All Over The Place

The past couple of days, I've been all over the place, mainly in conversation. On the way to meet an academic from the US in real life, I discovered the guitar shop in Greenwich Market, Tom's Guitar Shop. Tom was there playing guitar, and I played a couple of guitars from the display and chatted with him for a bit. I may well send him photos of the guitars I'm planning to sell because he's a little less jaded than some of the guitar shop chaps that I've come across. There's still a lot of sexism in those places; female money is obviously worth a lot less than male money. Further in the future this fact will be ridiculed, I sincerely hope.

The conversation over coffee was intense; oh how I've missed the academic world that is nothing to do with management, spreadsheets and all that blah. The conference community was fascinating, even with its competitiveness, tripping-up and (yes) misogyny. The worst male academics were the ones who declared themselves to be feminist, and thought that was all they had to do. Ha ha! Just try reporting a sexual assault by their favourite male student and see how that plays out!

Somehow I managed to walk more than six miles, chewing over the food for thought. And today, my friend Joan came for a walk and a forage through the charity shops, and there is now yet more food for thought.

I have so many ideas for songs that I feel overloaded. Could this be called a 'Constipation of Ideas'? I'm not sure... I have a pristine book to start writing them in, having abandoned my phone notes after Facebook spied on them and started pushing 'Facebook Washing Line Groups' when I was in Scotland and made a note about colour-coded washing on a line outside Rothesay a few weeks ago.

My handwriting leaves a lot to be desired, but even that has sometimes created some very interesting lyrics as I've misread what was written on the back of my hand, for instance.

It was an unexpected pleasure to see Emily Kam Kngwarray's paintings at Tate Modern last week. They are beautiful maps of thought and movement, sometimes layered with repeat visits, stopping and starting, turning and thinking. Aboriginal paintings seem to be a historical precursor to Situationism, and this fascinated me: the here and now, measuring by walking and looking and making precise marks.

 It's great to simultaneously not understand a language but to feel respect for what it's saying and the way it speaks. There is something humanly empowering about them, and about their direct communication, that dwarfs the morass of stupidity that we're whirling around in at the moment. Where are the adults? Did everyone's maturity stop developing when they were toddlers? Kngwarray is a duchess of dignity and patience. What a relief to come across such great art.