Silly horse

Life + lyrics

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 22:25:00 +0000

This post has been a few weeks in the making, but two train journeys today have helped to crystallise it. As often on a solo train journey, I set about into a wistful and thoughtful frame of mind. Not quite melancholy, but lots of gazing out of the window in a wondering kind of way, and indulging in my favourite pasttime of examining my own thoughts. And, as usual, I decided that the perfect accompaniment to my wistful mood was some suitably down-tempo, mood-matching music.

The power of music to elevate, counter, enhance, chime in with, create and deflate our emotions is what I’m thinking about. But more specifically, for me, the role of lyrics within that.

I know plenty of people who love music and, at the same time, who don’t pay more than the slightest bit of heed to the lyrics of a track. They might notice some vague words going on in the background, but their attention is always focused up-front, to the beat or the chords. They might hear the lyrics but without really ‘hearing’ them. To them the lyrics aren’t an integral part to their emotional response to the track - they’re moved by the pure sounds themselves.

I can also be moved by an arrangement of sounds and obviously frequently am. I’m not one of those people who asserts that dance music is somehow not ‘proper’ music because it has no lyrics or (heaven forbid) no guitars. An instrumental or lyric-light track can reduce me to tears or happiness in just the same way. But to me there’s something so special about that feeling that the words someone has written somehow chime in so well with your own thoughts at that specific moment. Or the way they can transport you away to somewhere…

And they don’t have to mean anything to anyone else for that to happen. I know I’m a sentimental old fool but sometimes I can extract such poignant meaning from even the mundane-est of words or lines….somehow. It says something to me about the sheer poetry of everyday life, the fact that the chancest of events and the smallest of details can be charged with such significance. Here I think of Benjamin with his poetic-philosophic-mystical way of looking at the world - that every second in history has the potential to be ‘charged with “jetzeit”’ - the time of now. That the most inconsequential of things can be rendered strange if looked at in a new way.

Here I want to give some examples of lyrics that mean so much to me but I’m really embarrassed to do it. I can deduct personal meaning from sometimes the schmalzy-est or cheesiest of pop songs, as well as the obscure ones written by ‘proper’ musicians.

One example I can give is actually for almost the opposite reasons I have given above, and that is some of the lyrics of Joanna Newsom on ‘Ys’. For me, her lyrics take me away into completely, other, different worlds from the one I inhabit. They do have sentiments that I can tune into, but interestingly they are, in the completest sense, unique worlds in their own right. Of any songs I have heard I think they are the most truly ‘poetic’ in the sense of being so carefully chosen, every word, phrase and line perfectly weighted and perfectly in place - at the same time with the most startling and complex imagery.

Here are a few lines from ‘Only Skin’:

“and there was a booming above you
that night, black airplanes flew over the sea
and they were lowing and shifting like
beached whales
shelled snails
as you strained and you squinted to see
the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry

you froze in your sand shoal
prayed for your poor soul
sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl
and when the bread broke, fell in bricks of wet smoke
my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke”

And that’s just how it starts, straight into it like that with no warning. I love to spend time thinking about what it means. And this is a 15 minute song so it just goes on, weaving its own intricate world, moving through so many emotions…and never gets tiring or contrived. Whereas originally I thought it was to do with rural life in America, kind of like a Cold Mountain scenario, I think I have since ‘cracked’ it that it’s more to do with war. It’s from the perspective of the woman a soldier comes back to, who I sometimes think is his mother and sometimes his girlfriend/wife. It’s about the unspeakable traumas he has endured and how she tries to help him live with them. Just beautiful.

Of course this has nothing to do with my own life experience, but there are definitely things I take from it - mainly the idea of the helplessness of love.

That’s it for now. I’m off to write some poetry or something.

My new favourite shop

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:15:58 +0000

My new favourite shop:

I just bought 2 pairs of Pipnstuff earrings and they are beautiful

I don't know what's odder, the cute little horses or the insistence on pronouncing 'miniature' "min-E-a-ture" in that silly American way ;-)

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:57:27 +0000

I don't know what's odder, the cute little horses or the insistence on pronouncing 'miniature' "min-E-a-ture" in that silly American way ;-)

Mob benefits

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:24:28 +0000

It comes to something when even the Yakuza have to claim benefits to get by:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/20/japan-gangsters-benefits

There was a similar article in the Guardian Weekend about the demise of the Mafia in the US. Seems it’s not easy being a hardened crim in these desperate times.

Books I have read recently (to go with my all-new book theme)

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 11:49:00 +0000

I’ve had a bit of a spate of reading again, after struggling for a few months with tiredness and obsession with listening to music on the tube instead. I *can* do the two things at once but then I don’t concentrate enough on either! Reading is a serious business you know ;-)

Here is what I has been reading:

American Pastoral - Phillip Roth

Jitterbug Perfume - Tom Robbins

1000 Things To Do in London - Time Out (flicking through anyway)

After Dark - Haruki Murakami

Darkmans - Nicola Barker

Fathers and Sons - Turgenev

The Grass Arena - John Healey

Basket meals

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:58:00 +0000

Thinking about the ‘concept’ of meals-in-a-basket following a conversation last night. You rarely see basket meals in pubs anymore although with the resurgence of Weatherspoons (thanks, in large part, to the 99p pint) they may make some kind of comeback. Actually, Weatherspoons never really went away, amongst the student populace and certainly not the normal rest-of-the-country populace. It’s just us poncey metropolitan types that have shunned it in favour of massively overpriced Soho bars and eateries. I think it’s time to re-appraise it. And not cause it’s ‘retro’ or suddenly cool to be a bit ‘declasse’, but because it’s cheap and honest. Although I’ll still be giving the WKD and the rancid blue cocktail pitchers a wide berth.

Also on the subject of basket meals my lovely friend Ian has written possibly the most (and maybe only) heartbreaking song about them:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xJwVJhvnoSw&feature=channel_page

Whenever he introduces the song at gigs, he always gets a laugh due to his comments about it being about ‘how unhealthy batchelors are’ or similar. Underneath those lighthearted comments however lies a song of great beauty, which is very personal and very sad. Such is the way of a lot of great pop songs.

Always dreaming of the open road…

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:44:54 +0000

Always dreaming of the open road…

Cracking slippers, Gromit ;-)

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:49:56 +0000

Cracking slippers, Gromit ;-)

Something I have learnt today

Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:41:59 +0000

Sometimes the simplest of explanations really are the right ones…

Ooi doon't looike it Daaad

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 21:17:00 +0000

Today I travelled into the fens to visit my hometown, Downham Market. Although I now think of Cambridge to be ‘home’ when I visit my parents, Downham is my original hometown. It’s always tricky for me to go back to Downham as there are a lot of contradictory feelings mixed up in there. For a long time I didn’t go back at all because I couldn’t face it. Now I’m older I recognise my responsibilities to the relatives that still live there and I feel my duties quite keenly. I still get a sense of foreboding when I get on the train though. In typical fen style it was a frosty morning and the mist hung low over the great flat expanse. From the train I saw some horses and hundreds of white geese in a field, apparently travelled from nearby Welny to feed during the day.

My dad greeted me off the train as usual and we went to my Grandma’s house. All the ornaments are in the same position as they have been ever since I remember. Sometimes I find this comforting and sometimes creepy. After lunch we walked round the town. I always forget how close together everything is. In my imagination there are much greater distances between places like the Hollies carpark and the Clock. I went through a phase of dreaming about this place often, while I still found it hard to go back. So ordinary, just walking round through the precinct and round to Clackclose estate where Grandma lives.

In real life everything is just as the dreams, the same pull between familiarity and displacement. Dad and I went to look round Peacocks, Boots, Tesco and Reeds the furniture store. The Peacocks and Tesco both arrived after I left town but have already taken on an air of nostalgia. I find it odd that my Dad wants me to look in Tesco and then remember that Tesco counts as exciting in Downham. In Reeds I remember the day I left Downham to move away to Cambridge and took a new bed with me for my new room.

I don’t know what I find more depressing - the few shops that have closed down and are now boarded up, or the ones that are still there and don’t appear to have changed in 20 years. I swear there are things in the windows of the Stock Shop and AT Johnsons that have been there gathering dust all that time. The town was very quiet today and there were only a few people braving the chill for the 5 or so shops that were open. Mainly elderly couples and a few youths. I didn’t see anyone I know.

It’s only recently that I’ve come to realise that this is not a typical hometown experience. I thought most people left town at the earliest opportunity and would do anything not return. It’s surprises me, makes me happy and jealous all at the same time to learn that this isn’t always true. There are towns and villages where the whole community comes together at Christmas time, to drink with each other, share their news and their lives and have fun. Even if the young people have long since moved away to strike out on their own, they’re still drawn back every year and they all come together once more.

To me, Christmas has always been a time to draw away from friends, not towards them. I leave my London life behind and hibernate in a quiet time of TV, wine, my two parents and sometimes my brother. Everyone I knew in Cambridge has moved away, let alone Downham.

So I think I can be forgiven - just - if I seem churlish and begrudge these people in their other towns and villages their community spirit this Christmas. It’s just that I never had it and that makes me sad. Maybe sometime there will be a chance for me to join in with someone else’s. Until then it’s back to my books and my days of solitude, dreaming of when I can get back to real life again.

Monday 9pm

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 21:04:30 +0000

Watching Festive Q1 with Snave and drinking nice wine. Missing my baby already and it’s not even Christmas yet…x

Silly Horse has met her match!

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 10:48:00 +0000

Silly Horse has met her match!

BAD HORSE!

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 14:33:43 +0000

Silly Horse has been bad and has not posted any updates for yonks. Sorry about that.

This weekend I will be mostly (I hope): enjoying my new duvet, supping ale here http://www.greenwichunion.com/menus.html and eating lots here http://www.theprovidores.co.uk/prv.html. All in the company of my favourite other Horse :)

Roll on Saturday!

Going to see this lot tonight. I am a big fan of the winsome and the arcane.

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:54:48 +0000

Going to see this lot tonight. I am a big fan of the winsome and the arcane.

Getting too wordy now, just trying to redress the balance :)

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:15:13 +0000

Getting too wordy now, just trying to redress the balance :)

'Pocketed' - Ramona Herdman

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:08:41 +0000

We touch fingers slightly too long

handing a glass. The hairs on his arm

mesh like breath in the hairs of mine

as we lean drunken.

I sit in the quiet sour boysmell,

tile bench between us sliced

exact as a pew’s ribbon,

a separating inch of leather.

We touch eyes too long.

Giddy as the plummet

into lager, I count the ticks

in his iris, yellow-brown:

ridges in a boiled sweet’s pout.

We walk too slowly home.

Breath-plumes mingling like the lint

in our handcuffing pockets

would, were they blown dandelion-open, inside out.

Wed 5th November

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:44:42 +0000

Just had my first gingerbread latte of winter, and it pleases me greatly! What with that and the US elections, it’s been a good couple of days all round. I am easily pleased, it seems :-)

One of my new favourite places to eat...might have had more to do with the company of course :)

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:57:04 +0000

One of my new favourite places to eat...might have had more to do with the company of course :)

Flight of the Conchords

Mon, 03 Nov 2008 23:00:43 +0000

I’ve just discovered this show, it’s genius! Best quote so far:

“I’m not crying, it’s just raining on my face…”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_of_the_Conchords

"The true has no windows. Nowhere does the true look out to the universe."

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:17:20 +0000

“The true has no windows. Nowhere does the true look out to the universe.”

- Benjamin (re-quoting someone else…Goethe I think…all to do with monads)