The office basement is now covered in rainbows.
One of my colleagues joked that there must be a mini-bar down there, sure, if I was going so often. No, but there really could be, now! I have made a desolate, brutalist dump into a multicoloured, almost-paradise (if I can get a strong person to help me with the boxes still containing tiles, and maybe a tall person to help bring some other boxes down, and once we get a hoover down there). In all seriousness, though, it looks so much better. I have ordered it. I no longer look at it and think “Oh goodness”. I can think “I did that, and I did a good job of it.”
After I finished tidying the basement, there wasn’t really much I had energy for. I tried to do some filing, and it didn’t quite work. I recognised I was tired and getting nowhere. I went home early, justifying it by that I had worked overtime last week.
I thought I would have made Friday night a theatre night, but I was pulled towards home. I’m glad I just went, letting my cerebellum direct me. I needed a quiet evening. I came home, a friend I haven’t heard from in ages who has music coming out next week sent me a really sweet message – “Thanks for keeping the faith”, in his project, that being, “u r a special soul”. It seemed like he might not come back to release anymore songs for a while, and he does it in a very unique way – It was all a very high-energy, almost mad, project – He wears a mask, trying to get by on merit alone, suggesting that anyone could be him, and he could be anyone. He talked about his personal life and experiences, and mental health, online, just as we all came out of the pandemic and many people became aware of how starved they were for connection, and I think his scene resonated with a lot of people because of that. He got a lot of his fans together personally and created a really wholesome Facebook group where people posted their art and poetry, and started discussions about books, games, and music, and made friends, ultimately. I will admit that most of his currently published lyrics are not my cup of tea (I say currently published, because what I have seen of the unpublished was pretty good), but if you are interested in a very different sound and yet another different progression of emo, here’s an angsty song called “riots in the streets freestyle“. I will let you discover the other songs and make up your mind on them by yourself. Max, himself, is very interesting man, though, with a good vision, on the whole.
Talking of music, my colleagues were discussing French rap today, and songs they felt talked about important issues, such as war, politics, death, and poverty in the banlieues. I can attest that the French rap music I have heard did impact me. On the whole, I have always taken a very narrow-minded view on rap, because I’ve mainly been exposed to songs that generally sound the same, and not in a good way. I think you probably know in which way I mean. I’ll give you a song in French that I was shown at uni that I thought was great, lyrically, musically, and visually in the music video: Les Mirabelles, by MC Solaar. It’s about the death of the French village due to its service to the greater good of France.
I’ve also been thinking about French a bit – what I’ve learnt:
- “En province” – “In the provinces”: anywhere that isn’t Paris. I feel like this links back to the days when France was a feudal kingdom assembled of the territories of many vassals, and these territories didn’t speak the same language. In fact, I wagered to myself that Provence is a corruption of “province”. It turns out that yes and no – Both words have their origins in the Latin “provincia” (meaning province), and Provence was one of the first parts of modern-day France to be conquered by the Romans. So there you go.
- “Normalement” – doesn’t just mean “normally”. “Normalement nous avons une échange maintenant” means “We are supposed to be in a meeting now”, not “Normally we have a meeting now”. Basically, it replaces “should”. It is the super-indicative. Yes, I did just coin that term.
- I am starting to think in the subjunctive. It comes naturally. It’s like a sixth sense, ‘cos in English we don’t really think on it, and omit it very often. “If I was walking to the station, I would pop into Sainsbury’s first” – actually not technically correct (say I, who formally hate linguistic prescription, and once challenged an Oxford don to a duel on the matter) – It should be “If I were…”, as it should be the imperfect subjunctive that precedes a conditional in an if-clause, because it is a hypothetical – it hasn’t, and may not, happen. I said “Je ne pense pas qu’il y ait…” today, and it felt so unnatural to do otherwise, and I thought, Score.
Do I have any wisdom beyond the French that I have learned today?
Tidying is underrated.
I do believe that your surroundings can affect and alter your mind.
If you’re feeling inadequate, the fact that someone isn’t giving you the time of day doesn’t automatically mean that they think you are inadequate.
It could well be that they are just having a bad day. In fact, they probably are. Everyone is rather self-absorbed, and they certainly, by that logic, aren’t thinking about you the whole time! Relax!
Slow. Down.
Or your body will tell you about it later, in which case:
It is no shame to spend an evening in, just resting, living to fight another day.
Anyway, I should go and deviously plot when it is I should go and watch the vaudeville Un chapeau de paille d’Italie, because a lifelong attachment to Kvinihidze’s musical adaptation demands it, with my shiny new Navigo pass which I will hopefully obtain tomorrow 🙂 And sleep. That is also of capital importance.
All my love ❤
At Least Afloat 