B O N D P H O N E.
Words and pictures by Chris Lamb.

Doing Capoeira – Brazilian martial arts disguised as dance – last night finds me today sore, stiff, and wanting to be Batman. For all the initial frustration, for all the pent-up intimidation and doesn’t-play-well-with-others bad feelings from spending a decade and change in public school physical fitness programs that marked my first class (and came up again last night, the by-product of missing a week’s worth of classes due to lack of time), the sense of accomplishment that comes from something as simple as getting your foot off the ground in a new way is thrilling; thrilling enough, even, to make me do it all over again come Thursday night. I’m still clumsy, I still get my rhythm tangled up when doing the sequences, I still have trouble getting up the courage to play in the Roda, but I can do this one bit that’s a series of quick steps and kicks, and last night I did a handstand. Mostly. More of one than I’ve managed before, at least, and for now that’s enough.

Only it’s not, really. Capoeira is an addiction, a game that no one ever truly seems to master, something to dedicate your time and body to at the expense of going out drinking, or rock shows, or a space on the couch next to some one soft and interesting. Last night’s class was as much as lesson as anything else, reading thus: keep doing this, and it won’t hurt as much over time. Stay away too long, and you might as well not come back for the wreck it will leave your arms and legs the next morning. We’ll see.

posted by chris  # 4:45 PM 4 comments

Don’t call it a comeback, I never left.

12:19 counts as tomorrow, doesn’t it? I’m getting back into the twenty lines a day habit but don’t trust myself to wake up early enough to hammer them out before work. That, and after the four or five glasses of wine I’ve had on top of Audrey and Cary in Charade, writing feels like the best thing to do, lacking a dinner cruise down the Seine or a Parisian Underground to run through. So twenty lines it is.

What’s happened? Here it is, half way through February and it doesn’t feel a tick past January third. This year’s running out too quickly, all the time caught up in working, reading, playing, watching. Too much of what I’m doing lately is too meaningful – what happened to fucking around, or fucking off, or even plain old fucking up? I need to walk around more, need to waste more time on things that matter in less direct ways. I need to talk to more strangers, show up more often uninvited, see more new things from odd angles. I need to remember how to talk to people, how to seek them out and make plans rather than idle chitchat upon running into them on the street. There’s the creeping realization that I’ve spent so much time among professional adults I may be going native, the thought of which, when I can stop long enough to have it, is terrifying. Is it too late now, a month and four days from turning twenty-four, for a New Year’s resolution not to be too old too soon? Yes. But there is a day job writing video games, and a hard drive full of pop music, and a little more than half full a bottle of wine left. That should do nicely as a stopgap in the meantime.

posted by chris  # 9:49 AM 0 comments

Twelve till ten on a Saturday night and there's a lot I should be doing instead of blogging. Like capital-W writing, for instance, or going out into the bitter cold to drink with people for friend's birthday. Yet here I am instead, whiskey chilling in a glass and new pop music coming in over headphones. It happens sometimes.

Though "new" is a bit subjective here: I'm listening to the not-quite released Love is All album, featuring the song "Felt Tip" which I stumbled over around this time last year in demo form. Ah, and there it is playing now, because iTunes runs on confluence, don't you know.

First impression on the final take? Somewhere between then and now, All is Love grew up a little. The demo was a slow and deliberate thing, like a wandering reminiscence along the outside of a scene you were never really a part of; pretty pop, too be certain, but a bit to precious for its own good. This new version has a necessary edge to it, swapping borrowed nostalgia for actual experience and the memory of it. Where the demo was all the stories your more adventurous friends told of their clubbing glory days, the album track is actual dance floor memoir, watching the next wave of ratty kids writing their name on the wall in thick Sharpie, claiming your old space as theirs a bit at a time. "Step right on the beat" indeed.

Which leads not at all to the news of the day: I'm creating a pseudonym. After years of thinking the idea of writing under any name but mine to be fundamentally silly, I've found myself writing for an editor who, for various reasons, feels his writers would be best served by a bit of anonymity.* Rather than stopping there, I've decided to create an entire person complete with personality and writing style to back up the name. Partly because I've never done it before, but mostly out of something Kieron Gillen said a while back on of of the forums I use, about how having more than one personality allows you full use of the range of emotions and styles. That's a poor paraphrase, but the idea is sound. Blame drink and lack of internet for the misquoting.

I haven't decided yet if I'll own up to work under the new name, but as there's no work to show yet I think I can wait to burn that particular bridge. I've discovered in the meantime that it isn't as easy as it looks, creating some one believable out of nothing. Reality has it too easy.

posted by chris  # 1:56 PM 2 comments