frank in lewes

this month has been a lot of fractured projects spread out on top of each other. mingling. getting aquainted. but definitely not getting finished.

so, a snapshot of a town called lewes that i visited this month to do some oral history recording with siân hunter-dodsworth (squire).

lewes has coastal air + country charm. ridiculously good vintage bric-a-brac stores + great pub cover bands. crisp spring air + enthusiastic bell-ringers.

and it has frank. siân's grandfather and the subject of our recording.

we'll be working on the project for a little while but until then: here's a taster of the town and its sounds.

weather patterns

gifts are the best presents.

a year ago my pa gifted me an ipod.

since that momentus day i've been grabbing little videos on the little camera that is a pretty nifty/ hokey feature of the little guy. it's not the best quality or the best format but as i've said before, restrictions in form, they make the world a better place.

here they are piled together with the help of tanlines and chronological structure. from london and around: fragments to enjoy.

suggested listening (kind of compulsory this time): reinfo/ settings/ tanlines

obscure(d) faith

back here i promised change. i am of my word. but before we get there here's a quick interlude. format and style intact: another trifecta of memory and theme.

suggested listening: julianna barwick/ the magic place / the magic place

perched within a sheer cliff face at the top of the mountains where spain was reclaimed from the southies, santuario de covadonga can make a believer out of anyone. pilgrims traipse up the mountain road for a touch of grace obscured from the light. tourists like us do the same.

covadonga/ asturias (es mi patria)/ 2009

this graveyard on the way to las peñas was the first time i'd seen the high-rise grave. architecture of the immortal soul.

guayaquil/ ecuador/ 2005

we made pilgrimage to lourdes last year. it was simultaneously inspiring and defeating. the miracle of the enterprise of the miracle was alive and well; both heartbreaking and heartening to see people at the site of their accumulated belief. overwhelmingly heartbreaking (and heartening?) to see busloads of the infirm and elderly descend on hope.

there are millions of candles, as vestiges of hope, confined in identical cubicles as you leave the shrine. the inscriptions on the back get me.

lourdes/ france/ 2010

this is england

as some kind of hot one year anniversary present i thought i'd put up a few snaps of my time in england: a retrospective, the english rose returns to the heartland.

i left before double digits and returned with just the kind of knowledge you'd expect a nine-year old to have. that is. i knew about iced gems and monster munch. i understood references to blue peter and art attack. the landscape was vaguely reassuring.

and that's where it ends.

i didn't know what it meant to be part of a big city. i didn't know how an economy falls.

i didn't know how england struggles to maintain it's archaic infrastructure: the physical and the institutional. i didn't know of the deep divide in political views that marks the front pages of broadsheets. i didn't know the underlying class dynamics of my parents' marriage.

i didn't know about mushy peas, wide-spread corduroy or emmerdale.

i didn't know about the relentless humiliation of being an australian living in london. i didn't know how much australians would insist on talking to me about the differences of two different countries, at length, repeatedly and at length repeatedly. i didn't know how to come to terms with living out a cultural cliche.

i didn't know that i would squlech my way into a sense of belonging to recline on the couch of cultural conversion. i didn't know that i would actually like it. not just a bit. but a lot.

now i know. knowing is nice. there's a lot more to know. but i mean, who doesn't prefer art attack?

as curated by neil buchanan: some audio and visual which are indicative, but by no means representative, of my time here.

suggested listening: magnetic fields/ get lost/ all the umbrellas in london

my favourite place in london (arbitrary big call): stoke newington car boot sale.

stoke newington/ london/ 2010

ukip. wow. this poster. says it all. statistics quoted and then transformed into column graph format may or may not be accurate.

wistable/ kent/ 2011

early last year it was pre-pre-election and gordon brown's failure to prevent the unpreventable had people worried that the tories would make a clean sweep.

on boxing day my auntie took me to a "hunt". the traditional english hunt has been curtailed but, even after seeing it, i still don't understand what happens now to make it any more humane.

apparently: bird of prey. man with shotgun. presence of dirt bike.

before the hunt started a sir with a red jacket and a megaphone took the opportunity to treat the crowd with some tory rhetoric. and in the end it made all the difference.

kersey/ suffolk/ 2010

the number 25 bus is not a nice place. it's a bendy bus and pretty easy to ride for free. transport in london is expensive so when something's free. something's free.

the seats are worn thread bare. it seems to have an unofficial policy of men only. there's always at least one shouter who lost touch with reality a couple of years ago.

the number 25 is not a nice place.

but check out this flower on the 25.

whitechapel/ london/ 2010

the common just behind my childhood home. this is my dad forging his way through forgotten paths, trying to find a vantage point to spy on said home, to gage the amount of diy done on said home, since said childhood.

thanks to his ambitious gait and my slow shutter speed/ general lack of skill you can actually see the time travel.

pyrford/ surrey/ 2010

changed beginnings

new year. new start. the promise of something different falling into the place of what's been missing.

it struck me that there's more to share and more to enjoy through this little portal.

the sonic and visual blind dates will still continue. but there'll be more. more variety, more projects, more expressions of vaguely formed opinions through fractured syntax.

there'll be more.

and look, i know how you feel about change. the beauty was in the limited palette. the restrictions in form. what happens when you open that out.

salient point. but seeing as neither of us have found what we're looking for isn't it possible that this is it? this could be it. for both of us.

hutenanny

everyone loves a good series. everyone loves waiting for it's completion. thank you 2011.

suggested listening: caribou/ andorra/ irene

my pa lives in minnesota. it gets cold there. on one of the balmier days we headed to a huge lake. the relentless outdoorsiness of the average american has made a sport out of fishing right on top of it. remote, romantic and. great.

minneapolis/ minnesota/ 2008

we traveled epic distances across beautiful lands. we arrived. my friend found a way to insult the english. we slept in a freezing room as desert temperatures dropped. i was woken early by the cold and headed out before the sun had blazed it's path across this outhouse.

salar de uyuni/ bolivia/ 2006

my new year started with the coast. for me this bodes. it bodes well. the english coast is moody like your adolescent brother, sensible like your reticent uncle, beautiful like your understated cousin and completely free of the flashy developments that the brash sun brings with it.

whitstable/ uk/ 2011

street feelings

suggested listening: las robertas/ cry out loud/ street feelings

this is the amazing skyline packed in behind the macba in el raval. all walls should come with a right way up pattern.

el raval/ barcelona/ 2009

this beaten down building is the archetypal latino man: romantic, out-of-date and beautiful.

but then, latino men are short.

i took this on a ridiculously hot day and, it could just be me, but the heat on the walls is almost tangible. i can't quite make out the sign, not in the photo and not in my memory, but i think it's talking about community action and co-operative living. how could it not.

buenos aires/ argentina/ 2006

sometimes towns are so remote and otherworldly that they seem beyond utilitarian concerns like streets. it doesn't make sense that a road even runs through this town.

salar de uyuni/ bolivia/ 2006

window into the window of your window

suggested listening: animal collective/ sung tongs/ winters love

my favourite room in london. blue new year's skies from the mount view attic.

freedom house/ london/ 2011

these guys were watching the pre-school's christmas show in a sleepy fishing town from the comfort of their own home. entertainment included a transgender teenager (reggaeton moves).

olón/ ecuador/ 2005

thanks to the yesteryear lamp post out the back of our house the loungeroom gets shrouded with this amazing amber glow. i took this when i was staying on the couch before i properly moved in and thought it was pretty. and pretty special. i showed the amber effect to some visiting canadians and they looked at me like i was 1. dissapointing and 2. maybe a bit sad.

home/ london/ 2010