Putting together music for tonight’s White Mischief DJ stint. It’s a steampunk-themed event, so I’ve been thinking about what a steampunk disco might actually sound like. I’ll spin the usual showtunes and cabaret fare, but this time I’m keen to try a bit of Philip Glass… Songs From Liquid Days? Mishima? Have to be careful not to play the stuff that reminds people of ads for electricity companies.

Maybe some 80s Nyman, like the frantic ‘Angelfish Decay’ from A Zed And Two Noughts, which did funny things to my brain in 1986 and still does now. Or a waltz from Drowning By Numbers. Perhaps the ‘Ice Dance’ from Edward Scissorhands, or some of Murray Gold’s widescreen scene-setting from Doctor Who. I’m rather fond of ‘Song For Ten (Original Version)’, from the end of The Christmas Invasion. It’s that Phil Spector-esque song which plays while David Tennant chooses his costume from the TARDIS wardrobe.

And then I could follow with ‘Dirty Business’ by the Dresden Dolls and ‘Eight Steps’ by Electrelane. And, and, and…

The Fall’s ‘Kurious Oranj’ (Peel Session Version) also has something of the steampunk about it to my mind. Hmm. Maybe.

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Yesterday: to Claudia Andrei’s to help weed her backyard of the sprawling ‘Evil Dead’-like branches and thorns there. It’s one occasion I regret not owning any jeans. The only rough trousers I have are thin jogging bottoms, which are no protection when kicking against such horticultural pricks. I come away with few thorn-inflicted wounds to my legs, and have to scrabble for the Germolene and plasters. Still not going to buy a pair of jeans any time between now and the grave, though. Thinking of bleach-blond gardeners brings to mind Kim Wilde. As I snap away with the secateurs, I wonder if I look like Kim Wilde from a distance. I suppose everyone looks like Kim Wilde from a distance, if you go far away enough.

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Emails:

I’ve been enjoying your diary since circa 2000… I wanted to thank you for so many years of quality tales and insights into Bohemian living… Also, thank you for the recent direction to Sebastian Horsley’s written work. I’m half way through ‘Dandy in the Underworld’ now and enjoying it thoroughly. I can certainly see why it makes it onto your now ‘essentials only’ bookshelf.

Maggi Hambling also praises Sebastian’s remarkable memoir in her Telegraph profile this week.

And here’s Sebastian himself on YouTube, spouting his polarising aphorisms.

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Had a couple of ‘viral marketing’ enquiries, asking if I’d be interested in hosting video ads alongside my diary entries. Though I could do with the money, it’s not really my sort of thing. Even if it’s for a product or cause I’d happily endorse, it’d just feel out of character. The Web is stuffed with adverts enough as it is.

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From: alex pollard

Hello. I am an artist (painter mainly) from glasgow… my work can be seen on www.sorchadallas.com… i have been asked to make new work for a show in Whitechapel in London and i was thinking that i might make a black and white painting of yourself (rendered in black make-up a little like the italian mannerist painter arcimboldo)… i’ve just realised that i can print images from your gallery section and they are a good quality of dpi. I intend to start work on some paintings soon – i was wondering whether you would be interested in seeing the outcome.

Consider me interested. I exist to be photographed or painted. I’m the opposite of that Native American concept about photographs stealing one’s soul.

I cope better in images than I do in real life.

I have been asked to remind the world that orders for the Fosca live CD have to be in by this Sunday 11th.

It’s a limited affair, and this is the only way of acquiring a copy. Includes artwork and photos from the But Is It Art? aesthetes, and liner notes from myself.

Here’s the link:

http://butisitart.org/Fosca_Concert

Have been feeling tired and consumptive lately (well, coughing heavily). Much of it is down to sheer lack of discipline. I think if you set your own schedule you’re more tempted to fill the day with putting things off, going on whole shopping trips for single items, and generally not getting anything done. Today I have to be in Piccadilly at 10am for breakfast with various bohemian friends. So I find myself getting up and dressed by 8am with no problem at all, as opposed to whole days spent languishing about in my dressing gown idly surfing the Web, suddenly noticing it’s 3pm. Funny how you get more things done when you’re already busy doing other things.

A friend once told me he didn’t trust any bands who made music full-time. ‘Hobbyist bands are more passionate about their work. And more prolific.’

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Some final leftover thoughts from the Stockholm weekend. The Saturday was spent strolling around the various islands and cafes of the city with FB Niklas, Ylva and Matt. We paid a visit to ‘Sosta’, the city’s best espresso bar (worth noting) and the fantastic Moderna Museet, the Museum Of Modern Art. Lots of great daubings from the usual suspects: Picasso, Dali, Magritte, Miro, Picabia, Bacon. An early Antony Gormley: this time, his body-cast figure is crouched halfway up the gallery wall. Children passing through the gallery must surely think he’s Spider-Man. Once again, I think how I’m far better acquainted with Mr Gormley’s nude body than I am with my own.

The museum’s signature exhibit is Robert Rauschenberg’s Monogram – the stuffed goat in a car tyre, with its painted muzzle. [you can look at the thing from 18 different angles on the museum website – search for ‘Monogram’]

Other favourite works in the permanent collection include Isaac Grünewald’s portrait of Ulla Bjerne, dressed in her ‘garconne’ dandy style.

Plus Anish Kapoor’s Mother As A Void, a huge blue egg-like sculpture baffling the eye and ear. Speak in front of it, and your voice suddenly sounds stark and skeletal, as if you’re suddenly singing back-up on a Joy Division album. Try looking inside the mouth from a close angle, and the surface is so smooth the eye is tricked into thinking the object is completely solid rather than hollow.

Here’s a view from a window in the museum, me attempting artiness again with my suit and tie reflected below the harbour:

While Lea and Gemma were getting married back in London, I was shopping in the museum shop for a nice card to give them. Plumped for a Japanese art card featuring two rabbits exchanging hearts.

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Here’s the interview I did in that sky-high restaurant, with a few more photos:

http://www.digfi.com/default.aspx?id=11253

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Thursday night: to the 166th Annual General Meeting of the London Library . Never been to an AGM before, but I happened to be in the Library as it was about to begin. And as some staff members smiled and beckoned me from tables of drinks and nibbles, I decided to attend. Chatted to fellow Library members and writers, such as Auden biographer Richard Davenport-Hines.

As I’d imagined it was a genial, old-fashioned, well-dressed crowd; lots of suits, and more than a few cravats and pocket-square handkerchiefs. I was told some previous AGMs had lasted 15 minutes and attracted about ten members. This one took two hours, with about two hundred people crammed into the Reading Room. Many had to perch on the balconies for the duration.

The item responsible was the drastic rise in the yearly membership fee, from £210 to £375. For the last few years, the Library has been subsidising its own members from its various financial investments and reserves. Turns out this can’t go on any longer, hence the fee increase to cover the true running cost. For those who can’t afford the full cost (such as myself), they will increase their concessionary grant resources accordingly. Makes sense to me. It’s still cheaper than the average London gym membership, points out one member.

The rise is ‘exceptional but necessary’, says the Library’s President, Tom Stoppard. Sir Tom was unable to attend but had a pretty good excuse: he’s in NYC overseeing the Broadway opening of his latest play Rock ‘N’ Roll, and has put on a fundraising performance over there for the Library. His message cited a speech by his predecessor TS Eliot at the 1952 AGM: ‘the disappearance of the London Library would be a disaster to civilisation.’ Added Stoppard, ‘We must not let it not happen on our watch’.

There were some strongly dissenting opinions in the audience, not least from a former Treasurer who read several sheets of notes detailing his concerns, even offering to donate his own savings to help cover the deficit. But when it came to the vote to confirm the new fees – via raised hands – the ‘aye’s had it. Then everyone filed out to a lot of acquiescent sighing noises. ‘Massed sighs of bookish acquiescence’: I should have captured that as a sound effect.

For my part, I’m rather excited about the forthcoming expansions to the building, including a new common room with coffee facilities and a rooftop reading room with a skyline view. The Cataloguing Room has already been freed up to provide extra study desks. The Lovely Labyrinth: because it’s worth it.

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Friday night: to the Colony Room with Sebastian Horsley, his girlfriend Rachel, and Rachel’s white bison frise dog, Charley. (Sebastian H: ‘it’s essentially a tampon on a leash’).

Seeing dogs walked in the Soho streets is unusual, even cute little fluffy dogs. Though I look the way I do, and Sebastian looks the way he does (today with a towering top hat and plush dandy suit), when it comes to eliciting a reaction from passers-by, Charley upstages us both. As we walk to the Colony from his flat, young women out on the town stop and stroke Charley, making the kind of noises echoed elsewhere at firework displays across the city: ‘Oooh! ‘Ahh!’

Says Horsley, ‘I had no idea a small dog could be such a babe magnet.’

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I love that while others are blogging about the new Joss Whedon series, the new Girls Aloud album, or the unfolding media morality tale of Heather Mills McCartney, I’m blogging about the London Library AGM. With the phrase ‘babe magnet’ in the same entry.

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Modern Halloween in the USA. Blogger Scythrop reports on teenagers on his doorstep:

If you can’t take your mobile phone away from your ear to say “Trick or Treat!” … you’re not gettin’ much from me.