Obsession

I have become very much obsessed of late with any type of pre-80's office buildings and towers, to add to my already long-standing lust for industrial spaces and abandonment. I have found a certain piquancy in the loomingness of an underused office tower. There is a building very close to where I am living now that I have developed a crush on. Its maybe circa 1968, ten floors, and the other day I entered the building on a lark and the elevator opened on its own, as if it were falling in love with me. Riding that elevator to the top felt clandestine. The view at the top was just the icing on the cake, or as Peter Sellers said in "Murder by Death"- "Like TV during honeymoon....UNNECESSARY." It was the act of transporting between floors, of being in a building I had literally no business in, that felt so deliciously criminal, like an affair.

Its odd.

The only thing that could rival that would be to be inside of it, at night. For the whole thing to be ABANDONED. To slink down darkened halls with offices filled with archaic, punch-card era machines that looked like Daleks. To stare down elevator shafts and hear the echo. To see the streetlights shining through louvered windows and dusty blinds, creating patterns on massive oaken desks with multi-line phones from companies that folded decades ago.

I am not sure if others in the world feel this way. I feel actually LUCKY to be an american at this juncture in history, to be enjoying the fruits of a depressed economy in a way that I had never dreamed. That the upside of economic disaster is massive, haunted, empty office buildings.

Study #4 - Super Hits of Winter

Winter is upon us, and for me the season brings changes in certain habits. I tend to listen to more Soft Machine and creepy electronic music in the winter. I get a powerful lust for the smell and taste of peppermint. And I switch to Super Hit incense instead of my usual Nag Champa.

I sincerely wish that blogs came with a special pneumatic tube like those found in the old Weimer-era Berlin swinger's clubs- you could buy trinkets and send them to whatever table held the object of your fancy- so that I could send all a package of this lovely incense to complete this auditory and visual experience. Super Hit and the first two Soft Machine albums- that is as winter for me as ice and Christmas. Ergo, the title of this study.

Songs are all across the map, and many would wonder why I included a couple of reggae numbers in there. Reggae in winter is a very close, warm sound. It's the sound of shivering round the fireside to warm, dubby bass. This makes sense to me. Perhaps it won't for others.

Nevertheless, included as usual is the cd artwork, track listings, and a five minute visual loop of appropriate ephemera (ran through my own peculiar psychedelic processing system, of course). The whole can be downloaded in its entirety here.

Many blessings in the new year, and many more studies poised for entry.