LISTENING TO - Up All Night by SAULT

SAULT are a loose and constantly rotating music collective based in London. Attracting a serious amount of critical plaudits, plus a Mercury Prize nomination for a series of recent albums Black Is, Rise and recently Nine.

The music is a fascinatingly broad ranging mix of R&B,Soul and funk stylings. Through these exploring their responses to the Black Lives Matter movement, the George Floyd killing and experience of racism. All without it ever becoming worthy, preachy or heavy handed. Its personal and punchy in all senses of the word.

In this social media era, its remarkable so little is really known about them. SAULT are helmed by the producer Inflo, two regular contributors are Kid Sister and Cleo Sol, notable featured artists have been Little Simz and Michael Kiwanuka. 

On Up All Night is from an earlier album called simply 5, on it we find a lighter tone and a deft paean to the pleasures and joys of dance culture.

SHORT STORY - Paternal Fog

The rows of terraced houses built of millstone grit, swept out across the Pennine hillsides. Poking out of the surrounding peaty heather as though they were its curved chest ribs.  Mary's house was in the middle of one short terrace. Once soot blackened, now sandblasted back to its pristine warm honey colour. As though the Industrial revolution had never happened. 

Such terraces, were originally built to house the increase in the towns population during the latter decades of the nineteenth century. Coming to work in the mills and factories. Those same terraces were now being re-branded by estate agents as characterful bijou residences. Excellent starter homes for the aspirational young and recent emigres. Though her family had lived here for near on half a century, Mary had begun to feel out of place. As if she were an anachronistic survivor from entirely another era. In truth, she herself had never felt comfortable here, whatever the time period.

The interior of her house embodied all that was 'homely', with all the vagueness that term holds. The house was stuffed with ornaments. All that could be said was that it felt honest.  No self conscious aesthetic pretensions. Externally sourced senses of style, adapted or adopted, had never entered through its door. Here inside, it was a world all of its own.

To those who knew Mary, the house interior spoke clearly of who she was. The sort of life and lifestyle instinctively she wanted to create for herself . And that had turned out to be 'homely'. An open invitation for someone to pop round, to stay and chat, though few came. Here were rooms where everything placed within them had meaning, intrinsic or assigned. Each item hand picked, chosen by virtue of love, not fashion trend. They could be entirely functional items too. This had become Mary's private motivation in life, to at the very least be useful. 

She rarely reflected on the broad range of her possessions. The role they might have in supporting her mental, physical or spiritual well-being. Well-being was to her a modern fad that had the suspicious whiff of a self indulgence, that was quite alien to her. This sort of sensuous pampering, felt too precious by half. As she took in all three hundred and sixty degrees of her living room, she could reconnect with people, places visited, past events. Conjured by merely being in the presence of a piece of furniture or a decorative object. 

This preservation of memories was all part of an obsessiveness with documenting her own life and that of her family. It was as though the past was all there was left that had any real value. Optimism required the future to be less amorphous and indefinite. She had no valuable family silver. What her parents owned had been all mass produced, pressed metal and electroplated. Sentimental figurines of bucolic shepherdesses, were always more pot than porcelain. It was one of the consequences of being born into a large and moderately impoverished family. All their most precious objects felt more valuable than they actually were. 

Fog was the towns constant, often unwanted, companion. It came in smoking off the river or rolled down from the moors overnight. Either way, it filled up the valley as though it were a bath. Today was one of those occasions when it was still smugly clinging on around town. Only the chimneys of the quiet redundant mills still stuck their fingers up and pierced through it. Out of her back window Mary could hardly see to the terrace opposite. Figures who walked passed were fuzzy grey silhouettes. Reminding her of her Father, short and stocky. His recognisably ambling walk, thumping along the cobbles in work boots. But, gosh, that was decades ago. Her Father was long gone. Like the back alleys between terraces, it was all smoothly tarmacked over by now.

A good few years had past since her Mother had died too. The sense of her loss, along with guilt tinged relief, had long ago softened into a persistent background noise. A quiet hum of loneliness she'd got numbly accustomed to. Only those shape shifting shadows coming and going in the fog bound streets outside, were ever able to catch her emotionally off guard. She recently thought she'd glimpsed her Mother in the fog, which had shaken her nerves quite profoundly.

Her Mother Enid, had been extremely hard of hearing. By the time of her death she'd become a bit of a phantom, a half presence. A broken shell of the woman she'd been in her prime. But at least, she'd been someone to come home to, to cook for and have faltering conversations with. All Mary's brothers and sisters once married, had left. Leaving Mary and Enid living abandoned there together. Both, husband less and amenable to the comforts of a familiar but stale continuity.

It had not been a life choice for her to become the full time carer of her ailing Mother. This just happened. No one in the rest of the family ever asked her if she'd mind doing it. It was almost as if everyone, including herself really, simply expected that she would. She did her daughterly duty, got stuck in, got on with it. When her Mother's physical robustness and mental brightness began to fall steeply away, things turned more emotionally difficult. Mary, no spring chicken herself, found being around her Mother all day and everyday, far more taxing and stressful.

Much as she loved her, removing fouled underwear, washing and dealing with her regressing into a state of dependency, like an adult sized child, changed and tested her relationship. Slow roasting her affection over the fire of resentments and guilt.  Every personal desire was compromised or put on hold. until some time in the future when Mother would no longer be here. Alone, she bore with her anger at the apparent injustice of it all.

Her pride and resolve to be helpful had then taken a real bruising. Usually immensely capable, practically minded and able to manage most things that life threw at her. That quality became gently corroded by rarely getting a break from being the care giver. She'd become tired of just about coping. Her patience with the rest of her family worn paper thin and brittle. Surely the family, who largely stayed away, must realise what she was being put through. But no, it was as if there was a thick opaque veil between her life and theirs. They continued to turn away when their own Mother messed herself again, something she never could do. She had to face that, daily.

But then she'd never found the personal resolve to move out herself. To escape the foggy streets and commitments inherent to living within that terraced house. It was as though her entire past, present and future life were inextricably bound up with that parental home. Things that might normally draw you away from it - a desire for independence, career or marriage - had for whatever reason not happened. If she had been interested in the opposite, or even the same, sex, or to have children, these were feelings kept firmly off limits. Convincing herself that they'd never mattered that much to her anyway.

Mary was the smallest child, who had turned into a smallish adult. Stocky build, legs like tree trunks, round national health glasses. Complete with the family characteristic of thick hair, untameable as wire wool. With the fiery aubern colour, not quite ginger, that all her sisters had. Her complexion the familial palour of off-white, ruddy cheeked, fine blue veined, with the freckles of youth joining up with the liver spots of age to form a mottled tan. Her gate perennially brisk and purposeful. Even on those days when the fog outside was actually more of a cough inducing smog.

Perhaps she did give off entirely the wrong signals. Dressed like that, like she didn't care. Looking to the outside world like a spinster twice her age. Drab, shapeless, unflattering cloths were her style even in her early twenties. Her appearance sexless. Mary felt uncomfortable within her own body, it had never felt quite right. Privately the family thought Mary an odd fish, which was used as shorthand to explain everything about her that was puzzling. Which was quite a lot.

Her family were traditional working class. The sort that wore stoical pride boldly declared upon their duffle coats. Mary, had been born between the Wars. Her parents inculcating in all their children, that life owed you nothing, and could be much briefer than you might wish. Far too short for self absorption or preoccupation with your psychological difficulties. There was still such a thing as rationing you know.  So to others she appeared always chirpy. not a care in the world. Busily tramping around, permanently on a mission. Nothing ever leaking out from her internal world.  Her way of processing and dealing with any personal difficulty that cropped up, was simply to knit or sew, with an ever greater speed and ferocity.

That fog, once it had arrived, could hang around for days and days. But this time it was going on for weeks, seemingly forever. No amount of heavily diffused sunlight appeared to shift it from continuing to wrap itself around the streets like an all enveloping shroud. Hardly able to see three feet in front of you. Mary rarely went out much, she was older now herself and unsteady on her feet, particularly in the Winter. She had lots of ready meals in the freezer. So not even a quick dash across to the corner shop was required very often. You could tell where that shop was, because its lights fluoresced so brightly in the fog. It was as though it were a glowing celestial invitation, for residents to shop local.

Weeks went by, never going out, never seeing anyone, no one, not even family popped by on a visit. Since her Mother's death her engagement with the outside world, instead of expanding to fill the space, had contracted. Venturing out less frequently, there was only the four walls of her 'homely' interior. Her loneliness, though painful, appeared also to drain her of energy. To paralyse her sense of being able to take the initiative. Maybe this was what depression felt like. An ever present fog that did not help, impenetrable and all encompassing. It was like being imprisoned within a cloud.

The streets themselves appeared to change form in the fog, they became less substantial, more ethereal. Solid three dimensional human beings, totally replaced by the wraith like spectres that Mary saw. Not just deceased members of her family, who appeared almost daily, but also former neighbours and friends long gone. Maybe the fog allowed these all to become visible, as if they had always been there hidden behind too much clean air and reality.

Mary one morning whilst sitting up in bed, sipping her breakfast tea, realised a stark and frightening truth - that she was living in complete solitary isolation. How long had it been since she'd seen or talked to another human being? She couldn't remember, sobbing uncontrollably. Through her windows the fog was everywhere as usual. The streets sparsely populated with the shapes and outlines of people, phasing in and out of the fog. The outside world too had become less tangible.

Her mind began broaching on more unthinkable, troubling ideas. How did she know for certain she was even still alive? She felt increasingly like a fog bound ghost herself. Not existing on the physical plane, but in that misty realm occupied by sentiment and past memories? These were all questions she ought easily be able to find answers for, surely. She ventured cautiously outside, wrapped in her quilted dressing gown, it was freezing cold out. You could see your breath. That felt reassuring. Could she find anyone else of certifiable flesh and bone? No! All the shadows and silhouttes out on the street dissolved the moment she drew closer. Frantically knocking along the terrace, no one came to their door or even tweeked a curtain. Because all the other houses turned out to be fake frontages, painted facsimiles on boards. It appeared that unbeknownst to her she'd been living on some sort of film set, masked behind masses of dry ice.

She jerked into a full frenzied panic. Shuffling across the street in her slippers towards the warm glow of the corner shop. Maybe the owner Frankie would be on the counter. She knew everything going on locally, maybe she'd tell her what had happened. The bell rang as she entered. No one seemed to be around. The lighting inside the shop seemed more blinding than usual. The bead curtain rustled between the rooms out back and the shop floor. A man, a person she didn't recognise at all, stood there widely beaming at her. He spoke slowly and kindly.

'Ah, at last you've found us. We were beginning to be concerned about how much longer it was going to take for you to come over. The visualisation of your house was due to fade away soon.  But, never mind you're here now, come on through to the back. There are folks here who  just cannot wait to speak to you'

FAVOURITE MUSIC TRACKS 2021

In no particular order of preference. 
A few of my most played tracks from this changeable year.
I've found a lot of solace in the enjoyment of music and these tracks in particular.

I hope you do too. 

Click on the song name for the link to the You Tube video

Little Simz ( ft Obongjayar ) - Point & Kill
A simply brilliant fusion of rap with African rhythm. 

Dry Cleaning - Scratchcard Lanyard     
Deadpan, Droll & Utterly Charming

Sparks - Lawnmower   
Playful, Bonkers and Particularly Catchy Fun 

Billy Nomates - NO   
Coarse as a Brick Wall, Assertive & Scathingly Witty

The Revolutionaries - Kunte Kinte Dub 1,2 & 3     
Thanks to Steve McQueen's film Lovers Rock for this Dub Gem

Sleaford Mods (ft Billy Nomates) - Mork & Mindy
Rough Hewn Poetry & Magic from the boys

Gabriels - Love & Hate in a Different Time
Classy & Sassy, Makes your Dark Soul Sing Aloud

Black Country New Road - Science Fair
Unhinged Menace Never Sounded so Alluring & Approachable

Wet Leg - Chaise Lounge
Delightfully Silly & Packed Full of Sexual Euphamisms

John Grant - County Fair 
At his melancholy yearning best, I cry each time I listen to it.

Low - Dissappearing
Breathtakingly beautiful mix of angelic vocals and slabs of massively phased guiitar.

Billy Mackensie - Pain In Any Language
Unrequited Love criss crossing the line between falling in love and obsession, rejection and stalking.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Bosses Hang 1- 3
If you've the time to spare, this is quite magnificent.

Natalie Gordienko - Sugar
Last but far from least, this gem from this years Eurovision..

MY OWN WALKING - Journal 16/12/21

Jnanasalin gave a talk recently about Buddhism at The Octagon Unitarian Chapel in Norwich. A uniquely beautiful example of a Presbyterian non conformist building. For me the place was evocative my own Methodist upbringing as a child, of my Mother and Father.

During the talk there was chanting of the Shakyamuni mantra and Jnanasalin read the opening verses of the Verses on the Faith Mind. I felt a strong upwelling of emotion, I wanted to cry, but I was in a public situation, so checked myself. I felt overwhelmed by feelings of deep fondness. I really missed both the mantra and the verses. They are like dear familiar friends. A love affair that was not yet over, that still meant a lot to me  That sense for things 'missing' lingered. Of many things that are no longer here, such as my parents, I miss them too.

Two days later. I'm up far far too early, as is frequently my misfortune. In these hours I fill the sleeplessness by watching a TV programme or two. On this morning it was one of the Winter Walks in the Yorkshire Dales on I Player. Again I had the same welling up of emotion, again the sense of 'missing'. This time it was for needing to be alone and walking in that countryside. It reminded me of the Pennines, I yearned for the hills and valleys of the West Riding.

I followed this with an episode of The Repair Shop. Where a group of skilled crafts people restore broken family items. Again the emotional welling up. The programme can be over sentimental and manipulative, but it is about mending emotional connections, restoring or repairing what has been lost, forgotten or missing. This is not without significance to my present Zeitgeist. Whilst talking about this to Jnanasalin the emotional dam I'd built burst its restraints.

I've had a tendency in the past when I leave any situation to sever all emotional as well as physical connections. It appears to be how I've coped with disappointments or disillusionment. I move on, with the intention at least, of not going back, not returning. Whilst I've attempted to prevent the momentum of this gaining too much traction, I've found it impossible to completely resist, subvert or divert. One way or another withdrawal will make itself known. 

For the last six months I've not sat to meditate or performed any sort of ritual, Buddhist or otherwise. I have consciously done this to create an open space, from where I might gain a clearer perspective on where I am, what I want to do next, what is it that remains important to me? I seem to need from time to time to step back, to remove myself from contexts. Only when you renounce something do you find out what it means to you.

I've had mixed responses to commitments and belonging to institutions. Though often appreciated and benefited from the supportive context for practice they provide. Yet at some point I find myself rebelling against those self same commitments and institutions, I see them as constraints. Boundaries and disciplines tell you where you are and what you are trying to achieve.  But I can, over time, lose my connection with why on earth I am there, whether this is what I really desire, or just what the religious context itself implies I should want. I cease taking meaningful refuge in it, because faith has, unbeknownst to me, flown off on wings to who knows where. I need to follow wherever that faith goes.

Here I am endeavouring to 'own my own walking' Forgetting that I also need to own and respect where it is I have already walked. What there is from my past spiritual journey that I still love, find useful, and, hence, should be taking forward with me. My emotional connection to what was 'missing' was as good as an alarm bell, or someone waving a red flag in my face. 

There is undoubtedly sentimental attachment present too. Missing the comfort of the familiar.  This does not necessarily mean returning to any religious context I've once been part of. But it does require me to pick up and reexamine a few things that may have fallen out of the trolley on my way to the supermarket check out.

POEM - Water Retension

In just one whisk of a
febrile moment, a fly on a whip of wire
hits the water, awakens it
ringing
across the tension like a bell
until that vibration, that throb of presence
hooks the eye, then the mouth
of a distracted minnow, till it is ritually
netted, extracted and examined like a specimen
on a grassy bank,
invariably
something else comes up
flailing and gasping in harmony with the fish,
a message
bound in the same slime envelope
that turbulence muddied, it releases an ancient sigh
once abandoned, hurriedly concealed
rushing up to freely associate with the present moment
the outward demeanour of clouds, the blue framed sun
breaking through the ripple glazed ceiling, between
subliminal and liminal, its a fragment of a page
emotionally ripped
from the half remembered
pored over now, as we walk again
in its forest woods, breath in its pollinated air
inhabit its words, its angles and trajectories
bathetic consequences
that didn't go right, back then, did it?
has it ever? for you? for them? for then
does not look good for being kept quiet about, even now,
you come out of it bad, still so blinkered
to what was wrong on your part
double dipped in selfishness and shame
every regretful cough
requires you to swallow hard
whilst observing the guilt itself forage for further food
like squirrels in the fall do, kicking up
speckled cancerous leaves as they go
madly scampering
across long cast shadows, thrown
further away, by the low slung obtuseness of a
winter sun, pulling the limbs
of trees, into the pleading elasticated arms
of El Greco martyrs filled with remorse,
a small teaspoon of mercy to lay
at the feet of the smaller god head, that is you,
the eternally virtuous version, endlessly rewarded
with a venerable absence of mind, a lousy grasp
of history, a forgetfulness, not only infectious
but careless, because
it conveniently absents you from reading aloud
the written details
on the page, what you should regret
but you know that just so long
as you are prepared to wait, sit it out, say nothing
thoroughly enough, this bubble will burst
the surface waves subside, the fish returned to its pond
and nothing will remain
to say to self or other, that whatever happened
happened, there will just
be you, the fly and the vague aroma of something
not being quite right
quickly blown away on a light breeze.


Written December 2021
Stephen Lumb

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 55 - Say Hello To Barbara

In the right royal realm of Peppa Pig nothing is going awry in the world.......until if course it does.

As I write we are returning to mandatory mask wearing in shops and public transport. So, it looks like we are not yet beyond selling the face masks that Jnanasalin has been making consistently over the last eighteen months or so. Eight hundred of them and still rising, as we currently sell around fifty a month on average. Its not something we ever imagined Cottonwood Home would hold as a standard stock item. That our best selling line would be a handmade decorative fabric face mask. This is a strange retail world we live in.

November, has been a month of stark contrasts. Extremely mild weather and fresh sunny days, interspersed with heavy rains, winds, storms and wintry blasts. Consequently shop takings have mirrored this chopping and changing.  In the off season we draw more from local residents, whose appearance in town is notoriously more weather dependent.  But overall, though lower in key, its had a heartening flavour to it. A lot better than our pessimism might have allowed us to imagine.

Thursford's Christmas Show has returned this year. So daily, around 11am, a coach party or two of the still ambulatory semi retired will stop over for a couple of hours in Sheringham. On their way to their yearly injection of high camp, courtesy of the two o'clock matinee.  As is ever the case, where the coach is coming from dictates whether we get any trade from it. If its from the Midlands or the North, then the visitors are often dressed ready for Winter weather, elderly eskimos clad in white padded jackets with fur edged hoods. They get waylaid by next doors 'rude' cards, laugh long and hysterically,. Then, barely giving our shop anything more than a desultory sideways look over their shoulder, they leave. 

If the coach is from the Home Counties, well, they behave like wasps drawn towards a bowl of sugar. Bringing an assorted middle class coterie of Hinge and Brackets across our very welcoming portal. So far there's not been that many of these. Which perhaps says a lot about the type of demographic the Thursford show generally draws its audience from. The sort that remember with nostalgia Saturday Night at the London Palladium, or never saw anything at all wrong with the Black and White Minstrel Show.

After four and a half years of reliability, Nigella, our fourteen year old black Vauxhall Corsa, passed over to the great scrapyard in the sky. We'd been returning from a Sunday jaunt to Diss and the gears and clutch were not working together smoothly in lower gears.  Having carefully got us home, Jnanasalin drove her the next day into our usual garage. Whilst they were taking her out on a test run, what was left of the gears cracked open like a Cadbury's Easter egg, and that was that.

There had been some indications she'd been nearing the end of her useful life. Becoming noisier, her suspension weaker and the electronics had developed some random idiosyncrasies.  Nevertheless, any demise takes you by surprise. Suddenly we had to buy another car, a second hand Vauxhall Meriva. 

So what would we name it, would it feel masculine or feminine to drive.  Thinking Meriva sounded vaguely latin, we toyed with perhaps calling her Gloria ( as in Estefan ) Once we had experience of her first hand we realised she wasn't really that exotic a car. Much more practically headed and conventional machine, so we said hello instead to Barbara ( as in Good ).

Whenever Jnanasalin is away I make the most of the opportunity to watch an art movie. So recently whilst he was on a weekend visit to his family, I watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film by Celene Sciamma well deserving of being called ravishing. A sensitive and sensual portrayal of the developing intimacy between a female artist and her initially reluctant sitter. Its framing and visual quality is astonishing. Its as though you are watching all the subtle placing of figures and items in a Dutch interior, staged with the dramatic quality of light of a Caravaggio. A truly marvellous film. 

Jnanasalin also has a regular weekly meeting with fellow Buddhist order members. This has become my night for indulgence in The Fassbinder Film Club. Currently working my way through his back catalogue. In my art school days in the late seventies he was considered the edgiest of cutting edge German cinema. Hugely influential but perhaps overlooked these days. You can stream many of them from Google Play for £1.99, which speaks volumes I guess.

Over his career the films are highly variable. The earliest ones like The Holy Whore are self-consciously stilted and avante guarde in style. They glory in their quirks and oddities, But here are the experiments that his later films are founded upon. Highly political and provocative, often executed in a heightened melodramatic style of symbolic realism. Rainer Werner Fassbinder emerged out of experimental theatre in the late sixties. His films continued to possess a contrived theatricality of feeling, of being deliberately arche, stagey in acting. Exquisitely posed in set, dramatic use being made of doorways and mirrors to frame scenes.

His better films focus on a strong central female characters. Many played by Hanna Schygulla whom he referred to as 'the driving force.' They are frequently quite beautiful to look at but brutally honest. Sympathetic to characters who are invariably outsiders, betrayed both by love and society. Fassbinder's films explore  knotty moral issues in a raw, quite unfiltered manner. At the same time they are frequently touchingly human in the complex frailties they portray. Fassbinder himself was a deeply conflicted man, who thrived on living up to the idea of being the enfant terrible. One is left an impression that, as a person, you may not have always found him convivial company. A drug overdose brought his career to an end at the age of 37.

His films create a Brechtian distant unease.  What you are shown is human behaviour that is not always kind, tasteful or pleasant. Fear Eats The Soul,  Effi Breist, The Marriage of Maria Braun and The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant are the best I've watched so far.

Meanwhile, in another alternate universe altogether, our Prime Minister has successfully completed his public transition into Mr Bungle. Who didn't hold parties during covid restrictions. But he is a lying toe rag after all.  And everyone appears to be quite fine with that............until they are not.

 

FINISHED READING - Three Books by Richard Holloway

I was drawn to Richard Holloway's writing, because his spiritual journey contains some elements I felt were comparable with my own. He felt like a person from whom I might learn something about practice outside of a religious tradition.

Godless Morality, Keeping Religion out of Ethics was first published  in 1999. It proved a step too far for the C of E, making the position of Richard Holloway the then Bishop of Edinburgh untenable, he felt he had to resign. The ramifications of that decision rumble on for him still. In The Stories We Tell Ourselves, published fifteen years later he is still trying to make sense of what his religious understanding and relationship to his faith is now. Simultaneously out or sync with, whilst remaining lovingly connected to, aspects of the Christian spiritual tradition. 

It can be easy to use ones knowledge of doctrine as this killer blow to win or close down discussions.  On the personal level of an individual practitioner it isn't necessarily helpful for someone in a position of authority to always 'put right' your views. Particularly if a fuller exploration of meaning, or a moral dilemma maybe required.  Sometimes you just have to take that long rambling journey, in order for any change to become a really genuine one. You can't use the word of god or the Buddha as a short cut to insight.

'Revealed religions tend to blow a smokescreen round the living reality of the faith-doubt experience and out of the smoke emerges - doctrinal certainty!  Behind a great clatter of mirrors and a great fog of smoke they move from faith to certainty. Believers are not encouraged to take the plunge of faith, they are invited to swear to the certainty of a series of historic claims that come in propositional form'

All religions, theistic or otherwise, move from believing provisionally 'as though it were true' to the swearing of oaths of loyalty to the veracity and certainty of some pre-packaged absolutes. The one and only true way to see reality. Its not even that these are wholly wrong or wholly right, they're just incomplete facsimiles. Virtual truth mistaken for the real. The unknowable air of mystery swept aside by the assertion of incontrovertible doctrine.'*

In many ways all his books ask the same questions - To what extent does the way we hold to religious doctrines and religious institutions help or hinder spiritual progress, practice and life.? What light do these cast on the meaning of human Life?  Looking in the Distance from 2004 examines that very human search to explain the how, why and what we are here for.

'even if we choose to go overboard and swim alone, we have not necessarily abandoned the religious quest; not if we think of it as the name we give to humanity's preoccupation with its own meaning or lack of meaning'**

Confident assertions of belief from scientists or religious leaders about where we and the universe have come from, rarely fully convince. There is a certain amount of confirmation bias going on in the solutions we come up with. Whether they explain things through the concept of god or an unconditioned emptiness or the universe as a self contained solid state. All end up imagining something beyond our current comprehension and hence lack verifiable evidence.  Leaving us in a state of unknowing. Nonetheless its worth noting how quickly opinion, conjecture and hypothesis quickly become firm belief and fact.

'Those of us in this place of unknowing believe that the war of opposing interpretations is pointless, because the mystery of Being can be neither demonstrated nor destroyed by explanation, it is a wound that has to be endured.'**

We can't help ourselves from wanting to fill that void with something though. As G K Chesterton once said, 'When men stop believing in god, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything'  Perhaps as the Buddha indicated the search for answers to our lack of meaning, god or no god, these only send your mind into a speculative spin. Off in pursuit of an endless fools errand. Basically don't bother yourself with them, its a useless activity - get on with your meditation.

' living in this state about the ultimate meaning or unmeaning of things is so arduous and painful that its entirely understandable that we constantly create theoretical objects for ourselves onto which we project a fictitious reality in order to rescue us from uncertainty.'**

Staying and sitting with uncertainty and the insecurity that arises from it, is a meditative practice. Its seldom done for long.  As we persist in grasping at certainty through beliefs and security in scientific fact or religious authority,which neither can fully or securely sustain. 

In The Stories We Tell Ourselves from 2014 he takes familiar biblical stories and reinterprets them. Trying to counter more traditional, literal interpretations by perceiving them as archetypal stories, myths we can be guided by. Towards the end of The Stories We Tell Ourselves, he draws a few conclusions about what use these stories might be. What is the ultimate purpose of any spiritual teaching? Are they to enable you to discover things for yourself, or to instruct you in the doctrinal authority of what you must do?  Volition and outcomes are primary.

'Better to do the right thing as if God did not exist than to do the wrong thing in the name of God whose existence you are certain of'***

Whilst not a practicing Christian, I am interested in how Holloway reframes the image and purpose of god. That perhaps it is better if god is not personified, conceived of as 'no thing', a way, or to not existing at all. The individual is then left holding the responsibility for directing their impulses towards the good or god within themselves. The teachings of Jesus do not lose their relevance or usefulness the moment the epithet 'son of god' is removed. The term 'son of god' may not have been used as a literal statement of fact, but more a state of interconnectedness, a way of being. Maybe even the whole purpose of human spiritual practice.

I struggled at times with some of the Christian theology and language. I couldn't always cross them over into concepts I could find useful. But I did resonate with the overarching purpose of these books. In a way, does it matter what 'the stories you live by' are, what you put your faith in, what you believe in even? Particularly if they are all 'incomplete facsimiles' of the truth anyway. The act of faith is an orientation, a boat you inhabit and travel in.- destination towards the unknown or unknowable.

Perhaps the focus should be more  on -What happens as a result of them,? - How do you respond and act? - What do you do? -What are the consequences and benefits they produce upon yourself, upon others, upon the world? These questions remain the same regardless of whether its religious, political, economic, social or cultural stories, beliefs and ideologies we are following.

' Given that the universe is what it is - however you understand it - what are you going to do about it? How have you personally decided how to respond? What story have you decided to live by? Whether or not you know it, you are already living by a story you are telling yourself. So, what difference does your story make? Upon whom does it impact? Are you aware of its impact? Come to think of it, do you even know the story you are living by?'***

CARROT SCORE - 6/8

* from Godless Morality, Pub. Canongate Books 1999
** from Looking in the Distance, Pub. Canongate Books 2004

*** from The Stories We Tell Ourselves, Pub. Canongate Books 2014

 

MY OWN WALKING - Journal 26/11/2021

When I imagine my future spiritual direction, it begins by being open and receptive. Yet as soon as I take a step towards anything there is an urge to start asking 'does this feel right, does thus feel like a place where you could live, does this feel like home'. I appear always to be within the planetary orbit of this settling instinct. Encouraging me to grasp for coherence, for a known spiritual tradition, a safe context within which to understand how I am practising. A place where I can live, feel supported, sheltered and belong, because it can get lonely out here.

This is a theme likely to crop up repeatedly. What I'm attempting to do - to own my own walking - can slip from an easy solitary travelling, into being a long, hard and lonely road. In truth, it can be both things simultaneously. I have to be prepared to hold these two perceptions, ways of seeing the ground beneath my feet. Walking this independent form of spiritual path inevitably requires knowing its a tightrope and walking with care along the tension. Recognise when its showing its face once again, and not be too dismayed or dismissive about that.

Standing on' my own ground' presents me with the infinite possibilities of an open road, but at the same time there is the desire for someone to hold my hand. To help guide me along an unfamiliar path, to share their companionship, their experience and their wisdom. Such spiritual friendship requires shared values and practices to make a mutual bond useful. At this point, for myself, this would be seeking out security in a place of insecurity.  There can be a wisdom in this insecurity, and that interests me even as I find myself pulling away from it.

Whilst I remain in the mood for exploring, to investigate what it is I'm naturally drawn towards, to go deeper into interests and new found enthusiasms, finding like minds is unlikely and potentially misleading. If I need to settle into anything it is the creativity required in this approach, how to respond and engage usefully with whatever I encounter. Observing where this type of focus naturally leads, without erecting any predefined or emerging contextual boundary around it. 

This desire to find ones spiritual home can be a real need. But it also can come from a neurotic impulse. Trying to escape feelings, aspects of oneself, of reality as it actually is, that you are uncomfortable with, don't like or want to experience. Home can be a place to hide yourself from yourself.  To take shelter away from any discomfort. To keep what is outside your experience outside. A home supports, but also contains and imprisons. Creating a way to filter what does and doesn't enter your experience. Should I conceptualise even my current spiritually independent path into another form of home, this could prove equally unhelpful. 

I suspect one never finds ones true spiritual home, without letting go of ones ideas and concepts of what it is that home looks and feels like. What one needs your home to be for you. Home has a shifting perspective, that never has a permanent location or orientation. At some point we step out of the safety and isolation of home, in order to encounter anything or anyone new. To be renewed and reinvigorated is to be prepared to meet the unknown, whilst wandering in a wilderness of potential.

'Come, As a man who hears a sound at the gate
Opens the window and puts out the light
The better to see out into the dark,
look, I put it out.' *

* from Finally by W S Merwin

FINALLY by W S Merwin

Finally

My dread, my ignorance, my
Self, it is time. Your imminence
Prowls the palms of my hands like sweat.
Do not now. if I rise to welcome you,
Make off like roads into the deep night.
The dogs are dead at last, the locks toothless,
The habits out of reach.
I will not be false to you tonight.

Come, no longer unthinkable. Lets us share
Understanding like a family name. Bring
Integrity as a gift. something
Which I had lost, which you found on the way.
I will lay it beside us, the old knife,
While we reach our conclusions.

Come, As a man who hears a sound at the gate
Opens the window and puts out the light
The better to see out into the dark,
look, I put it out.

by W S Merwin
taken from Migrations, New and Selected Poems, Pub. Copper Canyon Press.

CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 29 - Fusspot & Foofy This Isn't

North Sea Coffee, Cromer Promenade, Cromer.

You are not going to believe this, you are just not. A third carrot cake since lockdown finished and a third thumbs up. Have I turned into a push over during the last year? Now, I know some of you take a perverse delight in the more vitrolic reviews. The more fulminating a condemnation the better. To be honest I miss that too, it can be such a relief, like releasing a long held fart. Its cathartic. But the ultimate aim of these reviews is to praise the perfect carrot cake. So when I do find one it produces a teenage giggle of delight, that penetrates and rattles through the world weary cynicism of my sixty four year old form.

So what do I say as I begin my review? Don't lose your perspective. Don't get carried away. Don't be deceived by fusspot and foofy presentation. ( that may just be another Golden Rule right there ) In this case it was somewhat the opposite. Don't be mislead by the first appearance of your cake being served unceremoniously shoveled into the papier mache equivalent of a dog bowl. However perfectly and ecologically formed from recycled pulp.  Look at that photo! The presentation, even if I were to be charitable, is unprepossessing. But I am more than willing to forgive such errant casualness. should the darkly ginger tinged nosh inside it prove superlative.

You may have heard me mention North Sea Coffee before. I do have, shall I say, the odd Flat White there. It is served in one size, in a small disposable cup, so they get that bit right. As a Flat Whitel its acceptable, but no shining gold star. It is a few kilometres away from the real deal - at The Black Apollo in Holt.  Yet after battling through the wind and rain on the Cromer seafront, particularly this past summer, with a passably good coffee at the end of it - meaner men than I would not quibble. 

What lifts any wavering spirits are the cakes. Perfect little specimens of wholesome confectionery. My personal favourites in descending priority being Date & Fig Slice - Apricot Slice - Banana Loaf.  Some of their best confectionery is produced by the Mother of one of the women who runs North Sea Coffee. She is something of a confectionery goddess as far as I'm concerned. So the day when a carrot cake appeared on the cafe's cake list, interest was peaked enough to put aside my abiding preference for the aforementioned Date & Fig Slice of immaculate conception. Such is my devotion.

Anyway, we are four paragraphs in and still scene setting. Start the review of the cake, its overdue. As you can see from the photo this was one mega piece of carrot cake, carelessly slumped as it is in its ill fitting paper potty.  Looking for all the world like a full grown man forced to wear an old school uniform. All the externals of the cake look correct. The tan colour, the weight if it, the mix, the frosting, the walnuts. Look how many walnuts there are, confident in its resemblance to a full sea of curly hair. 

Yet how often have ravishing appearances deceived us? In the world of the carrot cake looks are not entirely trustworthy.  The cake's texture was spot on. Hefty but not doughy, sturdy enough yet still a strand filled sponge, that was moist. The frosting lay there, magnificently forming a firm crust, but with the delicately sweet edged taste we expect of a superlative cream cheese. I instantly felt deep love for this rough hewn ragamuffin of a cake. Its a classic carrot cake, that doesn't need the additional plump of sultanas to brighten up its flavour spectrum.  Quite nutty though, which is a good thing. This one was indeed a very good thing. 

CARROT CAKE SCORE - 8/8

ARTICLE - The Books I Never Finished Reading

I recently gave up on reading Piranesi, the prize winning novel by Susanne Clarke. I got halfway through it, and still felt in a darkened state of imaginative disengagement, waiting for something to turn the light on for me. Warning signs were emerging. A determined attitude was setting in - lets put our shoulder to the wheel and get ourselves to the end. Only then could I be free to read something more enjoyable. My husband reminded me that there was another, less self punishing, option. To stop reading it altogether and move on.

Its a rare thing that I would do this. I am into completion by temperament, or should that be habit? Not finishing anything just feels lazy, fundamentally wrong. An act of failure, either on the part of my limited imaginative faculty or that of the author's. Some one has to be found to blame for this state of affairs, this failure to connect, it's either your fault or theirs. That it might simply be just not my sort of book, is like reminding the person with chronic IBS that maybe they shouldn't eat spicey foods. Its not helpful, of course we know. But we cannot resist the desire to consume whatever we want with the risk of the sudden onset of chronic diarrhoea, only one of the possible outcomes.

One can forget that reading is a voluntary act of free will, no one is making you do this. You bought or borrowed the book in the first place. You chose to read it, but tend to forget you're also equally at liberty not to do so. In theory, I think of myself as an averagely intelligent chap operating on the premise that I am able to obtain a rough and ready grasp of things. But, in reality I don't always.  Like everyone, I have my limits, even if I'm not ready and willing to openly admit it. For the male of the species this can all be a bit loaded. It would be like confirming in public you are thick or stupid. To risk ribaldry and ridicule. Something you'd just never do, however true it was, or how common place a male experience it may or may not be. Its just better to draw a very opaque veil over the whole subject.

I have given up on non fiction books when I've discovered too late they were far too theoretical or technical for me.  Recently I bought a short compilation of writings by Gaston Bachlard, because quite a few years ago I read and gained a lot from his book The Poetics of Space. However, this one, On Poetic Imagination & Reverie completely defeated me. Early warnings were the Prologue and Introduction by academic commentators, that took up half of what was a very slim volume of just over a hundred pages. The experience of reading these was reminiscent of being locked in a room where no sound could either enter or leave. They use specialist and, for me at least, impenetrable forms of expression. Despite my noncomprehension, I was not entirely convinced that they had anything of real interest to say underneath all that fawning verbiage. I found myself reading and re-reading sentences hoping to gleen a morsel of meaning from it to feed either my intellect or imagination. But they floated through my consciousness without creating the slightest ripple of understanding. This was humbling for sure. If I were then to descend into the mode of the savage critic, or worse still to character assassinate someone I've never met. Then both the author and I would be truly lost. The vindictive slap across the face of righteous impulses, should never be thoughtlessly indulged. So you didn't get it, get over it!

I don't imagine anyone wants to feel beaten by a mere book. So much so I have been known to keep trying again and again, but hitting the same wall, with an increasing degree of masochism. The best example of this tendency, was reading Thomas Pynchon's - Gravity's Rainbow. Its a very weighty book in both size, scope and complexity. I started off quite enjoying the rich quality of his writing style, this was going to be good. However, it shifts constantly about in time, period and place with little indication when you have changed location. You just have to intuit when this is happening. It has a vast range of eccentric characters, with new ones being introduced all the time. There came a point, about 150 pages in, when I found myself lost. I no longer knew who anyone was or what was happening, I became utterly exasperated. I no longer cared to live there with my imagination anymore. This happened each of the three times I attempted to read it. I have never returned to Pynchon since, its too painful an experience to risk reliving it yet again.

When it comes to my taste in music, I seem quite happy to try out anything. But equally happy to not make too big a deal of it, if it doesn't excite my interest or enthusiasm. My view towards books is apparently substantially different. Still open to trying something out. But the experience of not liking or getting on with a book, has a much more pronounced impact upon my self esteem and views of my intellectual ability. Which is interesting to note, I suppose, with regard to the fixed murky shadows of ones self view. Particularly for the practice of holding ones likes and dislikes more lightly or provisionally. Over identifying is all.

EVERYDAY RITUALS - No 3 Reading A Book

Most everyday life rituals are improved if you simply slow yourself down. 

Arriving home after the demanding pace of a day at work, stuffing dinner hurriedly into your face, sitting down for whatever your chosen evenings activity is. In that mentally hyped up state you find yourself still trying to multi task even in your home life. Its great on the quantity of what you achieve at the expense of the quality.  So watch a frenetically paced action movie or TV programme, whilst constantly monitoring your social media feed, talking to your kids or partner with music playing intrusively in the background. Which of these are you giving your attention to? All of them? Does this sensory overload ever stop? And we wonder why we don't sleep well, remain tired and stressed out in the morning. The multi tasking rituals of both our days and nights are all being carried out at the same driven pace. With no time off.

You would think reading a book was the one thing that could provide that time off. Yet the moment you pick up a book to read, some unresolved issue pops into your mind. So once you sit down to read acknowledge there will always be things left on your 'to do' task list. Few of them need urgently addressing right now. The more attention you give them the more the restlessness will breed, mostly to the violin accompaniment of anxiety and stress.

Turn everything else off - do one thing
The ritualised power of literature, music and drama is that, given the right conditions, they take your mind, emotions and sense for your soul, imaginatively somewhere else. To do this effectively they need to have your complete and undivided attention. It takes a concerted willed level of effort these days to put ones tablet to one side, turn off any TV, radio or background music and read. To create the conditions in which to do just the one thing. By keeping our senses in a flurry of spinning plates, at all times, are we unconsciously creating distractions that keep us at a distance from deepening our experience of engagement?

What do you read from?
I do possess a kindle and a tablet. Their capacity, lightness and portability is convenient, particularly when travelling. But lets stop for a moment to consider what the consequences are of everything happening through one device. There is no separation or demarcation of one activity from another. It's a bit like living and interacting all the time within the same room. As though the way you perceive the world has only a single window through which it can be viewed. Zoom or screen fatigue seem to be examples of what happens to us when we see everything constantly through the same restricted sensory viewpoint.  We become wired and alienated from ourselves.

This type of tech inherently cultivates a shorter attention span. It makes it far too easy to flip from the novel you are reading, to just check your emails, Instagram, or who has posted on social media recently. It allows you to respond immediately to associative connections that pop up in our mind anyway. Its a medium with built in algorithms for distraction. Before you know it you've spent two hours scrolling through quite inconsequential dross on the internet. The plot of the novel you were reading is long forgotten. Your devotion to just reading a book, as any repeatedly interrupted ritual would, loses its power to hold your interest.

Over time I found kindle/tablet use emotionally disconnected me from the act of enjoying reading. Instances of my reading or even finishing a book noticeably diminished.  A book on kindle/tablet can feel very transient, you can even switch it off like a light. One click and its as if you never read it, its no longer there. The book and the author become a bit anonymous. It vanishes from your conscious awareness far too easily.

Hold a physical book
A kindle or tablet has the weight of a wallet, the cold sensory anonymity of plastic sitting in your hand. There is an important physical ritual in the experience of holding and opening an actual book. It has a distinct cover that illustrates something about what lies within. It opens up to reveal a whole world contained within it. Hardback or paperback books have a weight and solidity to them, they feel substantial. A physical book sits on a bedside table or a shelf,  reminding you of the experience of reading it. 

Reading is as much a tactile experience, as an imaginative one. The warmth of a book in your hands, as you turn actual paper pages, you understand on a physical level where you are within the book. There is a bookmark, page numbers, to visibly mark your progress. You possess it. You connect with it as an object of love, desire and appreciation. You underline favourite passages, make marginal notes.

That there has recently been a boom in people buying hardback books. maybe in part as a reaction to the bland non descript nature of reading on electronic devices. I've returned to buying physical books, from a local bookshop.  All the browsing, the choosing, the  purchasing, is a great preliminary ritual adventure that precedes and adds to the eventual pleasure of reading the book. 

A bookshop can order you anything they don't have in store. I know its a bit counter to the instant gratification zeitgeist of our age, but having to wait for something to arrive builds through anticipation the pleasure for when it does. Bookshops are also socially enjoyable, getting to know the shop owners a little as people. To develop a relationship with them and their bookshop as a place to visit. 

This is contingent on having the surplus cash to buy new books, which I do at present. But there are still libraries and second hand stores should you wish to be more economical or ecologically minded over where you source your reading matter. 

When & how you read
All books require the arising of the apposite moment for them to be read. Don't force it, never think you ought to read anything.  I've had many a dispiriting experiences of persisting in reading a book I'm just not enjoying, or in the mood for. This can turn the act of reading into a dogged experience of stoically sticking with it through to the bitter end. It makes reading a ritual emptied of all its magical properties. So be aware of when reading a book is becoming an act of endurance, and not pleasure. You are not a failure as a person if a book fails to float your boat.

Any book needs the time and the space in which to work its magic upon you. The aftermath of reading on a kindle meant I got used to reading as a cheap, but effective, soporific before sleep. Five, maybe ten minutes max and then the head would hit the pillow. Reading as a nightcap is OK, though it doesn't suit every book. Complex plots or unusually densely structured novels don't work as bedtime reading. Ones with short episodic chapters are better. Its generally best to recognise from the outset what a book will require of you attention wise. Some books need ample amounts of time, the space in which to absorb your attention. To become slowly drawn into the world it is describing, and begin to live in it imaginatively. 

Be aware  if you find yourself clock watching, or counting the number of pages you've read. How much more till you reach the end?. Reading a book is not a mission, a time and motion survey, or on a tick list of daily life achievements. When truly in the world of a novel, or when writing, listening or watching anything, you can be transported to a space where time does not figure in quite the same way anymore. Time will fly by largely unnoticed. This relieves any pressure you may feel you are under. You do have to surrender yourself to reading. If you in anyway turn reading into a stressful activity, its ablility to relax or take you out of yourself will be diminished. Impatience will rob you of the benefit of time off.

What you read
What you read has to be something you are interested in reading. I prefer to read a book whilst my interest in a subject is peaked. Like my music choices, I enjoy following up on lines of inquiry and pursuing these interests whilst they are still alive for me. Philosophical, Poetic, Pulp, Classic or spiritual. Be aware of how much you are up for. A thumping great 600 page Hilary Mantel is quite a commitment, the chapters long and detailed, this type of book can feel herculean. Perhaps a Louis de Berniere, Armistead Maupin or Matt Haig might be more suitable, shorter chapters, narratives that move on quickly at a pace, where you can easily adjust the amount you read. A light literary stroll can sometimes just be more manageable, and hence enjoyable, than strenuous intellectual mountain climbing.

What you read may not be a novel. It might be poetry, history, psychology or an art book. I love a good autobiography or biography, but not all the time. A factual informative book occasionally. If I get a bit imaginatively dry an art or poetry book can set my creative synapses sparking again. Through past experience I've developed more of an intuitive sense for what it is I want or need to read at any one time.

Where you read
Where you are when you read is important. In bed may work, but as I've said it has its dangers of reading only being this brief ritual nightcap before slumber. But then we don't know what effect this may have upon the richness of your dreams. Where you read can vary according to the season. In the autumn and winter snuggled up in a cosy armchair in front of a real fire can be exactly the right surroundings. In the spring and summer, perhaps an outdoor seat in your garden. Or you take a walk to your favourite park, wood or bit of the coast, sit down there and read. I've found even being alone in a bustling but convivial cafe can aid concentration and absorption. Sometimes with a very good book you can become so completely absorbed in it despite the supposedly unfavourable circumstances.

Reading out loud
In the early days when humankind was moving from an oral to a written story culture, the written, carved or printed words were considered inanimate until they were spoken. Speaking brought words to life. If the texts were sacred spiritual ones, chanting or reciting them in a temple or church was a ritual central to engaging with their meaning and purpose. Speaking words aloud invoked an immediate alive connection with the sacred.

I find with poetry in particular, that the words and their meaning become so much more tangibly alive once I hear them out loud, vibrating in my larynx, vocalised sounds reverberating in a room. Sotto voce or silently to oneself doesn't quite give you enough of a physical sense for their real power. You can read a Shakespeare play, but its only when you read it out loud or see someone else perform it, does it reveal more of its depths. To vocalise poetic words throws a pebble into a pond that 'touches the depths before it breaks the surface,' as Gaston Bachlard expressed it. It plucks on the harp of unconscious feeling.

Reading  silently to oneself is a relatively recent phenomena. Silent reading to a largely illiterate society was considered rude or selfish. You were fortunate if you were educated and able to read. Books were rare, so you were encouraged to share them by reading them out loud to others. This rekindled the memory of an older communal oral storytelling tradition. When Dickens toured doing public readings, these became a central part of how he connected with his readership. It didn't matter whether you were able to read or not, you could hear the stories being dramatically read onstage by their author.

The way words and conjunctions of words resonate in a space and within us, can touch and move us in unexpected ways. I know it feels to us now an odd thing to do, but it is worth giving reading aloud a try, to yourself indoors or outdoors, or to others if you feel brave enough. 

Reading as shamanism

Reading has always possessed this ritual incantation aspect, to summon up mercurial spirits of wonder and inspiration. Reading touches on our roots and ancestry, the demons and angels, the mythic elements that have guided the human spirit of adventure. As we read we reach out to inhabit and shift through the past, present and future. Passing through this world, old and new, other worldly realms, of fantastic alien places. We become one with the muse of an author, their vision becomes our vision, their images become ours, what was once another's imaginative world  becomes ours. The ritual of reading can hold us in a trance, right up to the moment we turn the last page, close the book and put it aside.

LISTENING TO - Hey What by Low

The album Hey What ends as it begins with a symphonic crescendo of beautifully orchestrated kerrangs of noise. Heavily compressed bass sounds, fuzzy edged guitar reverbs, thunderous drums and drones, electronic ticks,tape loops and wailing tones coming at you from all directions. Over the top is the glorious ravishing vocal harmonies of Alan Sparrowhawk and Mimi Parker. Weaving a musical majesty rarely heard since The Cocteau Twins ceased to exist.

There is a lot to be discovered on this album. I find it an intensely moving listening experience. The soundscapes Low paint are huge, expansive, liberating ones. I'm tempted to say spiritual, in the sense that the effect of it is a hopeful and uplifting one, as if it releases something previously imprisoned or weighed down.

The track Disappearing and the albums opening track White Horses are representative indications of the sonic world a Low album currently inhabits.

 .

And yet picking out individual tracks like this does not entirely convey the overall form that this album takes. Each song moves through connecting interludes that bring you almost seamlessly into the next track. Its a type of song cycle.

I'm beginning exploring Low's back catalogue of twelve previous albums. A listen to Things We Lost In The Fire from 2001 reveals an apparently different sparse and generally acoustic sound. Bundled in with the late nineties 'slowcore' sub genre, there appears to have been quite a stylistic shift in Low along their twenty five year history as a band. 

Hey What is an identifiably progressive development. It cranks up a massive wall of sound from the embryonic foundations of their previous 2018 album Double Negative. That album is a more lyrical, plaintive and romantically intimate offering. By comparison Hey What possesses this awesome magnificence, the scale and glittering urban sophistication of a huge skyscraper backlit by a gorgeous sunrise.

However, in the way they carefully place their voices then allow a beautifully sparse soundscape to expand behind it, there is some continuity between what they are exploring now with their earlier work.. They may have been more low-fi and subdued, but the sense of drawing you into a whole other realm is still present. Its just that with Hey What without any sense of bombast or an overinflated concept, they've sculpted with much larger musically imposing forms and flown high with them. This album has such a beauty to it, I find it pretty much flawless.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8