In a bid to escape the repetitive ket-flavoured nightmare of another tech-house clubnight a young clubber has resigned himself to a night of watching paint dry.
James Marsh, who has spent every weekend for the last two years swaying slightly to DJ sets that never really go anywhere with other k-heads, decided that a more exciting way to spend his time was to paint some walls and spend several hours watching the drying process.
“It’s the best night I’ve had in years, I painted the room two colours white and red then I just flopped into a chair and gazed excitedly as invisible air molecules imperceptibly dry the paint over the course of the evening.”
“I was putting bets on with myself about how long it would take,” explained Marsh, “Would it take 2 hours? 3 hours? It was edge of the seat stuff as you can imagine I’m sure! I also wanted to see which dried quicker, the white or the red, you wouldn’t get that kind of excitement from Patrick Topping!”
James claims that after several “mindblowingly exciting hours” he brought the evening to a shuddering crescendo by having a cup of tea and a Marmite sandwich in total silence by himself.
“You really don’t know the excitement of watching two different coloured paints air dry on a wall until you’ve spent the best part of your twenties listening to mind crushingly same-y tech house tracks in fashionable warehouse raves.”
“At one point in the night, probably the highlight for me if I’m honest, I tested how dry the paint was with my finger…I’ll never forget it, I walked slowly up to the white part of the wall and tentatively placed the tip of my index finger against it,” he gushed. “Not being able to feel if it was wet I then examined my finger and there was nothing there, no wetness or anything!”
“It was an amazing feeling moments later when I then placed my entire palm against the red wall not really expecting it to be wet but I pulled my hand away and it was covered in redness! White dried quicker than red, it was stunning, I’ll never forget it.”
James insists that he’s not going slowly mad and has only been forced into this behaviour by how bored he is with the static clubbing scene but that he plans to go to even greater lengths to explore possibilities of mindless drudgery outside of tech house.
“I was thinking of rolling a boulder up a hill forever, or one I heard they do in the Gulag, moving piles of rocks from one place to another for 8 hours a day!” he concluded. “How brilliant, I’d love to see Tale of Us try do a remix of that!!
