Jazzy D's Soul Notes

Another interesting morning down at the community radio station, Swale FM. Searched info about a voluntary group,sent off a couple of emails, and phoned up a guest for coming onto Nicola's show in a couple of weeks time.

Currently in Sittingbourne library looking for some CD's to rip to the laptop. Then off to the Office and afterwards to Faversham to sell a few items.I also need some more pipe tobacco.

Well, it is better than being stuck indoors. 

This afternoon I did another “buddying” session down at the library, but there was nobody to help out on the computers, so I completed a crossword in the Guardian and checked my Discogs site. I added some more singles on to the site , which I though I had on sale, but obviously when I checked I didn't.

I have watching with little incredulity of the troubles in Tottenham over the weekend which has now spread to other areas such as Hackney Brixton and Peckham. It is too early to suggest if this is part of an underbelly of discontent , protest and , or just criminal advantageousness, but I was not that surprised of the outcome.

Civil and criminal disorder has never gone away, nor is it any better or worse. Where the combined pressure of socio-economic disadvantage acts heavily enough on young men, who identify themselves as being part of an homogeneous disadvantaged community, it takes very little catalyst for disorder to grow from flashpoint to riot. Rumour, with enough specific detail that convinces in the retelling can be enough , if people feel not enough reason not to become involved. I think we're seeing economic conditions provide enough disenfranchisement "potential" for disorder combined with a specific catalysing event , which was resonant enough to transcend the individuals involved.

The potential for disorder is never far away, and riots are tumultuous, heady phenomena that can sweep people up as easily as frighten people away, and they have a momentum. Rioting is a young man's game, by and large, and the experience can be electrifying in a way that signing on can't. Riots are also terrifying, of course, and almost never a good thing.

If the riots come to this quiescent part of the country then I do know the revolution has started and that, unlike Gil Scott Heron's polemical jazz track, The Revolution will be televised.

Having said that, as Baudrllard once stated , this could be a simulacrum, reality erased.

I gave my cousin a biography of a cricketer, and a Jeremy Clarkson book, plus a cricket legends book, of which none so far has been read. He seems to be too glued to the telly or checking various internet sites to have time to read a book. This seems to be a problem of the modern age , in which there is too much distraction for moments like quietly reading a book. I love these moments where I can hide away from such electronic distractions and just simply immerse myself in the written word.

A number of postings done today , some this morning and the rest tomorrow before i go to Maidstone to do a mystery shop.In the end it will be ten packages of various shapes and sizes.

Tim is feeling very rough today. Not only has he got a sore throat, but also a headache, or head cold, and various other aches.I do feel sorry for him.

In the library. Picked up a couple of reservations -

Jean Baudrillard "Simulacra and Simualtion"

and

Terry Eagleton "The Function Of Criticism"


I have read the Baudrillard book some years back but no longer have it, so i thought I would use the library system to read this short philosophy book , as it came from Folkstone library.

In the post from Amazon  last week, Naomi Kline's "No Logo" . I have been meaning to read this book since it first came out but now i have it, picked up for a 1p plus postage!