Have you ever just danced? Danced until...

...you could feel the sweat running down your neck, your muscles burning from too much? Your jaw hurts from smiling and shouting, your head is banging from excess noise and heat and everyone around you is laughing because you appear to have no control over you limbs? Or, if you're just going it alone in your room, the headphones come off and there's a feeling of emptiness because there was no-one there to share that with you? No?

Why not?

I'm pretty much certain that there is nothing on earth which causes that much bliss. There are drugs, and drink, which are hilarious but short lived and, ultimately, a bit bad for your tummy. There's the bed-style fun, but that requires so much legwork beforehand... You can climb mountains, but you need to be in shape to avoid risks. You can run marathons, but the same things apply, generally. Painting? Requires the right frame of mind. Singing? Concentration. There are basically rules for them all - Steps to take before the good bit hits you and you grin like a moron.

How's this then? Turn on, turn up, dance. That, my loves, is the kind of way to spend an evening. Dancing doesn't have rules! Not unless you enforce them. I'm sitting here, panting for breath, because I have been throwing myself around my room, alone, with The Go! Team blasting away in my cans, and I cannot begin to describe how much better this is than going downstairs to play N64 or sitting and trying to force myself to read a book. Nope, this is instant buzz.

I hate when people make dancing a tool - Some sort of primal ritual used to lure the opposite sex into their grasp, only ever with one ultimate, self-centred goal. It's dancing, for crying out loud - "To move one's feet, body or both to the accompaniment of music". How the hell did this get undermined too? It's just expression, freedom to move the bodies we've got.

We need to do it while we can, folks! Were all going to get old, and we're going to complain that our frames aren't what they used to be and we will look back at how lucky we were, and when that happens, I want to be able to smile and know that I had a good time with it. I don't want my only experiences of dancing to be with 18 drinks in me on some gum-covered nightclub floor and a half naked girl weaving around in front of me - Where's the fun in that? I want to remember me and my mates just moving; no inhibitions.

When I think of dancing, I think of me and Henry Croft starting the night of a Sixth Form social as the only ones in front of the DJ, hopelessly shaking around to "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley and laughing our arses off because it was so damned ridiculous that we were the only ones willing to have any fun. I think of My 18th birthday in my back garden, raving to Pendulum with Chazzeh, just us, grinning and alive. I think of Me and Becky, watching the Go! Team live, making friends with complete strangers and losing ourselves in the strobelights and t-shirts, just dancing because it felt right.

Folks, dance with me. Stop working now, it's too late. Put on some headphones, play whatever you like, and have a go, because you don't need anything else to feel brilliant.


'tonm. xx



Book of the Moment: Many things.

Song of the Moment: "Keys to the City" by The Go! Team

It has just become very obvious...

...that I'm probably going to disappear off the radar in a few years.

I have great friendships with a lot of you folks out there, most of whom will never read this and remain blissfully unaware of this revelation. I treasure silly passing remarks, odd grins from across the street and conversations which have lasted deep into the small hours of many dreary mornings this country has had to offer in the past.

It's all stopping though, of course.

I'm rubbish at keep up to speed with any of you in any way. I rarely show my face for big evenings out on the town; I am drawn to a different lifestyle, I fear - a lifestyle which aspires to peaceful villages where residents spend their days wandering about playing instruments and smiling and drinking tea and feeling perfectly happy with the state of things.

What's more, my inevitable career path leads me far away from the big cities and noise many of you enjoy so much. I'll end up in a cottage somewhere in the country, drawing the occasional thing for some newly developed shop that requires it, then strolling off to work at a post office until the day is through. It will be time spent alone, too, by the looks of things.

I have tried, mark you - I have twisted myself to fit into many frames and stories, but in actuality, it is never genuine; my presence is not intrinsic to the memory, simply moderately interesting excess used as kindling for another anecdote around the cheese and biscuits.

Yes, I will disappear. Many of you will forget me, some of you may have a flicker of interest in where I've gone, I might even be lucky enough to hear that one or two of you experienced genuine sadness with the passing of time. However, all in all, I will still fade away. I have loved many of you, but I can't keep pretending this lifestyle is my own.


These are, of course, simply words, and they will be passed over by tired eyes, and silently disregarded by busy minds. They'll probably be void by tomorrow anyway.



'tonm. xx



Book of the Moment: Still Stephen Fry's Autobiography.

Song of the Moment: "Samson" by Regina Spektor

Whiskey and Coke tonight...

...and some seriously loud music in my headphones. I actually detest living in this house.

I can deal with the conflicts between myself and those around me. I can deal with how small this place is. I can just about deal with the severe lack of anything remotely resembling a garden. All that will stand with me as long as it needs to. What get me are the residents of Fratton.

My neighbours, for example, have several, very loud dogs. I hate dogs as it is, but these foul creatures will wail and howl at any human or movement within a 1 mile proximity of their house, and they will keep going until either the termagant of a mother screams at them like a banshee or they receive the necessary blood sacrifice from whatever poor, unfortunate soul happens to be anywhere near them at that precise moment.

The family are loud, associate with other loud people and make no bones about it - They bitch and whine at each other until the sun sets, by which time they have all presumably returned to their respective bomb shelters and injected more adrenaline into their veins so that, when the morning creeps round, they have absolutely no problem leaping from the sheets to fire off more expletives at one and other, an event which is louder even than the disgracefully bad choice of music shamelessly blasted through the speakers of the stereo of the teenage daughter on the other side of my wall.

I don't know, perhaps i'm having a bad evening? Well, i most certainly am having a bad evening, lets not beat about the bush... perhaps i'm over exaggerating? Maybe they're all just tormented philosophers, desperately trying to seek new plains of understanding by battling out every day over questions above and beyond my own thought process...


No. That simply doesn't work. Nietzsche never bellowed "Gimme your eye-liner or I'll smash your face in" from the pages of Thus Spake Zaratrustra...

'tonm. xx




Book of the Moment: Still Stephen Fry's autobiography - See yesterday's entry.

Song of the Moment: "Butterfly Caught" by Massive Attack

I can see the finish line...

...and now I can dance the last few hundred metres too!

I finally got a new iPod, and this time it's a classic, so it'll last, plus it has basically everything I own on it - Groovy.

Anyway, to matters at hand - I finish semester in near enough 2 weeks, and the pressure is seriously on. I have to make a book, the frame of which will hopefully be entirely twisted, as a reflection of the notions of tormenting, manipulation and nagging referred to in my chosen novel, "An Essay on the Art of Tormenting" by Jane Collier.

I have to a whole butt-load of preparation for it tomorrow - In fact, I basically need to absolutely decide on what it's going to look like and how it will be built, because it needs to look really good, and if I haven't started to build by Monday, it'll be rushed. Research, as always, is boring as stripping wallpaper and ultimately not as helpful. If I don't do enough, though, then my final solution has to be utterly perfect, because its a 50/50 marking scheme. I'm sure it'll pan out OK.

Well, not sure, but you get the idea.

I'm ready for term to be over.

'tonm. xx



Book of the Moment: "Moab is My Washpot" by Stephen Fry

Song of the Moment: "Creepy Crawl" by Be Your Own Pet