wytchcroft

hobbit hole or hovel??

2009-11-08T22:21:22Z

Well my place, my country maison du wytch or possibly Bag End, or possibly Wyts End, is - as you would see for yourself if unlucky enough to visit -
messy.

Very messy.

Very, very messy.

Messy raised to the power of at least eleventy one.

In a nut shell; not an easy clean, hard to tidy, tricky to maintain. Somewhat resembling this:

but y'know, rural.

So of course i am grateful and gobsmacked to have spent the evening watching my Italian friend work wonders around my token efforts (i may have washed up). She would say; "I'm bloody good i am!" and she'd be right - although i believe my exact words were; "You are a masochistic sucker HA HA HA!"

But i am truly thankful if somewhat startled to realise i have carpets, walls, floorboards and bookcases! WOW!

I should take advantage of miracle working chums more often!

Koff! Seriously, though - thanks V! :))

fireworks 09

2009-11-07T23:15:38Z

fishing for taxis in a lunar pool
jumping on the line
split by the night

a silhouette diving
struggles for purchase
the air at street level
split by the rain

tumbling from the library
among the bikes and cars
it's like a fairgound tonight
she says

split by the fireworks
she shoulders it
she's soldiering on...

and me
i live in the country
where the fireworks trail the valleys
lighting the way from the rocks to the moors
with tiny stars

and bonfires re-enact the smoke
of those old mill chimneys
now fallen and drunk
like famous dead writers

who slipped on the rocks half concussed
stumbling home from the lodge
split by the night
split by the rain

and the fireworks.

two rockets for bonfire weekend!

2009-11-07T18:57:23Z

hope you enjoyed them!

they

2009-11-06T00:02:01Z

When they came for her
at the knocking gate
did you give her away?
or did she fade...
... like a radio wave

you're too stubborn
you're too stubborn for that

oh whisper a pardon
these impossible saints
with their heads on a plate
listen to those ghosts
at the knocking gate

surely you're too stubborn for that
too stubborn
to

fade
like a radio wave
give that dial a twist
you must try to resist

too stubborn
not to

live

you must try to live

winds will come
as is their way
banging at the city gate

don't give her away

live

like a radio wave

oh don't give her away

live.

........................................

that was the last of 3 linked but tangential pieces.

there

2009-11-05T18:21:37Z

they opened up the belly of that Scottish church
looking for spirit and fingerprints

you were not there

in prior time they would have known
between the hollows of your thighs
your legs of stone

you were not there

wild dogs hunting in the undergrowth
in a spray of petal and leaf
as faces merge and voices blur
as memory maps belief

science sings hymns with a microscope
and you would have understood
they hope
a language like music

faith in the shadow of an old worn altar
alters little

you were not there.

and

2009-11-05T04:00:35Z

and scarlet ribboned
woven round
these autumn trails

blown to a stand still
grave and gray
such a little way

a pause for thought
to feel the rain
the pressure on the glass

the curving track
where they laid her down
between the summer and the grass

it's an empty room
and a speaker phone
it's a rusty tongue
and guide

the yellowed book
that Beckett wrote
has coffee stains inside.

All Saints Day

2009-11-01T17:40:30Z

,
"O Holy Wisdom, Soaring Power,
encompass us with wings unfurled,
and carry us, encircling all, above, below,
and through the world."

"Every element has a sound,
an original sound from the order of God;
all those sounds unite
like the harmony from harps and zithers*."

Hildegard Von Bingen

*one for Gurdjieff!

happy halloween!

2009-10-31T23:02:09Z

as upon this night, this merry eve,
earth and heaven and all between
may easily be seen

draw forth the curtain
rend the veil from your eyes
step forth and lightly
in the circle, in the ring
of all life's circus
a glad imagining

step up, step forth
feel the wild dreaming
the worlds are one
and every isle now shining
behold how the light
is given by the dark
and each of us become
a living spark

upon this night, this merry eve
blessed be
so take your leave.

ruff arrows

2009-10-30T13:35:44Z

arrows and stars (in progress)

intro/outro:

and all the shadows
every doubt
all the silence
every shout

dim the lights around the house

and blow those candles out

we're leaving.

…………………….

space:

10 x the dawn
alpha centauri
red shrouds the morning
the glittering minutes

nebulae

necklace and warning
counting those beads
1,2,3

all the birds and their beaks
beta centauri
fabulous and full we
climb like ivy to the sky
we climb like ivy to the sky

comets and clusters
matter and dust
reeling in the moments
hear that wild music float

UB313
DW2004
10 x the dawn

alpha orionis
betelgeuse
venus
neptune and all

we climb like ivy
we wrap our limbs around it all
10 x the dawn

chasing the stars

till we fall.

…………………………..

grace:

like a diamond in the rough
an earring in the rug

a wild black poppy in the wood
a wild black poppy in the mud

and the crazy man stands
where the arrow lands

and his face
promises grace

and ophelia wades
out into the waves
out into the stream
out into the signal
and the rising frequency

out into the waves

grace

………………………

reggae song 23.000 (The Astrologer's Daughter)

i used to hang with an astrologer's daughter
curious to know what that life had taught her
i mean, how would you cope
when your dad makes his living giving horoscopes?

we hate a date
it was 1978
the weather was muggy
and there were thick brown clouds,
you couldn't see for toffee
through the thick brown clouds
the colour of coffee

typical, oh typical - yeah isn't it just?
not exactly the right kind of night for astrology
it was a bit of a bust

not one of her father's stars was shining
not of her father's stars was tearing up the sky

all the same we tried
hand in hand and standing
together on the roof
almost romantic

and nobody claiming
to have a monopoly on the truth

then sooner or later it was morning
all that bleary routine;
nicotine - uh huh uh huh
caffeine - uh huh uh huh
getting up for work
you know the scene

trying to find some music
i heard her dad on the radio
and i was thinking "uh-huh uh huh
oh here we go
i bet he sounds like a jerk."

so i listened to the father
of the astrologer's daughter
listened to him chatter on that radio
and what i heard

was the warmth in his words

as they sprayed way out beyond the earth
and the dirty
atmosphere

out into a darkness rarefied and clear

out into space
out into space

between the whirling planets and the satellites
all them winking lights

he was answering a caller
with an anecdote about school yeah
and he said "you know i love my daughter,
i love my daughter very much
it's true
i love my daughter very much
it's true..."

sounded like he meant it too.

so now i can't help but wonder
what is she supposed to do?
just exactly what is she supposed to do?

but i guess if there's one thing
that life has taught her
it's that it's very strange to be

an astrologer's daughter

i mean it must be strange
to be an astrologer's daughter

.............................

piano song (my blue heaven)

and so i went today
to that old coastal slate gray
where our shadows used to play
but the sea, but the sea, but the sea
had washed it all away

and if the wind cries your name
it does it somewhere else
somewhere miles away

memories are made of this
the ghosts of chances that we miss
tied in a bundle and sealed with a kiss
wrapped in paper
like fish and chips

greasy tea and a petrol smell
looking for my blue heaven
all the way to hell

peering through the plastic windows
walking round the clifftop track
picking up trinkets that get left behind
no/one ever goes back

and there's a little monkey sitting
over my guitar
sometimes you have to wonder
how you let it get that far

and my blue heaven
is bagged up in the rain
an old steam whistle between the trees
and gone again

wrapped in a moment
and gone again

and there's no reason
and there's no blame
end of the season
tired of the game

there's no distance
kill it in the fade
there's no love
no love betrayed

there were two shadows dancing
but they're not today
and my blue heaven
is just an old old song
that i've forgotten how to play.

and it's a cold blooded morning

they teach the band to play

............................

and it's love

and it's love again
flashing so bright
like a new moon shining
from the back of a coin
and we're watching it dance
we're watching it dance

away into the dark

oh tiny light
light my heart
light my heart

for i'm the dead and you're the quick
i'm the candle, you're the wick
and we are one in the space between
the magic and the trick
that holy place where there is no
cynicism

and it's love again
the familiar clatter
of an old refrain

and if we throw wide
if we miss the mark
if our arrows find no answer
but the dark

if we stumble, if we fall
and the stars double back
to attack

we don't have to worry about it
for we are gone in the instant between
the magic and the trick
a click of the fingers
a flick of the wrist
sends us dancing
away

and it's love again.

....................
this is all very rough but useable enough i think
there are a couple of songs/lyrics in this lj that i might use as well
and some fragments have been nicked from earlier bits.
the main idea here is using fragments and scraps found on paper and tape some of which are 20 years old. it's a collaboration between 'me' and 'them' the prior self who feels a very separate personality to me in the now. which is all very pretentious i'm sure - but im finding it to be an interesting process.

chalissa, THANK YOU!:)))

gr8 escape

2009-10-27T21:33:23Z

Among other things, October is the anniversary of Houdini's death which was actually on Halloween ...

Here is a picture of his famous Upside Down Trick - which wikipedia claims is still a mystery...

Well - i have a pretty good idea how it was done and i wonder if anyone else here has interesting theories of their own?

Houdini has of course had a huge impact down the years on popular culture and those within it,
(take a look at the list on that wiki entry - it's enormous!) from David Blaine to Robbie Williams to Kristin Hersh.
Her song Houdini Blues and video for Your Ghost can be compared to Kate Bush's song Houdini -
both seem to take escapology as a metaphor and seize on the idea of a key hidden in the mouth or passed by a kiss.... a symbol maybe... as if a gnosis of some sort could be delivered vocally by the artist.

On a more superficial level, escapology can be fun!!... but don't try it at home!

colliding galaxies haz maid of awesome

2009-10-26T23:19:47Z

popular science never had it so... win!
thanks to misnomer at whedonesque for the wonderlink!!

stuck in my head stuck in the clouds

2009-10-21T02:47:17Z

listening to Lisa Germano recently has made a million songs of hers bubble again in my brain-pan...
this is one of 'em... and it's lush.

thanks to the uploader!

Crackling water
In the crackling light
And the crackling clouds
Here in the crackling night

I want you now
If this is not hate
I don't know how
I ever over-underrate

Here on earth
Where the wind and the rain prevail
It bends what you build and it rusts what you nail
Here on earth

When the weather is warm
And the cool rains return
When the wind's fully formed
And the storm we finally earnt

Yeah, i'll return
When the weather is warm
With the gray i've earned
And my heart now fully formed

Here on earth
With the bends and the rust
You hide from the rain and the winds you mistrust
Here on earth

I hate you now
If this is not love
Then i don't know what
I've been a party of

Here on earth
With the wind and rain
They love to erode what you love to sustain
Here on earth these things remain

Crackling water
In the crackling light
Crackling clouds
In the crackling night

I want you now
If this is not hate
I hate you now
If this is not love

If this is not love
Well, i don't know what
I've been a party of
I want you now

I want you now
I hate you now
I hate you now
I want you now

I want you now
Hey...
I hate you now
If this isn't love

some crazy kind of question

2009-10-12T21:32:04Z

Do you keep tabs on ex-boyfriends and -girlfriends over social networking sites? Do you think it's emotionally healthy or dangerous? Amusing or painful?

Sometimes i wonder where these psychotic questions come from.

But i guess that everybody has that chord and waits for it to get played.

There is no gone. There is no forgotten. There is no lost.
But all the same...
From the silver in your belly to the water on my brain
memory is the whistle on the mystery train
so let's ride. Akiko-chan. One for you. And one = ALL.

.
many thanks to whoever posted that to youtube.

the picture is an adaptation of the cover for Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart... in the words of Yusuf Islam; Pick up on a good book now!

come in number 9...

2009-10-09T20:01:29Z

the beatles were a prism (the beatles were a prison)

through which a decade of time, life and culture and all the attendant people (where do they all come from?), were refracted; light turned into music from black and white to any colour you like, roll up roll up.

the beatles were a prism through which john lennon could look at the pieces of himself and watch them in play - the first person to self create the movie of the beatles was john.

i was in a play once as all four fabs and it drove home to me that the beatles; john paul george ringo stu pete bert brian george sgt pepper the walrus and -

they were all john.

(the beatles were asked; Which one's Paul? Oh we're all Paul, they answered. The fibbers.)

a flickering shadow slipping in from hamburg to liverpool in the grey suburban dawn.

"Pay that taxi mimi."

john lennon is a prism through which anyone can be refracted, can be projected - an image forms according to the viewer - we can all own a john lennon individually adjusted to fit and whether we like 'him' or not, just as every new biography searches for the one true lennon and simply ends up creating another new one.

The truth is not out there.

But there is memory - there are people who were touched for real - who miss the man for real - they will be thinking about that today in ways we can't 'imagine'.

All that aside - here's a song proving that the canny old rocker saw a decade coming before we lived it.

and here's an affectionate parody of the velvet underground - one of my favourite beatle songs to boot!
john takes macca's very first song and rewires it completely. Enjoy!

Be ye in heaven - be ye in hell
here's to ya, happy birthday mr L. !!!

absolutely a serious TUNE!

2009-10-09T01:24:36Z

just a voice was rightly called Mighty

from 1965

.
and yes (as some saw yesterday) - this - is still stuck in my head...

just riffin' off lisa germano's new album

2009-10-08T00:20:22Z

and that was thunder i think clouds rumbling above the water tower as we sang
sang broke toy to the bluebirds two beautiful blue birds twitching on the scuffed earth the curb still holding the iron print, that skid, you on a bike when that guy was - you thought he was following you home ("can i keep him?").

but the sun shatters the thin glass and it's a beautiful day
all over again
here in the dull expanse the swedish flat-lands no-lands the lowlands some call home
can i keep -

singing to the birds as we dance like cats among them scattering wings and beaks and claws and all for the dance
that's magic
playing

you sing me stunned "it could be very simple" summing up the thoughts i've been having, carrying them around like stones in my pocket and we're running down the dark culvert aaaah to the frozen edge of the lake and we skim those stones and they don't
break the glass
the frozen glass with all the underneath, all them colourful fish beneath - raging and hissing but they don't
break the glass
and it's a beautiful day
it's really a beautiful day

two children singing and laughing and waving and clapping
by the edges of a lake, cold water, wishing well
two magic neighbors
wish them
we should wish them well
get well
be well
again
some beautiful day.

.........................................
lisa germano's album is wonderful.
"He must be God he can turn cats into pieces of furniture."

banneramic

2009-10-05T20:23:55Z

.
dolhouse dollhouse dollhouse DOLLHOUSE

Ruminations, Illuminations, Station to Stations, well ok, waffle mostly.

2009-10-05T11:59:20Z

And a farewell to Francais, Franglais, Denglish - call it what you will...

i have been stumbling onto some interesting material recently, just following my interest in language and music.

Anyone that knows me well will be aware of my fascination with language (i have a profound love/hate relationship with Semiology*!) and also with the work of Wittgenstein (blows kiss to Melissa) who posited that there could be no such thing as a private language.

Private language? Think Tina Turner singing; "I'm your Private -"

actually don't.

But i HAVE been listening to Emilie Simon a lot and her new album in particular. There is a lot to do with language on the album, for instance the song Chinatown.

Here we have a French woman singing in English about being in Chinatown in America. That's enough to blow my mind right there.

And the album was only released in France. Go figure.

The music and lyrics sometimes mesh very nicely together - producing an expanded sense of the visual so that lines like;

"In the city a Chinese Doctor is operating; what’s going on?"
becomes a cinematic moment with steampunk burps and whistles of machinery.

So the language is democratized and communicable and fact (information) meets fantasy. The private becomes public - at least apparently.

I doubt that Emilie would keep a diary/ or her thoughts in a language other than French - but it's possible, it would be a creative thing to do.

Simon has spoken of wanting to put herself in a strange place, to shake up her working practises. This reminds me of Bowie and Iggy and the sojourn in Berlin.

One of my favourite songs by Iggy is The Dum Dum Boys which contains the line;
"I can't seem to speak the language"
sung over a Martian sounding mangling of Hendrix and Kraftwerk, provoking what Bowie and Eno would term 'the third piece of information'.

The internet is somewhat like that. Language meets language meets image meets creativity and the lines between the personal and the public blur all the time.

The desire to communicate - the spread of the web - at a basic level would seem to prove both basic neurological communications theory AND Wittgenstein's philosophical ideas.

And yet...

As well as Simon I have also been listening to an English singer performing the work of Hildegard Von Bingen whose native tongue was German but who also invented a language just for herself. (An invented language doesn't mean a private language necessarily especially if it's broadcast. Anyone seen the film Nell?) The music is extremely emotive and spiritual at the same time.

And the fact that the singer is at one remove adds another layer, as does the fact that the singer herself has in the past sought to blend, (as the music production by Lynch does here,) the old and the modern, the sacred and profane.

Certainly when i knew her Jocelyn talked about this to me – but, crucially, enacted it to a large degree, her language was her life in that respect.

But her music of the period (sometimes with the band MSG) does seem a little awkward now in comparison to the more organic music of more recent years.

Then:

now:

That the Lux Vivens album was produced by David Lynch makes perfect sense to me - his series Twin Peaks contains a language that is reversed twice, spoken backwards and then reversed to become forwards - motion sickness in a sentence.

In another piece of synchronicity, my lj-beloved recently started posting a similar line of enquiry and in her in usual way has been inspiring me a lot. So i shall end this bit of rumination with a bit of scribble that i wrote in response to her most recent entry.

This, i hope, will answer a couple of people who have been asking me about my ‘writing’ process, the how and the why, which i never feel qualified to talk about really. I always say that I write because I can’t articulate – and this is a good example of what I mean.

There are many puns in the following piece but some have also been lost. I'm interested in how many can still be found and read.

There are also a couple of pop music references, natch. Emilie Simon's Chinatown (see above) and also Rainbow

with the line "How you gonna be the same when they make you change your name?" and George Harrison's song Devil's Radio

with the line "Makes us hide behind shades." In French the literal word for Shades becomes nuances, shades of meaning.

The word 'Radio' allows me to use the word 'Speaker' which has a double meaning connected to the piece as a whole but also the lines at the beginning about mouth to mouth/tongue to tongue.

That pun itself works differently in translation since (as elsewhere) it mixes the profane and the spiritual (i hope).

Another obvious pun is China + Porcelain. But there is also a joke here about Chinawhite, among other things a kind of refined Heroin/Opium.

(see also Emile Simon's Opium and Dame de Lotus).

Some of the other jokes are mostly language or letter based, (e.g. Peut-être bien si mon amour,) but i don't want to pull the thing apart too much for risk of spoiling the fun (And a little mystery i hope - again -).

The lines from Chalissa that are riffed on here are;

typing as fast as I can while trying to keep my mind at bay with slow-motion ninja moves, listening to "Changed My Name" by Phil Norman on repeat...

) I've changed my name this time to wandering (

I'm convinced that the secret lies in the reason why people wear sunglasses.

But see the whole post and the connection to Chinatown, Simon - and my whole waffle here.

And it should be noted that we both wear shades - a lot.

……………………………………………………

English;

thank you beaucoup - une coup de cendre the centre of the coup a coup de

nomme what are we after all but our names the magic logos passed from

tongue to tongue the viral communion and the clacking of the shoes upon the

stairs advance advance! how much, in the shadows, what is the cost, what is

the price? and How you gonna be the same when they make you change your

name? Emilie Simon. And you could sing through the steam, the gleaming

china smile of the agent in porcelain, your new name ready for collection

hidden in a dossier up the magician's sleeve, beating like a full purple heart

stitched together, purple prose and singing from the cracked speaker George

Harrison The Devil's radio "makes us hide behind shades"...

Well maybe so my love, all creatures equal under the neon and blind.

Denglish:

thank you very much - a blow of ash in the center of the blow a blow of names

what we are after all, that our names the logos magic master key of mouth

stops the communion viral and the slapping of the shoes of l' advances on

l' staircase of l' advances! how much, in l' is shade, which the cost, which is

the price? and how you will be the same ones when they to make you change

your name? Emilie Simon. And you could sing through the vapor, the smile

étincelant China of l' agent in the porcelain, the name of your new loan for the

collection d' a file hidden in the sleeve of the magician, while beating like a

heart full crimson bent together, the prose of crimson and song of l' enclosure

of cracking Radio operator George Harrison The Devil' S” makes us hide behind

nuances" …

Peut-être well if my love, all beings equal in front of neon and blind man.

The ‘French’:

merci beaucoup - Une coup de cendre au centre du coup un coup de nomme

ce que nous sommes après tout, que nos noms les logos magique passe de

bouche en bouche la communion virales et le claquement des sabots de

l'avance sur l'escalier de l'avance! combien, dans l'ombre, quel est le coût,

quel est le prix? et comment vous allez être les mêmes quand ils vous faire

changer votre nom? Emilie Simon. Et tu pourrais chanter à travers la vapeur,

le sourire étincelant Chine de l'agent dans la porcelaine, le nom de votre

nouveau prêt pour la collecte d'un dossier caché dans la manche du magicien,

en battant comme un cœur pourpre plein cousues ensemble, la prose de

pourpre et le chant de l'enceinte de craquage Radio George Harrison

The Devil's »nous fait se cacher derrière des nuances" ...

Peut-être bien si mon amour,

tous les êtres égaux devant le néon et aveugle.

…………………………………………………………………………..

The version I haven’t posted is my French original but it’s unnecessary, basically the process went i) French ii) Denglish iii) transliteration of Denglish by machine into ‘French’. Iv) A version that makes plain sense in English. And THAT is how I have fun on my downtime!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thanks to all the youtube uploaders!
*pun: semiotics

film music

2009-10-02T14:50:42Z

one of my favourite films...

one of my favourite pieces of film music...

one of my favourite pieces of music. period.

Tous les Matins du Monde

just riffin off from emilie simon's album The Big Machine

2009-09-18T03:47:06Z

You know that it's time to go up, up, up, up,
Had a Big Machine ridin' your shoulders...
Pearl's Dream - Bat for Lashes (Natasha Khan)

Could be we riding that strange train, that mystery train, like the Soom Express.
Express… what's left to express - all the music hear that as we crash through the doors - burst through the splinters, what the carriages carry, money in military bags and the music hear (it's a big machine) that Tokyo arcade density - you got any questions? You got an equation for that?

Written out in long hand on a mildewed yellow pad - Je suis français - this is my pad, this is your world - but enough of that.

And on and on the carriages rumble (it's a big machine) and on and on the chimney just screams, looking out through the window to a million scenes, a hundred countries and all the people just dancing to the music of the rails.

These Songs are so familiar, it's an easy recall, that bag of Kate Bush tapes you left me - i never listened to them at all. And here's you and here's me, someone must have pressed record, someone must have pressed it by mistake… coz hears you, hears me and hears we laughing in that hotel room and mumbling half-asleep. I was singing "when i'm free" and you were singing "mmm… maybe, baby", but we couldn't be.

So blow the trains doors open darling, let’s dynamite the night and go - like a Rocket to the Moon, c’mon like a comet into snow - oh it's a big machine, just let it roll.

Regarde Moi, Je suis la Garde; i'll take that ticket - i'll check the time table, just take a look at all these tables, the compartments are inviting the centuries to blur, the years to roll away, it could be 1887, it could be tomorrow or today. These glimmering figures, these fashions change; a lady with a dog and a pair of ruffled fur gloves, a slim businessman polishing his eye-glasses on an attaché case perched across his lap –
and then there’s me in my old ripped jeans and you with a hole in your boot and the whole train just smelling of soot and cigarettes and sweat, better get your hands on some change.
Wrap your knuckles round the currency love, put a coin into the slot and sing along.

It's a big machine.

thank you, merci beaucoup -
une coup de cendre the centre of the coup a coup de nomme
what are we after all but our names the magic logos passed from tongue to tongue
the viral communion and the clacking of the shoes upon the stairs
advance advance!

how much, in the shadows, what is the cost, what is the price?
and How you gonna be the same when they make you change your name?
Emilie Simon.

And you could sing through the steam, the gleaming china smile of the agent in porcelain,
your new name ready for collection hidden in a dossier up the magician's sleeve,
beating like a full purple heart stitched together, purple prose and singing from the cracked speaker;
George Harrison, The Devil's Radio "makes us hide behind shades"...

Well maybe so my love, all creatures equal under the neon and blind.

Peut-être bien si mon amour,
tous les êtres égaux devant le néon et aveugle.

i hear the roar of the Big Machine,
smell the oil and methodrine...
The Sisters of Mercy

happy birthday double header! Regina and Raven - happy birthday!!:))

2009-09-16T19:29:33Z

Jean Cocteau once wrote a play called The Eagle Has Two Heads exploring the dualistic states of male and female, upper and lower class, master and servant. When I think of Regina it is in the same way, poet on the one hand, prose writer on the other.
A creator of two interwoven characters Shelby and Alberto, female and male, two sides of the creator – and in her more intimate works; husband and wife – whilst in prose the mysterious and unnamed ‘she’ and her relationship with God.

These double acts pulse with a broiling life that drives Shelby onto the highway and the eye of the reader back to scanning eagerly for a new entry on the page. Regina, I compared you to Diane di Prima when I first encountered your work – and it’s still an apt point of reference… but how many more sides to you and your writing have I been privileged to see since then? I think I naively said I would comment now and again… ha ha ha! – I am of course an addict now and comment on almost every entry, a daily occurrence, the breadth and quantity of which are genuinely staggering.

But it’s the quality! I have been and continue to be genuinely stunned. A line, a verse, a piece – wild and free or tight and disciplined, warm and humorous or frayed and dark… you have taken me through so many dreams, shown me countless lights shining through the cracks of mysterious doors, pressed a fleshly map of human relations into my hand and whispered the secret names of strange continents; “man” and “woman”.

So many entries in this journal have been inspired by you. For all of the above - and more, I take the opportunity to thank you and wish you a very happy birthday!

And if the eagle has two heads perhaps one is a Raven…

Neversremedy – you have allowed me to read poems and stories that wind around the reader like smoke rings...
that flutter like bejewelled fingers or indeed the feathers of the Angelic Ravens of the Norse and the muse Ravens of Apollo.

Your sheer creativity is daunting to behold!
But your tolerance, deep feelings, righteous anger, family love - and occasional slapstick are also apparent and equally inspiring.
So to you as well i must say a big “Cheers!” and wish you many happy returns.

I am one lucky wytch!!:))

Putting a little coco in the bourgeois chocolate box.

2009-09-15T23:30:41Z

Finally got to see the movie Coco before Chanel which I’ve wanted to catch for quite a while;
Very enjoyable it was too. Easy on the eye and the mind and with a lot of humour and some excellent back and forth dialogue which is generally very well played. Audrey Tautou gives an excellent performance, her character refuses to back down, smile on demand, play the coquette – it’s her most interior role since Dirty Pretty Things.

So it feels a little uncharitable to have to say anything negative – but, holy wow what a weird wasted opportunity the film is – and slick? You could use it to oil the hinges in your mansion!
For starters it’s one of those rags to riches stories of social climbing that manages never to show the bottom of the ladder – there is not a single poor person in the film, not one. So perfectly were the proles airbrushed out of the narrative that I found myself wondering if it was for the censor, well , merde - the poor means an 18 certificate for sure and we can't have that now can we?.

Still, style really can be substance and hardly a frame couldn’t be used for an expressive dust jacket for something or other. It's beautifully filmed and there are indeed some wonderful shots of wool sitting half ignored on a hardwood surface whose grains are a melancholy autumn tone of rich gold. This IS the Coco Chanel story after all, so everything is material, from the furniture of the various plush dwellings to the skin of each actor in close up. And these things; objects, moments, faces, are not meaningless.

WARNING: Many gratuitous and deeply frightening limp moustaches are seen in very close detail, a Freudian piece of symbolism perhaps. Talking of which, and it’s almost Shakespearean, Coco dresses in male style clothes (cross between Chaplin and Patti Smith) which look wonderful anyway but are worn by Audrey Tautou who, well, plus belle – naturally. She then tells people that when the lights are off, "skin is just skin", not male or female... before picking up with a man whose name is ‘Boy.’ Fun and games huh?
But the films own jaw seems to drop because it clearly doesn’t know what to do with all that sort of thing, too seedy perhaps or to freaky, a bit like the poor - or the actual working process that leads to the dazzling fashions seen at the close of the movie. That lack of process is the opportunity squandered, at least for a fashion and textiles junky like myself. I wanted to see how these creations got made, what choices were involved and what processes. It’s like a film about Picasso only without the painting.

There are good natured scenes of St Coco rescuing glad ladies from whale-bone corsetry (in real life come the 1950s and she gave it back again, lest we forget. Hepburn wore Givenchy and Dior for a reason!). And such things do gladden the heart. The film concludes by noting that Coco succeeded in her battle against a male dominated world. Yes, we do get to see that world. It has two men in it. Decent enough chaps in their way. So again, hearts are gladdened.
Of course as yet another Sarkozy era détente picture, that’s exactly what the film wants to do, to gladden its audience, to make friends with it.
Anyone who has watched the gradually increasing conservatism of French Cinema as well as its increasing revisionism and hard-sell abroad, ever since Amilie (according to some), will loathe this flick and Tautou once more, but it has to be said, just as with the British ‘heritage movies’ of the 80s, it’s not rubbish that’s being knocked out here. Coco is a good movie, just as La Vie en Rose was or Moliere or Female Agents. And if it makes flicks like La Haine and Les Amants du Pont Neuf orThe Vanishing feel a thousand years ago – so too it rids us of pseudo-intellectual gack like The Piano Player and Ma Mere and reconnects with the sheer cinema of pictures like Manon des Sources and The Reader. No bad thing. Just empty. And I knew that when I went in – really, sometimes it’s just for the eye candy and… so what?

Go see it and have a good time.

WARNING: If you are a chain-smoker like me, be warned, there many lovely cigarette moments that (if you are watching in a cinema) will drive you insane!

more musical mega-faves... The Only Ones

2009-09-14T17:20:34Z

i'm having similar conversations with a few people just now, so;
A couple more songs that changed my life, made me start a band and why i still like guitars!

The Only Ones are best known for 'Another Girl Another Planet' which is a fab enough blast of space pop but there was a lot more to them than that - just as although they are often linked to bands like The New York Dolls, or other glam-punk bands, that don't actually sound anything like them.
They DO sound like Television (whom i love a lot) as well as the various bands they've influenced in turn such as The Violent Femmes and even Spiritualized, whilst Pete's half-arsed sneery vocals are everything The Psychedelic Furs tried for...

...and i can't help wondering, is part of their appeal for me just that they were a local(ish) band when i was young and sleepwalking around with my knees nailed together... yet another band with Saaaf London accents in my collection. Hmm. They certainly articulated a world that was very familiar to me.

Anyhow, they glittered and exploded like few others and had darkness and guitars to die for. It's a minor miracle in fact that they didn't. But they are still around today having reformed not long ago and Pete's kids are in bands now etc etc and time moves on.

When i first heard The Beast i literally fell on my face.
This can happen... i think i've described before how when i first heard The Cocteau Twins i collided with a rack of tapes in a record store and had a pleasure fit. With The Only Ones I got the eerie sensation of listening to a band seemingly created from the sounds and visions in my own head; The riff, the voice and the unexpected guitarmageddon at the half-way mark.
Oh yes, the stuff of my daydreams right enough. After that I snapped up everything else by them as soon as possible - and i have to say, i still consider them one of the greats.
The second song here is The In Betweens - which although less immediate than The Beast is nonetheless an epic that pulverizes me to this day. The first track is from their self-titled debut album and the second from Even Serpents Shine, the follow-up.

..

Gimme that cowbell!! THERE'S NO CURE.

'sordid clandestine love'? Bring it on!..

this song was later uh, 'remade', - koff! - by Suede as 'Stay Together'. Youtube can sometimes be a mean medium but thanks to the uploader and i hope they play ok here in lj. They're audio only so i'm hopeful - although this took ages to post.

Девочка из будущего - женщина из ныне!!

2009-09-12T03:52:17Z

and YES! a great day, a wonderful celebration; HAPPY BIRTHDAY Stosha!!
Yu, wow, i owe many, many thanks - for knowing you has brought so much inspiration to my mind and this journal...

You have shared your warmth, humour, intelligence, thoughtfulness, spirit - and personality.
And great writing of course!!
It's been said by many people and it is true, you are unique, there's no/one else quite like you!!:))
So this post is for you with all best wishes and good feelings.

From one side of the world to another - have a gooood birthday!!!:)))

so, Что дальше единорога?