Hard On Me

I bought the Mock Tudor Album a few years back. This is another one of my favourite songs by Richard Thompson. Great words and intense guitar playing with it.

Hard on me, hard on me
Why do you grind me small
Hard on me, hard on me
At every fence I fall

I bite my rage
I stop my breath
I shake my cage
I swim with emptiness

Hard on me, hard on me
Like they were hard on you
Hard on me, hard on me
So I can stumble too

My circuits seize
My senses jam
I don't know who to please
Trapped inside the Wicker Man

You're so hard on me
You're so hard on me
You're so hard on me

Hard on me, hard on me
Why do you grind me small
Hard on me, hard on me
At every fence I fall

Unzip my heart
Unbraid my veins
Unstitch my wantonness
And loosen up my reins
Before I dare
Go on that hill
In dumb despair
Unfreeze my will

You're so hard on me
You're so hard on me
You're so hard on me

Now to find out how to play it ... my fingers are still hardening up on the strings!

So much for the good old days

An article from the Australian titled "Without soothing heroin tonics, we're addicted to panic"
by Emma Tom, she notes:

"AUSTRALIAN society has gone to the dogs. The young are intravenously connected to iPods at birth and think nothing of pulling out a pink bit and performing a turkey slap live on national telly. Parents are permissive, schools are postmodern, and cruise ships, once innocuous floating nursing homes, are now dens of druggish vice and nudist iniquity.

If only we could return to the golden era. You know, that time when neat nuclear family units flourished behind white picket fences, blissfully free from the multitude of social ills that plague us today. No scary new technology, no sleazesome celebrities, no teenage girls in slutty porn-star singlets. Just good, old-fashioned moral uprightness."

Ahh yes, the rosy tinted view of the past still prevails, and the sky is still falling..

Emma Tom continues ...

"The overwhelming evidence is that the more things change, the more they stay eerily similar. But this is unlikely to come as a comfort to a society that loves working itself into a sky-is-falling frenzy. Oddly enough, we seem to prefer the panic. "

The good old days never really existed. Some things remain the same, some things change.

Thanks Romana (from the MOLES discussion group) for the link.

Poems by Luke Davies

I stumbled across a book of poems by Luke Davies - who wrote the book Candy (on which the film is based) - which is really quite beautiful. It's called "Totem". It has one very long poem "Totem Poem" with over 500 lines and then 40 other poems.

Here are some verses from Totem

In the yellow time of pollen when the fields were ablaze
we were very near bewildered by beauty.
The sky was a god-bee that hummed. All the air boomed
with that thunder. It was both for the prick
and the nectar we drank that we gave ourselves over.

... and

In the dead of night in the dead of time
the private creature nibbled, milky under moonlight
Not a pine needle dropped. A salmon pulse throbbed muted
from the slumberous cold waters. The lake's meniscus shivered.
Dragonflies flinched, then picked up the void where they'd left off.

This is really lovely, evocative writing.

You can read about the book here:
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/18/1092765003067.html?from=storyrhs.

Budding
by Marie Gibb

(I can't remember where I found this poem, but I like it.)

The mind is having an affair
with a body in full denial
A conscious on full alert and
holding a trial
They say if you’re flirting with
the idea you’ve already sinned
and the mind is sentenced wearing a grin
all over itself because it has already
gone there
Heart has been agitating the temple and
inducing hunger, feeding its urges
prodding the body to give in and splurge
What are you waiting for
Refusal to indulge in obvious excitement
could be taxing on your health
Get swept up and carried away
Bathe… No, dwell in the river of your fantasies
and the body will surely follow
getting itself wet
Stop fretting about tomorrow and live
unbridled losing your inhibitions today
This is the winner’s path… unapologetic
and the losers are drunk with
envy of those and fat from boredoms
garden
Be frivolous with yourself and listen
to your heart
Begging for a pardon
Listen to a pro and let it go
Just let it all go

Also reading: Candy (Luke Davies)
I haven't seen the film yet. The first few chapters I found compelling.
Let's see how it goes ...

Monday Monday

It's a grey and green monday morning
In a glassy green and steel cityscape
Of wobbly floating reflections
Of the grey sky.

The rain floats down
There is no wind blowing
It drizzles onto the black tar
Onto the black streets and paths
The women are dressed in black
The men are dressed in black
All under a floating sea
Of black umbrellas
(Occasional red or yellow ones
mark the optimists I suppose).

Its been like this for days and days
And I'm tired of it
All the wet, cold, green and glassy blackness
Of this grey and green monday morning.

Postscript: The weather did improve - as it always does!
And yes, not only was the weather bad, but it symbolised my mood for a range of reasons.
But is the weather a cause or just co-incidental?!

Reading: On the Road - Jack Kerouac

I've just started reading Jack Kerouac's "On The Road" - a classic I should have read 30 years ago. Better late than never, I guess. I already find it compelling with lines like this:

"But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life, after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' "

All I can say is "Awww!"

Here is a review of the book: http://bookreviews.nabou.com/reviews/ontheroad.html

Sandy Denny Video!

This is a wonderful find - Sandy Denny singing some of her songs. (North Star Grassman and the Raven, a bit of Crazy Lady Blues and Late November). It's a bit wobbly at times, but a must for Sandy fans. I find her voice entrancing still, after so many years - saw her play with Fairport Convention at the Sydney Opera House in 1974, and never forgot it. (Yeah ... I was young!). She died in 1978, aged only 31.

Here is a good article on her life and talent from the Guardian newspaper


Here are the video clip links:
Sandy Denny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Rd_gMrmf6g

Fotheringay (Sandy Denny's band after leaving Fairport): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTae4KLRn9c singing Too Much Nothing

Fairport Convention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0sSxk7yxn8 singing "Now be thankful"

Fairport Convention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBYNzVfknB8 singing "Polly on the Shore" (features Trevor Lucas, Sandy's husband)

Fairport Convention: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNsdVo2Em9o Singing the "Hanging Song" from the John Babbacombe Lee album

A beautiful and intense poem by Paul Amlehn

(Found it here:
http://www.drunkenboat.com/db7/index.html )

from The Seven Words

I

When the world has been reduced to a dark wood I will find you
a taste of ashes floats on the air. The musk is in the deer,
the fire in the wood. What new constellations of torment rise
for me now? Like weak prey torn I have bared my innermost hidden
to my killer. And if I become the ancient traveller I shall go
down the path the air milky and spiced with trade winds with
rose leaves in closed jars. Here it has the sublime confusion
of a dream we cannot remember. The great fire which illuminates
us and sings in our flesh leaves us a husk of helpless shadows.
Again these same thoughts that fall and fly. Whistlings
of death and unheard music. I have been humiliated by the
destructive powers of my own love. I have confessed an appetite
that is unspeakable. At the time of telling blood flows from
each eyelash pieces of the heart that come through the eyes.


II

Along the path back to the cold of nothingness I hear the light
beat on the other side. All is visible and all elusive, all is
near and can't be touched. How much longer must I carry this
body of grief? The useless anguish of my flesh and my weeping
without tears. Amnesia guides me through these solitary
fields over the numb earth. There is something I am here for
something I have to do before I can go the dead around like
birdcalls rain in my face. I have created a loneliness for
myself that no one can imagine. I am filled with all things
seen for the last time.

Love in the personals

An interesting article in the Sydney Morning Herald Archives by Catherine Keenan
(January 3, 2004):

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/02/1072908885008.html

This story is about personal ads in literary magazines like the London Review of Books and New York Review of Books - but goes into the use of emails and personas people are able to create for themselves on line.

This is a very interesting development in how people meet and interact. My kids seem to find half (if not more) of their friends via the internet discussion groups/chat rooms. The trouble is (from a parent's point of view) is that they stay up way too late at night chatting to their mates in the USA or Denmark or other far flung places from Australia! (hey, parents are supposed to tell their kids to go to bed and get enough sleep aren't they?)

What is interesting is the way you can create some particular version of yourself on line - via a blog, or even just email conversations.

After a discussion of her research on people who place personals in literary magazines, the articles author, Catherine Keenan, concludes with this:

"I did a quick Google search of the name he gave me, but this yielded only a musician affiliated with Philip Glass, a ballet dancer and a lumber salesman in Louisiana, none of whom seemed likely. I emailed Paul, saying as much, and asked him to tell me more about himself.

He replied: "Why do people always make such sweeping assumptions about those of us who work in the lumber business? Is it really so odd that I should mix an interest in postfeminism with the care and storage of hardwoods?" He continues to write to me in the guise of a southern lumber salesman, talking about his special Creole recipe for a chicken-based Christmas cake, and assuring me that "when you specify cypress, you've made the choice of kings!"

Once started, some of these correspondences are hard to end. But in true LRB fashion, I still know absolutely nothing concrete about him. He may be 18 or 80, cruel or kind, ugly or gorgeous, a respected academic or an inmate at an internet-enabled asylum. But I am intrigued. And that - whether you are an intellectual, a writer or a timber expert - is the goal of all advertising. "

Back to the fretboard

I got my self a new guitar yesterday. The old one wasn't staying tune, and the neck was too wide for my hand anyway. The new one is much easier to handle, and sounds much better. What has inspired this has been ordering my Sandy Denny Songbook from Maartin Allcock. At last I can learn her wonderful songs. Can't wait for him to do Richard Thompson's songbook as well.

Fingers are sore while I get back into it though.

Richard Thomspon and Mirror Blue

I'm currently listening to Richard Thompson's CD "Mirror Blue".
This is a fantastic collection of songs. This one is one of favourites on the album, but then again I love them all anyway.

Taking my business Elsewhere

If she's not here by now, then I guess she's not coming
If she's not here by now, then I guess she don't care
Oh waiter, I won't waste your time anymore
You've already started to sweep down the floor
And I guess she's not coming, so I'll head for the door
I'll be taking my business elsewhere

It wasn't for me, that spark in her eyes
It wasn't for me, that halo in her hair
When she touched me a lump rose up into my throat
But she must act that way with any old soak
And waiter you don't seem to share in the joke
So I'll be taking my business elsewhere

She called me her fantasy
And boldly she kissed me
I'll never get over the sheer surprise
Of her acting that way
And I'm healing okay
But for the eyes of her...

Oh it's cold in the rain and it's dark and it's sad
And I'll miss her tonight on my lonely back stair
I'm sorry for taking so much of your space
I'll move down the street to some friendlier place
'Cause I guess she's not coming, and you're sick of my face
I'll be taking my business elsewhere