I do not want a hug

Erin the hedgehog was sad 

“cheer up” , said Felipe Weasel, “it might never happen”. Felipe tried to hug Erin

“I DO NOT WANT A HUG” said Erin, and carried on walking 

“Turn that frown upside-down” said Otto the (bat-eared) fox. “Come play in the leaves with me”

“I DO NOT WANT TO PLAY IN THE LEAVES” said Erin, and carried on walking 

“You just need to think positive” said Suri the Meerkat “stand proud and look at the world”

“I DO NOT WANT TO STAND PROUD” said Erin, and carried on walking 

“eat some of these hazelnuts and you’ll feel better” said Scurry the Squirrel 

“I DO NOT WANT TO EAT HAZELNUTS” said Erin, and carried on walking 

Ereth the Porcupine Sat still, on a log. She looked at Erin, and then looked at the space next to her on the log, and then looked back at Erin.

“AREN’T YOU GOING TO TELL ME TO CHEER UP?” asked Erin

“no,” said Ereth

“WELL THEN AREN’T YOU GOING TO TELL ME TO STAND PROUD?”

“no,” said Ereth

“WELL THEN AREN’T YOU GOING TO TELL ME TO PLAY IN THE LEAVES?”

“no”, said Ereth 

Erin was so used to being angry and spiky that she didn’t know how to react.

“if you like,” said Ereth, “I’ll help you get that thorn out of your paw”

Erin realised that the thorn had been there all along, and that was why she was so grumpy. When Ereth pulled it out, she felt better, and a also a little silly for being angry with her friends. 

They had tried to help, but because it wasn’t the help she needed, she had been mean to them.

“thank you, Ereth”, said Erin. I didn’t mean to be mean, I was just hurting. Would you wait for me while I go say sorry to my friends?

“I will”, said Ereth, “And when you get back, if you like, you can sit on my log with me”

Erin went to see Felipe, and gave him a hug.

Then she went to see Otto, and chased him through the leaves

Then she went to see Suri, and they both stood as tall as they could and watched the sun set

Then she went to see Scurry, and picked up some hazel nuts on the way, which they shared.

When she got back to Ereth, there was a little fire going, in front of the log. 

“If you like,” Said Ereth “you can have a hug” 

“I would like a hug!”, said Erin.

She carefully tucked away her spikes, and cuddled up to Ereth. 

The Lighthouse

Old George lives at the lighthouse. He is long past retirement age, but kept the light going, unpaid, because it needs doing, and he likes living in the lighthouse. 

He loves the air at the top. At a hundred and three feet high, the tower's elevation means that the air is palpably thinner, and George, having spent a good deal of his life at the lamp, says he finds it easier to breathe up there.

There is little call nowadays for the lighthouse, and it has become simply daymark, in function, with the decline of the shipping industry, but George still keeps up the tradition, just in case. 

He enjoys watching the boats. In his youth it was cargo vessels, but now it’s mostly just leisure boats, and the occasional fishing expedition. Watching from the top of the tower, inhaling a sweet mixture of pipe tobacco and lamp oil, Old George can see the whole town, and feels almost as though he is their protector, ever vigilant, should anyone need help.

He sees Horace the Grocer’s rowboat, adrift on the river, and chuckles to himself, as he imagines the scolding Horace will be getting now for having sailed home drunk from the pub again. It’s quicker, and shorter, to walk home, but greengrocery belies Horace’s true passion, and after a few drams of navy rum, he is wont to feel the water under him.

“It’s  not a bad old life really”, George mused

Ebb & Flow

Ever moving, the ebb and flow of the sea serves to calm. The predictable entropy, every wave different, yet the same. I search for reason or purpose but come up short, and yet am not disheartened. Perhaps the point is not to achieve any one specific thing, but just to face each new challenge calmly, confident that it will work out, because, one way or another, it always has.
Half a life ago I was so sure I had everything figured out and knew where I was heading, and to what end. But there is no end, save the inevitable ultimate end, when I become one with the universe again. Failure has been the greatest teacher I have had. Not so much the personal failure, which more and more I realise is actually success at continuing, but the failure of plans to come to fruition; the failure of society to realise that if everyone is cared for, everyone is better off for it.

So what now? Never has the future seemed more uncertain, or more daunting. I have a feeling, as though it is my destiny to be presented with answers that seem too easy, and almost always are. Yet for every opportunity that has crumbled to dust, I have forged the foundation of a different possibility. Success is not unobtainable, simply finite. You don’t achieve your goal, and then simply rest for the remainder of your days, each mile marker of success contributes a chapter to your story. Success is not one thing, but a series of small victories, and the failures don’t negate them. Even when balance seems to be in favour of the disappointments, it is invariably just a matter of perspective. Wins and losses are temporary - they are the end of a story, but not the end of the story.
There is a temptation to view things in an absolute, binary manner - particularly in the settling dust of a skirmish that has left you momentarily defeated. And yet, even in the face of this seemingly insurmountable obstacle, as one person falls short of your expectations or hopes, another rises above them. Victory from defeat.

Björk in my ears is a multisensory experience

I was reminded today of the existence of Björk's "Debut". I use the quotes partly because it's a title, but also because it was only a title. It was Björk's first foray into solo artistry since leaving the sugarcubes, but already had the startlingly disco "Björk" in 1977 (no, really) and 1990's Gling-Gló under her belt, to say nothing of the albums she did with the Sugarcubes, and also with KUKL.

So it wasn't in the traditional sense, a debut. But as Björk drawing a line under everything that had gone on before, and declaring, albeit subtly, that this was something new. And it was. Looking back, it makes total sense, with how her career has gone since then.

If you're recommending Björk to a first-time listener, whichever of her styles you prefer, or want to impress upon the listener, it's likely to be something from after 1992. You might recommend the earlier stuff as further listening, to someone who has already delved into Björk's catalogue, or you might even recommend one of the albums on its own merit, though that's still unlikely to be in the context of "this will give you an idea what Björk is about".

I actually got into Björk because of the singles on Debut, and then, particularly Play Dead. The first single I bought was Army of Me. It was the CD single with b-sides rather than remixes. Army of Me is terrifying. It wasn't at all what I expected, and I didn't really like it. Not a great start. The b-sides were Cover Me, You've Been Flirting Again, and Sweet Intuition. They're all songs that I adore now, and have a special connection to, as this EP was where I really became a fan.

They're all quite sparse and disjointed, which is definitely part of their charm, but which at first confused me. It also intrigued me: here was someone using elements I recognised, in combinations that I didn't (like the pretty dresses and doc martens, that were soon a thing), and that forced me to re-assess what was acceptable in music.

It didn't feel like it at the time, but that last statement was pretty fucking huge. I've listened to a lot of music, and there is no shortage of artists who've influenced what I make, and how I make it. Björk though, kind of opened a door and asked "have you seen what's through here?".

So the first album I actually heard was Post. I didn't get it immediately it came out. I wasn't yet a devout fanboy. I'd dipped my toe in the water and it felt fine, but I was still getting my head round Army of Me. It took Hyperballad to get me properly on board. I loved that its name was a description rather than a name. I was/is exactly that. A ballad, with a bonkers beat over it. I was still only becoming aware of the potential of orchestral strings over an electronic beat, and Hyperballad caught me at just the right time.

I got Post in the ltd edition digipak version. Again I was confused. I already knew I loved Hyperballad, and I was growing to like Army of Me. It was also nice to hear an English version of You've been flirting again, but a lot of the rest of the album left me utterly bewildered. I resolved to come back to it and try again, and went and got distracted with George Michael and Radiohead.

Some months later, having neglected to try Post again, I was in HMV, and they had the then brand-new Homogenic, on a listening post. I popped on the impressively robust cans and dove in. By the end of the track, I had decided I was having the ltd edition digipak again. getting it home and finding that Hunter is followed immediately by Jóga, reassured me completely that my impulse buy was definitely going to have been worthwhile.

The instrumentation on Homogenic is predominantly strings over electronic beats, mostly provided by Mark Bell of LFO (who I just learned is from my home town. Yay!). It was while she was touring this album that I first got to see her live. The entire set was just Björk, Mark Bell, and the Icelandic String Octet. My mind was blown.

Ever since then, I've been pretty completist about her stuff, working back and getting the stuff that cam out before I was properly aware of her (hence finally hearing Debut after both Post and Homogenic.

I haven't really kept up with the last few albums, and I'm still not really sure what scared me off, I'll get round to it some time. But from Debut to the Live Box, I've got pretty much every b-side and remix, and I know that stuff really well because I've listened to it to death...but not for a while.

It's always a pleasure to go back revisit an artist you love, and hear them through ears that have been changed by experience, since last they were host to this album, or that EP.

So today I listened to Debut, and then Post, and now I'm on Homogenic. What struck me is that listening to each, you get a kind of mental image of the artist as a character. Like, what was she experiencing to write these songs? The first album's overall feel is summed up in the title of the album's one cover - "Like Someone in Love". The whole album is the excitement and optimism about a new love, the feeling of boundless joy, as everything feels to fall into place, and anything seems possible.

Debut closes with The Anchor Song, which is quite bittersweet in tone, and the imagery is of sinking to the dark depths and making it home. It's not dark as such, it's a contended voice that sings it, but one which is maybe a little more resigned than the boisterous, energetic voice of a few songs ago, a little more melancholy than the voice accompanying the harp on the jazz standard.

So the angry, pounding, unrelenting power of Army of Me, when played right after Debut, makes you sit up and take notice. This is no longer the happy-go-lucky protagonist of the first adventure, it's the confident, no-shit-taking superhero that is going to guide us through her bonkers breakup recovery methods. It's glorious, such a contrast to Debut. It's more mature on every level - complexity of songs, themes, lyrics, music, production. Björk was in control, and getting stronger for it.

It was that contrast that made me want to write today. I could go on, dissecting each album, listing all the amazing b-sides that are virtually unknown, but Just hearing these albums again made me want to share the story of how Björk lit a fire in me.

The Storm

A couple of weeks ago there was a storm. When I heard the first thunder, I was out in the garden, enjoying the sunshine. I set my phone to record, and sat in the shelter watching the rain.

The storm lasted just under half an hour, and I determined that I would use the recording on a tune. I’d intended to chop it into bits, and use them as intros and outros to a collection of tunes. Then I listened back to the storm, and decided instead to leave it in one piece, and just work around it with some synths.

I went through about 100 synths, playing around with notes, chords, arpeggiators, twiddly knobs, pedals, until I had about 15 that I either really liked, or thought would make interesting white noise, or that sounded like anything from Tron or Blade Runner.

I recorded random bits of melody, and odd chords, at various points throughout the storm, then gradually added bits in between. After some editing, which I found really methodical and soothing, I had something that was starting to sound coherent.

I will most likely end up adding more to it at some point, or playing about with the levels, but as a first draft, I think is ready.

I’ll warn you now though, it’s actually half an hour long, so, you know, I won’t be offended if it’s not for you.

P4

The Speed of Life

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