Category: Uncategorized

Often late to the party, I persist in exploring new music (that’s new to me). Partly it’s because I subscribe to Apple Music and feel I ought to get my money’s worth – and so each month I make sure to find at least one new band or artist to justify the £9.99 fee. But equally, it’s about the continued quest, which mitigates against becoming stuck in a rut (of which I am eternally fearful as I think it leads to decline).

So I’ve amassed a large collection of old, new and oft experimental stuff and, more recently, have invested in an amazing bluetooth player for the house and some totally funky and fabulous can’t-get-enough-of-them headphones for the rail travel I’m now doing lots of… and also for in the bath.

Which is where the “perfect darkness” comes in, as I love to lie there, by candlelight, cosy and warm, and lose myself inside these gorgeous headphones. It’s also the title of album and song from one of my more recent band finds.

A tiny taste of what I’ve found over recent months:

Adna – multiple albums – this song ‘Overthinking’ is from the album ‘Closure’ and is perfect bathing music. In fact, I think I only ever listen to Adna in the bath.

Agnes Obel – no idea how I came about this one, but again multiple albums and this song – Poem about Death – in particular is of the experimental vein, only enjoyed when in the right mood and certainly not everyone’s cup of tea:

Bear with me, they’re not all as weird as this one…

Ah, but dammit… there’s Camille – utterly fabulous, but also utterly weird. So many of her songs I adore, and she sings the best version of ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ ( as Nouvelle Vague). However, today I’m sharing her wonderful cabaret-to-punk-esque ‘Cats and Dogs’, which is just amazing, I love it. Here she is singing it live:

Elsiance – Nobody Knows – wonderful sound… another bathing toon. I just love her voice, though too much of it becomes melancholy.

Fatoumata Diawara – I think I came across her on a Radio 3 music show – wonderful sound, lots of albums to choose from, this song is called Sowa.

Finally… though I could easily go on… a fantastic band I discovered (late, yes!) through being an avid fan of Walking Dead – a brilliant TV series with a fantastic soundtrack. The band is Fink, the album the Perfect Darkness of this blog title, and the song is Warm Shadow.

I do love finding ‘new’ music, and I love sharing it – if you have any fabulous finds, please post them in the comments below!

A crow barks in a nearby tree

relentless in its rowdy call until

neighbour, three doors down left

shouts “shut up!”

 

I feel his pain,

yesterday it was someone in the

street shouting “hey Joe, Joe, Joe, JOE!”

to the point where you’re silently screaming

Jesus just answer him Joe,

and for three days now it’s been a squeaky toy,

bought for a new puppy, four doors right, whose

owners’ tolerance is to be frank surreal – the

utter depravity of this relentless noise – and

really only surpassed by the surprise brought

in the restraint then collectively shown as we sit,

quietly in our Cuprinol-fenced zones,

trying to read a book or make a call or just still

the mind to contemplate the depth and purpose

and trajectory of our sodding futures, only

to find ourselves haplessly stuck listening to this shit

valiantly managing to refrain from the loud

“shut up!” deafening within.

 

Shut up.

Just shut the fuck up.

 

So I now, three days on, hear the neighbour shouting

at the crow who has come to represent all that is

Disturbing, Intrusive and Unacceptable in this world,

and I want to echo his sentiment, or at least support it

with loud applause, but I’m too damned British and

so instead I sit in quiet glee,

just nodding,

just smiling.

 

The ambience changed this week as

neighbours are, it seems, collectively

on annual leave – how bizarre – but

booked, presumably, when the weather was

fair and all seemed perfect, and so

now they light barbecues in the rain

with grim Dunkirk spirit,

smiles kept bright, voices chipper,

squeaking their fucking dog toys,

and pegging out washing overnight

that still drips low each morning,

wishing they could cut the grass

and at least feel there’d been some sort

of productivity to it all

 

but

in the midst of it

if just one

finds the courage

to momentarily shut the world up

well, for that I am grateful.

~ Zand, 24^thJuly 2018

Photo by Nina Strehl on Unsplash

Photo by Chris Barbalis on Unsplash

 

there’s a car crash up ahead

i can’t see it, i can feel it – maybe this bend, maybe the next – perhaps i should go home

listen to yoga chants eat greens remember to breathe and try and recall a time where the roads were safe and a person simply continued to move forwards without fear and the checking of maps dials rear fore – all that anticipation… and for what? why journey at all if each step is predicted?

there’s a car crash up ahead and i’m in it

for one who needs to fix each moment in an aspic concentration carefully measured, this is abandonment, a failure of duty, a release of the wheel and a foot off the pedal

for one who needs to fly, it’s achievement

for one who flits twixt flight and fall, it’s inevitability

at last.

there’s a car crash up ahead and all the yoga chants in the world won’t cease the crush of iron will and failed peace and longing and hope and noise and quiet and lies and truth as they touch mingle melt and meld into a fireball of inevitability, a journey’s reckoning

there’s a car crash up ahead

and no time to get home.

Zand, 15th June 2018

 

 

I’m reading “A Little Life” by Hanya Yanagihara, and this is but a partial review of that book, given I’m only a few chapters in. But, oh, the writing is so sweet that I needed to speak out early. Take this:

The other aspect of those weekday-evening trips he loved was the light itself, how it filled the train like something living as the cars rattled across the bridge, how it washed the weariness from his seat-mates’ faces and revealed them as they were when they first came to the country, when they were young and America seemed conquerable. He’d watch that kind light suffuse the car like syrup, watch it smudge furrows from foreheads, slick gray hairs into gold, gentle the aggressive shine from cheap fabrics into something lustrous and fine. And then the sun would drift, the car rattling uncaringly away from it, and the world would return to its normal sad shapes and colors, the people to their normal sad state, a shift as cruel and abrupt as if it had been made by a sorcerer’s wand. 

When I read writing like this, there’s a huge temptation to throw down my own pen – just spend the remainder of my years reading more similarly quality stuff. But, no… that’s not the Right Thing To Do. What’s essential, for any writer, is to read what they enjoy, spend time reflecting, and work out why is this so good? We should be inspired rather than defeated by another’s work.

This particular passage (and much of the rest I’ve read to date) is so damned good because of its clear and simple evocative pull. I really *am* on that train and immersed in the world of those downtrodden characters… And what else is fiction writing other than that escape into another world, no matter how grimy and Real..?

Onwards…

 

…. or ‘wisdom tooth’ as we might say nowadays.

I went to the dentist today and had confirmed that I am teething. Yes! At the grand age of 53 years, I have a Wisdom Tooth coming forth. Hallelujah! I am so very excited at the prospect of finally being wise.

The pic is my younger daughter, who turned 16 today. The other is now 18. Where does time go? In the dentist’s, a curious toddler was running his grandparents ragged in the waiting room – grandparents, I might add, who didn’t look that much older than me. I smiled, as I waited, watching his antics… and thought before you know it, he’ll be grown.

Here they are, the 18 year old and the 16 year old, obviously before they reached those ages.

I wonder what Wisdom will entail? My dentist – and my colleagues – find it mildly hilarious that I am teething. I tell them yeah, but I will be SO wise! And I actually believe it. As though, once the tooth has made its total entrance, all manner of stuff will become Known To Me. Yes.

A namesake of sorts (my maiden name is Teasdale) wrote a pome on the subject of ‘Wisdom’ and, somehow, it seems particularly apt with this teething thing and the two daughters reaching significant ages…

Wisdom – Sara Teasdale

When I have ceased to break my wings
Against the faultiness of things,
And learned that compromises wait
Behind each hardly opened gate,
When I have looked Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange – my youth.

Happy birthday to my darling daughter who has brought, and continues to bring, such Joy.

And here’s hoping for Wisdom, for us all… 😉

 

Watch this. What this tells me is that people actually genuinely WANT to feel affinity with each other – not anger, not division, not  difference. We WANT to be connected. We are social creatures, this is what we want. Just watch the two women identified as ‘cousins’ and I dare you to not be moved…

… and on the lines of things recalled from Ye Olde Times, there was this bit of silliness in 2010 which I’d almost forgotten… it made me laugh to see it again.