TOM FRANCIS
REGRETS THIS ALREADY

Rain

It was pretty dark when I left work tonight. It felt odd because it’s summer, and I left as early as I could (six) (after a quick bout of Ragdoll Kung Fu) (/self-important brag). Clouds – that’s what I blame. Absurdly the guy walking out of the building ahead of me immediately turned back when he reached the door, nearly knocking me over, and waited with what I suddenly realised was a small crowd of people apparently unable to cope with the outside world while it was raining. Some of them had coats.

I’ll tell you what’s good music for this: Sketch Show – Chronograph. One of those from-nowhere gems John Peel used to unearth, brush off and show to us proudly. It is pointedly headphone music, a willful disconnection from your surroundings – which should ideally be modern, wet and sickly with electric light.

That is atmosphere. It’s weird how long you can go without experiencing any atmosphere to speak of, and without noticing that you’re comparitively numb during this period. The second a mood like tonight’s early storm wakes me up, everything becomes interesting, refreshing and promising. Today was completely different to yesterday, it had its own feel. Consider the following exchange from Seinfeld:

Kramer: What’s today?
Newman: It’s Thursday.
Kramer: Really? Feels like Tuesday.
Newman: Tuesday has no feel. Monday has a feel. Friday has a feel, Sunday has a feel.
Kramer: I feel Tuesday and Wednesdays.

Today is a Wednesday, and I felt it. I’m not sure anything but Fridays have a feel for me normally, and it’s a shame. You remember days with feels. I remember lying on my back with a friend from uni, listening to Seymour Stein with the windows open on a summer day on which we had one lecture each. I remember turning up to those same lectures on another day, late, in winter, biting my gloves off as I locked up my bike and bustled into the orange lecture theatre with an aura of unwelcome cold air. The difference between these days and forgettable ones is not what happened, just the weather. Sometimes it’s memorable, and everything is interesting.

Last night had atmosphere too – walking home from a meal made uncommonly cheap by a combination of special offers and the plastic prong of a salad fork found in Rich’s lettuce. Bath at night, like any British city of a certain size, is usually post-apocalyptic with pockets of angry, red-faced public druggies. But when it’s a warm, still night and all you can hear is the dark, sinister serenity of Coaxing Méche from the Grim Fandango soundtrack, it’s suddenly the soft stone of the ancient buildings, the park by the river and the wide open spaces that you notice.

The short story is that an MP3 player is necessary to slow the passage of time. I suggest an iRiver of some description, but only ever buy the international versions of their players from now on – the American ones are crippled by the forced introduction of ‘MTP’, a Microsoft protocol the device has to use to connect to your PC, designed to support Digital Rights Management (file copying restrictions to enable new ways of paying for downloadable music). The problem with it, apart from that, is that it’s sickeningly slow, bans you from copying file types Microsoft doesn’t understand – even if the player itself supports them (most notably the wonderful OGG) – only works on PCs with Windows Media Player 10, won’t let you open files straight from the device or even Explore them in the normal way, hides the directory structure and the firmware from you, frequently hangs when copying files to the player and occasionally corrupts the ones it does claim to have copied successfully. The international versions still use ‘UMS’, which means they work as a fast, restriction-free removable hard drive. And there’s virtually nothing you can throw at an iRiver that it can’t play. Just so you know.

You also need to stop eating so much. I think I was even putting on weight as my existence became comfortable. This is no way to live. Everyone should spend at least half of their life hungry and listening to music. Comfort is a bit like death, you just exist and decay. There’s nothing wrong with improving your situation to a satisfactory level, but you can’t just stop once you’ve done it – you need to keep exploring, feel like you’re traveling whether you go anywhere new or not. We are all pretty stuck in our geographical ruts, but with new music for when we’re in the world, and new everything else for when we’re not, we ought to feel like we’re at the frontiers of human experience. All the time.

Another good one for rain – anything by the Postal Service. Ben Gibbard – the common factor between them and Death Cab For Cutie – is the only person writing romantic things that don’t leave me cold. Plans, the new Death Cab, is wonderful. I’m kind of a neophile with them (and music in general), in that Transatlanticism was the first album of theirs I wholly loved, and this is frequently better. Marching Bands Of Manhattan is the one to try if you get the chance.

Let me clarify something rather suddenly and unnecessarily: we regularly have great conversations at work. Our business is a ridiculous one, and so consultations with colleagues tend to be about other-worldly matters or puns. I intend to write some of them down. But since we’re not all philosophy students, looking back at one exchange I transcribed at university still induces mild pangs of nostalgia.

Andrew: Does anyone want this last piece of cake?
Ben: Nope.
Andrew: Well, you’re wrong, because I do.
Ben: Then I misunderstood the nature of the question. I thought you were calling for each of us to say whether or not we wanted it.
Andrew: Ha! I knew you’d think that!

Me: If you wanted him to think that, that’s what you meant by it. What you mean is just what you want the other person to understand by your words.
Andrew: No it’s not! If that was true, how could anyone lie?
Me: Well, you can mean something you know isn’t true. Like, if I said my face was blue, I’d mean that my face was blue even though I knew it wasn’t.
Andrew: But I had mental pictures…
Me: You can’t go the mental pictures route. Rob doesn’t even have mental pictures.
Katy: Yeah, that’s weird.

Andrew: Who said I wanted him to think that, anyway?
Me: I guess we got that from the way you were shouting “Ha! I wanted you to think that!” whilst jumping up and down and pointing at him.
Andrew: I didn’t say that!
Ben: Yes you did.
Andrew: No, I said “I knew you’d think that.”
Me: Yeah, he’s right, actually. So are you saying you didn’t want him to think that?
Andrew: Yeah.
Me: But you knew he would, and you said it anyway.
Andrew: Yeah.
Me: So it was with a heavy heart and a deep sadness that you said this, knowing you’d be horribly misunderstood.
Andrew: Yeah.
Me: And that was why you were jumping up and down and pointing at him?
Andrew: I was angry!
Me: And laughing?
Andrew: With anger!