1.

During World War One a German anthropologist made recordings of captive British soldiers reading aloud the Parable of the Prodigal Son, noting down the regional heritage, denomination, age and profession of the men. The result is an aural time capsule from a pre-globalised world and an insight into British dialectal history.

Berliner Lautarchiv recordings.

2.

As far as I’m concerned Richard Dawson is the most interesting musician to come from Newcastle and lyrics from his earlier albums in particular tap into the Folk Horror Revival in quite a unique way. The second piece I’ve included below I also find evocative of the Paul Wright film Arcadia.

I’m perpetually on a search for artists of any kind who can reflect back at me the striking, ghoulish splendour of rural England and the culture that lies there in a way that doesn’t involve reenactment or white people with dreadlocks.

The lyrics of Richard Dawson.

Weaver
Richard Dawson

I steep the wool in a cauldron
Of pummelled gall-nuts afloat in urine
Ad river-water thrice-boiled with a bloodstone
Then let it breathe
Under the beams
While I prepare the lichen
Half a fist of wizardbeard and rock-tripe
Yields a dye enough the whole town to paint
Lavenders an echo of the beeswing
Dazzling foxgloves ashake in the salty wind
It looks like a thundercloud
Suspended from the gables
High above the bobbing heads
Which now and then look up to see what's dripping on them
So we begin
Feeding it in
Combing through the fibres searching gently for a yarn to spin
My lady takes a nasty tumble
Down the crumbled steps of the merchants guild
Precipitating the early onset of labour
There is a crab
Caught in her hair
Stretchering through the market
Fearful are the bellows to behold
Even with the spindle firmly clenched between her teeth
With a snap the baby's head emerges
Onto these sodden eiderdown bedpages
Even though the new born child
Is not my kin
And still is dangling by a string
I ken the rising mystery of love
My very ancient friend

Riding through Yorkshire,
we come upon the ghost of a tree at Buttertubs Pass
Golden and green, flapping its leaves,
Though it is winter and there is no breeze.
Seven little sparrows pale as soldiers
Hopping in amongst the curling boughs.
Then comes a shout from one of our party
Old Albert Bousefield's fallen down a hole
Hope upon hope, fastened to a rope
Not able to ascertain how deep it goes.
"Albert can you hear me? Make a sound!
If you can't make a sound then clap two stones"

Leaving behind our friend in the lime pit
We hurry on in quiet dread
Into the fog, smothering the Dales
The raindrops are falling like the bars of a jail
Buried in the arsehole of the world
A row of burned out huts we made our beds
Lying awake looking up through the black wooden beams
I can see the Milky Way
Comes there a scream out of the sky
A great ball of fire goes hurtling by
Everyone's awake now. What the hell
is happening today? It's all so queer
Rising at dawn to find Thomas Knox
has not from his sleep been summoned forth
Face like a mask, fixed in a gasp,
We wrap him in blankets and we cover him with grass
Onward with our journey through Tow Law
Over Headley Hill, past Hanging Stone

Called on an inn to fill our bellies
With dark bloody meat and sour black beer
There we were warned never to stray
Far from the road through Kayo Bog
Several of the children from the village
Disappeared last month without a trace
Three hours later we go in single
file through a maze of moaning soil
Reeking of dung, droning of flies
The moss on the trees glows as we pass by
There is something awful alive in this place
We are most relieved to leave behind
The moon is a peach in the brown fields of Kibblesworth
It won't be long 'til we get home
Cramp in our guts, bile in our throats
Mischief undulating through our bones
Suddenly the city lights around us
Disappearing up into the clouds
Seven little sparrows pale as soldiers
Hopping in amongst the curling boughs

Ghost of A Tree
Richard Dawson

Paul Wright - Arcadia

3.

The Lighthouse - Willem Dafoe ‘Hark!’

"Let Neptune strike ye dead, Winslow. Hark! Hark, Triton, hark! Below, bid our father the sea king, rise from the depths, full fowled in his fury. Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime. To choke ye! Engorging your organs 'til ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more. Only when he, crowned in cockle shells, with slithering tentacled tail and steaming beard, take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches banshee-like in the tempest, and plunges right through your gullet! Bursting ye! A bulging blackguard no more, but a blasted bloody film, now a nothing for the harpies and the souls of dead sailors to pick, and claw, and feed upon, only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the dread emperor himself. Forgotten to any man, to any time. Forgotten to any god or devil. Forgotten even to the sea. For any stuff or part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul, is Winslow no more, but is now, itself the sea!”

I grew up pretty far inland so the idea of the sea perpetually lapping at us always seems quite novel and slightly odd. I like the lighting and the angle in this scene, and I find it reminiscent of Caravaggio’s Medusa.

Maxfield Parrish

4.

‘Cobble Hill’ 1931.

’Old White Birch’ 1937.

Maxfield Parrishes paintings have a heady, acid quality to them which brings on a solvent taste in my mouth. He was widely known in the US during the first half of the 20th century for the designs he did for calendars and biscuit boxes. I love the idea that work of these hues could be found in midwest kitchens, like Dorothy brought back a bit of Oz with her.

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