if you always get up late you'll never be on time

good morning, monday of the last full week in february. you begin the return to a life of consequence, of work and assignments and deadlines and bibliographies. but there is time yet before 10:30am for the scribbling of other stuffs. guess i'd better be quick then, huh?

since my last post life has been eventful. john, my east anglian guest, remarked how easy it was for him to get out of the groove of his norwich life - the one that includes going to class and having a job, you know, real life things - for he had been in london for a spell before coming here as well. it's true, it is disturbingly easy, though the pressure of the inevitable return to responsibility is never able to escape me. but, hanging out with john for several days is always substantive, partially because i especially try to find the worthy activities around town. notably, we laughed - something that does not always dominate our visits, which seem to be a time for talking and taking in and addressing in these days of muchness. we went to glasgow for the day (please see the photosite for a few demonstrated moments) and john decided that he prefers edinburgh, which i suppose i agree with. glasgow, while full of great stores for the truly indulgent of materialists (which i very much could not call myself), is mostly full of recognizable commercial things - big brand names and chains, nothing surprising or with individual character to be discovered. as in my last visit, we had trouble finding a place to eat that wasn't also inhabiting literally every other block (says a customer i had last evening: 'but what's the incentive to open an interesting independent restaurant in the city that gave us the deep fried mars bar?' fair.) but we managed, i promise, and i do like it there as a sometimes sucker for commercialism. we saw some art and a few buildings that i've just studied in my architectural history class floating around the city centre, which was satisfying to me (if you can't see the buildings at least some of the time, the knowledge is sort of useless).

and of course there was broken social scene, the reason for our short trek in the first place. by following our noses when we arrived at the venue, glasgow school of art, john and i managed to hear a good 20 minutes of the band's sound check undetected. which i enjoyed but despite my great love for the band didn't wholly welcome, for i had never seen them play before and it would be john's fifth show; errant playing and nitpicking and tuning and the occasional joke or reprimand are not the things i wanted to constitute my ultimate first impression of this band. so i waited until the show to really notice things and then i got what i wanted. it was a great time, full of energy and the obvious but disparate personalities of the many bandmembers and performances of songs that really make much more sense played live. we were right in front beneath the stage right guitarist, and it was new and excellent to be able to make eyes with the musicians while dancing and singing along like one imagines a real fan should. talking to the band members afterwards made them very much seem just like regular dudes, which was disorienting in a funny way, for rock star glorification is kind of silly sometimes, let's be honest. i'm happy to be able to think about the way their music is collectively made now as a listener.

back in edinburgh we had sort of a blah saturday afternoon that was entirely compensated for by a great evening. it began with a seriously good indian dinner at a famous local place in edinburgh called original khushi's - john is a much more frequent fan of this type of food and he was extremely pleased, so i will consider it a success. this was followed by a student production, directed by a first year student, matt, who lives in the flat directly below and is a stand-up guy, of tom stoppard's rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead. john and i agreed that it was unbelievably good, the production and the script itself, with which i was unfamiliar. it was arguably the best thing either of us had seen performed by non-professionals, and so i am quite glad to have by chance been in matt's flat talking to my friend bari when he brought it up, because the university theatre mysteriously never advertises their productions around campus. why one would want an insular constituency for your audience is beyond me, but hopefully i can catch some more of their shows in the remainder of the semester. after this we went to my friend may's flat, where most of the usual saudi arabian crew was absent, but john was able, with delight and amusement and estrangement, to get a sense of this slightly glamorous aspect of my regular life, in may's extremely nice flat filled with people wearing fancy things and drinking fancy alcohol. how i end up in the places i do, who knows.

yesterday i worked all day at the bistro and saw john off; he and i will be returning to our former long distance friends status for awhile, the one in which we don't expect to see each other often. but, add one more correspondent to the list, i am ready. so, for the next three weeks i am going to be pretty crazed and not in an exactly fun way. i am sitting surrounded by my readings: oscar wilde's de profundis, a book called does god exist? that is a loooong historical overview of atheistic thought and important figures, nietzsche's the anti-christ, some architecure papers, etc. i am going to produce something with all of these things and beginning immediately need to figure out exactly how. hopefully i can keep you updated on any exciting or at least noteworthy parts of my daily goings on meanwhile. i must be off to discuss modern tragedy over coffee - top of the morning to you and take pains to start your week well.

adieu-