'Birds that scream euphorically can learn to sing for territory'
I don't claim to know much about life. We none of us do, do we? Generally I trying to orient myself against the forthcoming gale of modern existence which feels perilous to me. This isn't negativity I wouldn't say. Just reality. Anyway, whenever I need to do that these days I generally put a record on and play it throughout the day A mast against the ongoing day. Usually something that yakes me back in time.
Today my mast against the day is Beth Orton's Trailer Park an album I originally bought on CD when it came out in 1996 just after I moved back to England after a few years abroad in Germany, Poland, Czech Repunlic and a brief jaunt in Barcelona. You could do that in the days before freedom was frowned on and we began to fear dinghies on the horizon spotted through binoculars from the turrets at Dover Castle and launched the gunboats and submarines into the briny yo go out and meet them.
Brighton. Autumn 1996. England had marched through the European Championships to inevitable surrender to Germany in the semis on penalties. Tony Blair and New Labour were exultant. I decamped from my parents home in Canterbury and went to live in Hove. I got myself a cool flat at the top of a stout building close to the seafront. My father drove me over with my record players, tv and an answerphone and I signed on, having foolishly arrived out of the teaching season meaning there was no work at the the language schools I had hoped would supply me with gainful employment through the winter months.
1996 felt post everything. I was post girlfriend. I'd been ditched fairly brutally at the start of the year and nursed a broken heart and damaged ego over someone I realised in retrospect was not worth it, at all. We had not been suited and had three very happy months in Warsaw to look back on .when we'd truly experienced Love. You learn this in time. The ongoing goal.She the extraneous.
Loaded magazine and Chris Evans were in their pomp. Frankly it seemed desperate and slightly craven. A friend of mine from my German days was doing his PGCE in Brighton and had ditched the girl he had been with in Dortmund who thought they might marry for a New Labour business glamourpuss who I tried but couldn't like. Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers and The Verve grabbed the batons from Oasis, Blur and Pulp and the mood and sky palled.
I was fairly brassy. Doing voluntary work at an old people's home of old aged pensioners who played bingo and had sing songs. 'Oh Oh Antonio. He's gone away.' On Friday lunchtimes and into the afternoon.I went back to my flat and put Trailer Park on. I never stopped listening to it
And I've put it on today. All day thirty years on as I've made my way through another winter's day of relentless rain..Fimic dislocation. Taught my lessons and turned over the vinyl Kept turning it over all day. It's a feast. .Folk and Chill Out room. A lasting statement. I can't think of another album quite like it. Introspection refection, poetry. Brightness shade, gloom. Wonder. Watched from my second foor window on Newcastle as people stamp down the pavement in macs and cagouls, crouched under plastic transparent, brolleys. They'll all be home soon. Eastenders and Masterchef are on.
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