Onward!!

It was loud, rowdy, boisterous and fun. The annual intercollegiate Geography pub quiz completely exceeded my expectations. We managed to get teams from LSE, UCL and Royal Holloway to take part. UCL dominated the room with their antics (including stealing the prize trophy halfway through the quiz) but in the end Royal Holloway triumphed as winners (among much booing, which wasn’t so nice).

It was amazing meeting other society committees. I can’t believe how normal the other colleges are – for a moment I could forget the endless LSE posing and just concentrate on having fun and let go. By the end of the night the floors were sticky, my coat and papers (which I had foolishly left in a folder on the floor when I had taken our round of questions out) were wet and I had a busted knuckle which has never happened before. Not that I was in a fight – far from it – I just knocked it on something while organizing.

The UCL committee were brilliant, vibrant people. I am really looking forward to doing stuff with them in conjunction with our student societies and hopefully personally as well. It’s hard to pinpoint where exactly they differed from the typical LSE student, but you just end up with a feeling of “they’re ‘normal’” and “they aren’t”. If you’ve ever been in the same situation you’ll know.

Big up to UCL for the crazyness, to Holloway for coming all the way down and to LSE for bravely taking part among the hordes of physical geographers. I had fun, I hope everyone else did as well.

Some friends of mine have picked up squash and managed to convince me to try it as well. I was wary of running back and forth in a narrow room whacking a ball at a wall but it turned out to be really good fun, and a serious workout. I am definitely going again, since I want to take advantage of the university’s cheap facilities, and a racket doesn’t seem to be too expensive.

Since I’m not the sports person of the year by a long shot, it was an interesting experience to discover the presence of muscles I had no idea I possessed. During the two hours after our game I spent in the computer lab, I realized I must have pulled a muscle as my back stiffened and started hurting like crazy. I must have been a hilarious sight, unable to bend myself forward to get out of the chair and once I had managed to do so, hobbling around like an old man.

Fortunately, I had a friend helping me out. For all the good things she did, she deserved to laugh at me panting and complaining. Another, medically-trained, friend told me over MSN not to worry and directed me to this stuff, which are incredible at killing pain. I can’t believe they’re over-the-counter. He also told me to keep as mobile as possible, so we set off by foot towards Old Street to sample a Norwegian friend’s waffles. I had intended to walk part of the way but eventually managed the whole distance, a little over 2 kilometres, despite freezing every now and then with breath-stopping cramps down my back.

I met some really nice new Norwegians who study at the LSE. It was great being served waffles by beautiful girls without having to get up from the sofa due to my back! I had never tried the combination of brunost and strawberry jam, but it works surprisingly well. If you get the chance, you should try it without hesitation. The other non-Norwegian in the room, a Welshman, was not as adventurous, though we all tried to persuade him otherwise; he preferred Nutella.

I can’t wait to get back to a state where every movement doesn’t elicit sharp breaths from between clenched teeth to play some more. It’s not procrastination if it’s physical activity, right? Not that I have time to procrastinate, either. I have three weeks to complete assessed essays, prepare presentations and do a smattering of other “lesser” work.

I handed in an essay today that I thought was a total disaster. I spent way too much time on it considering I could have probably gotten it to the same state in half the time if I would have applied myself and concentrated on getting it presentable. I’m not looking for a perfect grade here, but still it’s annoying handing in something you’re not exactly proud of.

But then again unexpected results can crop up: I got an incomprehensibly high grade with verbal commendations from the professor on an International Political Theory essay I wrote, and that was an essay that I was dreading getting back.

Now I just need to apply myself to doing several other essays, and this time the grades I get actually count.

I’m totally spent. During the last week, I’ve been out four nights, catching shows and doing other fun stuff. I already wrote about one of them, but quite honestly I don’t think I could do another full post on Earth and do it justice. What I would need now is some stability and relaxation, maybe some TV with friends, and definitely a lot of sleep. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed every night, and for once really felt the perks of living in London, but having to concentrate on essays now is a pretty exhausting thought.

Earth, then? They played material both from Hex (Or Printing in the Infernal Method) and the new album, The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull. It’s cool how material off Hex really conjures images of desert America and those long pans of spaghetti western movies. The newer material is more conventionally-structured while retaining the repetitive droning that is the trademark of the group, and at least for me worked really well. It seemed the audience loved it too, as they cheered noticeably loud every time the new album was mentioned. What surprised me was that the band members themselves were selling merchandise both before and after the show. I chatted briefly with Don McGreevy who was really friendly and for lack of a better term, appreciative of my appreciation. I also got myself an absolutely sick Earth “Raven” t-shirt. I can’t remember the last time I’ve bought merchandise at a show.

I’ve been on a Southern Lord binge this last week, and it has rekindled my interest in actively seeking out new music. That’s cool, but my wallet is crying already.

Incredibly loud, visceral, spiritual. Trying to write a review of a Wolves in the Throne Room concert is like running out of words at the starting line. It is nothing like the experience of listening to their records, for a start. It transcends genres and pushes the boundaries of music. It has left me moved, dizzy and cathartic.

I guess I could start describing the experience in that it was as if all the humming of the wind in the trees, the crashing of storm-whipped waves of all the oceans crashing onto rocky shores at once, all the buzzing of insects and all the rumbling of the powers within the Earth were amplified hundred-fold, creating a distorted, bass-filled wall of sound that stretched from wall to wall and eternity and back. Varying in pitch and intensity, the sound was only pierced by the drumwork that kept it together, and the not-of-this-world vocalizations. For an hour or so, the audience stood transfixed, experiencing the throes of a planet in flux. The band stepped on stage wordlessly, channeled the noise through several harrowing movements (I hesitate to call them “songs”) and left again, without uttering another word. It felt like they had been there for only a fleeting moment, such was the enveloping power of the aural force.

“Vastness and Sorrow” was so incredibly powerful that I started imagining myself somewhere far away, my eyes closed and my head swaying to the undulating rhythm underlying the piece until the conclusion. Most of the audience stood transfixed throughout the experience. The epic “I Will Lay Down My Bones Among the Rocks and Roots”, played in two distinct parts, built up such a cathartic crescendo in me that I do not know of a previous occasion that I’ve experienced music in quite the same way. It was definitely a function of the sheer volume and visceral gut-wrenching as well as the song structures themselves – I assume that seeing Sunn O))) live would be a similar experience.

If you look up Wolves in the Throne Room, don’t let yourself be limited by the labels of “black metal” and “metal”. They are only the starting point of the music Wolves in the Throne Room create. Their work goes far beyond genre boundaries, into something that manages to touch you somewhere in your soul, in a way that is both terrifying and beautiful and moving at the same time. I don’t care if you think these opinions are daft and my way of describing the gig pompous and over the top. That’s how I felt and that’s cool.