Places – Frames of Reference

It Is Not My Music

There’s a celebration of Don Cherry at the Barbican tonight (Don Cherry Tribute). Sadly I can’t go. So I’ll put this video here as a consolation. And today I’ll rummage through my CDs and I’ll shake the Cherrytree. Its fruits have many flavours and taste of many places. According to Richard Williams, “he collapsed the distance between the supposedly primitive and the supposedly sophisticated more effectively than any musician I can think of.”

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This film from 1978 is about Don and Moki Cherry and others who lived with them in the school house in Tågarp, Skåne, Sweden, in the 1970s and onwards. It includes sequences from SoHo, New York, and Moki Cherry’s textiles on the walls in Hästveda and Long Island City. With Rashied Ali, James Blood Ulmer, Nana Vasconcelos, Denis Charles, Huss Charles, etc. A film by Urban Lasson.

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If you enjoyed this you might also like to see For Don Cherry.

Perry Wood

It’s a balm of leaf light. Catch it on a good day and you can carry it with you for months. This was mid August, now as I write it’s mid October and I’m housebound, too sick to walk in the woods, so I gaze at these photos and remember how we bathed in the green light of sweet chestnuts, how it washed over us, and Perry Wood is a convalescence of trees. Continue reading “Perry Wood”

Playing Places

A short immersive documentary that takes you into the woods at spring with artist Cosmo Sheldrake. Working with his own field recordings of the dawn and evening chorus, he talks us through his process of interpreting these sounds into music and playing them back to the places he recorded them. More here – www.cosmosheldrake.com

An Eggardon Summer

Watercolours Liz Somerville

Eggardon Hill is an Iron Age hill fort to the north-east of Bridport in Dorset. I live on a farm half-way up it; the hill dominates the landscape behind us and in front there is a far-reaching view across Lyme Bay to Devon. My studio looks directly out on to Eggardon, the window at the back perfectly frames it. Continue reading “An Eggardon Summer”

Walking Wallington

We’d just walked up the hill out of the village and were about to turn off the main road to follow the Icknield Way. I’m pointing at the fingerpost, map in hand, but with such a weird posture, as if I don’t really know which way to go at all. This was the summer I discovered sciatica and every footstep was a conscious effort. But walking was so much better than sitting. Continue reading “Walking Wallington”

A Walk From Hawkley

These ancient yew trees are in the churchyard at Hawkley in Hampshire. I’d discovered them via the Ancient Tree Inventory. We’d come down from London to meet Howard Phipps who was coming up from Salisbury with a windowful of wood engravings in the back of his car. And surprisingly we got there first, so I went looking for trees. Continue reading “A Walk From Hawkley”

(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding

For old times sake – Old Kent Road – A2 – New Cross – The road to Maidstone – A20 – The World Turned Upside Down – London Transit Centre – Gas – Take Courage – As I walk – This wicked world – Searching for light in the darkness of insanity – I ask myself – Is all hope gone? – Is there only pain, hatred, and misery? – And each time I feel like this inside – There’s one thing I want to know – Oh what’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding? – Brinsley Schwarz – 1974 – Nick Lowe’s best song

From Ayot St Lawrence (Again)

Earlier this year (it was April, a week after we’d walked from Aspenden), and a walk that went unrecorded, in waybegone daze, that seems more like eight years ago now than just eight months. How can one year feel like so many more? We’d returned to Ayot St Lawrence again, but this time we’d been spun off in a different direction to last time. Continue reading “From Ayot St Lawrence (Again)”

In Siracusa

Long ago and far away. 2018, in the back streets of Ortigia. Before Brexit and before Covid, when holidays were not so unusual. I’m looking back at old photos as a kind of vicarious vacation, an escape from our day to day to yesterday. We’d been here for a couple of weeks, exploring the island and the countryside round about. On this day we walked from Ortigia back into mainland Siracusa to discover the Latomia dei Cappuccini and the Catacombs of San Giovanni. Continue reading “In Siracusa”

You Are The Folk

What I love about Folklore is all the many, many unanswered questions. Modern life gives us answers in a fraction of a second via the wonderment of the internet. They may not always be correct, but the answers are there. Continue reading “You Are The Folk”