Clash Guest Blog: Moby

Clash Guest blog returns with the gentle godfather of radio friendly techno: Moby. We managed to correspond with the man himself straight from his current tour which, for now, his him planted right in the centre of Latin America. So, here is Moby on Mexico.

Moby writes...

I'm writing this from Mexico City, where I'm currently on tour. Mexico City fascinates me... It's gigantic (I'm going to guess that it has a population of 20,000,000 people) and it's crowded, and the air is kind of grimy, and it's one of the few cities built inside of a volcano.

Ok, I should preface my musings on Mexico City by stating that I don't really know what I'm talking about. Well, apart from the fact that I'm here and I've read a few things about Mexico City over the years. I could go to Wikipedia and look up 'Mexico City' and be better informed, but I'm generally pretty comfortable with my ignorance, especially if my ignorance gives rise to non-factual information that might actually be more entertaining than the facts themselves. Facts should be immediately tossed out the window if they're not actually very interesting. Unless aforementioned facts pertain to medical procedures or driving directions.

Mexico City used to be a lake. A gigantic lake. Apparently in places... it's still a lake. And apparently the city's kind of floating over what used to be a gigantic lake. Most of that is probably true. Some of it might not be. But whenever I fly into Mexico City I look at the walls of the volcano in the distance and try to imagine Mexico City as a giant lake. It still kind of looks lake-like, although instead of being filled with water it's now filled with cars. Cars are kind of like water. Well, actually they're not at all like water. Maybe on a quantum level they are. Sort of. Again, probably not.

Mexico City is old. A few years ago I had a day off here and I went to some of the Incan (or Maayan. Or Toltec. Or i don't know) pyramids nearby. Fourty five minute drive and you're inside huge Native American pyramids. Fourty five minute drive from London and you're watching someone eat a curry. Fourty five minute drive from New York and you're on Long Island. Fourty five minute drive from Mexico City and you're looking at ancient stone carvings of jaguars. That's pretty cool, if you ask me. And our guide gave us some stones that had magic powers. They were probably polished rocks he'd bought at Wal-Mart, but i'm pretty happy working under the assumption that they were magic stones that helped me to commune with my ancestors.

Mexico City was called such by Andre Breton, the father of surrealism, 'the most surreal city on the planet'. I wonder if that was a compliment or an insult. The former, probably. A lot of the surrealists came here when surrealism tapered off in Europe. And trosky was killed here. Or nearby. Not that he was a surrealist. Or maybe he was, accidentally.

Mexico City is chaos. But yet everything sort of works. It's like someone very large was juggling 20,000,000 people and all their stuff, and then sneezed and scattered everything randomly. It's a city that shouldn't work, but yet it does work. Slowly, usually, and usually involving traffic congestion on mind-numbing scale. Tomorrow I have a show here. And then another show here the day after that. Two chances for me to try out my utterly dysfunctional Spanish. But apparently my accent is Ok. That's what they tell me. But people here are unfailingly polite, so my accent is probably crap. Ok, that's all i have on Mexico City.

Thanks,
Moby