TV FAVE RAVE - Interior Design Masters

Now on its second series under the new Design Masters banner, and I think its forth format revamp, I think this programme may have finally found, not only the right presenter in Alan Carr, but the right balance of experts, novice designers and tasks set.

The nonsensical and completely unnecessary recycling challenge they once threw into the already turbulent mix midway has, thankfully, long gone. What you need to see is left entirely to the camera and edit - the character of the designer, how their talent, personal conceits and preferences, resilience and resourcefulness stand up under pressure.

This years crop are the usual, and hence, very familiar, motley bunch. The twink who thinks they are god's gift to design, the flamboyant OTT designer who you just know is going to struggle to rein it all in, the inspired one who's designs are too clever or elaborate by half, always in danger of having to do a last minute edit to finish on time.- the one who self sabotages with confidence issues, but usually pulls it off - the one who can't budget to save their life - the inexperienced raw talent that blossoms and will often win the competition. Also, every male contestant, if they are not already gay, then their dress sense and camp demeanour show they've read and inwardly digested the entire bible.

Episode 1, did not disappoint. Michelle Orgundehin has found her feet now, so she can say quite cutting but true things to a contestant like 'your just lazy as a designer' and you cry freedom for her. She met her match this week with the seasoned performer that is Lawrence Llewelen-Bowen, also both a master of design and the pithy put down.

Marvellous stuff.

ARTICLE - Water Takes The Shape That It's Given

Inspector Montalbano is investigating the death of a prominent politician, whose body was found in a car left in a place known for prostitution. Witnesses say they saw a man having sex with a woman in that car the night before. The post mortem confirms he died of a heart attack, Montalbano, however, is suspicious about the scene of the crime, there are just one too many anomalies. He visits the deceased's widow who believes the death of her husband was politically motivated. Neither of them has any proof. 

'What can I do' bemoans Montalbano.
'Well, you could just accept the shape they gave to the water'
'what do you mean' he asks.
She recounts a childhood encounter with a young country boy .He'd put on the edge of a well a bowl, a cup and a square tin all full of water, and he was just staring at them
she asks him
'What are you doing?
he replied with a question.
'What is the shape of water?'
laughing she says
'Water doesn't have a shape, it takes the shape that its given'

I watch a lot of crime procedurals, not usually with the expectation of being left reflecting on a phrase. But 'water takes the shape that its given' stayed with me. There is something about it that made me want to dig a little deeper into the what and why of it.

I was viewing this particular episode of Montalbano the morning after five days on retreat at home had concluded. My retreat reading had been Dogen's - Sansuikyo - The Mountains & Waters Sutra, and a commentary on it by Shohaku Okumura. Other watery spiritual metaphors had seeped in from other reading directions; from Gary Snyder's The Practice of the Wild and Sheng Yen's commentary on Seng Ts'an's Faith In Mind. The natural symbolism of water appeared to be falling out of thin air and into my lap. Then, once the retreat was over, I was merely relaxing watching TV, and was presented with yet another.

'That -- water takes the shape that its given'

Our bodies are largely made of water, too little and we die of thirst, too much and we drown, it scalds, it freezes, it falls, it pools, it moistens, it floods, it flows, it steams, it snows. Water adapts itself to whatever circumstances it finds itself in. Water is a shape shifting element. 

'Water reaches into flames, it reaches into the mind and its images, into wit, and into discrimination, and it reaches into realisation of the Buddha-nature'     Dogen

Waters capacity to flow as a spiritual metaphor is irresistible. To be able to mimic waters ability to go with the flow of whatever it encounters, to get through, in, over, around or under it. If only our experience of life could be more like that. Moving smoothly from one thing to the next, nothing ruffling us as we ride those tigers and paddle through those doldrums. Water brings insights into a better way of relating to reality. 

That our original shape was quite like water 

Water has more than ease of flow to recommend it.  Unlike humanity water never gets stuck for long in one particular form or way of being. If water has any sense of itself as water, it is not one that is stifled or inhibited by its own self consciousness. Water doesn't have a fixed permanent sense of who it is. A quality of water is that it has no will, no desire for control over its destiny. Water is compelled to fully embrace its innate willingness to adapt and be transformed by external circumstance.  It doesn't have to be protective of, or define, who, what or how it is. Water is content within its wateriness.

'Water embraces whatever shape it currently is, however brief.'

Dogen extols the virtues of water. Though he asks us not to allow our perceptions of them to be limited only to human centred viewpoints.  Do not assume perceptions are the same for all sentient life. How, for instance, does a fish view water, what form does water take through a fish's eyesight, how would that perception feed into its imagination and way of living?  Can we conceive of what fish-water, duck-water, or Buddha-water might look like?  Lets not assume all sentient life defaults to the human way of seeing things - for why should it?

Perceptions of water take the shape that we give them.

Humanity tends to find different perspectives, different ways of doing things challenging. It prefers consistency, routine and certainty over their opposites. Our use of the internet appears to be making intolerance of other cultures and opinions more intense. History shows that people have often tried to force people to believe or see things in one way, the way that they do. If they refuse to conform, then we imprison or kill them. Yet our opinions, like our sense of our self, evolve, they are not the fixed things we think they are. Actually we all possess a more water like sense of self, even if we carry it around in a bottle.

Like water our sense of our self can become frozen

We protect self identity, reinforce its shape through how we interpret our perceptions, the stories we weave around them about who we are, why we are the way we are, what we are or are not capable of. Then apply the same criteria to other people, why they are who they are and what they are. We force ourselves and others into predefined shapes. Seeing them only as what we've made them into, the particular box that we've constructed then put them in.

'In general, ways of seeing mountains and water differ according to the type of being that sees them. There are beings which see what we call water as a string of pearls, but that does not mean that they see a string of pearls as water. They probably see as their water a form that we see as something else. We see their string of pearls as water.'    Dogen

Can we imagine ourselves being more like water? Adopting the shape of other peoples opinions and ways of being, To understand anyone requires imagination, empathy and being able to listen, often without comment, as we soften our world view in order to accommodate someone else's. To see the world as if through another persons eyes, broadens who we are or can be. Someone being different to us doesn't make them unknowable. We can befriend people entirely unlike us, it can be quite invigorating. 

We already do this in a smaller way with friends, partners and family, all the time. Unconsciously adapting our shape and way of being in order to sit easier with another person's shape and way of being. We find ourselves behaving differently with friends from schooldays than we do with those from our work or the buddhist centre. People from these different contexts don't necessarily get on, even though they all have you in common. They appreciate a different side of you. There are people you clash with all the time, something about their shape you cannot adapt to or accommodate. It's worth investigating why.

Different people's shape allow you to be a different shape too. 

There is a traditional Buddhist story of the five blindfolded people each describes what an elephant is like for them. One knows an elephant only by its trunk, another by its ears, another by its legs, another by its tail, another by its belly. Each is correct according to the experience it has of it, but incorrect in describing the whole animal.  The same goes for us and our family, partners and friends, each has their own partial view. No one can fully describe the shape of you, not even you.

' Now let us be wary of this. Is it that there are various ways of seeing one object? Or is it that we have mistakenly assumed the various images to be one object? ....If the above is so, then practice-and-experience and pursuit of the truth also may not be only of one kind or two kinds; and the ultimate state also may be of thousands of kinds and myriad varieties.'    Dogen

Lets integrate the diversity and inconsistencies that we hold within ourselves, be with them, rather than fighting against them. Resist making ourselves conform to a consistent shape, particularly if that shape is not of our choosing. The shape of ourselves can be far more flexible and fluid than we allow it to be. The same is true of other people, of our way of seeing the world, of our conception of how reality is. There maybe an infinite number of tracks up to the top of a mountain, numerous routes to cross an ocean by, many a circuitous, winding path toward Buddha Nature.  

Reality functions like water, it has no permanent shape.,

Reality shape shifts

We are shape shifting sentient beings, that do not yet realise it..

POEM - Midnight Musk

The silence tonight
has the quality
                        of thickening cream
liberated, openly receptive
as well
           as this giving gesture
done in mime, suggestive
aloof
though not lacking a sense
for human history
                             and wonder
in a deepening amour, yes,
the type of amoroso that is learnt
from leaning into it,
                                keen
listening to the listening itself
                                                as it listens
conjuring nothing out of nothing
with an open handed palm, generous
to a fault, flawless even
like a deep blue sapphire, softly
ringing, a bell with no clapper
swings, soundlessly stirring
                                             not a thing
that might reawaken sound
into calling an echo
                                into the air
though I do not hear emptiness
in this no-thing-ness
I hear
         everything.

written January 2021 by
Stephen Lumb

FINISHED READING - I Wanna Be Yours by John Cooper Clarke

It will be no surprise to anyone that John Cooper Clarke's autobiography I Wanna Be Yours, is everything you might expect it to be; rambunctious, alliterative, slickly rhetorical with more pop cultural references and detail than one man should contain and remain alive. It is a well turned performance in prose form. That the man, and the poetry, has remained alive is a triumph of the will.

His life story rolls out then in a flurry of words, puns, bad and good jokes, plus frequent and unashamed name dropping. He is a fan who has often not just met his idols, but also worked alongside them, with the occasional unhelpful interference from an absolute plonker of a manager. His memoir appears populated with cartoon like individuals, completely Dickensian character types. At first this was a delight to be with, after a while you begin to wonder exactly how long he can keep up the unrelenting pace of baroque banter. The answer would appear to be indefinitely. So you have to be up for keeping up. He is a performance poet renowned for the high speed style of delivery, after all.

We get to hear of the entrepreneurial shenanigans of his manager Wisey, his drug supplier Jackie Genova, and sharing a flat with 'the doom chanteuse' Nico. Whilst sketching a vivid picture of them all, its also a grudgingly affectionate one. He does in a way understand them, permits them there little peccadilloes, and is never wantonly cruel. Throughout this his private self remains behind the carefully packaged and practiced poetic performance persona. John Cooper Clarke is one of those people who seems genuinely to be always on, because he doesn't know how to do off, I guess that's where the drug use fitted in. He says he's no team player, a bit of the lone individualist. One does wonder what he's like to live with.

There is a touching grace and humility to him. He knows his worth, enough to not need to self aggrandise or blow his own trumpet. Cooper Clarke appears as the outsider poet, but is curiously quite a conventional, apolitical one. He is that rare thing a popular poet, who just about makes a living out of it. And now we know that it all began with the classic inspirational teacher who by encouraging him to write showed him the way out of Salford, so hats off to Mr Malone.

He has never concealed the drug dependency retold here in gaudy technicolor. He neither excuses nor sanitises it to make it palatable, nor gives it the glamour gloss of rebellious non-conformity. He struggles in the middle with his very human love and hate of them. He tells you what he enjoyed about his drug use, whilst also telling you about the financial ruin. What being a slave to an addiction will make you do. 

As a lifelong fan, I sailed through all its 460 pages.  The early years, the punk years, the drug years, the rehab, the late renaissance, its all here. If like me you lived through this period, its a reminder that even in the midst of the grim and messed up 70's & 80's, the north threw up gloriously unique talents such as Professor John Cooper Clarke.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

SHERINGHAM DIARY 45 - The Listening Wind

Today, yet another storm is passing over us. Its a portent. The wind and rain lash against our windows with all the persistence of an attention seeking celebrity. Our TV ariel on the roof, is so poorly attached to the chimney, it swans around imitating the mechanics of a musical box fairy. Swiveling all the time in the gale with a depressed groan. We're all so fed up with the wind - its whips, bursts and melodramatic sweeping gestures. Its like living in an H P Lovecraft story. Where the wind may be jeering, but it is also listening closely to us. I have a sense of its empathy.

We're unlikely to be flooded here, just the occasional pond of water collects in one dip in the coast road. That place where, once upon a time, there used to be a fording crossing. In one flash surge it returns, gone by the next day, or the day after. All the roads leading to this coast road come steeply down from the escarpment. Water will always find its way towards the sea, leaving a badly woven trail of detritus behind it. All storms clear out the deadwood and refresh the air. They drag down from the surrounding forests and track ways all that, though unwilling, has lost its vision and vitality for living. 

Jnanasalin and I, stay mostly indoors except for our daily walks and the necessary visits to Sheringham or Cromer for provisions etc. January through to February town is normally extremely quiet, but in lock down this has been given a stranger dystopian accent. As the New Year has progressed the number of local cafes open to offer a take away coffee service has rapidly dwindled, at the current count it's - one. We were due to close our shop for 3-4 weeks in the second week of January anyway, then the lockdown was called. 

The lockdown has removed our only chance at a holiday away.  Instead we have tried a weeks holiday at home, which though restful, had not quite the quality of rejuvenation we required. Soon we were back into planning our new lines for Spring. Placing orders with new suppliers, in an atmosphere of not knowing even when we will be permitted to reopen. Its the mode we've pretty much been in the entire last year, and we are both tired because we cannot stop it, cannot really let go, cannot imagine another way of responding to the pandemic that isn't making something. Making is for the future, it is a form of hope.

We had a plan for the end of January. Jnanasalin would go away for a weeks solitary retreat, whilst I'd have one at home. This has now morphed into attempting to do this whilst we both remain at home. Its an experiment, and like all such things we do not know how it will turn out. The week prior to this had for me felt dispiriting. I couldn't get into a productive groove or a good headspace with my making. Seemingly surrounded by circumstances that just seem to conspire against, to be at odds with, any intention I laid out for myself.  I've been frustrated to hell with both my lack if engagement and productivity. Unable to find the right magic spell for the current moment. And yet, as George Grosz put it, 'even as I flounder I am forging ahead'.

Underlying all this is a need, compressed still more by the tense atmosphere of a pandemic, for a deeper form of creativity and self- expression than making for the shop provides me with. Something not bound by the conventions of a sell-able product. Liberated from a predefined form. Instead of working within the parameters of the known, to go off piste and enter into the unknown. Don't get me wrong, I'm very fortunate to be able to make a living from the things I make. But that can only be sustained and nourished by other forms of creativity where I am free to set out for new unexplored territories.  

200 WORDS On - Free Speech

Free speech is the foundation of a free, fair and democratic society. We’ve the right to express what we think, but its not just mouthing off, then walking away. Though willingness to engage in debate is a condition of free speech, we tend to dodge the slippery matter of justifying our opinions. Being held to account is not an optional extra, viewpoints need to be challenged.

You can say anything you wish, yet it’s not consequence free, nor absolute. Individual rights come with collective duties. If you encourage hatred, physical harm, death, defamation, sedition, or undermine the nations security or democracy, there's a consequence to that. Free speech has never come completely unfettered. The balance is re-struck all the time between self-expression and its legal limits.

Open discussion of issues is an ailing art. Fallacious views are best punctured through effective debate. Preemptively silencing those whose views we disagree with, evades the duty to establish what is true and of value. Social media, has created public forums for ignored sectors of society, though frequently fails the consequence, challenge and accountability test. If freedom of speech is to thrive in this digital age, we must better understand what its there for.

FAMILY FRAGMENTS - The Proximity of Memories

The position of the dark red high backed armchair was predetermined within the room. The coals in the small fireplace occasionally spat out bright orange phlegm, just to its right. From here you could view whatever was going on in the back room of this terraced house. The floor space always looked cluttered; a folded down dining table and its guardian chairs; a three piece suite with brightly crocheted antimacassars; various poofs, sewing, sewing machine, thread boxes, photo albums stacked under the low coffee table. A long sideboard and display cabinets fully inhabited each alcove, containing a miscellany of cutlery, plates and ceramic objects. Everywhere stuffed to the gill in this nonetheless cosy nook.

The wings of the armchair formed huge amplifying baffles, directing softly spoken conversational details to any person who sat between them. Dora, as usual, was ensconced there, attentively listening, legs placed close together, feet front facing, arms relaxed, hands at ease in her lap. The frailness of her body dwarfed by the chair in which she rocked. Today she was seventy, the supposed focus of a family celebration, a queen for the day being greeted by her subjects.

Currently frowning, she wasn't in pain, but simply straining to follow the chaotic mess of interactions between her grown up children, whilst their own youthful offspring energetically bounded under, over and around tables and chairs. Though it was her birthday, this felt like too many people. Frequently proving tricky for her to hear, she missed, or misinterpreted, a lot. 

'It ud help me if the didn't gabble su much' 

She thought half aloud, never quite sure where the volume knob her own speaking was set. An under the breath mutter easily came out as an exclamation. Too quiet you wouldn't be able to successfully interject, too loud and it sounded as if she were shouting them down. It was rare that they fully caught her drift anyway. She was used to non-comprehension, both her own and other people's.

Their gossipy chatter continued hopping around from one subject to another and then back again. Sometimes Dora managed to keep up with this conversational flow quite well, through a combination of lip reading and snippets her hearing aid picked up. On other days, like today, everything was painfully distorted, as though passed through a hiss of static. The consequent experience of isolation was distressing. She had the desire to be at the heart of these family get-togethers, but it was common for her to be the mute figurehead. 

The feeling of being forcibly removed that the deafness imposed upon her, had only increased in frequency as she'd got older. Being ignored in a group growing in direct proportion to how elderly you were anyway. She often resigned herself to sitting back and being the quiet observer, voluntarily absenting from active engagement. The proximity of memories became easier to interact with than other people. So her attention drifted off, gazed into the fire or empty space. Remembering past incidents from decades ago, to the days before her husband died. 

Her husband Douglas? Well, almost to the end he'd been an active hulk of a man. Though, after fifty six years of life, he was snatched away in just a matter of days by un-diagnosed  blood pressure and circulation problems. Dora, suddenly bereft, was bringing up the remaining dependents of her brood of eight, single-handed. Her children had done their best to step up and help out, Reginald and Maureen, the eldest, in particular. 

The following years were tough financially and emotionally. The family would be a strain to feed until more of them were working age. No matter that the children at that time were ranged in age from on the brink of teenage to into their twenties or married, she'd needed to rapidly reduce the size of the family home and then somehow fit the remaining progeny into this more manageable terrace, The one she was now retired in, with her eldest daughter Maureen as her default carer, still living with her.

Was it a coincidence that Douglas's death had also been the point when she'd first noticed the decline in her hearing? Initially she'd made light of it. Jokingly blaming it on over twenty years of perpetual pregnancy. Yet the drain on her energy of repeatedly giving birth had weakened her physical stamina, as did forever clambering up and down the cellar steps to fetch water to boil and wash clothes. The day to day drudgery any Mother had to do then for her children. 

'Douglas! wer useless at bein a Father.....no elp to nobdy but hiself.'
She muttered.
Maureen looked up from her sewing 
'What wer that Mother? 
You Father...blumin useless' 
'Ay, suppose he was, didn't behave as if he wer though' 

Everyone accepted Douglas would retire to his 'study' the moment he arrived home after work. To do whatever it was he found to do in there. Only eating a meal or spending quality time with them on a Sunday. As a consequence he'd become more feared than loved.  He appeared to want to keep everyone at a distance, the paternal mystery man. Playing the aloof Edwardian patriarch and the disciplinarian with a leather belt whenever it felt appropriate. Yet, apart from bringing in the money and being the sire of children, he was sod all use around the house. There were things he considered played no part in his role as Father, or as a man, however self serving that appeared now.

'Eeeee.......e wer gud wi is hands though, wurever they were involved in mekin.'

Dora spoke to herself fondly, without any hint of innuendo or irony.

Just as she'd started to feel the first bodily signs of declining energy, this had happened. She'd become the sole director and centre of a whirlwind of unending activity, of things needing to be done, money to be earned. She remembered the constant tiredness and concern. The weary weight of it lingered on now in her body, in the tenderness and creaking of her arthritic joints. She loved all her family, but there was the tattered remnant of bitterness still hanging out back to dry. It had taken a toll on her outlook on life.

When she'd first gone for the hearing tests they'd informed her of the many known causes of deafness. That most probably hers was inherited, a family disposition. She couldn't remember any of her family being deaf, not in middle age anyway. But then maybe, like her, they too had become expert at disguising it. Life up on the edge of the moors in the low granite cottage where she'd been born and brought up, was always physically cold. The family temperament as austere as the moors that surrounded them. They were never a close knit family, more the reverse. No one seemed to have much to say to anyone, even at the best of times. They were self contained, chapel stained through and through, each as silently morose company as carved gravestones. They could have all been deaf as a door post and nobody would have known.

'If thee has nowt useful to say, tha shoudn't speak on it' 

She'd heard her Father's voice speak that phrase, with the usual pseudo biblical inflection of the part-time Methodist lay preacher, countless times. Hearing it again echoing through her mind, accompanied by the usual finger waving reproof. If there'd been any love in that man, it had been driven out by the cold of a persistent north westerly wind.

The hearing loss occurred in both ears. Though progressing slowly at first, it was cumulative and mostly irretrievable by the time it was finally diagnosed and treated. Yet if the deafness was not a family legacy, then prolonged physical stress or a severe blow to the head were some of the other less palatable options. Half recollecting murky events from earlier life, she thought it best not to go there. 

Though if truth be told, Douglas too had not been averse to administering a well aimed clout or two, whenever his temper, the children, or her backchat got the better of him. His pride had proved to be a surprisingly fragile thing. She forgave him his failings now, she'd even forgiven him for dying. Forgiving helped when she had cause to miss his companionship. It would be far too convenient to lay blame at his unresponsive feet for her being deaf. Nothing could be done about any of that. She'd been widowed and become profoundly deaf. None of it was going to be removed by knowing of its cause.

Though not hearing absolutely everything sometimes had its advantages. Whenever Maureen was bustling round, trying to boss her into having yet another radio in the house, that she did not want. She had a practiced way of looking blankly or confused, sometimes deliberately choosing not to comprehend. Those radios she knew would be bought anyway, making her hearing aids whine and whistle wherever she went. 

'Ow many more did she blumin need? '

There was only so much blathering from her daughters and daughters in law that she could tolerate. Her sons and son in laws,? well, they fell all too conveniently into the cowardly tendency of the northern male - the stoical but unknowable silence. 

Dora had moments when she was really glad to be able to shut herself off completely. Pretend that she was listening, but really it all just floated over her head. Occasionally interjecting, but never entirely sure whether the topic of conversation had moved on or not. So she'd just throw in a comment, to test the water, as a way of letting them all know she was still there.

'well, mebay he should just gee up tryin and start afresh some weir else' 

If everyone looked puzzled or pretended to ignore what she said, then obviously she was way off  the current topic. She'd see Maureen's shoulders shudder from a chuckle, then loudly over enunciate the confirmation: 

'Mother... Weev moved on from... talkin... about r Ben'

Being left on her own could in many ways be easier, more manageable than company. There was always a conflict within her, feeling isolated and lonely on the one hand, or longing for the quieter stiller hours of the day, on the other. Those times when Maureen would go into town, or was out at work. Times when she could just sit in her armchair, not have to worry about what she had or had not heard, or trying to make herself understood, she could commune with the flames in the fireplace for hours if she wanted.

On the better days, she'd sense a change in the air quality.  The fire would briefly bring smoke into the room, as if someone had just come in the back door. Then there would be the recognisable form and mass of her husband approaching. Quietly slipping into the back room for a chat, with an appreciative -

'Hello Luv'

On this evening of her seventieth, all the family having now departed, Maureen was upstairs sorting out photos humming along to one of her blessed radios. Then she heard the familiar tones of his voice in the doorway saying -

'Happy Birthday Dora'

As he emerged from the kitchen into the back room, her attention skipped to alert in an echo of younger love. There he was. Douglas, visibly sitting down in front of her, smiling with àll the warmth in his eyes she remembered from long ago. He rarely said more than his opening greeting. Yet without even opening her mouth she could give him an uninterrupted catch up on how his daughters and sons were doing, all the up to date family gossip. Mind to mind like.

TV FAVE RAVE - Winter Walks

Here we all are, once again stuck at home most of the time. What do we need most? Perhaps it is to remember what it's like to walk freely in the outdoors, to feel fresh air on our skins where the wind and the rain it raineth daily.

Though we cannot take a long days walk legally, or literally, perhaps someone else could do so for us. The BBC is running a series of half an hour slow TV' programmes called Winter Walks ,where a presenter takes you out on a seven mile country walk. I've only watched three so far, with the Rev Richard Coles walking from Sutton Bank to Rivaulx Abbey in Yorkshire, Baroness Warsi from Kettlewell to Coniston Bridge and Selena Scott from Thorpe to Applewick in Wharfedale. They were all in there own way brilliant snap shots of an experience. Full of those small incidental delights, such as Richard Coles becoming self conscious about not eating his flapjack in a church he was about to visit. 

Others in the series are with Simon Armitage and Lemn Sissay, all walking somewhere to somewhere in Yorkshire or Cumbria. In the process you feel like you are getting to know them better as people. Despite being a Tory, I discovered I've got a lot of time for Warsi's genuine friendliness, warmth and good humour.

It is touching, informative and utterly life enhancing viewing. If you've been feeling downhearted and a little too weary to drum up enthusiasm for home based activities during these first weeks of lockdown, give yourself a tea break, a plate of your favourite biscuits, light a fire and put on any one of these six walks. They will not fail to lift your spirits.

BBC Winter Walks

FINISHED READING - Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart

Though this is a novel, it bears similar themes and period to Damian Barr's memoir Maggie & Me. Douglas Stuart draws upon his own working class upbringing, but has chosen to liberate himself from factual retelling in order to bring a fictionalised universality to it, still bleakly real and occasionally horrifying.

The novel pivots around the character of Agnes Bain, who is Shuggie's Mother. A spirited resourceful woman, who is uniquely house proud. Always prepared to apply a defiant glamour to her appearance. All so she can hold her head high even in the shit hole of a housing estate, she's been abandoned to by her taxi driver husband. She has two fatal weaknesses, a besotted attachment to men who are serially unfaithful, heartless slobs and an addiction to alcohol. All her children at some point try to save their Mother from the latter, but having failed several times, eventually rescue themselves by abandoning her to her fate. The pain of watching her descend into irreversible alcoholism becomes too hard to bear. Eventually only young Shuggie remains, but for how long?

Shuggie Bain is a devastating novel, in both its storyline and the vivid quality of the writing.  It reminded me of Arthur Miller plays, where rough cut working class characters try to battle their way out of fatal nightmarish circumstances. All set within a fatally predestined narrative hurtling towards its denouement like Greek tragedy. You can sense from the beginning that things are never going to end well for Agnes. In the middle of a successful dry rehab, you know this is just a brief pleasant pit stop on the motorway to a much darker oblivion. It's a hard read at times, but a brilliantly realised one. You never lose sympathy with the characters even as they make yet another bad judgement. Their human failings burning them up from within. 

CARROT REVIEW - 8/8

INTRODUCING - Eliane Radigue

The ensuing days of lockdown do strangely also provide time, space and opportunity to explore and expand horizons. To develop skills and experience in new areas, from personal creativity to what you watch, read or, in this case, listen to. If you want to hear music that possesses a sense of calm steady movement, then the music of Eliane Radigue maybe for you.

New musical encounters, for me, are often made through following up leads and connections from previous discoveries. For example, in 2020 I came across the music of Anna Von Hauswoolf this led to investigating on You Tube the avant garde drone pieces composed by Carl Micheal Von Hauswoolf, her Father. After that you can then pretty much leave the rest to You Tube's algorithm to keep throwing 'music you may like' suggestions at you. A few minutes in will tell you if what is being presented interests you or not. This is how I was led to try out the masterfully minimal music of Eliane Radigue. 

She's a French composer who has been creating her sustained drone based pieces since the 1950's, these began from exploratory compositions that utilised tape loops of feedback. This early experimental phase took a further quantum leap with the use of electronics from 1970. This progressed, technologically speaking, to using the ARP 2500 modular synthesiser, on which her compositions were entirely made for the following twenty five years. 

The orchestrating of these pieces, even when the recording technology improved, must have been incredibly long and arduous. Requiring immense perseverance and patience, just from trying to obtain the best alignment of the tape recorded elements. This frequently would involve starting completely again with the recording, often after many weeks of effort. Not losing your inspiration and confidence during this taxing working method, would have been extremely challenging.

At the debut performance of an new piece called Adnos 1 a group of music students approached her, they wanted to talk with her about her work in relation to Tibetan Buddhism. Over time Buddhist practice and the dharma appears to have become indistinguishably enmeshed within her musical Zeitgeist. Her musical ear developed still closer attention to the slow minute changes in tonal quality within the electronic thrums, spontaneously happening quite fleetingly in the moment. This increased awareness during the process of composition. also reoccurring later in the listener. The gentle arising and meeting of sounds sonetimes continuing over a period of an hour or more. The effect, should you surrender yourself to it, can be mesmerising. The closest encounter in musical form to a meditative practice.

From 2000 she abandoned her use of the ARP 2500 and started to write music purely for acoustic instruments. Though the medium changed, she still drew upon all she'd learnt attending to sound fluctuations when composing through a synthesiser. You might place her compositions within minimalism, electronica or drone, but each of those designations can never quite captures the essence and effect of what you actually hear. The way these soft tonal ossilations and the gentle melding of rhythmic tones can draw you in. 

Radigue works within a somewhat geeky musical sub-genre, one often dominated by male techheads. Her gender, the individual uniqueness of her approach and the chosen musical form have contributed to her sometimes being underrated or overlooked for a great deal of her 88 years of musically productive life. Composition for Radigue must then be an act of continual resolve, of devoted love, how else could she persist in making music? Today, when 'drone' based music is having this popular contemporary moment in the spotlight, there may be a chance of a long overdue rise in appreciation for Radigue's altogether unique body of work.

A few pieces by Radigue are available for download purchase. The rest you'll find either on CD, Vinyl record or to stream on You Tube or Spotify.

FINISHED READING - Maggie & Me by Damian Barr

Damian Barr's memoir is a joy to read one moment and distressingly heart breaking the next.  His early life in Thatcher's 1980's is vividly drawn. The grim and grisslier details of his working class Newarthill upbringing you are not spared, alongside the touching or hilarious stories of his naive self's first encounter with the realities of life.

Barr in his youth appears so optimistic and resilient. Even when faced with seeing his family and local employment fall apart, as these traditional sources of work are dismantled by the hardhearted calculations of Mrs T and her ilk. He just had to get street wise and grow up quicker. One can only feel empathy toward him, and for his Mother, as she struggles in the circumstances she's presented with, grasping for life support from a range of unsuitable men and the demon drink. In the midst of this he comes to the realisation that he's gay, and born into an society and local environment that is hostile to it.

Barr has understandably mixed feelings about Maggie, as do we all. Split between despising the brutality and cold consequences of her political ideology, whilst admiring her resolute determination and will as a person. Given what Barr has achieved since in his own life, the latter provided a role model for how to pull himself out of the unfavourable circumstances of his upbringing. Reacting to the former, forged the sensitivity and warm appreciation for people, for their triumphs and sufferings in the midst of adversity, that seems such a noticeable personal quality.

CARROT REVIEW - 7 / 8

2020 The Enjoyable Bits

2020 informed us about us. Aspects perhaps we surreptitiously hid from our awareness.  Thrown back upon just ourselves, many have felt over the limits of their personal resourcefulness.The pandemic has also pared things back to its essentials and a simpler appreciation of life. This, for me, has been where the enjoyable bits were to be found, alongside the truly dreadful 

Walking
Jnanasalin and I were able to take advantage of daily walks in our surrounding countryside and coast. Which, when you live in a place like North Norfolk, its easy to take for granted. I found a strip of lonely pebble beach where I love to go for a bit of alone time. Discovering together in the Spring a beautiful bluebell wood a brief walk from our house, we had no idea existed. Small important joys.

Reading
What curtails deeper engagement in anything, is believing you haven't sufficient time for it. My reading of novels in particular, had become reduced to a brief bedtime read before shut eye. Substantial books requiring prolonged attentive reading I've often struggled to make much progress with. 

You have to slow your pace of life down in order to read well. Being driven by a perpetual state of haste, trying to do two or more things at a time, skims over the surface of literature, as well as life  Rather than fully savouring each moment of the lived reading experience. 

Damian Barr's Big Scottish Book Club did not just revive my desire to read, but also to read well, to set aside time solely for reading. Even developing an ongoing list of books I intend to buy from my local independent bookstore in Holt

Recommended Reading: Damian Barr /Maggie & Me - Douglas Stuart/Suggie Bain - Sayaka Murata/Convenience Store Woman. - James Baldwin/The Fire Next Time/Notes of a Native Son

Listening
Its much the same when you're listening to music, you need to provide the space to give it closer attention within. You can just leave music pootling away in the background. But not all the time, otherwise we only gain a sense of it as aural wallpaper, not the breadth and beauty of sound or emotional resonance. This year my engagement stepped up a gear in the pursuit of fresh musical landscapes. It has had two prominent directions- the individual, distinctly personal voice and the other more experimental vehicles for grand noise, with the occasional mash up of the two.

Recommended Listening: Joni Mitchell - Richard Dawson - Cabaret Voltaire - Chris & Cosey - Anna Von Hauswoolf - Anna Meredith - Silver Mt Zion - Eliane Radigue

Meditating
With the inexorable rise of Zoom, meditating with others was still possible, bridging distances from a mere tens of miles to whole continents,with Zen groups from Norwich to New York. The benefits of this has been plain to see in the regular maintenance of my practice. Zazen practice encourages being present with the present. In the midst of a pandemic and all the multitudinous concerns that arise out of it, it's been useful to practice grounding experience whilst remaining openly aware and letting go attachments to whatever arises.

Writing
Time and space also allows the heart to open up more, to respond to the rumblings of deeper streams, ones perhaps rarely touched upon amid the noise and hurly burly of so called 'normal' life. The very concept of normality has revealed the flimsiness of it as a confection. I've written in a broader range of forms and more frequently over this year. At times its been quite a thrilling ride setting out into new territory.

Watching
Films and TV have been a safe and comforting form of interaction with the outside world, but also quite a passive one. Great to vegetate in front of, but sometimes you need a richer more complex emotional engagement, than flashy editing and visuals alone can provide. So from films, documentaries to comedies I've appreciated things that provide a sense of closer human connection or an irresistible positive zest for life.

Recommended Watching: Ambulance - Hospital - Grayson's Art Club - Schitt's Creek - Bait - Battlestar Galactica - The Repair Shop - American Utopia - Streetcar Named Desire

Local Shopping
We decided to adjust our mindset from 'online first' to prioritise 'local first'. You have to be willing to forego the convenience and potential cheapness of Amazon. But these always come with a hidden cost to something, whether its cheap slave labour overseas, the environment, or to your local economy. Online shopping has the potential to isolate us still more, whilst ruining our local quality of life. I've found I actually enjoyed the process of investing more of my cash in the Sheringham area. After all we are a local business ourselves, so this has been to do with extending the scope of how we collectively and individually walk our talk.

FEATURE - More Zen Mountain Poems

Valley Sounds, Mountain Colours

The murmuring brook is the Buddha's long, broad tongue.
And is not the shapely mountain the body of purity?
Through the night I listen to eighty thousand gathas,
When dawn breaks, how will I explain it to others?

Su Shi

Mount Lu Revisited

Regarded from one side, an entire range;
From another, a single peak.
Far, near; high, low, all its parts
different from the others.
If the true face of Mount Lu
cannot be known,
it is because the one looking at it
is standing in its midst.

Su Shi

With coming and going, a person in the mountains
understands that blue mountains are their body
The blue mountains are the body, and the body is the self,
so, where can one place the senses and their objects?

Zen Master Hongzhi Zhengjue
(1091-1157)

A person in the mountains should love the mountains.
With going and coming, the mountains are their body.
The mountains are the body, but the body is not the self
so where can one find any senses or their objects?

Eihei Dogen
(1200-1253)

POEM - Submit

Impossible
to dam the air against movement,
to fight back flight or flurry, in an
ineffective resistance, standing witness
to the willful impetus of wind
flying in your face, buckling
the knees, slipping past any resolution,
playfully flipping what's left
of your hair, into a squall of snakes
subverting umbrellas, turning the night skirts
of your romantic soiree inside out, gales just
walk over and around,
they belittle our pathetic persistence
beneath an elemental brassiness, still we are trying
intransigence, the swingeing demand, tantrums
of exasperation, the wind commands
you surrender yourself, to it
stop walking head down, into it,  body
positioned against the riotous force, of it,
and submit 
just do it
submit, be
with it.

Written October 2020
Stephen Lumb