1. Ticket stubs are a short-hand for a whole day or night's (mostly night's) memories. Packed into a plastic envelope that I bought in a train station in Paris are tickets for the empire state building; the Stavanger smoked fish museum; a viewing of 'My Son My Son What Have Ye Done?' at the Curzon in Soho, a gig I can't remember at Koko, and the god-awful SATC 2 that I saw with my sister in a movie theatre in New York.
2a. My favourite image from the TOILETPAPER wall calendar. It was February in my room for a number of years...
The calendar was empty for February 2021 - and it may remain that way, as it seems absurd to book a bench in a pub garden, and so I'm sure that I will never get round to it.
'Call Andy Warhol' an extract from Christo's diary from 1967
3. Lettraset is inconsistent and time consuming, but also deeply pleasurable. The satisfying texture of the tracing paper and the neat cross-hatched scratches that are made transfer each letter - one at a time - from the sheet onto its intended surface. The resulting graphics are jauntily placed - jumping up and down, slanted slightly to the left or right - in a hybrid between the handwritten and digitally printed.
4. When did trainers all become so mad? Thick angular heels jut out like spurs; fat, foamy soles undulate and ripple; plastic air bubbles trapped for eternity; and Loewe's 2008 Arabian nights trainer with toes that project upwards like a snakes tongue. Where does one find normal trainers?
5. Londoners have embraced the dog like never before, and - like a Londoner - I want one.
6. Adam Curtis's films are both compelling and repelling. If ignorance is bliss, then don't watch 'Can't Get You Out of My Head'. Similar to his other films in many ways - video collage, discordant muzak, voiceover by Curtis himself - I found the six-part series format troublesome, as it was more and more difficult to press 'play' on another episode. Presented in a single hit, Curtis's world view is compelling, but over seven instalments felt punishing.
Putting forth the argument that our age of individualism is the cause of many issues, Curtis notes that "what we feel is seen as very important - in consumerism, politics... and so portraying how people are feeling is just as important as portraying the facts. Putting the two together is the 'modern' journalism - it is no longer patrician, more just a presentation of facts".
Curtis concluded his the conversation with BlindBoy by saying:
"One part of life is that stuff happens and it is assembled later into meaningful stories. But sometimes, there are just fragments - it happened and now it's gone - and that is as much a part of the realism of our time as the joined-up stories."
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7. The idea of the acquired taste says something interesting about the human psyche: if something is unappealing at first, why try it again? What drives us to keep trying to enjoy an olive or an oyster? Are acquired tastes status symbols - vintage bottles of red and wheels of pungent blue cheese - or are they a marker of an aged palette, one that has been dulled by too many cigarettes, too much salt or sugar?