There is a beautiful scene near the end- a fly crawling backwards in circles around a man’s wrist.
just.then
Jo Hamilton’s live performance of Release Us, at the Glee Club Album Launch in April.
I Was A Teenage Stock Photo
Yvonne Georgina Puig on being photographed by Getty Images and appearing in all sorts of surprising places, for This Recording.
Reach into the soil
Bare hand round brown root
Strain against the sucking clay
Pull up the weed.
Our garden has no soil- only the stickiness that cloys between rotting matter in other, more fertile grounds. Shards of clouded glass in place of stones, slivers of plastic, cheerily printed with leaf and flower, too warm to touch, not quite heavy enough.
Once, digging out a grave for a raised bed, I untangled children’s clothing from the prongs of a fork. A tiny grey and pink dress, small yellow knickers, rusted with mud. This has not been a family home for many years. I cannot picture the face of the girl who once tumbled through this place, dressed in grey and pink, glowing like a cloud. Such smallness frightens a woman not yet bearing child- something that springs from a seed, grows without direction, not knowing how.
As a girl I thought that plants grew from the ground upwards- emerging from chambers secreted beneath the earth, where they waited curled, and unwound into the air, inch by inch, as the seasons passed.
Roger Hiorns’ Seizure has become “a site of pilgrimage”. According to sponsors Artangel, since the flat at 157 Harper Road was opened earlier this year, prompting a Turner Prize nomination for Hiorns, visitors have come from across the city to take in this ethereal work.
A council flat near Elephant and Castle, filled with copper sulphate solution and left to crystalise for several weeks, may not constitute art. Art confounds definition, thank goodness- imagine how deperate life would be, if all was clearly delineated between analysis and insight, fact and thought.
There are so many forgotten spaces- their form and dimensions fade into dark corners, in abandoned buildings, disused lift shafts, in the gulleys that Hiorns filled with flame in 2003. These places do not exist to us until they are uncovered, like ancient undisturbed caverns broken into by miners.
I remember as a child tip toeing through Dan-yr-Ogof, the guide’s voice echoing around the stalactites. He told us that the largest formations took hundreds of thousands of years to form. On average, a stalactite grows just 0.13 mm per day.
In the lab, this process can be accelerated to fit within National Curriculum time constraints, aided by none other than copper sulphate. So the weeks old ‘forgotten’ flat in Elephant and Castle appears to have lain undiscovered for milenia, at least our hearts tell us so, when our eyes meet with that impenetrable blue.
Today it was time to check the garden. Under simultaneous rain and sunshine, I picked through the weeds, spiking the slugs that tumbled, like gobstoppers, from grassy pockets. Slugs are the slowest things in the world, and I am sorry for spiking them, but they make holes in the things I want to eat. If I were to encounter the Slug Princess, I would strike up a conversation about how pretty her freshwater pearls look around her neck (where exactly lies a slug’s neck?). Then I would strike up a bargain with her, allowing her subjects to slurp their way freely across the vast plains of my garden, with nothing more to fear from the spike, as long as they ate only Japanese Knotweed. the Princess would curl a benevolent lip, and agree to the deal, and all would be well in Oakfield. “The fabrics, buttons and beads are often vintage, found in thrift stores, markets or estate sales, and many of the snail shells I’ve found while digging in the soil.” What is an estate sale? MB x
In times like these, when we are being pushed to believe that the world is going up in flames and down the plughole at the same time, sources of true delight can seem few. That’s why I set up this blog. It’s about beauty, patience, attention to detail, and those who take time to delight in life on an intricate and honest level.
We need to remind ourselves every day that there is more to this life than hypothetical loss and gain, plunging interest rates and rising gas bills. Times are hard, but they’re not impossible, and the tiniest flickers of joy are still enough to spur on the human spirit, so we must open our eyes and ears, and seek them out.
Imagine my relief, therefore, when I stumbled upon Jo Hamilton’s debut album Gown. She’s been on the Birmingham music scene for a while now, testing out songs on the live circuit, nurturing and honing them, letting them grow organically.
In collaboration with Jon Cotton of production company Poseidon, who produced the Ivor Novello Award winning Scott Matthews’ album Passing Stranger, and after two years in the studio, Hamilton has created the most breathtaking work of art.
Gown EPK in High Deifinition (get your speakers on and sit back!)
Gown comes out on April 20th, and by all accounts, the music industry can’t wait to get their hands on it. It’s hard to draw comparisons with other artists, because the mix is so complex that Jo’s sound is assuredly her own, but I’ll give it a go.
Imagine Joni Mitchell’s voice made stranger and more nuanced, filtered through breath and deep resonance. Jo’s sentiment is raw like PJ Harvey, heightened by an achingly open spirituality. The instrumental layers of tracks like Glorious (Deeper) recall The Eels and even Nine Inch Nails, but there’s no point me trying to describe by comparison- this work is manifold in its complexity.
I thought I had some idea of what to expect from this album, until I listened to it. Expectations are subverted over and over again- just when you think you’ve pinned down what Jo’s about, the next note kicks in to teach you a soft lesson.
Heavy grunge mixes with vibrant acoustic guitar and Celtic melodies, Morrissette wailing slips into the gentlest whisper, and it’s all so measured. Nothing is given away too soon, each track builds carefully and patiently to a heartrending climax. You can hear the time invested in this labour of love.
At a recent private showcase, in the midst of an unshockable crowd of music professionals, Jo shone, and shocked. Almost hidden from view at the back of a long, dimly lit room, her body barely moved as she reached the first chorus, belting out notes that would make most singers buckle. I could see that onlookers were genuinely stunned by just how deeply the music was affecting them, on an instinctive level- I haven’t known such a raw reaction to a singer since Ray Lamontagne live performance at the Glee Club some years back.
Maybe this explains why those who know about Jo Hamilton have been saying there is a ‘need’ for her right now. In a world of instant, simulated gratification, where we consume so much so quickly that it doesn’t touch the sides on the way down, a gem like Gown that stops you in your tracks is a welcome, visceral relief.
Check out this story about some of my favourite humans- graf writers- on Tommy Digital’s wonderful blog Nossa!
Remember in school, when you scrambled together feverish mixtapes for friends, hoping they’d think you were cool and that they wouldn’t hurt you? Remember how vulnerable you felt as you handed over the cassette, complete with painstaking inlay card track listing and cool stickers? When I was 15, Andy Maclennan snuck me a mixtapein the buspark before school, and I blushed bright red, knowing he’d spent at least two hours of his time putting it together. The tracks included Clubbed to Death, Monster by Henry Rollins, and a track by Led Zeppelin that buzzed the heck out of my dad’s car speakers on our summer holidays that year. I recently found a drawer full of tapes at home, all scrawled with finepoint and biro- “SMASHING PUMPKINS SAVED MY LIFE” and “I heart Marylin Manson”. These days, we kid ourselves that there is no need to archive the music we want to share into a physical format, thinking it’s all at our fingertips to listen to in digital deluxe whenever we want. Less and less value is placed in the artefact, and that encourages a lack of respect for the artists who make the music we listen to. It’s freely available, downloadable, copiable and instantly deletable, and that’s why, I think, it’s underappreciated. All hail the mixtape! Fuzzy, smudged, brittle and easily corrupted, cassette tapes are a beautiful way to share music, because they really do need taking care of, they are as fragile as the notes they carry, and they take time to put together. Subnav.com know this, and that’s why they’ve made an online platform (a nod to the digital age), where DJs, musicians, soundsystems and artists can share their mixtapes with the world. Check out the latest offering from the wonderful Slobodan- he describes it as “the soundtrack to a perpetual war”.
Today, I crashed my bike on the way in to work, flipping over the handlebars as I braked on a hill, to avoid getting squished into the tarmac by a speeding BMW. The car continued its frenzied path up the road into town, and I lay squealing in a crumpled heap.
Before I knew what was happening, a gorgeous blonde angel lady, who I will probably never see again, or have a chance to thank, had shepherded me to the curb, saved my bike and my glasses, called the police over and calmed me down. Then another complete stranger hefted my bike into his car and drove me home, regailing me with stories of his kettle import business, and telling me I looked like an accomplished vaudeville act as I launched myself over my handlebars.
All that time, all I could think about was how I’d started weeping midair, because the man in that car was willing to end a life through his own impatience. The road ahead looked so open and inviting that from a standstill he had launched out across my path, after staring me in the eyes. He must have known what had happened, but he didn’t stop. It’s OK though, I’ve learnt a lesson that he hasn’t- take pride in time, it’s a beautiful thing and we use it too lightly.
That’s why I wanted to share with you the work of Paul Alexander Thornton- this man is in love with biros, and his intricate drawings are testament to patience. Click on the photo to see what else he has drawn out from his brain onto paper.
