Sub Rosa

Moby has hit the big time and seemingly untouched by the degeneration that is happening around him.  He has acquired his 'perfect punk-rock girl' i.e. a vegan-Doc Marten-wearing, mosh-pit surfing, pink-haired supporting, all-round pulchritudinous babe. Which on paper seems the absolute perfect soul mate, but in reality, is not hot on laughs or shared anecdotes (or, it seems even conversation). When a reclusive nerd meets someone who speaks even less and is more curt than he is, things become a bit of a problem. Abrupt to the point of being rude, she seemingly doesn't want to even hold his hand, though quickie airplane sex seems to be on the cards.

Poor Moby, invested much too much in this relationship and the writing is pretty much on the wall; 'I was starting all our conversations with the word "so" again: "So... how was work?" "So...do you want to have spaghetti tonight?" "So... would you do me a favour and kill me in my sleep so I can be spared the pain of waking up in this terrible relationship?"'

Moby - I feel your pain.

To give Moby his due, he does have a knack with words and has a deadpan delivery that has made me laugh out loud several times.  For instance the conversation with his dog Walnut, enticing it to play with a fellow pit bull; 'Walnut stared up at me, as if to say, "Really? Do I want to play with the giant psychopathic pit bull that eats glass for breakfast?  Best-case scenario, I get cold and muddy and the pit bull ignores me.  Worst-case scenario, I get slowly eaten by that monster' (p.236).  Love it - a very human-canine interaction here, more warmth with the dog than with the monosyllabic snotty Sarah.

I think he is at his most eloquent, whilst composing a track.  Conflicted about Sarah, he describes his musical arrangement and the prose just falls out of him.  This gives me more hope for the rest of the biography and I do take yesterday's critique back a bit.

Quote of the Day
He begins drinking after eight years of sobriety; 'We were in a windowless dive bar [...] with thick cigarette smoke in the air and an alphabet of hepatitis in the toilets' (p.259).

Approaching the last quarter of the book - now on page 300.

Dear Moby, dear, dear, dearest Moby.  This biography is not holding my attention.  I am half way through and am considering giving up.  I am trying, though other, more interesting books are enticing me to read beneath their covers.

He bemoans his lot in the UK, where as he is about to hit the big time, he is forced to shack up at a manky Brit B&B where the shower is 50p per 10 minutes of water. He is interviewd by Kiss FM and is seemingly stony and monosyllabic; 'I wanted to tell him, "I'm jet-lagged and staying in a charnel house that should have been levelled in World War II"' (p.155).

Amusing n' est ce pas?  Ah...I remember the days of badly-maintained guest houses in the arse end of nowhere too - but with a certain amount of nostalgia, it must be said.  Bearing in mind he slept in an abandoned factory and barely washed for so long - what was his problem?  However, he does set up the vibe of rave/acid house in its infancy, 'The show was in an old, venerable theatre, but it felt like a rave.  The air smelled like Vicks and the crowd were waving glow sticks and blowing airhorns and whistles' (p.156).

His musings on Britain - ' I had grown up seeing two different Englands on TV.  There was the bucolic England with witty university students floating on slow boats alongside waterborne flower petals on gentle rivers and sunny ponds.  Then there was this England, the rainy, cold England that was the background for any movie about defeated people waiting to die in public housing estates'. A Joy Division fan, he contemplates how different it would have been if Ian Curtis had ben 'born in Palo Alto (he'd) probably be managing a chain of oraganic coffee shops and married to a yoga teacher' (p.158-9).

See, Moby? That IS what I like about you - the chaining together of random ideas, of interesting (if a bit stereotypical) contrasts.  I don't mind well-placed humour or insightful thoughts - it's too much of the inane, real-time yaking that's boring me rigid.  If you want my opinion, you could have shortened it a lot bit and the whole book would have been immensely more readable and far more enjoyable.

Maybe, I have a chequered opinion on this, as a music fan and as a person who ordinarily liked his essays (anyone who has picked up his CDs has been treated to Moby's penned outlook on life).  I am not a former raver girl.  So, I have come to the conclusion that, unless you were an acid-house/raver warehouse participator, infused with various nineties narcotics, holding glo sticks aloft, then this biography is going to sink lower than an underbaked veggie souffle.

I'll stick with it for now, but Mobes....mate - you need to edit this :-/