Sleep Wanted

Sometimes sleep deprivation just creeps up and whacks you on the back of the head. Today is one of those days. Wow!

Soundtrack for an imaginary day

Lifting, climbing, but doing so very very slowly.

From a period of pain, stasis and freezing.

Music accumulating, gathering for listening. Music for inspiration.

A choice for a working: for a certain mood or mode -

1) David Sylvian - Blemish

[a soundtrack from the beyond the realms of pain and falling apart. Still difficult to listen to after so many plays, but compulsive all the same.]

2) David Sylvian - The Good Son vs The Only Daughter

[remixes of the 'blemish' album. A heap of remixers take the basic materials and do something diverse and splendid with it. New stuff, new thoughts, new sounds and ideas.]

3) Sigur Ros - Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do

[an EP from this Icelandic band, the soundtrack to work by the choreographer Merce Cunningham. Three pieces with sounds from everywhere, even a music box. A journey of uncertainty.]

4) Terje Rypdal - Varder: Live at Molde Festival 2004

[avant jazz guitarist meets heavy metal. Rypdal makes yet another trip into classical music and comes back with something huge. Not heard this yet - looking forward to it.]

5) Robert Fripp String Quintet - Kan-non Power

[prog rock meets baroque! From soundscapes for the yearning of the soul, to the precision of Bach.]

6) John Paul Jones - Steel your thunder

[live album from former bass player with Led Zeppelin, taking in ambient and soundscape. Is the guitarist Fripp?]

7) Bjork - Medulla

[back to Iceland for new adventures in low fi and voice. Human Beatbox for the 21st century. Robert Wyatt brings sensibility and melody, Bjork finds her soul resonating. No-one anywhere near where she is.]

8) Matching Mole - Matching Mole

[early Robert Wyatt, post-Soft Machine. Out of work jazz musician does pop music. Is 'O Caroline' the most beautiful love song you ever heard?]

9) Can - Future Days

[kraut rock does funk music way ahead of its time. It took until 2005 for the world to catch up with these people...]

10) Brian Eno / Jah Wobble - Spinner

[been looking for this album for years. Deleting stuff is so infuriating. Heard a couple of tracks, love it. Wobble as the William Blake of our century. Restless traveller.]

11) Harold Budd - Avalon Sutra

[what do you mean, it's his last album? Retiring? What a way to go! The perfection of ambient, depth and beauty.]

...and we take the 11 discs (12 if you count Budd as 2xCDs) on a trip through the imaginary day, to a serene place...

Blogger Crashes!

OK, it's a defined law of computing that things go really well for a while, so you stop backing up your posts before sending them to the weblog. Then, just as you put the finishing touches to a great post, and hit the publish button, blogger decides to crash and lose your post. I have posted an entry called "Soundtrack for an imaginary day" earlier today, then it completely disappeared. I have re-written it and posted it again, but it has disappeared again. The second version is saved so I should be able to post it once Blogger recovers. Meanwhile this is a short post that will probably disappear too!

Thoreau

I regularly read the weblog of Greg Perry. Today he posted a quote from Henry David Thoreau which drew me across to his weblog where does regular posts of extracts from the journals of Thoreau. Today's quote is great - go and have a look.

This quote resonates with me, because I am just lifting out of the winter blues and trying to get the productivity levels up. Time for some ambitious goals.

Podcast Paul talks about bullying

I recently listened to Paul Nicholls' podcast from last week (I'm getting behind with these things!) He used show 27 to look at the issue of bullying. It is well worth a listen - follow the link and click on show 27 to download the mp3 file.

Paul is a solicitor, so his comments about tackling bullying are really interesting. He reveals how he was bullied at school, and talks about that, and then offers clear advice to parents to support children who are being bullied. This is a serious issue, well worth the time he spends on it. He helps with the real issue of making something happen when parents can often feel powerless to help.

Drama for the soul

Last night I went to a local drama group, to see whether I should join them. I have thought about getting involved with a drama group for a while now. It's one of those quietly written resolutions or ambitions that I never seem to get to. So, last night I went and watched the Riverside Players as they rehearsed a play for performance in a couple of weeks. The play, "The Tuna Fish Eulogy" by Lindsay Price, was a marvellous play. There were just four actors in it - it was performed to an amazing standard. This is a play that uses overlapping voices and overlayered texts to great effect.

I was incredibly impressed. Now I need to think what the next move should be. I'm not convinced that I should join the drama group just yet - I have no experience. I think I need to find a workshop or something where I can gain some skills first. I also have been thinking for a while about getting some time with a voice coach to learn how to breathe properly and project my voice.

Comments are welcome - I'm going to do something - I just need to be clear about the next step.

Meanwhile - I haven't forgotten podcasting. I've just been overwhelmed with other things. I'm still listening to Richard Vobes and Paul Nicholls regularly and gleaning ideas from a host of others too. I'm a few days away from jumping in at the deep end and having a go...

Words drip down like stains

Fresh from the keyboard - words that make the first cut of a poem:

Words drip down like stains

I

Words
drip down like stains on the side of the soul
when the meaning that you sent was clear as hearts
and all that was spent

Don’t remember everything then – that’s all at sight
and I will regret from the moment my mouth opens
best left aside, underneath and always
that’s the best I can offer

A single rose, a symbol of the shows
the every expression that I ever gave to you
or made for you, then leapt over rushes and bushes
like some kleptomaniac crunch of a shower.

II

Words
flow out like spit down the chin
the sin I’m in, the skin I’m in
remembered conversations

Everything speaks to me like the
genuflections of reflections in the glass
of my mind, your kind should stop
being sharp to mine

Then the words, the often heard
in each moment that I offered
would be as clear as the hurting
now it’s all forgotten.

Waiting then when

So when is the podcast going to happen?

... trying out ideas, mulling over different techniques, listening to others for inspiration (positive and negative). No point in repeating or copying what is already there. Need to do something different.

Using sounds, using words, effects, not just an audio blog.

... soon, yes, soon.

Torrents - Brian Eno & Terje Rypdal

There's this technique for downloading files called bit torrent. Without going into the technicalities, it's a way of moving files around the internet peer-to-peer so that you download and upload at the same time. This way you share out the bandwidth required to download files.

Over the last week I have been looking at a couple of sites that support this. Torrent Spy provides links to a wide range of material including music files, tv, movies, games, software etc. I hunted through a lot of this material. Most of the material on this site is copyrighted and available through official sources. I'm not sure that it should be made available for download.

Another site, Easytree, hosts the sharing of live concerts and officially unavailable material. This is a completely different concept. It's unlikely that one would download a concert and not bother with the studio albums. It's an environmnent to experiment with material before buying CDs, and it's a place for collectors to get material that is difficult to get hold of.

Over the last week, I have managed to get hold of a host of material by Brian Eno, recordings that are not commercially available. They include music from deleted games, and from art installations. I've heard some amazing music.

The other great find was 6 sets of music from Terje Rypdal. I was aware that he had produced quite a body of classical music (see this list), as well as the jazz which he is better known for. But getting hold of it is very difficult. ECM records have released a couple of albums, but most of it is not available. It's brilliant to find a way to hear this music - which is wonderful.

Thanks to the uploader for sharing this music.

The Easytree site claims that it tries to ensure that material is not shared where artists object. If this is achieved, I think that sites like this are a brilliant way to encourage broader listening, and to support the serious music fan.

One word of warning - Easytree has a maximum of 100,000 members. So you may have to keep visiting until membership is available. Inactive accounts do get cancelled, so it shouldn't take too long.

Douglas Barbour - Fragmenting Body etc

I recently finished reading a book of poems by Douglas Barbour called "Fragmenting Body etc". Douglas is from Canada. The book is published by Salt which is a joint UK / Australia press (read an excerpt here) - the output from Salt over the last few years has been impressive.



I really enjoyed reading this book. Douglas used a game to devise the input lines which give the inspiration to the poems in the first section. He chose a set of random lines (with the help of a die) from a book and then used these to start the poems which were written quickly over a month. The poetry in the collection is marvellously challenging. Douglas really tears apart the language and reconstructs it. One is taken one a journey through the roots, parts and segments of words -really getting inside the language which he uses.

This poetry is probably the closest I have seen to e e cummings without descending into pastiche. Douglas takes the experimental approaches of cummings and makes the interpretation totally his own.

One is left with the feeling that every part of the syllable, the word, the line and the spacing is so carefully thought through. This is a poet totally in command of the language he works with.

These are not just poems that play with language though - they also work hard with emotions, and depict events and narrative.

All in all, a read worth making!

The project '50 Books in 2005', is a little behind schedule. But not irretrievable.

Do one or two things really well - if only!

Advice from Dave Pollard’s weblog (How to save the world): –

Do one or two things really well!!

That focuses right in on one of the things I have real challenge with. Even at the best of times, it is a real effort to sustain focus on one thing for very long. I always have a huge list of other things which I am really keen to do.

Dave admits that he too is not exactly brilliant at this. He sets it out as a "do what I say, not what I do" item. Well, I too can realise that the focus on one or two things really does make a huge difference. People who I know who are really obsessed about a small number of things achieve incredible things.

But then I do admire the polymaths in the world – those people who excel in a wide number of areas, who dabble in all sorts of things out of interest. Look at Leonardo da Vinci.

So, just maybe the world needs a mix of specialists and polymaths.

Peter Riley Books - bad news

Today I received the latest catalogue from Peter Riley Books, a mail order seller of poetry books, new and second-hand. He is based in Cambridge, England. I've been getting his catalogue for a couple of years or more now. He has an incredibly diverse choice of poetry from a wide range of presses. It's a great way to get hold of poetry that you would never find in a book shop.

Well the bad news is this. Peter says in his latest catalogue that he plans to close down the business later this year. That will leave a big hole in the poetry world in the UK. I will be very sad to see him go - and will miss browsing through his catalogues and picking a handful of books every couple of months.

I'm not ignoring the fact that running a business like his must take an enormous amount of time and effort.

But his efforts will be really missed.

Richard Vobes Show

I listened to another episode of the Richard Vobes Show this morning. Richard has produced 40 podcasts in the last couple of months. They feature a little music, lots of chat and laughs. He's very good at podcasting. I am mentioning him again because he left a comment on an earlier post to this weblog. Thank you, Richard.

I'd encourage any of you who read this blog to listen to Richard's show. I rate his and PodcastPaul as the best shows I have listened to so far.

Richard wants to hear my show to see what he thinks of it! I'll have to get on and record one then.

Blanked

Sometimes things just don't work out the way you want them to. Let's just say that I'm trying to sort out a few things that are major for my future - my job, what I do with my time - and things are not going according to plan.

It's important at times like these to work on the basis that things happen for a reason, even if it is not clear at the time. So, although the decisions being made around me look like they are sliding away from what I am trying to make happen, just maybe it will all make sense in the long term.

I can but hope.

P.S. Sorry to speak in code. People get sacked for being too specific about their employers in blogs, you know!

Podcast whatever

As I browse podcasts, and dig around in this relatively new medium, it becomes clear that we are still at the experimental stage of this whole innovation. It's being played with by the Early Adopters. Although the talk around this phenomenon is loud at the moment, so the growth in interest is happening as I write. Those previous sentences are another way of saying that podcasts tend to be a bit amateur and improvised at the moment - but that's part of the charm of the whole thing. It's refreshing to hear podcasts after the bland professionalism of mainstream radio.

Today I downloaded the new version of iPodder (2.0) which seems to have fixed some downloading problems which I was experiencing. I emailed Andrew Grumet from the Development Team of iPodder this morning, and was really impressed to receive a reply within a couple of hours. That's excellent customer service! Problems are fixed, and podcast downloads are happening again.

As I type this I am listening to the latest edition of the Brainwashed Podcast which is a weekly podcast of music associated with brainwashed. Last week's hour long programme comprised music from the UK Industrial Records label - Cabaret Voltaire, Robert Rental & Thomas Leer, Throbbing Gristle etc. Music from the early 80s with an alienated feel to it - in keeping with the times as i remember. This week's programme is based on the theme of 'time' and features a diverse mix of found sound, ambient, electronica and funk.

Well, earlier today I took the experiments a stage further and recorded Test Podcast One - ten seconds of voice and background music. So, I have got that far with this experiment. I'll keep you posted....