Bloc

If I could do it again, I'd make more mistakes

I'd not be so scared of falling

If I could do it again, I'd climb more trees

I'd pick and I'd eat more wild blackberries.

Bonobo

Sums up this week really.

Daydream

I need to stop sleeping in the day. Daydream reveries partially induced by Murakami, partially by the fact it is pretty much inevitable if you lie on your bed with a book. The Wind up Bird Chronicle this time. I made it fifteen pages in before drifting off. Thats not any kind of comment on the book, more a comment on how cosy my shockingly thin mattress actually is and how tired I must have been

Another list for the week

Achingly hot, vague resemblance of a tan line, ensuing pride (you need to understand just how pale I am), kew gardens, sun dappled fields and plant meadows, roaming geese, ducks and the occasional peacock, that really good but expensive lemonade that comes in a can, so good that obviously i can't remember it's name. Flatmate fun, drinking, dancing and another three o clock in the morning pasta session. Sloane Square, Newspeak, Saatchi, massive paper and cellophane sculptures, one in a pastel blue that looked like a massive wave, clunie reid's collages and prints on aluminium, black abstract paintings, a tower of speakers and a self playing piano, getting a bit excited seeing mat collishaw having a gander through (with a burberry bag draped over his shoulder no less). Richard Wilson's 20:20. I think it was love at first sight, especially on overhearing bemused american tourists wonder where the smell of oil is coming from. Amazing art shop that sold pigment in massive jars and held etching tools within tiny drawers, almost like an apothecary, British Museum, Italian Renaissance Drawings, awe, da Vinci's advice to an apprentice, 'draw and don't waste time.' Catch up gossip in Starbucks, £2.95 on something that wasn't worth it. It never is, I will never learn my lesson. Royal Academy Degree Show, a ridiculous amount of postcards picked up to adorn the walls of my room next year, Lydia Carline's prints being the most beautiful thing in there (though it was a close run thing), Mr Whippy, being caught off guard and so going to Hampstead Heath sans Murakami and sans bikini. I made do with Glamour and a paddle until I saw the tadpoles. Les Miserables matinee, Eponine, being offered a box of maltesers with one solitary little chocolate ball left, falling into the trap I always do after seeing a musical in that I believe I can sing, eating at a diner with a jukebox that has got me back into motown in a big way, royal albert, pimms, trivial pursuit, my favourite question being 'Who had her toes sucked by her financial adviser? HRH Fergie'. Every day is an education.

This isn't really as much a list as it is a Jack Kerouac type splurge. I do love London.

Writer's block //

So

A two hour nap in the day is never a good idea.

A re-acquainted music obsession. Young Runaways. I'm in love with Lifeline.

They're from Wolverhampton and everything. Thats always a bonus.

Exposed

Voyeurism, Surveillance & the Camera. New Tate exhibition, one which I found myself completely absorbed in. Have visited it twice within three days and managed to leave maggie in search of a brew whilst I got so spell bindingly distracted by a Nan Goldin video. I genuinely think I was in that little cuboid room for a good forty minutes. 'The Ballad of Sexual Dependency', hundreds of photos of her life, intimate snapshots flicking by to what I'm sure I remember as Petula Clark's Downtown. I'm never good at trying to explain why I like work but this was mesmerising. You become a voyeur of her life almost, an onlooker to scenes of domesticity, family life, relationships, drug abuse, addiction, sex. The closeness of Goldin to those being photographed was obvious, there was never any distance in the photographs, just a complicit sense of trust. The colours were amazing too. There, that was a half decent explanation.

The charm of this exhibition is that it satiates curiosity, what individuals do and how they behave when they are unaware of any other presence, when they don't have to uphold any pretense or maintain any illusions for the sake of how they may be perceived. There's something of a charm about it, especially with reference to the photographer who roamed the streets with his Fallowfield Facile, a six pound box camera that was carried under the arm and wrapped in paper to be disguised as a package. The unseen photographer sounds like quite a good role to undertake. I love the idea of Miroslav Tichy roaming around communist Czechoslovakia with handmade cameras, taking pictures through the aid of tins, of general assortments of rubbish, which no one believed were real. I have visions of many pinhole camera projects next term.

Popped to the Amersham last night to see the Adult Youth exhibition. Some of the work was beautiful, in particular melting blocks of ice, photocopy art, abstract paintings and a tiny drawing that was hidden high up on the stairwell. Another ridiculously sized roast was made yesterday and I have enough apple sauce to last me for a year, sadly none of the actual food remains, that's where the issue may lie. I have also decided it is completely pointless to keep on tidying my room, the wave of visitors is akin to the waves of the sea, however, instead of the sand being left beautifully smooth with the receding of each wave my room looks like its been hit by a food, newspaper, magazine and general chaos bomb with the exit of each guest.