The Voice of London Episode XV

I really wish I had kept a closer eye on Pollstar. Last week I found out that the Arcade Fire will be playing five shows in London at the end of January, but when I went to check ticket prices I found out that all five shows had sold out. Needless to say, I was disappointed. On the other hand, it's not uncommon to find scalpers or other people trying to sell tickets outside of shows here. Maybe if I go to the venue on the night of one of the shows I'll get lucky and be able to get in. Fingers crossed and such. Ben Folds is also going to be here in January. He would be pretty cool to see but tickets are £25-30 so it's pretty expensive. We'll put him in the maybe pile.
In other news, it looks like I'm probably going to be moving out of my current place sometime next month. £260 a month is just getting to be too much to pay for rent so I'm going to try someplace else. At this point I'm not sure exactly when I'll be leaving this apartment, whether it'll be in the middle of January or at the end of the month. In any case, if you're thinking of mailing me anything, don't send it any later than the first week of the new year. Otherwise hold off till I can give you my new address.
I finally bothered to buy some DV tapes for my camcorder the other day and I was thinking of filming tours of the places I stay. I'll also film the fireworks show on New Year's Eve. Once I fill the tape with other stuff I'll mail it to someone over there so you can all share in my adventures. Well, not all of you. Basically just the people who live in Winnipeg. And who know the person I mail it to. And the person I mail it to will have to have a DV camera. And they'll have to be willing to play it for people. And-- ah, fuck it. You'll all just have to wait till I come back to see and video I shoot. Or until I can afford to buy a laptop, transfer the video to that, burn it to DVD, buy envelopes and stamps, and mail those to-- ah, fuck it. You'll just have to wait.
Today I took a walk down to St. Paul's Cathedral, then across the river for another visit to Tate Modern. From door to door it took the length of the Hold Steady's Boys and Girls in America. Give of take Southtown Girls. I brought my video camera and took some footage of the Turbine Hall. Nothing spectacular, just something to get me started. Anyway, there was a new piece that I found interesting. It consisted of a 7x7 grid of 49 interconnected perspex cases in which were poured coloured sand, creating the images of 49 national flags. Then (and by then I mean as part of its creation, not part of its exhibition) thousands of ants were released into the cases. They proceeded to burrow through the sand, gouging tunnels and spreading the colours throughout the "flags." It's partly meant to symbolize immigration patterns and comment on the concepts of borders and national identity, which is kind of a coincidence because last night I happened to be reading the Wikipedia article on Canadian national identity, which led to me reading the Wikipedia article on beer, which led to me wanting to drink beer, but it was after midnight so the pubs were closed and besides, I'm saving my cash to drink on New Year's Eve.
Speaking of drinking, a couple weeks ago I was bored one night so I decided to get drunk. Piotr, on e of the guys I live with, went out to buy us some cider. When he got back he told me they didn't have it in cans so instead he bought us each a 2 litre bottle. Two pounds a piece. The stuff was called White Ace and it was 7% alcohol. No, wait, seven and a half. It was kind of like the Stone Cold of ciders, but stronger. It wasn't even really apple cider. It was like apple and pear cider. I ended up drinking just over half the bottle. Fortunately I manage to stay sober enough to wake up when I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and while I was sitting on the toilet I started throwing up in the sink. When I was done I felt less nauseous but the rice I'd had for dinner was preventing my vomit from rinsing down the narrow sink drain very well. I couldn't just leave it there so I had to scoop up handfuls of half digested rice and toss it in the toilet. Normally this would probably have made me throw up more but at the time I was too drunk to care. I threw up a little the next morning and the rest of the day I was hungover worse than I've been in a while. But the point of the story is really to picture those grains of rice, some chewed and some whole, soaked in digestive juices, and imagine the feeling as you grab a nice, big, squishy handful. Happy holidays everyone!

Exegetically yours,
Matthew Hawkins