[23/01/2024] Officially coming out of Chess retirement. Can't remember why I quit. I think it was the all consuming nature of the addiction. I used to have conversations with people and as I spoke to them chess pieces would move around in my head making it hard to concentrate. Told my therapist this and he thought it interesting. Anyway, I believe you can get to 1000 elo easily with like 3/4 tricks. Focus on not losing pieces (blundering). That's obvious. You should focus on any hanging pieces and any potential checks and any potential forks. But most importantly, learn (to a high fucking degree of accuracy) these two openings: The French Defense (for black) and the Vienna game (for white). With these two openings you can easily reach 1000 elo. Good luck soldiers. (bonus tip: watch loads of GothamChess videos when starting he's actually the one)
[22/01/2024] I should write everything ever. I should write a book with everything in it.
[17/01/2024] (from the youtube comment section of a SALEM video): 'the beauty and the pain are inseparable and that's the way it is and the way it has to be.'
[17/01/2024] my mothers love makes me cry (tears of joy , for i am very lucky)
[17/01/2024] feeling (against my better judgement) that there is something very vain about diary films, and feeling a bit embarrassed that one of mine is showing in a gallery tonight. maybe it's just feeling unworthy! and then i remind myself that i am worthy, worthy of good things and things that feel cool. this is a cool thing to have happen
[16/01/2024] saw an angel today when i needed it most and so i thanked it and it left (only visibly, the hope it instilled continued on)
[16/01/2024] i think of nervous dogs, walking in the cold
and then i think of you
[13/01/2024] going hiking/walking (no headphones !) is awesome. i'm saying something everyone already knows in themselves but it's so important for body + mind. sometimes this diary reads like a health blog. it's beautiful to take the time to 1. bask in the beauty of nature while 2. thinking. the only distractions are the beautiful incidents of nature, which i think really help the thinking anyway. I'm in the Scottish highlands right now, there's nothing for miles. you can look out for miles and see no trees, just these immense rolling hills, made of earthy oranges and blips of purple. wooden poles lined up taking electricity to all the isolated homes. i sent a postcard to my family today and it'll get picked up and sent on Monday. I ended it with 'It's a funny feeling knowing I am as far as possible from you all while still being in the same country'. it's funny how homesick I get, I feel like I've spent most of my time here talking about my dad (opiates aside). snow is incoming and we're a 40 minutes drive away from the nearest town. it's all so strange here but it's all so beautiful.
[13/01/2024] i am many things
[12/01/2024] nature affords is the freedom to be a child again - it gives us all the tools and space, all you need it the imagination / idea and you can likely do it
[12/01/2024] the water is panting like a dog on a hot day: little breaths lapping at the shore
[10/01/2024] destined to a life of mediocre blogging. yeah let me tell you that the most connection i've felt with my dad was through heroin adjacent drug use in a format that even the twitter girlies can't post. i'm fucked
[10/01/2024] I really do love opiates though. Ever since my father was put on opiate pain killers (self dox) and said he understood why America is plagued with the opiate crisis, I understood that me and him have a deeper bond than anything verbally accessible.
[10/01/2024] Two days into travelling to Scotland from London (self dox). Some much beautiful landscape in the north that I am envious of all those who get to frequent it (self dox). The girl I am in love with says her dream of 4 years is to walk the Downs, where I have grown up and always been so close to (self dox). I'm still reeling from the brutality of love. and other things that make me more angry than sad. But to be on this trip is such an exciting privilefge, so much to come from it. I was bitten by George's dog yesterday but didn't say anything because I didn't think it was that big a deal despite being taught (as a postmans son (self dox)) that it is a big deal (tetanus jab, time off work). If I die of something blame that. I'm a lot of beers deep with very little food (I am a greedy boy) and that is how I see the rest of the trip panning out. Listening incessantly to Salem the past few days thinking about heroin. A girl asked me today what I thought of codeine (the band) and I told her I love opiates
[08/01/2024] ...and yet we must persist.
[08/01/2024] word of the day is IMPOSSIBLE.
[08/01/2024] nervous dog as an allegory
[08/01/2024] i try every day to be happy
[05/01/2024] read my first book of 2024 and now i am vivaciously writing. the manifesto of the online schizophrenic and my theory of online anonymity / 'personas' as the only actual way to form human connection online. it is through anonymity that you can let your guard down, and thus be yourself and learn, through others accepting you online for your true self. Anonymity means people see you without the mask of the face or the knowledge of your identity and all the weight that comes with it (stereotypes, etc.), instead seeing the self you show through your writing, thoughts and feelings that you post, (posting as journaling, in essence, an ancient practice which has been identified as key in understanding yourself - look at Jung), with your guard lower than if you were on your public facing accounts. You can see that others accept you, and hopefully from there come to accept yourself. There is freedom to make mistakes in anoynmity because only you have to deal with the consequences, and you should! This is not a way of pure escapism, of running away from your problems and continuing cycles. This is a method of finding yourself by masking your physical self and letting your mental (conscious, subconscious, etc) be allowed to come to light, and to test vulnerability in a safe space (online anoymity).
[05/01/2024] libgen (,+jstor) and archive.org are the greatest resources to come out of the internet imo. to be able to realiable find books and movies you want for free, as well as browse now ancient internet forums and sites through the wayback machine. you have enough 'content' (material?) on these sites alone to satisfy you for a lifeitme of consuming (on the internet).
[05/01/2024] sometimes i say things and worry people will misconstrue them, read them not as i intended. which i have to accept is fine. if they think what i've said or done is wrong, it is up to them to then clarity with me what i mean. i hope to explain myself in what i say and write and do and if that fails, if the other believes me of being wrong, then they should call me out on it. it's good to accept a mistake
[05/01/2024] i really want a kindle due to my recent libgen love but also because they seem like an immense technical feat. this ink technology that means pixels just sit there and there's no flashing, that light only goes onto the page (the same way as light bounces off a page of a book, not up through the page(screen) into your eyes). i always fear i would hate it as i hate reading of a screen but i think i could get behind this as it would affect my eyes as if a book and that's what i need. i always scoffed at people reading on the tube with a kindle... i am sorry, we all make mistakes
[03/01/2024] at the end of the day i can always have a glass of red wine & read a book or watch a youtube video or adventure time or listen to beautiful music
at the end of the day i can create and i can think about love and write and make gifts to give to others and make food or the perfect cup of tea
[01/01/2024] Happy New Year xxxx
last year I successfully predicated many things such as sititng down to piss and beautiful trees coming into fashion, while Lawnmowers and Timothee Chalamet went out. This year predictions are therefore ones to hold as truth. Without further ado...
in:
[29/12/2023] i haunt spots where i used to hang out with exes because i like to cling to beautiful things (memories of smiles passed quietly across dimly lit tables, the light filtering through the woods onto your face and hands, you sat in my lap as waves crash in front of us, wind whipping your hair into my face)
[29/12/2023] the moon is so bright the birds think it's dawn - again they sing for me because of what they know. what they know is more than i do, their song is all they'll tell.
[29/12/2023] nervous dog as a schizophrenic monologue
[29/12/2023] (00:45) if you're awake right now watch the moon as it's guiding light penetrates the wall of cloud; as the stars are on standby, watching
[27/12/2023] re-reading Wojnarowicz for dissertation, forever enlightening. Such an incredible and admirable understanding and empathy within him. His words are his life - he knew what death was (inaction, all consuming hatred to the point you are blinded from beauty). Living IS loving. Living is loving despite all the pain and hatred. Death is giving up and becoming hate. This is not to say you never hate, hate is a part of loving (and certainly living). The beauty is you always come round in the end, don't end up blinded. I like the Christian ideas behind forgiveness: 'For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.' - change the Father to yourself and you've reached the key. To forgive others is to forgive yourself, to accept we are all imperfect is to accept yourtself for bing imperfect, and to be gentle and loving to yourself even when you fuck up.
[26/12/2023] RECOMMENDATION: beautiful video all about love. i love watching things about love. i love to learn about it and pretend to understand it but then, as absurdism calls, understand that i never will, and then i can bask in the glory and the horror of it. the beauty and the pain!
[26/12/2023] been thinking about how Ben said i'd be a good dad.
[26/12/2023] RECOMMENDATION: 'I'm a Search and Rescue Officer for the US Forest Service, I have some stories to tell' - i forget how enticing a creepy story is. especially when it seems real. i love the woods and want to go hiking even more now. hiking as adrenaline seeking instead of relaxation
[25/12/2023] Merry Christmas. someone said something along the lines of 'whenever life gives us a chance to be happy, it is our duty to ourselves to take such an opportunity'. Christmas is just that - a time for love, togetherness, joy. I'm very lucky to have wonderful family and so much safety. Hammered last night with close friends who I haven't seen in a while - how easily we all slip back into one another's lives. Joy!
Someone crashed into both of our cars last night, both likely write-offs. And yet, as my Father said: 'nobodys hurt, so everything is fine'. We're all fine. The final thing I wrote this morning, 4:28am, before passing out into blissful drunken sleep was 'the birds know it's christmas'. They sang me all the way home and they sang me to sleep. Joy!
[21/12/2023] CHANGELOG: added a new part of the site: my collections. :) always wanted a place to show all the beautiful albums i have and thought this was the place rather than another instagram account. most of the images are taken from discogs and are of the exact version i own - clicking on the images takes you to their discogs page where you can view all the ephemera, backside art, coloured viynl & booklets in all their glory ! I suggest spending a good amount of time on discogs looking at all the art people include in their records, or just buy the records if you can. so much inspiration to be had. will add a CD's and cassettes section, a selling section & a bootlegs section at some point over the next couple of months
[24/12/2023] Christmas is pretty emo. It's the Eve and I'm listening to Wicca Phase Springs Eternal on heavy rotation. Adam McIlwee is one of my favourite writers... I let him speak for me a lot. I wrote a letter to Martha on a tiny scrap of paper that had some Tigers Jaw lyrics printed on the front, the letter was about letting others write for you, using others words when you're feeling so much but can't put it down - all you can do is feel. that's what is so magical about music to me, it's saying things you maybe can't (and maybe wish you had, or could). i feel like 'outside yr window' by wicca phase but i would never say those things. but i can feel them deeply and that's beautiful. sharing that song is me saying: this is how i feel. or, I've felt this and now i'm listening to it i'm feeling it again. this is something i know but couldn't put into words. sometimes you have to let others speak for you (it's why even the best musicians record covers)
'I'm outside of your window with my radio
You are the only station
You play the song I know
You are the song I know'
[22/12/2023] RECOMMENDATION: Ethel Cain's YouTube channel. this video specifically - it feels like you're at the afters and this person you've just met but kinda hung out with in between hanging out with others you maybe know better has decided it's time to go deeper, to workshop some things they've been thinking about, and in this state of comedown or tired post-intoxication they feel safe enough to do so. they've dwelled quietly on these ideas for a while but they like the fruitful conversations that comes when sharing these ideas with others, and now you (lucky you!) get to be a part of that. there's a truly magical time around 4am after the party. if I'm with George it is marked by the whiskey coming out and the country music coming on. there is an almost visibly beautiful aura that taints your vision at this time.
[21/12/2023] RECOMMENDATION: a website where you can watch grass grow. this has existed since 2005. maybe the internet isn't dead
[20/12/2023] nevermind i'm not writing because of the wine i'm writing because of the beauty of the English countryside and the silence, calm and pleasure it affords
[19/12/2023] i've started drinking wine again (since last night) and decided it is an important element in the life of an artist/writer. was able to write ( more than a sentence) for the first time in a long time having had two glasses. two glasses! it's all you need. a form of relaxation (there's no need to over do it). i get a weekly oracle sent to me that tells me what's happening in my world.
this week:
[19/12/2023] fascinated by early internet blogging especially within music subgenres. found this insane post about Taylor Bow, some sleazy noise/hardcore band from the early noughties which goes from discussing why the band sucks to the writers mixed feelings on porn, their extensive knowledge of porn and then imagery of disaster as shock value/as a form of activism. we lost so much with social media, i know this is from tumblr (social media) but it was a blog site first and foremost, and the real social media i'm talking about is the ones that don't allow longform posts like this (e.g. twitter/instagram). it's a shame tumblr sucks now and is full of horrible ads and a generally ugly UI that doesn't encourage you going to the users actual site, just the built in page that doesnt show the beautiful customisation possible. blurgh
[19/12/2023] she's listening to Mazzy Star - 'our' band (i hope)
[19/12/2023] i have thought about the last song i'd play before killing myself a lot but that faded once i stopped looking at what my friends are listening to on Spotify
[19/12/2023] i cry best to music, and i do think crying takes a lot work and a bit of skill to make it really worth it. sometimes it catches you off guard and there's nothing to be done then, and you don't even think about doing anything. you just let it happen and it consumes you and hopepfully spits you out. sometimes i know i'm holding something that needs letting out and that feeling usually starts with a beautiful song, and i realise i've got this thing in me. this sadness deep and buried and ready to come out. crying is beautiful. for years i didn't cry and then in 2017 i fell in love properly for the first time and i've been crying ever since. back then i used to listen to 'my kind of woman' by Mac DeMarco and i'd ball. 'our' album was 'BIG TV' by White Lies. I was 16 and she showed me Creep by Radiohead. all I had listened to up to then was Odd Future, Teen Suicide and soundcloud rappers. we went to london the day lil peep died and i was in a mood the whole time but i took a photo of her beautiful and smiling with some disgusting filter on it and it wasn't so bad. anyway, after we broke up i was listening to all kinds of shit, my tastes changing and for the better. the original upload is deleted, but when things were real bad, and even now when they're real bad, i find my way to 'It's Cool, We Can Still Be Friends' by Bright Eyes. music for real heartbreak, heartbreak that feels like an all consuming grief (as heartbreak often is). I kept posting and telling people how beautiful it is to be heartbroken and then it happened to me again but different. it's all brutal but at least there's the music
[16/12/2023] i have 5 different voices because i'm normal. I listen to music because it's awesome. i have so much i want to do and will do. there's no stopping that. and i'm paranoid like i'm being watched all the time and they were outside my house last night and i walk past with my head out the window and heart in mouth. and we'll pretend it's fine for a while longer. and maybe we'll keep going for a while longer after that.
[13/12/2023] psychosynthesis & absurdism are compatible
[12/12/2023] Ader understood that the ocean is where the truth lives
[12/12/2023]
[09/12/2023] keeping on keeping on. words are never enough
[04/12/2023] found an old track + recorded some silly guitar, titling unintentially stan brakhage inspired (it's funny how everything keeps coming together)
[04/12/2023] We talk about it in all the different contexts, but mostly the violence of inaction and the violence of silence. Waiting a couple of hours that feel like a day or more and it keeps ticking it and it keeps getting worse. Later on, a peak, which is hair ripping mad like every cartoon asylum dweller, scars and all (they’re more visible now than before) but this peak, although the height of awfulness, no control just pure HURT HURT / emotion, is not the end as, now you must wait, grow cold, and watch as it turns dull like the knives in your grandmothers kitchen drawer. Arms too weak to sharpen them (folded in her lap on a tired Sunday) & they must wait patiently to have their power granted back to them by a new young fresh face (they bought them off a house clearance on eBay) or they risk the worst fate (stuck blunt or snapped in trash heaps shipped to India never to function again, accidentally slicing off a young boys finger, and there he can see that the violence doesn’t end but for you it’s a distant memory and you try again and again with the same fate the same index or pinky bloody red gushing but again: you’ll never see this and you try again and again). Futility as the name of the game
[03/12/2023] RECOMMENDATION: a website more beautiful than mine. at the moment everything feels more beautiful than i - winter feels so violent
[02/12/2023] RECOMMENDATION: a video on having a crush (the most dehabilitating disease in the world)
[25/11/2023] i love going to the club because nothing changes (i listen to music and think about girls)
[25/11/2023] is pleasure for the sake of pleasure a sin
[22/11/2023] Pigeonholing DJing into this idea of it being for electronic music was wrong (others saw through this, I have only recently realised it's potential outside of the electronic). The power of Ecco2k's classical set for Boiler Room is unmatched. Les Rallizes Denudes is the opener for a soundcloud mix made in 2023. Story telling - maybe I don't need to make my own music, mixtapes this phenomenal & moving are possible.
[22/11/2023] Sandra said she could guess I can't cook but only because I can do other things
[21/11/2023] everyone in my home town looks as if they're seconds away from murder
[19/11/2023] got a NYT subscription that has been serving me well. suggested reading:
1. 'This Is Not the Way to Help Depressed Teenagers'
2. 'Teenagers Are Telling Us That Something Is Wrong With America'
3. 'I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You.' (this one is controversial, I find the comment section interesting)
you have 30 days from this entry to read these without paywall, enjoy :*
[14/11/2023] streets drenched and it smells like we're 14 again: walking alongside the side of the road dipping in and out the ditch that lines it. the smell of petrol now and I ask what's your favourite smell? rain on concrete, you reply. a few weeks later, same road, ditch, petrol station and the heavens open up. the sweet smell of rain on concrete. every summer storm & i'm back there with you.
[14/11/2023] I've spent all day writing about Mekas for my dissertation, finally getting to the point after 3500 words. All I can think about is the humanity in his work. Listening to Silver Mt. Zion I see what Mekas has been saying in his films always, in what so many of us are trying to show: humanity! the beauty of the world.
'And lover, sweet lover
Please don't discipline your hands
Just kiss me in the morning
In your dirtiest pants
We will find our way'
[14/11/2023] I hope to see love win.
[14/11/2023] Interview with Jonas Mekas: 'So, we are now where you can have in one pocket a pencil, and in the other one your camera. That was the dream of Cocteau. Where movie cameras become like pencils, then cinema will be equal with other arts. That’s where we are now.
[14/11/2023] Thinking about NYC when a guy asked me if we had McDonalds in England. It was the day the Queen died and he came up to me later showing me that McDonalds had shut in the UK because of the Queen dying.
[13/11/2023] thinking about whether having all information in one place is beneficial in terms of our internet society. In that, would we all be more connected/happier/less addicted? if we were all still on sites like this (neo/geocities sites where we are our own curator? not struggling with algorithms out of our control, just making connections through one site per person (or whatever.) I think that I'm pinning down how we would feel too specifcially and I'm wondering in fact to a wider degree - what would we all feel if this were the case? if our own websites and thus our own governance were our social medias. I was just thinking about the very explicit differences in the role of all the main socials I use: instagram main account for my work/art, nervous dog as a personal / vulnerable persona to exist in contact with others online while still having a false sense of security/anonymity, twitter as a place to feel insane and go insane, letterboxd to write film reviews (but also putting those film reviews on instagram as I have more of an audeince there - the same with putting tweets there, the same with putting excerpts from this blog on there, the list goes on forever). In other words, i'm jumbled (human) and unsure of what having all these things means for me. They all give something different to me, but is that a good thing? e.g., do I need all this?
[12/11/2023] RECOMMENDATION: a video on the 'mematic renunciation of love' (explains why love is everything important in the world - after Dostoevsky, “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”)
[12/11/2023] [REDACTED] but it's actually made me feel closer, more willing to understand and forgive
[12/11/2023] we are all human eg full of inconsistencies
[11/11/2023] We would always meet in cold weather, tucked under coats with hands placed neatly on opposing sides of the table. One time over tea, the others over pints - we talked with distance but undertones of longing (alternating each time, once from me, once from you, once from me, once from you, etc. until it ran dry a ship that had sailed and then coasted to the shoreline - waiting to ride waves again?)
Further back, we used to sit across from each other over pints, and our hands weren't apart but together (playing with your fingers, circling your palm, swapping rings).
At the pub I broke my ring, split in half but still joined. I looked over the table at you (candlelit, pretty oranges flicker across your face, the brown of my Harvey's) and i knew then i loved you but i wouldn't ever say that (not until it was too late, once fro me, once from you, etc.)
I wrote once about clocks and them ticking out of sync and that was us and now both clocks are smashed so they can never meet but sometimes when it's cold and i see candlelight flit across your face i think of how even a broken clock is right twice a day
[09/11/2023] the burden of change as an inevitability is a burden we must all take on