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On the Friday of this week, this time last year, we went to Shoreditch to experience the Midsummer Solstice @state51 and @GhostBoxRecords . It was a warm and balmy evening.
That week was a life lesson, something that will stay with me forever.
It seems odd recalling it now, when we have all been confined to our homes for 3 months.
"Time had gone soft at the crossroads, & let me show you how", means something completely different now
It seems odd recalling it now, when we have all been confined to our homes for 3 months.
"Time had gone soft at the crossroads, & let me show you how", means something completely different now
You can watch some of the main performances on @state51 's youtube channel, which they've just updated. In some ways it seems like years ago; in other ways, just a second ago. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1jMKWiJjnPccguePTySHvrKfQd_g2sMZ
Each room had been decorated in solstice themes, such as Pan's garden. It was genuinely magical. We were drawn to the spoken word of @oldweirdalbion & @EvergreenSister performance. I'd not heard it before.
You can watch that performance here:
You can watch that performance here:
It was enchanting, beguiling, intriguing. the music was beautiful, the visuals drawing me along the windy lanes and chalk paths of the south Downs.
Why does it matter to me so much? It was a brief respite in a period of trial, of trauma, of extremes. A period when I learned a lot about myself and about who matters, what matters.
Again, it seems odd thinking about it during the pandemic, but it was a period of rapid change.
Again, it seems odd thinking about it during the pandemic, but it was a period of rapid change.
and what did it point to? The beauty and the darkness that is #landscapepunk. The eternal oak, the ritual of morris, the continuance of the iron-age hill fort in the topography of a landscape.
The next day, Saturday, was blisteringly hot, and as the lyrics describe, the sky was 'wrecklessly blue'.
Reader, we walked the Ring.
Reader, we walked the Ring.
I'd not been to that part of the Downs before. Despite Justin describing Steyning as 'Steyning, that strange town', we were more intrigued by the beautifully modernist light industry workshop building just before you reached the path to the Ring.
The walk up was a bit #folkhorror - we stumbled across a dying sheep in a field. A young teenager on his bike tried to climb over a barbed wire fence to reach it; it was covered in flies. A local came past & said it had been like that for days & the farmer couldn't be contacted
The way up, we experienced the wonderful line in the piece, 'before you know it, before you're really ready, grass becomes chalk.'
The view from the top was breathtaking. The topography impels you to walk the Ring.
I wish I could see Chanctonbury Ring again. touch its oaks. I learned so much from it. "This landscape remembers."
I played the album incessantly ever since. For me, it represents a connection between the human and the natural world, the different timescales that the natural world, particularly trees, follow. that human timescales are ephemeral, while so much in the landscape remains
And it reminds me of finding the difference between courage and cowardice, strength and weakness, solidarity and division.
the Soundcarriers were also good btw. As was the free bar...
this midsummer feels dullened, seen through our garden & the computer screen, not through human touch, laughter or friendship. I hope midsummer 2021 offers something renewed and real.
I miss live music. I miss sitting in a pub with friends. I miss walking through a yew forest in summer. everything is dullen, whereas last year everything was hyper-real.
a blog post from the time: http://historyofpublicspace.uk/2019/07/17/millstone-grit-vs-chalk/
I do want to do some writing and research on the 1987 Great Storm at some point. not sure what though
On our wall.
