Happy Birthday Bob
Bob The Bob
Murder Most Foul
A combination of chopped-up newsreel and fever dream, “Murder Most Foul” is Bob Dylan’s most striking piece of work in years. This is the author of “Desolation Row” populating a 17-minute song with a lifetime of remembered cultural fragments, zooming out and panning back and forth from the single pivotal event of the Kennedy assassination, plucking references out of the heavy air.
An eloquent introduction by Richard Williams from just over a year ago. Read the rest of it here – thebluemoment.com.
Subterranean Homesick Blues
The song was used in one of the first “modern” promotional film clips, the forerunner of what was later known as the music video… The original clip was the opening segment of D. A. Pennebaker’s film Dont Look Back, a documentary on Dylan’s 1965 tour of England. In the film, Dylan, who came up with the idea, holds up cue cards with selected words and phrases from the lyrics. The cue cards were written by Donovan, Allen Ginsberg, Bob Neuwirth and Dylan himself. While staring at the camera, he flips the cards as the song plays… The clip was shot in an alley close to the Savoy Hotel in London. Ginsberg and Neuwirth are briefly visible in the background. – Subterranean Homesick Blues
A Good Friday Walk
For the first time in months we slipped out of the house and into the car and drove to the quietest part of the forest. There were distant sounds of dogs barking from the kennels over the fields and the woods were a chorus of all kinds of birdsong (this place is noted for nightingales) but there were no other people, so that counts as quiet. Some parts of the forest can get overrun, especially on a holiday weekend, but this is not one of them. All day we saw only two other people and they were on horseback. We were the only walkers. But we met many trees. The first was this broken tree, with half of its crown folded and fallen upside down to the ground, its branches radiating all around like an asterisk or a baptismal cross, symbolic of life, death, rebirth and regeneration. It’s a sign of Easter. Would it be renewed and resurrected by the time we returned? I hoped so. Continue reading “A Good Friday Walk”
By Our Selves
Toby Jones, Andrew Kötting (as a straw bear) and their merry men revive the wanderings and wonderings of Northamptonshire peasant poet John Clare, on a quest “for scenes where man hath never trod”.
※
Toby Jones, Iain Sinclair and Andrew Kötting (dressed as a Straw Bear), made a five-day walk from Epping Forest to Helpston in Northamptonshire, following in the footsteps of the poet John Clare. Clare’s delirious march is the spine of the project. A great English pilgrimage, a self-enacted novel in the tradition of Pilgrim’s Progress.
※
A film by Andrew Kötting, with Iain Sinclair, Freddie Jones, Toby Jones, David Aylward, Eden Kötting, Simon Kovesi, MacGillivray, Alan Moore and many more.
※
By Our Selves / Andrew Kötting
Grimoire
For the month of May, the Rowley Gallery’s window display features drawings and prints by Tim Robertson. Continue reading “Grimoire”
Walking In The Woods (3)
This green cathedral is at Jacks Hill, Epping Forest. It was October 2020, the last time it was safe to go walking in the woods. The Covid beast has been at large and we’ve all been advised to stay at home. But deep in the forest, away from the crowds, is perhaps the safest place to be. I’m writing this in late March, the sun is shining outside and I am missing the trees. Continue reading “Walking In The Woods (3)”
Walking In The Woods (2)
I’ve been coming to Epping Forest for over 40 years, but I never saw this magnificent oak pollard at Rushey Plain pond before today. Complete with wasps nest. There’s always something new to discover here, and it all looks different every time. Continue reading “Walking In The Woods (2)”
Walking In The Woods (1)
I’ve been suffering woods withdrawal, I’m yearning for a dose of the green stuff. It seems like such a long time since we ventured more than a few miles from home to go for a walk in the woods. So I’ve been scouring the archives for unposted photos, stashed away overlooked down the back of the sofa or hidden in the depths of a forgotten rucksack. Epping Forest has been out of bounds because of COVID-19 restrictions, but I managed to find a few photos we took earlier, before lockdown. Continue reading “Walking In The Woods (1)”
A Head In The Clouds: A Year Of Looking Upwards
A blogpost by Robert Bruce:
It is a year since lockdown and during the whole period I have found it helpful to look upwards to the skies. It soothes and calms. It reminds us that the world goes on, mostly beyond our control. From our small roof terrace in Maida Vale and, when allowed, from elsewhere, this has been a year when clouds, mostly free from the vapour trails of aircraft, have become towering and tumbling symbols of freedom. But first: A wave of farewell to the old world we knew before lockdown. Now look upwards from the roof terrace. Continue reading “A Head In The Clouds: A Year Of Looking Upwards”