Don't go travelling without your towel!

"Time is an illusion, lunch time doubley so." - the immortal words of Betelgeusian Ford Prefect.

Yes it's towel day, the world wide celebration of The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy and rememberance of it's creator, Douglas Adams who passed away on May 11, 2001. A day when self proclaimed nerds can show their love of Adam's stories which have spanned radio, books and television for the last thirty years. I am myself wearing a towel over my shoulder, and true to Adam's words it has been more than useful over the day.

I was first introduced to Douglas Adams when I began playing Starship Titanic twelve years ago. I loved the quirky oddball humour of the game, it had the large budget and graphics of an epic American video game, but it certainly didn't take itself seriously. I began reading the Hitchiker books when I was fourteen. Although my parents revelled in the television show, I was unaware of the kind of impact these stories made on the nation.

It's the pure, unglamourised Britishness that makes Hitchikers so accessible to it's English audience. We can all relate to despondant Arthur Dent, a man who simply wished to potter around his little house who ends up travelling the lengths of the galaxy in his dressing gown. He fumbles along in these adventures, pausing to gawp wide mouthed at life's little annoyances (i.e the world being destroyed) protesting to have a little lie down when things get tough and the ever lasting search for a good cup of tea.

Adams was famous for his style of improvised writing. His fluency and unique flair for combining the genres of comedy and sci-fi made his books an engaging read for the teenage me. However Adams who was well reknowned for writer's block and procrastination, "I love deadline, I love the whoosing sound they make as the fly by." The last books of the series; "So Long and Thanks for all the Fish" and "Mostly Harmless" did not reach critical acclaim and were based sketchy subplots of his creations from the previous series, although Arthur and his hapless friends are given their final curtain call.

In 1981 the BBC broadcast a television series of HHGG which thanks to a brilliant casting (I'm convinced Simon Jones really is Arthur Dent) and some fantastic hand made illustrations disguised as computer graphics, it is a very faithful adaptation of the story. The choice to use American "squeaky-tonsils" Sandra Dickinson was a brave one, seeing as Trillian was originally an "arabic looking" astrophysicist from England, but I wouldn't want to argue with Adams's decision.

The Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy epitomises what it is to be British: eccentricity, an overwhelming desire to drink a good cup of tea, being overwhelmingly startled at change but giving small responses like "Oh dear." HHGG philosophises about our very existence, how insignificant and mundane our lives are, but how wonderfully funny they are. Adams was never afraid to stare into the seemingly bleakness of life and laugh. There might not be a god, there might not be any rime or reason why some of us get shitty jobs, repulsive family members or get our houses crushed by a demolition squad, but we might as well have a giggle. Happy Towel Day!

Hello I'm me, who the hell are you?

Perception is one thing, all us as conscious beings cannot escape. Not to say that some people haven't tried.

To us normal blimps of existence, the famous are there for one gastronomical reason, for us to judge, prod and poke them until they don't look like us anymore but a group of plastic aliens that descend to earth for a while until we get bored of them.

I've been intrigued by the personality created around Jim Morrison, in fact I'm not at all sure that such a person ever existed. It's like every fan, critic or friend own a small piece of a jigsaw and squeeze them all together to make the paradoxical Frankenstein that is Morrison. He's either a sex symbol or a melancholic poet, a menace to society or an icon of revolution, a philandering bastard or a vulnerable young man. Morrison himself created an enigma around his past life, declaring his parents dead and that he was traumatised by a horrific car accident witnessed at the age of four. It turned out that his parents were very much alive (but estranged from their son and his bohemian lifstyle) and that alledgedly the accident involved no fatalities, just an old Pueblo man crying on the side of the road. But why do people care if these stories were true or not? why do I care? It's the strange insatiable desire we all have to figure out these percieved gods.

Another perception gripped strongly by the public is that of Sylvia Plath and her husband Ted Hughes. Plath remains an enigma too, a young talented and beautiful woman who is bizarrely obsessed with death. Hughes adultery was blamed for Plath's suicide, although it is forgotton that Plath was suicidal from her early years as a teenager. We like paint a picture of the shy, vulnerable women being abused and abandoned by the tyranneous Hughes, it's easy for us to understand, easy to create a victim and a bully. During her lifetime Plath fought against perceptions placed on her. In 1954 after intensive electroshock treatments, Plath bleached her hair blonde and made a name for herself at Harvard, winning poetry prizes and exceeding in her studies. Plath said she wanted to make a 'new persona' for herself, although clearly she did not rid herself of all her demons.

Modern celebrities, as we all know are created entirely on perception than any recognition of their art. A pop star is not just a singer, they are an image perfectly honed (and sometimes destroyed) for the viewing pleasure of the public. It's interesting to see how the tide turns for some celebrities. Seven years ago Cheryl Cole was the arrogant foul mouthed member of a girl band who racially attacked a black woman in a restuarant. But after her husband's adultery in 2008 Cole was thrust into tv shows, adverts, her own successful solo career because she was now a 'nice northern lass' Her public image took a U-turn so much so that she won 'Most Inspirational Woman of the Decade.' Heck. The same couldn't be said for pop road-kill Britney Spears who continues to grapple to the top of her failed career but slides back down again. It's inevitable that once Spears pops her clogs she won't be the pot bellied red-neck mad woman but a poor desolate girl who was pushed to become the best by all those around her then laughed at on her way downwards like a circus freak show by all of you, you bastards!

I could go into the whole 'celebrity culture compensating for structural religion debate' but it's obvious to everyone. Let's just say that judgement is what we all do best, as soon as we learn to speak we are saying what we like and don't like, we love examining others, doing a bit of pop psychology on them because we all know somewhere in the world someone is doing that to us as well.

Milking our ovaries: Womb envy in folklore

Fairytales have not always been the fluffy Disney-esque stories we read to our children at night, once upon a time they were unpleasant stories of rivalry, jealousy and an incredible amount of violence and debauchery.

When I was a child fairytales bored me, they were flat, meaningless stories that preached crusty morals about being do-gooder females. Our revolting folklore tales were cleaned up by 18th century storyteller Charles Perrault in order to entertain French aristocrats who were so gentille the mere mention of blood or copulation would make a lady keel over. In turn the Brothers Grimm took many of Perrault's adaptations and a handful of German folklore and mashed them up into a bright ball of fluffiness.

Sadly these tales stripped of thier crude motifs lose a lot of their intial meaning. Freud may have coined the phrase 'penis envy', but looking back at the attitudes towards women in these old tales its easier to believe that men have been(and perhaps still are)scared, envious, intriguded and fearful of the power of the womb.

Bruno Bettlehein explored how fairytales become symbolic of children growing into adults. Every single heroine in the fairytales of the Western world are pretty industrious girls no older than 13. Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel were all supposed to be girls reaching menstruation, and with menstruation comes the ability to bear children. Of course these girls never follow a smooth course to a happy ending, they are obstructed by people jealous or frightened by their developing sexuality, namely old crones or promsicious men. Little Red Riding Hood is the obvious example, a girl who conspiciously wears the colour of menstruation whilst wandering around a wood completely alone save for the ravenous male wolf whos enticed by the sight and smell of this young woman. Bettlehein suggests the absence of parents in these tales plays upon a bildungsroman theme, that by removing guardians (or making them utterly useless) it shows how young women must make their own decisions in life.

There is however a recurring theme of parental neligicance in womb envy, being incestuous fathers. In The Bear by Giambattisa Basile a king seeks out a new wife after being widowed, and looks towards his own daughter as his bride. He keeps her locked within the castle and her only escape is by wearing a bearskin (or donkey, or goatskin depending on the variations)to avoid having sex with her father. The entrapment of the pubescent daughter shows the father is aware of the girl's sexuality, sees it as a threat to his own power as a man so he decides to keep her for himself.

Basile also recorded the earliest version of the sleeping beauty story, named Sun Moon and Talia. The father is distressed when the heroine, Talia pricks her finger on the spindle, the spindle being a phallic symbol and the blood drawn from Talia showing a loss of innocence. The King presumes she is dead and sends her body to a country estate to never be seen again. However another king finds Talia in the estate, and not being able to wake her, decides to rape her in her sleep. What a lovely tale to tell the kids! Talia gives birth, still comatose to twins who wake her up by sucking the poision out of her finger. The princess's deep sleep marks her period into sexual maturity, the rape is an act of dominance and power of the male upon a dormant womb. When Talia wakes up and seeks out the king who violated her, she comes across his evil wife who also shows womb envy because after years of marriage she remains barren while Talia gives birth to twins in her sleep.

It's interesting to note in The Grimm's 'cleaned up' version of the tale, the young girl in her comatose state is made unttainable by being placed in the top room of a tower surrounded by a thicket of thorns. The thicket is a protective barrier against the girl's virginity that only the most virtuous of men can enter . In a more literal interpretation, the thicket is the virgin's freshly grown pubic hair which acts as the gateway to a princess's womb.

Our fairytales were not born out of social niceities as we know them today. It wasn't about morals and karmic outcomes for do-gooders, they were tales about humanity. Jealousy, anger, betrayal, courage, friendship, family roles and restraints. They were about real people in bizarre fantasy landscapes which mean to tell us more about human behaviour than what we should or shouldn't do. Sexuality is the greatest motivaton in the human psyche, and to those male storytellers all those years ago, the womb and feminine sexuality was an admirable mysterious and unattainable quality. Sex is all about the hidden, fetishes are fetishes because we don't understand them, they are secrets. In folklore the womb is a secret and all men want to know.

Drawing the Curtains: Frusciante's life through the albums Part Three

Next follows A Sphere in the Heart of Silence, which was released in November of the same year and is one of Frusciante's albums which closely resembles his first recordings over a decade ago. The album is a joint effort with multi-faceted musician Josh Klinghoffer whose childlike high pitched vocals lends a ethereal quality to the album's melancholia. The album contains only seven tracks at an average of five minutes each which is a bold move even for an experimental artist like Frusciante.
The album is deeply electronica influenced with synthesisers and electronic drums as primary instruments. Frusciante returns to his trademark caterwailing from Niandra in "Walls" blended with heavy electronic beats in a somewhat painful track you wouldn't want to be seen listening to unless people already find you disturbing. "Afterglow" is arguably the most inspiring track on the album, finding a perfect balance between a fast paced dance backing and haunting vocals. "Shadows casting bodies, who knows which way things will go?" Frusciante's take on electronica is undoubtedly fresh and complexing for the listener but I feel the man works best when he keeps his music raw and untampered.

Curtains is the final quick release album of 2004, and rather aptly named too. Frusciante seems to have pulled himself from the depressive Sphere in the Heart of Silence towards a more acoustic orientated album. "The Past Recedes" is a predictable, soft centred track that is a little too perfect sounding for a Froo fan like myself. An official video for The Past Recedes was created, but it is a rather uninspiring piece where cameras pointlessly follow Frusciante round his boring LA house doing boring things like getting out of bed, eating a rissole and taking a nap. Watch out for some exciting shots of his kitchen sink and try not to hyperventilate! Joking aside the album is a massive improvement from "Sphere" and illustrates in finer detail how simplicity and unrefined peformances of songs leads to a purer and enjoyable sound. A clear example is "Ascension" which in no way is perfect (Frusciante's count up to the song is heard and the acoustics of the room are tinny) but it is a warm, bittersweet and spontaneous song that shows seems to wrap up the whole message of the album, that the deeply flawed side of humanity is the purest inspiration.

Although the six month album stint ceased here, it certainly wasn't the end of Frusciante's solo efforts. January 2009 saw the release of The Empyrean, a musical masterpiece to start the end of a decade. The record has been named a concept album by Frusciante himself, but it perhaps more subtle in its storyline than the more famous examples from prog rockers Pink Floyd and Genesis. The Empyrean is supposidely the story of two characters existing within a man's mind throughout his lifetime. It's not quite clear how this conclusion is met simply by listening to the album, like previous works of Frusciante his songs express a plethora of atmosphere without any tangible meaning. It's probably why his work remains so compelling.
The Empyrean literally means the highest point in heaven, and backed up by a string quartet and a handful of prominent musicians (Flea, Josh Klinghoffer and Johnny Marr from the Smiths) the album develops a celestial silky smooth weightlessness to Frusciante's sound.
Frusciante's cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" is a beautiful rendition and although it doesn't quite capture the intimacy and grief of the original, Frusciante makes it his own. It is an apt song for Frusciante who like Buckley was plunged into heroin addiction and it's references to Greek mythology link nicely with the Milton/Blake-esque theme of the album.
"Unreachable" is a quietly spectacular song and a pivotal scene in the story of The Empyrean. the protagonist wakes from the lull of "The Siren" and realises he is disconnected from everyone in the world. In "God" we see Fruscinate playing the role of the big man himself, explaining to the protagonist why he even creates life in the first place and not to give up just yet.
"So each day would be new I build you to sleep. That's the idea of dying but you'll just have to see." Of all of Frusciante's works, "God" a melodic feathery piece is the artist's own reconcilication with spirituality after a destroyed youth.
"Central" at 7.16 minutes long is the most lengthy and powerful song in the album, illustrating the protagonist's sudden desire to rid himself of apathy and fear to progress to his own Empyrean.

Essentially The Empyrean is a story of personal enlightenment, attaining heights that seemed impossible at one point. Being comfortable with your own existence and not denying yourself to life. Frusciante's style in The Empyrean is refined without an obsession over perfection. Vocals are distorted and instruments experimentented with but the album has a solid backbone which stretches his style into the sublime. Indeed it's Frusciante's greatest effort as of yet.