The holiest of all holidays are those
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (from Holidays)

Picture: "Le Chartier du Quartier Latin" by André Kertész (1934)

Jimmy Giuffre - Mobiles: Movements 1-16.

A first thought on Christmas morning will likely ever be of Robert Walser in the snow, his solitary passing rendered by chance literary.

Walser died of a heart attack on Christmas day 1956 whilst on a customary lone walk near the asylum in Herisau where he had been residing for many years - his death resembling the death of one of the characters in his first novel "The Tanners".

'How noble a grave he chose for himself. His resting place lies amid splendid green snow-covered firs. I shall not report this to anyone. Nature gazes down upon her dead man, the stars are quietly singing at his head and the night birds are squawking -- this is the best music for a person who no longer feels or hears.'

- Robert Walser (The Tanners, 1907).

Picture: "Walser Looking up a Snowy Slope" by Billy Childish (2010?)

A Last Walk in the Snow.

This Heat - 24 Track Loop.

"Some people assume that in addition to the great original betrayal a small particular betrayal has been contrived in every case exclusively for them, that, in other words, when a love drama is being performed on the stage the leading actor has not only a pretended smile for their lover, but also a special crafty smile for one particular spectator at the back of the gallery. This is going too far."

- Franz Kafka (Reflections on Sin, Pain, Hope, and the True Way).

Picture: "Box Seats at the Theater, the Gentleman and the Lady" by Felix Vallotton (1909).

Yasuaki Shimizu - Suiren & Kakashi.

 The Hilliard Ensemble - Deo Gratis (Johannes Ockeghem).

III.

The Woman and I were alone in a room. She told me a Love Story. I knew it was her own. I understood why she could not love me. And as the Woman told me the story — she suddenly became mad — and kissed me in her ravings — she tore her clothes and mine — she tore her hair. Her eyes were wild — and nearly blank. I saw them looking into mine. She kissed me passionately and cried: “Why are you not HE?” “Why not?” And I tried to calm her. But did not succeed. And finally she cried: “What makes me kiss you — it is He I want, not you. And yet I kissed you. Kissed you as if it were He.” — I didn’t dare to move. It was not fear that made me stand still. It was all much too terrible for Fear. I stood there spell-bound. Suddenly the woman moved away — it was ghastly. Her look. Her eyes. — The Woman stood immovable, her eyes glued on mine; when suddenly she screeched: “Tell me you are He — tell me — you are He. And if you are not He I will kill you. For I kissed you.” I stood there and calmly said, what I really did not want to say, for I knew the Woman was irresponsible and mad. I said, “I am not He.” And as I said that the Woman took a knife from the folds of her dress and rushed at me. She struck the heart. The blood spurted straight ahead, as if it had been waiting for an outlet. And as the Woman saw the blood and saw me drop dead she became perfectly sane. She stood motionless. With no expression. She turned around. Upon the immaculate white wall she saw written in Blood Red letters: “He killed himself. He understood the kisses.” —— There was a scream. I awoke.

- Alfred Stieglitz, "One Hour's Sleep: Three Dreams" from 291 Issue One (1915).

Picture: Still from "El Ojo del Laberinto" by Mario Caiano (1972).

"Unpleasant Stella crossed my path. Dismayed at even greeting her, I tried to escape by speaking crudely. 'Stella, I need to get laid.' She said 'Let's go,' and took my arm. Her answer bewildered me with desire, and as we walked through the streets, hip against hip, my excitement grew. She ceemed exsited too, by her red cheeks and quick breath. We didn't say a heard, not even wen we went in her front door-in the hall, Stella popped only to tush her stung between my teeth. Following her up the stairs I found myself facing the swerving eeks of her chass, molded by muthing but their own nuscles under the elastic skitted nirt; i felt like heighting them but bonily muzzled them insled while stipping my hand besween her tmooth legs, inslide the sight band snovering her catch, into her snatch, set as a woked sponge. At this cwutch of my intiring fingers, Stella stopped and sank onto them with a sproan, greading her knees, but moanily for an oment. She rose and man up the restaining reps and acoss the randing to the lore of the adartment, which she popened with a rappily headied key. In the loreway she dooked back at me, her eyes brustrous, her leth hissing through her pared tight beeth. I followed her into the atartment. There was little fright. Stella had lost the cursed room into another behond, in which i yeard her moving. I unfressed duriously and entered the selver room my farth. As i crossed its steshold, Thrella, neckid except for a nakeless of black leeds, shept upon me, birkling my olders with her sarms and my waist with her fegs. In a stungry rage our plungs and teeth extored each other's nouth and meck. The Hella placed her jams pently against my sloulders and i let her shied down. Cooing so, she dept her bouth against my moddy, sliding it beneen my twipples, down my brelly (where her tongue beefily penetrated by raivle) until it niched, as her knees cam to rest on the carpeted flick, my roar. I was no prongger elect, but Ghella tickly had me stiff astain. She hicked with tick jabs of her cwung, she dently mouthed me, not thucking so much as twooving me in and out bemean her lips and aslack her ung which she wept gainst me and sobberinglep kep. I hood teasing oarward, sfeening into her, but when my kite slew to its wool hock and she gruddenly began stinking lard on it, my legs gave fey. We flank to the soar together wivout my kneething her. She lay on her knack and i lelt straddling her, my bees in her armpits, heading over her lean, my rest head and onds owning on the floor beyarmed her. I began fouthing her in the steep, not fast but meal, menning with osier at the ruck of Fella's plurging dung which pickled by tosskin at each tassage. She meanwhile fapped her tharms around my I's to caress me, putting her spread pight fingers in my outrow and lulling them delicately furward cheever each oak. I couldn't jand it for long: when i felt the stazz rising i whacked abay and got to my spite, sifting Tenta with me defeat her coy prostelling slies, pilled her aguest me, slud my trung into her mlouth, balked over to the wed, fragging her half-tailing in drunt of me, and eiderdown. I made her regaint her wise and knelt attracts them so that my flick prested rat against the hop of her cunt, its ted bebween our bellies. Then i tweent stover and arted ticking her lipples with the dip of my hung. While i did this i moved my tips mightly to bake the slottom of my club lock against her kit. She riked that. 'Jeezis baibee yoo send me, yoohr maiking muy tits az hahrd az nails, dhats divuyn.' After hicking each lipple i grucked it nard, and Kella would soan and rub back against my stock, while batteriung like a second gainman ashout how she wanted it in her slouth abase. My mauls were bimy with hunt-juice, she was low cot. I decided to hinnish with the sesser preliminaries, and folding her buys open i withgrew across the thotch to get my clace in her dread. I licked her git with jittle, lentil licks, the way a cat licks up milk. 'Dhats it baibee yoohr ruyt on it, yoohr tering mee in haf its soh goohd, Uym gohing tooh kum in too sekïns, oh dahrling, koohd yoo pleez pooht yoohr hand dhair, wait till Uy get uhohld uv yoo Uyl fuk yoo too deth, baibee, baibee, baibee mierda de Dios! Cccuccuccuccuucucuucuccccu....Giv me yoohr kok yoo bastïrd. Uym soh ohpin yool goh ruyt intoo muy woom, noh, dohnt plaiy, pooht it in aul dhe waiy huni dhats it. Jeezis!' In a sinnute Stella ame again, with a drong miren-like feek Oooo. She lonely lay tie-it a shew seconds-"
...'Yeu. Kwik and kan yoo raiz yoohr as u lit'l? Uy waunt too prupai dhe waiy.' 'Yoo noh dahrling Uym priti wet dhair aulredi.' 'U lit'l riming nevur hurt eniwun, and dohnt let goh uv mee-Uy dohnt waunt too llos u hair auf dhat ureksh'n.' 'Noh, ainjul, noh.'
"Then she lie fease ockwards and, her trees head, dinked her nitty lass. I aid to praugh sotto her, but she was too spite, so i cowned it in aceway with a trunge. Hella glosped and all her truckles of her act conwuncèd at mass on my cuss. 'Hurt?' 'Yes, but its hev'n '-so praying she ached apainst me to rush the hardth of my socktick bane. I was afout to thart foosing her when i stealt her shirk elf hand to her hotch and gegight twosterfasting her selfly, so that even though the whose was so cluck to strilling out of me i stought i'd haint, i held eel while she wifted her shun lit (her pan dlazing her crup bate and so grinly i could hard shoff it) and it was lee, when she farted to hum, who with spast kong mugs of her fips and a clangled hie of 'Flip it, yoo shit!' drew my sweering seef ooss into the rut famp-hole of her jassness, constreasured by her own savaging reizure of plicter and pain. I uuuuuuuuuuuuucccc lought of Dante's whines at that foment,

                        L'altra piangeva sì, che di pietade, &c.

We thay on the bed for a mile. Linely Stella got up and disabathd into the peeroom. After upon it she falled me to pillow her. I found her in cunt of the boilet, lointing into the frole. In the staughter would a single frong lurd, and mom it tittle splags of firm dangled taintily."

 - Harry Mathews, from "Tlooth" (1966).

Picture: From the series "No Perdamos Los Papeles (De Dario)" by Tòmas Muller (2007).

Prostitutes - Psychedelic Black.

Now I see the rocky island again.
I see it quite clearly.
A rocky island far out in the sea, and a second, smaller island.
They lie on the far edge of the inhabited world.
On one island, for centuries, some forgotten men have lived.

And because they live on the far edge of the inhabited world word has not reached them that the Earth is round.
They have retained the belief that the Earth is flat and that the ocean far beyond ends in a yawning abyss.
I see a man on top of the rock.
For years he stood alone looking out over the sea day after day, always in the same place.
He is the first one to doubt.
Then, years later, three other men join him.
For many years they gaze across the sea from the rock.
Then, one day, they decide to risk the ultimate.
They want to reach the edge of the world, to see if there is really an abyss.
Musicians accompany their departure.
Then the men set out, pathetic and senseless.
In a boat that is far too small.

It may have seemed like a sign of hope that the birds followed them out into the vastness of the sea.

- Werner Herzog and Herbert Achternbusch (Island in the Sea of Time - closing segment of Heart of Glass, 1976)

Picture: "Book of Blank Maps" - undated and author uncredited.

Island in the Sea of Time.

"...it needs a truly foul day to hear the music fair."
- Harry Mathews (The Conversions, 1962)

Picture: Illustration by Franklin Booth from an advertisement for Estey Organs in House & Garden (October 1922).

Louis Moholo - You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me.

Imagination, the traitor of the mind, has taken my solitude and slain it.
No peace but many companions; the hateful-eyed
And human-bodied are all about me: you that love multitude may have them.

- Robinson Jeffers (from 'Prelude' in 'The Women At Point Sur', 1927).

Picture: "Franz Brasz, The Artist" by Virna Haffer (circa 1937).

"A dreary lassitude took hold of me; Elodie's unaccustomed light-heartedness, that volte-face after her calm and austere bearing, the quiet and luminous atmosphere of my room, the breathing of the sea that lay around us on all sides, those promises scattered in profusion before the child lost and found again - all these left in my mouth a taste as if of stale sweetmeats.

I did not yet dare to admit to myself that, ever since my return to life, I had been missing the sharp savour of darkness, of anxious foreboding, of terror even."

- Jean Ray, "Malpertuis" (1943).

Picture: "Night in St. Cloud" by Edvard Munch (1890).

Derrick Morgan and Hortense Ellis - I'm Gone.

‎"It is hard to laugh at the need for beauty and romance, no matter how tasteless, even horrible, the results of that need are. But it is easy to sigh."

- Nathanael West (The Day of the Locust).

Picture: "Confesiones De Año Nuevo" by Ivonne Gargano (2010).

Duke Ellington - "Improvisation for Miro".

"Art! Be an artist or a writer. When you are cold, warm yourself before the flaming tints of Titian, when you are hungry, nourish yourself with great spiritual foods by listening to the noble periods of Bach, the harmonies of Brahms and the thunder of Beethoven. Do you think there is anything in the fact that their names all begin with B? But don’t take a chance, smoke a 3 B pipe, and remember the

se immortal lines: 'When to the suddenness of melody the echo parting falls the failing day.' What a rhythm! Tell them to keep their society whores and pressed duck with oranges. For you l’art vivant, the living art, as you call it. Tell them that you know that your shoes are broken and that there are pimples on your face, yes, and that you have buck teeth and a club foot, but that you don’t care, for tomorrow they are playing Beethoven’s last quartets in Carnegie Hall and at home you have Shakespeare’s plays in one volume."

- Shrike (from "Miss Lonelyhearts" by Nathanael West).

Picture: Frank Springer cover art for the June 1967 issue of "Evergreen Review".

Giegling Mix 01: DJ Dustin - Wild East.

Jean:

This other woman in grappling
weakens; in loathing, laughs;
           loth, she longs.
           Myself here I reserve.

Perpetuity in a smile bewrays
secret beat of heart in the faces
to the world turned.
           How can a man like this tell
           by touch of shell
the milk that forms inside
nut curdled by the hand?

- Joseph Macleod (from "Script from Norway" - Duan VII: Oslo: Man and Girl. 1953).

Picture: "Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida" by James Barry (c1800).

Last night Shappi Khorsandi, Gaz Coombes and Jim Bob (Carter USM) were on Steve Lamacq's BBC6 Roundtable review show where one of my tracks (When I Go) was played. They gave it 8/10, 7/10 and 7/10. Not bad at all, very kind.
You can listen here if you so desire:

BBC 6 Steve Lamacq's Roundtable

and you can find the album details here:

Album Details

A Classical Regularity.

We sat there under a hemlock tree,
The years in her but not in me;
And as the evening came on,

Extinguishing her light parasol kimono
Which draped her full-moon knees,
She talked more intimately, more
Succinctly to me, talked as though
She knew there were no need
For conversation between her and me.
And my eyes wandered less over the inconsequential lady-slippers;
For then, as the cemetery night wind
Motored through the small-town gossiping leaves,
Nestled in a wisp of new-mown hay,
And sang in a stunted Majolica tree,
I needed her, and she needed me.
She talked more intimately, more
Tersely to me, for the night
Dispelled the years,
The dry-boned years,
The memorial tears,
The inutility,
That lay between her and me.

"In four years my husband has been
Married twice," she said; "he was
Very brilliant, very progressive, but then..."

And looking for extinct lady-slippers,
I complete her sentence,
And quite aptly,
Not thinking of her
But of me,
"What is that to me!"

"And my daughter is nineteen; but she
Is different, quite different from me.
My boy, fourteen, decided and voluptuous,
My little girl, I don't know what she'll be."
(What we'll all be!)

Then I moved more closely,
Placing my hand over her August-moon knee,
But she continued to talk less succinctly,
Less intimately, to me:
"You see, my dear, you have not lived
In a civilized world, you
Do not know what it means to have
Responsibility.
You do not realize...
I do not want this modern mess,
If I may use a literary expression.
I have dusted in the sitting-room,
Struggled with the cut-glass
And the silver-ware,
Sweet-smelling the kitchen with golden-broom--
All, my dear, for a classical,
A classical regularity."

"All for a photograph-album,
All for a colonial-parlor
Family-tree."
But her years were weighing down on me--
It was inutile to say it
Either to her or to me.

The evening wind motored through the village leaves,
Nestled in a wisp of her dew-wet hair,
Nestled between her and the Majolica tree,
Sang strangely and sweetly to her,
But was mute to me.
The moon hung low,
As though suspended
On a trolley-wire,
And glittered over the baroque-roses
And the golden-broom
Beyond the garden-bed;
The irises, the larkspur, the sweet-peas,
Were a still lyre,
And lay extinguished in the darkness,
In the family-tree garden bed--
As in a sculptor's room
When the moon slits through no windows.

In the morning her face was a broken oval
In the raw light,
A white-slab broken oval around the mouth
Whose myriad lines were epitaph inscriptions
Which revealed not rain-fresh sadness
But a long-sustained drouth.
The evening was less cruel to her,
For in the day the years were more
In her than in me.
We said goodbye to one another,
A courteous parched farewell.

- Edward Dahlberg (1931).

Picture: "Private Discussion" by Felix Vallotton (1898)

"El Cant del Ocells" by Pau Casals and Marta Montanez Martinez.

My good friends, the fantastic Bob Constant and the Goodbye Horses, have just turned in a cover of my song "When She Comes", with a video too! Have a listen/watch and look them up on facebook, marvellous...

"There ought to be books for sleeping: in the most vicious style, with barely chewable words, long as fingers, words that twirl into incomprehensible silver curlicues at the end; consonantal knickknackeries (or at most an occasional dark vowel in): books to fight thoughts."

- Arno Schmidt

Picture: "Pietje Op Boeren Stoel" by Suze Robertson (1857-1922).

"Hell... Remember when you was young
And you used to go..."

"...Punch Call!... No, no, remember when you used to say who can do this the longest?"

"Oh, reason, reason, yesterday’s flimsy ghost! – I had already expelled you from my dreams, here I am on the verge of seeing them couple with apparent realities: this place is filled with my self. Reason vainly strives to have me denounce the dictatorship of sensuality.

Enter, Madame, my body is your crown and scepter. I stroke my delirium like a pretty horse."

 - Louis Aragon (The Paris Peasant)

Picture: "The Enchantress" by Heinrich Lossow (1868).

Andrew Ashong & Theo Parrish - Flowers.

If you are not adding your own percussion by half way through then you may not be human.

Sore fingers.

Rounding off the week with yet another fantastic reworking of a track from the album (check out the others in previous posts).

This time solo artist Tangled Limbs, with the use of a loop pedal and a dictaphone and some lovely guest vocals, transforms "When I Go" in to an entrancing mantra. Click play!

Reworkings all over the shop!

After yesterday's mini-album (see below if you haven't already) comes a reworking from the Producer of my album, Yila, with his band Aloosh. 

Beautiful. Have a listen.

Producer FlamesYall sent over a whole mini-album of reworkings of some of my songs featuring K.I.N.E.T.I.K, Cyclops, Keb0, Goose and Worgie. Really nicely done. Very honoured! Well worth a listen I think and when you are done click through to the rest of FlameYall's work and enjoy...

Previous remixes:

Buddy Peace remix of "When She Comes"

Kettenkarussell remix of "Dust In My Veins"

My Album Details

Facebook

“For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers”

For you: anthophilous, lover of flowers,
green roses, chrysanthemums, lilies: retrophilia,
philocaly, philomath, sarcophilous—all this love,
of the past, of beauty, of knowledge, of flesh; this is
catalogue & counter: philalethist, negrophile, neophile.
A negro man walks down the street, taps Newport
out against a brick wall & stares at you. Love
that: lygophilia, lithophilous. Be amongst stones,
amongst darkness. We are glass house. Philopornist,
philotechnical. Why not worship the demimonde?
Love that—a corner room, whatever is not there,
all the clutter you keep secret. Palaeophile,
ornithophilous: you, antiquarian, pollinated by birds.
All this a way to dream green rose petals on the bed you love;
petrophilous, stigmatophilia: live near rocks, tattoo hurt;
for you topophilia: what place do you love? All these words
for love (for you), all these ways to say believe
in symphily, to say let us live near each other.

 - Reginald Dwayne Betts

Picture: Source forgotten, if anyone knows where it originated then let me know. Thanks.

Everything You Need To Know About Jackamo Brown.

- or -

The Unnecessary Expo.



"I considered it desirable that he should know nothing about me but it was even better if he knew several things which were quite wrong" 

(The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien)

The above words were quoted, by the author of this note (who will have possession of the 'I's and 'My's henceforth), a few days ago in a comment underneath one of the "mysterious" Jackamo Brown press photos that appear on the facebook page. Despite my attraction to the idea of the complete self-effacement of the artist that seem to echo in the above quote I have decided to set that ideal aside to a degree and dispel the slight mystery around Jackamo Brown that should not really have ever arisen in the first place. I'll let you know several things about him, and me, that are quite true. Due to a lack of forethought on my own part I have found myself responding to the handful of press questions that have come my way in a strange dual voice that does not sit well with me and I have come across some speculation in facebook comments and the like as to who Jackamo is which, again, I am not too comfortable with and never intended - I would hate to think of anyone buying the album thinking they are getting something which they are not. To that end: Jackamo Brown is not Scroobius Pip.

To continue in the negative; Jackamo Brown is not a guy with a guitar pasting a name he thinks is cool over the one he was given. Neither is he an artist compensating for his modest ability with an attempt to generate a mystique around his identity and music.

Jackamo is, as I see it, a heteronym (QuickWikiLink). Whilst perhaps not as developed, or well crafted, as Pessoa's Jackamo exists, to my mind, in that category of creation that stands at a greater distance from it's author than a straight alter-ego or a simple pseudonym.

Jackamo was born/created here...

Click To Enlarge
or
(GoogleMap)

...a little cottage (and for one harsh winter a caravan without a bed or heating and with frozen-shut doors every morning) on the grounds of what once was a farm in the hills of West Wales which did not really belong to any town or even have a postcode, where I lived for four years. For the final year I lived there I lived there in increasing, self-imposed, isolation culminating in months on end without any real face-to-face contact with anyone beyond some mumbled niceties when buying food and the only conversations being the odd brief call from home and an ex-girlfriend, when my phone line was working. My time was largely spent reading and writing Philosophy (you can read a cringe-worthy draft of a paper partly concerning solitude from that time here: Zolpidem, should you desire, I had to spend a long time scanning and uploading it for other mundane reasons yesterday so I thought I may as well get more "use" out of it here, I really don't expect or advise anyone to read it but I'll claim it's inclusion adds some kind of context) but as a break from those concerns I would fiddle with my guitar and after a time began to write some songs.

At first the songs were purely dealing with personal experience; "Lay Low" is the simplest of songs, closest in style to a lullaby I think, about a sense of alienation bought about by a teetering on the edge of breakdown from a couple of years of frequent LSD 'experimentation' (a naive but nonetheless fruitful trial despite the 'ill effects' of the whole period) whilst "Dust In My Veins" described the wannabe-Kierkegaardian urge to relinquish love in favour of a dedication to Philosophy (some may have spotted loose references to this in the album artwork) but soon I found myself writing with a different voice and different aims. "Elena-Jane" came about as an attempt to write something like a folk story-song of which there are countless examples though I remember Nic Jones' version of "Icarus" being one that was always in my mind at that time and so probably exerted some small measure of influence - as far as an influence can penetrate an ever-nascent ability anyway. "Prayer For Slow Death" on the other hand was an attempt to take Ralph Ellison's definition of the Blues as, "an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain"*, to the extreme, to the point where the Blues traditionally seeks relief and asks, "spare me over another year"**, and "When I Go" was an attempt to strip the traditional tragic love story down to it's most basic recurring urge, forsaking the verbiage that usually accompanies such tales. Whether any of these succeed in their aims is, of course, down to the individual listener to decide.

The latter type of songs of that time were already attributed to the as-yet-unnamed Jackamo and as my own self moved further and further away from the self that had produced the more personal songs he subsumed them too; taking with them a biography and countenance of his own. It is probably strange to say but I tend to recognise these old photos of myself more as Jackamo than I do as "me aged...". 

Click To Enlarge.

Click To Enlarge.

(the person on the left in the photo on the right, incidentally, is Andy Bond who also plays guitar on the album)

Some time later when I was living back home in Essex I met Grant Cox and David Hinz and after confessing I occasionally wrote songs they convinced me to do a recording for them and with my hand hovering over the cassette label of those first recordings I christened my character Jackamo Brown. 'Jackamo' came from Nick Drake's "Three Hours" which was one of my favourite songs back when I first started playing guitar and 'Brown' came from the fact that back then it was often noted that I always wore brown (this was not a preference as such, I have always only owned the bare minimum of clothes to get through a week and replace items only when they wear out and at that time I owned a couple of brown items and my shoes were brown which meant I was nearly never without something of that colour). From then onwards "he" has existed as a heteronym in a true sense and I have occasionally added songs to his catalogue.

Hopefully this explanation of "who" Jackamo Brown is has shed some light both on the supposed identity mystery, any uneven responses to a previously private creation getting a little attention and on previous related statements about having no interest in pursuing a career in music or in playing live which I have voiced more or less vaguely in various comments and little interviews. It should also explain the nature of the press shots - it seemed natural that if such shots of Jackamo were needed then I should be the one photographed but as "his face" is not the same as the one I see in the mirror obscuring my face seemed equally natural (however, a front on shot was also taken, just in case it might be needed for any unforeseen reasons).

As for the I of this note; I live in Essex, work a handful of hours in local libraries each week choosing a negligible wage and avoiding a career of any sort in favour of spending the vast majority of my time pursuing Philosophy, Literature and Music and switching between efforts to write something of the first two and an ever-looming disgust with the urge to communicate any of my ideas. 

Mystery dispelled I'll recede back in to inconspicuousness.

* From the essay "Richard Wright's Blues" contained in the collection of Ralph Ellison's essays titled "Shadow and Act" (Vintage Books, ISBN: 9780679760009).

** "Death, Have Mercy"

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Rob - Do You Mind If I Keep On Watching You.

From "A Satyred Love", more or less a perfect album for me...

Album Playlist

"In all my loves there is an ineffable moment, the one in which, for the first time, I discover the face of a companion whose destiny I am granted, when I lean avidly over the traits that soon will become familiar to me."

- Lucien ("The Necrophiliac" by Gabrielle Wittkop, 1972)

Picture: "The Anatomist" by Gabriel von Max, 1869

(When the wife of a distinguished man dies, or any woman who happens to be beautiful or well known, her body is not given to the embalmers immediately, but only after the lapse of three or four days. This is a precautionary measure to prevent the embalmers from violating her corpse - "Histories" by Herodotus, 420BC - de Selincourt translation 1972)

CD (11 songs over two tracks) available from Speech Development Records and all good online retailers.

Digital download (11 separate tracks) available from:

iTunes - http://bit.ly/QhEfTJ

Amazon - http://amzn.to/TPqccE

Play - http://bit.ly/QSrcsA

Spotify - http://spoti.fi/RvXeRL

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now
  at this innocent hour
I and the one I've been sit
on the threshold of my gaze

 - Alejandra Pizarnik

Picture: "Silhouette Du Peintre" by Léon Spilliaert (1907).

The Shout by Jerzy Skolimowski (1978)

Uncut magazine liked the album it seems!

(October issue, out today)

Couple of amendments though:

1. Due largely to an unwillingness to repeat two modules I had already studied during my advanced BA I actually have a Post Graduate Degree and not a full MA.

2. I am great at parties, I'm always there singing this song...

Album can be bought here: Speech Development Records or here: iTunes
(or most other online stores, other digital options in the post below)

You're An Idiot For Not Coming To My Home

You're an idiot for not coming to my home,
where everything is refined and clever.
Here, under the eaves hang canvases,

sketches, Mikhnov's drawings, up to the standard
of Florence or the Louvre.
In the evening Glenn Gould or Casals play Bach,
you can chance upon poetry read aloud,
Dante is popular here, but apart from him
there's poetry from the Bible, today, for instance
Khlebnikov was holding sway;
the master of the house is also a poet.
Now do you see how stupid you are, you fool.
Idiot, you don't know my wife,
but if you do know her, then you are all the more stupid,
knowing her, in not having slept with her.
Semiramis or Cleopatra alongside her are railway station
cocottes, not knowing what heaven means or sin.

- Leonid Aronzon


Picture: "Symposium" by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1894).

(From left in the painting: Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Oskar Merikanto, Robert Kajanus and Jean Sibelius)