SCREEN SHOT - The Sparks Brothers

This is one fan's devoted love letter to Sparks. Packed full of interviews with other fans, famous and otherwise, and with the one true constant in Sparks, the brothers Mael. This documentary by Edgar Wright takes you on a rough and ready trajectory through the 25 album ( and counting) output of this truly remarkable band. Having success, not having success, then more success, the fallow periods, followed by another creative renaissance. They keep moving on, whilst staying recognisably Sparks.

As a lifetime fan myself, there were moments in this movie when I felt immense pride in them, sad for them, frustrated for them, and deeply moved by them. Going chronologically through each of their recordings, you see there are great albums, there are so so albums and genre defying albums. It is a single minded career trajectory they have persued, and its not always been an easy one. Particularly when you've been so influential on many forms of pop music, but receive little credit from those who owe you the most. Time you owned up Pet Shop Boys!

Edgar Wright manages to find a visual style to complement their music, it captures some of the essence of them, their fizzy, wacky, eccentricities, artiness, pop references, wit and parody in their output. This comes from both brothers, but a special mention for the pen of Ron Mael is required, who is such a versatile songwriter. He can, after all, write a moving song based on the repetition of one line over and over again. Now both in their seventies, producing music appears to be what's keeping them creatively lively and spiritedly rejuvenated. Long may this last.

If you are not yet a fan, watch this movie and prepare to be amazed and impressed. If you are already a fan, you are in for a two hour treat. At the end of the movie the brothers cheekily state there are now no mysteries left regarding Sparks. They then proceed telling you a list of preposterous fake statements about themselves. Sparks remain as mysterious and baffling as ever, despite apparently 'sharing' so much. Never a band to take completely at face value. Sparks are a band for whom the words 'tongue in cheek' was surely invented.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1986 - The Shopping Mall of Love by Sparks

In Sparks immense back catalogue there are many many musical delights and surprises to be found. If I had to choose a list of my personal favourites it could quickly become quite lengthy. But The Shopping Mall of Love would be certainly one on that list. Its taken from their 1985 album Music That You Can Dance To. This album was their some what mischievous response to a music executive's question - why couldn't they just produce music you could dance to, in order to be more successful. That man was not best pleased,apparently, when they chose to take the piss. This just goes doubly to show how little he understood Sparks satirical raison d'etre.

The Shopping Mall of Love is remarkable for many reasons. It is almost entirely built around a singular drum sound that loudly pounds away like a pile driver in a concrete bunker. In addition there is the very real joy and rare example of Ron Mael taking up front man duties, and brother Russell being merely a backing vocalist. One hears for the first time, the dry satirical quality to his vocal delivery.  Flat toned, suppressed, with all the expressively stilted charm of the emotionally disconnected male. 

But when you stop to think about it, what is this song about? After all, where and what exactly is the Shopping Mall of Love? Is it a brothel? A sex accessories shop? Is Jill an inflatable doll and does she come mail order? You get little hints in the lyric, but nothing definitive. But she is a work of art, so uninhibited!

BROTHER DAVID ON - Blessings

In this video from his Network of Grateful Living You Tube site, you can hear Brother David, with his measured and warm Austrian accent, reciting these 'blessing' verses that he has written. Thoughtful, open hearted and themselves blessed with lucidity and insight 

Bless what there is,
for being whatever it be,
blessed because it exists.
you need no other reason.

Source of all blessings,
you bless us with breath,
in and out,  in and out,
ever renewing us, ever anew,
making us one 

with all who breathe the same air.

May this blessing overflow 

into our shared gratefulness,
so that with one breath 

I may praise and celebrate life.

Source of all blessings
you bless us with humility
that down to earth quality
that has nothing to do with humiliation
but makes us stand tall
and acknowledge 

the humus that feeds us
and the stars to which we aspire.

May I learn to practice and to honour in others
this sparkling humility which is the dignity
that we as human beings cannot afford to lose.

Source of all blessings
you bless us with imprecision
with all that is vague, close but not quite
all that leaves room for the more specific, 

the more precise,
and room for the imagination.

May I know when to be exact 

and when to move freely
and blessed in the space provided 

by all that is not perfectly defined
giving full scope to my dreams 

and my creativity. 

Source of all blessings

you bless us with memory

that sacred in gathering of the past

that allows us to recognise faces

learn poems by heart

find our way back when we are lost

and bring forth old and new

from its nearly inexhaustible store.

May I know what to forget

and what to retain and treasure

keeping in mind the smallest kindness 

shown to me, 

and spreading its ripples 

for a long time to come.

Source of all blessings 

you bless us with change

In the seasons of the year

from snow to greening

flowering, fruiting and harvesting

in the seasons of life

from childhood to youth,

full ripeness and sageing

all living things keep changing.

May I welcome change as a sacred opportunity

to grow and savour in each unrepeatable moment

in its fleetingness

what is beyond change.

Source of all blessings

you bless us with departures

for they are a necessary part of our journey

necessary for the arriving

May I always be ready to take leave

always aware that every arrival

is a prelude to departure

every birth a step towards dying

and may I thus taste the blessing

of being fully present where I am.

May blessings help to sharpen your taste

for the gift of life

in its immeasurable facets

may you grow ever more blessed

ever more able to be blessed 

 

BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST

Edited from his book 

99 Blessings, An Invitation to Life, 

Published by Image Books, 2013.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal April / May

Count your blessings while you may - so goes the song - one I used to sing as a prepubescent boy soprano, many many years ago. There are two versions of Count Your Blessings; a late 19th century hymn and a secular popular mid 20th century one, sung by Gracie Fields. Both versions encourage you to recollect the ordinary things in life and to be thankful and grateful for them, particularly when you feel despondent or low in spirits and optimism. The hymn places that gratitude before god from whom such 'blessings' were said to originate. The later version simply asks you to bring your blessings to mind, to place ones present, perhaps more emotionally difficult experience, into a broader perspective.

The idea of life as a 'blessing' is currently resonating with me. I'm finding it useful in shifting the emphasis away from the habitual views I hold to what I've been given -  life as a gift I could to be more consciously grateful for. Brother David Steindl - Rast wrote a book 99 Blessings which extolled ordinary aspects of life that we either take for granted or overlook. I'll post an extract from this after this post 

I guess for some the idea of  'blessings' will be too entwined with the idea of a deity who dispenses them, to be useful to them. Certainly the hymn version of Count your Blessings, makes this clear that 'it will surprise you what the lord has done'. Brother David's - Blessings, however, can be read with or without a deity in mind.  He has very consciously couched them so they don't necessarily require a belief in a divine origin in order to be meaningful or useful. Blessings are given. But the source of them, can be seen as arising from the process of nature, from the interactions of time and space with being, from conditioned co production, from karma, from our interdependence, from the universe, as part of our consciousness interacting with the entire cosmos. God is only one of many possible imagined sources for these blessings.

Brother David regularly reminds you that you need to recognise your blessings in order to be grateful for them. And recognition of blessings is becoming part of my current practice. In last months Journal I was exploring the relationship between appreciation and gratefulness. That it can be hard to see exactly what moves the heart from a basic appreciation to a lively sense of gratitude. After the arising of an appreciation for something, a feeling of being blessed by it sits in the place between that appreciation and the arising of gratefulness and joy. Once one can feel something to be a real blessing, then it becomes possible to take it into ones heart. Gratefulness emerging out of the feeling of having been blessed.

I've been placing this idea of life as a 'blessing' alongside the Buddhist idea of human life as a 'precious opportunity'. In life we are blessed with many precious opportunities, that having a body, mind and consciouness enable to happen. You can endeavour to progress spiritually, to see the true nature of what our life is part of.  First we must appreciate that our own human life is this rare, precious thing, because it is so fragile, fleeting and finite. Our lives arising in the world are akin to planetary alignments or conjunctions, momentarily throwing up consciousness. This blessing freely arrives and equally freely departs.  

Yet, because this comes free and without apparent reason, we can take it for granted. Its easy to drift through life as though its this money tree forever dispensing the wealth of life to be spent, rather than a valuable resource, an endearing yet time limited thing.  Unrecognised blessings can be seen as like a letter, delivered but left unopened on the doormat. Never to be read. Never understood. Never taken to heart. Never opened to life.

LISTENING TO - Ain't No Grave - Anna Calvi

Anna Calvi has done well out of having her music incorporated in the Peaky Blinders soundtrack. Her assured passionate vocals and depth of guitar prowess, becoming a neat fit with the programmes stylised visual aesthetic. Its brought her finally to the notice of a much wider audience, one that she's deserved for quite some time.  This track Ain't No Grave is her latest creation specifically for the current final series. But full length films are said to be in the pipeline, so who knows?

For a while she's also been selectively mining the sonic quirks of mid-Seventies New York darlings, the original dark synth duo Suicide. The heavily echo reverberated yelp cropping up all over her recent work. Having done a truly superb reinterpretation of their seminal track Ghost Rider, you can imagine the Peaky Blinder music commissioner asking her could we have something of yours, but like that? And here it is. It borrows a very similar 'train on the tracks' keyboard rhythm.

There are also thematic antecedents in the song Wish from her last album Hunted - of doing one more thing before you die. Someone will be no more by the end of this song. For Ain't No Grave has a death defying walk, a striding menace lives within every step of it. Until this defiant strut reaches its denouement in a conclusion that has the murderously slashing and wailing chainsaw lead guitar that Calvi has become so adept at, executed with practiced fluency and steely edge. Great stuff. 

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SCREEN SHOT - The Human Voice

Look, its half an hour long. Half an hour of the divine Tilda doing her stuff. Plus, its directed by Pedro Almodovar. Plus, its Tilda doing her stuff for half an hour. What are you waiting for? Just watch it, right now! 

Originally a stage play by Jean Cocteau. Almodovar has transformed it into something flamboyantly all his own. He built the set inside a warehouse, to emphasise the contrived aesthetic of it still more. Every aspect of the flat is designed to the absolute hilt, both stylish and stylised, every decor choice strikingly distinctive. Each shot in the movie composed in strong colour blocks of primary and secondary colours, placed against the softer green wall colouring.

Living within the artifice of this oh so beautiful environment is an equally immaculately dressed woman. She's waiting, waiting for the man with whom she created and once shared this ultra luxurious flat. Her former lover, he still hasn't come to collect his bags and belongings. They are waiting in the lobby. She is waiting for this return, or at least a call.

The woman will break out of this staged set. Pacing back and forth, as if stalking the warehouse, dressed in a bright scarlet ball gown. The woman's life appears completely dictated by the constraints of high fashion, a high maintenance lifestyle and appearance. And yet now her life and this lifestyle is upturned, she cannot move on nor escape from it. She's still holding out for the man to return. Until she can speak to him, her life is kept on hold. The man appears to be deliberately keeping out of contact. His silence is an expression of his power over her. Then the man does phone. 

Tilda Swinton, conveys all the brittle nervy desperation of this woman. The transparency of her lies and deceptions, to herself and others. How emotionally dependent she remains on this man, it hurts. Yet, as the call progresses, there is a gradual realisation that she can recover agency over her life and future.  There is, after all, something she can do to break the spell to release herself from this gorgeous prison.

Its just brilliant, watch it.

CARROT REVIEW 7/8

Currently available on I Player.

CARROT CAKE REVIEW No 31 - Claggy as in Cement

 Sheringham, Norfolk

Cafés in our town are ten a penny, really good ones are a rare species. Most are not bad. Pleasant, but average you might say. Nothing to, scare the horses by producing a well rounded Flat White with great richness and depth. Buying a coffee here generally blurs the boundary between a cappuccino and a latte, whatever the coffee variety actually be being made. This, in my experience, is not unique to this town.

Suddenly, post pandemic, cafes in North Norfolk seem to have woken up to the fact that they are competing for business. Standards of confectionery have noticeably risen. The coffee quality has yet to follow suit. I do like this particular cafe, its very pretty, always has a welcoming feel and good customer service. Their coffee? Well let's just say three things - One, their Latte's are good. Two, their Flat White's come in two sizes Regular and Large. Three, their Latte's are good.

Its a universal truth that any shop has its set of Unique Selling Points, and the things that it regularly falls down on. Here its homely, friendly ambiance and customer service do much of the heavy lifting, to makes it an very attractive place for a return visit. Which we do, when we can. The coffee quality as I've said, is acceptable. The Cakes? Well it depends what you choose. Their quality can vary from great, to nice try, to that's a bit under cooked. But that is also quite a common fault in cafés. One can also unwittingly find oneself eating something made for sensitive stomachs without fully knowing it. Left  wondering what it was that was not quite perfect about that red velvet muffin.

But they did have a Carrot Cake on this occasion, so I showed myself willing to give it a try. I ordered my Large Flat White in the full knowledge that it would only be a strong Latte. For that was my subversive desire. The cake, well it had a good enough golden tan like appearance, a slightly feeble looking buttercream, and a texture of woven strands reminiscent of OSB board. So the visual impression was of a pleasant enough facsimile of a carrot cake. But as with all things, looks can be god almighty fibs.

As I put the cake in my mouth I was a little on edge about how it would be as a taste experience. Initially it was OK, yes, this was OK, wasn't it? As my taste buds got used to the new sensory sensations and began to interpret them, there was an odd transition in its texture. Rather than holding its weight and flavour, once saliva got to work on it, the texture dissolved into a claggy, then almost dry cement like after taste sensation. I recognise this. Oh, you all know what this is, don't you? This is some aberrant variety of gluten free flour unlikely to send anyone's stomach into a full disgruntled bloat. Give me strength my great Jehovah!

You know, I'm becoming tired, yes, really tired of the increasing pervasiveness of these sort of culinary subterfuges. Bakers are noticeable getting better at producing gluten/dairy free cakes that look convincing from the outside. But the taste experience still leaves me half aggravated, half disappointed. Too exhausted now for the full on fulminating rant.  

I like this cafe a lot, but its not because its an all round superlative experience. It can be patchy. But then when is any café ever such a thing? Not very often I would say. I can remember a handful, no, its less than a handful, of truly all round brilliant cafés. My expectations are always for something that is actually a very very rare occurrence. Where ambiance, customer service, coffee and cake quality all reach a peak of excellence. And that can be even harder to maintain.

But, please, please please, out of genuine concern for my continued mental health, could I be told when a carrot cake is made with gluten free flour and maybe I'll chose a bloody half macerated flapjack instead. Because I'm just so so so tired of the failed fakery of gluten free carrot cakes that would not upstage a Farley's baby rusk.

CARROT REVIEW - 3/8

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1978 - Duck Stab by The Residents

Duck Stab was my first entry point into the rather deliberately bizzare and unconventional aesthetic of The Residents. At the time, in 1978, The Residents were an ultra secretive avant garde art and music collective working out of California. Little was then known about them as individuals. No names other than that of their frequent guitarist of choice Snakefinger.  After 60 albums and fifty years of existence some of them have now been named, outed as being members. Despite vociferous denials! 

Their early work consisted of surreal and frequently discordant parodies of pop classics and rock conventions such as their version of The Rolling Stone's Satisfaction, or on albums like - Meet The Residents, Third Reich & Roll. My personal favourite is The Commercial Album, which has forty tracks of each a minute in length. Its a beautifully executed exercise in the concise use of sound and style to instantly create a mood. On these, rock instrumentation and synths are sometimes subversively played on massively amplified children's musical toys. The vocals distorted in a way that makes them sound sinister, twisted, unnervingly sounding as if The Muppets were crazed on amphetamine. The lyrics mimic the style of children's nursery rhymes but are as if by a chorus of demented clowns. Where - an ether eating eskimo would gag upon the sight. Convulsed into oblivion from laughter or from fright. Yeah, weird man.

The original Duck Stab was an EP, which has since been expanded to LP length by including another EP - Buster & Glenn. But there was something about the economy and brevity of Duck Stab, with its seven tracks in just over sixteen minutes. Just enough weirdness without it becoming unrelentingly jarring or tiresome. Some tracks have a distinctly unsettling air - Sinister Exaggerator  & Blue Rosebuds, others are playfully deranged fun - Laughing Song  & Bach is Dead. The track listing goes as follows:-

Constantinople
Sinister Exaggerator
The Booker Tease
Blue Rosebuds
Laughing Song
Bach is Dead
Elvis & his Boss

Worth searching out are a few concept albums such as Eskimo, basically a parody of Eskimo life and rituals, or The Mole Trilogy a narrative tale about a conflict between the Moles and the Chubs. These were quite conscious attempts at the time by the group to break out of their well known and loved form as rock n roll wackos. After these albums I sort of lost interest in them and moved on to some other trashy pop art darlings.

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 60 - The Twin Mountains of Expectation & Prevarication

It is true that when you long for something to arrive, time actually extends. Its a bit like Pinocchio's nose getting longer the more he lies. Any event seeming further away, even as it paradoxically is actually getting nearer. The effect of our desires, the longings, the expectations appears to slow the experience and acceleration of time, putting the brake on how our lives are progressing. Expectation freeze frames the sense of forward motion.

As I've mentioned before, post Christmas trade in Sheringham is always dire. However,having no experience of March before, we naively expected trade to start picking up. But despite our neighbours in The Courtyard repeatedly telling us its always pants, we clung to our hopes that for us it might be different. It wasn't. Also the constant news about hard times and income squeezes to come, gave our confidence a shake. What effect will all this have on the tourist season? Everyone talks of how things don't really pick up till Easter. But will it this time.? Easter is also late, it seems an age away. We've bought in new stock lines in readiness. Let the season begin ....soonish.

If our experience of the last three months has felt harder than before, this is partly of our own making. What helps a bit, is if I practice cultivating a hopeful demeanor, unattached to any specific outcome. Trust in days being whatever they will be. Observe how they sometimes will turn around from dire, to fine, to flush. All this will happen inspite of my wishes and longings. So I try to minimise wishful thinking, speculation and expectation. To paraphrase the Indian teacher Sadguru, there is only the present moment where you can have any effect on what happens, so focus on that, keep plugging away putting energy and initiative into it. Remaining unattached to any desired for result.

Soon enough the bunnies of Easter will be seen bounding over the fields with their bountiful baskets full of eggs. From the moment April arrived things did indeed begin to pick up. The sales pattern of each day is erratic and unpredictable,though takings prove steady in the end. We have found that the number of sales has gone up, though the average sale figure has dropped by about a third. So this coming season, it seems, will require us to keep pace with the increased turnover on smaller priced items. Simply matching last year may be harder to achieve, but not necessarily impossible. We wont have our first real indication until the end of this month where we might be with it all. But people are certainly being price conscious, purchases are taking more consideration. Increasingly folk are paying in cash, which usually means they are carefully managing their spending.

In June this year it will be four years since I resigned from the Triratna Order.  This has of course removed me from close association with that Sangha, from the network of friendship I'd built up over my years of involvement. Subsequently trying to find a new Buddhist Sangha to join, proved to be like putting the cart before the horse. An atmosphere of aloneness inhabits the individual spiritual path, it's one of its particular qualities and one could say a down side. 

Independence rarely exists in a pure state, its neither entirely 'free from' nor entirely 'part of'. In the same way, a country cannot be wholly an independent sovereign entity. In the interaction of trade and culture we choose to relax the degree and scope of our independent activity. Countries agree to collaborate wherever it becomes mutually advantageous to do so. Likewise for me, if there is a middle way here spiritually speaking between independence and belonging, it's in the area of 'freely associating' 

So, because I remembered with fondness doing meditation and morning service regularly I've returned to attending them a few times a week via Zoom at Norwich Zen Priory. It is just for that. I'm not committing fully to their approach. Its simply their morning service still speaks to me. It sustains me in some way, perhaps it helps to touch base with this regular morning meditation Sangha. To feel less cut off on this path of spiritual exploration I'm on. Even though that is in reality how it actually is.

Jnanasalin and I recently spent a delightful day in Bury St Edmund's with Taradasa and Vidyasiddhi two friends of ours from Cambridge. Last week Saddharaja and Saddhahadaya were up here in holiday and came round for dinner. Saddharaja is a friend whom I've known the longest in Triratna, and I always enjoy his company, shared enthusiasms and his encouraging presence. Each experience was delightful and invigorating. They lifted my spirits, but this also reminded me what was currently in short supply.

Jnanasalin and I make a good team and effectively support each other. Though we know we each have our limitations. Everyone needs a broader supportive network if only for the benefit of a different quality, tone or perspective to the conversations. Jnanasalin is still part of the Order so he still has that context outside of just the two of us. I've had moments over the Winter of feeling the lack of friendship here quite keenly. 

Not a naturally gregarious person, I'm the classic introvert in many ways. Friendship doesn't come easy.  I tend to be initially wary in new contexts. Opening up and relaxing more once I feel at home and welcome. An aim for this year is to start making connections outside of the shop context. To find groups in my area I'd feel happy to join and be a part of. I have some ideas, its just getting around to acting on them. There are the mountains of prevarication to overcome. Well little mossy hillocks really.

I continue to work, admittedly somewhat erratically, on my shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham. I'm nearing completion of the external structure. So I will have to start settling soon on the form for its interior. What is that going to be like? I'm loving the shade of blue I"ve used for the exterior. The shape of the shrine is reminiscent of Anglo Saxon caskets. Which is very apt as the original shrine was a small rectangular chapel built by an Anglo Saxon noblewoman in response to a vision she had. 

 

My vision for the interior keeps changing from day to day. My uncertainty is making me prevaricate starting on it. But like the exterior I just need to begin doing something, then the ideas and direction will evolve out of that. That's the problem with both expectations and prevarication, they both tend to inhibit action being taken, yet that is the very thing that will overcome them.

BROTHER DAVID ON - The Mystic

' The mystic is not a special kind of human being.

But every human being is a special kind of mystic.'

Brother David Steindl-Rast

SCREEN SHOT - Lawrence of Arabia

This David Lean film, originally released in 1967, is the classic heroic epic film. Redefining at the time what that could be. The filming constantly astonishes you with its beautiful framing and composition. It is always worthy seeing this on a huge cinema screening, seize it should you ever get the opportunity.

T E Lawrence gets sent to Arabia purely on an information gathering assignment. But in the desert tribes he finds his real vocation, his cause in life, and returns to Cairo an unlikely hero.  Its hard to separate fact from myth these days. Having tried to read Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom twice, and failed both times. I can confidently assure you he was a truly awful and turgid writer. Lean's film does show how the Lawrence myth started, how it helped and hindered the man himself.

Peter O'Toole plays Lawrence with all the charisma and sensitivity he can muster. For which he was rightly nominated for an Oscar. Some of the casting of Antony Quinn and Alec Guineas as Arabs certainly would not happen these days. But I have to say it still works because both are skilled actors. It ought to creak more, but somehow doesn't. Guinness, playing an Indian in a Merchant Ivory film twenty years later, felt considerably more ill considered and offensive.

The script hardly misses a mark showing you how Lawrence's ideal of a free Arabia, got betrayed by the secret Sykes Picot agreement. How he moves from being a man revolted by killing to one who madly revels in it. From someone who plays along with his image to someone who believes in it as his destiny, and becomes trapped within his own myth making. He is a heroic figure, but we are allowed to see the shadow side of his personal failings too. Had he not died in a motor bike accident at the age of 46, one wonders quite how perceptions of him might now have changed.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1982 - Klacktoveedestein by Blue Rondo a la Turk

Some bands find their moment, whilst others such as Blue Rondo a la Turk try to create their own moment and never quite make it happen. At the time, 1982, their mix of salsa, pop and soft jazz stylings was on the verge of becoming incredibly trendy and in vogue. With zoot suits, padded shoulders and slicked back hair, everything looked at the time ripe for Blue Rondo a la Turk. Word of mouth was building, press reviews of their live gigs raved. But when their sound reached the vinyl something seemed to fall distinctly flat upon the ears. Where was all that pizzazz and verve we were expecting to hear?

Their first single Me and Mr Sanchez reached only the lower end of the chart at 40. The second, this track Klacktoveesedstein, even though it was produced by Godley & Creme, faired little better topping out at 50. But it showed more of their promise, that 'uh uh uh ah' vocal backing is the real making of it. Lifting it a bit beyond your average Latin tinged derivative. I still have a soft spot for it all these years later. 

Blue Rondo a la Turk didn't last much longer. The record company brought in some big hitters to try and salvage their speculative investment. But their second album, part written and produced by Clive Langer, ex Deaf School and Madness producer failed to chart. Two of them split off to form Matt Bianco, who did have a moment and a few Latin tinged hits. The lead singer Chris Sullivan ran The Wag Club for a while, started making videos and eventually became a successful writer.

MY OWN WALKING - Journal March/April 2022

I've been making a practice, a somewhat irregular one, of taking time to write down things I'm grateful for. Each time when I open my notebook and write down my impressions, I'm aware that in this process what is noted is not always gratitude. It maybe on the path to gratefulness, but it has a way to go before actually touching it. This has started a reflection for me about what the relationship between appreciation and gratefulness is. There obviously is one. Appreciation is an observation, containing an emotional response that sometimes results in gratefulness. But a lot of the time it remains just appreciative.

Brother David talks about the element of surprise in gratefulness. You become a aware, as if for the first time, of a feeling, impression, thought, action or a person. The effect upon you of that given moment is that it takes you by surprise, startles your five senses unexpectedly.  Suddenly you appreciate your life or experience in a different way. As though what was once monochrome is now coloured. The consequence is that you may stay with that moment, until you no longer can, and then bask in remembering your appreciation. Feeling a grateful uplift that it exists.

Appreciation contains the potential to love what is present, or recently passed from your experience. To love it wholeheartedly and unconditionally. And in what we are aware of, appreciate and love we find the foundation of gratefulness. There is always the tendency in the remembering of appreciation and love, for it to be overcome by sentiment and nostalgia. To slip into desire and not gratefulness. Gratefulness seems strongly related to any given moment. Each instance if it will be lost. Once we look back, longing for that moment to return, our grip on gratitude slips.

To feel grateful for an experience, is to appreciate and love what appears in each given moment. Simply for existing. For being just as it is. Its value is in its impermanence, that it will disappear. This is all part of why we feel grateful for something existing at all. For it is transient. Each moment of gratefulness is special. It is unique. True gratefulness appears not to cling. It immediately has to be let go of.

All this runs counter to some of my habitual feelings and responses. On some days I'll place a qualification, a but, a negative coda following after any expression of gratefulness. As if this is required for authentic truthfulness. The nature of any practice is that it feels inauthentic at first. For it will be. Gratefulness is being faked. You will feel a fraud, and that is OK. I'm playing let's pretend, until at some point may be I am not. 

The practice is to tune into a different way of appreciating experience. To change the habits of a lifetime rarely happens overnight. Becoming more appreciative is a huge step in the direction of gratefulness. Even thought it may not yet be grateful appreciation. Like a novice archer, its all about the practise and perfection of your aim.

I'm becoming more aware that gratefulness, when you do feel it, needs to find its own particular form of expression. There is an imperative, an impulse within gratefulness that demands it should be spoken, expressed through action. What is the medium or voice for this?  It may not be truly gratefulness unless you do. Gratefulness at heart is about an expressed connection, of a love for a love.

POEM - What is being left unsaid?

In the stream of words
they come at you, like tart veins
of raspberry fluid mixed into the iced cream
of form, context and meaning, all
lost to the tone, the frustration
that's weighing down the words,
we feel it, but reluctant to hear the phrasings, lest there
being used as smuggler ships, bringing in the contraband
of unacceptable thoughts, the ballast of prejudices,
the half formed, dressed in not quite ideal language
words isolated from sound, unmoderated
unmodulated, unmediated, unmasked
mouths we don't like the shape of, from people 

with human hearts and lungs, articulating
in inarticulate ways, do we fear some sharp needle
is concealed within these raw dum words?
not used in circles, elliptic or squared off
directed words, pointed and pointing, 

clumsy exclamations, maybe

symptoms of their voicelessness, echoing around a dead end canyon far far away, away, away,

from rooms where 

you just don't say that, shut up, you and your sort

back to your sleepy silent hollow, diverting you from the 

stream of discourse, the artificial seating arrangements
of polarised debates, intellectual nuance built in
to silence anyone unversed, take away 

the embrasure of their mouth,

their oxygen, their ability to breath, dialogue with their diaphragm
and release, exhale those befouling words into a megaphone
and the reports will edit it out, yet if there are
no pictures, no texts, no blog posts, no vapour trails
then history becomes neglectful, an impoverished lie

presenting only neatly packaged myths

sanitary words, binding nuptial agreements
speech, truly free, cannot be legislated for
it abhors the stamp of government
approval, we must be willing to suffer the coarse in words,
the sling of uncomfortable sentences
their lies, their truths, their defencelessness, their innocence
of the narrative, how stumbling they can be,
off message mouths, test our shibboleths
are the imperfect vehicles for the collective brain, there's pain
in the named storm of these words, this is how language 

is cracked open,

to examine the oracles displayed in its entrails, 

and then to discourse

for this is all we can do, to locate
whether there is any truth
in whatever is being left unsaid.

Stephen Lumb
written March/April 2022

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1977 - R.A.F. by Brian Eno & Snatch

Here we are, its 1977, and a B side to Eno's single Kings Lead Hat, providing an really interesting curio from Eno's extensive back catalogue. Its an early instance of the use of 'found verbal conversational sound' in his work. At a time when he was bored with the timbre and limitations of his own singing voice, and began exploring using 'found' sources as a way to create a different type of vocal presence. An idea further expanded upon in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with David Byrne in 1981. Holgar Czukay's seminal album, also built around edited short wave radio recordings of found voices - Movies - was not released until 1979. Though in 1977  it was already in its long gestation phase, an idea still in the process of being worked out. 

Found verbal conversational extracts were on the brink of having their moment in popular music. Other ideas such as scratching and sampling would also emerge into the mainstream over the next five years or so. Though 'found sound', was not in itself new, The Beatles had used it, and it had been around in contemporary music and avant garde circles for literally decades, since the widespread availability of tape recorders. Then a new tool to colour soundscapes with. The arrival of the first widely available home computers in 1977 would eventually bring a whole new way of composing music into being. One that took this idea of 'found' musical sources onto an entirely new level. 

But here we have R.A F. a three minute music sound collage utilising edited fragments of recordings made of the left wing militant The Red Army Faction, a splinter group off the Baader-Meinhof Group. They were reportedly directly responsible for 34 deaths, but even more if one accounts for those collaterally damaged. The recordings used here were made during the kidnap of the banker Hanns Martin Schleyer, held prisoner and ransom money demanded. They would eventually murder him. 

Snatch, were Patti Palladin and Judy Nylon, who moved to London in 1974 to be a part of the London punk scene. Their music had a punk stroppiness and was edgy, like Lydia Lunch crossed with Lou Reed, generally documenting aspects of urban low life. Here they are the muttering voices 'do you think anyone's worried about you?'and the final defiant salute of 'No Sacrifice!. 

The music is layered with numerous Enoesque sound treatments of instruments, all wack a wack dub looped bass, a discordant jangly guitar sound that goes in and out throughout the track like a drone. Plus an incredibly hard as concrete drum sound, really cutting,with the flattest of punches to its snare. Previously heard on Bowie's Low, made in collaboration with Eno, and released the same year as this. Together this conjures a very urban and hostile soundscape into which the German words of the R.A.F. menacingly crackles and weaves. A whole world away from the lyrical word play and musical mischief of Eno on Seven Deadly Finns, three years previous. 

R.A.F. - a perfect pop record? Well, no, but certainly one of Eno's finest moments and a brilliantly complex reflection of its time.

SCREEN SHOT - Drive My Car

Yosuke Kafuko is living a happy and creative life with his wife Oto. He a successful actor and director, she a brilliant screenwriter. Whilst journeying in their car, during or after sex, she spins elaborate and bizzarely dreamlike tales. Yet there is much that remains unspoken, particularly of Oto's regular extra marital affairs. He knows when these are happening but never says anything, he is so afraid of losing her. On the night he thinks they are going to finally broach the subject, he returns to find her unconscious, she later dies.

Three years later Kafuko is a director in residence, assembling a cast for a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanja. He chooses Takatsuki to play the lead, because he recognises him as Oto's final lover. He wants to understand why Oto needed these affairs, what they gave her that he could not. But its too late now, isn't it? Coming with this job is his very own driver, Misaki Watari, she is very skilled at her job and a good listener. On their daily car journeys they reveal more and more to each other. Discovering they have a lot in common, for each holds a secret guilt.

Based on a Haruki Murakami short story from his collection Men without Women. The film bears some of his trademark strange twists on reality. Different to the book, a lot of why what happens happens, never gets fully explained. The film is a slow elegiac car journey, that nevertheless remains quietly captivating throughout its nearly three hours of running time. If that feelings daunting, be not afraid, it is well worth the effort of surrendering to its simplicity, pace and poignancy.

CARROT SCORE - 6/8