2026 PLAYLIST No 9 - Trinidad by Geese

Geese - Trinidad

The opening track of Geese's Getting Killed, Trinidad, is a barbed wire infested cacophony that is up their with the early work of The Birthday Party for something scary heading your way. It starts off innocent enough with a gently voiced blues fired admission that ' I try ', sung repeatedly, but then the car crash begins. Cranging guitars angle grind through some metal, and Cameron Winter starts loudly declamining like someone demented that 'There's a bomb in my car'.Yeah, this is not your average bit of easy on the ear indie, this has nerves of steel, and the brawn of devils. As he admits to murdering his family and then driving away. I love this, mostly because they dared to open their album with this, which makes the rest of it seem a beautiful stroll in a park, by comparison.

MY OWN WALKING - April Journal 2026

'I started questioning how loyal I have been to my own suffering'

 Vinny Ferraro

I've been listening and reflecting, as part of my daily practice in the morning, to an interview Dan Harris did with Vinny Ferraro on his 10% Happier You Tube channel. I've recently shared this elsewhere on this blog. Ferraro is an American Buddhist teacher whose approach to practice I'm appreciating. In it he said the sentence above. Are we all too loyal to our suffering, do we take everything that happens to us far far too personally? 

A friend of mine once stated that worldly reality was not malicious, vengeful or doing things deliberately to thwart and make you suffer. Worldly reality was actually indifferent to what we think about it, what you think you want from it, what you desire and wish for. Doesn't care one jot about any of that. And that is really what makes our suffering so existentially painful. It would be so much easier if we could believe it was a result of a God expressing their displeasure with us. But actually, out there, there are simply circumstances and conditions into which we step and throw in some of our own, and sometimes what happens is favourable, and at other times it is not. 

Instead of this creating an ability in us to maintain some distance and perspective, we tend to become completely intoxicated with the tragic nature of our suffering. The words we surround our suffering with, like tragic, egregious, fatal, terminal, persistent, malignant, long suffering, degrading, decimating - all inform you of the narrative framework of hatred, aversion and resistance we place our suffering within. We don't like our suffering, obviously, but it is all ours nonetheless. As it becomes ever deeper entwined in the possessiveness of - I, Me & Mine.

Buddhist teachings usually suggests you find ways of learning to see the nature of reality as it is, rather than how you want it to be. It's not easy, by any means, as we can so quickly be swept away on the wings of our desires. The American Zen teacher Charlotte Joko Beck, would say that Buddhist meditation practice was all about cultivating a bigger container for our experience. Making us able to hold more of our experience without wanting to push or run away from it. That has to include our suffering, not just the nice stuff.  There is a way of staying loyal to our suffering that isn't clinging and possessive, but is instructive and potentially liberating. 

In June this year, it will be two years since my heart attack. And this was undoubtedly one helluva huge wake up call. Suddenly mortality was top of the agenda. I think about this in someway every day, it's not something you forget easily. But I am also aware of the experience now becoming part of the normal background noise of my life, and perhaps it is losing a bit of its cutting edge as a result.  It's slowly drifting into the usual human pattern of fully experiencing the suffering, you survive it, you move on, and then slowly forget what it's taught you. You cease remaining loyal to your suffering as that potent reminder of your mortality, what that suffering has taught you, the moment your desire to totally move on from it closes the door too firmly behind you. Consigning it to the dungeon of the past.

And in a sense Buddhist practice itself, encourages you to avoid unhelpfully dwelling upon anything negative or unwholesome. It can in the name of not unhelpfully dwelling fall into a similar tendancy of moving on too quickly. To forget how a closer reflection on the state of suffering itself can be instructive. Meditation practice can certainly enable you to live through difficult experiences with a higher degree of calm or equanimity, yet leave the causes and symptoms, unexamined, And unexamined suffering if it becomes buried, can exist like an angry gremlin in the depths of your psycho-physical body.

I've been aware lately that there's a layer of life experience I'm reticent to look into. Though I've had friends, there is a lonely way of being within me that has its roots in childhood bullying, that formed a tendency to withdraw into a self contained mode whenever the outside world got too difficult or challenging. I think of myself now as being good at being alone with myself, and in the present day that is mostly true. But there was a time in the past where I was lonely and was less settled and at peace with who I am. And that experience still exists within me, I sense the shadow of it, emotionally tender, largely unexamined and unprocessed.

There is a way of staying loyal to the experience of suffering, that avoids becoming embroidered into the detailed fabric and design of your personal tapestry. The habitual way you think about and interpret your life experiences. Once the suffering experience has abated somewhat, it can be slightly easier to just observe the suffering in retrospect. Still in touch with what you have just been through, but less inclined to be totally taken in by it. But to do that effectively does require us to become that bigger container for our experience, able to hold the pain and suffering we encounter without becoming painfully embroiled in it all over again. To hold the suffering like an archeological artifact you've unearthed and make informed judgements about it's age and provenance, and how it fits into the framework of the internal story you tell about yourself.  And in time, to see through the state of suffering itself, by loosening the ties to I Me & Mine we have previously forged.

2026 PLAYLIST No 8 - Au Pays Du Cocaine by Geese

Geese - Au Pais du Cocaine

Geese appear to have landed in the catagory of becoming the much lauded saviours of guitar based music - 2026 edition. Which is probably the sort of albatross most bands would not want strung around their neck. That they have achieved a level of success without fully capitulating to the mainstream music industry, is a tiny bit miraculous. However, with the album Getting Killed they have broken big, because this album is really just too damned good. It's their fourth, and judging by a cursory check through of their back catalogue, it is indeed a seismic shift in their overall sound and originality. What first caught my attention was this -Au Pais du Cocaine. It's a plaintive song, goodness knows what it's about. Drug or love addiction take your pick. Cameron Winter's flexes his vocals,  channeling a Rufus Wainwright vibe, which gives any song it graces a quality of world weary languor. But whatever this song is, it's compulsive listening. Can't quite get to through day without a touch of it.

FEATURE - Vinny Ferraro Interview

Vinny Ferraro Interview

I came across Vinny Ferraro quite recently, and what a joyful and insightful being he is. Big beaming face, very down to earth and a wonderful fully inhabited Brooklyn accent. I've listened to this twice, once all the way through, and then daily using bits of it for my morning reflections. He has had, by his own admission a tough early life, which he talks about during this interview. His central themes about spiritual practice here are - not taking what happens to you personally - trying to resolve issues you've inherited from your upbringing and family ancestry - how to deal better with your anxiety and mental tendencies - learning how to realign your focus - becoming more equanimous towards what happens to us and around us, so we can, as he pithly puts it,' become unfuckable with'.  And a whole lot more.

2026 PLAYLIST No 7 - Sherpa by Angine de Poitrine

Sherpa - Angine de Poitrine 

Now at first glance you might be thinking, what's with the gimmicky black and white dotted costumes, makeup, the golden triangle insignia etc. This all feels rather too contrived, its weirdness feels arch, does it not? This is the experimental rock duo Canadian group Angine de Poitrine, formed six years ago. Their nom de plumes are - Klek the drummer and Khn the micro tonal guitar and bass player. They recently released their second album, but have suddenly become something of an internet sensation.. 

Their music is built out of repetition, of layering guitar lines over one another, sometimes shifting delightfully into atonality, that suddenly erupt into a straight slab of rock or jazz riffery.  Occasionally there's a sonically altered vocal like a Star Wars alien. There music has an insanely driven quality. When they hit their full stride they are an irresistible force. As I watch them I think - would this feel any different if they weren't dressed in so avant guarde a fashion? And the answer is yes, but the music they produce would remain interesting. You might start to take it more seriously. The presentation may feel deceptively a daft parody, but it is constantly in a dialogue with the music. Weirdness meeting weirdness.

I think its best to conceive of the costumes as all part and parcel of an elaborate performance art piece, and the music as radically anti any convention or musical genre you might want to bag them in.  Sherpa, with it's Arabic tinged chord sequence is about as strikingly original as they come. It is quintessentially them. Angine de Poitrine, incase you were wondering, is French for Angina Pectoris. Chest pain in other words. Whether they will surpass their internet fame and have legs longer term, who can say? Will the masks eventually have to come off?

FINISHED READING - Inside The Flower Garland Sutra by Ben Connelly

The Avatamsaka Sutra, is literally a vast text fifteen hundred pages in length. it is by its very Mahayana nature frequented by baroque levels of spiritual embellishment that can be intensely flowery in their expression. It is a central Buddhist text of Chinese. Japanese and Korean Buddhism. Uisang, a Huayan Buddhist monk from seventh century Korea, created a succinct text called The Seal Of The Huayan One Vehicle Dharma Realm, which is a summation of the main themes of the Avatamsaka. The Huayan approach to Buddhism has attempted to make a working synthesis of early Buddhist teachings with those of the Mahayana, hence why it refers to itself here as the One Vehicle.

Over the centuries it has formed the text into the pictographic form shown below. They took its full name, The Seal Of the Huayan One Vehicle Dharma Realm, and shortened it to The Ocean Seal Chart.This displays the thirty lines of the The Seal in one continuous arrangement, designed to start at the centre with the Chinese character for Dharma, cycling around a twisting maze of lines to end up back at the centre concluding with the character for Buddha. This I find really appealing, as it is both a representational and a spiritual pattern. It gives cogent visual form to a central concept of the Avatamsaka of the completeness and interdependency of all phenomena.

"Dharma Nature is all pervading harmony, without duality."

'While Early Buddhist teachings emphasize the path from suffering to non-suffering, from samsara to nirvana, Mahayana teachings emphasize that samsara and nirvana are inseparable. They are both here now. The Dharma that is the end of suffering is reality. The compassion that the Buddha embodied is never separate from this moment, and in fact is simply seeing that it isn't separate. It's not an object apart from you. It isn't somewhere else, some other time, some other better person. This is it!'

Ben Connelly has kept to a simple rubric here. He takes each of the thirty lines of The Ocean Seal Chart and writes a four or five page explanation, giving personal examples and reflections on it. He writes in a manner which generally eschews complex jargon, and tries to maintain a readily coherent clear style of expression. Given the potential here to bask in the false security of possessing an intellect, Connelly maintains a welcome degree of perspective and humbleness. 

"The minds first aspiration for awakening is true awakening"

This direct quote from the Avatamsaka Sutra directly confronts a common misconception of awakening as a destination rather than an awakening process we are engaged in from the moment Beginners Mind first inspires us. This means none of our many decades of practice are remiss, we are all in a process of ripening and maturing that primary awakening.We may find ourselves trying to drown out our 'first aspirations to awakening' with personal doubts and distractions, but we cannot erase it from our experiential memory altogether.

" An inexhaustible treasure adorns the Dharma realm, a true jeweled palace.

Just sitting in the bed of the Middle Way, the ultimate reality.

This stillness is Buddha."

' In our lives we travel, sufferings and joys come and go, and we can also realise that we have always been right here. We may think that the dream is fake and the waking is real, but both of these matter, for they are our lives.'

There are many, no doubt hard won, useful and practical insights within Connelly's commentary, born from years of his own practice, mistakes and misconceptions, as well as what he has evidently learnt. I found it a perceptive and accessible interpretation of the Huayan philosophical approach to the Avatamsaka Sutra, which does sort of make me want to actually read it, rather occasionally encountering amputated extracts. Mahayana Sutras can be a challenge to read I know, but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

All quotations taken from Inside The Flower Garland Sutra by Ben Connelly.
Published by Wisdom Publications.

WATCHED - Mr Nobody Against Putin

Pavel Talankin is a teacher in an ordinary school in Karabash, Russia. The widely renowned unhealthiest town in the world. Existing, as it does, cheek by jowl with a huge copper mine. To us this looks a truly grim place, grey and bleak, full of poorly kept Soviet era housing.  Pavel, however loves the town he grew up in, its people and his work. Apart from teaching, part of his job is to document on film the day to day events taking place in the school. His office becoming a hang out space for a particular type of arty bohemian student. Pavel is a nerd working within the school system, he doesn't ever quite fit the mold. But he has discovered a way that he can creatively contribute that works for everyone's benefit. He loves and cares about his students and their future. All is going fine, until Putin invades Ukraine.

What happens then, is that the state begins to interfere in the day to day running of the school curriculum. Teaching becomes a mere repeating of daily statements from the Kremlin, about the nature of the war, and the people's role and responsibility to support it. Daily he is forced to record on film the pseudo military assemblies, the absurd nationalistic propaganda statements being presented as education. There is one gruesome scene where a group of Wagner mercenaries come to the school to tell them about the war  and show off their military hardware and it's explosive capacity to kill and maim. At one point the Head states that the level of pupils educational attainments are falling. This is entirely a result of the additional burden of their teaching becoming a propaganda arm of the war effort. Pavel can't stand it, and hands in his resignation. 

Then, after someone from the West contacts him about the films he's made, he decides to stay. Simply in order to better document what is happening, and the decline of the school into a source of recruitment for the war effort. As his own students are drawn into being future cannon fodder for Putin's war. He makes small acts of rebellion, like broadcasting the Star Spangler Banner sung by Lady Gaga through the schools sound system. His taciturn librarian Mother, sits repairing books to make them last longer, and shakes her head at Pavel telling him 'to engage his brain, and eat more sweets' for she can sense where this is all leading. People start to be suspicious of him, and his filmmaking. His students becoming hesitant to hang out in his office or be filmed. Pavel knows it's only a matter of time before the authorities come for him, The most touching moment in this documentary is the speech he makes at the Graduation celebration he organises, the day before he leaves and escapes Putin's regime altogether. Everyone attending understanding what the sub text of it means.

This is a very humbling documentary film to watch, about one quite ordinary chap, who attempts in his own way to resist an oppressive regime. I don't think we understand, just how easily any country can fall into becoming an authoritarian state. Look how American democracy has rapidly declined in the space of just one year. Where it suddenly becomes dangerous to mock the leadership or hold certain opinions. How much people start conforming to whatever the regime demands them to be, in order to survive. i might like to think I'd fight back, but would I really?

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

Oh, yeah, and this just won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature 2026.
Can currently be streamed in the UK on I Player as part of its Storyville documentary series. 

MY OWN WALKING - Spring Journal 2026

It is not uncommon for religions to use an archaic or even totally extinct language in their chants, liturgy and rituals. An example would be Latin in Roman Catholicism, but other denominations have there own sacred languages such as Coptic, or Church Slavonic. Ancient Aramaic in Judaism, Classical Arabic in Islam. With the chanting of Pali or Sanskrit texts, Buddhism is not then that unusual. These languages are worth preserving, because they serve what is really a rather vital function, that is not solely one of academic interest, for linguistic diversity or historical origins.

These old languages in religious contexts are important primarily for spiritual reasons. Such ancient words embody all the poetic metaphors, experiences, aspirations and insights, encountered over countless generations of practitioners. These can sometimes span from non-historical through historical time, right up to today. They form a bridge, via their sound and lyricism, to present day practitioners with the religious emotions and expressions of past disciples. Giving cogent form to the idea that we are the present day torch bearers for an entire religious lineage, maintaining this language and traditions intact, into the future. And this duty of care, as a disciple, is the case whatever that religious tradition is. It could be said that the Christian Protestant Reformation, with perhaps the iconoclastic excess only a reformers zeal might execute, expunged ,and hence impoverished itself, by destroying this link through language to the past. Which may be why it can often feel, even today, a little spiritually unmoored. There is nothing like an extinct language to ground you in the vale of impermanence.

( In Pali )

"Sangham jivitaparyantam saranam gacchami.

Ye ca Sangha atita ca

Ye ca Sangha anagata

Paccuppannq ca ye Sangha

Aham vandami sabbada."

( English Translation )

"All my life I go for refuge to the Fellowship.

To all the Fellowships that were

To all the Fellowships to be

To all the Fellowships that are

My worship flows unceasingly '

These five lines are from the penultimate verses of the Buddhist Triratna Vandana, or Salutation to the Three Jewels. Verses of praise, respect and dedication ,to the Buddha, the Dharma ( his teachings) and the Sangha ( the fellowship of practitioners ). Often chanted at the beginning of each day, they act as a reminder of what you are dedicating your life to, depending upon and 'taking refuge in ' as a Buddhist. Certainly in the early days of my involvement in Buddhism, they were just something we recited.  I never quite grasped why we were saying these verses in a semi-extinct language like Pali. In a modern Western context this could appear to be a bit anachronistic. Similarly the Pali/Sanskrit names of Buddhist Order Members. Were these an unnecessary bit of exotic cultural appropriation on the part of Western Buddhist practitioners? In holding such views I was completely mistaking the purpose of their use of Pali / Sanskrit , and these verses of the Triratna Vandana point you in the direction as to why.

In Buddhism single words or phrases can become spiritual transmitters, referred to as dharani. These conjure a resonating relationship through sound, with the truth, not just with the Buddha's teachings, but with that small essence being awoken within us, with that of the true nature of reality. Chanting short texts in Pali/Sanskrit in the context of spiritual fellowship can, at its best, be like tuning into the fully functioning life force of Enlightenment. Even if we feel we are just mindlessly chanting these words that are incomprehensible to us, they nonetheless plug us into the spirit of this interconnected essence to all reality - across all time and space - past, present and future.

In my early morning practice period, I have generally just meditated. Though of late I've found myself gravitating towards chanting the Triratna Vandana. After many years of not doing so. I immediately found myself feeling something within my being was woken up and plugged in to a relationship far bigger than just myself. It felt like a coming home, for these verses are extraordinarily familiar to me. I've chanted them in many different contexts, hundreds of times. They also reconnect me with those years of involvement with Triratna and 'the Fellowships that were' then. And even though I rarely meet any of these people these days, they are still with me when I chant these verses. Forming part of a personal lineage of practice, which I am still grateful to have received. So, when I find myself bemoaning the lack of 'spiritual fellowship' in my current spiritual path, I need to remember what this spiritual fellowship can be. Well, it is broad, it is multi-dimensional, it is an all encompassing event. 

Reciting the Triratna Vandana, draws a similar map, one that spans time and space. A known lineage of practitioners traced directly back through two and a half millennia to the Buddha, is important for Buddhists to maintain an active and live relationship with. A Sangha, in its idealised form, is a fellowship composed of all the practitioners whoever were, are or are to be. - the Unenlightened and Enlightened human beings, the Arya ( noble or illustrious ) Sangha, and imaginatively outward to realms of archetypal and cosmic Buddhas. Not just the local practitioners you meet in your Buddhist Centre ( or Church if you are Christian). These Fellowships that were, become vaster in scope once you add in ' The Fellowships that are, or are yet to be'. And these make it clear, if you have no yet cottoned on, that you are your own traditions next step. Without the effectiveness of your practice and spiritual life, there will be no future for it. And a sense of gratefulness and appreciation for the many levels via which spiritual fellowship through practice is handed down to us, is important to the sustaining of our practice now. Through the language and texts that we chant, we atune and orient with the spirit of our lineage of practice, that underpins whatever we subsequently do.

Whether Buddhist or Christian, there were always turbulent epochs in the past, the distant rumblings of this being' The End of Times'. And its very easy for us to bemoan the 'self evident failings' of our present institutions and some of our spiritual fellow travellers, and go passive-aggressive towards it. Significant Buddhist figures and sages, often appeared in periods of apparent decline, such as ours. But we cannot just sit back and depend on someone else turning up to save it.  Chant these last words of the Triratna Vandana written on this page and don't allow any feelings of despair we may hold, be our final coda. The revolution can start at any moment, it may have started already, so be ready to respond. 

'Etena saccavajjena, hotu me jayamangalam'

'Oh by the virtue of this truth, may grace abound, and victory!'

LISTENING TO - Trying Times by James Blake

James Blake's seventh album, marks a significant shift on many levels for him. Two years ago he took a major gamble, left his record label, dropped his agent, and launched himself as an independent artist with his own label. On a practical level he was taking full charge of the direction of his career and how its marketed. Enjoying having a much more direct connection with his fan base. He distrusted the widely used streaming model of record companies, that wasn't demonstrably lucrative for the artist, nor an effective way of promoting and selling your work, as it has often being made out to be. So, the last two years since Playing Robots Into Heaven have proved to be a steep learning curve. But out the other end of all this comes Trying Times, which is probably James Blake's most musically and thematically coherent album, he has made so far.

Trying Times, is on the surface a simple sequence of love songs, often distant and imaginary, fracturing or malformed by modern troubles in maintaining any sort of loving relationship. But, like the song The Death of Love, it is also a comment on this particular moment in our culture, where our tech mediated lives are funneled into increasingly divisive and hate filled dead ends. Where we find tolerating differences, any lack of convention, or merely an alternative opinion, increasingly tricky territory. 

The soundscape on Trying Times is recognisably James Blake's, but it is more organically sparse and sparing in its arrangements, with the keyboard and Blake's voice often clearly placed right up front and unfiltered, than previously. He is less inclined to throw everything bar the kitchen sink at a track, and if all else fails drown it in echo, of voice modulation. Quite often, he starts from a melodic line borrowed from another person's music, whether it's a choral line from Cohen or a 50's doo wop, it sets the scene for the song that is to follow. The idyllic opening of I Had A Dream She Took My Hand, demonstrates the fantasy world that this lilting waltz time song exists within. 

The album opens with Walk Out Music, with a vocal exchange between two voices chiming in with 'Your no good, to anyone...anyone...to anyone....dead, dead, dead ' Blake uses this device of two voices intertwining and sharing a sentence to manifest an internalised dialogue. Which here drops in other words as reminders, that also there's 'trust' and 'opportunity' present as you walk out into a new world. It's an immaculately simple song about reticence and embracing whatever is currently present. And in the songs which follow :- The Death of Love - I had a dream she took my hand  and Trying Times, we find him laying out some of the best songs of the album.

The song Trying Times is undoubtedly the pivotal heart of this album, arriving with 'You know I'm shredded by the time I'm home' and how though ' I'm an eyesore, your a sight for sore eyes'. How our close relationships with others constantly saves us from being swallowed up by our self preoccupations. Our lack of external loves and friendships being a danger to us all. The video has Blake sat beneath a triangle of spinning plates, that one after another fall down during the song. A cogent metaphor for modern life requiring us to do so many things at once, we cannot help but feel we fail to attend properly to all aspects of our life. 

Blake's career has been fortunate in that he has become the much sought after producer and collaborator with a wide range of top level artists, from Rosalia and Beyonce, to here on the track Doesn't Just Happen, with the distinctive authorial tones of Dave - 'If being a man was easy I'd still be me cah I do shit the hard way'  he declares. That he understands 'I know you want to make it to heaven, but it doesn't just happen'. There is a very catchy walking keyboard refrain that ambles cyclically across the background throughout this track, concerning the day to day travails of a man just trying to do good, in the face of adverse conditions. It's one of the many highlights of the album. Others well worth catching, are - The Rest of Your Life  - Through The High Wire. The album winds up with Just A Little Higher. Which concludes the album with one of its most telling lines of lyric- 'Adjust your sights, Cos they're playing us, From a great height'

Like many of Blake's albums, Trying Times has a longish running time of forty seven minutes. Whilst he does alway give you value for money, I do think a judicious cut of a couple of tracks might have been of benefit to the impact of the album, as a whole. A problem when you are your own boss is, who tells you when further editing is required? There is a danger that you are too close to the thing you are creating, and understandably love, to stand back far enough to perceive what it really needs.  

That said, I'd say Trying Times does sustain its length better than some of his previous albums. You are carried along by the all enveloping soundscape he has placed the songs within. There are no overly dramatic lurches away from its languid and often rhapsodic orchestrations. These minor reservations aside, Trying Times gets a big thumbs up from me, I absolutely love it.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FINISHED READING - Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura

Imagine you can meet someone from your past ife, with whom you had a strong connection. It could be a lover, a friend or a relative. And even though they are now dead, you can arrange to meet them between dusk and dawn during a full moon. To perhaps resolve some long burning question, ask their advice or help with an issue, or simply just to spend time with them once more. You can only do this once in your life, so chose carefully.  If you chose to do so, you have to contact a 'go between' who asks you who you need to see and why, and then dialogues with the deceased about whether they wish to meet this person or not. If they do, they go ahead and make all the arrangements for a meeting in a hotel room. This is the basic story set up of Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon. 

And so we meet Manami Hirase, a young woman whose lived a life which she feels is of no significance to anyone. She feels internally in constant despair. The one highlight of her life was encountering Saori Mizushiro, a TV celebrity, when she was excessively drunk,, hyperventilating in the street, and Saori had calmly helped her in a peak moment of distress. Saori has recently died unexpectedly, and Manami wishes to talk to her again as she feels her life no longer has any point.

Another 'go between' client, Koichi Tsuchiya is a successful and very busy businessman. He starts a relationship with Kirari Himukai, all goes well, they fall in love, she moves in with him. But then one day she appears to pack her things and leave never to be heard of again. Seven years later, a tortured and embittered man, Koichi is wondering whether to have her legally declared dead, so he can finally draw a line on this relationship. But then he hears about the 'go between' and has to consider whether knowing she was alive or dead would really help.

These are just two of the often complex life stories touched on in this sensitively written book. All the clients the 'go between' helps are living lives that in someway cannot move on because of an issue that has stubbornly remained an obstacle. Each time Tsujimura describes the background of her characters life dilemmas and how they discover the 'go between'. These meetings with the dead may resolve the central issue, but not always in the way the client expected or desired. Some feel released to live their lives more fully, others remain haunted by something reprehensible they did, which their meeting with the deceased still fails to resolve. 

Tsujimura's writing style ( as translated ) is composed quite simply and plainly. In very grounded real terms the messiness of emotions and issues at play in any single life, are revealed. It deftly avoids stepping into sugary sentiment, which given the subject matter is often laced with tragedy, it could so easily do. The lives she describes come across as universally relatable, filled as they are with quite ordinary guilt, envy, love, loss and remorse, everything is here.

The final chapter about the 'go between' we've see appearing throughout the book, provides a satisfying twist at the end of the book. Lost Souls Meet Under A Full Moon was a huge success in Japan when first published, and has subsequently been adapted into a movie. It does, in many ways mine a recurring vein in Japanese fiction, of the closeness of ancestors, being able to meet and dialogue with the ghosts of your relatives, crops up incidentally quite a lot. This novel also has the recognisable tone of gentle quirkiness which a lot of mainstream Japanese fiction employs. It's not an earth shatteringly original book, but it is very well written and I for one found it a really engaging and satisfying novel to read.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

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INSIGNIFICANT MOMENTS IN THE FOLDS OF TIME - Keeping A Float

And so he'd become a student. A point in anyone's life when escaping home suddenly revealed a whole new level of disconcerting decision-making, one's he'd never really wanted. He could now, within reason and capability, do anything. His life could assume whatever colour he chose, take on any smell or taste he desired it to have. The internal friction between the risk taking and the risk averse, combined with the financial impoverishment accompanying being an inexperienced sophomore, almost paralysed  him. These constraints of life weighed heavier upon him than you might expect. Why wasn't he more devil may care and fancy free? He couldn't afford to be.

Money proscribed the amount of insouciance you possessed, abundance was liberating, any lack felt imprisoning. Today he was painfully aware that the sparse wafers of cash in his wallet were being drawn from a rapidly diminishing bank account. And it was only mid term. Christmas, and the financial relief of living off his parents income, well, that was more weeks away than there was the money for. He'd never had to manage his own money before. Paid his landlady rent, feed himself, decide when he could afford a special treat? These concerns unsettled him. He'd yet to learnt how to efficiently manage the surges of anxiety. Still in a semi improvised phase, money could indeed suddenly run short without him fully understanding how. Living abstemiously off bread and butter, until the next munificent grant cheque arrived. That, or quick return home to check the parents were still alive, and be well fed for a weekend or more if he could swing it.

In the meantime, he'd make the most of subsidised meals served in the college canteen, and plugged any remaining pangs of hunger with anything readily and cheaply available in his local Spar. This was consistently bags of crisps (cheese and onion, not plain), doughnuts ( with, not without jam ) and a ubiquitous saccharin filled cola ( bottled, not canned). Cos he did have standards. Cola had long been his late teenage drink of choice, a sugary drug rush he craved with it's sweet caramel fizz. It was bad for his acne, and as a consequence his self confidence. He looked at his puny eighteen year old body in the mirror, saw the small tire of fatty doughy settling around his waist, and sighed with a hopeless shrug. This would only continue expanding, until he took control of his sugar and fat consumption. But you can't fight your genetic inheritance. Anyway, this sort of life shaping decision felt, as yet, completely beyond him. He proudly wore the badge of blind but youthful optimism, convincing himself it took decades for waistlines to turn obesely flabby, anyway. There was oodles of time left to self indulge, before the outward preservation of a deceptively lithe youthful appearance would suddenly enter a more noticeable phase of shameful decline.

Today, he was spending his remaining lunchtime, doing what he often chose to do, wander aimlessly around the semi-rundown, punched out windows of wharf buildings by the old docks. The desultory ruins of an industry broken to smithereens by fishing quotas and adversarial wars over trawling rights, now totally abandoned to historic sentiment. As was his want, he stopped on a favoured wrought iron bridge, once the pride of this municipal trading city. The malnourished bones of which now stuck out like a flicked V sign. Manifesting decay in the sickly flow of its streams that fed into the estuary. There were days when the water seen hurtling down from this bridge, would be a bright scarlet red, or a fluorescent yellow, occasionally pure turquoise blue. Whatever the dye wash the works upstream needed to dump. On this occasion the stream was an unusually normal piddle of shit colour. 

Taking a short cut over rubble and wire infested scrubland. Squeezing between the rotting wood skeletons of dilapidated semi-industrial sheds, he reluctantly ambled back in the general direction of college. The one beacon of bright modernity nestled, as it was, beneath the venerable soot blackened statue of a Victorian anti slavery campaigner, perched atop a pillar like Simeon Stylites. Whose watchful eyes missed nothing. Nope, he wasn't ready to return to the over peopled thrum of college campus yet. He veered off down a cute, narrow, almost Dickensian, alley peopled by single roomed solicitors offices and the smallest pub in the town. He knew exactly where he was headed, the large sprawling family run department store he'd recently discovered. Where he'd found nectar of pure gold. Welcomed smoothly in through revolving doors, swerving passed the perfume counters, he clambered in increasingly excited expectation up the slow moving escalators. Quickly negotiating his way around the complex layout of the men's clothing department, then haberdashery, then interiors, then gardening, til he reached his top floor nirvana, the department store cafe.

Calling it a cafe, was a bit of a misnomer. It was more a perfunctory adaption of a series of changing rooms into a wall bar and a gaggle of stools. It's dreary terracotta paintwork, much scuffed with disconcerting major dents in its walls, as if it had suffered the consequences of a pensioner bar brawl or two. This cafe was tightly squeezed into one corner of the retail trading floor. With not one window to look out from, through which to view the grey mist shrouded suicidal world beyond. If you were a troubled introvert seeking the rejuvenating solace of being truly alone, and not just with your thoughts, this was the one, the only place. It was his secret pleasure, one not to be shared with anyone else, ever. Because this cafe served him his new obsession, a highlight of this or any other day - the ginger beer float.

 

WATCHED - The Importance of Being Ernest

You are currently able, for the next month only, to watch this National Theatre production of the Oscar Wilde classic for free on You Tube. It's definitely worth a watch. It takes a quite radically new approach to the presentation of Wilde. It's colourful, camp and makes some bold casting choices. The sort that will get a right wing anti-woke homophobe foaming from all their inflamed orifices. Which has to be a good thing in a free society. It's the second time I've seen it, and whilst it is an engaging production, a repeat viewing does double underline it's weaknesses. The things that are lost due to this style of production. And the expressive limitations of some of its actors. 

Wilde, as a playwright is always deceptively light on the surface. So much so, that modern audiences do not read some of the queer code he wrote into a play like The Importance Of Being Ernest. That the Victorian gentlemen in particular might disconcertingly recognise. The living of a double life where a respectable home life, wife and children, is kept separate from an alternative lifestyle that inhabits a darker, clubby, more sexually deviant lifestyle. Wilde knew all about this from personal experience, of course. And this play was the highpoint of his West End success, literally months before scandal and the infamous trials erupted. Some people didn't like the way he lampooned and exposed the moral hypocrisy of his era. So were more than happy to put an additional boot in.

There is always a character in his plays that is the main cypher for the Wildean viewpoint on society. Here it is Algernon ( Ncuti Gatwa ) the free living batchelor with a conveniently ill friend Bunberry. Who he has to visit at short notice whenever he wants to disappear from town. He is flamboyant and devil may care, and tries to influence his friend Ernest (Hugh Skinner) to be likewise. But Ernest is in fact far too ernest in his concern for status and respectability, But finds he cannot marry Gwendolyn (Ronkẹ Adékọluẹ́jọ́ ) because her mother Lady Bracknell ( Sharon D Clarke ) in examining his background found it wanting. Though he is not without money or property, he was adopted, and doesn't know who his parents were. His alter ego, when he is in the country is called Jack, and he is the guardian of his 'little cousin' Cecile ( Eliza Scanlen ) The ludicrous extent to which he is willing to go to maintain this deception, is where the main farcical thrust comes from. Everyone is trying to be something they are not.

The production opens with Algernon appearing in a vivid pink gauzy froo froo dress, playing a piano in a gentleman's club. It all turns a bit transgressive and raunchy, then we are suddenly back in a respectable elegant turn of the century drawing room. This sets the general approach of this production. It's full of big broad camp infused gestures, and an almost Carry On level of winking and nudging to the audience. Ncuti Gatwa undoubtedly has charm, and self evident charisma by the bucket load and plays his character's flamboyant knowingness well. He crowd pleases, with plenty breaking of the fourth wall. I have yet to observe in anything I've seen him in so far, whether there is any more to him as an actor than this well honed affable quality. 

This directorial approach works only because it is prepared to sacrifice nuance to nudge nudge comedy. Wilde's satirical wit is playful, and this is often hidden in an elegant turn of phrase that requires pointing out by the actor. The problem with this production is that it is frequently tone deaf to these, and walks over subtleties needing emphasis in its rush for an easy guffaw. This broadness of tone, however, is consistently adopted by everyone in this production from Lady Bracknell to Gwendolyn to Ernest to Cecile. Though Cecilia is supposed to be a naive fanciful ingenue, inexperienced in worldly matters. She is played here as someone who is somewhat emotionally retarded for her age, which is far from what is required. 

The production doesn't hang about. Thankfully, it keeps a brisk pace, and performs an enjoyable romp. Though on my second viewing, by the interval I'd begun to find its constant titivating of your chuckle muscles with a feather boa, somewhat tiresome. Though it makes nods towards there being a subtext, they are just nods. Sometimes in order to amuse, you have to take comedy with great seriousness. This play does not benefit, ultimately, from being presented as though it's an end of the pier / drag revue. It's an absolute riot to watch once, but twice just reveals how little more it can offer you.

CARROT REVIEW - 5/8

SCREEN SHOT - Locke ( 2013 )

Ivan Locke ( Tom Hardy ) is driving his car along a busy motorway.  His journey is being punctuated by a range of phone calls, pulling his attention, often in opposing directions. He's an extremely  competent man working for a firm managing the practical logistics of constructing a huge new development. 

Tomorrow a huge pour of concrete will mark an important foundational stage in this job, and Ivan has, out of character, just announced he is not going to be there to supervise it. His immediate superior goes completely ballistic over the phone. Ivan is evasive at first, as to why he won't be there to oversee it. He's not going to be back home in time to watch the match with his family either. It turns out that he is on his way to support a woman who is about to give birth to his baby. A one off casual shag nine months ago, has now become this moral obligation that means he needs to be there. Potentially threatening both his career and previously happily contented lifestyle. 

Written and directed by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) this is a tautly written one hander. One forgets just how brilliant Hardy can be as an actor, when given a superlative script to work with. That this is gripping stuff, packed with emotional tensions, explosive anger and edge of the seat frustrations, is down to Hardy's ability to communicate the essentially self deluded goodness of Ivan. The turmoil going on in his heart and mind is visible, as he tries in vain to not let taking responsibility for his one reckless mistake, completely ruin everything else.

You only ever hear voices on the other end of the phone. But they are recognisably those from a list of top notch English actors - Andrew Scott, Olivia Coleman, Ruth Wilson, Tom Holland, Ben Daniels, Alice Lowe. They vividly paint in sound the picture of confusion, despair and fury about why Ivan has chosen to do this. Why? Well its something to do with not wanting to behave irresponsibly like his father did. Which is communicated via Ivan occasionally having a conversation with his Father as though he were sitting in the car's backseat. This movie as a whole is nail bitingly believable, but this was one point where I felt its sure footedness nearly tripped over itself. Hardy makes it credible, but only just.

Locke is like watching a masterclass in subtly nuanced acting from Tom Hardy aided by skilled direction from Knights.  Apparently Hardy performed the script, filmed in a car on a motorway, twelve times. The best bits being then edited into this final film. I found myself unexpectedly deeply gripped, by what seemed at first an unpromising premise.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

POEM - Collating Pebbles

I hear popular 

invidious distinctions 

made on the pages
of books and rhymes

reformulating history

as though belonging

a sense of place were a matter 

of the purity of its ingredients 

cooked in a mythic ancestral soup

selecting only the whitest pebbles 

from a beach of mixed aggregates 

wilfully ignoring the continental drift

the gravelled tides 

that brought everyone to an island

you really have to want to get too

our shingled beaches 

ever shifting in their formation

with each lunar cycle 

carry whatever flotsam 

the waves throw up

for we remain 

as ever we were

a resolutely mongrel nation 
our noble destiny our right of birth 

is to be cross bred 

via our estuaries and ecstasies 

by glorious virtue of evolutionary jism

with Neanderthal pebbles, 

Celtic pebbles, 

Roman pebbles, 

Scandinavian pebbles, 

Angle, Saxon and Jute pebbles, 

Norman French, Dutch and Andalucian

and any other exotic gene pebble 

we might pocket through our travails

through the gravel 

of this washed up lineage we have

absorbed cultures 

with the insatiableness of blotting paper

adventuring across seas

migrated seeking fortunes in 

foreign climes, 

conquered, quelled and capitalised

on the achievements of countless

civilisations whilst

we forged then forgot an Empire

that we ethnically cleansed 

of our sins and repainted beneficent 

should you chose to

though why ever should you 

define our nation by the narrowest alley 

travelled between one street and the next

then we all become foreigners, immigrants and refugees 

by virtue of crossing a road

become prey for territorial street gangs

lurking on the other side of an

invisible boundary line

someone thought up

on the back of a fag packet

we are all in a world wild search 

for a destination sublime

to find whatever our true home is 

and wherever we choose to land

humankind makes that 

into the flesh and bones of a nation

collated out of the inconspicuous ruins 

of our collective vagrancy 

our primary homelessness

we wander arrive

we settle 

and conjure

a less muddied destiny for ourselves 

with whoever we are with 

wherever it is that we are

nothing about a nation is eternal

nor sacrosanct 

we briefly share genetic time

together on a river

that floats us downstream

into a vast encompassing sea

into which we all become 

indistinguishable 

from water

in the end.

Written by Stephen Lumb February/March 2026