I've just completed my orbit of the M25 via Iain Sinclair's breathtaking book London Orbital, and I'd like to share the music which has accompanied me en-route on Sinclair's psychogeographical tour around London's outer rim. This week I have been mostly listening to Jim Moray, who, with Eliza, Kate and others, is a young and exciting voice in English folk. These young people's acceptance into the mainstream signals the confidence and crossover-potential of the current English folk 'scene'. Radio Three devoted a whole evening to English folk a short time ago (hear it here), grappling with awkward questions about why English folk music is so marginalised, and playing lots of tunes old and new to celebrate its vitality and relevance.
"Yes, Chuck Berry was great. Yes, Bo Diddley was great. Yes, Harry Cox was just as great," said Tony Engle, head of Topic Records. Jim Moray's Raggle Taggle Gipsy was perfect accompaniment for Sinclair's encounters with the strange and oddly wonderful on the byways of Essex, Kent, Surrey. Encounters which enriched my understandings about what Englishness is. A thing far more complex, multi-layered, dark and mysterious than generally assumed, a thing which embraces the Beckhams and Bill Griffiths, the Afro-Celts and Ron and Reggie Kray.
Great that Greenbelt are showcasing some good English folkies this year; the festival may be onto something ripe, a rising awareness of something which may just help, in these times of confusion around national identity, to positively redefine what Englishness is. Barking bard Bill Bragg is engaged in this search for "a new England". Another man's journey worth joining in with.
"
Venue for 'Making Love' is Tent 2 Cafe (one of the four big tops)- capacity
stated as 1000.
"
This is what I received about the workshop I am doing in the big ymca Prague Festival, it is a good quote!
It is a workshop, sorta training session(three in the week x 1.5 hours) about love and how do we do it .....seeing that Jesus mentioned it a few times and made out it was pretty important. It will be experiential and good fun and deep too. I will take the group, with their permission, down a road where they share in small groups in a fun way, personal stuff, faith stuff, childhood stuff ........ and come out of it feeling good and knowing themselves better, skills too, loving themselves better, better lovers of humans and feeling warm about their creator..Thought I would share that with you......................................... you are beautiful ..................bhp
I'm nobody's child
I'm nobody's child
Nobody wants me because
I'm nobody's child
As a man who flounces about in long white robes for a 'living' (whatever that means) I feel a bit ambivalent about the forthcoming appearance of ultimate flowy-robey people The Polyphonic Spree at this year's Greenbelt. After all, lots of clergy go to Greenbelt to get away from all that and be among people dressed like real human beings for four days.
Although obviously, in my designer Everton shirts, I epitomise the event's counter-hippy couture I admit I've lost this argument, jester hats with bells on and stripey dungarees being the standard festival wear. But my real ambivalence about the Spree bumping up to Billy Bragg on Trade Justice night is that the occasion may lose some of its teeth. They'll be a fine spectacle for sure, but perhaps rose-tinted too.
This is the thing: I was all geared up for Greenbelt Monday going out on a good old Bragg campaigning high, Bill firing up the fifteen thousand to get out there and shake up our local politicians on trade. Now I fear what'll happen is half the punters will float away on a polyphonic cloud, only using their Christian Aid postcards-to-Tony to paddle through the air as they go.
I'm not worried that BB will be out-performed by P-Spree; very different styles, equally high class. I'm just hoping the crowds will stay to love him too, this one-man Clash, the man who kept the opposition going during the dark Thatcher years, (who, along with Greenbelt and little else kept me going during the dark Thatcher years), a serious trouper.
Perhaps the festival may invite them to come together - in the style of Bill's wondrous eighties roadshows. Ah, now I'm imagining justice and joy joining hands as Bill (robed, of course) invites the Spree back onstage for the great finale, his classic reworking of Route 66, A13, Trunk Road To The Sea. Now that would be heavenly. The perfect way to send the punters home (or at least, the ones heading over to Essex).
Sorry I haven’t blogged for so long, but I’ve been too busy doing Greenbelt stuff, to find time to write about it!
I’m currently up to my ears with village and campsite plans, discussing potential sculptures, ensuring the venue, noise, accessibility and health and safety teams are on-track, updating the Health and Safety Policy for the Insurance, planning the Venue Managers’ Training Day, getting volunteer ticket applications completed, discussing risk assessments and so much more.
Needless to say the panic levels are pretty high! Some things help reduce them, others only exacerbate, for example:
Not Helping: any of the 20+ daily Greenbelt emails that start: “sorry to let you down at this late stage…” or “I know you’re busy, but…”
Helping: emails that start “would it help if I did x for you?”
Helping: a neighbour kindly lending me his entire Billy Bragg back-catalogue to ensure I “complete my education” pre-festival.
Not helping: having to avoid same neighbour so as not to have to admit that 1 month on I still haven’t managed to find time to listen to all the CDs.
Helping: knowing that my Greenbelt wishlist dreams have come true and that 24 robe wearing Texans will make all this work worth it.
Not Helping: “so about dressing rooms then?”
Helping: another neighbour dropping in with the traditional box of chocolates to celebrate the recent safe arrival of their new son, the latest addition to our little community.
Not Helping: seeing that the park on the corner was covered in Police Crime Scene tape (again) this morning and wondering what kind of world baby Omar has been born into…
Not Helping: the Greenbelt Homepage displaying a countdown to the festival – like I didn’t already know we’ve only got 43 days left to get it all ready!!!
Helping: errrm….can I get back to you on that one?
I'm nobody's child
I'm nobody's child
Nobody wants me because
I'm nobody's child
Just found out that the Polyphonic Spree will be playing GB! And then I saw that Denison Witmer is playing the Performance Cafe! Once again, GB amazes musically...do not miss these acts...!
Also saw I'm on schedule to play Saturday morning Sunday sometime at Performance Cafe...
I've never heard my mum speak quite that way before. Hearing her describe in close detail how a frog, on the surface of the small pond in their back garden, had patiently, fervently, stalked and caught a fly, I blinked. Could almost have been listening to Annie Dillard. I wonder (yes, wonder) how her recent progress in painting has also helped her verbal powers of observation and expression flourish. How long before the wonder of nature and the power of words combine in her so she can echo Annie's deep poetry: "All day long I feel created. I can see the blown dust on the skin on the back of my hand, the tiny trapezoids of chipped clay, moistened and breathed alive."
And then I went to Borders and in the current Harper's Magazine I read a lengthy, thoughtful article by Jack Hitt, speculating on "the declining power of the sacred word to reach our hearts as something other than shibboleth" and the slow emergence of words born of environmentalism which are perhaps slowly replacing them: compost, which shares its roots with communion; off the grid, describing new forms of asceticism or monasticism; pollution - percieve how interchangeable that is in common usage with the older term, sin. For resurrected, read recycled.
Hitt's no anti-Christ. He's trying, if you'll excuse me, to dig deeper into just how we create meaning, express understanding, today. He suggests that Christ's use of language helps us in this search, a "stock of metaphor ... drawn from ... daily life - seeds, weeds, plants, farming ... daily chores ... family quarrels - intensely familiar dramas." Drawn from the same stuff with which Annie creates such powerful life-pictures.
Maybe my mum's new back-garden language is a sign of what's happening, subtly, to all of us. Hitt concludes:
"New words appear in the culture and assume a subtle power, one that begins to feel like truth. For now, we might not be able to hear the fullness of their meanings or foresee the ripe possibilities of their future connotations. ... But where does any word start? For the answer, let us now turn to the Gospel of the Lord, as revealed by John, when he wrote, "In the beginning was the Word."
............. 'Vitreous Detachment'. ....................
When I went the Docs today folowing a weeks wait since the holiday, he sent me immediatly to the eye clinic. I was seeing a blanket swinging in my right eye and blurring my vision. So ................ some concern from dear old me. Nobody else can see this stinker but I can and it was bigtime driving to Italy through France of course.
Yellow eye drops and a ban from driving for the ''day out at the hospital and I was diagnosed as ....... he said a 'jelly' detaches from the retina and causes this. It may get worse before it gets better but then it will get better. It will drop off and just become a floater in the eye.It cannot be reattached. hmmmmmm
Relief.!
The same day Joan is in for an op and that meant strange vibes in the Wilson home. So the end of the day leaves me getting ready for work a.m. as Joan lies in hospital and I am galad to say, home tomorrow.
It has all gone a bit Pete Tong ....... I say that because, as I click them keys, Pete is playing them on last Fridays tape .....the vibes are good.......... I can have it really load with Joan being away!!
Short reflection today. No deep reflection. But .......have a look at the redesigned 'pearls of wilson' on my website and the 'Level 5' too!! See the poems written by some of the people I work with and feel them ........ great stuff.
B beautiful .............................................. bhp
www.pipwilson.com
Sunday Sunday ........................... lunch by Joy ....... and conversations with Angels ............
The bad thing again today was plowing through London traffic ........... so slow and tense and such a waste of human time ...... good job I had Joan and Gilles Peterson to keep me sane.
Busy week ahead and do not feel best prepared for it but ......... I like that bible verse:- "God wants what we have not what we havent"
So here it is .......... I hand it over ..........................
................................................................bhp