| For the beauty of the earth |
[22 May 2012|04:31pm] |
So bright! More daisies than I have ever seen, and blossom, fragrant hawthorn, and buttercups and meadowsweet and small blue things, and more blossom.
.. and I had the afternoon off. Originally to buy clothes suitable for posh seminar am going to in London on Thurs (with 'parliamentarians' amongst the participants), like a suit, or at least suit trousers to go with the-one-jacket-that-fits, and a new tie (I'm told my 90s silk ones now look dated), and shirts (at Debenhams one-day sale offer half-price - a bargain)
anyway I did do that, but also what a FAB day to have extra time in to enjoy the green on the way into work and Port Lake at lunchtime. Even the algal mats looked good in the sun, with swans artfully posing around them.
Small buntings quibbling made R2D2 noises
Ducklings can dive but they pop right back up again
Not in anyway to take away from the nice day vibe, but o boy is it going to be hot in London on Thursday, by all accounts, for this thing (that starts at 8: *effing* 30 a.m.). And I still have a huge pile of clothes on the floor to sort out what to chuck to recycling and what to give to Oxfam and what to re-closet, and hence procrastinating writing this.
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| once upon a time ... |
[21 May 2012|10:48pm] |
...the internet was finite, for me. Mostly BBC News, LJ, and selected wikip. (I know my surfing was rudimentary.) And in the gaps, I felt compelled to do things, write things, and, often, post the latter (as you may have noticed). Then I discovered Twitter, and now the internet never ends.
(8) in my time of typing
adds in type "Katy Read" for due credit in case she has a google alert for her name, which wouldn't be activated by the image above
ETA: Someone on Twitter just said what I said only better
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| Things seen in Costa (first two were a few weeks ago) |
[20 May 2012|10:41pm] |
1. The writing on the wall opposite that we couldn't quite make out, does it say 'the stars my degredation' or 'the stars my destination'? We later went up and inspected it. (I know I made up what the words were, I can't find my notes, if people there remember, I will edit.)
2. A boy, about 11 or 12 I reckoned, getting out of a plastic bag, with care, a largeish flat square object: an LP. And looking at his purchase, reading the back, looking at the front picture again; a considerable investment for his means, one suspects. (I saw what it was but can't remember - Best of Herbie Hancock, possibly certs. some old jazz/blues thing - Not Fats Domino nor Duke Ellington or Ray Charles or )
He had a single, too.
3. New for the thing: Coronation chicken 'farmhouse' sandwiches advertised. Does 'farmhouse' mean added cheese? Probably it means brown bread, but I didn't test. What's next, Olympic calamari rings?
4. Iced everything promotion, for the hot summer we're having, including staff in new uniform blue t-shirts. Staff serving you look cold; you think 'I want a cold drink': it all makes sense.
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| hmm, BBC News front page |
[15 May 2012|08:24pm] |
----
although I did think it was probably a bad day for Charlie Brooker/Charlie Brooks confusion when the latter said 'witch hunt'. (prefigured by the puritan-look at Levenson)
even so, naughty BBC
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| Questions of Authenticity |
[13 May 2012|11:26pm] |
1. The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker. I really enjoyed this a lot. A sort of about-poetry meander by a fictional 1st-person poet-narrator. How much are the views expressed Nicholson Baker's?
2. Exit Through The Gift Shop, a Banksy film. I really enjoyed this a lot. A sort of about-street-art documentary, which is really funny (esp. Banksy's closing lines which I won't spoiler and anyway only are funny if you've seen the story as told in the film). About which people wonder, how much of this is true?
( Read more... )
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[11 May 2012|01:39am] |
beside the wide, to right
the river runs high
the swifts fly low
in the evening wood
lit by leaves
I sit in shadow
the wood is not entirely still,
and not entirely quiet
it creaks and calls, sways
and suffers the roars of extraneous unseen planes
in the wide flats, right
the rivulets and small lakes gleam
beneath me a train
ah, I know where I am
I am lost
But from here I can navigate again
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| No Badgers |
[10 May 2012|10:59pm] |
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I went up to Wytham wood for the annual Badger watch (census take) (it's on again tomorrow) - a longer walk from OUP than I'd expected, had allowed 45 mins which wasn't enough, but people (about 30) were still gathered in car park not yet set off when I got there a bit late. I had worried that sitting still and quiet in a wood for two hours by a sett waiting to see if any badgers turned up might test my patience, but in fact the small noises in the wood, the top branches occasionally swaying, the light through the new leaves, (a cuckoo and a green woodpecker heard) etc. etc. kept me quite entertained. But sadly no badgers. It's a bit of a long walk there and back to do it all again tomorrow (a heck of a long walk, that and not having looked at a map - I assumed I would find my way, and did, but realised on way back in the dark I've not actually walked back from Cutteslowe by road before - seeing Port Meadow from that side I briefly imagined I was in the Netherlands or something, but it all worked out), but next year definitely will try again.
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| Trembling Bells: trembled well. love is a velvet moose. |
[04 May 2012|11:34pm] |
Trembling Bells and Bonny Prince Billy
seen tonight at the Bullingdon Arms. A small, hot, back room of a pub, packed with people and a really good band playing, which could be heard clearly even over people at the back talking (& bar serving) even when it was a cappella singing (minor grr)* .. but even they shut up for the last song and two encores. Bumped into Angus there, he said, (1) "This is what going to gigs in the 70s must have been like", (2) "I thought it would be more country" (me, it is, isn't it, amongst other things?), him, "it's prog-folk" (me (to myself), yes, good call, but muchly other too; reminds me of the Meat Puppets, in places, and is also proper folk, anti-folk). (3) "He has a really good voice, doesn't he?" (yes)
What I'd seen on youtube (for research) Billy was just joining the 'Bells to sing backing vocals, but in these new songs he gets lead, shared with Lavinia Blackwall of the 'Bells, alternately and together, (and steps back to do backing at times).
Billy and Lavinia were clearly enjoying it; & it all sounded great. It was both controlled and slightly unhinged. No, unhinged is wrong, but what I want to get at is a feeling of freedom, almost amateurishness, as if, but actually they were very together and playing by rules, that they set. Presumably the whole set was as unknown to the rest of the audience as it was to me, since the collaboration album hasn't come out yet.
ETA: they did this one (the new is on youtube), which had me wondering why "love is a velvet moose", (interesting, but why?), briefly, until I realised it was "noose".
EETA: Will Oldham visited Truck Store on Cowley Road and the Newspaper shop across the road; it is not known whether they recognised him in the latter.
* example of overheard: "I saw Billy Bragg play in a room to ten people once. Yes, I know! I was so impressed with myself."
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[30 Apr 2012|11:33pm] |
(1) first attempt, (2) second, OK what should we do, go round, or take off our shoes? This guy and I came to the same decision.
(LJ Scrapbook is (mostly) broken *again* but I found a way through; how appropriate)
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[30 Apr 2012|03:24pm] |
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Paddled to work this morning. Never done that before. Water nice and clear, but really quite cold. That was fun, but I am going to use a different route home.
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| time machine weather |
[27 Apr 2012|04:35pm] |
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well it's been a heck of a day, both getting through a lot of work stuff (incl some pulling hair out - quite fraught), but also with the light periodically turning to darkness outside, then to semi-solid grey rain, then back to light with scraps of blue sky and very shiny pavements/puddles refecting, and then suddenly back to darkness ... and rain ... and this repeats, that I feel like it's in fact been several days, speeded up.
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| The oud couple |
[21 Apr 2012|10:51pm] |
So, that gig, then. The double duo were very good indeed. Two oudists and two percussionists (each a pair), together, inprovising ('we didn't realise we'd overrun by half an hour the allotted first half'), and playing in their pairs alone, and solos from the percussionists*, ending with folk tunes from Iraq and ?, which really rocked/swung/&everything inbetween. And 10/8 time, I think is what they said introducing one song, 'we start in that and, hopefully, come back to it'. Noodling. Reminded me of Brand X and Stanley Clarke. But more mesmeric. Nice to hear the ouds so clearly, at even the gentlest touch. But also the percussion - Picconi had many things to rattle,** each with a slightly different flavour, the drum/tambourine can be scratched, tapped at its edge, and half-fall to shimmer the mini cymbals on its edge, and hit with a flailing hand and fingers to make so many sounds, rhythms, textures.
Reminded me of when playing with kzin, I used to make a point of making sounds for him, scratching things, rustling, on different surfaces, rather than just here's a string, chase it, - to play to his world, his soundscape, his enormous ears.
I got the CD of one pair of them, Ahmad Al Khatib and Youssef Hbeisch, which is very good. They're on World on 3 'from 22 April at 11:00 pm'
* I was going to say, never have I enjoyed a drum solo before, but as Wendy said on FB, one amazing one was a tambourine solo, in which he seemed to be accompanied by a bass guitar - that was the tambourine too. Similar to this (which is him, but a different tambourine). (He had on a stand near him some tools for tightening the tambourine or its mini-cymbals which he used between pieces, like you'd tune a guitar.)
** and a presumably-water-filled metal thing that made watery notes when hit by his fingers.
Khyam Allami (oud), Andrea Piccioni (persussion), Ahmad Al Khatib (oud) and Youssef Hbeisch (percussion) (ETA: oops. got the last two the wrong way round before, now corrected)
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| Counting corvids |
[20 Apr 2012|10:51am] |
One for sorrow, two for joy
Three for a girl and four for a boy
Five for silver, six for gold
Seven for a secret never to be told
Eight for tomorrow, nine for today
Ten for trans and eleven for gay
Twelve for coal, thirteen for oil
Fourteen for neverending toil
Fifteen for weltschmertz, sixteen for schedenfreude
Seventeen for green, eighteen for red
Nineteen for the living, twenty for the dead
Twenty-one for you, twenty-two for me
Twenty-three mob kzin but he would win
Twenty-four for darkness, twenty-five for light
Twenty-six for another go, twenty-seven for not right now
Twenty-eight for space, twenty-nine for time
Thirty for the long-lost rhyme
...
A thousand for love, a thousand-and-one for not yet my son
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| the wet and the gloom |
[19 Apr 2012|06:34pm] |
Really adds to the colours though –
Brought out the moss green swirls & curves on the tree-trunks in the parks on walk home last night
And the green tunnel I came in through this morning was so a-glow it was lambently vivid.
Have been doing some things not done in a long while:
1. Two days not smoking or drinking. That's enough for first attempt isn't it?
2. cooking meat: Chilli con carne - NEVER use Tesco mince again! ug. so much water, had to decant it while trying to brown it, but still, RANK. Chilli OK, smothered it enough. With sour cream and chives (lots of chives in the garden) - not had that before, nice; flavour reminds me vaguely of something. Later in bed I realise what it must have been - 'sour cream and chives' crisps flavour.
3. Reading Song of Ice&Fire: finally starting a Dance of Dragons.
4. Listening to the Lamb*. Had to prod the turntable connections into action; do things like that decay? I don't remember the connections being a problem last time I used the turntable, er, some time ago.
*trying to solve a 'Carpet Crawlers' earworm, but made it worse: now have the whole thing in my head.
there are no native earworms in New England
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| LED graphic equalizer display |
[16 Apr 2012|09:27pm] |
wren
a small burnished ball
sings surprisingly loudly, this silver morning of buds, brightness
its tail half-way between a dash and an exclamation mark
twitches like a VU-meter needle
veering into the red
recording this, the sunlight in the new leaves,
the twittering all around, the willow trees, catkin-green, in the sun,
I list-
en
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jackfirecat's journal
