Brains should come with working Garbage Collectors.

[hirez]

For $reasons some bright spark from the telly played an unexpected burst of 'Pop looks Bach'. As is usual I was taken with a feeling of mild terror and that odd shiver up the back that happens when you listen to something really very good. ('Do something right' by Arcwelder, f'rinstance. Or Autobahn or Kerosene or...)

I pottered off to the machine room and listened to several versions on the Youtubes. The mild terror is gone because I'm really too old to be worrying about Physics homework now, and it seems to me that the original version is easily the best one.

Elsewhere, this is fine stuff. (via omnicognate chiller I think)

I must admit that I am a fan of spectacularly non-traditional home decor: Tread-plate, kitchen Kawasakis, home media servers that come in 19" racks, a PA plugged into the telly (when your house is a semi-regular gig venue, having your own PA is perfectly sensible), breezeblock bookshelves, paintings stacked n-deep against the walls, stoves made from scrap... It's all good. In its place.

For instance, the thing about scrubbed tables. They're lovely. I've got one. It belonged to my grandparents and if I had a larger house I'd probably crank its handle and discover that the screw-drive has rusted to bits. And the chairs. They're all Utility items. (apart from the GWR waiting room one) For objects made as cheaply and with as little waste as possible in the 1940s, they've done jolly well. However, one could only get away with anything more 'shabby chic' (Which, fuck you) if the rest of the building was some Mies van der Rohe knockoff. Anywhere else and it would look like you really dug living in a squat. To me, this is all entirely obvious and organic. It seems to me that for the people in the above tumblr it is completely non-obvious and they've made a sequence of buggers of the job.

I'm not sure I have a point here.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

So I guess it's wrong that I rather liked almost all those rooms in the photos. I would gladly own an Eames coat rack.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Nope. That's the wonder of interior design - I know damn fine that all the stuff that works for me only works for me.

I think the 'problem' I have with that sequence of interiors is that they're rather too 'studied' - there's an almost Ballardian feeling about them which makes me think that someone's forgotten the 'living in' part of 'Machines for living in'.

Of course, my own choices are equally studied. The notion of an authentic experience is inherently ludicrous.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Yes, some of them do look entirely too hipster chic and self-congratulatory.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

Is what you have interior design, or just an organically developed interior comprising Stuff That Takes Your Fancy? My home is an exterior representation of my brain. Dusty corners, eclectic ornamental bits and pieces, furniture of many different types and ages, piles of Stuff/books lying about haphazardly, and shabby decor (walls are what hold the ceiling up and are for attaching things to. What, I have to think about them as things in their own right?).

FWIW, whilst all my friends' homes have aspects I like/love/admire, yours is the only one that I connect with in a sort of "this environment is related to me".

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Well, yes. The optimal end-point of Collecting Stuff is obviously Snowshill Manor. I suspect I was warped by a visit to the place at an early age.

(And ta very much indeed.)

[nmg.livejournal.com]

ias has been yearning for an Eames rocking chair for some time, and we bought the garklet a knock-off kid's version of the Eames coat rack for Christmas. In some circles, this probably counts as child abuse.

In some of the photos, the thing being criticised isn't the thing that I think should be. For example, fuck your arco floor lamp (http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/post/16926295148/fuck-your-arco-floor-lamp): the problem isn't the lamp, nor the Barcelona chair, it's the bloody Stevie Nick poster.

[easterbunny.livejournal.com]

Same. I want to turn my home into a sanctuary for wayward terrariums.

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

I like terrariums. There was one in the waiting room of the Doctor's surgery we used when I was a kid. Or there was until my brother knocked it off the low table it was on and smashed it.

Terrariums and toddlers don't mix.

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/

http://catalogliving.net for more of the similar.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

"Omnicognate" - heeee! I am keeping that one. That's a good'un. Thank you!