konstantinos’ blog

When music feels so good…

Friday Midnight is almost here! And Ghetto is close! Have fun and daaaaanceee
At least I’ll do that…

Mommy, can I go out and kill tonight?
I feel, I feel like taking a life.
Please, I wanna seal the kitchen knife
and feel, feel like taking a life.

Rippin kittin kidding on the round (x2)

Daddy, can I go and haunt tonight
like you do on Sunday mornings.
Honey, give me a real gentle knife
to feel, feel like taking my life.

Rippin kittin kidding on the round (x4)

Mommy, can I go out and kill tonight?
I feel, I feel like taking a life.
Please, I wanna seal the kitchen knife
and feel, feel like taking a life.

Rippin kittin kidding on the round (x4)

Mommy, daddy, please let me go (x2)

Yes, finally and after trying for more than a month now (since these days in Cupertino) I managed to break my working hours personal record yesterday or actually early this morning! Many times since January I’ve been so close to that but never succeeded in doing so (lol). Good preparation, strong willingness and a satisfactory physical state (it was only Monday) were catalytic in that. Yeaaahhhhh

Records are to be broken and yesterday I broke another one; the VPN time connection status shows clearly 17:09:19 hours connected, just before I pack my equipment and leave office at 02:43 in the morning.

Let’s just hope that everything will be ok after this launch. Many people have worked long long hours the past days.

P.S. i don’t know why I wrote that (kind-of-)post. Probably because it can make me realise more objectively that the hours I have been working since I got this job are ridiculous! Or not? And my question is: how many hours do you usually work per day dear reader? Let the competition begin

It was one of these Friday nights with (dr.) Mario and (future dr.) Antonio (hehe) at Trash Palace when I first heard this song for the first time. At first I couldn’t understand why a wave of euphoria started spreading across the dance floor. After a minute though I started realising the reason. I hadn’t heard such a catchy tune for a long time now. And then there was this voice! Familiar voice; but nooo it can’t be him …his repertoire doesn’t include this kind of music. But I can’t be wrong. Antony has such a characteristic voice. So characteristic that it’s impossible to forget or at least not pay attention to!

And then the next song started playing and I was left with the question. But I was at Trash Palace. The following tune can easily make you forget the previous ones. And this was the case once more. So days passed and I randomly heard this haunting song on (best) radio in the rush half hour between deciding what to wear for the office and eating my (always) minimalistic breakfast. The important here is that I also heard the name of the song, and realised how correct I was about Antony. It was him. Lending his magnificent voice to the first grand hit of the “fanciest groove of the moment” according to an early description at last.fm; Andrew Butler’s Hercules & Love Affair project.

This wiki has now been changed to something more modest, but still the acceptance of this musical project is impressive and that’s fair in my opinion. “Hercules is the brainchild of NY resident, producer and DJ Andrew Butler & The Love Affair is one of the most inventive and original collaborative studio projects in many years, where beautiful, bruising harmonies and tensile rhythms collide in resurgent soundscapes and emotive dancefloor workouts.“… as less modest this info can be!

SO… all this intro for “Blind”? Maybe I’m exaggerating (and to tell you the truth …that’s the truth! I’m exaggerating) but you cannot easily bypass a dance track with vocals from Antony Hegarty (yeap! the one from “Antony and the Johnsons“) and this unique Balkan-style melody. Of course “Blind” is not big news for all the early music adopters out there. But as for every decent pop/dance track, remixes are part of the game. And one of them is probably this summer’s hit. If I liked the original version a lot, I should admit I like the “Frankie Knuckles Dub” version 4.3 times more (hehe…. someone please close my laptop’s lid now before I write more crap things… !).

Anyway, back to reality. Just listen to the track and sing the lyrics. That’s all a legal (lol) blog can offer to its non-existent readers. The play button is just a few pixels away.

As a child, I knew
That the stars could only get brighter
And we would get closer
Get closer
Oooooh

As a child, I knew
That the stars could only get brighter
That we would get closer
Get closer
Leaving this darkness
Behind

Mmmm-mmmm
Oooooooh

Now that I'm older
The stars should lie upon my face
When I find myself alone
Find myself alone
Oooooh

Now that I'm older
The stars should lie upon my face
And when I find myself alone
I feel like I
I am blind

Feel it
Feel it
Feel it
Feel it
Like I am blind
I am blind

I wish the stars could shine now
For they are closer
They are near
But they will not present my present
They will not present my present

I wish the light could shine now
For it is closer
It is near
But it will not present my present
It makes my past and future painfully clear

To hear you now
To see you now
I can look outside myself
And I must examine my breath and look inside
Ooooooh

To see you now
To hear you now
I can look outside myself
And I must examine my breath and look inside
Because I feel blind
Because I feel blind

I feel it
I feel it
I feel it
Like I
Like I'm blind
Ooooooh
The movie will
Mmmm, and feel it
Oooooh, I feel it
Feel it

…was the weekend that has just given its turn to the third Monday of this month. A weekend characterised by one thing; rediscovering how interesting life in London can be. In a few words and in chronological order, a masters course mates reunion and the discussion that took place around a “new kind of subject” untouched until very recently (my mistake!), an amazing new night-life spot which I want to believe that few people in London already know (call me “Shunt”), a retrospective exhibition at Tate which makes me realise that even sculptor is a new art territory of interest for me (call me “Juan Muñoz” exhibition), a visit to a relatively new and promising (g/c)lubbing space in Soho (call me lo-…) and finally a sunny Sunday spent at various districts of this city (Picadilly, Tottenham Ct Rd, Angel and Canary Wharf… ouf) including a nice lunch (call me “Satsuma), a quick “business” meeting, a “pastitsio from Alkisti, Kely and the new couple” dinner and a great movie (call me “There will be blood”).

What else can someone ask from his weekend? … a repetition in 5 days could be a good proposal… although next weekend starts on Saturday evening… so a repetition in 6 days could be the proper proposal.

“Spanish sculptor (b. June 17, 1953, Madrid, Spain—d. Aug. 28, 2001, Ibiza, Spain), created moody and challenging installation artworks, most of which featured monochromatic human figures placed amid unnerving architectural spaces and often incorporating animatronics and sound.”

Friday night and finally decided to stay in(!!!). That’s so not me for whoever knows me in real life. Many phone calls, many plans and many friends that could possibly go out with… but I think I just needed to stay in and relax a bit, after the busy week that has just ended. Besides, Saturday and Sunday is so close and as always I’ve scheduled more things to do than I could possible have the time and physical resources to do so. I was discussing about this issue with a very good friend of mine (and colleague since December) and I was explaining to her my thought that my life is like a constant party. I don’t know how different people understand that and whether they can have the same feeling about their lives but this is exactly how I feel especially after I got my first full time job two months ago.

I had always been a very optimistic person who only sees the bright side of the things. However, I now have this “constant partying” thought because I still try to fit in my days and nights all the things that I enjoyed doing all the previous years when I was a student and fortunately I had pleeeenty of free time. Time that you only appreciate after you start working on a full time basis. Time that you now want to fill with so many activities whereas two months ago you wouldn’t even bother too much. And my job is not the typical kind of a 9-5 office job, at least practically. During a working day I usually cannot treat myself with more than 4-5 hours of free time. But, I am so excited that I am doing this kind of (publishing) job in an office full of the coolest people I can imagine for my colleagues, managers, bosses etc. It’s like these old school days when I never wanted to miss going to the school because I always had a great time there!! (…call me weird, abnormal or a geek… it’s the truth).

Office excitement … and then there are these few hours left to catch up with your friends, your hobbies, your as-it-used-to-be life. And there are two options here; relax, calm down and let tiredness absorb the last trace of willingness to do more things (see “go to bed from 11pm”) OR keep an active pace and try to maintain the social nightlife you used to have before! And by nightlife I don’t (always) mean go for a drink, have a special dinner, go for clubbing or do whatever “living” at night can include, but by definition whatever you do in London on February and after 4pm doesn’t take place under the sun. I am, of course, up for the second option and that explains in a good way what I stated at the beginning of this text… “constant party”. To sum up, five busy days and nights during the week and then comes the weekend!!

Two days in which you want to do all the things you cannot do in every other day that doesn’t start with an “S”. Friends from London or not, people that you want to spend time with because reasonably they are more than friends or unreasonably less than friends but in a strange way you prioritise meetings with them. Many times, I find myself thinking that I am so fortunate to have so many friends in London (and in general) and almost the same number of times I am getting worried that I will never find the time to properly spend a few hours with every and each of them. Prioritisation and concentration is the key here! Surely, I am still not very successful in that but I am trying.

And apart from “people” there are “activities” that I enjoy and need time to dedicate on them; classical old school activities that you don’t want to forget because they had always been part of what gives you joy, like visiting Tate and other relevant sites, reading wallpaper*-like magazines, updating/exploring/recalling my musical library or pushing my camera’s shutter button, and new more social and extremely addicting recently-adopted activities related to deviantART and other online arts communities, related to more of “provato-style” and less of “titanas-style” (why? …i still read that?) blogs and and and …

I wish days had 30 hours or more! Just a few extra hours to reclaim the lost sense of having time for a bit of everything while having the luxury of standing on the right side of the escalators of the underground. Maybe I’ am just too new in these updated settings of my life. Balance will probably be established soon. It has to… but constant partying doesn’t have to end.

(random thoughts of a Friday night… if all these don’t make any sense to you just hit the back button of your browser or even better close the browser and arrange a party!)