2009

2009 in review. What might be a rambling, pointless and overlong review, much like that Deathspell Omega one somewhere here and you might wish I'd never put it up but what the hell, why not?

Things started well. Mostly. The 1st of the year started according to plan. Ihsahn ends A Grave Inversed with the closing riff on 21st Century Schizoid Man. I might be hearing things that aren't necessarily there. Yes, the years big shift was in finally getting out of jail. Finally saying fuck you, I don't need your job, a job or any job. Fucking awesome. I think I'd been building up to this for a while now with my serial jumping but I really enjoyed the final resignation. A bit more than when I quit Barclays.

This year was also great for trying new things and the opportunity. Thank you 2009. Nice of you.

I had an absolutely terrific holiday for 2 days in Suratkal. But it's Suratkal and an awesome holiday there is pretty much the default setting. That first morning was fucking epic. Thank you Kau. This was actually the only holiday I had. All other plans met with disaster and personal tragedy.

I finally met an old friend for the first time and lost all sense of proportion. It's been a pretty wild ride so far. Exhilarating even if a bit strange.

I lost my grandparents. It's not something I'm totally at peace about. Zen has not happened. It happened way too quickly. Like, what was the hurry? I'm a bit angry but mostly just sad. In other news I'm off to Mangalore next weekend for my third 13th day ceremony in the last 5 months. Terrible.

I heard a lot of music this year. More different shit than ever before. I didn't read much though, Hardly. I did read Toll the Hounds and Dust of Dreams in the same year. I'll read it this year too when it finally gets here and I get my own copy. Don't remember reading anything else with that much excitement. Saw some really fantastic movies but mostly I think 2009 was all about the music.

Oh, by the way I almost forgot. I turned 30 this year. I had no epiphany, no morning after sickness or revelation. I was just another day older.

I had a mostly sober year. Sober as in calm and peaceful at least when it came to hanging out with the boys. Wednesday nights meant going to Tavern a lot and we started a mid week pit stop. Weekends were spent mostly getting hammered but with very little driving around and behaving badly. It was pretty good.

My 2009 sounds a bit drab. I hit a guy. He was asking for it and he provoked me but I probably shouldn't have. Still, I felt pretty good once my heart went back to its normal rate.

Okay, After is an altogether different beast compared to the first two albums. There are elements but the Spiral Architect rhtyhm section seems to have more freedom here. Also the saxophonist adds a very avante garde feel to the sound. This is quite a dense piece of work from Ihsahn. It doesn't have the immediate catchy feel of Angl but I've been listening to it for a while now and it's mostly awesome. I think as good as Angl, probably better but also a bit different. This fellow's brilliant but I'm also totally digressing.

This year I would like to make a few changes. I don't know what exactly but I'll write about it here once I know. I'm quitting cigarettes as of tomorrow morning. I think it's big deal even if I've quit 4 times in 2009. I'm also going to take up swimming and yoga.

Coming back to 2009, it was a strange year. It was filled with chance and coincidences and weird skullfuck moments that more often than not ended with more skullfucking. I had some absolutely terrific highs and also some totally horrendous lows. I put my plans in place very nicely and everything turned out pretty fucking well but then I realised it wasn't really enough. I wanted different things and freedom only means something if you know what to do with it. Some of it worked, some flopped but I'm going to try it all. Like I said at the start, awesome.

Okay, it's back to being really cold. I'm going to go back downstairs. I hope I haven't forgotten some epochal moment. I don't think so. I also don't think I can give the past year any sort of rating. Too much happened. Good things and bad things that were not comparable to each other in any way. A year pretty much filled with some strange confusion. Like it wasn't sure which direction it wanted to go in. I managed as best I could although I did have a few moments of weakness.

If I had a chance to do it all over again I'd do the same shit all over again. I think that's a fair year.