The Art of Shopping

I cannot trust people who say they never enjoy shopping. That's just sad, or else it's terribly narrow-minded as these people tend to equate shopping with buying winter clothes and stocking up for the weekend. There's a part missing about people like that, and clearly they have never been to a decent second-hand bookshop. 

There was a moment in Gateshead years ago, when I ran like a barbarian into a record store trying to locate The Who, The Kinks, The Byrds or whatever it was that I listened to at the time. W, K, B! Through the beads of sweat and disheveled heaps of my fringe, however, I could see my friend patiently browsing through letter A. It was a remarkable sight, and rather stunning in its own strange way. Thirty minutes later, he would hand me a record by Honeybus that would be spinned in my CD player (yes, this happened in 1789) for days on end. That day, my friend walked away with a fantastic John Cooper Clarke compilation, and I realised there was art to the whole thing. 

These days, I find that God has created two types of enjoyable shopping: shopping for wine and shopping for vinyl. Both are absolutely essential and both should be enjoyed for the end result and the process. I remember being extremely annoyed at the chap from a vinyl record store in St. Petersburg who kept pestering me about the records I wanted to buy. 'We have thousands of them, and I'm the one who knows where each of them is'. He was offended, too, when I said I would probably be all right doing that myself. 

But I absolutely loved the two middle-aged gentlemen from Valencia who never said a word during my solemn two-hour mission and only expressed their love for The Shirelles which I'd fished out of some well-hidden 60s box. Same with wine - please, don't give me any suggestions because you will just tell me that more expensive wines are better than cheaper wines and, please, don't tell me about the palate because the chances of you remembering the taste of this particular wine are frankly miserable.

Still, perhaps the most striking thing about shopping for wine and shopping for vinyl is that they are both based on very much the same principles:

- The older, the better, obviously, just beware the sour scratches.

- If you like the cover/label, you absolutely have to buy it. The result will always be special. I've tried some great German Riesling that way. I've heard Bessie Smith doing "St. Louis Blues" because of the unforgettable sleeve.

- Heaviness, be it weight or degrees, is generally a good sign.

- Never go for anything 'sweet'.

- Always remember what Oscar Wilde said: "One is not enough, three is too many".

- Don't buy anything over 30 dollars unless you are dying to get it and there's nothing else in the store that could improve your late night in.

- If you see Tom Waits, take it.

- Enjoy the process. Don't rush it. This is art.

In fact, there's just one crucial difference. On occasion, you can find a two-dollar LP that will blow you away. With wine, however, it's never that simple. With wine, as Christopher Hitchens put it, you have to upgrade yourself, because you are not going to live forever.

Album of the Month: KNICKERBROCKER GLORY by John Moore

About two hundred pages into Phil Baker's The Book of Absinthe, a book that absolutely everyone has to read, I saw the name of John Moore. There was a slight tingle of surprise, and yet strangely the whole thing made sense. In fact, it had me recollect two things: a small club in Munich where I tried absinthe for the first time and the songs from John Moore's Lo-Fi Lullabies that hit me so hard a few years back. "What Do You Want To Talk About", a green glass of Mari Mayans. Suddenly, it made perfect sense. 

Knickerbrocker Glory is John's fourth solo album after the sad demise of Black Box Recorder, and it's much in the same vein as the previous three: narcotic vibes and late-night introspection. This time around, however, the sound is less claustrophobic. "Philosophical Man" (the single), "Controlled Explosions" (indeed) and "Something About You Girl" (new version of an older song) are infectious rock'n'roll hits for non-existent charts, and "Anne Of A Thousand Ways" is an ultra-speedy waltz that features some bizarre opera singing that either works brilliantly or doesn't work at all. I don't believe we are supposed to know.

However, it would just be your average great album without the five remaining ballads. "Rabbit Hole" is of course an instant John Moore classic, the pretty "Near Me" could meander for days for all I care, and then there is the small matter of three closing songs. These I've grown to value as highly as that final four-song stretch on Lo-Fi Lullabies. It's vulnerable lyrics meet confident songwriting, and I defy you to find a stronger conclusion to a 2018 album than "How Do You Turn A Friend Into A Lover?", "The Girl From Reno" and "South Of Heaven".

There's an old interview where Martin Amis spoke about the feeling he had while reading Saul Bellow. He loved those books so much, he felt there was no other person in the world who could possibly get more out of them than he did. That is a rare thing, and I can't shake off the feeling that this is exactly what is happening here. "The Girl From Reno" speaks to me in ways that I would call intimate, which is odd, and all the more rewarding, as I have never really met any. I have tried Mari Mayans, though. 


* In other news, Alela Diane's Cusp is a perfect February album and Lawrence's "When You're Depressed" is a perfect February song (Go-Kart Mozart's Mini-Mart is out, and it's as deranged and intelligent as you could wish). 

travelling notes (l)

The most depressing thing about travelling is watching people and realising that many of them would just stay at home if their cameras didn't work. At least get yourself a Polaroid, for God's sake.

Phantom Thread

What a sizzling work of art. 

I used to think last year's cinema could not get any better than Personal Shopper (awards season as witless as ever), but Phantom Thread may just have too much in the way of blue neck-ties and Johnny Greenwood's strings. I'm not talking about social importance, fuck social importance, I'm just talking about great cinema. 

On the face of it, it's hard to get too excited about a film describing a British fashion designer from the 1950s, but at this point I'm willing to watch anything from Paul Thomas Anderson. The man adapted Thomas Pynchon for screen, wrung blood from Adam Sandler and made one of the greatest films I've ever seen (The Master). He could find his way around needles and threads, easily.

And he did. It's a great director who takes three seconds to let you relax into his film, and Phantom Thread is spellbinding. These days, great cinematography is very faint praise, but those florid streets of London and those rural window-views are an eye-feast. And then you have some of the world's greatest acting (well, you know) and Johnny Greenwood's classical soundtrack (to which this review is written). 

However, to me it's all about Paul Thomas Anderson, and the way he can manipulate you into anything. His grasp is quite impressive, and the genius of the omelette scene is pure cinematic brilliance. And what is even more impressive is that this wonderfully taut act is followed by a few minutes that are borderline hilarious. You smile, you question your own emotions, and then he wraps it up with style and emotional depth you rarely find in modern cinema.

Speaking of cinema, it was three-quarters empty, which is perhaps how it should be with good art. And, incidentally, with a good dress. You don't want too many random people going after the style that is yours. 

Stranger Things

There is a short scene in Stranger Things that explains the sheer brilliance of the show.

Having just come up with a bizarre plan (they certainly have those), Charlie and Nancy are at an improvised shooting range. Naturally, Charlie is hopeless at hitting the can, and now the turn comes to Nancy. A girl who has never held a gun in her hands, let alone fired it. But seconds later she fires the gun - and... lo and behold... she bloody hits it.

Well, of course she does. But there's a catch. It's a well-trodden cinematic cliche that suddenly looks like magic, and that's because in this age of cynical filmmaking very few people have the heart and the guts to enchant you with something as simple as that. 

Favourite Bookstores, p.5

Carrer de Quart, which grows out of Carrer dels Cavallers in central Valencia, is the kind of street where you are bound to find yourself at some point. Whether you go there because you feel the gluttonous urge to eat the best paella in town or are simply lost having just been spewed out of the decadent insanity that is Cafe de las Horas, is immaterial. But you will be there, and by being there, you are most likely to bump into El Doctor Sax and ask yourself this question: should I go in?

And, indeed, should you? The simple answer is - not if you have to ask. 

El Doctor Sax is not even a bookstore. I'm guessing it's a state of someone's subconscious but you can't be too certain. The place is a delightful hobbit-hole cluttered with imaginative postcards, random books, deranged stationary, quirky T-shirts, denim handbags, one-euro DVDs and Christ knows what else. In fact, I believe Richard Burton would thus describe 'the order of Martha's mind'. 

But random books can be random in a random way. Here, the incidental nature of the bookshelves is not just insane - it is intriguing. There is no sense in a volume of French poetry in the Spanish language lying side by side with a rare Patti Smith biography, but then again - maybe there shouldn't be any sense, or alphabetical order, or a clear intention of what book you are going to end up with. After all, there's a stylish cover featuring Roman Polanski that you cannot resist. It might be in German, but should that really stop you?

It's a cramped space, and you can hardly see a Frodo Baggins hiding under the barrage of accidental paraphernalia. He is supposed to be in charge - if he even exists. You are dizzy and you almost can't breathe from the sheer possibility of finding the one novel that has always eluded you. You feel that El Doctor Sax is a mess but the only place in the world where you could stumble upon some obscure classic you have to improvise to buy. And face it - you are simply dying to buy it. There's more to life than books, you know, but not much more. 

Going back into the street is a joy, too, as your sense of wonder oozes into the disjointed groups of people hurrying towards the inevitable Canela restaurant. You are slightly drunk from the odd experience, slightly awestruck. You still don't know what it was, though it does feel like an oxygen shot in the midst of a stuffy season.

And then, seconds later, you bump into the Sex Place which is right next to El Doctor Sax. But you are rushing to Plaza de la Virgen and so you are going past it to avoid that all-important question: should you go in?

Because that's a yes - if you have to ask. 

travelling notes (xlix)

Citizens of major European cities who still don't hate tourists should be called saints.