My ongoing exploration of electro drone music has recently thrown up Alva Noto as a darkly tinged entrant into my field of interest. One of the knock on effects of the lock downs has been an increasing fascination with such longer form pieces of music. Things that stretch your attention span beyond the three minute single song format. Alva Noto has made several collaborations with Ryuichi Sakamoto, and it appears to continue to be a productive and fertile creative relationship.
In recent years John Grant has broadened the style and subject matter of his songs. Whilst still delivering them with characteristic wit, sense for melody, and the rich mellifluous tones of that voice. But there's also been a sense of uncertainty and drift to it. Where does he go from here?
The emotional vengefulness and score settling of earlier songs, could never be maintained without eventually descending into self-parody. Demons having been exorcised, Grant's songs have become gentler in tone, more at ease with himself and his past. Even writing a romantic love song, without any pronounced thorns sticking out would have been previously unheard of. With his last album Love Is Magic he appeared to be reaching for an overarching thematic tone or mood, however inconsistently he achieved it.
Boy From Michigan is expertly helmed on production by Cate le Bon, taking the instrumental heat down a touch. We have here a very different album. At times quite gloriously brave, encompassing all the best his considerable talent can offer. Set this time within the atmospheric frame of a boyhood being remembered. The eponymous track Boy From Michigan, begins with an ominous wave of synth. We are going back to his home town, but like all returns there is reticence, its a mixed emotional bag - 'Beware when you go out there, they'll eat you alive if you don't care. They're using different rules, the american dream is not for weak soft hearted fools.' For he is still that simple boy from Michigan.
Initially the return takes place in the idyllic world of childhood delights, previously depicted so fondly in an earlier song Marz, Recollections of a time and place seen through less world weary young eyes. County Fair is a beautiful lilting song about his first visit to the county fair. He's on the perifery, not really part of the gang, but they are letting him tag along ' you can ride with us, or we can meet you there'. He cries because he's too small to go on some rides, but he falls in love with the garish beauty of the place nonetheless. Its a song chock full of colourful touching details.
Each track takes you to a different period- his childhood, his teenage years, the friends, his first loves, sexual experiments and memories of abuse. The tone and feel of them is gentler, reflective and more heart than hurt felt. There is pain here, but its not lashing out at the cause of it He wants to understand, to forgive if possible, to regret the loss of friendships from his youth. Throughout the songs have an unsentimental honesty and poignancy to them.
The hardest listen is the song Rusty Bull. The young Grant is at the junkyard 'where my Daddy goes', but mixed in with recollections of the tasty fries that he liked, is a discomforting memory of something he didn,t like, of someone who visited him at night time 'when he lies in his bed' the forewarning creeks on the five and dime staircase from which' forty years later I'm still trying to run'
Grant is very good at quickly setting the scene with his lyrics, 'I see you in the pink art Deco glow of the Cruise Room' or being 'All alone on some back country road just outside of Shawnee, Oklahoma' or 'Just so you know I always knew that you loved me. Let there be no doubt or confusion in your brain' In this song Just So You Know its never entirely clear who's love he is acknowledging, a former lover's or parental love? If it is the latter, Just So You Know becomes a more emotionally complicated song. To love and yet have difficulties with aspects of a parents love, is an uncomfortable space to find oneself in.
There are the usual oddball tracks, such as Rhetorical Figure. Musically at least paying homage to the new wave bands of his youth, say The Cure or Devo. Whilst lyrically extolling the exuberant attractions of said figures of speech. Your Portfolio and The Only Baby are I find harder to fall in love with. These songs seem to be straining for something but not quite getting there. The latter is over extended and histrionic at times. Its having a shot at Trump and his ilk, but I'm not convinced it hits its target.
Putting these aside Boy from Michigan is a more than welcome return to top form.
CARROT REVIEW 7/8
We were on a mission, to buy a container for a recently bequeathed gooseberry bush. We start off at Holt Garden Centre because its the closest Venturing further afield should it disappoint, and in the past it has done so, frequently. During the lockdowns Holt Garden Centre has undergone a massive makeover, setting them back two million pounds. But the outcome of it all is a Garden Centre that knocks spots off most of the local competition.
If I were to describe their previous cafe I'd have to say it was amateurish. Always looking if it was run by a gaggle of semi retired volunteers drawn from the Kelling WI - Friends of Holt Garden Centre division. The new cafe is large open, airy and no longer looks as though it was set up in a converted milking shed. Its stylish and spacious. Having quickly made our decision on the pot, we rewarded our aesthetic deliberations with a coffee and cake.
And....they had a Carrot Cake. It was a really foofed up one, flouncing on a cake stand. Saying look at me - Oo La La - smack your lips around this hustler. In short, it bore all the outward signifiers of a Carrot Cake posing provocatively in a red light district window. Such 'come hither' cakes can be the confectionery equivalent of Boris - over promising and serially disappointing. So, I was not holding out for a hero with this one. That sort is usually all provocative display and no cake sex.
I ordered a slice, plus the obligatory flat white chaser. Only one cup size of FW's offered, so no annoying sizeism here. It turned out to be a passably strong coffee. OK, but a FW it was not. The Carrot Cake, as I said had all its frilly knickers on show, with a half dried slice of orange stuck in the frosting like a Flamenco hair comb. The exterior circumference plastered in frosting. Pebble dashed exceptionally heavily with walnuts. Served on a roughly triangular shaped ceramic plate. Three raspberries on one side dusted with icing sugar, and the aforementioned half candied orange. One glance at the cake itself, titivating aside, told me that this was not a bad carrot cake. It bore all the visual indications of actually a rather good one. Quelle Surprise!
The texture looked good, an uneven mortar mix with sizable chunks of walnut grits mixed evenly across it. It was in short not stinting on the required ingredients of grated carrot and nuts. So thumbs up there. The taste was rather excellent. Finely balanced, it expertly walked the line between weighty and light on the palette, but had the necessary doughy gravitas that avoided sinking into being under cooked.
Now a lot of carrot cakes lack confidence in the basic carroty experience of a carrot cake, and tip in a scree of mixed spices to fill in for the perceived lack of flavourings. Either that, or they are fraudulent cheap skates who will con you with a Spice Cake, but lets not go there yet again, eh? Here the spices were very well balanced, just a suggestion, not a clarion call to the international spice trade to 'send more nutmeg and cinnamon'.
The frosting was the only slight disappointment, it being a butter cream. Well actually not even butter if The Supreme Cake Maker is to be believed. He said it was margarine based. But having maligned it, I think I have to say this made a light, not too sweet or intrusive entrance. A compliment to the cake not an active takeover or aggressive drowning. For a marge sludge it was not bad.
A well judged carrot cake all round.
CARROT CAKE SCORE 7/8
'The walking of the Blue Mountains is swifter than the wind, but human beings in the mountains do not sense or know it. Being in the mountains describes the opening of flowers in the real world. People out of the mountains never sense it and never know it, do not see, and do not hear this concrete fact.
If we doubt the walking of the mountains, we also do not yet know our own walking. It is not that we do not have our own walking, but we do not yet know and have not yet clarified our own walking. When we know our own walking, then we will surely also know the walking of the Blue Mountains.'
DOGEN
Three years ago when I resigned from the Triratna Order was a big moment for me, a cathartic decision that had been long in the gestation. Over my many years of involvement it was as though I was a fuse box where one by one the main switches overloaded and tripped. There was now insufficient electricity, few connections live, hardly any energy coming through, I was burnt out, frazzled, done to a crisp.
When you leave any organisation - what next? - is a not unreasonable question to be at the forefront of ones mind. In a sense once you have been a practicing Buddhist you will remain a Buddhist to some degree. Its a bit like riding a bike, you can't forget what you've learnt. My training in Triratna means the way I interpret the world and my experience of it, will still tend to be cast in the language and viewpoints of that spiritual tradition. Whatever I encounter processed through this learnt paradigm.
For six months after resigning I chose to do nothing to answer the question - what next? Then tentatively I thought I'd try Zen. My love of Dogen made it obvious that I should explore this approach. Over the last two years I've tried two Zen groups, The Order of Buddhist Contemplatives and Stonewater Zen. Each time I have had a honeymoon period, where I get a bit over excited, think this is exactly what I'm looking for, and recognise something in it that was absent from my involvement in Triratna. There is also familiarising oneself with a whole new viewpoint, and their way of describing it. But as I went further in my engagement with both groups I began to feel this frustration bubbling up, an anger even. I began to feel critical and dismissive. A pattern to my responses was emerging. Did I fundamentally just not want this?
I knew I was looking for a new Sangha to practice within. I know nothing is perfect. Letting go of my friends and connections within the Triratna Sangha was hard. The need of a supportive context for practice, a Sangha, is a very Triratna way of approaching things. Kalyana Mitrata being so central to the spiritual life within it. I've recently seen that this desire for Sangha is distorting my vision of what it is I should be doing. Its not a Sangha, but a break from all the loyalty and commitment to an organisation that being an active Sangha member requires. I need to feel free to do whatever the hell I want, free of spiritual commitments or traditions.
One of the things Reverend Leoma at the Zen Priory taught was never to take emotional responses at face value. Always take an interest in what lies beneath them. So I've sat with and reflected on the nature of my frustration. On the surface it seems as though my frustration was with Zen, but beneath that was an older more amorphous frustration with Buddhism, but beneath that was the disgruntled form of frustration with myself as a Buddhist practitioner.
After nearly thirty years of practice where had all that effort got me? The practice I've done, the rituals, the dharma talks I've listened to, the books I've read. I have my sour moments of ennui when the dharma appears to be more and more of exactly the same. The last thing I need right now is yet more dharma input. What I already know is not reaching me, still missing its essential point, constantly. But then anyone who is not enlightened is just not getting it are they? What I found beneath all of this was spiritual despair. Ultimately I was profoundly disappointed in myself. And beneath that was?
A fear in the end. The fear of having wasted my life, and not just on spiritual practice. To die with maybe just a few Buddhist frills to decorate my overall level of spiritual ignorance. Yet had I really been completely squandering this precious opportunity? There are many sorts of views at play here, grasping for meaning and purpose, for insights and enlightenment, for a quantifiable achievable goals, to feel better about myself. My spiritual wiring at present, is just a bit more fucked than usual.
The consequence of these realisations is that I've felt quite down. Its like a form of bereavement, or grieving. Churning me up good and proper. Leaving Triratna, deciding to gradually cease using my old order name, and now these revelations. It is all part of the process of letting go, of disrobing, taking off what no longer serves any use Where there is loss, there will be periods of mourning. This hurts nonetheless. Its also humbling, the not knowing, the continuing state of spiritual ignorance. What should I do? Should I do anything? What does any of this mean or signify? Wait, I urge myself, just wait awhile. Jump to no premature conclusions. And so I am waiting.
So far I believe I should steer clear of involving myself in religious organisations, traditions and structured approaches. Its not that they are inherently wrong, none of the zen groups I've tried are invalid. I just can't do that right now. I have to feel at liberty, rightly or wrongly, to make my own imaginative choices and connections. All the enjoyable bits in my engagement with Triratna were about discovering those connections, most often through the devising of an elaborate ritual. Creating the emotional equivalents to the teachings, as Sangharakshita puts it. The baroque, involved and passionate nature of those rituals really ought to have alerted me sooner, that at heart I am no Zen practitioner. It is Dogen's richly imaginative poetic nature that I find inspiring. Whilst I might imagine myself as a monastic,with a Zen focused practice, its not long before I also find it the most desiccated of asceticisms. But, hey! I gave Zen a go.
I have chosen this path that I'm now walking. I do not yet understand what its purpose is. Until I do, I cannot fully own my own walking. But facing the right way, being receptive to the sun rising on the horizon and heading off with no goal in mind, this is what I must do now. Whilst it will feel lonely at times travelling this road with little Kalyana Mitrata - this is where I start.
written June-July 2021 by
Stephen Lumb
Its the middle of June, a heatwave is happening. And so during one sultry night, when the duvet was thrown off to cool down, I received the misplaced kiss of my first mosquito bite of the Summer. Bliss.
The shop is doing well. Daily sales persist in mirroring the weather ie - inconsistent and unpredictable. A sequence of poor slow days, some slow but good days, some just very good days, some days when you'd think everyone has died, gone to heaven and not told you. A vague trend is that we take nothing in the first couple of hours before lunch, then take the majority of our daily sales in the space of half an hour to an hour. June, though it has followed this pattern of extreme variability, has over the whole thirty days proved one of our best months so far.
The pandemic and its restrictions have become second nature, whilst remaining tiresome. Spectacle fog, what's there not to like? I understand why folk feel fed up with it all. To elevate that feeling of being fed up into a logical reason for the restrictions to be finished seems, frankly, ridiculous. If being fed up was more effective than the vaccine, the pandemic would have been over last summer. Unfortunately, our feelings never made anything go away.
Unbeknownst to us, we've grown up in fortunate, though unreal times. The daily threat of disease so reduced we actively plan for a longer life. Taking us by surprise when we do fall seriously ill or 'die before our time'. Our prevalent health worries are a consequence of living longer, whether its arthritic, cancer or dementia related conditions.
In the 14th century the Black Death is estimated to have killed between 30-60% of Europe's population. Combined with a series of wet Summers, severe winters and the resultant famine, which killed yet more. Social fabrics disintegrated and the economy all but collapsed. You could say, comparative to the Black Death, this time we got off lightly.
However, the arrival of Covid 19 did lead to the often unedifying spectacle of folk behaving like spoilt children throwing tantrums about how unfair this disease is. 'For god sake its infringing on our civil liberties, our lifestyles, our peccadillos' Highlighting a 21st century loss of perspective, and an out of touch view of the consequences of sickness and death on lives, let alone the economy. This is one of the many deluded luxuries of our age, along with believing uncritically in the oracle of our feelings.
On a much frothier note, I am now sixty four. Delectable food, cards and presents have been offered up and accepted most joyfully. The Supreme Cake Maker, as per my request, made Mary Berry's Devonshire Apple Cake. All thought of my diet thrown out the proverbial for a day or so. Finished off with a Chippy Tea on the harbour wall at Wells next the Sea. The day after, being Sunday and our only day off together. we took breakfast at Creake Abbey Cafe and an afternoon tea at the Dales Hotel, just around the corner from home. In four years of living in the village we'd not set a foot inside afore. Splendid days, places and fare
Our diminutive patio decking outback, has been in need of rejuvenation. Flaking in places, worn away in others. I've been waiting for consistently warmer weather before beginning conservation work. So, given the Summer we've been presented with, I've waited quite some time. The plan of execution was to do it in two halves. Scour, sand, clean, repaint one half. Then once dry, move the arbour and containers onto the freshly painted area, repeat on the scuzzy remainder.
However, several fronts of grey cloudettes and torrentials intervened after the completion of the first half. The return of fairer times may commence, so I'm told, later next week. Meanwhile, birds have performed a dirty protest over the freshly painted section, excreting shitty piles of random green squiggles all over it. Nature abhours a vacuum.
I'd not come across him myself till this popped up on my radar via a Guardian review. The set up here is that he's working on a new show, as something to do whilst in lockdown. But as the lockdown goes on and on all his own personal demons come out of the woodwork, creeping into his songs, poems and monologues.
Much of Inside captures something of the particular flavour of personal distress many have encountered during the pandemic. If you tend to deal with your problems by getting out of your head, sensory hedonism, or simply just going out. Then being forced to stay in and not meeting folk one to one can become like an unwanted meeting with the Dark Lord in a side alley.
A lot of care is taken here over the staging, so its hard to tell how much here is genuine verite footage or carefully curated artifice. But there are times when you sense that he is really freaking out a bit here, and not in a good way. Everyone, myself included, have had moments when you wonder quite why you are putting any of this stuff out there, what personal need is this post serving? Is this healthy self expression or just indulging in a narcissistic sense of self importance?
The song White Woman On Instagram caused a bit of controversy. Pointing fun at the superficiality of whats posted on Instagram, is in a way an easy target. Particularly for a man to take the mickey out of women. Whilst the casual sexism/rascism is certainly one way to view this, it also has the ring of truth too. Otherwise the arrow would have nowhere to land, its just not one gender or race that is necessarily prone to this. I've seen universally the type of things listed in the lyrics posted on Instagram. The carefully crafted perfect image and lifestyle that influencers, celebrities and wanna bees, put out there. It is all a bit of an unreal fantasy that is being peddled.
What you get from Inside, is an performer reflecting on his own work whilst it's in progress of being made. There is a telling segment where you view one monologue to camera, that you then see him commenting on, then another version comments on the comment until the cacophony eventually drowns out everything. Burnham's humour works best when it glancingly hits the target on the head, particularly of his own internet obsessed generation. Asking if you aren't performing online then what are you?
Currently available to stream on Netflix
My love of watching craft makers at work cannot currently be sated by The Repair Shop. I've watched them all. I've searched further afield for my fix, eventually coming across Julian Baumgartner on You Tube. Currently I can't quite get enough of watching his working process. I am in awe.
The work demands someone who is methodical and patient. Lots of scraping away, thoughtful slow careful preparation, the time he takes over this is simply astounding. These are obviously edited videos, often speeded up filming to fit into a half hour or hours running time. Then there is the cleaning, executed in rhythmic circular motions taking off just the dirt and varnish, but no more. If it won't come off with gentle solvents, then its stronger ones, and if these are ineffective then he scratches the residual old varnish off bit by tiny bit with a scalpel. All of these processes cannot be hurried and may take hours and hours and hours.
All the while he's not getting into a flap. His tables, unlike mine, never get messy or disorganised. He makes sure he takes regular breaks from the tediousness of some tasks. He knows how to look after his mental health. Loves the restoration part but is used to delaying his gratification sometimes for days. Then there are the decisions he has to make about what he is or isn't going to conserve, how far he is going to take his restoration, what his client wants and what he can deliver.
Here is one just so you get the feeling for its fascinating minimalism. Be warned its addictive and some of his videos have several sequences to be watched.
As this novel opens we find ourselves on a boat with a woman who has devilish horns. Its 1910 and she's heading for Edinburgh and 10, Luckenbooth Close. She's desperate, she's a surrogate mother with child, reluctantly going there to deliver it to the brutal Mr Udnam. The Close, is a ramshackle of flats in a dank dark tenement block. It inhabits the place of a central character for the entire novel.
Each Chapter heading has a different year, flat number, persons name and short introductory sentence. You move backwards and forwards in time, gradually progressing forward towards the millennium. Initially I was under a misapprehension that each chapter was a separate discrete character in a different era, and the novel a collage of the life and times of those who'd lived in 10, Luckenbooth Close. A hundred pages or so in I suddenly realised that there were now repeating characters. Oh, there is some sort of story going on? Whilst remaining a collage of tales as well? I became still more baffled when the writer William Burroughs turns up to live temporarily in one of the flats. Was there meant to be an actively meaningful link here ? The zeitgeist of this novel is seriously all over the place,I found it more than a tad confusing. Throwing your attention away with every abrupt change of character, period and continuity.
Jenni Fagan's writing style is undoubtedly fecund and fired up with imaginative possibilities. Rough and robust, with a lot of verbal energy on the page to propel the eye onward. Luckenbooth has visual power a plenty too, that could leave viral traces infecting your imagination. It has this bleak underbelly of corruption, violence, murder of the Victorian melodrama type, tinged with Gothic occultism. However, this all left me feeling disappointed, that it really ought to have been more captivating and absorbing than it was, often infuriatingly opaque rather than intriguing with its cloak of mystery. The episodic flip flopping through time causes you to wonder - where the hell are we going? and do I care anymore? Oddly, I decided quite early on that I didn't, whilst still waiting to be shown the error of my ways.
So quite a disappointing reading experience. Was it worth the effort of hauling oneself through to the end? Sadly, No.
CARROT REVIEW 3/8
For The First Time - Cambridge based band Black Country, New Road's debut album emerged during the last lockdown garnering a huge amount of positive praise and hype. Mostly of 'the best new band in the world' variety, not that helpful for any band, let alone a seven piece still finding its feet. One can only hope they maintain as firm a grip on their assured sound and compositional style as is evidenced on this album. It opens with Instrumental, which is a very jaunty and upbeat track, which seriously misleads you about what will be following it. Some of this album can be a lot more unhinged and discomforting than this.
Whatever their main singer and lyricist Issac Wood is channelling, it is coming at you from a particularly obtuse angle. Whilst you may not always be able too follow the angular poeticism of his lyrical drift, you can feel what he means. Fraught with all types of social awkwardness and angst, the world and him seem out if sync. His solipsistic preoccupation and the music behind it all do strangely fall together into a mighty and often moving force. His vocal emoting having the quality of a cracked vessel, that at any moment might completely fall apart
The music lives in its own odd little world. A realm where a klezmer style knees up can dissolve into a mournful guitar or song phrase. Move from a nostalgic feeling for an optimistic world built in the past, to a huge racket of distressed distended sounds in the present. One where Woods raucously declaims repeatedly ' I am more than adequate, leave Kanye out of it'. This is 'Opus' a gripping ten minutes that takes you on an emotional journey into one person's despair.
On 'Science Fair' any idea that the band might lack musical balls is well and truly dispelled. Crackling along with menacing unease, as if actively following a man who is some type of unhinged stalker, living with his mum, who can only feel positive and in control of himself when he's out running. Guitar feedback, sliding strings and horns, a rumbling keyboard bring to this an out of control shamble, a drug fueled sense for his headspace and movement.
The version of 'Sunglasses' on For The First Time is an altogether more grungier affair than the EP version released a year before. It demonstrates the ongoing maturity and growing confidence of the band that they're happy to completely reformulate a previous release to better reflect the bands current approach and tone. Once again we have a frail man at the centre who only when he wears sunglasses can face and engage with the outside world
Even the music on this album is unrepresentative of where the band is currently at, its out if date, its over a year old, being mostly recorded prior to the pandemic. Not even toured this stuff because of that. They are currently at work on completing their second album. On this splendid outing I wonder where they'll venture next. Their debut wonderfully blends elements of fire and sophistication, that whilst perhaps not yet achieving greatness, is a superb first grab at it.
CARROT REVIEW 6/8
Boredom is a god bearing many faces.
They inhabit realms we want to escape or find relief from. They hang around crossroads where a change in direction is required, a shift in the paradigm of our thinking, beliefs or feelings.
Sometimes we are living unkindly with ourselves, we have become the pain we are in. In such threadbare conditions we cannot sleep well, struggle to function, find our general engagement with life difficult. The world and ourselves becomes that little bit bleaker. No nostalgic sepia toned photographs, just starkly contrasting black and white. The state of boredom sits as this gremlin, party pooping upon our general joie de vivre.
The landscape of boredom is surrounded by bleak horizons, distracting us from seeing what is directly beneath our feet.
Boredom is a place that, paradoxically, we escape too, it diverts our attention away from even more discomforting feelings. Things not yet fully conscious. These initiate a pause in the progress of our desires, with a bardo where nothing else can happen, everything is frozen unable to move. Boredom has the quality of quicksand, the more you struggle the deeper into it you sink. Frustrating as this may be, there is no point in being angry or pissed off with boredom. That just stokes the fires of it. Be still and let it pass in its own time.
So, in one twist of a moment, we turn around to face boredom once again. That void, always, it seems, worthy of staring deeply into from time to time. When it next happens be more curious about what lies beneath. Boredom might seem just this latest bit of sediment to settle into our conscious awareness. But once you sit with it a while you may detect an aura surrounding it. This isn't a heavenly radiance but the radioactive emanation, agitated, with the toxicity of a dark angel. For you this aura is likely to have a different ombre to mine.
Boredom languishes upon an uncomfortable old mattress sprung with pure panic.
Now, on this occasion my lack of ease arose close to home in the retail environment of our shop. After weeks of reassuringly good trading, in mid May it all went spookily quiet, deathly quiet. Tumbleweed rolled through the frontier seaside town. My response, was inwardly to despair, as though I were awaiting the arrival of doomsday. This was surprising, because I know retail, Ive survived the closure of my own business in 1997, lived through the demise of Windhorse in 2015. Things do come to a halt, I recognise that things reach their end. Sometimes they naturally running out of energy, or the mental proliferation of purpose running ahead stops. Even in this place of seemingly greatest stagnation, movement is already impatient to be present. Though it never ever feels like that.
But that isn't what is going on here at all. These were just a quiet few days in Cottonwood Home, surrounded by weeks where sales have been more than encouraging. Later in the month, one Bank Holiday Sunday, we had our best days take since we opened two years ago. My response then, was also to panic, but this time about being unable to keep up our making to match any continuous uplift in sales. Both these panics were over reactions, unwarranted responses to an event. Panic usually appears when we are overwhelmed by something, of a situation seemingly beyond our ability to control it. Panic bubbles up from underground, it releases the breath of Hades, from a much deeper place than surface conditions might themselves reveal to you.
Beneath this panic of mine lay the cadaver of an old old story. This one goes - everything you attempt will inevitably fail, bound to go wrong because fate decreed this course, fundamentally there is existentially something wrong with you. Boredom disguises my panic over this view reasserting its 'truth'. A self alerting mechanism to failure being near bye, maybe in the next room. It's just waiting to open the door fully so it can walk right in and take over the proceedings. So, that is the usual scenario. Not a great script, rather repetitious and lacking in originality as a film, but frequently being re-released to a cinema near me, none the less.
Boredom is that person wandering in a desert desperate to find the direction of water.
Our usual sense of purpose, direction and meaning comes from the intermittent, illusory notion that we can be in charge and bring whatever we want to our lives. Yet 'Who is it that is saying this?', 'where are they?' 'What planet do they live on?' Can you locate that 'me' , find its source, one you're so confident is the answer to 'who is it that is saying this?' 'Me' can be such a trickster. You know your arse exists even though you've never seen it face on. Even as we look for 'me' it becomes far too embroiled in the shifty nature of its own self regarding views to reveal where they are coming from. Its like looking for water in a desert. Us you say, they come from Us, well describe what Us is, please do? Us is essentially the homeless hobo kicking sand in your face, then running away.
Our creation stories, perform an important function. They self define, however encouraging or crippling the book category we put them under. Were you to step out of your self-definitions what would you step into - a space of meaninglessness, completely emptied of a sense of oneself? Unlikely. Without our self views what would we spiritually be or become? Of course we over identify with what we feel, think or believe. Its impossible, perhaps even undesirable, to fully decouple ourselves from them. They are hard wired. When we simply ask 'who is it that is saying this' it is to non-plusse, not just our thinking or emotions, but our self awareness. Where 'We' can be, seems to us to be a bit of a no brainer, we believe we know, but also don't know. Recognising a self deception is important, even whilst we continue to perpetrate it
Are we tiring of a particular version of ourselves when we become bored ?
Someone once said that in a state of confusion we are in a creative space, a place of possibilities. We all want to be different in some significant way to how we have turned out. So maybe one purpose behind asking the question 'who is it that is saying this?'is to disorient, to kick us off our usual rail track towards a more open ended way of being. Because its an open ended question, not required to even have a definitive answer. There are many answers, like many ways of being. Boredom reveals a vacant space behind the phrase 'Who is it that is saying this?'.
Boredom is emptied of our habitual refuges. Where you travel to from there is the koan of everyday life. Do you return to those refuges or venture out into unknown territory?
As a man now approaching his 64th birthday, the sense of my mortality forms its own particular frame to the discussion about boredom, meaning and purpose. What can the search for such things be for, when the ultimately finite nature of your life is coming into ever closer and sharper focus? Every day you start knitting a jumper you cannot be sure you'll ever get to finish. Any notion of leaving something behind as some sort of sedimentary legacy, is a self conceit - that a life working in retail matters in the greater scheme of things. Mistaking our occupation as actualisation.
Most people see their legacy, their gift to the future as their children. For myself, as a gay man, that sort of genetic legacy, surrogacy and adoption aside, is just not going to happen. A heightened dependence upon sexual identity, career or quite often blind hedonism, are three alternative ways of filling in the blank spaces around meaning and purpose in anyone's CV. Self indulgence in such situations tends to win out, lives becoming centred around the self regarding, self satisfaction, self pleasuring, self success, the fun and frolics of the self in what happens day to day. So in a simple quiet day in the shop, the feelings of boredom, of things not quite working out as usual or as expected, can rattle that particular delusional cage. Boredom points us towards the vacuity of our notions, lecturing us on the dementia of all self-made things.
Boredom is a state where memory fails us.
We can no longer remember what it is we are meant to be doing with our lives. Boredom is where a sense of loss is alive, we live and breathe a feeling of bereavement, of grieving over what is lifelessly laid out before you. It is a mental space where we cannot connect with who we believe we were, are, or could be, and this is frightening. Floating in this ocean of forgetfulness, we panic.
Boredom is a bit of a grim reaper.
We can become so desperate when we are bored, to get back, to return, to escape its prison, to be that positive person we once were, perhaps only a moment of a day ago. In boredom a version of you wants to expire, but only for a short while. We feel ourselves to be the product of memory, in both in its movement and in its stasis. If we were to experience our life as an impermanent phenomena, this might more resemble the life of a library book - constantly loaned out, expired, returned, loaned out. Self awareness as a borrowed book.
Boredom as the rehearsal, for being forgotten.
In boredom we find ourselves self forgetting, giving up on our history. History forgets all the time what cannot be re-formulated into the cliches of hagiography or myth. Human history tells us that who we really were ,what we were like when we were alive, will ultimately be forgotten. We will all be forgotten.
Every single piece of human activity and ingenuity, the daily search for , and assertion of, meaning and purpose is another way of writing - Someone Remember Me Please! - into already shifting sands.
Can any of us live calmly and at peace with knowing we will be forgotten?
As soon as we subliminally sense panic, do we become bored ?
My current favourite ear worm track, since I saw this video on Jools Holland on I Player. This superbly slick modern reworking of the 1970's Philly Sound has all the hallmarks of a Summer hit, if it gets the airplay it deserves. Is the singer one of the brethren? Highly likely.
A few years ago Hubby and I were walking the Pilgrim Way back from our first visit to the The Slipper Chapel in Walsingham. At the side of the road we passed a discarded wheel hub. Having walked on I was suddenly struck by an idea for it, so popped back to pick it up. Having seen a few reliquaries of saints and the great catholic good in the Slipper Chapel, I thought I'd make one.
Once home, I primed and painted it a dark red base colour. I ordered ten miniature glass vials from E bay, Thinking they might make suitable receptacles for 'reliquary' objects, whatever they turned out to be. I created a long collage artwork out of painted wood off-cuts to form a suitable background support. Everything then hung about in my workshop draped in plastic, as other events interrupted the creative flow and I lost sight of how I intended to take it forward. So it stayed awaiting the return of time and inspiration, for what turned out to be a number of years.
Fast forward to the most recent lock down. Once we started our regular Art Club day, completing the Reliquary Project resurfaced. I decided what each of the ten vials would contain - things that in some way represented me, my interests and enthusiasms. These turned out to be:~
1) Writing - a poem written by me
2) DNA - beard shavings
3) Gay/Camp -a strip of cut gems in the colour of the gay rainbow flag.
4) Painting - a strip painted in gouache in a geometric design
5) Music - a playlist for my funeral *** (links at bottom of this post )
6) North Norfolk - filled with sand from Sheringham Beach
7) Churches & Architecture - a painting of a pointed arch window
8) Buddhism - a stick of incense
9) Dogen - a written extract from the Genjo Koan
10) Craft Making - a cabled string of yarn
I was surprised how quickly everything came together in the end. It was as if all that time elapsing had narrowed down all the options about how best to complete it. So now its mounted on its background and forms part of my shrine in the craft room / shrine space / spare room.
1) T Rex - 20th Century Boy 2) Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime 3) David Bowie - Aladdin Sane 4) A Certain Ratio - Flight 5) Elbow - One Day Like This 6) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Wonderful Life 7) Sparks - The Decline & Fall of Me 8) Cocteau Twins - Musette & Drums 9) Wild Beasts - End Come Too Soon 10) Strauss - "Beim Schlafengehen" Four Last Songs ( Jesse Norman )
As a chronic insomniac I've got used to waking at two in the morning unable to rekindle slumber. So in those early morning arisings, I watch many a boxed set. I've had my Friends phase, my Star Treck derivatives phase, My Schitt's Creek phase, my Vera phase. In recent weeks, at the same time as working my way through each series of Midnight Diner ( see a previous post ) I've been catching up on a few episodes of the Repair Shop I appear to have missed first time around.
I find it calmly absorbing to watch the skill of a craftmaker at work. Their unhurried careful working methods I emulate only in my dreams. By comparison mine start off being well tidy and ordered but gradually descends into a pile of mess. The enotional tone behind much of my work as if I'm undergoing a productivity review. Its an area of practice just to stay calm and rest easy with taking whatever time is required.
Many of the older Repair Shop series are audio described. These fill in audible space, where it may be unclear what exactly is happening if your sight is poor on non existent At present I am non of those things.
This reminded me of going home to stay with my Dad, he was in his late eighties by then. At some point he must have accidentally pressed the audio described button on his TV remote. He complained vociferously about how the BBC were now putting this chap talking over the top of all the programmes, all the time, and how annoying that was. He rarely wore his hearing aids, even though he was a tad deaf, so the TV was on incredibly loud. The audio description bellowed out. Needless to say I switched it off.
I've unexpectedly been taking huge and unexpected joy from these audio descriptions. Sometimes the scripts go very flowery and poetic, at other times they have a perhaps unintended humour, or assume the feeling of having been written as a piece of magic realism.
If you couldn't see what was actually going on, how might you interpret some of these?
- A pigeon perches on a wooden post, as Dom takes his mechanism to Steve.
- At her workstation Julie spoons something from her mug into her mouth.
- Sparks fly as another crafter sharpens a piece of metal.
- The sun rises over the idyllic countryside, a fine mist settles over the trees and drops of morning dew cling to tall blades of grass. Two of the crafter's walk along the gravel path to the barn.
- Jay gives Hannah a friendly pat as he passes her work bench.
- The branches of trees are blown by a gentle breeze, and a bird waddles across the repair shop's thatched roof. Suzie is on the home straight in her work.
- A wren ruffles its feathers, then the craftspeople arrive at the workshop.
Just think how much better life would be if everyday life had a voice constantly explaining what the hell was going on. On second thoughts maybe not.
Lately I've been processing a deeper understanding of the nature and consequences of one self view I've held. One result has been being easily irritated by the smallest thing not going according to plan. A recent re-jigging of the shop layout was a case in point. All was well until I'd made three different attempts at getting a re-hang on one section of wall sorted out. Each time it didn't work, stick on hooks fell off walls, things pranged or fell onto the floor. Though I did eventually succeed, it was done at great cost to my overall quality of equanimity. I'd progressively dug myself deeper into a funk of frustration, then anger. I returned home so physically tense that my back just went, to be nursed for the next few weeks. Some times I wish that prattitya samutpada wasn't so blatantly co--produced.
On another tack I've been adopting a more lassez faire approach to boredom in the shop. I realised that although 'if all else fails, distract yourself ' can work, it cannot be your first and only port of call. I now get on with some craft making task, but don't necessarily do it to the background accompaniment of music, radio, a film or You Tube video. All those things, though there to alleviate your response to the boredom, are also a prolongation of it. As you flip from one sound or visual form to another, each one failing to really transform the mood or satisfy the hunger for presence or purpose. Such distractions can simply intensify the connection with the state of boredom. Maybe it is just better to let it be. To stop scratching the itch.
A friend of ours Sam, knowing my liking for things Japanese, bought me a Japanese Stab Bookbinding kit for me to try out. I found I really enjoyed painting the watercolour paper covers and making them up into a little notebook. The process is a relatively simple one, skill wise, but I find it very satisfying. I am already looking into further developing my nascent skills with books about Japanese Bookbinding being sourced, and improving my book binding tools. I can feel a few new stationery lines for the shop will be coming along soon. I've also bought an introductory set to try out marbling paper or fabric, which might just end up featuring on book covers. Just a few lines of craft inquiry I want to pursue over the next year, along with seeking to improve my general level of upholstery skills.
Oh joy of joys its Eurovision once more. By turns batty, bizarre and bombastic, I love it. This year some contributors having been so deprived of their performance fix last year, have gone all out surreal weird. The Norway entrant has a song about wrestling with his demons. Guess what he's dressed in? A glittery jump suit with a long white fur cost and angel wings, chained to four dark devilish demons who try constantly to pull him off his pedestal.
And just why are Latvia's three back up singers all dressed in emerald green with black visors like extras escaped from robo cop, whilst the singer is a vampish Egyptian queen?
There was a song from Denmark which unfortunately didn't make the final, like many of this years entrants channeling mid 80's electro. With an Andy Bell like lead singer whose posturing was seemingly choreographed by an out of work bricklayer - and now shoot your arm up high then push your left hip to one side, and hold. Then grab half a microphone stand in your hand and run around the stage set with it, stop, jump and do air splits, spread your legs. One couldn't help but feel the wardrobe combo of string vest and tiny cerise jacket made for a much smaller man, was not their only mistake.
There are also the attempts at profundity. In these days of worldwide pandemic no self respecting frivolous entertainment can avoid at least attempting to make a pigs ear of sensitive artistic credibility. Mostly this comes down to dance routines to fill out the void between voting and results. In the second semi-final we were presented with an ambitious piece of tosh, reportedly about relationships across boundaries. This consisted of a handsomely bare chested gentleman, dressed in a floor length silver metallic skirt and his hots for a young man. who does acrobatic tricks on a bicycle. I was moved!
One song favourite this year is Moldova's, a country with a well earned reputation these days for putting on a memorable stage routine. This years entrant Sugar did not disappoint, channelling mid period 'kitten' Kylie. Probably the campest thing of the 2021 show. The promo video is actually even better with additional dancing ice cream cones! But be warned she does rip the face off her boyfriend and eat it at the end. I kid you not.
Trends this year - the obligatory borrowing from - everything that Queen Bey has ever done - Lady Gaga lookalikes and soundalikes ( yes someone still does that ) - the shrill melodramatic braying of Florence ( of the Machine ) - and the Bulgarian entrant doing a spookily perfect impersonation of Billie Eillish - without irony. Plagiarism thy name is Eurovision. Claims for music copyright infringement are in the post.
