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....

Podcasting - first ideas

OK, so I want to make a podcast. I have spent far too much time over the last week looking into the whole issue of podcasting. I have looked at Adam Curry's site (founder of this whole podcasting idea). I have downloaded the ipodder software, and subscribed to a number of feeds so that I can receive shows when they appear. I am now signed up to 22 feeds (look on podcast net and audio.weblogs.com for lists of podcasts) - but something is wrong with the way ipodder is set up, as feeds aren't coming through as they should be. Technologically challenged! I've figured out that I can make a podcast using Audacity and have downloaded that too - I'm in the middle of trying to figure out how to set up an rss feed so that people can subcribe to the podcast and download it. And that's as far as I have got with it. Time is what is needed - oodles of it! I'm carving out what I can. In the meantime, watch this space. Or if you are a few steps ahead of me, post a comment and tell me how to get there...

Yes, there are plenty of sites with guidance but they tend to very quickly drop into geek-speak, which leaves me completely baffled. A little determination and trial and error, and we will get there.

More new music than you can eat in one sitting

One way and another I have a heap of music to listen to at the moment. Try this for size:

o Brian Eno & Jah Wobble – Spinner
o Brian Eno & Laraaji – Ambient 3: Days of Radiance
o Brian Eno – Future Light Lounge Proposal @ Bonn 1998
o Can – Tago Mago
o Magazine – Real Life
o Magazine – The Correct Use of Soap
o Matching Mole – Matching Mole
o Porcupine Tree – Futile EP
o Roy Harper – Live 1978
o Soft Machine – 1 & 2
o Soft Machine – Third
o The Residents – The Warner Brothers Album
o Fripp & Eno Live London 1975
o Keith Jarrett w European Quartet - Live Frankfurt 1976
o King Crimson – Live Stockholm 2003
o Magazine – Secondhand Daylight
o Robert Fripp String Quintet – Kan-non Power
o Tabla Beat Science – Tala Matrix
o The Residents – Duck Stab + Buster & Glen + Goosebump
o This Heat – This Heat
o Bjork – Medulla
o The Blue Nile – High
o Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
o Elbow – Cast of Thousands
o Echo & The Bunnymen – What are you going to do with your life?
o David Sylvian – The Good Son vs The Only Daughter
o Sylvian / Sakamoto – World Citizen

I love being overwhelmed with the amount of music I have to listen to. Much fun will be had over the coming days wading through it all, and absorbing all the ideas and styles.

On top of all this, I also have been listening to podcasts by a few people. Two which have grabbed my attention so far are PodCastPaul and Richard Vobes. Both are based in the UK and produce new shows of 30 to 40 minutes in length every few days (Vobes is most days!) They combine chat with music and provide something which you can’t get on the airwaves at the moment. The commercial radio channels in the UK are all the same and generate a bland mix of music and inane nonsense. I like that fact that podcasts allow anyone to put together their own thoughts, tastes and idiosyncrasies without being restricted by commercial considerations. I’ll be posting more on this as I work out whether I can put together my own podcasts.

Magazine - 2 albums

I have managed to get hold of two of the albums by Magazine, an English band of the late 70s and early 80s. I still have these albums on vinyl, but never take the trouble to listen to any of my vinyl collection.

The two albums - Real Life and The Correct Use of Soap - are every bit as wonderful as I remember them being. I love the dry drawl of Howard Devoto's voice. And the mix of guitar, bass, drums and synthesiser (Dave Formula - yes, very 80s synth, I know) make for a fantastic sound. The lyrics are incredibly sharp and bitter too. Devoto spent a short time in the Buzzcocks with Pete Shelley (he wrote their hit "Boredom") before leaving to form Magazine. I saw them live in Liverpool and thought they were brilliant.

I remember these two albums really well. I played them to death at the time. The two other studio albums - "Secondhand Daylight" and "Magic, Murder and the Weather" - I haven't heard as far as I can remember, so I'm going to search for those too. There is also a live album called "Play" which is supposed to be excellent too.

The main guitarist John McGeogh (who left the band to work with Souxie and the Banshees) died last spring. His guitar was a distinctive sound in their music. They were a band that worked through a fair few members though, so there were other guitarists.

There's a fan website shotbybothsides.com which is worth a visit to find out more about them. It sounds like Howard left the music scene for a while, working as a photo librarian. He has been back in the music industry recently working with Pete Shelley in Buzzkunst and ShelleyDevoto.

With songs like 'The Light Pours out of me', 'Shot by both sides', and 'A Song from under the floorboards' Magazine are definitely a band in need of a revival.

"Maybe it's right to be nervous now..."

"Now that I'm out of touch with anger / Now I have nothing to live up to"

Been away

Well, I am back after a break of a week. I went to Austria skiing. This was the second time I had been skiing and it is now all starting to make some sense. I can now go at fair speed without falling over (too much!)

The service is now back in action. There will be posts over the next few days, on music, poetry etc.

I received an email from Norm Geras this morning. He wrote to let me know that my blogroll of links had disappeared off the site. After an exhange of emails, it seems that this is a problem in certain browsers, and not in others. How strange! If you are unable to see my "Weblogs I watch" list then please let me know, so that I can see if I can do something about it.

Whilst I was away, there was also a reference on Anny Ballardini's site to the posting I made recently about the Creative Commons initiative. Thanks for that, Anny. This was the second time I had had feedback to the idea of inserting a Creative Commons license to the site. Greg Perry also emailed me about it. It's interesting which posts attract attention.

Anyway, over the next few days I'll post reactions to some of the music I have been listening to recently including David Sylvian's "The Only Daughter".

I'll also be commenting on Podcasting and offering some links to podcasters. Watch this space!

Creative Commons

After the last post, I looked through the Creative Commons website and within five minutes I had figured out how to set up a Creative Commons license on the weblog. Over in the sidebar there is a Creative Commons license with a link to show what the terms are. So easy!

Wired News: Putting Eyeballs on Copyright Law

The latest issue of Wired News has an article about a civil rights fight over copyright. It builds on something I commented on a few days ago. The article is well worth a read as it brings into sharp focus the issue of copyright and control of history, creativity and the arts by large corporations.

It feels to me like we are on the verge of real change around this whole issue - the challenges of digital media, the democracy of file sharing (see post from a while ago) - it's a question of who will win out on this.

I'm becoming increasingly aware of the whole "Creative Commons" movement. Time to investigate further...