Odyssey No.E@L

When I play Powderfinger's Odyssey No 5, Izzy sometimes gets up and turns it off - she says she loves it, but that it makes think her too much of dark thoughts about the meaning(lessness) of life...

I can't imagine why...

I absolutely love the rather bleak, despairing tone of the whole album (a softer more acoustic Soundgarden/Audioslave). Yes, the darker the song or book or movie, the happier I get. Cheers me up no end! I am not a death-metal or goth freak but some downer albums just click with me. The songs' thanatic energy on O#5 seem to feed some disquiet in me that is converted into a calm (often foot-tapping) sense of pleasure. What country music does for rednecks, what jazz does for sophisticates...

"This life well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned nothing like I planned
Control well it's slipping right through my hands
These days turned out nothing like I had planned..."

Can't embed my favoritely depressing Youtube Vid however.
The Metre

"If you measure the world by what you leave behind...
Welcome to the saving grace
Welcome to the saving grace..."

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Smile, we're all gonna die one day. How else to take it, but with a grin, on the chin? What will you leave behind?

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An acquaintance of mine, a neighbour of some friends, such a nice bloke, Robbie was his name, I'd had a few beers with him every now and then, including one time I bumped into him and his wife in a hotel cafe in Dubai -- he dropped dead the other day. Woke up feeling dizzy and unwell... Thunk.

Thunk makes you think. He was just 2 or 3 years older than me.

He had a fatalistic attitude in general, I remember. Was sort of pleasantly grumpy, well more cynical (as we all in our 50's are) than grumpy. I can see his face now, serious but amused - it in my memory, in my brain cells, he is part of me. And I wish I had seen him a bit more often, got to know him better. We got on.

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Everyone's life is its own odyssey. No-one who set sail with Ulysses got out of that voyage alive...

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;...

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Speaking of going home: after 8 weeks straight sitting on my disrupted arse in Singapore, making hardly a dent in my unread list of books and save a weekend trip to Melbourne for the Grand Final, I am finally getting out. 10 days in Bangkok! I cannot wait. You know me. I cannot rest from travel...

E@L