Bloggers Are The Protest Singers Of The Naughties

It’s a heartwarming thing to see the Queen in all her gold and finery talking about the importance of fighting the economic downturn. It was a magical moment, which would have only been bettered if Elvis had walked out and sung In The Ghetto. Fight the downturn? Let’s start by melting down the carriage you turned up in.

If there’s one thing I don’t like, it’s cod liberalism, but this time it seems that they’re pissing in our boots and telling us it’s raining.

They say gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners.
They’re so tired of shooting protest singers that they hardly mention us.
- Elvis Costello

Despite doing a podcast, making nob gags and laughing so hard that coffee comes out of my nose, I’ve had a really artistic week. Actually, scratch that – lowbrow comedy doesn’t preclude artistic merit, but I’ll come on to that in four paragraphs.

I watched a documentary about Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet. Crazy bastard had this dream that musicians were performing a piece while flying around in helicopters. Since he was a composer he thought he’d give it a go, and he wrote something for them to play, stuck them all in choppers with little monitors of him conducting them while listening through a mixing desk to each of the musicians while they buzzed around in formation above an packed auditorium.

I write a blog on a train. Sigh.

Still I’m young and funny. And alive. Are you alive, Stockhausen? I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that, what? I see.

I also watched an interview with Clive James and Nick Hornby, which was awesome. My words can’t express how much I admire him Clive James. I don’t have the talent. He’d have no trouble, which is why I do. He was talking about the struggle to read books he thinks he should read instead of getting pleasure out of them. He said: “Without enjoyment, there is no art.”

Bang. Right there.

And finally, last word from this, which I saw via Meg, and it sums up all of the above, combining the enjoyment of performance, a moment of sense in the muddle and the forethought of execution, which states also that without art, there is no enjoyment.