We’re making plans to meet up and talk about features and things for this site and future issues, and it all feels exciting again. After the hyperaction of getting the mag together, the lull while it got printed, and the proud-of-us-all feeling that finally descended on me after the launch party last week (it took a while, I don’t know why), it’s now all about what next, how to sustain this momentum. Juana Molina’s singing gently, backed by swooping, questioning analogue synths, and I’m thinking, wow, Sophie Heawood should interview her. New people are writing to me with great suggestions, and I’m actually writing back promptly, with words like ‘YES! Jack Rose rules!’ I’m actually harassing press officers myself, rather than the other way around, and, even better, there seems to be some lovely music in the air. Susanna and the Magical Orchestra’s new album, for one. Sweet, sweet stuff. I read that Richard Youngs just did a record with the drummer from Scatter, and that makes me really happy. I have a listen to Shystie’s album; think how much I’d like to get her and Miss AMP in the same room, chatting. Not so hard; we all live in the same bit of London. Can’t wait to pull all these strands together. I’m even looking forward to the inevitable arguments and misunderstandings.

I’m also looking forward to the next issue of Strange Attractor Journal http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/ , which I hope our contributor Mark Pilkington will be pulling together shortly; the next Loose Lips, of course; the always welcome issue of Bust http://www.bust.com/ , the only women’s mag a woman actually might, y’know, want to read, apart from of course this little gem, http://www.sweetactionmag.com/ , to which my wife and I are considering taking out a subscription, although I’m not sure I want to pay to look at hot hipster boys when, with a little effort, one can look at them for free in one’s own London borough. I’d rather pay for some useful information; London’s full of doe-eyed emo fuckup eye candy already, and the NYC/LA/SF versions are not that different, at first glance anyway.

But until Sweet Action shows up, I’m curing my insomnia by re-watching The Holy Mountain, late at night, wishing I had someone to shout “HOLY SHIT LOOK AT THAT AAAHAHAHAAAAHAA!” with at the appropriate moments. However, those moments come with such frequency that in the end I was just muttering it to myself and making those vague noises of disbelief only induced by the lines sight of…what was it? The alchemical transformation scene? The factory making toys to encourage kids to hate Peru? The hippo? Neptune, chief of police? The snake in the woolly jumper? The Pantheon Bar? The guy who conquered the mountain horizontally? The peyote/whatever scene in the ceremonial ball court of Monte Alban? All of the above? Probably. Afterwards I dream, appropriately, of strange goings-on in the Pyrenees.

Now if I can just wake up to the fact that I have to do my Day Job also, and stop running around the house drinking coffee and having ideas to the sound of Albert Ayler while I’m supposed to be working, things might be even better. I mean, I might have a bit more money and stuff. But really. Last night I found a homemade gold-green gauze circle-skirted party dress on the pavement outside Oxfam, which fits me like it was made for me (yes, I am going to go in and pay them for it, yes yes) and has no rips, defects or suspicious stains. If you don’t see that as a sign that the universe will provide, then clearly you need to refine your worldview somewhat.