Thursday 9 July 2009

9TH JULY - 21:47

today is thursday, and i have spent the majority of this week rehearsing for tomorrow afternoon/nights performances of tommy at the jolly brewer.

on monday night chris, kelly, kim and i went to wetherspoons with the intention of entering the quiz. however, after meeting kelly and kim's 6th form friends and witnessing the amount of people in the pub, we decided against it. we ended up going to the barge and bottle (after kelly chris and i hosted our own music quiz in the beer garden of wetherspoons), where chris' drink was taken from him as he was unable to provide ID. this proved to be as entertaining as ever.

the night became more entertaining, however, when 'steve' decided to join chris and i for a conversation that opened with the following, drunken line:

'which came first - the jazz or the perfume?'

you know a conversation is worth having when it starts with such a question...


after a time discussing little richard, barbeques, led zeppelin, gretches and regrets 'swept under the carpet' with 'steve', we made our way to the mabern for a spot of pool. they were playing a michael jackson show on some sort of music channel, without the television screens turned on - i know this as we walked in to the sound of michael dancing on and and smashing the swastika bearing windows of a car - an amazing sequence that caused controversy when shown as the extended finale to the black or white video.

i learned the playing pool against your two best friends is much more fun when played to such a brilliant soundtrack....


i stayed at amy and ryan's house on tuesday night to watch the michael jackson memorial show with amy. my emotions are still quite confused and i am still in a sense of disbelief about the loss of michael, however the memorial was spectacularly emotional, tasteful, and poignant. it left me with a sense of not only the traditionally religious values of the jackson family, (highlighted by a beautiful rendition of the gospel piece 'the king is coming' as michael's coffin was wheeled in), but the humane qualities of the enigma. behind the glitter, a surface is bare. and behind a mask, there is a face. a father, a brother, a lover, a friend, and a rock.

as the brilliant al sharpton said to paris, prince and blanket: 'it's not your daddy that was strange, it was the thing he had to deal with that were strange.' in both a literal and a metaphorical sense - michael had to deal with strange attention, surreal heights of fame and genius...and with his own demons and insecurities, both of which were on an elevated scale. however, just like everybody else on the planet - he was not a strange being. he was a human being, conceived and born in flesh.

stevie wonder's contribution was spectacular - so dignified, traditional and powerful...

it will only be when michael is buried for good that the world will truly begin to come to terms with the loss, however i am certain that the influence he had on me as a vulnerable, weak child, and on millions of others like me across the world, we never die and will, sadly, never be understood by the sceptics. 

found this amazing song by a band called S.C.U.M. the song is called warsaw, and it is so powerful. it enforces my ethic that the audible energy is always coupled with a visual energy - it is a natural and magical process, and this footage is so absolutely captivating, raw and powerful - it also highlights the identical qualities of the delicate and the powerful.

S.C.U.M - warsaw










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