A fine piece of writing...

Bloc Party is an autonomous unit of un-extraordinary kids reared on pop culture between the years of 1976 and the present day. Like many such kids, between them they eventually concluded that their own attempts to imitate what had informed them could be construed as a worthy variation on the many forms that preceded. They do everything that's required to conform to the currently received ideas of what a band is: ostensibly to play instruments at the same time, but also have a title for the work created.

Kele picked up a guitar when his hands enabled him to do so and his brain gave him the inclination. Russell had already done as much beforehand when they met in 1998. In the fine print of music papers and in telephone conversations they enabled meetings with Gordon and Matt who also had ideas of some relevance to bring to the collective effort. In this sense a band was created.

Henceforth should follow a list of auteurs and musicians that figured in the formative minds of the four as they went about their work. But to do as much seems churlish in an already self-referential world. Suffice to say there would be no band without the efforts of guitar bands formed in British and American towns in the 70s, 80s and 90s, aswell as visionary writers and artists of various kinds whose work has informed the world and culture itself as it stands. The precise names are as good as any you can come up with, in fact probably much, much better.

... and a pretty decent band too. Check them out: Bloc Party

Snow bunny, queen of the foot of the mountain

The body is resilient. It can be pushed and pushed, take a rest, and be back on going again. The drive up and down the mountain was interjected by dose-offs, but when we were there, from 9-5, we were awake; we were on, we were alive. The grumpiness from waking up so early for a workout melted like the mountain fog meeting the noon sun— it evaporated into the fuel for one goal. One simple goal: find the way up the slope and snowboard your way down. I had rarely used my body so much and so fully. It took only a few seconds to go down the wimpy slope that I practiced on. It took 5-10 minutes for me to go back up, get geared, and summon up the courage to go down again. Once I had made the trip though, once I had reached the flat foot of the hill where there’s no action, there was only one urge in me: go back up. Sure I spent a lot of time contemplating, theorizing about snowboarding when I was on the upper part of a usually pretty tamed slope. But only in coming down the sport really happened. I would have no control over the steepness, the curves, the bumps and the people. And I would not know what I was doing most of the time. And that would be exactly the point. That fear, followed by a rush, was what got me going and going.

Man, we went two days in a week. Snow fell the whole night before Wednesday and we enjoyed a thick, feathery layer of snow in our first lesson. A nice, forgiving cushion for a beginner like me. Still the snow didn’t help much when Sam tricked me to take the lift to the top of the mountain. I had to slide all the way back down. It took me like an hour to come down; it was no fun. What made it worse was that the mountain kept curving right. I didn’t get a chance to really do anything when I couldn’t even counter the natural way of the slope. All I could do was to squat up on the board a bit, get way too scared, fall back, and then redo the same thing over and over again. It was putting real strain on my lower legs; my left calf cramped two times during the slide. One time I got up and saw a creek with running water underneath— had I slid one foot to the right I would have fallen into it. Nonetheless after the Long Slide I went on practicing a couple of hours, and I only quit when a bad stop cramped and immobilized both of my calves. (I would spend the whole day next day walking like a crumbly old man, or the Hunchback of Notre Dame.)

I was hooked. I was on steriod; it was called Endorphin. I never knew sports was so fun—you have a goal, you face challenges, you master some techniques, and you go again. I was mountain high.

I love giving myself to the mountain. I love throwing my body out and let it fall. Although I did spend a lot of time ramping up to it, every time I fell I realized: “This is not too bad. I can totally get up and get going again!” When I skateboarded, everything else in the world shrank. Nothing was bigger than the mountain. No self, no worries, no trivialities. It was just me and the slope before me. I love this feeling of giving myself to a goal and forgetting the worldly cares— they are not significant anymore. After my first day we had to go to the Mall as we thought we had lost our cellphones. We were in dirty skid clothes, wide-eyed and wild looking, probably a bit smelly too. We were completely out of place amongst those holiday shoppers and teenagers who were so eager to be seen and to become something. Normally we get a little distressed by the grotesque commercialism of “da Mool”, but not that day. We’ve got PERSPECTIVE today. We knew there was only one thing that mattered javascript:void(0)
Publish Post(snowboarding down the mountain), and all else is only frizz and fluff. Yeah, frizz & fluff. Insignificant.

Today the snow was icier. It hurt more to fall. I had 4-5 pretty bad falls. I scratched my chin in one of them. I kind of look like a “flower-face cat” now…