More than just Invisible

More than just Invisible

Wednesday 5 November 2014

Pain and Music with my Insane Friend


I got home from work tonight at 8.30, feeling tired miserable and in pain. I’ve had what I thought was bad toothache for over a week and this morning decided SOMETHING HAD TO BE DONE; the cost of dental care over here is beyond the reach of most people so a trip to the emergency clinic at the School of Dentistry is the only solution.

The clinic is open 9-12 in the morning and 2-4 in the afternoon and is so much cheaper than a dentist and you don’t have to pay straight away. The only drawback is you just have to wait and wait and wait. I got there just after 9 and left at 12.45.

That didn’t really bother me as it was warmer than my house and I sat there reading ‘London: City of disappearances’, a mixed bag of a book that manages to stimulate, aggravate and irritate in equal measure. Iain Sinclair’s own pieces read, in part, like feeble parodies of his own writings but on the whole the book is worth reading and wasn’t a bad way to spend the morning.

The outcome of the visit is that my teeth are fine; that’s not is causing the pain, instead it’s temporomandibular joint disorder which is essentially a problem with the muscles of mastication (no, mastication). Langley, the smiley dentist didn’t have anything to offer as a solution, apart from taking painkillers, which I’d already told him didn’t work, and a visit to a more specialised clinic at the school when they reopen in January.

Bugger, I thought, don’t really fancy putting up with this until then, especially the pain that feels like there’s a spiral of burning liquid moving around my ear and cheek bone. Luckily, when I got to work I was complaining about it to the supervisor , who had it last year and sorted it out by massaging a muscle inside her mouth, copied from a you tube video and sucking a piece of raw garlic (for its anti-inflammatory properties not for anti- vampire reasons).

So soon as I got home after I’d fed the hungry dog, the hungry cat and the hungry me, I started sucking on a piece of raw garlic which made it a bit better for a while. I had a few things I had to do online, apply for a job and apply for a benefit so I got the laptop out and looked for some music to play; I’d downloaded the three I to I tracks by Music with my insane friend, recommended by Out To Lunch on Facebook.

I’d played them before but this time I entered a new world with them. THIS music is seriously impressive. Music can be absorbing but this absorbed me, taking over my mind and body in a transformative, transgressive, rhythmic flight of passage.

Why aren’t they played everywhere? In lifts, in car parks, at the dentist, in schools?

There’s an unforced, organic, natural flow to it, that is absent from much avant-garde (for want of a better term) music. This should be, must be, the sound of the future; it’s uncliched, genuinely revolutionary music that slaps banality, conformity and complacency to the ground and then beats them with a large stick before burying them in a grave of their own mediocre making.

Yes, it’s that good. I can see why OTL is so determined to in urging people to listen to them. He’s right…
Go here for enlightenment.

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