second-memory

Saturday 11th April 2026
  best song at the moment = dwm by ideasforconversation  

Friday 10th April 2026

 second blog entry in one day!!! i'm on fire and aren't you lucky (i have no clue if anyone reads this as I refuse, for my own wellbeing to attach it to google analytics to track site visits) plus I like typing with the idea that no one will read it . . . 
     SO, i'm going through some of my writing from the summer of last year, when I went through a brief spell of writing prose (i only do this when i'm unemployed) as well as writing down everything i was reading / learning and wanted to archive some of it on here, which is counterintuitive as websites have a hugely shorter lifespan (average is 2 years it think?) than paper . . . so I'm not really archiving, more like publicising  . . .     
song lyrics from a song I wrote with Tilly Dyson in Devon (early July 2025)
are you my wisdom teeth
cuz you're coming in hot
you hurt and sting
and I can't stop touching you with my tongue
you're bothering me on this long train journey along the southcoast
are you, then, tell me!
an ex-lover
or my wisdom tooth?
all up in my gums
in all my little moments
in the bathroom
and i CAN't stop touching you with my tongue
cold and strange and porcelain
you cannot be from my own body
yet here you are
screaming for my slobbering affection, emerging from my mouth flesh
well here it is!
HERE IT IS! HERE IT IS!    

notes on how to make a radio play that I have now recorded although not edited (really need to do this at some point)    
proclamations of deisre -> silent bids for connection, how to sound these? what is their noise?? the phone taps . . .      

the dumbest thing i've ever read in a gallery text
'the route through the exhibition is both spatial, and atmospheric'

this statement
the point is not to like things, it is to have opinions    

excerpt rfom Kathnleen Jamie's Sightlines
from J.A. Baker's old book peregrines: 'The peregrine lives in a pouring away world of no attachment, a world of wakes and tilting, of sinnking places, of land and water'    

the world according the Louis MacNeice
inccorrigibly plural

random poem, which is random in this old notebook but even more random because i don't really write poems
I will dream and
try not to seek explanation
I have no ownership over my happiness,
nor my melancholy
I will approximate the peregrine
and make myself shoes from pouring out
tilting planes of land and sea
I will seek love like noone's fool
and hold it would speculation
I am a read and a friend / a swimmer of
high ambitions

bits of this notebook are alternations between talking about romance and then writing notes on the history of radio, unsure whether to retranscribe here        

     BACK TO PRESENT DAY BLOG:   I'm reading this book my mum got me about Patagonia and if I feel like I'm baiting centrist millenial men when I read it in public. BUT IT"S ACTUALLY SO GOOD, and interesting, although like not that well written. But luckily because it's not very well written whenever there are bad points made it's completely transparent so you feel clever for having spotted it but also you don't get duped. But the history itself is so interesting, the way Patagonia pioneered what is now this obsession with 'authentic' branding and one of the first major businesses to draw on UGC (user generated content but surely you know that)for its marketing. Except at the time all of it felt really ethical. I guess these branding and marketing concepts but before the web in the form we understand it today. So user generated content marketing but decades before Web 2.0. 
  MiddleBrow podcast episode with Mindy Seu is a great intro to internet history if anyone's interested 

   ANYWAY FAVOURITE YOUTUBE VIDEOS AGAIN OBV: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Co2bT8WzcY
  (ear live set) obsessed with how they perform laptop / software heavy music, largely through lighting and this heavy whole body moevment that is synchronised but also not at all 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBBkLMPqrYM&list=PLhZ2fCXxDkHrcJ_Ili-U6S_UcLHmG9dZt&index=2
 This is a 59 second proxy reiki session with the gloopiest soundtrack, this woman has the craziest vibe but is definitely a psychic because I am always so moved when I watch her videos. and this one ends with the caption 'yeeting the negative energy into the infinitene nothingness of the Wuji' which is a really beautiful sentence 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJn7v6-M1BU&list=PLhZ2fCXxDkHrcJ_Ili-U6S_UcLHmG9dZt&index=3
 my friend Dan recommended me this album by Liz Phair, who he described as a bit of an indie rock darling of the 90s before her career went in a direction (or lack of) that she wasn't entirely happy with. And for her this album is the 'purist expression of her artistry' or something like that. I feel like she made this at a very early Web 2.0 moment WHEN the cultural omniverousness of UGC was really taking off and everyone was starting to access and network these endless decontextualised pieces of sound or image but BEFORE woke, hence a track like BOllywood - some of the vocal editing of which completely reminds me of certain moments in Mermaid Chunky's music, 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WmvpzQw67A&list=PLhZ2fCXxDkHrcJ_Ili-U6S_UcLHmG9dZt&index=4
 this is from the same youtube channel that i listened to FunStyle and the first 5 bars in particular are really great and Wavey Mavis is clearly on some based shit. 

Wednesday 8th April 2026
   I've decided the name I'll release my music under now, Blurb. Lydia McKimm my excellent friend and wonderful writer came up with it. Not sure she like it as much as I do. Need to send demos to a promoter to start playing live soon. 

   Enjoying Dog by Ideasforconversation a huge deal, as well as Audre Lorde's essay on eroticism which I've been recomended by so many people.   

Friday 3rd April 2026
   Favourite youtube videos rn: (not linked you need to copy and paste lol) 
  Kero Kero Bonito Live stream:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGGPMTvfYb4 
   Marsupial Meditation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qSuuByBp0 

Monday 30th March 2026
    People have incredibly strong opinions about dating apps and I sometimes wonder if they aren't one of those things that has become a vector for signalling a broader position about the "tech" vs "natural" debate, rather than a subject that engages curiosity or interest. I'm always surprised by how often these conversations turn into people saying things that are both obvious and entirely contingent on the individual. i.e: dating apps discourage people from asking out others IRL. I understand why someone would say this, of course, but it's so obvious (of course one mechanism can replace another) but also so contingent (this happens to some people and not to others) that I never really know how to respond, because it feels like a bit a dead end. And what is especially interesting about these conversations is that they seem to avoid anyone sharing anecdotes about their experiences. Huge amounts of young people in London will have conversations with other strangers every week online, and yet when dating apps are discussed (hinge the usual suspect, Feeld a bit less), despite how much they are discussed, no one ever really shares those conversations, or the people they're talking to. 

 Part of me feelsl like this is indicative of alot of conversations around 'digital technology', we pretend we're discussing phones or social media, but actually it's just a vector for an almost entirely abstract conversation that can vere into puritanical territory . . . with hints of the 'culture' vs. 'nature' debate that have premises of some things being 'natural' and 'organic', set up in opposition to anything connoting the digital world or digital material culture. 

 But despite this, everyone who partakes in these conversations is still using their phones mostly every day, but their activity stays entirely distinct from the discussion. Maybe it's just hard to communicate your online activity and identity with anyone who isn't in that particular 'algorithm' or 'subculture', and then of course lots of leftist infighting about phones encourages shame around time spent with devices, so people downplay their online activity 

Thursday 5th March 2026
    The art of Sidival Fila, a contemporary artist and Franciscan Friar. It's the 800th anniversary of St Francis of Assisi's death. What an incredible figure: thought to be a kind of pre-modern enviromentalist, he gave up the extreme wealth and inheritance of his father's cloth business to become a lay penitent. One story tells how he used Bible Divination which is where you open the Bible on a random page and what appears is thought to be the will of God . . . similar mechanics to Tarot then.     

Tuesday 23rd February 2026
  I write everything in this blog (as supposed to the main website) directly into the HTML code. I think I write in a more clinical way as a result. It's almost this double mediation, that brings me back to the quote from Ione at the top of this blog, the sense of writing with the intention of being read but with the false pretence that the 'blog' style gives, that this is unmediated, intuitive and   from the heart.  

 Kind of confused about the rise of these ‘culture’ articles by mags like Dazed that make broad statements about a particular ‘scene’, in response to nightclub photography. Seems like Instagram carousel journalism with not much substance? They always accompany a photographer’s work (generally of an event, featuring sweaty bodies, dancers, smoking area chats), and then say something super generic and often pseudo-academic-speaky like: ‘In pictures: Manchester’s electrifying, multigenerational party spirit’ (real) or ‘the queer formation of identity in North London’s basements (I made that one up lol). The thing that I find SO WEIRD about these pieces is that, they aren’t purely photography features (by virtue of making broad statement’s about culture) but they definitely aren’t full fledged articles with any sort of critical spin. What we end up with is this deluge of online articles that are just poorly fleshed out versions of Instagram carousels. It’s like we can’t just have photography on it’s own, it has to be self aware in making a really conscientious existential point about wider culture and these banal / pithy statements that just fictionalise overall trends without journalistic backing and make ‘youth culture’ into an algorithmic buzzword. Maybe links to Anna Kornbluh’s Immediacy in this, the need for something to be big and immediate and ‘raw’ and to the point. But I haven't actually read Immediacy yet, but a lovely person called Evie who works at Donlon Books on Broadway Market recommended me that after we got chatting about Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Maggie Nelson. I bought Derek Jarman's Chroma , mainly because Dorothoy Prior mentions him so much in the book I'm reading by her and I loved his film Wittgenstein which I watched in the free film booths at the BFI.

Wednesday 18th February 2026
 Trying to write a project at the moment which is all about kissing and every song it built around the magic 8-bit plug in. Makes for writing songs incredibly quickly. Am currently reading Sex is No Emergency by Dorothy Max Prior. I've read Faithfull by Marianne Faithfull and I'm With The Band by Pamela De Barres which are written earlier than Prior's but are also autobiographical narrations of music scenes in the 60s and 80s, however those were much more personal and this is very pragmatically diaristic in comparison - very little emotional insight and more of a record of events. A very comforting read weirdly.   

Friday 23rd January 2026
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8qSuuByBp0  
 I think Youtube is filled with the most fantastic and esoteric video content and it never fails to fascinate. Recent favourite  

 Thursday 22nd January 2026 14:14
   Yesterday's list: Dance, dancing, mug, sewing machine, headphones, waterbottle, age of innocence, plant, sewing machine, mug, notebook, pin cushion, camping table, daily planner, wind chime, laptop, notebook, audio-technica, embroidery hoop, music stand, climbing wall, window sill, guitar stand, ipod touch, laptop, water bottle, scissors, needles, thread, tannoy monitor, street lamp, large tree, converse trainers, indoor lamp, speaker, mixer, embroidery, dotted pattern, pizza cutter, mirror, fabric, haberdashery, turntable, sewing machine, bouldering, the night sky, bedside table, music stand, at the grove, somatic, therapy, keyboard, bike tyre, toxic waste, A4 notebook, wall hangings, forest, candlestick maker, sewing machine, transition, pop filter, record player, brother, radiator, weave, mauve, converse, country, public services, pizza cutter, wardrobe, leopard print, anniversay, leopard print, technology, metal, metallic, trainers, filing system, pencil, neurotic, ill, rug, floor, material, tufts of fabric, mobile phone call, evening, a girl who is going to be okay, a girl who is going to be okay, the whole world in a day, the whole world in a day, rock climbing, swimming in cold cold water, swimming in black cold water, swimming forever forever      

Sunday 14th December 2025 19:59 (home in SW London)

  Interview with directors of La Horde: Maybe we have to rethink the word compromise within ourselves and understand that it is not grieving anything. It's more like the beginning of an encounter

Monday 3rd November 2025

the dating app Breeze, lists 'Formula 1' alongside 'Art' as a potential interest to advertise yourself to other people on the app. Others include, tattoos, sustainability, and personal development. Now imagining  someone with who is both Formula 1, sustainability, languages and dogs . . .  (you max out at 4, naturally)       

   reading list 
  https://www.personalcanon.com/p/how-to-speak-to-a-computer 
  https://kunstkritikk.com/our-phone-is-a-sex-toy/
       



  before I forget   

  Eva and Franco Mattes AKA 100101110101101.org

What if I told you that the true heir to John Heartfield, the renowned photomonteur who ridiculed Naz1sm, isn't a progressive activist, but a tinfoil-hat, anti-v4xxer conspiracist? Enter David Dees, a a psychedelic graphic artist who might well have anticipated the weirdest AI slop. How come we know nothing about him? After all, his work possesses its own visual dignity. The short answer: because he's evil. Design culture, in its typically neo-Victorian fashion, has a problem with evil, and confront it with a mix of paternalism and outrage. In fact, it has little interest in understanding evil as a force that actually operated in our world. Google's "don't be evil" injuction will do. *But, as Pasolini reminds us, "those who are scandalized are always banal - and, I would add, always ill-informed".

Sunday 25th October 2025

  New top favourite film: The Future (Miranda July)
  saving the link to this pdf to read: https://monoskop.org/images/2/20/Russell_Legacy_Glitch_Feminism_A_Manifesto_2020.pdf
  and this
  I Don't Do Innocents (A Radio Play in One Act)  by Anne Carson

Thursday 23rd October 2025

  deas for more radio plays other than one I'm working on now: Taking text excerpts from dystopisan Terma and Conditions, like spotifies new ones that refer to all technologies made now and unkown to us in perpetuity etc. . . slightly bizarre guided meditations? Riffing on more earnest ones with frequencies   

  Yesterday I was checking out the market stability of Solana the cryptocurrency (because of NinaProtocol) and thought, how did I get here because 3 years ago I was just obsessed with books about ecology and nothing else and had this incredibly blinkered-gendered view of tech interests like blockchain etc. .  I was just trying to trace back in my head when my interest in ecology switched over to an interest in cyberspace / internet studies. Because 3 years ago at University my primary interest was ecology, fueled by a growing anxiety about climate change which I no longer experience. I then became fascinated with map-making and specialised my dissertation in cartography (specifically how it related to religious attitudes around land enclosure in England and rural dispossession in the 18th century). The worst drinking game in the world would be to read my undergrad dissertation and to take a shot everytime I wrote  'colonial cartographic imagination'). Then I fell in love with a lecture by Tim Ingold the geographer and his ideas around the arbitrary fiction of 'originality', and I applied his framework to my essays on digital image reproduction. My interest in cartography became an interest in information design generally, my (highly spiritual) interest in ecological interconnectivity became an (obsessive internet-related) interest in system design and I think from there, I just became increasingly bored with writing about the more-than-human  - which I began to feel was circumlocutory almost spiritual sort of pseudo-academic therapy posing as analysis. I lost interest in writers like Donna Harraway because it felt so out of touch with places of actionable change, like contemporary politics. And I literally couldn't bear to be recommended the Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes one more time.  

   In the end I'd rather just go for a swim in a lake than read that stuff now (might change my mind) . Initially I was obsessed with the ecological impact of the internet (data centres . . Gerry McGovern the Irish speaker. . .ethnographies of data centres) and then I realised that the writing about the internet was more exciting than anything else I was reading. I still have books purely about ecology on my shelf that I may never get round to reading.