It's funny how quickly you become an elder statesman. One day you're going to events, and the next you're remembering them. One day you are telling people about things, and the next you are being told about things, then telling the teller that the thing you are being told about reminds you of a similar, much older, thing, only for the teller to in turn tell you that they have no idea what you are talking about. If you have always traded on currency, what happens when you are, well, no longer current? You try to age into it, I guess, and come to terms with your youth no longer being a commodity. You consider that you might have other characteristics now, like wisdom, wiliness, or a kind of resilience that comes only with a proven ability to have continually stayed alive. It is often said that people grow more comfortable in their own skin as they get older, and this disinterest in the burden of being perceived makes them more at ease, and by extension, somehow more authentic. They no longer have anyone to impress, or anything to prove, and that alone makes them appear more restful. That, or you shave your head, grow a big white beard, wear an expensive black bomber jacket, and lurch back in the direction of a youth that will never again be in reach of you.

The other day MA said about going to the live performance of recording artist called 2Slimey. He was talking to a young person there who was surprised but not displeased to see him at the event having learned how old he was. The young person then congratulated him, saying he was "unc" but still “tapped in" regardless. MA was very pleased about this exchange, and he was correct to be. He had managed to remain gracefully relevant. I was thinking about this when going to see Klein at the ICA the other day. During this show, I could not help but reflect on things I had been to before, ruminating on the past glories of someone who had, in his youth, attended cultural events of localised historical importance. I was there, seeing James Blake and Trim doing 1-800 Dinosaur at Plastic People in 2014. I was there, when Jam City first played the guitar at Total Refreshment Centre in 2014. I was there, when Kelela played at XOYO with Total Freedom as her DJ in 2015. I was there, when Dean Blunt blasted fog and white noise for 90 minutes before finally appearing on stage at Bloc in 2016, performing for his babyfather project. At a great many things, a very long time ago, I had been there. And yet, telling these stories to any young person now would mean nothing. These are not their gods, and describing them only serves to place me as being from a specific period and milieu, back when you talked to the man in Tesco on the checkout instead of pressing the buttons, back when Freddos were still only 10p and when they still had proper binmen. They would not understand. At this Klein show, CQ said everyone around us looked "much cooler." I agreed, but insisted that this was a good thing and that it indicated we had found ourselves in the right room, for the first time in quite a long time. From the stage, harsh noise was blasted out vociferously, making CQ's trousers vibrate. "My trousers are vibrating," she said, and we both held them and grinned. “Yes, vibrating.” On the stage, performers pirouetted in breathtaking silhouettes, carving vaudevillian shapes against a strobing blanket of audiovisual fuzz, inhaling and exhaling multicoloured balloons sequentially. In front of us, a man of about fifty five wearing a t-shirt with LONDON AIRWAVES printed on its reverse swayed, taking it all in. A tapped in unc. Moisturised, comfortable, restful, and thriving.

LISTENING

On a recent trip, I did some walking around and listening to music on earphones, which is the best way to listen to some albums. Soundtracking life. Here are five things that were moving through my earphones during said trip. I listened to My Name, one of several recent projects by Tony Bontana. He is a rapper and producer from Birmingham and this is a conceptual project in a kind of classic hip-hop mode that runs through various interpretations of what a name means. It is good and he is going places it seems. I also listened to Michael Cloud Duguay’s Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go, a wonderful album recorded in various churches across Newfoundland. It is haunting, weighty, elegiac, and all of the other similar adjectives that I should know better than to use. This will remain among my favourite records of this year, I think. I listened to Charles A.D.’s Luminous. This is a dub techno project of a Japanese producer (and farmer.) There isn’t much new or special about it, but it is just warm, bright, and nice. Delicious music. I listened to Jana Horn’s Jana Horn, an album I have been listening to, on and off, since Philip Sherburne praised it quite effusively in his newsletter. It is a singer songwriter thing that at once sounds like a lot of other similar sounding things and also doesn’t. I defer to Sherburne for description, who calls this “music that moves like a sparsely populated aquarium, flashes of silver and slow-moving green tendrils framed within aquamarine silence.” Lastly, I listened to Fold’s Jump Source, which, despite being very silly, keeps finding its way back into my ears, particularly when I am walking around and there is sunshine.

PERSONAL

After a five year hiatus I am bringing back my screening series LOST FUTURES with a showing of the 1991 film Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees. I won’t say anything about the film here as I wrote the marketing copy for the website listing. But it’s on 24th November at ICA London. We’ll screen the film from videotape. So do come along!