I’ve been on holiday again. Completely absent from what is usually my reality. And I didn’t even have to leave the city. It seems funny that you can vanish so completely from a place that normally seems so small, where everybody knows everybody and a day doesn’t go by that you don’t bump into an acquaintance or friend unexpectedly – typically when you are looking exceptionally rough and are in a hurry and probably in some sort of pain which makes your salutary smile look twisted and morbid hence deepening the sense of social paranoia that we all seem to suffer from.

Anyway, I have been in a different world. A face of Glasgow that runs so closely parallel to the life and people I am used to but has never, until now, crossed over. It all feels normal though, as if nothing different has happened, like when you return home from a nice little jaunt to the ski resort or posh continental city or what-have-you and go back to your life as if nothing has changed. As if you were never affected or touched by your adventure. You have a vague sensation that for a little while something was altered but it is distant and almost inconsequential afterall.

But I am back now. Back to my people so to speak. Though it has been fun to self-indulgently flounce around this parallel world doing who knows what anymore. So why travel? My friend Clovis* is already planning his mad route for the summer, he just plunges into it with no money, a guitar and a bicycle, rides, plays, starves, gets rained on by weather and random bums and perverts but always resurfaces a couple of months later looking emaciated, tanned and shining from his very skin with the joy of the chase, that chase of life and (like myself this past week) self-indulgent freedom. Oh to allow oneself this behaviour all the time... (sigh) But, harrowingly, we have jobs and responsibilities, or I do at least.

My boss at work – Rudyard*, is a Shaman. He travels in his own head and swears by the enlightening and cathartic properties of LSD. Also, last night I met a girl called Claudia* who is a self-taught Shaman in training and seems to have a very different take on the whole concept. So as a consequence I felt myself to be totally ignorant of what it means to be an enlightened human being since nobody can even agree on a definition for that term. I just decided to drink Tonic wine and listen to music that makes me feel like my state of mind is actually part of the greater picture. We are all on different rails, or off them, but all coincide every so often.

I think I shall become a self-proclaimed Shaman and lead the world into a new awakening. No no, even better, I shall be Jesus and save your souls form the eternal inferno while Tom~ wastes our TYPE invoice slips and Robbie~ knocks the gunk out of the ink rollers as they bicker.

*The names of these individuals has been changed to protect their confidentiality
~The names of these individuals haven't been swapped for fun

This Week in 5 Words and a Book

Isabel was reading tea labels. Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

Robbie has built a greenhouse. Soul by Andrey Platanov

Tom coppiced for the railways. Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne

Music

#4 Come and see: Click here to open the TYPE 07/03/2010 spotify playlist to hear what we want you to listen to. May have nothing to do with seeing.

• Johnny Cash – The Man Comes Around
• Marlene Dietrich – Kisses Sweeter Than Wine
• Scout Niblett – Dare
• April March – Laisse Tomber Les Filles
• Pavement – Decouvert De Soleil
• Tom Paxton – What Did You Learn In School Today?
• Hans Appelqvist – Tänk Att Himlens Alla Stjärnor
• Neutral Milk Hotel – Naomi
• She Keeps Bees – Gimmie
• bhama – Girl In The Kafka T-shirt
• Daniel Johnston – I Saw Her Standing There
• PJ Harvey – Ballad of the Soldier's Wife
• Moondog – Bird's Lament
• Susumu Yokota – Plateau on Plateau
• Lightning Dust – Antonia June
• Casiotone For The Painfully Alone – Tonight Was A Disaster