: 23 March 2002 :

Something quick:

I went to the Museum of Modern Art yesterday, the first time I've been there in the two-and-a-half years I've lived in Oxford. The current exhibition is very good. I did mean to write at least a summary, if not a review, but I don't know if I'll get round to it. In the midst of a big old pretentious gallery full of stuff that says a painting of an empty stage is obviously about the Holocaust (when I looked away from the painting the gallery attendant caught my eye, as if daring me to shout “I liked everything so far but this is just bollocks”), I realised that sometimes you can't help thinking about the banal little things. Like when I was looking at some pencil drawings that were pinned to the wall, and I couldn't help noticing the pins - long, thin, tiny-headed pins that reminded me of acupuncture.

I'm feeling quite subdued tonight. I was playing Music Has The Right To Children earlier and it has a scratch at the start of “Turquoise Hexagon Sun,” one of the best tracks on the album. I think it's a scratch - I can't see anything, and I'm hoping it's just dust or grease or something making it skitter, but I can't help fearing the worst. Anyway.

After yesterday's entry, I couldn't help laughing today when my mate told me a story about Monday night. He went to see Godspeed in Hackney, and he met a few people there that we know. He told me that when he was at the station he also saw “some bloke wearing silver trousers, really old battered Puma trainers and a pink woolly hat”. As John described it, his reaction was something along the lines of “man, that bloke looks like a prick-- wait a minute, he went to my school,” and the pink-hatted one came over:

Pink Hat: Did you go to Dulwich College?
John: Yeah.
Pink Hat: Oh. [wanders off]

The funniest thing, John told me, was that Pink Hat was holding a copy of the Wire. “There's nothing wrong with the Wire,” he said, “but holding it in your hand on the way to a gig is seriously geeky.” I'd be inclined to agree, but I can still find it in me to feel superior. I don't even own a pink woolly hat.