I Heard The News Today...

An era has come to an end.

After fifty years as Dictatore Supremo of Cuba, Fidel Castro is stepping down. The fact that he's lived long enough to do so is, of itself, surprising, America having spent the last half-century trying - and, by various means, failing - to assassinate him. His governance has been a geopolitical constant for so long that ending it is akin to the demolition of the Berlin Wall or the collapse of the Soviet Union (an event which Castro himself survived, despite his reliance on their funds). The boards of history are being redrawn, one feels. We do not know what will happen next.

Human beings are narrow creatures. Deliberately or not, most of us spend our lives believing that the way things are now is the way they will always be, because ours is (surely!) the society for which the rest of history has been working. If we envisage future change, it tends towards one of four categories, viz:

1. Naively minimal - refining the status quo through better technology;
2. Hopefully progressive - hovercars, space travel, nuclear fission and green power;
3. Cynically dystopian - corruption and socio-economic divides after global cataclysm; or
4. Apocalyptic - end times, the Rapture, Ragnarok or other such death by explosion.

The problem with these models is twofold. Firstly, they are each contextually based on current perception: the naive minimalist doesn't comprehend the unknown; the hopeful progressive determines all future need based on currently percieved deficiencies; the cynical dystopian assumes that the worst of the status quo will endure; and the apocalyptic believes things are irrevocably going downhill. This is because - quite understandably - we cannot divorce ourselves from the present. It is foolish to assume that nothing of the current era will endure, but equally unreasonable to guess at what survives. There is, admittedly, nothing else to go on; and yet we forget the precariousness of predictions, assmuing (each in his own way) that this thing or that will never alter.

Secondly, however, is the problem of rogue elements - the ultimate catalysts for the above problem. There are several billion people on our planet, all of them acting individually and in hugely disparate circumstances. Throw in the necessity of coincidence, and it becomes impossible to tell what events are really shaping the future.

How, then, does any of this relate to Fidel Castro?

There are moments in life when we hear something new, experience something significant, and undergo the uneasy realisation that the world has altered; that our perceptions of future continuty, however intelligently founded a moment ago, are bunk. Often, these moments of epiphany are shared across a wide-ranging consciousness, sparked by a single event. John F. Kennedy's assassination. September 11. Man walking on the moon. The end of the French Revolution. And whenever it occurs, some small part of us is either rattled or elated: despite the breadth of global possibility, despite the laws of time and the passage of history, we had never really believed this thing could happen.

And now it has.

Life Is A Song

Music has been such an integral part of human culture for so long that describing why has become largely impossible. Asking why different songs can move us deeply is a bit like questioning why we have two eyes, or the reason for round planets - like trying to pin down the precicse mechanisms that result in love, the answer either varies from person to person or becomes an admission of intrinsicality, viz: It Just Does. Through a combination of music and lyrics (or sometimes just music, or sometimes - if we broaden our definition to encompass poetry and rap - just lyrics), music can perfectly express moods that we otherwise struggle to pin down, to such an extent that in this day and age, we may well refer someone to the iTunes store when asked about our day.

Which makes me wonder: what songs best define your personality?

Obviously, it's not an easy question. People are multifaceted, not to mention ever-changing. What described us perfectly at the age of 15 may no longer apply, while a ditty we adore now might bring shudders in a decade. But here, at least, is my attempt to self-describe through song.

Teenage Years:
Touched - VAST
Bohemian Like You - The Dandy Warhols
Goodbye To You - Michelle Branch

Politics:
Can't Buy Me Love - The Beatles
Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell
Loose Lips - Kimya Dawson

Whimsy:
Sand In My Shoes - Dido
A Place Called Home - Kim Richey
Love You - The Free Design

Happiness:
Release - George
Stevie - Spiderbait
19-20000 - gorillaz

Not Quite Wonderland

Dreams are strange and mischevious creatures.

Last night, for instance, I was conducting a one-woman raid on the palace of the Queen of Hearts. After escaping rising (and poisonous) floodlevels by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, I gained access to the upper gallery, where an ordinary broom, bristles dipped in a convenient puddle, became a weapon powerful enough to disintegrate the flesh of whomever it touched. My secret ingredient was ordinary water - while safe to me, the Cardfolk and their minions (variously giant attack dogs, Jabba-esque slugs and zombies) found it deadly. Which is odd, because, in the course of my adventures, I kept on finding glasses and bottles of the stuff in every room, ready for me to fling in the face of my next adversary.

After my first attempts were thwarted by zombie-staff, I discovered a secret passageway leading into a labryinth of winter passages, unleashing five benevolent ice-sprites in the process. Thus aided, I continued into the royal chambers, melting two dogs, a Jabba-creature, the King and, finally, the Queen herself, like the Wicked Witch of the West. By the time I reached the Chamber of the Bishop-Knave, I was running out of water. Old, feeble and bed-bound, my final quarry shouldn't have presented much of a problem, except that he tried to beg for mercy, to be left alive - crippled as he was, what harm could he do? Following some dream-logic, I explained this wasn't possible; that in order for the curse to be broken, he had to die as well. At that, he leapt up and attacked me, dodging whatever water I threw at him until, finally, he tripped and fell, allowing me to splash a final glassful in his eyes and run.

Outside, I headed uphill through a maze of dark and narrow streets, which, instinctively, I recognised as belonging to Old London. A light snow was falling, and although I knew where I was supposed to go, the way proved to be a dead end. Then the ground began to shake, and a giant stone horse, ridden by a giant stone rider - a stentorian version of a statue in Trafalgar Square, silhouetted against an overlarge and misplaced Nelson's Column - came to life. It had been sitting between two narrow, black Victorian townhouses, and as they strode past where I was hiding (I had to move, twice, to avoid the hooves) I saw a staircase revealed behind their former resting place.

Running over, I climbed the stairs, baulking at a passing zombie - unnecessarily, as he apparently couldn't see me. The stairs became a ladder: one half of a sheer, almost vertical wooden watchtower straddling a river on either side, with a tiny, unsheltered platform at the top. It was here I waited and, looking west, saw a kind of ever-present sunrise/sunset on the horizon. A single ray of light fell back down where Old London had been, illuminating instead a field, a wood and a save-sphere (mentally stolen from Final Fantasy X). Relieved and tired, I climbed back town, dodged a final zombie-traveller, and saved my progress by a wooden noticeboard covered with multi-coloured sheets of paper. I kept one eye firm on the menu which had popped up across my right-hand vision, until it finally informed me that my data had, indeed, been saved beyond corruption.

Then I woke up.