Archives : all posts by Sean

John Tavener - Eternal Memory - 3. With Great Peace & Serenity
performed by Steven Isserlis, Vladimir Spivakov and the Moscow Virtuosi.

My enduring memory of Jack Layton, the leader of Canada's left-wing New Democratic Party, who died this morning, was that time Miranda saw him at Idée Fixe. Idée Fixe is a dive bar, my favourite. Jack was there with his Montreal team, swigging a big bottle of 50 and playing pool. It wasn't that he was "like us" - of course he wasn't, he was a lifetime politician, moustached and jolly, chronically un-hip, so clearly a dad who tells lame jokes and waits in the car with his hands on the steering wheel, for no matter how long. But Jack was there, at our dive bar, when he could have gone to any other bar. He came because it was the closest one, quiet, with a free jukebox. Idée Fixe is dingy, a little sad, full of sketchy characters. But who gives a shit, right? I could imagine Jack grinning his grin and asking, "Is the beer cold?"

Another time, at the parade for St-Jean-Baptiste, a parade I had always been a little scared of, there was Jack, marching. I was an anglo in Montreal and I always wondered whether I was welcome at this Quebecois national holiday. I think I was (& think I am). But it took me a while to feel that way. Jack, from Toronto, didn't seem like he ever hesitated. He strolled and waved. I felt like he was saying: "Who gives a shit. Let's get together."

In politics, Jack always seemed to be saying: Let's get on with it. Let's get on with getting to the moment when we live in a fairer, juster, better country.

His cheeriness and optimism was so persistent it sometimes felt fake: how could it not be fake, we asked. But there is a difference between a lie and a performance. I believe Jack was a persistent optimist, an unflagging hoper, but in those instants when his optimism was impersistent, when his hope flagged, he still behaved like the person he wanted to be. Kind, open, ready for new friendships. For Jack, there were more important things than self-expression. When he was feeling stricken, frustrated or afraid, and we didn't need to see those things, he never showed them. His own story, his inner life, was never so important as the other things he wished to communicate. I believe in us.

I didn't agree with every decision Jack Layton made, as a politician. I don't stand behind every policy of his NDP. But I was with him, mostly. My friend Patricia wrote, I believe in the possibility of integrity in true leaders. I would change this slightly: I want to believe in the possibility of integrity in true leaders. Jack helped me believe that things can work out. That we can overcome our petty private stories, our grievances, for the sake of social justice and the collective good. It makes me very, very sad that he is gone.

The third movement of Tavener's "Eternal Memory" feels, here, like a song of death, a song you would hear at a funeral, ushering the departed as he rises to the afterlife. But I do not mean it this way. I imagine instead that this is a song of dawn moments. When you lie in your bed, flickering in and out of sleep, and feel - as I'm certain Jack did - that distant sense of possibility. When you can hear the faintest sounds of a future paradise.

Let's keep moving.

Rest in peace, Jack Layton. Sincere condolences to your family and friends.

I was proud to put my faith in you.

---

Update, 12:55pm: Jack Layton's final letter, to us.

Gym, Deer - "Darlings". Gym, Deer's Robert Lee lives in Red Hook, NY, by the water. In an interview with his label, Primary Records, who showed me this extraordinary song, they asked him, What is something you find funny? And Robert Lee said, When kids try and relate with animals. That made me sad. "Darlings" had always made me think of human beings' clumsy fumblings, the gentle ones, helping and longing and loving, sometimes futilely. Now I imagine animals there too, in with Gym, Deer's haunted doo-wop, just as clumsy, just as misunderstanding. A dog cannot tell a girl his heart any more clearly than I can. Let me show you with gifts, looks, unworded murmurs.

I'm very smitten with this song. Gym, Deer's debut is forthcoming; in the meantime you can buy another track, "Nod". There are also many other excellent things on Primary Records' free sampler, particularly the songs by Claude Rosen, Names of War and Pony of Good Tidings. When Primary's Anthony LaMarca told Robert Lee that he reminded him of Arthur Russell, Lee said, "I don't know who that is. This is me trying to be Nick Drake and Bobby McFerrin.".

Martha Wainwright - "Adieu mon coeur (live)". Martha and her band perform this song with even more whimsy than Édith Piaf's original, a smile at the corners of the mouth. It is a song that dwells in its own "écho de bonheur", its echo of happiness, from the season before the singer said adieu to her love. When we walked on treasure, when we were vagabonds, the stalks of wheat were long & golden, the days went on forever. "On aimait les chansons", we loved songs, and now-- now, what? We love them still, bittersweetly, adieu, adieu, we cannot help ourselves. [from Martha's excellent record, her best, interpreting the songs of Piaf - buy]

(lion image by Disent)

Language and Politics - "Denny's (on Thursday)". Solar flares, scorched skies, and so a hundred news reports about flooding, locusts, the economic impact of sun-spots. You pay no attention to your record collection. You do not realize something is happening there. Those plastic discs, vinyl slabs, streaked and shocked by weather. Two years later, you pull out a TV On The Radio album, lay it on the platter, find a million microscopic changes. Shines gone matte, glitters where nothing glittered before, all these shifted thrills. [buy on Bandcamp]

Peggy Seeger - "When I Was Single". Let me put it this way: Peggy doesn't seem very happy, hitched. She has problems with dishes, children, shoes, such a heavy heart. When I was single, my shoes they did squeak / Now I am married, Lord my shoes they do leak / Lord, don't I wish I was a single girl again. So many complaints, low and sad. But she doesn't mention her husband. Or at least she doesn't mention him in words. I think that's what the closing bars are about, just hummed, and I can't work out quite what's wrong.

I discovered this song as part of No Words' new mix, MCML: A 1950s Reel. Beautiful 50s folk, from around the world, available as a free 70mb download.

(photo source)

Neutral Milk Hotel - "Two-Headed Boy Part 2". Jeff Mangum came to Montreal last night. He played a beautiful show, the songs that mattered, his voice almost unchanged. He wore a plaid shirt, a newsboy cap. His haircut was the same as it has always been. He opened my heart right up, lifted words and wordless syllables to my lips. He reminded me that every time I make a metaphor with flowers - blooms, buds, curls, - it is a tribute to him. But in spite of all this, I am not sure what Jeff Mangum was after. He came back to Montreal after years away, sang his cranberry melodies, asked us all to sing along; and maybe he was after money, or solace, or reverie or community or some full-circle kind of peace. I really don't know. He gave nothing away. He smiled, quipped, eyes flicking around. He drank from that plastic bottle of water. He seemed disappointed, sometimes, in himself. He seemed most alive when he was singing. He sang old songs and offered no clues. Today I listen to "Two-Headed Boy Part 2", feel its full force; and I wonder what it means, when a man is selfless and concealed. [buy]

Gillian Welch - "The Way It Will Be". E---- lifted her hood and went out into the fiery streets. There were yells in the air. The rioters had already been chased through F---- Lane so now the road was empty, full of smoke and sirens. The Tesco was boarded up, the shoe shop, but someone had broken the window of the Greggs. E---- wondered what you would loot from a Greggs. She stood in the shattered glass, peered into the bakery. Part of her expected crumbs, so many crumbs, feathery bits of puff pastry. But the inside was clean, undisturbed. Cheap cakes sat under glass.

E---- walked up the street. She was sick with missing M----. She was streaked and raging. She heard sirens and felt as if they were batting against her. This city should be full of crows. Not rioters, cops, just a million black crows, watching from the eaves, clicking their beaks. She didn't want to ever see M---- again. Wanted him to live in a green valley, where the sky is always white. [buy]

---

You have until midnight GMT to buy If Destroyed Still True #6: Iraqi Kurdistan edition, a zine by my friend Nine. It is £3, black and white, utterly exceptional. I met Nine when I lived in Edinburgh. But she has left that city, taken her life on her back. She is a traveller, now. She is sensitive, serious, alive. She tells good jokes and listens hard. Earlier this year she visited Iraqi Kurdistan. IDST6 is about her time there. It is a photocopied cut-up job but in its content it is so beautiful, thoughtful, a testimony of feelings felt and questions asked. Nine's gift is the way she strings together pieces of things - honestly, humbly. These strings of pieces teach and move me, in a manner that almost nothing else ever does. I recommend this little book passionately, unreservedly. £3, shipped anywhere in the world.

(read more about the poem above / listen to it read)

Lana Del Rey - "Video Games". Sugar, magnolia, melting ice cube. This love is slippery, smoky; it hides, plays, coyly rises. Lana Del Rey will watch your car rattle to the curb, watch polygons fret on the LCD, she will long for you from a place that is just beyond arm's reach. Her summer dress is off and then it's on. She is against the jamb. She drinks pink lemonade and watches the jade plant curl. I am not sure I trust it, the thing she is promising. Some prizes look better in reflection. [from Pitchfork via Grizzly Bear / MySpace / before you get too excited]

Nikkiya - "When I Was High". When C came down the mountain, the trees were grey, the fire hydrants were grey, the rooms were room-temperature. She sat in her kitchen, drumming her fingers, squinting out the window and into the wasteland. The mountain was not very far away; she could go again. Her backpack was slouched near the door. But C did not want to give in to that impulse. She had things to do. Look at all these papers. She sighed, doodled, wrote a few lines. She tried to write the lakes blue, the lips red. She tried to remember the way the world had felt, from the top of the mountain: the birds' darting hearts, the cities' breathing, the clouds' fucked-up swagger. Could she feel these things again, in her house on her street? In the dumb lowland? It had been so easy on the mountain. Every time she closed her eyes, she could still hear it - the feathered trills, thunder and lightning, all that altitude. [website]

(photo is of Stephen Hawking & Jane Wild, 1965)

The Antlers - "I Don't Want Love". It's as if the Antlers decided love is a bird collection, a cage full of bluebirds, sparrows, finches, macaws, and then wrote a song about this decision. Peter Silberman sings in high falsetto, both sides of a couple, both sides standing beside the cage and saying, No. But then I don't really think this song is about love, despite its title. It's about something else, gorgeous and seductive, less worthy. It too can be a bird collection. It is wise, in my experience, to stand beside this cage and refuse. If only it always came with such a beautiful, stirring soundtrack. [buy]

Wynter Gordon - "Buy My Love". This clapping blitzing Junetime pop song is the opposite of & comeback to the Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love". Because Wynter is almost unequivocal: You can buy my love. Don't you hesitate to buy my love. The only hesitation comes in the middle eight, almost at the very end, but I don't buy that line for a second. Wynter's heart is full of empty jewellery boxes, bare fingers; it's a lootbag waiting for prizes. [buy]

---

Proud of my cover story on Spencer Krug, Moonface, for this week's Hour. You can download the album highlight, "Fast Peter", at Coke Machine Glow.

(drawing by marvelous matt forsythe)

I've returned from SappyFest Six, probably the best SappyFest ever, the best festival I have attended in years, and I have to send out a loud shout to everyone in the world who has never attended this tiny three-day shindig in Sackville, NB (pop: 5,411): IT IS A TREASURE & EXTRAORDINARY & YOU NEED TO COME. I really mean this. Gentle, vivacious and stunningly curated, with thunderous moments and quiet moments and loving moments. Cheap food, good beer, activities & diversions. All at a scale that puts friendships first, intimacy over spectacle. On Saturday night we watched Charles Bradley and we all held hands, in our little tent.

At SappyFest I write SAPPY TIMES, a daily newspaper of the things I hear. SAPPY TIMES is distributed, on paper, throughout the SappyFest site. You can read about past years of the festival, and also about the festival generally, from my 2009 and 2010 posts. Here are this year's pages, written always between the hours of 11pm and 8am, and this year with marvelous meteorological reporting by Jeff Miller.

This year's festival highlights include: Owen Pallett & les Mouches and Arcade Fire's surprise performance (under the name Shark Attack), as documented in Saturday; John K Samson, Sandro Perri, Little Scream, Bonjay, Charles Bradley and the Menahan Street Band, as documented in Sunday; Drumheller, Pat Jordache, Shotgun Jimmie, Jim Bryson and Jerry Granelli, as documented in Monday.

If you've never been to Sappy, I'll say it again: it's so special and small and of exceptional quality. If you enjoy the kind of music I do, and the songs we do, you owe it to yourself to book a trip to the Canadian east coast. See some swans, some beautiful songs, then drive to the coast and swim in the sea.

And finally, a little awkwardly, if you run a festival or an event or a zeppelin race or anything like that, and you would like to bring me to where you are, to write something like the Sappy Times, I would always love to talk to you. This is my email address.