. I don't really need this, she would tell herself...
what did it mean for a person to be free? she would often ask herself. Even if you managed to escape from one cage, weren't you just in another, larger one?
Sensing a theme? 5 Smell You're right - I haven't had an entry on this sense yet...but I love the smell of teen spirit and the whiff of right-here-right-now that comes from Ed Sheeran. Here he is in wondrous mode on Don't with another of my favs - John Mayer.
Overtime - For those with a mature attention span - I love Macca in this interview setting. Not your normal journalist questions and the old stories take on different twists.
