Not just for Christmas

It's been a Christmas full of dogs. I want a dog but sadly my lifestyle is far from dog-friendly. Nice to borrow others' though, just for a day.

And if the photos of this last puppy have made you all gooey, you can follow her exploits here.

Christmas on the beach

This (Christmas) morning we snuck away from the mince pies for an hour and went to Exmouth to witness the Exmouth Christmas Swim. The rain held off but the wind was chilly, not a day to go anywhere near the sea.

But at 11am, hundreds of people sang 'Merry Christmas' then plunged headlong into the water. Our friend Jo was one of them.

Most didn't stay long...

...many were in costume or fancy dress...

...but all agreed how invigorating it was.

It's a relatively new, secular festive ritual, a very English form of baptism, a symbolic death and rebirth in the midst of winter. It's silly but properly meaningful. No wonder it's proving so popular.

Like it's the end of the world

It will probably come as no surprise to learn that I don't believe the world will end tomorrow. I'm pretty certain that the end of the Mayan calendar (whenever exactly that is) doesn't augur the end. Nor do I think that tomorrow will see the final ingression of novelty, as hoped for by Terence McKenna in his Timewave theory. But of course, should the aliens arrive, or should we witness the birth of the Gaian Mind, or should mind free itself from the bonds of matter, or should we learn the secrets of intergalactic travel (to name but a few of McKenna's speculations), then I shall be the first to shout out 'I was wrong!' from whatever hell has been reserved for the unelect.

If it's Armageddon then I'll be blissfully none the wiser.

Amid all the hype surrounding 2012 the voices of contemporary Maya have tended to be ignored which is why I strongly recommend watching this Undercurrents-style film, directed by an old friend of mine from Newbury days, Melissa Gunasena. It makes depressing viewing I'm afraid. Same old shit. Capitalist West oppresses indigenous poor, even to the extent of misappropriating their beliefs and worldviews.

You can watch a short interview with Mel here:

What worries me is that 2012 has become a distraction from the main event: climate change. You only have to look out the window to see that the weather is wrong. The errant Jet Stream's wanderings have meant that here in Blighty it's barely stopped raining all year. There's more flooding predicted for the weekend. The signs are everywhere and yet still we seem intent on burning all the oil (in fact the logic of capitalism is that the less oil there is, the more worth our while it is to extract it).

I can't help thinking of that moment in Jeff Wayne's glorious Musical Version of the War of the Worlds, when everyone carries on as normal even though there's a bloody great martian rocket sitting on the common. What will it take?

We're gonna need some monumental societal shift to sort this out and while I'm pretty pessimistic about the future, I'm optimistic that humanity will find a way through. Probably. Just. While I'm unpersuaded by the Timewave, I happen to agree with McKenna and all the other voices that shamanism and power plants have a role to play in all of this, if only to stimulate creative solutions to intractable problems, though hopefully to open our eyes to a new way of living and connecting with the planet and the other-than-humans with whom we share it.

But at the very least, if some of the energy that's been wasted fretting over the Mayan calendar was directed at climate change, that would be a welcome start.

Backstage

...at the North Wall theatre, Oxford, October 2011, with Duotone, Wod and Nomi McLeod. It looks staged, right? I promise you it wasn't.

Feast of Fools

If you're anywhere near Dartmoor on the 23rd December then do come along to the Feast of Fools, a wonderful midwinter gathering with Telling the Bees, the Kestor String Band, Krasa (featuring none other than Rima Staines on accordion, who also designed the poster) and storytelling from Tom Hirons. It'll be seriously munchy.

Magic markings

After the brief efflorescence of the spunking knob, more strange markings have appeared outside, this time in the office car park just opposite.

There used to be a nice car-sized space in front of the wheely-bin but now, thanks to these lines, no one parks there anymore. Previously the car park tended to overflow, especially during the school run, I'm guessing much to the annoyance of the office workers and the bin men. Motorists ignored the signs.

But with no barriers, attendants, parking meters, ticket machines or clamping firms, it seems that all they had to do was paint some white lines on the tarmac. Works...like magic.

Just imagine what we could do if only we knew the right lines, markings, sigils and glyphs to daub upon the ground. We could topple governments. We could end climate change. We could change the world.

The answer?

I'm not sure it answers everything but this TED Talk by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains a lot.

Degrees of folk...part 2

Oh my, I've really done it now. I've turned the apple cart good and proper with my last post. I was expecting a healthy debate but not the storm that seems to have erupted in the comments pages. It's well known that you mess with the folk world at your peril. I ought to have known.

Correspondance and comments have fallen into two equally sized camps (I've deleted insulting ad hominem remarks. Not big and not clever). There are those who agreed with me wholeheartedly, who've commended me for saying something that needed to be said. As you'd expect, most of those comments have come from people who've not done or have no connection to the Newcastle Folk degree (though not exclusively); mostly, they've been posted on facebook (as you'd also expect).

Then there has been a spirited defence of the course, mostly, but not exclusively by students and ex-students, and mostly posted on this blog. It's heartening to see the passion and commitment with which they take their studies, a passion and commitment that seems equally shared by their tutors. If only all University departments managed such high levels of motivation. While the fantasy curriculum of my imaginary degree was just that, a fantasy, I've enjoyed reading about the actual Newcastle curriculum - we seem to be singing from the same page. I'm sorry that some people felt I was being unduly harsh by singling out the Teacups - that wasn't my intention at all, and in case you missed it, I praised their musicianship. I wish them every success in the world and have no doubt they will get it.

No, what I was hoping to do was raise two important questions about diversity and authenticity.

Leaving Glasgow to one side (as I think, Scotland is a separate case), Newcastle is currently the only University offering a folk degree. Not only does that restrict choice but it means that there is only one take on how to do folk music. However much they get it right (and students certainly seem to think that they do) I think this an unhealthy situation. A diversity of approaches is surely called for.

My second question about authenticity, about whether folk ought to be taught through the institutions of higher education at all, remains the more controversial one. There are those who say it puts folk on the map and affords it a badly needed legitimacy; others think this exactly the problem.

I may not have put the question skilfully but it's surely one that needs to be asked.

Degrees of folk

Just lately I've been listening online to what's been emerging from Newcastle University's Folk Music degree course. Here's a typical example of some of their third year students in action.

I worry a bit about endless cohorts of students forking out nine grand a year and thinking there's a living as a folk musician waiting for them at the end of it. (I worry about my Religious Studies students too, but at least they come out able to write an essay). But mostly, while the standard of musicianship is obviously high, I worry that it's all so excruciatingly nice. Wouldn't you rather go and see the old guy singing down the pub than something so...polished?

If folk music has a place in the academy then perhaps a bit of competition would be good for business, maybe somewhere down South. I've had some fun trying to think of what my folk syllabus would look like.

Obviously students would need to learn about the tradition and how to play their instrument. 

But I'd get them to read up on carnivalesque theory and go hunting misericords. I'd get them to see some traditional folk customs and write an essay about it. I'd get them to jam with musicians with whom they shared no language, and then try and copy the style of another instrument entirely. I'd send them to the Glastonbury dance tent with instructions not to come back until they'd fallen to the floor in a delirium of sweaty ecstasy. I'd get them to shut the fuck up and listen. I'd make them sleep a night or two under the stars. A passionate love affair and a heart-break or two would probably be character-building. And for their final practical, I'd pack them off to France for the summer with nothing but fifty quid, their instruments and their wits to see how they got on. A bit of enforced busking does wonders for performance skills I find.

Oh hold on a minute, that's what I did. Forgive me. I've committed the unpardonable sin of thinking that my life could provide a template for everyone else. Please accept my sincere apologies. Utter hubris.

But there's a serious point here. If folk music is as relevant as we claim then it has to have something to say. It has to have arisen, unbidden and insistent out of the sheer messy fact of being alive. It has to have come up through the feet, to have lingered in the loins, rolled around the heart and soared out from the belly. It has to give voice to what the Welsh call the hwyll and the hiraeth - loosely, joy and sorrow. That's not something you can teach, nor something you can buy. No wonder it all sounds so clean. The poor sods haven't had a chance to live yet.

Here's some folk music straight from the source. It's from Gyimes in Transylvania, and is I believe a style unique to that area. The wild intonation of their fiddles may be too tart for Western ears but for me this is the pure drop.

It makes my fingers tingle and my feet itch in a way that, sadly, nothing I've heard from the Folk Degree ever does. If I were eighteen with nine grand in my pocket, I know where I'd go.

[This post has proved, erm, somewhat controversial - you can read my response to some of your comments here.]

When a cigar isn't just a cigar

We awoke yesterday to discover that someone had graffitied the road outside. 

At first it was hard to make out.

Closer inspection revealed that it was, indeed, a 'spunking knob', as Charlie Brooker so aptly names this ubiquitous symbol. Actually, he's worth quoting in full on the subject:

'The rudest imagery appeared in schools – scrawled in the margins of exercise books. That iconic schoolboy's doodle – the puerile "spunking knob" – how did we know what that looked like? It's like a cave painting symbolising not fertility, but gleeful stupidity; an image hard-wired into the mind of every sniggering boy in Britain. Everyone smiles inside when they see the spunking knob scrawled in the dust on the back of a van, or scribbled on a poster. Is it a global phenomenon? Strikes me as inherently British. It should've been our logo for the 2012 Olympics.'

Well, I did smile, but placed right slap bang on the runway to the local primary school others greeted its, ahem, coming with a succession of pursed lips, angry scowls and tut-tutting. Naturally it didn't survive the day.

Like many, I simply love a good double entendre. Smutty puns are one of the great delights of life, and from Carry On films to Viz Comic's Finbar Saunders to I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, they form an essential part of a very British sense of humour. It's just that when the double entendre becomes single and explicit we suddenly call it puerile and inane, a symbol of 'gleeful stupidity'. Why is that?

The double entendre is a kind of legerdemain. It allows us to laugh at sexually explicit imagery while pretending that we're laughing at the cleverness with which that imagery is insinuated. Of course the truth is we're laughing at both. A single entendre like the spunking knob breaks the rules of the game. It makes the implicit explicit, and gives us no choice but to distance ourselves by other means, usually a public display of disapproval. Ah Dr Freud - you were so right.

Interestingly, the artist Grayson Perry argues that the erect male member is one of the last great taboos, and I think he's got a point (fnarr fnarr). In his expert hands (don't!), the spunking knob has been given an altogether different twist (matron!).

No, seriously, it's become tender, vulnerable and even a little bit tragic.

Thankfully high art puts an insuperable firewall around embarrassment, one that trumps even the protective layers of the double entendre, so we can contemplate this image happy in the knowledge that there's absolutely no biology going on between our legs. None whatsoever.

What a relief! (Don't start...)

The Mayan Prophecy, Timewave Zero, and 2012...the Great Debate

On Tuesday November 27th I shall be taking part in a debate about 2012, organised by the indefatigable David Luke as part of his excellent Ecology, Cosmos and Consciousness series of lectures (£7/5 arrive at 6.00pm for a 6.30pm start).

Also appearing will be Dr Cameron Adams, Gyrus, and (hopefully) Daniel Pinchbeck via skype. Booking is essential, and you can do it via the October Gallery website.

It may come as no surprise to learn that I'm - how shall I put it? - less than convinced by the flurry of predictions surrounding December 21st 2012. I'll be the first to admit that I'm wrong if we wake up on the 22nd to find that the UFOs have landed (I do hope not - I've got a lovely gig in Chagford on the 23rd), but it seems to me that this is just another expression of a very Judaeo-Christian concern with eschatology, the apocalypse, and the end of history. I prefer an altogether less linear view of time.

Don't get me wrong. I'm quite convinced that climate change is going to deliver us the mother of all shit storms, but obsessing about an arbitrary date in a calendar is just another distraction.

If you'd like to read more then why not download the latest edition of Paranthropology, where you'll find my article 'Get thee enhurued!': Magic Mushrooms, Time and the End of the World.

And while you're at it, check out Matthew Watkins mathematical dissection of the Timewave.

See you in London.

Shake yer bones

Last Friday the Whirly Band took to the streets of Oxford once again to mark the Day of the Dead. It was our most successful yet, with a large crowd of up-for-it people shaking their bones and generally celebrating this dark corner of the year. I was pleased to see that more people came in costume or with face-paint than ever before. It's starting to grow.

Kate Raworth was on hand to take photos - here's a couple. There's more on her website.

For bonfire night I finally made it to Lewes, whose November the fifth celebrations are somewhat notorious. Many thanks to Philip and Stephanie Carr-Gomm for putting me up and giving me the tour.

Things begin in the early evening when the seven bonfire societies, each of which have their own firework display, join together and process up and down the narrow High Street.

The standard costume of the bonfire boys is white trousers, stripey jumper and red neckerchief.

But many people parade in costume. In fact, so many eras and styles are represented that you're left wondering whether someone accidentally stumbled on the key to the fancy dress shop. I saw Romans, Elizabethans, flouncing dandies from the court of Louis XIV, pirates (lots of pirates), a green man, Gandalf, goths, steampunks, and priests (lots of priests).

The origin of Bonfire Night is, of course, the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of 1605, and an anti-Catholic thread still runs through the Lewes celebrations. People carry banners calling for No Popery, and seventeen burning crosses are held aloft to remember Protestant Martyrs burned at the stake in the sixteenth century. It's an image that carries some rather alarming cultural connotations. 

Indeed, at first glance Lewes Bonfire Night appears to be a deeply conservative, even reactionary, event, one sailing dangerously close to the unpleasant end of British nationalism. Many participants come in military costume; royalist sentiments are expressed; some people even 'black-up'. Oh deary me.

But I think such a reading is too simplistic. Amid all this order are some genuinely carnivalesque moments. The people dressed as priests are not having a pop at popery so much as mocking the pomposity of all organised religion. Yes, this is an expression of local pride and identity, but it's also two fingers to authority: try and stop us if you dare. Any councilor who tries to reign it in will find it's their effigy burning on the fires and that an election drubbing awaits. 

Yes, this is a carefully orchestrated fire show, one where the police are issued with safety goggles, a piece of managed disorder, but the pressing crowds, the drunkenness, the omnipresent smell of skunk, the flares and the strings of fire-crackers thrown at participants' feet, create  an exciting, even crazed, atmosphere. It certainly feels dangerous, as if anything could happen. 

And the Societies that dress as 'Zulus' or 'Red Indians' claim that they have always done so to raise awareness of, and show support for, oppressed indigenes (that may be spurious, I don't know, but it is at least a move in the right direction).

After the procession, each of the Societies make their way to their traditional pitches. I went to Commercial Square. First they lit their massive bonfire.

Then, in a truly carnivalesque moment, mock priests delivered mock prayers and mock sermons from a raised platform, replete with burning crosses, to the bonfire boys gathered below. The congregation responded with a hail of bangers and squibs. The priests shrugged off this barrage with a nonchalant sang-froid, an extraordinary image. And then the fireworks went off all around them.

The display was fantastic, perhaps the best I've seen, and was remarkable for its proximity. At times we were right underneath the rockets. Shock waves pummeled me in the chest. Burning debris fell all around.

In the end, I think that what makes Lewes so wonderful is that for just one night, the ordinary quotidian is shattered. Businesses board up their windows. People down tools, take to the streets and, work-be-buggered, have a party. Most municipal firework displays no longer happen on November 5th but on the nearest Saturday, as if a 'holy day' can simply be shunted out the way in the name of profit. Lewes reminds us that we have our priorities wrong. The agelasts want safety and order and things in their place. But we need somewhere to express our unruly selves lest they erupt unbidden. We forget this at our peril.

Wod - Live on Banbury

When Jim moved off his boat, Banbury, back in May, he decided to put on a farewell concert to a select audience of about twenty people. Wod played and we recorded the set. So here it is in its entirety for your delight and delectation. Enjoy.

Wod - Live on Banbury 2012-05-25 by Dr Letcher

I knew you were going to say that

A new study by psychologists at Northwestern University has found that we all might actually be a little bit psychic. The problem is, we don't know it, for if our bodies seem to have the unconscious knack of predicting future events - as measured through visceral changes in heart rate, skin conductivity etc - our minds seem rarely to listen.

None of this is news to me.

I've studied Tai Chi on and off for years, and the aim, as with so many physical arts, is to learn to listen to these bodily cues. They are remarkably effective. Clever monkeys that we are, we can literally lie through our teeth, but our bodies remain stubbornly honourable. We betray our intentions through physical tells, subtle clues and perhaps even chi. How else could people win at poker?

I play a little game with myself whenever I'm in a crowd to see whether I can avoid bumping into anyone. Often people look as though they're moving one way when their intentions betray they'll move in another, a trait that seems to get more pronounced in the elderly. Learn to see it, turn at the waist, and you can glide effortlessly down any busy high street. I've become reasonably good at sensing when people are about to change lanes on the motorway before they indicate, an essential skill these days. But I've also had some truly psychic moments. Here's just one.

Many years ago I was at Saint Chartier, watching a band, having a little boogie in front of the stage. I had one of those inklings, the sense of being stared at, and turned to see that a woman was indeed staring at me, quite intently, from up on the tiered seating. My inner voice was clear. 'She's going to come and ask me to waltz'.

I was alert to danger because she was beautiful and very French - my achilles heel - but I was attached. I turned quickly away to break eye-contact and avoid unnecessary confusion. Minutes later there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned and there she was. Oh bollocks. 'Would you like to waltz?' she said, in perfect English.

The researchers at Northwestern University have suggested that someone might invent a smart phone app to alert us to warnings from our bodily radars. Such a device is surely unnecessary. We have one already. It's called intuition or gut-feeling.

We've just forgotten how to listen.

Trouble at t'Mill

There's a furore in the folk world, there's trouble at t'mill. Veteran presenter of Radio 2's weekly folk show, Mike Harding, is to be replaced at the end of the year by Mark Radcliffe. Folkies, not known for embracing change, are up in arms. The spirit of rebellion is quietly simmering on Facebook and throughout the blogosphere. Ned Ludd is stirring in his grave.

I say replaced but everyone knows Harding's been sacked. He's not going quietly and has made his grievances public. His fifteen years at the helm have seen his audience rise tenfold. He helped institute the BBC Folk Awards. A melodeon player, he has folk music 'in his blood.' Quiet rightly, he feels aggrieved.

His sacking was pretty unceremonious. I'm put in mind of Radio 1's Night of the Long Knives back in the mid 90s, when the Smashie and Nicey generation of DJs were culled at one fell swoop. The reason given by the BBC is that it wants to take the show live (it's currently pre-recorded) and that requires a proven hand upon the tiller. I suspect age has more to do with it - Harding is 68 - and one can't help wondering if it has something to do with his never really being part of the BBC club.

But, however much I sympathise with Harding's treatment and feel he deserved better, I shan't be signing the petitions calling for his return. I never listened to his show. Honestly? I couldn't stand it.

Arguments about taste are pointless and take us nowhere, so all I can say is that the kind of music the two of us like and consider folk differs. Fair play to him and to those who loved the show but my idea of folk is altogether less polished (the name of his production company, Smooth Operations, perhaps says it all). I'm altogether less fond of Kate Rusby.

In fact, I suspect that my idea of folk is so rooted in alterity, resistance, psychedelia, otherness, outsiderliness, trance, that it'll never get played on a mainstream radio show (with perhaps the exception of the never-less-than-wonderful Late Junction, over on Radio 3), and I'd probably complain if it did.

The following quote turned up on Facebook recently, from an interview with the pianist John Tilbury, and it strikes me as relevant here. Asked how he viewed politicised folk music during the 60s, he replied:

Strong folk music is always the music of a repressed country, but we are the oppressors. Irish folk music is about the survival of their identity, but I think of English folk music being a lower middle-class museum music. I don't hear it having a vivid and active presence here, but Irish and Basque folk music identify a whole nation.

I'm not sure I completely agree but there's truth in what he says. An English lower middle-class museum music. Ouch. I can't help but feel that the folk industry of which Harding's show was a part, has less and less to do with the session and the lock-in and the protest-camp and the land, and more and more to do with selling a sanitised idea of the folk to people nostalgic for a past they never had. That seems to me to be something genuinely worth getting up in arms about.

I've always liked Mark Radcliffe. I think he's a brilliant and very witty DJ. But I doubt even he will change much. Perhaps the time for petitions is over. Perhaps it's time for some genuine trouble at t'mill.

Let the revels begin

There's a particular kind of music that appears in films, a genre all of its own but one that has tended to get overlooked. It's characterised by a folky, medieval or Eastern sound; it's expertly played but always too low in the mix to hear what's going on; and it rarely makes it onto the soundtrack album. I'm talking, of course, about revel music.

I think the first time I became aware of it was while watching Jim Henson's puppet masterpiece, The Dark Crystal (designed, of course, by Brian Froud). 'The Pod Dance' features some virtuosic recorder playing by Richard Harvey, former member of 70s medieval prog-rockers Gryphon. I spent years searching for the soundtrack only to find that Nomi had it - one of the many things that sealed our relationship. Now, of course, youtube saves the shoe-leather.




Things went all Oirish for Bilbo's long-expected party in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, with a tune called 'Flaming Red Hair' by Howard Shore.




Naturally they went all Oirish again when Kate Winslet got sweaty in steerage on the doomed ship Titanic. For once the band that actually played the revel music, Gaelic Storm, appeared in front of the camera, and I'm told their thirty seconds of fame propelled them to stardom. Good for them. It's the dream gig.



My old friends Paescod (later Nonimus), with whom I spent many fine weekends donning the codpiece, were not so lucky. Listen carefully in the procession scene of the otherwise execrable remake of The Wicker Man, and you'll just hear one of their shawm tracks (I forget which one but I'm sorry, I simply cannot watch that film a second time). They did get paid, but not quite enough for them to hang up the motley.

I was first turned on to medieval music at university when my friend Dave Brown played me some David Munrow. Munrow did go on to write film music but this first piece is surely crying out to be used for a revel scene (bear in mind it's the sixties, OK?). Munrow was undoubtedly a genius and almost certainly bipolar - tragically he killed himself in his early thirties and who knows what he would have gone on to achieve. But he certainly inspired me to take up the bagpipes.




Just last night we watched the Arnie-free remake of Conan the Barbarian. Beyond dreadful, the sole redeeming feature of this steroid-pumped nonsense was the track, 'Efrooh Badwina' by Egyptian percussionist Hossam Ramzy. Without sleeve notes I'm not sure what the reed pipe is but I'm guessing it's a kind of mijwiz, a double-chantered pipe found across the Eastern mediterranean.




And I very nearly forgot 'Romanian Wind' from Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which I think is when Watson gets pissed with the gypsies.



Do let me know if you've got any more examples of revel music. Maybe one day someone will release a compilation.

Could do better

On Saturday I got to deliver my paper, What is a Bard?, at the OBOD Mount Haemus Award Lectures, held in the Medieval Hall in Salisbury Cathedral Close. I was lucky enough to receive this award four years ago, and I'm pleased to say my paper seemed to go down well. I won't summarise it here other than to say I was putting the case for craft, but follow the link to read it in full (and indeed, the other papers).

However, I was delighted and surprised to meet someone in the audience who'd taught English to J. K. Rowling back when she was a girl. I was overcome with mischievousness. "Was she any good?" I asked. Well you would, wouldn't you?

It transpires that, though extremely keen, she was an unexceptional student, neither very bad nor very good.

I confessed that I'm not a Harry Potter fan. I've always found the writing unexceptional, the world jarring and unconvincing, the magic just poorly disguised physics with dodgy Latin. Like Terry Pratchett I've never warmed to the idea of muggles. Good luck to her and the rest of the reading world, but Harry Potter is not for me. I gave up halfway through volume three.

No, I'm a fan of the original wizard school on the island of Roke, where Ged or Sparrowhawk goes to learn his trade, in Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea trilogy. Apart from Le Guin's beautifully crafted prose, what I love about the books is that they are so wise. They're taoist texts, meditations on the need to accept the shadow, death, and, through effortless non-doing, to find one's place in the endless unfolding of the world. I know of no other fantasy text in which the hero's teacher, the wizard Ogion the Silent, never uses magic but prefers to wander the forests in silent contemplation. He's Lao Tsu with a staff.

"Ah", said the teacher. "A Wizard of Earthsea was one of the books we studied in class."

No comment.

That night it was St Giles Fair...

Well, daytime actually, but Telling the Bees fans will get the reference. On again tomorrow too...