Flyer for a night I am putting on with a little Greek guy, a tough Spanish Guy and a Wayward Polish guy. Link to my shazza via title of post. Cum!

Holy Burger!! Inexplicable krautrock soul art tribal treasure. go!

click on title to d.load.

Note written in the inside cover of a £2 Second Hand Book purchased in charity shop in Highgate yesterday:

6/18/07

Paul Cronin -

To get to heaven you
have to crawl
through satan's
arsehole.

Good Luck -

(indecipherable signature)

Who'd have thought
that snow falls
it always circled whirling
like a thought
in the glass ball
around me and my bear

Then it seemed beautiful
containment
snow whirled
nothing ever fell
nor my little bear
bad thoughts
imprisoned in crystal

beauty has replaced itself with evil

And the snow whirls only
in fatal winds
briefly
then falls

it always loathed containment
beasts
I love evil

(from THE COLLECTED POEMS OF FRANK O'HARA)

So it was that on Monday morning after a night drinking with Matt, Pia, Rohan and Max I awoke with a numb face. I could not feel anything on my left side of my face. A very strange feeling i can assure you. I tell Pia, I can't feel my face. I tell Julie, I can't feel my face. Julie says i do not look 100% - I pretend it's ok, leave house to go to work, buy cigarette's, place one in mouth and realise the position of the cigerrette as is usually the case is no longer possible. I also picked up pomengrante juice and whilst sipping on this i dribble some from the left side of my mouth. I realise at this point that something very unusual is going on. I re-enter the house, unsure what to do. Julie demands that i do not go to work, I feel i have too as i missed my Saturday shift due to getting too schmozed on Friday night. I will check in at work then go to Doctor. Negotiating the transport to work is fine expect i cannot read my book as normal and the idea of listening to music is the last thing on my mind. I get to work and and i tell boss man that i feel weird, he says i do not look right and to go to the 'walk in centre' accross the road from the park nearby.

I do this.

After a brief inspection by nurse she tells me I have to go to the hospital immediately. To be frank, i have not even seen a doctor for 8 years or so. I am hopeless in this regard and for what it's worth despite my endless attempts to destroy myself i have had a pretty fine bill of health over this period. Hospital? What? Well, as my father once had a stroke, my sister has Multiple Scerosis and my Grandfather had Parkinsons Disease I thought I had better get this sorted out pronto.

Entering the hospital the first thing i see is a poster with a check list of warning signs gauging whether one has suffered a stroke. I am able to check a few of these boxes and subsequently 'freak out'. It takes too long to see a doctor who was nice enough but somewhat inept also (the national health service here feels like those budget hairdressers for folks in training sometimes). After numerous tests on various parts of my face; move eyes, move tongue, pinch skin "can you feel this" etc... (the most heart trembling of which was testing my eyesight, which normally rules like no other part of my bod, but in this case, my left eye failes me wonderfully, a heart skipper indeed) the doctor walks out again and for the third time that day i fall asleep. I think 20 mins passes before the Doctor comes back and diagnoses me with 'Bell's Palsy'.

I had never heard of Bell's Palsy before, but it's a rather curious infliction indeed. The source of this is still (like many neurolological ailments) unclear, the cause can be either related to dormant chicken pox, stress or various other theories.

The results for me personally are:

The left hand side of my face does not move
I cannot close my left eye
I have lost aprox 30% vision in my left eye
I have lost substantial hearing in my left ear
I have a mild 'pressure' sensation in my left ear
I cannot taste food
I have a weird chemical taste in my mouth most of the day
My speech is somewhat slurred
and, my favourite,
I cannot pronounce the letters B or P ! (apparently common to folks that get BP - I love the irony that the 2 letter's one looses the ability to prounounce are the initials of the actual affliction !).

On the flip, I should have a full recovery in weeks, or maybe months as the damaged nerve which caused this in the first place re-grows and full vison, hearing and facial 'balance' is re-stored.

In the meantime it's eye drop city, explanation nation and general mark meet the new mark kind of scenario.

Yes, I am good in good company, Katie Holmes and George Clooney have both been through this. Good looking people, talented people. smart people. People's people with flipped lips and dribbled bits!

Suffice to say, this was quite a way to start the week. I was in hospital most of Monday and then had to prepare for my first lecture at St Martin's on Tuesday. The lecture went very well as it turned out with the students ignoring me holding the left side of the mouth for most of the talk and engaging quite thoroughly with the various topics raised through an exploration of the themes, references contained within the work of British 'noise' act Whitehouse.

Wonderful, Wonderful Times indeed.

I am getting used to all this but having had 2 dj sets this week it I found it incredibly difficult to communicate to people that i had not met before. Iwill stick to my pals for now and for what it's worth a big shout out to Pia, Julie, Costas and Diego for being truly wonderful about all this, treating me like a human, hanging shit on my current condition and generally making me feel more human than simpy a new born weirdo!

I am presenting three 2 hour lecture's at St Martins college Clerkenwell campus based around the theme of 'Shock and Controversy in Contemporary Culture'.

Details:

Tuesday 12th Feb 10:30

MUSIC: Focussing on the development of the Power Electronics genre following on from the 'industrial music' seed planted by Throbbing Gristle. A heavy focus on the entire output of British act Whitehouse incorporating themes such as The Avant Garde, Sonic (frequency) exploration, abstract and concrete music forms, Scientology security checks, Neuro-linguistic programming (in particluar Dark NLP), Speed Seduction, Internet forums, etc

Tuesday 19th Feb 10:30

FILM: Foccusing on the Political, Psycological, Pathological, Religious and Sociological aspects within the works of Pier Paolo Pasolini, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Vera Chytilová and Michael Haneke (incoporating the literature of Elfriede Jelinek).

Tuesday 26th Feb 10:30

ART: A focus on the exteme end of art in Post War Japan with a focus on Ero Guro and the historical works / events that informed this movement.