MY OWN WALKING - Journal January 2023

One way of getting to know yourself better can be learning to recognise the qualitative difference between the things you appreciate because you were brought up on them and the things you are naturally drawn towards that satisfy you on a deeper, more personal to you level.  These are, in my experience rarely the same thing. To say this is nature versus nurture, would be a bit too abstracted and cold, and doesn't quite strike the correct emotional tone. I would say its the difference between how one feels a sentiment and how one feels when you love. Its about ones proximity to something that is authentic to you.

A sentimental response is usually attempting to regain or resurrect something you once had possession of in the past. It might be comforting, reassuring and imbued with a feeling for a particular place, person or period. Something you encounter in the present briefly catches your eye and reflects the past through it. Though you may find yourself feeling drawn towards it, and to love it, its an indirect two dimensional love, in the present but from the past.

Love in the purer sense is more of an all encompassing present moment emotion. There is a sense of being spoken to directly to ones heart without anything acting as an intermediary between. You instantly unquestionably love it, and this is different to sentimental love in that it tends to be more wholehearted and satisfying because it arises instantaneously from your soul. Though the whole idea of having a soul becomes problematic, if one couches it as being something eternal.  I believe this term can have a role in describing something fundamental to, or exemplary of, you in your present existence. Ultimately its impermanent, but its an essential facet of how you are manifesting in the circumstances of this life, in this moment in time.

Now, I'll admit there can be a lot of confusing overlap here between the past and the present you. I try to view this as similar to hearing a much loved record from ones teenage years and loving a new record by an artist you've never encountered before. One of these has a lot more baggage travelling with it, not all of it is a concern in your present experience of yourself.

What prompted this particular reflection was a realisation about my own responses to spiritual practice and my upbringing. I was born in Yorkshire in the town of Halifax. Originally a fairly affluent medieval market town, based on wool and weaving. Which, because of its proximity to fast flowing streams and an easy access to coal in the 18th century, became one of the premier manufacturing Pennine towns. The honey coloured nature of its millstone grit building material, the heavy wheels of industry turned into something altogether more bleak and soot blackened. Unsurprisingly the Northern industrial towns also became a test bed for the burgeoning Non Conformist faiths - the Congregational, Quakers, Baptists, Methodists, all set up their evangelising missions there.

The protestant proselytising lingered on into the 20th century, finding renewed purpose as the Northern industrial powerhouse itself fell into a steady decline. My parents were both brought up in Methodist families, as were we.  Non conformist chapels are spartan, pared back buildings, nothing is extravagently decorative. Excessive self indulgence is looked down upon, as is severe aesceticism. Everything is to be done in moderation. Methodism is understated about most things, nothing like as hardline, nor as dogmatically puritanical as some protestant faiths. Their beliefs are as kind, simple and essentialist as their chapel interiors are.

That religious culture tutored my own expectations and self discipline, which I later took into my approach to a non-christian spiritual life. My early enthusiasm for Taoism and later in Zen Buddhism was fed by a desire to keep things simple, unfussy and fundamental. As was my fleating interest in monasticism and distrustful unease with imagery.  Its not even that this is not helpful, it maybe so. Its just that it is inherited meaning rather than one you have found and resonated with for yourself.

But, when I look back at what I've actually found most inspired me aesthetically and devotionally, its been quite wildly unrestrained extravagance, over the top, highly decorative and beautifully elaborate things. Full blooded, expressive, archetypal and poetic individuals. The exhilarating enjoyment of playing with colour that Bridget Riley paintings exude. The love of Catholic imagery, Alchemical imagery, passionate, luridly coloured and physically expressive rituals. The fondness for the latin temperament. The exuberant abandon of the Indian sense of devotion and colour.  A feeling of excitement whenever I go to the Our Lady of Walsingham shrine. Even the bright colourfulness and enjoyment of patterning in my own artwork, reveals a totally different less monochrome soul when its left to express itself openly and freely. And lets not get me started on my tastes in music. They all speak of who I feel I am on a deeper and more direct level, when not filtered through the drier more austere views of protestant restraint.

I have spent a good deal of my life, believing that to be serious and hence be more effective in spiritual practice, it has to be the simplest, purest and aesthetically minimal. That somehow just letting go and completely surrendering oneself emotionally to a lucious aesthetic, is just too primeaval, a self deceiving indulgent intoxication. Its almost a form of spiritual delusion, or at the very least devious cheating. But here at the point of becoming pensionable, is where I realise that such devotional exuberance is what I often want the most. So whilst there was once a yearning sentimental nostalgia for a simpler life, today I seek out exuberance as if this was a light spilling out from under a doorway, hinting at something even more wonderful beyond it.

I have spent a lot of my life backing off from my own exuberance and constraining myself, finding my passion for such things uncool or problematic. Maybe this is the time to cease doing that.

WINDOW VIEWS - The Unlocked Back Door

Roy sat by the heavy oak table heavily panting, his face glistened with sweat from all the frantic running. Maybe he'd bunker down here until the fracas outside died down. Lucky the backdoor of this house had been left unlocked. So he didn't have to add breaking and entering to his already extensive criminal record. He got up to peer from behind the closed curtains of the front room window. In the streets, he could see the smoke of a distant explosion, his car being torched probably. Whilst other, more likely stolen, cars were veering around the area erratically. Flashlights scanning down the hedgerows and ginnals. Young men his age ran along the middle of roads yelling and whelping like pack animals. It didn't look like they'd be giving up and going home anytime soon. If anything this was escalating into an uncontrollable rampage.

The backdoor suddenly slammed shut, as though a through draft had caught and angrily wanged it against the frame. Roy jumped. A bang, far too close, strung him out. He'd better go check that wasn't the owner of the house returning. No, no one around. Though the door appeared to now be locked. He went to check the front door, also firmly shut. Behind him a voice spoke - 'You don't want to leave do you, you've only just arrived, and I do so love male intruders'  Roy freaked,' What the fuck!, who, where are you?' Something brushed passed him. it felt vaguely feminine, he could smell a heavy musky rose perfume ' You seem to be in some sort of trouble, young, sweaty man' a cool breeze blew over him,  'maybe that will... dry you off.'

Roy had only one impulse, to get out. 'It's not that bad here, once you get to know me. The name's Rochelle. I think I'm going to really love having you around for company. Has anyone told you how cute you are?' Roy half felt a hand on his posterior, and then a passing brush of air briefly lifting his hair. 'Mmmm so soft, so gentle'. 'Get the fuck away from me' Roy flailed his arms. He had to find a way to extricate himself from here.  This must be just some elaborate hoax, surely. 'Oh no, this is no hoax... Roy, tell you what...Roy, maybe you should bang on my windows... Roy. Try to attract attention. Go on, do it for me.. Roy.' 'No, I won't, those guys are gonna kill me' 'Whose to say I won't, I think you should at least try a scream or two'. The curtains tore apart and bodily lifted he was flung hard against the window glass, making a creaking splintering sound. Though he banged and screamed as hard as he could. 'Please, please, guys, save me, for gods sake save me, I'll tell you where I hid the stuff I stole, I promise' From the distance the sound of police sirens were growing louder. Everyone was scarpering. No one noticed or heard a word.

FEATURE - Magdalena Abankanowitcz

 

Monumental woven sculptures created by Polish sculptor Magdalena Abankanowitcz have become so synonymous with her they are sometimes referred to as 'abakans'. These are of such an immensely large scale they appear even in this video to be quite overwhelming. They conjure up all sorts of associations. They remind me of 'dolmens' or of pagan shamanic figures. You can feel the weight of them, heavy both in their physical nature but also in spiritual potency. They are hanging there as if it should speak to you directly from another dimension altogether. Abankanowitcz was a true pioneer in the use of textile fibres as a form in sculpture. This Tate video shows you the details of their structural forms in all their bulk, stitch and woven slugs, the forms and strands of fibre. She vastly expanded the range of possibilities for contemporary sculpture.

QUOTATION MARKS - David Bowie

'We live within this manifested idea
of what should be form
and what we try to keep out of our existence is chaos,
which is a very real part of our lives,
and our refusal to accept chaos
has been integral to our existence
and has been one of the greatest mistakes
of civilisation that we made.'

David Bowie

SCREEN SHOT - Moonage Daydream

Time takes a cigarette.

Moonage Daydream is not a traditional film documentary or biography. More akin to a tapestry or collage in a beautiful montage of visuals, sound and form, music, period clips and contemporary words. Its an audio visual feast. You hear Bowie describing times in his career, both at that time and many years later. You hear the as yet unformed naivety and the more fully fleshed out maturity of Bowie's reflections side by side. Did he really know what he was in search of all along, or was that only reclaimed, mythologised and reframed over time? I guess it is all of the above, its something we all do. We retrospectively tidy up our histories.

Puts it in your mouth.

After all the years struggling to locate his modus operandi, and the misfire that was Space Oddity, he hits upon the idea for a character, an alien androgynous rock star - his career goes stratospheric. Becoming this hugely idolised and much copied star. But the taste for Ziggy quickly sours as the character he plays turns into a monster, and begins to take creative control. Bowie, dramatically pulls the plug. Perhaps an upbringing with his loveless parents, created an existential need to remove himself from further stifling situations. Emotional loneliness and insecurity certainly lingered for years, hiding behind make up and outrageous cloths helped, playing a character helped, constantly changing focus and style helped. Behind these facades he gradually discovers who he is really - he's a storyteller.

You pull on your finger

Whenever he finds himself bored with his writing style he shakes things up. Often by moving to live somewhere he disliked or felt challenged by. So he transposes himself for a while to the US - Berlin - Japan. The magpie nature of his intuitions, influences, picks up scraps of knowledge and collects experiences that all fall into the creative melting pot. He described himself vaguely as a 'generalist'. Lacking the patience or ability to apply himself to detailed prolonged study. There was always something emotionally neutered and carefully edited about his public persona - the lonely and alienated man who fell to earth. In retrospect, his work always appeared to be about isolation, so Bowie himself observed. 

Then another finger

There has been a tendency to over claim the musical significance of what he did in the early years. He was a great borrower of styles, from The Rolling Stones to Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, that he somehow managed to make his own. Only when he moves to Berlin, to work with Eno, does what he says he's doing and what he actually achieves match up. Low and Heroes are his most musically creative career peak. Until even this particular vein runs out or steam, as did fresh ideas and personas. He drops the lot and heads straight for full on pop stadium level stardom. Wanting to present the happier more emotionally rounded Bowie he felt himself now to be. Until just how stultifying and boring that career path can be, how creatively barren the musical landscape is there, becomes clear to him. He looses the thread of exactly what he is trying to do. The film, thankfully, skips over the back to basics floundering, the naff nadir of the Tin Machine era.

Then the cigarette

Bowie was a well read man, with a curious and enquiring mind, with wide ranging creative interests. Music may have lost its vibrant charm for a while, the albums having only the occasional great track, whilst the rest was either straight borrowings from contemporary trends or his own back catalogue. Coasting, revisiting or reworking old themes. Major Tom becoming a recurring talismanic figure. Though he'd previously said the primary importance of his career left him no time for a love relationship. He falls in love with Imam, almost as though this were for the very first time. Hermione and Angie, apparently having been written out of the Bowie story line a long long time ago. 

The wall-to-wall is calling

The late renaissance in his career prior to his death, had a mordant mode, a mortal impulse, a need to cross all the T's and dot all the I's in his life, just in case you haven't quite got it right in your head yet. Maybe he needed to double underline to reassure himself too. He looks back at his life as if he was Lazarus, resurrected complete with bandages and buttons for eyes. 

It lingers, then you forget

There are aspects of Moonage Daydream which brought a lump to my throat, and are truly moving. The perspicacity of what Bowie says, is often quite startling. The world that Bowie's imagination dwelled in constantly fascinates whilst also remaining a puzzle. Both he and his imagination remain enigmatic. This film gets the nearest I've seen to portraying what motivated the man. That the creative thrust became a sort of personal quest for identity. A manifestation of 'the essential soul' of this one man. You don't have to be a fan to enjoy this movie, but if you are it shows you a whole other dimension to him.

Oh Oh Oh Oh - You're a rock n roll suicide.

One of the things that Bowie dabbled in and even went on a retreat once, was Buddhism. Not really a joiner of any institution, religious or otherwise, he acknowledged that what he took away from the experience was the impermanent and temporary nature of all we do. That for him this meant the centrality of life became paramount. He loved his life and attempted to live it to the full. Along the way he was an example, helping others begin their own personal quest, by turning himself into a visibly vibrant source of inspiration.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

QUOTATION MARKS - David Bowie

 

' Everything is rubbish,
   and all rubbish
   is wonderful '

   David Bowie.

WINDOW VIEWS - From The Other Side

The french windows in my room open wide onto an extensive back garden. The care home's lawn, shrubbery, wildlife and residents are all framed for me by these doors. I view all this from within my wheelchair. I end up looking out on this landscape for a huge part of the day. Putting a lot of effort into getting the maximum amount of interest and stimulation from it. I've taken to observing events in minute detail, from the changes in weather, the arrival and passing of seasons, to the tracks of birds and aeroplanes in flight, Then there are the smear trails of snails, the insects and spiders who slide or scamper across the glass. the scuttle of leaves. I've closely watched the working methods of the gardener, for instance, as he mows the lawn. He is quite impressive I must say, very neat and precise. Fascinating to see it all happen.  It's almost meditative. I would never have been that patient when I was his age. I couldn't wait to get such everyday manual tasks over and done with. Hurrying on to the next thing on my invisible to do list. 

On fine sunny days, I get rolled out to take my recreation al fresco. I sit in my wheelchair by a bench with members of my family or carers, but mostly  on my own. People are, understandably, reluctant to come and see me these days, it must be so unrewarding to visit, its distressing for them I expect. It is certainly distressing for me. They never see how I cry inwardly, to myself once they are gone.

I experienced a great upwelling of sadness as the nights drew in. When the patio doors needed to be closed to keep in the heat. As the last rays of summer sunlight vanish behind the poplar trees at the bottom of the garden. Left to gaze out at the looming gloom, until its absorbed into complete pitch black. At some point my Filipeno carer Doris will arrive - 'Mr Turner time to turn you around. Shall I turn the TV on? Do you want to watch anything tonight? She'll turn me around, looking directly into my eyes. Trying to gauge from the simplest expressive eye movement, my preference from a short list of programmes she rolls off. Since my accident I am, what my doctor casually refers to as 'a lock in', Moving my eyes, but nothing else. Mind alert as ever. Emotionally taught and frustrated, at not being able to vent it all out loud. 'No more fucking Pointless, Please! I don't really enjoy what I see on television, its so trite. Though it eats up the time I guess. I want to communicate what I most desire. But I feel effectively buried alive in my body.

However, the pitch dark evenings brought much more than I expected. More than a few fluttering moths trying to batter themselves to death on the patio windows. Familiar faces have begun to appear, glowing, hovering, emanating within the darkness. At first it was just my wife, but it expanded, within a matter of days, to a veritable parade of the good, bad and the ugly from my past life.  Relatives close and distant, just popping by to see how I am, I guess. I wonder really why they are coming. Does this mean something? 'Preparing me for death? What is their purpose? What is mine now? Though they do speak to me without speaking. I hear nothing, but can intuit what they mean. Mostly its just greetings and polite how are you's. My Mother visited yesterday. She was trying to communicate something to me, I couldn't quite fathom what. I felt quite a lot of emotional cross waves, heavy and mournful. When she retreated from view, I felt grief all over again. I spend all my time isolated, except for when these spirit faces arise. There are days when I hate Doris arriving. I want to scream - 'fuck off!' - loudly right in her face. But can't, obviously.

  

SCREEN SHOT - Congo

Some films, though made with the best of intentions, inevitably fall short of their own original aims. Others, even in the very moment of their conception know they are about to make a crock of shite and just roll with it. Congo, from 1995, is the most glorious example of a movie so bad it's a complete joy to watch. In the aftermath of Jurassic Park's original success, a mere few years before, Michael Creighton back catalogue became sought after source material for blockbuster movies. They spent 50 million dollars on Congo and it grossed three times that. I've never seen so much money spread so invisibly across a movie screen.

The story is a poor man's update of Rider Haggard, full of the usual egregious greed and casual racism about tribal Africa. As if the 19th century preoccupation with that continent as the source of the darkest primeaval proto civilisations, was still going strong well over a century later. Dr Karen Ross ( Laura Linney) has to go to the Congo to find out what happened to her fiancé, the latter's callous Father ( Joe Don Baker) pays for the trip on the proviso she comes back with mega diamonds. Meanwhile, Dr Peter Elliot (Dylan Welsh) wants to return his intelligent sign language trained ape Amy to the wild. The only way he can do this is if Herkemer Homolka ( Tim Curry ) a supposedly rich Rumanian philanthropist pays for it. Homolka wants to locate the diamond mines associated with the Lost City of Zinj. So far, so preposterous.

What can save a half bad movie is a script savvy enough to be self parodying, and actors who are willing to put their tongues firmly in their cheek, to send up both the film and their part in it. Fortunately, no one thought to do that here, so what you see in Congo is a movie almost completely devoid of self awareness and the parlous artistic territory it is travelling through. 

The two chief joys of this movie are the assumed accents, primarily Tim Curry's Rumanian accent, which travels insecurely in and around the Balkans, briefly touches on Russia before coming back to its very wobbly east european failed state. When this ludicrous accent meets the inane script you occasionally have brilliant moments of collision. They arrive in the ruins of Zinj which appear to have columns and columns of hieroglyphs written over the walls.  By the next morning Tim Curry emerges from his tent ' U know do's Eero glps we saw on du walls, I ave translated dem all' If I were being charitable I'd say Curry was the only one who knew what he was doing here, but.......?

In the dodgy accent department he is not alone. We have Captain Monroe Kelly (Ernie Hudson) , a mercenary known as 'the great white hunter' who 'also happens to be black'. The black American actor, Ernie Hudson, who was strangely thought to be an excellent casting choice. This wasn't an early precursor of 'blind' casting, its just dumb. 

Hudson plays it straight faced, without any sense of how weirdly inappropriate it feels. Not a glimmer of irony, for the entire length of the movie. Using the sort of upper class English accent only Hollywood could think was authentic. Its cadences on more than a few occasions landing back on the wrong side of the Atlantic. In one sticky moment of crisis in the movie, he utters in plummy posh tones - 'first we must locate our comrades, then the ape, before we even consider leaving'. As if they should sit down for tea and sandwiches then decide what to do, before the approaching mad gorillas eviscerate them. Lets not go into the mad gorillas, not right now, eh? Oh, this is so inspirational.  Its a truly terrible movie, played as if unblemished by shame, it so transcends itself that it becomes tolerably good.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8 ( Trash Elevated Score )

Currently available to stream on Channel Four

POEM - by Wendell Berry

The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

THE BEST BEFORE DATE - 1982 - Sulk by The Associates

The Associates were only ever a brief fling. Alan Rankine met up with a self consciously extravagant vocalist Billie Mackenzie in 1979. Success took its time coming though. It wasn't until their second album Sulk, that what they were doing appeared to align with the contemporary Zeitgeist. Party Fears Two and Club Country were both first recorded in the early days of their career. Recognising that these tracks were their best stuff to date, they didn't want to waste them by releasing them to an unreceptive audience. So they held both of them back and waited. Then in 1982 with Sulk, the time arrived, and they had a double whammy of hits in quick succession.

Mackenzie was always such a limelight grabbing glamorously effete presence. You have to very consciously turn your focus onto what Rankine is doing in the background, the edgy yet, furiously urgent guitar trilling, almost flamenco. The catchy piano rills, riffs and cadences. Everything in the production literally drowning in echo, the background singing, sound delays and reverb. This ought not to work, it ought to be an absolute acoustic mess, but it isn't. It pushes the sonic envelope, but it's also classy, and they knew that from the moment they made it.

Sulk was a rare thing, garnering both popular and critical acclaim. The Associates in their original twosome split later that year, 1982, due to the usual musical differences. Mackenzie liked spending the record company advance too much. He wanted the lifestyle and success a more pop orientated direction might bring. Rankine, ever the indie, wanted to keep pulling on the fringes of pop and letting it messily unravel a bit. In reality both were inveterate outsiders. 

Despite the brevity of their popularity The Associates were daring, they could be dark and menacingly brooding one moment, then full of cabaret swagger or fizzing with stylish pizzaz the next. They had a huge influence on the next generation of performers such as Bjork and U2. Mackenzie made two more albums as The Associates, and one solo album, before sadly taking his life in 1997 at the age of 39. His reputation as probably the finest male vocalist of his generation remains intact. Rankine became a musical mentor, facilitator and producer for numerous Scottish bands, that included at one point The Cocteau Twins. He died, as you may know. quite recently in 2023 at the age of 64.

WINDOW VIEWS - Another Quiet Day

From the shop counter there was a clear view through the shop window out onto the street and down the hill in the direction of the central bus hub. You could tell when the buses arrived from the town suburbs and surrounding villages, because people would spill out, heading towards the main street like a particularly virulent plague. But 'towards the main street' meant that they would be heading away from the shop Restorative Moments. Aiming for the new retail park, with its tiny multi-plex cinema and studio theatre. This was part of the recently re-named Arts Quarter. 'I mean, what half arsed tiny market town has an Arts Quarter!' Gregory would mutter under his breath. Well, this one did, but why they didn't imagine including his shop was a frequent burning question. He blamed the town planners and the Councillors for a lack of vision. But it was the sheep like nature of human beings as shoppers, that angered him most. Allowing themselves to be herded and funneled towards an intended market without a second thought. Lemmings!

Gregory had been at work barely an hour, and was already working himself up into being cheesed off. No one had actually come into the store yet. He felt extremely uncomfortable with even the thought that this was going to be yet another quiet day. There had been a brief gaggle of people wandering passed the window. Just as quickly, and just as noisily, they moved on in cackles and fits of giggles at some in joke or other. If they stopped to view any of his stock on the outside tables it was with self-evident disinterest. Items were picked up, then discarded as if they were an exceptionally smelly sock. Another chap examined a piece of stock in such close forensic detail, as if to ascertain exactly how it had come into existence. Took photos of it on his phone. Now satisfied that he had found out enough to either make it for himself, or buy something identical or better online, he put the further shop soiled item back down. It was as if the whole purpose of Gregory's shop was as a three dimensional interactive catalogue display. Making it easier for folk to purchase with confidence online, having seen the thing you wanted and handled them in real life. 'Did no one buy on impulse any more?'

On quiet days Gregory didn't find it hard not to conjure semi- reasonable justifications for cultivating a resentful attitude. Resentfulness he understood perfectly well, but how easily that soured into disinterest he tended to miss. That disinterest made manifest in his demeanour, further deterred custom. It could, and was, becoming a vicious self perpetuating cycle. He was already referred to as Gregory the Grump, even by his own regular and devoted customers. There had come a point when his disinterest became endemic, he'd ceased acknowledging that it might be there. And once it became ensconced like a truly bad tempered and overweight pig, all was lost. A shop like his, could then enter its own death spiral so slowly and gently, that by the time an owner woke up to the now precipitous speedy nature of its decline, it was generally too late to avert catastrophe. 

Gregory's disinterest now lay like the dust on its shelves and stock had done - for quite some time. Potential customers could smell the neglect, the decay, the lack of interest, a mile off. In fact down the end of the road as you came out of the central bus hub. Understandably, rather than walk towards a rather unpleasant fetid atmosphere, most folk chose to walk away from it. Toawards the flashy vulgarity and artificial bon homie of the new retail park. Where people inhaled a pumped in perfume creating within them feelings of being loved and valued. With a complimentary squirt of cream and dusting of cinnamon on your cappuccino and piped muzak to boot, What was there not to like?

SHERINGHAM DIARY No 74 - One Singular Exemption

I'm not usually a man prone to colds or flu. I've not had Covid, as yet, fortunately. But this winter I have had a 'cold' for the first time in many a year. The last time, if the out of date cough medicine I had is anything to go by, was somewhere between 2017 when it was made and 2020 when it passed its use by date. As they are so infrequent an experience, I tend to forget what a full on 'cold' can be like.  And, when I do succumb, I tend to have a heavy one.

They generally start with a severe migraine like headache, only easing as a progressive nasal rawness develops and a sense of something gooey and adhesive gradually accumulates in my throat and upper chest. The 2022 version never fully progressed to the runny nose final stage. Somewhere in the week before Christmas the chesty catarrh cough that had been so persistent and irritating, suddenly went away. However, first week in January 2023 the cough reimerged with a vengeance along with an intermittent headache. I generally don't give in to 'poor me man flu like behaviour'  But I am feeling peeved for foolishly thinking I'd seen the bugger off. I blame it being so unseasonably mild. 

Getting this bug to move on is not proving easy. I have bought myself a fresh bottle of cough medicine should you be concerned lest I'd risked self medicating with the out of date one. I think you might be reading my obituary if I had, or of a particularly explosive stomach inflammation brought on by extreme acid reflux. I've already had two nights of perpetual coughing with little sleep on the lounge sofa. It will pass, all things being impermanent, but the lethargic lingering of this cough might be the one singular exemption.

Judging by the complete dearth of Lem Sips in North Norfolk, I am not the only one plagued by an unrelenting cough. Sales of cough medicines seem be the only thing currently booming. In our shop we are now in an entirely altered retail realm. December came within a few hundred yards of last years monthly total. So well done to us. You would not have guessed it from November. But perhaps folk just pushed the boat out later, and that bit further knowing full well they'd have to push it right back in again, come January. Post New Year always feels as though someone switched the algorithm in our collective brains, from Yo Go Shoppy to No Go Shoppy Shoppy.

In past January's we've stayed open for a fortnight before fully closing for four weeks. Opening up again February Half Term.  But it was made plain by the first two days post New Years Day, when we took zero pounds, that this year would be progressing along quite different lines. So we decided to only open on Fridays and Saturdays between now and mid February. Apart from the cafe, all the shops like us are following a two day week. So when the Christmas decorations came down on twelfth night, The Courtyard appeared to suddenly descend into seasonal hibernation. Strangely our main sales in the first week have been lampshades, not normally a Winter season staple. But this Winter looks likely to be an even odder beast than usual.

Taking a longer period of reduced opening, leaves more time available to complete our bookkeeping and tax return. And once completed, to set too on a list of things that need attention or are grievously neglected during the rest of the year. Four weeks plus, seems like an absolute age, yet it will fly by, if previous years are anything to go by.  At the moment with my persistent coughing now producing pain in the chest muscles, I cannot even laugh wholeheartedly. All my virtuous plans to get back swimming and meditating regularly have been unavoidably delayed by bad lung health. The NHS website is vague about the length of time a cough can linger in the body after a chesty cough infection. Apparently it can go on for as long as eight weeks, after which it becomes chronic. Which, as you can imagine, I do not find at all reassuring.

With more time off work, comes the mental space to ponder, reflect and reconsider how things are done. So Jnanasalin and I have talked about tidying up product ranges. Paring then back to eight core fabrics. There is also coming the now annual fabric hunt to Lincoln and Stamford, what might we discover new for this year? If we don't encounter a stunning mid century fabric range to get excited about, we are considering breaking out of this stylistic period and testing a capsule range of fabrics from the Arts & Crafts era. Steering clear of Strawberry Thief and other such Morris cliches you'd see in every garden centre and department store throughout the land.

We also want to adjust the style of our signage and labeling so that they work both in the shop or on a craft stall. Currently they are at variance and this means a lot of chopping and changing when preparing for a makers market. In a more normal year than this, I might be pushing for an aesthetic and paint refresh to the shops decor. But we cannot even be sure what the year ahead will bring, so that is off the agenda. As is the idea of moving to bigger high street premises. We are currently in a bardo of just wait and see what 2023 brings once the season begins at Easter, coming early at the end of March. 

Hang onto your hats prepare for a bumpy ride.

LISTENING TO - Bloody Mary by Lady Gaga

Somewhere in the mists of time Lady Gaga veered off into the well ploughed mainstream. All those visual shock tactics just became passe. Where that slipping point was is unclear but I would have thought, until recently, it was somewhere around the Born This Way I baled. This was such a clichéd and obvious bit of pandering to her gay fan base.

Then, up crops this track, Bloody Mary, from said album. Apparently gone viral because a speeded up version was used in a dance sequence in the Netflix series Wednesday. Since then a whole Tik Tok viral storm erupted of fan videos. The track was released and hit the top forty. Kerching for Gaga.

But a have to admit this is a late period piece of classic pure pop from the queen of shlock fashion. As with all of Lady Gaga's better work it has not one, not two, but at the very least, three musical catch phrases that just keep you forever singing along. As a songwriter she never breaks musical conventions, but god does she play them well. Whilst, nothing ever compares to the sheer visual and aural brilliance that was Bad Romance, Bloody Mary reminds you what peak Gaga could be capable of.

SCREEN SHOT - You Were Never Really Here

Joe (Joaquin Phoenix) is a much damaged man. He earns his living by. rescuing kidnapped children. The brutal manner in which he executes his missions, has more to do with trying to kill his own demons. The past, in split second flashbacks, is spliced with his present, his fantasies, and keeping a handle on his own mental stability that constantly teeters on the edge of breakdown. He gets a new job, to rescue a politician's abducted young daughter. She is being held and sexually abused in a guarded tenement building. He succeeds in saving her, only to find there is a much more complicated game going on here than he has been led to believe. The whole situation goes rapidly, and savagely, out of control.

This film from 2017 is a much overlooked piece of masterful noir film making by Lynn Ramsey. The opening ten to fifteen minutes is tense, ompletely without dialogue as you are introduced to Joe's completely screwed up world. The sharp editing of imagery is accompanied by an equally sharp piece of sound tracking by Jonny Greenwood that is stupendous.  The best I've seen since the beginning intro to Drive. This is 'show not tell' at a whole other level. Throughout the film you are constantly made aware of Joe's mental state by the nature and quality of sound. You may be just seeing a long slow shot of Joe sat panting, but the sound track is of a discordant prepared piano as out of kilter as his mind. All the surrounding incidental sounds of a coffee percolating, passing street sounds, are woven in, all over amplified to give a palpable sense of a perceptual worldview that is completely out of whack. 

It is a brave piece of filmmaking that only ever hints at why what is happening is happening. Never feeling the need to cross all the T's and dot the I's. To over explain. You are left like Joe, never fully grasping what is going on before your eyes. Ramsay helps Joaquin Phoenix deliver one of his best performances. A totally brilliant film that becomes even better on this my second viewing.

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

FINISHED READING - Gnosticism by Stephan A Hoeller

In looking for a general introduction to Gnosticism I chose this. It certainly provided an overview of the beliefs, gives you short biographies of significant Gnostics their life and ideas, and outlines Gnostic movements. But there is something in its chosen style of exposition that gets in the way of a clearly well thought out exposition, namely the author.

Stephan A Hoeller is a professor and practitioner of Gnosticism and goodness does he want you to know. The book is littered with his personal theories, opinions, defences and proselytising of Gnosticism. The last few chapters are really a succession of statements about the contemporary ills and flaws in modern society and how much better we'd all be if Gnosticism was more widely practiced. He declares Hinduism and Buddhism are essentially gnostic in principle, and a lot of things are apparently. And its not as if he is not right in many of the things he asserts, but a bit less subjectivity and expression of partisan viewpoints and more distance would not have gone amiss. To show not tell. There are a lot of words here, specialist gnostic words, Jungian words, umbrella words that require careful decoding and explanations. Words that tend in Hoeller's hands, unfortunately, to get in the way, he got in the way. Making it more difficult to connect with the theoretical structures, or what gnostic texts had to say for themselves

Gnosticism does have a lot within to excite and recommend it.  Its central idea being that the world and us within it, are made flawed from the moment of inception. It's not therefore the fault of our sinning. We do not need to be punished, nor be redeemed. We are born into a fractured relationship with ourselves, the world and the gods. We begin by using our deepening self knowledge to investigate and restore our relationship with the unknowable god. To mend and rejoin our being with that fundamental essence of all things. Becoming one through gnosis with gnosis. Myth and allogory replacing dogma, are strong qualities in Gnostic teachings too. I've certainly gained a few pointers of where to read next. So this has not been a complete waste of time to read.

As a religious philosophies go Gnosticism is probably the most esoteric and hence harder to pin down. Its been challenged before for its heretical concepts by numerous Christians, challenged about whether it really existed as a coherent religious movement ( it can appear tenuous ), challenged over the authenticity of its ' secret' texts. ( they're old but what they represented was piecemeal until the Nag Hammadhi Texts were found ) 

There is also something about texts being dubbed 'secret'. They were actively censored, forbidden and suppressed, this appeals to the modern predilection for conspiracy theories, challenging perceived conventions, and alternative facts.  Wholeheartedly exploited by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. If the Gnostic Gospels are actually 'gospels', then what they say they are represents an entirely different spiritual discourse that Jesus employed privately to his disciples. More metaphysical than his simpler public talks, where he used parables as teaching devices. 

I don't know what scientific and textual analysis has been done on these 'secret' texts to establish their age or original provenance. This book is by a 'devotee', so is probably not the place to find that out. Hoeller is too concerned all the time to justify or castigate the Catholic orthodoxy and to sell you Gnosticisms self evident theological richness and diversity. I just don't think he does a particularly good job of that.

CARROT REVIEW 4/8

WINDOW VIEWS - What She Has Seen

Some said, she couldn't possibly have seen what she said she'd seen. Hers was a small bay window on the second floor, on an oblique corner plot, not looking directly out on to the street at all. So at an angle to Seaborne Terrace, at a further diagonal to No 5. How she could have seen more than the briefest shaft of a shadow? A figure seen only from out of the corner of her eye, was no figure at all. That was, for them at least, not good enough.

However, she knew what she'd seen was far more than a shadow. It was at twilight admittedly, so she understood why people would doubt what her vision was of this liminal manifestation.  But, she would not renounce or revise what she had seen either. That figure was suggestive to her of something touched with the divine. It did not feel benign though. She was scared of it, by what she was not sure at the time. Realising later that she'd drawn too close to what was truly sacred, frighteningly so. There was something in the fluttering dusky wing of it as it flashed across the road and vanished through the door of No 5. 

This changed her so profoundly. For days she had the sensation of herself glowing, in a golden aura type way. The next day crossing the road to lay flowers where she'd seen the charcoal black angel. She did that regularly, until a local TV journalist approached her to ask why. Before that interview was finished, her vision, her sanity and her past was being called into question. and found wanting. It felt, to her, that her experience was being taken away from her and publicly trashed. 

Everyone behaved towards her differently after that. Pubs went quiet, people crossed the road. Homeless folk appeared to understand, perhaps because they were treated in a similar manner, or they had seen it too. But over time she hid herself away more in her room, becoming more reclusive. Until no one saw her at all. Several weeks later the landlord called round to find the flat apparently uninhabited. With only a scorched silhouette mark on the sofa to prove anyone had ever been there.

FINISHED READING - Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo

When you first start reading a novel its the quality of the writing that strikes you first. Whether its sparse, cold, succinct, warm, flowing, flowery, passionate, restrained, illuminating, imaginative or simply dull. Great writing has this sense of positive uplift as you read, a burgeoning enthusiastic engagement- Oh yes, I am going to really enjoy this. This will be exciting to read. Girl, Woman, Other completely grabbed my attention and never really let go through all its four hundred plus pages. This was a real treat.

With each chapter you are presented with a central character whose background and present story is told. The following chapter will be someone else perhaps only briefly encountered in the previous tale. Each woman's story tells us of the different way they live, the pressures to be a certain way, the prejudices, the rebellions,the conformity, the confidence or lack of it, successful or not, the loves and tragedies. Everyone responds in a unique way to this sense of being seen as other, whether that be as a being through class, female,black, mixed race, gay, trans. These are the many perspectives vividly brought to life, their upsides, their downsides, triumphs and failures. Each woman linked to another via a chain of experience over many generations and eras. Holding across the narrative a shared unity of purpose and desire for meaning.

Evaristo shows you every angle and obstacle. How each person findstheir particular way through. Some do not overcome their limitations, some fight, the consequences are not always beneficial. The richly diverse ways to a persons identity are often hard won. Her overarching focus is femininity, gender and race and how these intersect with one another. Shown in all its complexity and multi-facetedness. I identified with their struggle. Where for all their best efforts and intentions, they do fail, and whether they learn or not from that failing. Striving to fully realise your identity is an ongoing universal human desire. 

The expression of gender has behavioural expectations and limitations in our society. Ones further compounded by cultural and racial prejudices. These are just three ways in which the human desire to be liberated can be either thwarted or manifested. People simply want to feel free to be who they want to be. Sometimes they prove to be their own worst enemy, but just as often its other people, other men, other women, their partners, families, social expectations that are crippling them.

This is a truly fabulous book, each chapter a kaleidoscopic window on not just one, but many women's experience of life. At the same time it presents a picture of Britain too, not always likeable or favourable. A Britain that still can't quite bring itself to full embrace the broad spectrum of this wonderfully rich diverse nation, as it actually is.

CARROT REVIEW - 7/8

FEATURE - Iris Van Herpen

This video gives you a clear portrait of both the beauty, complexity and mind-blowing WOW factor of this Dutch fashion designers work. Through multiple layers of fabric and 3D printed elements, she creates clothes that operate on the cutting edge of both technology and fashion. This short film, without narration, gives you a sense for both the sensuality and sculptural qualities of her costumes. Its quite astonishing, I assure you.

LISTENING TO - Carnage by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis

 

Warren Ellis has been the creative force running alongside Nick Cave's  in all its forms in various configurations of bands, to film scores and now this collaboration. Becoming part of this constantly refertilising musical presence, whilst Cave goes through another renaissance in his already distinguished career. Unfortunately this time propelled forth on unfolding grief, a consequence of his son Arthur's untimely death. Undoubtedly cathartic, this work also arises from a need to understand the inexplicable. What has happened, how he has felt and responded. Songs on Carnage, are exculpatory, exploratory, trying to explain, expel or contextualise what is not resolvable.

The work they've created together is both personal and universal in its resonances. The songs are allusive in their poeticism, pointing away from his own pain to an imaginative simulacrum. Its as though Caves career has been leading up to this moment, when grief would, as he has said himself, crack him open.  Instigating a change in him he cannot reverse, even if he should want to.

A repeated current running through the decades of Cave's work has been his love for a biblical reference, musically mining declamatory oracles, the fundamentalism of southern gothic. Such fevered rants once consumed even his outward demeanour. The passion is now tempered with a resigned lyricism. Faith, whatever it is for him, has remained an obsession, wanting and not wanting it, loving and despising it. Trying to understand, like many of us do, our divergent responses. 

And so on Carnage we have a number of tracks that land upon the ear like urging hymns or psalms, such as Lavender Field or Carnage. Plaintive yearning melodies looking for some form of impossible resolution. It is significant that what opens the album is the track Hand of God. Where he swims out to the deepest part of the river and 'lets the river cast its spell on me' hoping to prompt the hand of god, to reach down and save him. Thus proving he exists, or cares. The strings swoon with evident unease, as the words Hand of God are incantated, as though calling for God to be present, to explain themselves. Cave rolls and groans his words and voice around an almost mythic search for clarity. 

And from this track onward the search for resolution permeates each following track. The sky returning as a metaphor repeatedly, from which a presence, a brief remembrance or the Kingdom may emerge. Somewhere he could rest easier. The obliqueness of his lyrics draws you into this realm, with its own colour, language and specific imagery. Both worldly and other worldly. Its a compelling album to listened to, yet the thought of returning to it is not without emotional reservations. Love, doubt, hate and melancholy swirl around in this mist of loss and longing, settling on shattered ground. This is often  simply heart rending.

 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY NO 73 - Becoming A Devotee Of The True Pie

I love a witty business name, one that neatly captures its purpose, style and zeitgeist. On our travels anywhere we invariably have to drive towards Kings Lynn. On that road we regularly pass a dog grooming business called Scruffy 2 Fluffy, which I find simply a work of linguistic genius. We all know examples no doubt of Hairdressers with a clever pun ot innuendo in the title, but  Scuffy 2 Fluffy proves it can crop up in other unlikely places too. Like Sheringham, where similar to so many coastal towns these days, it has developed bands of early morning sea swimmers. Come rain or shine they bravely toddle down to the sea front in their dry robes, maxi towels over their shoulders. for a chilling dip into the briny. It is a much more popular form of social grouping with women than men, perhaps for the most obvious wrinkly winkle reasons. So the women's sea swimming group in Sheringham, it appears, is quite substantial and has given itself a group moniker that I think is truly a thing of awe and resplendent wonder - The Blue Tits.

So we are at the turn of the year once again. What a perfect storm of crap events. A horrendous year for avoidable cock ups. 2022 has been without shame. With no signs of letting up its destructive unsettled progress, as we cross that artificially designated boundary in time and name, called The New Year. But one cannot help but try to brush off the dust of the previous year still clinging to our coat tails. To at least begin 2023 with an optimistic reset. Christmas has come and gone. It was enjoyable, provided a moment or two to reconnect with ourselves, now that the mad hurry towards the 25th has ceased. 

At Cottonwood Home, we are already looking into what new things we'd like to make or introduce to our stock range. Fresh fabrics to consider trying out. Making plans, with no idea what the economic circumstances we will encounter will be really like. We are going to have to be cautious and considered in any decisions, I expect. Particularly in the first quarter of the year when income is traditionally squeezed anyway. Shoppers who pushed the boat out too far in December, may find themselves madly bailing out an unmanageable rising debt level by the end of January. Spring may have some unpleasant surprises for us all.

But before all that, we have the dreaded self assessment tax return. Joy of joys. This year we feel to be less on the case, with so much additional emotional plate spinning going on. But the process of harvesting and sorting invoices and expenditure receipts has begun. Until the great data entry looms. These are both largely my role in the proceedings. Before Jnanasalin does the final huge tidying up and balancing bit of the accounting. Ever year I say to myself, lets keep on top of this, lets get into the habit of doing the accounts monthly. It would be so much easier if we did. Your memory of what transpired 18 months later really does go a bit vague, so you look at payments and wonder what the hell happened here? 

My first accountant,a friend of my parents, insisted you should start doing ones accounts in the way you mean to carry on. And he was right, because once there is a backlog, the mountain you have to climb just doesn't get any lower. Actively discouraging you in any effort to be on top of it. And so, this momentum of clarity and intent to get fully up to date, ebbs away. Like any New Year's Resolution, it lasts, not very long. And so even now, even whilst I say to myself that this year, of all years, it would be so much better to be fully on top of it. At the back of my mind is a flickering neon sign saying - ' Not a chance, mate'

Optimism, that's a rare quality these days. Harder to maintain or keep hold of, easily worn away by cynicism born of unrelenting bad news. Whether pessimistic, optimistic, fatalistic or apathetic there is frequently a lack of realism behind these. They're all coping strategies, giving the changeable impermanent and unpredictable nature of life an apparent philosophical unrufflable sheen. Coping strategies are fine just so long as they are seen as such, and not as a complete or correct view on life. Name the demons, beneath their outward appearance of willpower or resignation. 

2023 may prove to be a mix of many things, not all of them catastrophic or doom ridden. I can paint the world in a uniform colour of bleak as well as the next person. It can be my default mood setting. I can miss so much that is good, of value and to be grateful for, whenever I do this. Allowing the 'eight worldly winds'* to lead me, knock me about the head. Never more so than when the external circumstances, economic and otherwise, appear so turbulent and unpredictable.

Me after I've had a Matey Bubble Bath

 

As I mature in age, many things like one's libido become slower in ripening, I have, like folk over many millennia, had to become more relaxed and sanguine about what might be or have been. Its not that its all over, but one cannot do some activities without there being a more significant consequence than would have been previously, even a few minutes ago. I can go swimming, do my thirty lengths quite smartly still, then and hour or two later a wave of physical weariness will verily come upon me. Dragging down alertness of mind and hence productivity, if not to a halt, to an entirely slower speed of execution - from 78rpm to 45rpm. I've had generally to adopt a steadier, slower and more equanimous pace of working, I make more mistakes if I don't. Fortunately being a craft maker does benefit from this considered and less hurried pace of work. That more youthful frenetic pace of execution seems somewhat mad these days. What is all that hurrying about? Overly concerned about reaching destinations and giving insufficient attention to the travelling.

I viewed an interview with Karen Armstrong on You Tube recently. She said, what I thought was a really interesting idea. That the fundamentalism we see in many contemporary religions ( political and ecological too ) is a direct consequence of the emergence and dominance of scientific truth and rationalism. That faith, for some, has to become this incontrovertible truth, certain of its veracity to the point of immovable dogmatic belief. To match with scientific certainty, religious certainty. Her view being that faith has always been founded previously upon a 'cloud of unknowing', evolving out of doubts, uncertainty and the mystically suggestive experience of something transcendentally other.

We were in a Norwich cafe a while back. I ordered a flat white with an apricot Danish pastry. The flat white proved passable, the Danish pastry came warmed with a slight crisp flake to the pastry. We loved it. Prompting the question - why on earth don't we cook our pasties and pies properly? Its such a tragic loss to ones pie eating experience. Flabby sunk pastry half returned to water, is now a common place thing because of the convenience of microwave cooking. You can now buy from Tesco frozen Maple Danish, Cinnamon Swirls, Almond Croissants, Pain Au Chocolate pastries you can bake at home. Why wouldn't you want to do that, rather than tolerate its rather damp substitute. And so I became a convert, A devout follower of the True Pie.

Though it seems strange to say this - I love pies. Unfortunately, haste and supposed time saving has had a consequence. Impoverishing the pastie, pie,flan or frittata of its ultimate form and transcendent nature. Unwittingly I've robbed myself of this sheer delight - of a good crust, a well baked flan case, the flakiness of a danish pastry, the golden pastry top to a pie. Along with slow cooking, devoting time,say twenty minutes, to cooking pastry properly is really not much to ask. I wonder about ourselves these days, always on a mission to do things fast, to save time, without clarifying exactly for what, to do what? In my experience this contemporary compulsion to save time is a bit of a hamster on a wheel situation. It is never ending. Its a mind set with little to do with reality. We believe we must be able to do everything and therefore require as much time as possible. When, I would humbly suggest, we should prioritise quality of experience over quantity. So in 2023, choose to get off that wheel and cook yourself the real experience of The True Pie.

A current favourite

* The Eight Worldly Winds, is a Buddhist teaching that describes basic ideas and impulses that can dominate and rule our life should we pursue them. Coming in four pairs - Praise & Blame, Success & Failure, Pleasure & Pain, Fame & Infamy