I got back home a bit - Er, yeah - drunk. I have been obsessed recently with PJ Harvey's new album, Let England Shake, and obsessed with PJ for a lot longer. I'd been listening to her online, the way I know how, on iTube and also at guardian.co.uk, where she has a couple of studio performances. Listening to her and her band of old geezers makes me inordinately happy and being able to watch them makes me even happier. It's quite too much how I love everything about her. Really quite sad, but quite happy too. Since discovering Let England Shake, my computer's screensaver or whatever it's called, is her sporting a rather fetching head dress, which looks like it's been made from ostrich feathers. This weekend I was further pleased to discover more You Tubes of her singing whilst wearing said head.
So, getting back home, drunk, watched a couple, possibly my two favourites at the moment, the guardian video of The Last Living Rose backed up by her old geezers, all of them well turned out and her with her reddish Dorset nose. The good thing too about the studio vids is seeing their instruments (missis); pleasingly sturdy.
The video-videos, I mean the music videos, the ones produced to be marketed as visual accompaniments to the music, are also rich. 'The Glorious Land', probably my other favourite at the moment, starts with a simple shot of a huge tree, an extremely English scene, very simple, very very beautiful. And I've always had a bit of a thing for women with very black hair. Hence 'bulbous english trees, black hair'.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
bursting
is there anything, we ask in our desolation,
is there a reason, enveloped in sorrow we lament
and are sincere and bowed and scraping
in pathetic limbo, in a tunnel of fear.
strands surge forth, the tunnel made strands,
streaming in glorious love and array
galloping strident as the red on the nose
and rhythmic strumming of weeping joy.
bulbous english trees, black hair
woman most devastating in this very
moment this very particle of faith
chanting poetic, wielding drily.
concocting her own verse, her own,
her own, craters, moon landing,
continental shift is nothing in her wake,
is there anything, is there, is there.
cry unabashed, lyric on, score forth,
is there anything, keep the cry and the flame
is there anything, she wails and is wrapt
is there anything more beautiful than her.
Sunday 29 May 2011
Thursday 19 May 2011
Twirl and spin
This is another one influenced by a TV show, I know, I'm so... something. The show is Deadwood, the episode the penultimate one of season 2. Whereas one might possibly be able to argue that watching West Wing is required for much of my versicals, I don't think the same could be said for this, at least I think I hope not.
The episode is particularly poignant because a child has died, but a sense of release or relief of build-up of anxiety is common in the series, which is full of feuding, strategising and blood. The music at the end of each episode somehow reflects this sense of release and as with all the HBO stuff, the soundtrack to the credits and show is as good as the dramatic content. As befits the mid-late 19th century American gold-rush setting, the melodies are blue-grass, country, folk etc., all of which are right up my alley missis. The episode in question ends with 'Hey Willie boy' by Townes Van Zandt - Great. It seems interesting, maybe, that some of the lyrics are:
Hey willie how you gonna feel
When the leaves turn gold
Beneath your heels
Twirl and spin never gonna fall
Fallin just won’t do at all
No that wouldn’t do at all
- which I only realised after I'd written the bit about falling. Er, probably not all that spooky at all.
These were the original first two stanzas of the poem but I decided to jettison them:
there was a wooden prairie house
and what with the bonnets and all
we moderners may have thought
how quaint and primitive.
a psalm, numbered, catalogued,
the word, given forth as by town crier
and the preacher man stood back
almost losing his footing.
- There are echoes of my other stuff, 'soul forgotten', 'core of the earth' plus my seemingly never-ending theme of The Past and how life was... cheaper? Something like that.
I often/ usually pen the title then the poem but this time I added the title at the end (just now in fact), having forgotten about titles.
I recommend the TVS song - Unfortunately I couldn't find an original (i.e. by the man himself) version on iTube but...
Oh and in case you're in wonderment, yes, the 'sole' - 'soul' thing is deliberate. What a saddo.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wood and Water
we were shown the bubbling brook
beneath booted feet, sprung forth
around the sole and later a man
scaling a wooden stair, cradling a child.
in those days things were different
in those days men were men younger
child and adult, never the twain,
teenless times and more mortality.
why were we shown the water
seeping and gurgling from the earth?
because atop the stair a question is answered
on the landing breath is caught, stock taken.
the water is shallow and the landing is slight:
the surface; the soul forgotten
all the while the climb of the stair
and the surging of the earth's core.
the volcano eternal and ancient
gradual and emoting, profound
beneath surface tension, way beneath,
leading up to the trickling seam of future.
loss of foothold is not perilous
slipping up, bowled over by
things close to the face of the planet
emanating irresistibly, sucked in we are.
sucked in we are drawn out
layers, rings as in the redwood
and the man who carried the child
his love was in the centre of the trunk.
The episode is particularly poignant because a child has died, but a sense of release or relief of build-up of anxiety is common in the series, which is full of feuding, strategising and blood. The music at the end of each episode somehow reflects this sense of release and as with all the HBO stuff, the soundtrack to the credits and show is as good as the dramatic content. As befits the mid-late 19th century American gold-rush setting, the melodies are blue-grass, country, folk etc., all of which are right up my alley missis. The episode in question ends with 'Hey Willie boy' by Townes Van Zandt - Great. It seems interesting, maybe, that some of the lyrics are:
Hey willie how you gonna feel
When the leaves turn gold
Beneath your heels
Twirl and spin never gonna fall
Fallin just won’t do at all
No that wouldn’t do at all
- which I only realised after I'd written the bit about falling. Er, probably not all that spooky at all.
These were the original first two stanzas of the poem but I decided to jettison them:
there was a wooden prairie house
and what with the bonnets and all
we moderners may have thought
how quaint and primitive.
a psalm, numbered, catalogued,
the word, given forth as by town crier
and the preacher man stood back
almost losing his footing.
- There are echoes of my other stuff, 'soul forgotten', 'core of the earth' plus my seemingly never-ending theme of The Past and how life was... cheaper? Something like that.
I often/ usually pen the title then the poem but this time I added the title at the end (just now in fact), having forgotten about titles.
I recommend the TVS song - Unfortunately I couldn't find an original (i.e. by the man himself) version on iTube but...
Oh and in case you're in wonderment, yes, the 'sole' - 'soul' thing is deliberate. What a saddo.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Wood and Water
we were shown the bubbling brook
beneath booted feet, sprung forth
around the sole and later a man
scaling a wooden stair, cradling a child.
in those days things were different
in those days men were men younger
child and adult, never the twain,
teenless times and more mortality.
why were we shown the water
seeping and gurgling from the earth?
because atop the stair a question is answered
on the landing breath is caught, stock taken.
the water is shallow and the landing is slight:
the surface; the soul forgotten
all the while the climb of the stair
and the surging of the earth's core.
the volcano eternal and ancient
gradual and emoting, profound
beneath surface tension, way beneath,
leading up to the trickling seam of future.
loss of foothold is not perilous
slipping up, bowled over by
things close to the face of the planet
emanating irresistibly, sucked in we are.
sucked in we are drawn out
layers, rings as in the redwood
and the man who carried the child
his love was in the centre of the trunk.
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