All Posts (7458)

Sort by

To Thom Yorke.

Dear Thom.I am sorry. It seems so simple but it is all I can offer. Ignorance is not an explanation, it is the plight of my soul. I love you even if it is not enough on the best of days.Sincerely,A Stanger.
Read more…

A Sonnet from Hell, after Rimbaud

You!—with your stifled fragrance of burnt toast

And pilfered ashes from Nero’s furnace, come join

Our severed table of the disrobed and possessed.

For this evening we feast straight from the breast

 

Of Medusa’s best spawn. We caught the foal

In our stable, licking up a last puddle

Of some vanilla pudding. His buttered

Heart we’ll taste for dessert if you have the

 

Stomach for that. O!—how these devils

With their nasty splendors and hooks try to

Seize me. They make me put on the grumpy

 

Skin of the town friar and, limping door

To door, wear it for a mask, which, most times

Leaves me in stitches. O!—why such a face?

[All Rights, Eric Helms)

Read more…

So I know where to find it...

A dream. In the Ed Sullivan theatre, a place I’ve never been. 

I am backstage. A nobody behind the cordon.

But backstage is a weird mirror of the theatre.  I'm on auditorium stairs looking up toward heavy velvet curtains. From there, I will be able to look down into the audience and see the Stage.  

All around me are clusters of oddly laid out seating and lacunae. Blue-velvet perches everywhere, little snags of tables and seats- beanbags and bouncy seats and curvy divans and concave half-shell chairs… 

Artifacts of parties- mini liquor bottles- the litter of lost people....

Also,  artifacts of life.  The people who work in the building spend breaks here and there.  Little shelters & nests— some tables have woven nests of paper and origami napkins…. mind-discharge doodles crosshatched in octopuses and tangled flowers… ashtrays with layers of butts.  I see a flip-book of solitude over months and years, small memorials without context.

I climb…. I  want to see the stage.  Close now, a flight from the top, and a gaggle of girls appear, coming down my stairwell as I face up.  I stand aside.  who are you?  Will you greet me?  They pass, speaking to each other. I turn and see beneath me now is a jungle of plastic.  Tubs and benches and pipes and walls of the sort of beige textur-ey material cheap stand-up showers are made of.  I don’t belong here and I shouldn’t be….

I better go (where?), so I start back down the way I’d come.  The girls are just beneath me in an empty hot tub.  My stairs pass through.  One chatters about her fiancé, their dates, their texts, their vacations, their furniture, their cars, the wedding….

He’s a sniper.  She’s very proud. 

I arrange my face.  I'm going for: a not-butting-in-but-also-can’t-help-hearing-and-obviously-have-no-opinion-but-if-I-did-i’d-like-you-to-interpret-it-as-very-politely-happy-for-you-but-I’m-noone-and-it’s-none-of-my-business-can-I-pass-please? sort of face.  One squints at me.  I change course and climb around instead, on the jutting pipes and shelves and plasticware.  My hand slips and I fall.  I land in a dry waterslide.  Suddenly it’s all very fast and I know there is a pool waiting and it will be a disaster if I get wet- I'm carrying something (what?) that will be lost forever.  I round the last curve, throw out my arms and leges but can't slow… and pile into thin vertical gold railings, like birdcage bars.  It hurts to hit them… but I am so relieved.

I pass the waterslide attendant and want to tell him what happened.  He shakes his head- they’re waiting for me at my  new apartment. I have to hurry. 

*************

Now, I’m looking up fifty feet at my new front door. Is this where I was headed?  A woman I don’t know and my eldest friend are waiting for me.  My things are on the sidewalk and stairs in trash bags and thrown about loose.  The stairs are made of thin gold rods.  There are no rails.

I climb above the street, picking up clothes and papers and pictures and things.  Near the top I am so heavy that the stairs fall from where they are hooked into the landing.  I begin to fall.  I shoot my left hand up and grab the platform.  The left things I carried fall.  One pink sweater, a sweater I actually owned a decade ago, fell to the ground in feather swoops, so slowly I had time to recognize it and remember a day I had worn it (on a day when someone loved me).  It lands in the oil-puddled street and for a moment I nearly let go to reach out for it.  Instead, I choose to cling and I yell for my friend to help me.  She doesn’t come.  I hear her inside, talking and laughing and very near.  I scream.  Now let go of what I have left in my right hand.  The stranger comes and asks how to help me.  I ask her to give me her hand.  Together we pull up the stairs and reattach them. 

The rest is garbled. 

Read more…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c0ff

Lasts an hour

New York, New York, is where Unclassified is heading this week. As Radio 3 continues its season ‘The Way I See It’, celebrating the reopening of MOMA, Elizabeth Alker heads to the Big Apple to investigate New York’s contemporary music scene. This episode also features interviews with Thom Yorke and Edward Norton. They discuss the music for Norton’s new film Motherless Brooklyn, which is set in 1950s New York. Thom Yorke contributes a new ballad called Daily Battles to the soundtrack.

Elizabeth also speaks to New York Times music writer Giovanni Russonello who gives her some top tips of new acts to see and venues to visit in New York. And this episode has an exclusive first play of new music by Julianna Barwick which is inspired by the sky above Manhattan.

We also hear experimental saxophone music by Lea Bertucci, created using resonances in the Marine A Grain Elevator at Silo City in Buffalo. Daniel Wohl and Caroline Shaw represent New Amsterdam Records and Christopher Tignor takes inspiration from La Monte Young.

Read more…

Thom's China Girl

11011040099?profile=originalWhile sorting through old junk I wanted to throw away, I picked up an old diary of 2016 and opening a page at random, I came across a dream I had recorded on 22nd January and since it involved Radiohead and was so funny, I thought I'd share it with you so you too can have a good laugh at the strange workings of my subconscious. Plus with Thom making a whole album and film on the subject, it fits perfectly. So here goes:

Dreamt I was attending a circus show (??). There was a Chinese girl who was in great danger (??). Thom Yorke was in love with her and so he hid in a large jar (or urn) in order to rescue her. But in the meantime, the circumstances had changed and it turned out Thom was also in great danger. So with the other members of Radiohead and the Chinese (??), we all set to rescue him via a trapdoor to access the attic he was stuck in. Next, he was reunited with his Chinese sweetheart and Ed was beaming that we all did a good job (actually I was the one who went inside the trapdoor using Ed as a leg up haha!).

Wish I had more details but that's just what I wrote and I can't remember. Actually I had totally forgotten about this dream as I normally keep my dream recollections into a dedicated journal, but somehow this one was too weird for analysis or I forgot to add it to my dream journal.

Read more…

Jonny and friends at Fermo, Italy 25 October...

An unforgettable evening in a beautiful theatre. Jonny, Daniel, Kat and Giuseppe literally  played their hearts out and the reception was incredible (as was the "setlist")....

J.S. Bach - partita n.2 in d minor (longest movement) only Daniel Piero playing. 

3 miniatures from water (Jonny playing Tanpura, having taken off his shoes which remained on stages for the remainder of the concert!). 

Steve Reich - Electric Counterpoint (Jonny). 

Interval. 

House of Woodcock from Phantom Thread (before which, Daniel spoke in perfect Italian, indicating that the second half would be dedicated to composers that inspire Jonny as well as his compositions). 

Nico Muhly -Drones and Violins. 

Olivier Messiaen - vocalise (Jonny playing Ondomo - ondes martenot).  

88 - Kat putting on gloves to play. 

Prospectors Arrive from There Will Be Blood (Jonny playing Ondomo). 

Phantom Thread pt ll (Jonny playing piano). 

Olivier Messiaen - Louange a l'eternite de Jesus (sorry my phone won't do accents). 

Loop for Fermo (before which, Jonny apologised - in Italian - for not having spoken - because his Italian isn't good... not true). 

Read more…

Blog Topics by Tags

Monthly Archives