My ongoing exploration of electro drone music has recently thrown up Alva Noto as a darkly tinged entrant into my field of interest. One of the knock on effects of the lock downs has been an increasing fascination with such longer form pieces of music. Things that stretch your attention span beyond the three minute single song format. Alva Noto has made several collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and it appears to continue to be a productive and fertile creative relationship.
In recent years John Grant has broadened the style and subject matter of his songs. Whilst still delivering them with characteristic wit, sense for melody, and the rich mellifluous tones of that voice. But there's also been a sense of uncertainty and drift to it. Where does he go from here?
The emotional vengefulness and score settling of earlier songs, could never be maintained without eventually descending into self-parody. Demons having been exorcised, Grant's songs have become gentler in tone, more at ease with himself and his past. Even writing a romantic love song, without any pronounced thorns sticking out would have been previously unheard of. With his last album Love Is Magic he appeared to be reaching for an overarching thematic tone or mood, however inconsistently he achieved it.
Boy From Michigan is expertly helmed on production by Cate le Bon, taking the instrumental heat down a touch. We have here a very different album. At times quite gloriously brave, encompassing all the best his considerable talent can offer. Set this time within the atmospheric frame of a boyhood being remembered. The eponymous track Boy From Michigan, begins with an ominous wave of synth. We are going back to his home town, but like all returns there is reticence, its a mixed emotional bag - 'Beware when you go out there, they'll eat you alive if you don't care. They're using different rules, the american dream is not for weak soft hearted fools.' For he is still that simple boy from Michigan.
Initially the return takes place in the idyllic world of childhood delights, previously depicted so fondly in an earlier song Marz, Recollections of a time and place seen through less world weary young eyes. County Fair is a beautiful lilting song about his first visit to the county fair. He's on the perifery, not really part of the gang, but they are letting him tag along ' you can ride with us, or we can meet you there'. He cries because he's too small to go on some rides, but he falls in love with the garish beauty of the place nonetheless. Its a song chock full of colourful touching details.
Each track takes you to a different period- his childhood, his teenage years, the friends, his first loves, sexual experiments and memories of abuse. The tone and feel of them is gentler, reflective and more heart than hurt felt. There is pain here, but its not lashing out at the cause of it He wants to understand, to forgive if possible, to regret the loss of friendships from his youth. Throughout the songs have an unsentimental honesty and poignancy to them.
The hardest listen is the song Rusty Bull. The young Grant is at the junkyard 'where my Daddy goes', but mixed in with recollections of the tasty fries that he liked, is a discomforting memory of something he didn,t like, of someone who visited him at night time 'when he lies in his bed' the forewarning creeks on the five and dime staircase from which' forty years later I'm still trying to run'
Grant is very good at quickly setting the scene with his lyrics, 'I see you in the pink art Deco glow of the Cruise Room' or being 'All alone on some back country road just outside of Shawnee, Oklahoma' or 'Just so you know I always knew that you loved me. Let there be no doubt or confusion in your brain' In this song Just So You Know its never entirely clear who's love he is acknowledging, a former lover's or parental love? If it is the latter, Just So You Know becomes a more emotionally complicated song. To love and yet have difficulties with aspects of a parents love, is an uncomfortable space to find oneself in.
There are the usual oddball tracks, such as Rhetorical Figure. Musically at least paying homage to the new wave bands of his youth, say The Cure or Devo. Whilst lyrically extolling the exuberant attractions of said figures of speech. Your Portfolio and The Only Baby are I find harder to fall in love with. These songs seem to be straining for something but not quite getting there. The latter is over extended and histrionic at times. Its having a shot at Trump and his ilk, but I'm not convinced it hits its target.
Putting these aside Boy from Michigan is a more than welcome return to top form.
CARROT REVIEW 7/8
We were on a mission, to buy a container for a recently bequeathed gooseberry bush. We start off at Holt Garden Centre because its the closest Venturing further afield should it disappoint, and in the past it has done so, frequently. During the lockdowns Holt Garden Centre has undergone a massive makeover, setting them back two million pounds. But the outcome of it all is a Garden Centre that knocks spots off most of the local competition.
If I were to describe their previous cafe I'd have to say it was amateurish. Always looking if it was run by a gaggle of semi retired volunteers drawn from the Kelling WI - Friends of Holt Garden Centre division. The new cafe is large open, airy and no longer looks as though it was set up in a converted milking shed. Its stylish and spacious. Having quickly made our decision on the pot, we rewarded our aesthetic deliberations with a coffee and cake.
And....they had a Carrot Cake. It was a really foofed up one, flouncing on a cake stand. Saying look at me - Oo La La - smack your lips around this hustler. In short, it bore all the outward signifiers of a Carrot Cake posing provocatively in a red light district window. Such 'come hither' cakes can be the confectionery equivalent of Boris - over promising and serially disappointing. So, I was not holding out for a hero with this one. That sort is usually all provocative display and no cake sex.
I ordered a slice, plus the obligatory flat white chaser. Only one cup size of FW's offered, so no annoying sizeism here. It turned out to be a passably strong coffee. OK, but a FW it was not. The Carrot Cake, as I said had all its frilly knickers on show, with a half dried slice of orange stuck in the frosting like a Flamenco hair comb. The exterior circumference plastered in frosting. Pebble dashed exceptionally heavily with walnuts. Served on a roughly triangular shaped ceramic plate. Three raspberries on one side dusted with icing sugar, and the aforementioned half candied orange. One glance at the cake itself, titivating aside, told me that this was not a bad carrot cake. It bore all the visual indications of actually a rather good one. Quelle Surprise!
The texture looked good, an uneven mortar mix with sizable chunks of walnut grits mixed evenly across it. It was in short not stinting on the required ingredients of grated carrot and nuts. So thumbs up there. The taste was rather excellent. Finely balanced, it expertly walked the line between weighty and light on the palette, but had the necessary doughy gravitas that avoided sinking into being under cooked.
Now a lot of carrot cakes lack confidence in the basic carroty experience of a carrot cake, and tip in a scree of mixed spices to fill in for the perceived lack of flavourings. Either that, or they are fraudulent cheap skates who will con you with a Spice Cake, but lets not go there yet again, eh? Here the spices were very well balanced, just a suggestion, not a clarion call to the international spice trade to 'send more nutmeg and cinnamon'.
The frosting was the only slight disappointment, it being a butter cream. Well actually not even butter if The Supreme Cake Maker is to be believed. He said it was margarine based. But having maligned it, I think I have to say this made a light, not too sweet or intrusive entrance. A compliment to the cake not an active takeover or aggressive drowning. For a marge sludge it was not bad.
A well judged carrot cake all round.
CARROT CAKE SCORE 7/8
'The walking of the Blue Mountains is swifter than the wind, but human beings in the mountains do not sense or know it. Being in the mountains describes the opening of flowers in the real world. People out of the mountains never sense it and never know it, do not see, and do not hear this concrete fact.
If we doubt the walking of the mountains, we also do not yet know our own walking. It is not that we do not have our own walking, but we do not yet know and have not yet clarified our own walking. When we know our own walking, then we will surely also know the walking of the Blue Mountains.'
DOGEN
Three years ago when I resigned from the Triratna Order was a big moment for me, a cathartic decision that had been long in the gestation. Over my many years of involvement it was as though I was a fuse box where one by one the main switches overloaded and tripped. There was now insufficient electricity, few connections live, hardly any energy coming through, I was burnt out, frazzled, done to a crisp.
When you leave any organisation - what next? - is a not unreasonable question to be at the forefront of ones mind. In a sense once you have been a practicing Buddhist you will remain a Buddhist to some degree. Its a bit like riding a bike, you can't forget what you've learnt. My training in Triratna means the way I interpret the world and my experience of it, will still tend to be cast in the language and viewpoints of that spiritual tradition. Whatever I encounter processed through this learnt paradigm.
For six months after resigning I chose to do nothing to answer the question - what next? Then tentatively I thought I'd try Zen. My love of Dogen made it obvious that I should explore this approach. Over the last two years I've tried two Zen groups, The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives and Stonewater Zen. Each time I have had a honeymoon period, where I get a bit over excited, think this is exactly what I'm looking for, and recognise something in it that was absent from my involvement in Triratna. There is also familiarising oneself with a whole new viewpoint, and their way of describing it. But as I went further in my engagement with both groups I began to feel this frustration bubbling up, an anger even. I began to feel critical and dismissive. A pattern to my responses was emerging. Did I fundamentally just not want this?
I knew I was looking for a new Sangha to practice within. I know nothing is perfect. Letting go of my friends and connections within the Triratna Sangha was hard. The need of a supportive context for practice, a Sangha, is a very Triratna way of approaching things. Kalyana Mitrata being so central to the spiritual life within it. I've recently seen that this desire for Sangha is distorting my vision of what it is I should be doing. Its not a Sangha, but a break from all the loyalty and commitment to an organisation that being an active Sangha member requires. I need to feel free to do whatever the hell I want, free of spiritual commitments or traditions.
One of the things Reverend Leoma at the Zen Priory taught was never to take emotional responses at face value. Always take an interest in what lies beneath them. So I've sat with and reflected on the nature of my frustration. On the surface it seems as though my frustration was with Zen, but beneath that was an older more amorphous frustration with Buddhism, but beneath that was the disgruntled form of frustration with myself as a Buddhist practitioner.
After nearly thirty years of practice where had all that effort got me? The practice I've done, the rituals, the dharma talks I've listened to, the books I've read. I have my sour moments of ennui when the dharma appears to be more and more of exactly the same. The last thing I need right now is yet more dharma input. What I already know is not reaching me, still missing its essential point, constantly. But then anyone who is not enlightened is just not getting it are they? What I found beneath all of this was spiritual despair. Ultimately I was profoundly disappointed in myself. And beneath that was?
A fear in the end. The fear of having wasted my life, and not just on spiritual practice. To die with maybe just a few Buddhist frills to decorate my overall level of spiritual ignorance. Yet had I really been completely squandering this precious opportunity? There are many sorts of views at play here, grasping for meaning and purpose, for insights and enlightenment, for a quantifiable achievable goals, to feel better about myself. My spiritual wiring at present, is just a bit more fucked than usual.
The consequence of these realisations is that I've felt quite down. Its like a form of bereavement, or grieving. Churning me up good and proper. Leaving Triratna, deciding to gradually cease using my old order name, and now these revelations. It is all part of the process of letting go, of disrobing, taking off what no longer serves any use Where there is loss, there will be periods of mourning. This hurts nonetheless. Its also humbling, the not knowing, the continuing state of spiritual ignorance. What should I do? Should I do anything? What does any of this mean or signify? Wait, I urge myself, just wait awhile. Jump to no premature conclusions. And so I am waiting.
So far I believe I should steer clear of involving myself in religious organisations, traditions and structured approaches. Its not that they are inherently wrong, none of the zen groups I've tried are invalid. I just can't do that right now. I have to feel at liberty, rightly or wrongly, to make my own imaginative choices and connections. All the enjoyable bits in my engagement with Triratna were about discovering those connections, most often through the devising of an elaborate ritual. Creating the emotional equivalents to the teachings, as Sangharakshita puts it. The baroque, involved and passionate nature of those rituals really ought to have alerted me sooner, that at heart I am no Zen practitioner. It is Dogen's richly imaginative poetic nature that I find inspiring. Whilst I might imagine myself as a monastic,with a Zen focused practice, its not long before I also find it the most desiccated of asceticisms. But, hey! I gave Zen a go.
I have chosen this path that I'm now walking. I do not yet understand what its purpose is. Until I do, I cannot fully own my own walking. But facing the right way, being receptive to the sun rising on the horizon and heading off with no goal in mind, this is what I must do now. Whilst it will feel lonely at times travelling this road with little Kalyana Mitrata - this is where I start.
written June-July 2021 by
Stephen Lumb
Its the middle of June, a heatwave is happening. And so during one sultry night, when the duvet was thrown off to cool down, I received the misplaced kiss of my first mosquito bite of the Summer. Bliss.
The shop is doing well. Daily sales persist in mirroring the weather ie - inconsistent and unpredictable. A sequence of poor slow days, some slow but good days, some just very good days, some days when you'd think everyone has died, gone to heaven and not told you. A vague trend is that we take nothing in the first couple of hours before lunch, then take the majority of our daily sales in the space of half an hour to an hour. June, though it has followed this pattern of extreme variability, has over the whole thirty days proved one of our best months so far.
The pandemic and its restrictions have become second nature, whilst remaining tiresome. Spectacle fog, what's there not to like? I understand why folk feel fed up with it all. To elevate that feeling of being fed up into a logical reason for the restrictions to be finished seems, frankly, ridiculous. If being fed up was more effective than the vaccine, the pandemic would have been over last summer. Unfortunately, our feelings never made anything go away.
Unbeknownst to us, we've grown up in fortunate, though unreal times. The daily threat of disease so reduced we actively plan for a longer life. Taking us by surprise when we do fall seriously ill or 'die before our time'. Our prevalent health worries are a consequence of living longer, whether its arthritic, cancer or dementia related conditions.
In the 14th century the Black Death is estimated to have killed between 30-60% of Europe's population. Combined with a series of wet Summers, severe winters and the resultant famine, which killed yet more. Social fabrics disintegrated and the economy all but collapsed. You could say, comparative to the Black Death, this time we got off lightly.
However, the arrival of Covid 19 did lead to the often unedifying spectacle of folk behaving like spoilt children throwing tantrums about how unfair this disease is. 'For god sake its infringing on our civil liberties, our lifestyles, our peccadillos' Highlighting a 21st century loss of perspective, and an out of touch view of the consequences of sickness and death on lives, let alone the economy. This is one of the many deluded luxuries of our age, along with believing uncritically in the oracle of our feelings.
On a much frothier note, I am now sixty four. Delectable food, cards and presents have been offered up and accepted most joyfully. The Supreme Cake Maker, as per my request, made Mary Berry's Devonshire Apple Cake. All thought of my diet thrown out the proverbial for a day or so. Finished off with a Chippy Tea on the harbour wall at Wells next the Sea. The day after, being Sunday and our only day off together. we took breakfast at Creake Abbey Cafe and an afternoon tea at the Dales Hotel, just around the corner from home. In four years of living in the village we'd not set a foot inside afore. Splendid days, places and fare
Our diminutive patio decking outback, has been in need of rejuvenation. Flaking in places, worn away in others. I've been waiting for consistently warmer weather before beginning conservation work. So, given the Summer we've been presented with, I've waited quite some time. The plan of execution was to do it in two halves. Scour, sand, clean, repaint one half. Then once dry, move the arbour and containers onto the freshly painted area, repeat on the scuzzy remainder.
However, several fronts of grey cloudettes and torrentials intervened after the completion of the first half. The return of fairer times may commence, so I'm told, later next week. Meanwhile, birds have performed a dirty protest over the freshly painted section, excreting shitty piles of random green squiggles all over it. Nature abhours a vacuum.
