HOCUS POCUS!!

Well I really should be listening to all these new digital tracks on my hard drive, or at least formulating some kind of opinion/response to the whole funky/wonky scenario that others seem to think is actually intellectually engaging enough to bother discussing. Yeah, I enjoyed that Jamie Vex'd mix and Paul's new comp looks interesting, but still I'm disinclined to get involved right now. I suspect my lack of enthusiasm for current trends may be linked to a wider sense of doom and gloom about life at the present, and a lack of hope for the future, both on a personal and global scale. If one has no faith in the future, how can one engage with the music of the future?

"Can the world be as sad as it seems?", or am I just having some sort of midlife crisis triggered by impending 40th birthday? Also, I haven't had a cigarette for 26 days and am rapidly losing the will to live. But determined to keep at it, because I do actually want to live, and I'm hoping this is only the halfway stage of my life. I'm only 10 years away from the age my dad was when he died of lung cancer. I remember he had a failed attempt at giving up the fags when he was about my age now. Perhaps if he'd succeeded he'd still be here today. I intend to live long enough to see my grandchildren...that's what I keep telling myself everytime the cravings gnaw at my chest.

But then the little nicotine demon says " fuck it - if you have no faith in the future, why are you trying to extend your own future". He has a fair point.

I am looking forward to seeing the Watchmen movie, mainly cos I'm fascinated to see how they made a film out of Alan Moore's brilliant but 'unfilmable' comic book. And I intend to eat a shitload of popcorn.

Meanwhile, fear and uncertainty of the present-tense encourages one to seek refuge in the past. Perhaps this whole 'Hauntology' thing is the by-product of a generation's collective panic attack as it hurtles towards middle age in a world that it finds increasingly scary and uncertain. Of course, the world's always had a scary/uncertain element, but we were too young to understand or care back then. Applied to my buying/listening habits, the upshot is that I haven't bought new products online at Boomkat or Juno for months, but I'm crate digging in charity shops at any opportunity, in search of audio artifacts that somehow connect with my past life, or in the case of the above album by Dutch prog-band Focus that I found earlier today, a sense of completion of unfinished business. It's just a compilation of their first three albums, released in '75, but it has the hits "Sylvia" and "Hocus Pocus" which I always kinda liked when I heard them on the radio and always meant to buy a Focus record but never did. I could find a suitable Focus record in 30 seconds on the 'net, but I'm really enjoying getting back into physical searching again. It takes a lot more time and patience, but when you're not looking for anything too specific it can be a surprisingly rewarding pastime - sometimes it feels like the records find you. Plus you save a shitload on shipping fees.