tales from an ordinary world

2000-01-22

"Back in Metropolis, circuses and elephants
where the oranges grew...

...and it's only a day away
we could leave tonight
you could sleep along the way
dream in black and white"
The Church.

Sometimes when I've got the 200-CD changer on "shuffle", it comes up with the most wonderful gems that I haven't heard in ages, like the above - The Church's Metropolis. It's definitely one of those songs that feels right, or good, or whatever. In a similar fashion, but less so, the mechanical repetition of Autechre seems to be more enjoyable than usual this afternoon.

More or less before I was paying any attention, I was in the city - I'd hopped on the tram, and was busy leafing through my newly purchased Lonely Planet guide to New York City with my headphones on. I relived some of my old rituals - Saturday brunch at Tonkatsu Joshu, then coffee around the corner at Degraves Espresso. Then the rain came, and after standing around for a while deciding what to do I figured it best to go home and avoid spending any money. It also didn't help that I just couldn't think of where to go. Everywhere I could think of going I'd been a million times before.

The guidebook tells me that New Yorkers can tell a tourist by the fact that they look up at the buildings. Oddly enough, I'm guilty of doing that here in Melbourne. Once or twice I've seen some odd little sign on a high up window, where nobody looks.

Is a good piece of graffiti worth a thousand pictures ? I'm not sure if this one counts, but I've seen this appear on Dandenong Road near Chapel St since the new year started - "HEY PEOPE NOW WHAT ?" (sic). Sometimes it's hard to tell whether these really are profound, or if they're just trying to be. I was rather fond of "sack yr shrink, hire an artist" that I saw down in St Kilda last year, but wonder the same thing about it.