Lovely trees

[imomus]

Well, I really have to thank auto_appendix profusely for sending me Peter Neal's Incredible String Band DVD Be Glad For The Song Has No Ending. What can I say? Words like "life-changing" and "determinant" kept floating into my mind as I watched the two films, the 1968 documentary made for BBC arts programme Omnibus but shelved because it was "too advanced", and the whimsical pantomime filmed on Super 8 by the band themselves, The Pirate and the Crystal Ball, described quite accurately as "Wickermanesque".

The "Wickermanesque" atmosphere was enhanced by the fact that I interlaced bits of the DVD with a documentary being broadcast on Arte called The Cherry Blossom Front, a film by Kenichi Watanabe about Japan's sakura-mania, and the folk rituals surrounding the annual appearance of the blossom. The film showed Mount Yoshino, near Nara, exploding with cherry blossom, and showed the monk who tends an 1800 year-old cherry tree updating a website dedicated to it with daily pictures. The monk saw the tree as both sacred and frail, and his respect for it was thoroughly practical: make sure it has the best soil, so that its branches stay healthy. Support the tree, where necessary, with wooden platforms so that it can ramble horizontally despite having been blown around by typhoons for nearly two thousand years.

Back to Be Glad: the Incredibles are walking around Edinburgh, it's 1968, they're talking about God. "Some people feel they're separate from God and inferior. Others feel they share that energy." It's Robin Williamson talking, a faraway look in his eyes, and what he's describing is really the secret of Shinto. God is not elsewhere, not unknowable, but in us and in nature, channellable, tied up with down-to-earth things like trees and stories and weird musical instruments. I think the Shinto priest with his cherry tree would agree: what we call the divine is all tied up with structure, and we participate in it by playing with structures, tampering with structures, creating structures. The arbitrariness and unpredictability of the ISBs' song structure is, in this sense, divine, and perfectly worldly. Like their songs, the band's live performances are casually, divinely divergent: in the film they wear absurd Noah and Dove masks, retell the flood story "through the illusion of long-distance time-colour television", turn a routine gig into a dance performance and a poetry reading. Precious, pretentious, twee, trippy... well, yes, all of the above, if it weren't for the fact that these people really are channelling something divine, as the music (ramshackle, implausible, zany, devotional) confirms. Like blossom shooting from the cells of an ancient tree in spring, these songs have no ending.

Comments

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I think the Shinto priest with his cherry tree would agree: what we call the divine is all tied up with structure, and we participate in it by playing with structures, tampering with structures, creating structures.

This is very similar to the way I have come to think about divinity - soul corresponds to form, body to matter.

[(Anonymous)]

Did I see a review of this DVD on BBC4 ages ago. Does it at one point feature one member of the band playing a song about mortaility to an old guy (who cries)? I've been trying to track down what this was ever since.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I love the idea of the Incredible String Band rather more than the reality - the 'twee' gets in the way for me. It's the vocals that I usually have the problem with, I love the instrumentation unreservedly. I'm so bored with plodding guitar, bass, drums and, occasionally, keyboards combinations.

Your new CD is exemplary in its range of textures. I'll be interested to see how your 'life changing' exposure to ISB changes things.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I think what I'd be guided by here is the structure of the songs, the way they take off in new directions all the time. Also the stripped-down, modal arrangements, "guest-star" arrangements, I call them, where there are a lot of (exotic) instruments used in the track, but they each make a cameo one by one, and at any given point there are only a couple of sounds in brittle counterpoint.

[mundi-mundane.livejournal.com]

"I think the Shinto priest with his cherry tree would agree: what we call the divine is all tied up with structure, and we participate in it by playing with structures, tampering with structures, creating structures."

... and through finding poetic ways of filling these structures - those that we make and those that we find ourselves within - we experience and contribute to the divine.

Exactly!

[becki1111.livejournal.com]

"The monk saw the tree as both sacred and frail, and his respect for it was thoroughly practical: make sure it has the best soil, so that its branches stay healthy. Support the tree, where necessary, with wooden platforms so that it can ramble horizontally despite having been blown around by typhoons for nearly two thousand years."

I feel like the element of practicality is so often lost in religious or spiritual discourse, yet it is so vital. It is what leads to structure and our interaction with it....as you suggest.

For spirituality to be truly effective, it must have physical and abstract form in the past, present and future with equal stability. This is why your example of the tree struck me as it did...it is the perfect example of what happens when this is done successfully.

I checked out the links for "Be Glad the Song Has No Ending" and the "The Cherry Blossom Front". When I have money I definitely want to check out the former, and (here comes my question), is the latter ever available for viewing on the Internet? I am not fluent in French, but can generally make out the gist of web-sites and could not find anything leading me to believe it is, but I really want to see this program you mention. Perhaps PBS will eventually pick it up.

Finally, have you read Ancren Riwle (The Nun's Rule)? I picked it up from the library last week (it hadn't been checked out since 1965!). Anyway, it was written by Bishop Poore in the 14th century as a sort of instructional manual for nuns and anchoresses. I originally checked it out for reserach for a novel or novella I hope to begin in the relatively near future, but my guess is that it contains a lot of information or insight that lends itself well to what you wrote today as hermetic writing tends to take into account the divine nature of practical, daily ritual. It will be interesting to see if Bishop Moore goes into that or sticks to rules of chastity and the like. If only I could find texts writeen by actual anchoresses from that time period.

Re: Exactly!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The Cherry Blossom documentary was just shown on Arte TV here in Europe, it's not, as far as I know, available as a DVD. The "Be Glad" film is a DVD and should be available. Never heard of Ancren Riwle, but it sounds fascinating. Good luck with the novel!

[serenchwilen.livejournal.com]

Momus! It pleases to hear you're so moved by Be Glad. A couple years ago I commented on an ILM thread that The Incredible String Band's The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter is your bible, but that you didn't know it yet. I was half joking half serious, since I knew very little about you at the time and didn't know how much you knew about their music or whether you cared for it or not. It was just a hunch. But now I see in recent posts that you do have a respect (might I say reverence?) for them! Hurrah!

My favorite quote from the film is from Robin Williamson: "Well, whether one likes it or not, everyone creates their own universe, you know, and that's all I've done...just create mine...and I've created it mostly for fun. Sure, I'm glad that people like it."

If you haven't already heard it, I strongly recommend Williamson's solo album Skirting the River Road from a couple years back. It is everything music should be, and Williamson's voice has aged so wonderfully. He sounds like a wise old man come down from the mountains now.

Also, I'm often seeing critics compare some of the New Folk/Free Folk groups to The Incredible String Band, but I think the only newer group worthy of this comparison is Faun Fables. Seek out their Mother Twilight album and then get the other two while your at it. Like ISB, their songs pull you into their own strange, primitive, mystical worlds. They are also "channeling something divine" as you put it. And I'd say it's no small coincidence that leader Dawn McCarthy has caught the attention of photographer Merri Cyr. So far, I've only seen a few photographs, but I'd love to see Cyr do a Maya Deren-like take on Faun Fables like she did in those Jeff Buckley clips.

[leaflets.livejournal.com]

this makes me love you.

peer 2 peer

[(Anonymous)]

I would love to see the ISB documentary as well

Momus or auto-appendix, why not put it up somewhere online and we, your peers, can see it too .. spread the gift around

rapid share

or

libero.it

[(Anonymous)]

I recommend you to listen to USA IS A MONSTER, a band i saw last week that takes this whole new underground artschool hippie thing a couple of steps further and is love by it.
mario

Re: peer 2 peer

[commodorevic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, or you could buy a copy for $24 + shipping. Guess I shouldn't talk since I ripped a promo of 'Otto Spooky.'

A list poem of musical objects

[instant-c.livejournal.com]

I just picked this up at the record store today and thank you both for recommending it! It really is amazing and admittedly life changing. Such a truely great experience to watch them perform. I never would have imagined how important that is to their music. I wonder what they would sound like if they were starting out now? Apart from some of the ShoboShobo performances & Momus, who else is really carrying on in this spirit? Are there really that few artists really embracing many styles and instruments, refusing to be catagorized in one genre? Imagine Devendra, Hypo, and (whatever obligatory band that you like) as one musician/"band". I enjoyed the comment in the film about influences not being just one type of music because you own a record of it, but also the pop music you hear at a cafe.

[chachuuung.livejournal.com]

momus, i´m hoping you´ve already considered this at length:

what is the pedantic adjective form of "momus"?

is it "momusian"?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I suppose it must be. Or Momusesque. I think I prefer the latter.

Robin Williamson Stories For Spring

[johneth.livejournal.com]

Saw Robin (and his Indian wife)perform in Bath a few weeks back and their switches between tale and poem and song were spell-binding for a 'crowd' of about 50, in a Regency room with Baroque oval paintings on the ceiling (aptly one being Pan!)

Robin's Tale Of Taliesan, told as he picked a Welsh harp was magic realised as reportage, with cruelty, resourcefulness and a final litany to note nearly all of life (and death) experiences.

The man has gained some bulk (still has a full head of long wavy hair) but his voice is as lilting Scots qawaali as ever (he wove Water Song into an invocation for Spring growth)yet he can add the bass of the portly pensioner. Also played flute, mandolin, bass drum, fiddle and made a drone by balancing a tiny weight on the key of his Yamaha!

He promised a 'Summer Stories' tour and can be reached via here

http://www.thebeesknees.com/bk-pw-in.html

Hope to meet you tomorrow, between the bookcases. Good luck with the prep.

John