This place has been rather quiet lately. My last post here was more than 8 months ago, and this blog wasn’t exactly teeming with life before, either.
Standing in the digital space of what used to be my dimension feels like returning to my teenage bedroom and coming face-to-face with a caricature of who I used to be. Still, caricatures are quite good at jogging the memory. Here it is, disused, but not as dusty as one would expect – 80% of dust consists of dead skin cells and here there’s no-one it can be shed off of, after all. The walls are still covered with posters of bands I still like (or think I do) but never listen to anymore, and the corkboards still have pictures pinned on them of my younger self together with old friends I’ve lost all contact with. Did they move away from me or did I move away from them? The question is as pointless yet painful as ‘why must there be death?’, or ‘can oil and water ever be lovers?’
In the almost 10 years I’ve had this blog, my WordPress backend tells me that I’ve written 985 posts – a respectable number, but way too close to 1,000 for comfort. If I’d kept posting my earworms and the handful of Goodreads and Game 2.0 reviews here I haven’t shared, I could have done it, but right now the achievement seems hopelessly trivial (it’s no accident I’m calling it that).
I’d been meaning to write this closing post for a longer time than I care to admit. What had been stopping me until now is that I thought I’d be ‘betraying’ a part of myself. I realised at some point that there’s no shame in letting the past be the past.
I was thinking recently what I feel about the entity Cubilone. Am I Cubilone? Hardly anyone calls me that anymore, because most people I share my life with today don’t remember the time I identified myself as Cubilone. They didn’t know me, and I wasn’t aware of their existence. In time, no-one will remember. But let’s not go there.
I am now 28 years old. White hairs have started to make their timely yet not wholly unwelcome appearance in my beard. The unibrow hairs I regularly pluck were the first ones to go white, actually. I started using the nickname Cubilone when I was 17. I can’t recall if it was for Hi5 (yikes), MySpace or some other website where I felt the need to hide behind a mysterious-sounding nickname. It was an alteration of the even older handle CuBiCLe, a nickname I had spontaneously chosen for myself to play CounterStrike with friends at DaSilva, the first hit netcafe in Nea Smyrni. When I chose that name for myself, I’d barely count as a teenager.
Sometime around 2003, the me who first called himself Cubi. Or, if you’re catching pedant from reading me, an uncharacteristic photograph of me. What I can tell you is that, although I hated hairgel, I knew the cool kids loved it, and I was dying for their acceptance and appreciation.
For years I preferred not to talk too much about the true origins of the name Cubilone (and CuBiCLe) – as you can tell, they wouldn’t win any awards for originality. But now I wish to share this story with you in greater detail.
CuBiCLe’s true origins probably stem from ‘GameCube’ (I was an obsessed Nintendo fanboy at the time), but I really think it also had to do with reading/watching either The Sorcerer’s Stone or The Chamber of Secrets and subconsciously catching the word ‘cubicle’ from somewhere therein – Hogwarts toilets did feature rather prominently in both stories, after all.
Pretty soon, I was just Cubi. Eventually, I added the extra suffix “-lone” because it reminded me of ‘alone’ and it also kind of sounded Elvish. I don’t remember how vocal I had been about what the word ‘cubicle’ meant, but I definitely didn’t want to be going around introducing myself as ‘toilet or office compartment’.
In all honesty though, I don’t imagine I kept quiet for long – my humor was way more self-deprecating back then that it is now, and embarrassing myself for laughs is something I had not yet developed the pride to start avoiding. Today, I seek guidance from that part of me who didn’t feel threatened by the completely imaginary prospect of being embarrassed.
I have so many memories of love, friendship and joy connected with the name Cubi. It feels like by giving up on the name, I’m giving up on the memories, or even worse (?), the people I share them with. It is, however, some consolation that my memories of loved ones calling me that are probably just mine. You know, memories are some volatile, fleeting, malleable things; blindly assuming I share certain ones with people I care about is a recipe for disappointment. So I won’t assume that.
Still. For that, and for many other reasons, I know that I’m not giving up on the people, on the memories. That would be just me taking myself on my beloved guilt trips. No; this whole thing? It’s just about me. Just for me to grow out of my skin, leave my cozy, comfortable cocoon behind.
So, am I still Cubi? Am I QB, qb? Am I Cubilone? Today?
…
Cubilone is me. He’ll be me as long as I live. But I’m not Cubilone.
*holding breath*
*exhalation*
This marks the end of Cubilone’s Dimension. This open diary I would turn to whenever I felt lonely and thought that writing something would make people in general interested in me or help them understand me, no longer serves me. It might still serve Cubilone, but it’s not serving Dimitris.
If you’re reading this, you might be interested in reading some more of what I’m planning to start writing soon. I’m obviously too vain to not have some kind of personalised web presence that’s not plebby like Facebook, and most of all, I have really missed writing (in case you’re wondering: yes, with the goal of making people interested in me or to help them understand me).
I do hereby present you Hallografik.ws, my new site, which at the time of writing is still not ready, but I’m kicking myself into action. I hope I’ll stick to that one for longer than what Cubilone Dimension felt comfortable for.
As for the fate of this blog? It will stay online until December 7th, which will mark the 10th anniversary of when I registered it. I don’t plan on renewing the domain name, so I only know that “cubimension.net” will become available soon. In case you’re interested to grab it and use it to swear at me with really big letters.
The 985 posts? I’ve yet to really decide, but I don’t think I have the heart to lock them away or even delete them forever. Not yet…
A few weeks ago, in October, I was discharged from my mandatory military service in the Greek Army. When it was still lying ahead in the future, it was a period I had since forever been quite nervous about: how would I react to being ordered around? Would I be able to do the things asked of me? Was it really okay to support such a violent system with my consent and voluntary submission?
These thoughts troubled me enough that I was postponing the moment I would take the plunge. I was making excuses on the way and calling it indecisiveness, not to mention I was devising ways to avoid serving altogether. Nonetheless, I remained trapped somewhere between being a conscientious objector and indeed believing that even serving in the army could turn out to be a net positive, enriching experience. Sure, friends and people in my environment would often say things like “going to prison might be an enriching experience in some way too, but that’s no reason to go” and I would agree. But then I would think that if going to prison was obligatory for all men over 18 and not just convicts, if one got to see new places and it was only for 9 months, it wouldn’t be prison anymore.
What exactly did it turn out to be though?
This won’t be your typical post-service post. I won’t be writing down too many of my more fun or surreal army stories – people who’ve been through the same ordeal have heaps of their own and for everybody else it just isn’t all that interesting – nor will I list all the reasons the Greek Army is evil/inefficient/irrational/fascist and shouldn’t exist – you could fill in the gaps yourself and be spot-on without any of my help. No, this will be a post about the whole “net positive, enriching experience” part, and how in the end aiming to do something I would never normally do – something I predicted would help me grow – worked just as intended.
These, then, are the ways I grew.
Taking a step outside the Bubble
Spending a part of my life in the army was an experience I now share with many other Greek men and it will always serve as an emergency source of small-talk material. Keeping that in mind, it’s no accident that in the army itself all you talk about with most people is the service itself.
Out in the real world, you more or less get to pick the people you spend time with. The criteria by which you choose those people are mostly hidden away in the depths of your psyche, but you can count on the fact that the people you voluntarily allow closer to you aren’t that different from you. Over time, this might lull you into believing that people in general aren’t that different when it comes to opinions, tastes, political and religious beliefs, etc.
Bubbles and related shapes
This familiar environment is your bubble(link goes to a TedSummary page of a relevant talk on how we should “beware of ‘filter bubbles’“) Your bubble does a great job at sheltering you from what’s out there, but it also does a great job at sheltering you from what’s out there. Since us humans typically tend to normalize our experience and often fail to, or carefully avoid, taking into account all the unfathomable richness that exists just outside of it, pretty soon we lose perspective, forget about how our experience is completely subjective and far from shared, and we inevitably end up focusing on the (small) anomalies and deviations that exist inside our own environment/bubble and magnifying them to look much much more important than they really are.
Now, the army forces you to spend time with people in bubbles of all sorts of colours: green, brown, khaki, red, black, blue, white, red-and-black, blue-and-white, rainbow, and so on. These are people with whom under ordinary circumstances, out there, you would never ever have any meaningful interaction. They would never penetrate your bubble; it would filter them out of your experience or, in worst case scenario, make sure they are removed if they somehow end up too close.
Meeting, talking to, working with and receiving feedback, compliments or criticism through bubbles different from your own make you realize where the people who watch MAD Greekz all day, people who talk about football any chance they get or whose contribution to most political discussions is “all we need is another good dictatorship” have been hiding. They haven’t been hiding, and it wasn’t that you weren’t paying attention, either: the bubble was just doing its job rendering them invisible to you.
Laid out in these terms, you might ask if the bubble isn’t the greatest thing ever. To be sure, blocking out the majority of what’s going on out there has its benefits. It can help you focus. It can help you stay sane. Still, waking up every once in a while to the fact that there are so many different kinds of experiences, priorities, worldviews, so manybubbles to which you are invisible, can help you, give you the impression at least, that you understand the world just a bit better.
To illustrate, it can be a great and soothing feeling looking at your environment and believing that e.g. vegetarianism or feminism are catching on and are starting to become influential (which is of course true in a way) but definitely not to the degree one might be led to believe if one hangs out, online or off, with people who care about these issues enough they can create an online echo chamber.
Having your bubble burst – yep, I just went there – can bring about a reality check, a harsh reminder of what you really have to come against ( or work with) as well as something which is sorely missing in the lives of most of us: perspective.
(starts at 9:37) “A great wet blanket for smothering the fire of self-conscious anxieties is perspective. Consider the famous advice of Eleanor Roosevelt. “You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do.”As much as you obsess over yourself, you’re not the first thing on everyone else’s minds. They’re worried about themselves, what you think about them, and more importantly, what they think about themselves. You are not the center of their world.
Confirmation bias and its benefits
This next part goes against everything I just wrote about how bursting your bubble is a good thing. But bare with me: paradox is the garnish of life.
In contemporary social psychology, confirmation bias – the tendency to look out for people and ideas compatible with your own existing beliefs, use them to confirm what’s already there inside of you, and somehow miss those who don’t exactly agree with you, i.e. a variation of living inside your bubble – is perceived to be a fallacy to look out for if you want to consider yourself a person of high intelligence. In other words, listening to opposing opinions actively and questioning one’s positions and assumptions builds a stronger mind. So far so good.
Nevertheless, there is one element – a side-effect if you will – of surrendering to confirmation bias that can work well for you if you, like me, are open to considering views very far from your own and as a result sometimes find that weighing too many different opinions equally can get a bit confusing. It is called the backfire effect. Contrary to popular belief, confronting others with hard facts and arguments and proving them wrong doesn’t automatically make them switch over to your side. They might appear to consider your points, but more often than not, opposing opinions will trigger automatic, subconscious defense mechanisms and make people stick to their views and stand their ground with renewed fervour against what they perceive to be an attack against their very person.
It turns out that the army experience had precisely this redoubling effect on my convictions. I used to be willing to listen to completely faulty reasoning or arguments filled with hate and other toxic elements and say nothing because I was half-playing-kind/half-actually-considering the points made. You see, it’s always been easy for me to see why people feel the way they do even if I don’t like or agree with them. When confronted with arguments that made my stomach turn, I would explain away the malevolence through this empathy of mine. It is well-meaning, good for communication and all, but I would sometimes end up questioning my own values as a result: “maybe they’re right. Perhaps being ready for war is the best way to preserve peace”.
Being ready for war.
I’m known for my relative cool-headedness during discussions, and I do believe about myself that I weigh arguments as fairly as I can. However, the amount of absolute bullshit I was exposed to over the past months at some point made me stop and consider what role I truly wished to have in such discussions. They strengthened my resolve to protect what matters to me the most, i.e. freedom of movement and opportunity, animal rights, compassion, egalitarianism, to name just a few ideas which every day prove to be much less than self-explanatory. I still come to discussions bringing empathy into the picture, but I no longer feel as if a well-spoken argument can leave me stunned, nor that lashing out can solve things, precisely because confirmation bias works the way it does. From an idealistic perspective, I have an easier time recognising what it is I truly have a desire to fight for, or that in some cases fighting is a waste of energy – which by the way is what most online comment wars boil down to.
People end up liking you and remembering you for completely different reasons from what you think
If there was one piece of advice I would hear a lot before enlisting, it was to avoid attracting attention. “You don’t want people to remember who you are, what your name is, or what you do. You want to be a shadow – obedient enough to never raise an eyebrow, yet never to a degree which would make you stand out.”
It wasn’t long before I found out that it was impossible for me not to attract attention, or at the very least have people be somewhat aware of my presence – or absence.
One aspect of this I had been dreading ever since I was still in school, was the unusual sound of my surname – Hall – to Greek ears. I got my fair share of teasing for it when I was a child and for years I wouldn’t be comfortable with the attention I was getting purely because of it. As an adult man ready to enlist, the fear that I would have to fend off teases about my name was still there, like a childhood bite dictates a life-long fear of dogs or some weird aversion to a particular non-threatening food item. What I hadn’t considered was that, even though the army was in many ways like going back to school, a key difference would be that I wouldn’t have to be surrounded by kids anymore. OK, excluding all the 18-year-olds.
No matter where I went, everyone knew who I was: I was the Australian dude. People would greet me or try to engage with me (sometimes in English – just in case I didn’t understand Greek!) and sometimes I would have no recollection of ever talking to them before – they were the successful shadows, come to think of it. Of course I had to repeat the story of where the name comes from an inordinate amount of times, but I realized that the attention I got for my name wasn’t negative – it was my past reactions to it that had made me sort of weary of the whole thing. A few people commented that “Hall” sounded like that of a writer or actor or something like that – possibly because of how similar it is to “Dimitris Horn” – and moved on. All this was a wake-up call for something I should have seen much earlier: my name is a gift. I should use it to my advantage, wear it proudly on my sleeve and not hide behind nicknames invented to protect me from childhood anxieties.
What – you mean that there are others in the army who’re in the same position as you and can relate?!
Even more interestingly, people seemed to like me for no reason other than because I was doing what I do and being who I am – kind, considerate, stoic in my duties, accepting, not lacking in curiosity but mostly minding my own business. In an environment like the army’s where people say that you have to fight to survive and that you should not, cannot let anyone take advantage of you without at least busting everyone’s balls in the process first, I didn’t have to do anything to at least get along peacefully with almost everyone. In the end, I stood out not by bringing attention to myself, but by being a sort of a positive, strong silent type figure amidst the chaos, who also happened to have a memorable name. I didn’t have to pretend that I was anything; for all the cringe this line might produce in you, it has to be said: all I had to do in order to get by in one piece was to be myself.
Standing out can be a curse if you lack the belief in yourself that you may deserve or have earned the attention, but the army helped me reverse this in my head. Now I’m happy to say I feel that standing out because I’m actually doing something right, not just because my background is unique, is something to cherish and enjoy.
Boredom can be amazing for creativity
The darkest hours, the quietest times and the most boring shifts were the brightest, loudest and most exciting for my creative drive. I always had my little notebook with me, jotting down the events of the day or the ideas that kept coming to me in those fairly infrequent breaks where I could just stand there, alone, mind silent. Whenever people did see me writing down they’d tease me, asking me if I was writing poetry. I’d just smile knowingly, say nothing and keep writing. At the beginning I would just observe, and while it wasn’t interesting exactly, I felt more alive than I had in some time. There was nothing to distract me, no “shiny more interesting thing” to compete for my attention like a lightbulb attracts the butterflies of the night.
Having this in Greek and the rest of the post in English. Why do I keep making it hard for my imaginary readers?
In a similar vein, I remember having quite a zen experience one of my first days in boot camp. It was a January Saturday in Mesologgi. Half my platoon was out on leave and I wasn’t on duty, so it was quiet and half as crowded as usual, so I had some free time to relax. It was cold, crisp but clear. The sun had just gone down and I was standing inside looking out at the beautiful twilight, a cup of hot instant coffee in my hands. I only had a dumbphone on me. I realised that, then and there, in my army uniform and enjoying the moment, none of my past experiences, good or bad, really mattered. They mattered only in the sense that together they had brought me to that moment in time, but all that joy and pain was part of the past. The important thing was that I was where I was, simply enjoying being alive and conscious. I was moved deeply by something so profound that had come to me out of nowhere and while at boot camp of all places.
The general lack of stimulus did its wonders on me, at least in the beginning; the first few months I was super aware in my everyday life, and that was something I had been looking forward to before going in. At some point, maybe after the fourth or fifth month, I started using more and more of my time to play video games and tune out from the creeping sensation that I was wasting my time, and from that point on the creativity slowly faded away and was replaced by sluggishness and numbness.
The hardships of military life: playing Steins;Gate and enjoying the third freddo of the day.
A few days before I started writing this post, I came across the following quote by Neil Gaiman that helps illustrate what kind of experience I had and what energy I’m aiming to bring more of into my life:
“I think it’s about where ideas come from, they come from day dreaming, from drifting, that moment when you’re just sitting there… The trouble with these days is that it’s really hard to get bored. I have 2.4 million people on Twitter who will entertain me at any moment… it’s really hard to get bored. I’m much better at putting my phone away, going for boring walks, actually trying to find the space to get bored in. That’s what I’ve started saying to people who say ‘I want to be a writer,” I say ‘great, get bored.’”
Lack of sleep can alter you consciousness in interesting ways
The biggest downer in the army by far is the chronic lack of sleep. Especially in Samothraki, there would be some extra busy weeks where I’d seldom sleep more than 3-4 hours per day, sometimes less than that. Having to wake up for guard or patrol duty at 23:30, go back to sleep at 2:30 and then have to wake back up at 05:30, apart from all the blunting it brought to my mental acuity, messed with my head in strange and interesting ways.
I recall I would wake up and wear my uniform in a semi-conscious state, neglecting to wear parts of gear or sometimes even take my rifle with me, and then having all kinds of random memories and songs pop up. Once, this song came back to me along with all the lyrics. I hadn’t listened to it for close to 10 years, yet I remembered it almost perfectly. My switched-off state allowed it to come through piece by piece, unobstructed. It’s a testament to the power of music for language learning and the power of burried memories in general. Hypnotism must work in similar ways.
Respectively, getting used to waking up 4:30am every day as I did closer to the end of my service, when I was in Athens and serving as a driver for a general whom I had to pick up from his place and take him to the army HQ and back, helped me realize the power of going to sleep and waking up very early. Being awake for four hours already before the day breaks fills you with an eerie energy, and I’m saying that as a night owl that loves working at night.
View from Koryfi Outpost, Samothraki, early morning.
Enough. I’ve become another guy who goes on and on about their time in the army – but don’t they say most men can’t avoid feeling at least a bit nostalgic about that period eventually? Memory does work in strange ways, beautifying monstrosities, nostalgifying bittersweet nothings and erasing raw beauty as it does. That said, if you’re dreading having to do a certain something in the future, maybe even joining the army, here’s my distilled perspective, and make of it what you will:
The memory is worth it.
PS: Army post collection in reverse chronological order (they’re in Greek. If that’s a big problem, use Google Translate, at least you’re sure to get plenty of laughs):
Most of my writing in the army in the end was about Earworms and book reviews. I can’t be bothered linking to them, there’s way too many of dem posts. I have to admit that sitting here now though, I’m impressed at myself that I had the dedication to review books on leave.
I finally did another B&W film some days ago; it had been sitting in my fridge looking at me for far too long. I hadn’t touched my vat, chemicals and spools in almost three years, either, film and developer sitting there with an expiration date years before even then.
Who says great photographs can’t come from “expired” consumables?
It was after the Spotters Weekend was over, which is where I had spent the majority of the roll. I had just a couple left to round off the complete thirty-six plus the one or two extras at the end and couldn’t think of what to shoot last to get done with it. I took a couple of selfies and prepared my developing gear.
I was sitting there in my bathroom, all sources of light blocked, tools “arranged” in front of me – or, if you prefer honest descriptions, lying around in a way I had to feel around for them every time I needed to switch one. I started by trying to, as you would, unwind the film onto the spool which would be used as its case to neatly bathe it into the developer, but I just couldn’t get the roll to fit in right. Something jammed, the film wouldn’t be picked up by the lever and it wouldn’t unwind. I must have been struggling there blind for what must have been more than 45 minutes for something that in the hands of someone who “knows what they’re doing” wouldn’t take more than 5 at most.
By that time, I could feel that I had almost ruined the edge of the film and the last pictures of the roll by all the bending and creasing I had submitted it to. I knew that force wouldn’t cut it (I could fit some pun here if I tried hard enough), but I was getting a tiny bit desperate.
I considered bailing: turning on the bathroom light and instantly burning the pictures white with light forever. At least that way I would escape that limbo between art and frustration, sitting there in the darkness getting nowhere.
If you’re waiting for some dramatic turn of events, there wasn’t one, but indeed it was a turn that saved me. I just tried twisting half the spool while holding it vertically instead of horizontally, and that somehow did the trick. Relieved, I winded the film into the spool, placed it into the tank, turned on the lights and proceeded with development.
A few hours later, this turned out to be the last shot of the roll.
I’ll admit I’m quite happy with how I look in this picture, but what I love are the chaotic, random little blemishes that pepper it from my mishandling it. Together they make for quite a unique selfie, and a selfie it is alright, clumsy self-inflicted marks and all. It just wouldn’t be the same if it had come out “perfect”. In fact, the way it’s come out (just look at the right of my head, the contour of the… what is that anyway?) I think it is superior* in every way apart from visual fidelity I suppose.
At the very least it’s a happy accident. In chaos we trust – which is just The Flow dressed up in its cool black suede suit.
Some more highlights from that roll, in case you’re interested.
Mum and her partner Theodosis. Loving this one.
Katerina, our actress and hostess extraordinaire
Fanie, all-around artist
Philippos, our trusty barman during the Spotters Weekend.
Sanne and Bart. They virtually ARE Spotted by Locals.
The Zeos boxes really had ARGOS inside them. Even better.
Neni and her oracle pendulum
Hi-yo Silver, away!
*Film photography is, in my mind at least, being slowly relegated to what painting and drawing turned into after film photography itself was invented: an art form formerly used for picture perfection now rendered obsolete by some newer technology – in this case digital photography. You could say that painting was liberated and all kinds of artistic breakthroughs were had only after photography was invented and artists didn’t have to portray their subjects in any kind of technically immaculate way anymore – that would be the photographer’s job from then on. Similarly, free from the requirement that it should mainly display things “the way they really are” – we have phones and mirrorless cameras now for that – film photography can now be safely re-examined as a separate medium with its own specific physical limitations and artistic advantages. Like painting.
Σήμερα πήγα σε ένα πακιστανικό εστιατόριο στο κέντρο, δίπλα στη Βαρβάκειο, με την Sanne και τον Bart για το pre-weekend lunch. 3 μερίδες, μια σαλάτα και 3 chabati 11€. “You don’t want to know how much we would have to pay in The Netherlands for authentic Indian food” μου είπε η Sanne.
Ποτέ δεν είχα πάει σε πακιστανικό εστιατόριο στην Αθήνα.
Αύριο και το Σάββατο θα είναι το Spotters Weekend 2016, η διεθνής συνάντηση του Spotted by Locals που γίνεται κάθε 2 χρόνια. Φέτος θα γίνει στην Αθήνα, φαντάζομαι (και) επειδή οι ιδιοκτήτες και εμπνευστές του site μετακόμισαν πέρσι στην Αθήνα από το Αμστελόδαμο (παλιός εξελληνισμός του Amsterdam).
Με τη Sanne και τον Bart, το ζευγάρι αυτό των Ολλανδών, έχουμε συνεργαστεί πολύ καλά και φέτος, εκτός από το ότι θα συμμετάσχω για πρώτη φορά από τότε που ξεκίνησα να είμαι Spotter, τους βοηθάω με τη διοργάνωση. Κλείνω τραπέζια σε ταβέρνες, σουβλατζίδικα, κάβες με πολλά καλούδια, κάλεσα τον πολύ αγαπητό και ταλαντούχο Σταύρο Συμεωνίδη για την εικαστική κάλυψη, και στήσαμε βέβαια το walk με τους 5 ξεναγούς μας – τον Θανάση, ο οποίος κατέληξε μετά την πρώτη μας συνάντηση να μου πουλήσει το ποδήλατο του (πολλοί ανωστρεφείς αντίχειρες), την Ειρήνη, την street art expert ψυχολόγα μας, τον Ορέστη, τον τρελάρα συμφοιτητή από τη Μυτιλήνη, την Atenista Νάντια και την γευσιγνώστρια-ηθοποιό μας Κατερίνα. Αυτοί θα είναι οι ξεναγοί που αγκυροβολημένοι σε σημεία-κλειδιά θα μυήσουν τους 105 καλεσμένους μας από 51 πολείς στα μυστικά της Αθήνας.
Η διοργάνωση του weekend έχει πάρει αρκετό από τον χρόνο μου τους τελευταίους μήνες – ήδη είχα ξεκινήσει τη δουλειά από τον Αύγουστο, αρκετές εβδομάδες πριν απολυθώ από τον στρατό- αλλά είμαι ενθουσιασμένος για όλα αυτά και ανυπομονώ να τους γνωρίσω όλους και να περάσουμε αξέχαστα. Πολλά ευχαριστώ στον Νίκο Παλαβατσίνη της Κιμωλίας, συνάδερφο Spotter, χωρίς τη βοήθεια του οποίου δεν θα είχα καταφέρει να βρω σημαντικό μέρος της ομάδας μου για το weekend.
Κάτι άλλο: το Youtube και ο άβολα έξυπνος αλγόριθμος δημιουργίας playlist του μετά τους Red Sparowes με έστειλε στους Pelican, σε αυτό τον δίσκο που λινκάρω παραπάνω και παρακάτω. Όλα τα comments έλεγαν για το πόσο καλά ακούγεται σε ταχύτητα 1.5x, και είχαν δίκιο. Δοκιμάστε κι εσείς τον πειραματισμό με τη μουσική και την ανακάλυψη νέων τρόπων αναπαραγωγής που μας επιτρέπει η HTML5.
Προχτές που πήγα στου Ψυρρή, πήγα για να δω μια μουσικοθεατρική παράσταση. που μου πρότεινε η Άλεξ (η οποία τελικά δεν ήρθε – «χάνω τις διασκεδάσεις του απλού λαού», είπε με έναν περιπαικτικό λυγμό τον οποίο αντιλήφθηκα παρά το ότι η επικοινωνία μας ήταν καθαρά ψηφιακή – οι θυσίες της πάντως είναι για καλό σκοπό, το λέω εγώ)
Ήταν ό,τι καλύτερο μπορούσα να έχω δει για Halloween: το Nightmare Before Christmas, διασκευασμένο στα ελληνικά, παιγμένο από ένα τρίο ηθοποιών και με ζωντανή μουσική από ένα άλλο τρίο πιάνο-τσέλο-κλαρινέτο.
Καταπληκτική δουλειά οι τύποι και οι τύπισες. Από τις σπάνιες φορές που ήθελα να πάρω βίντεο απλά για να θυμάμαι πώς ήταν. Μακάρι να ανέβει όλο κάπου κάποια στιγμή.
Καλό μήνα. Το ξέρατε ότι υπάρχει ποδηλατόδρομος που συνδέει το Φάληρο με το Γκάζι; Ξεκινάει από εκεί που στρίβει στην Λεωφ. Ποσειδώνος το 218 περίπου, περνάει δίπλα από τον Ιλισσό μέσα από το Μοσχάτο και την Καλλιθέα (και συνεχίζει από το σημείο που ο Ιλισσός είναι καλυμένος και «εξωραϊσμένος») και από τον Ταύρο μέσα από τα Πετράλωνα και μέχρι την Τεχνόπολη είναι δίπλα στον Ηλεκτρικό.
Χτες έκανα την απόσταση Ψυρρή – Καλλιθέα (στη Δοϊράνης, δίπλα στη Νέα Σμύρνη) σε 15 λεπτά. No tickets, twice the speed, thrice the exercise!
Θέλουν να κάνουν και προέκταση του ποδηλατόδρομου από το Γκάζι μέχρι την Κηφισιά, πάνω-κάτω σαν έναν αντικατοπτρισμό της υπάρχουσας διαδρομής του ηλεκτρικού. Περιμένουμε!
31 ΟΚΤΩΒΡΙΟΥ
ΚΑΙΡΟΣ ΣΥΝΝΕΦΙΑΣΜΕΝΟΣ
ΠΑΙΖΕΙ: VITALIC – OK COWBOY (πορωτική ηλεκτρονική μουσική για μεγάλα ηχεία – και να ήθελα, δεν θα μπορούσα να σας πω περισσότερα για το είδος ακριβώς γιατί είμαι χαζούλης στη μουσική ταξονομία)
Καλημέρα.
Γράφω στο κρεβάτι μου. Πήρα το λάπτοπ από το σαλόνι το οποίο το έχω κάνει αρκετά ακατάστατο ώστε να το νιώθω άνετα ως χώρο εργασίας και το μετέφερα κάπου που ταιριάζει καλύτερα: in my actually lap. Το πάπλωμα του κρεβατιού το χωρίζει από το στρώμα των ποδιών μου – γούνας, λίπους και μυών, σε μια αναλογία που μπορεί να αλλάξει μελλοντικά, αν συνεχίσω να κάνω ποδήλατο όσο κάνω τις τελευταίες μέρες.
Λένε ότι είναι κακό να έχεις το λάπτοπ να κάθεται πάνω σε πράγματα όπως κουβέρτες και στρώματα. Αυτή τη στιγμή το δικό μου τρέχει σε battery saving mode και δεν βγάζει σχεδόν τίποτα από τα ανεμιστηράκια, και το γεγονός αυτό με κάνει να νομίζω ότι δεν υπάρχει πρόβλημα. Το αναφέρω σε περίπτωση που ανησυχείτε για την υγεία του.
Ξεκίνησα να γράφω σήμερα χωρίς κάτι ιδιαίτερο στο μυαλό μου. Απλά συνεχώς λέω στον εαυτό μου ότι θέλω να γράφω περισσότερο, αλλά διαρκώς τελευταία στιγμή με απορροφάνε άλλα πράγματα, συνήθως λιγότερο δημιουργικά. Σήμερα με το που ξύπνησα είχα όρεξη, και δεν την άφησα να πάει χαμένη. Γράφοντας έρχεται και περισσότερη όρεξη, άλλωστε. Η ιδέα είναι να ξεκινήσω να γράφω κάτι κάθε πρωί. Κάτι σαν morning pages αλλά κατάλληλα για εδώ.
Αυτή τη στιγμή πίνω καφέ φίλτρου με αραιό γάλα βρώμης. Το γάλα βρώμης το έφτιαξα με ολόκληρη βρώμη που αγόρασα (μοιάζει κάτι μεταξύ ρυζιού και σιταριού), αλλά δεν έχω blender που να κάνει καλή δουλειά κι έτσι προσπάθησα να το κάνω με αυτό το πράγμα που χτυπάς τον πουρέ και κάνεις τις σούπες βελουτέ (δεν πέτυχε). Τη στέρεα βρώμη που έμεινε την τρώω για πρωινό. Εδώ και καμιά βδομάδα που γύρισα από το τετραήμερο σεμινάριο που πήγα στο Free and Real στην Εύβοια για οικολογική δόμηση, στο οποίο κάθε μέρα φτιάχναμε και απλώναμε cob και ασβεστώναμε, με ενέπνευσε η δική τους φάση εκεί και θέλω να αφαιρέσω όσο γίνεται τα γαλακτομικά από τη διατροφή και να δω τι θα συμβεί.
Στο Free and Real τρώγαμε μαρμελάδες δικές τους με ψωμί (π.χ. μαρμελάδα βανίλια – το φρούτο), όπως και φουχάτα, μια δική τους συνταγή για ψωμοαλοιφή που έχει με φουντούκι, χαρούπι, ταχίνι και σιρόπι αγάβης που κατα εκείνους «έχει νικήσει την σοκολάτα» και πρέπει να ομολογήσω ότι για vegan Merenda κάνει εξαιρετική δουλειά. Επίσης τρώγαμε φρούτα, τομάτες και αγγούρια, το ίδιο και για το μεσημεριανό, και μόνο το βράδυ τρώγαμε μαγειρεμένο vegan φαγητό, το οποίο παρεπιμπτόντως ήταν εξαιρετικό: ο τύπος που είχαν εκεί να μαγειρεύει, ένας Αντρέας ο οποίος μένει στο Free and Real ήδη κάποιους μήνες, κάτι έκανε και όλα του τα φαγητά ήταν καταπληκτικά, με πολλά όσπρια, αρκετά μπαχαρικά και λίγες κλανιές – μια διόλου ευκαταφρόνητη ισορροπία που απαιτεί δεξιότητα.
Η διατροφή λοιπόν σε εκείνη την ομοφαγική/vegan κοινότητα με ενέπνευσε να δω τι μπορώ να κάνω κι εγώ. Προς το παρόν η αλήθεια είναι ότι έχω φάει και τυριά, και τζατζίκια, και γλυκά με γάλα και αυγά στα διάφορα τραπέζια που έχω πάει αυτές τις γιορτινές μέρες (στη γιορτή μου και την 28η), για να μην μιλήσω για το πάρτι του Καταζά και τι πίτσες τσάκισα εκεί, ή χτες που ήμουν καλεσμένος σε ένο δείπνο στην Αίγινα όπου έφαγα και σουτζουκάκια.
Για κάποιο λόγο δεν με πτοούν αυτές οι φαινομενικές αποτυχίες. Γενικά, αυτές τις μέρες μπορώ να πω ότι παίζω με το out of character (OOC) και out of the comfort zone και με τις χαζές ενοχές που προκύπτουν από το να κάνω τα πράγματα που είχα ίσως υποσχεθεί στον εαυτό μου κάποτε είτε ότι θα τους αντισταθώ ή ότι δεν θα κάνω ποτέ. Η ικανοποίηση της παραβίασης του comfort zone είναι μεγαλύτερη από τις τύψεις της παραβίασης του εσωτερικού κανονισμού συμπεριφοράς. Ή μήπως ο εσωτερικός κανονισμός συμπεριφοράς μου έχει κάποια κρυφή παράγραφο, κάποια σχετικά πρόσφατη αναθεώρηση, που επιτρέπει ή/και προτρέπει την εκτός χαρακτήρα και φούσκας συμπεριφορά; Θα κλείσω με ερώτηση όπως κάνω πολύ συχνά;
This one was a Life in Technicolor II-level earworm that had infested my mind for absolute months. Couldn’t find it anywhere and looking for “Amy Winehouse-sounding voice” or “black-sounding voice”, or downloading Adele’s discography didn’t take me very far.
How I solved the problem? I took the situation apart and thought that, if anywhere, I would have probably heard the song on En Lefko, one of the best radio stations in Athens and the only one I keep having on while driving important military people around. I found the collection they published with the songs they allegedly popularised in Greece. I found Kovacs and Diggin’ and the rest was easy. After I found it, I could clearly remember listening to it once while running sometime in Summer 2015. That’s when, you know, Greece was apparently ready to collapse. Honestly, I’m gonna have to dedicate another couple of posts to the songs that became my earworms thanks to En Lefko.
Sweet relief. This woman is jaw-dropping, and I’m not just talking about her voice.
