Everything is melting

The heat-wave continues in Britain, and it is such a big deal because it happens so rarely. Is it nostalgia that makes our childhood memories feel as though all summers were hot and sunny? It is some years since we have had such a good summer season.

A different climate brings a different mood. As I write this I am listening to ‘On Land’ by Brian Eno, a marvellous ambient sound for the weather. This album was recorded 25 years ago!

The work on the booklets for bluewater books continues apace. I am now working on two booklets – ‘zen words’ and ‘umbrian images’. Both will be produced in first limited editions of 50. They are taking longer than planned to produce, partly due to my perfectionist tendencies which means that I keep tweaking the finished job. Tomorrow I aim to produce the print run for ‘umbrian images’ and follow this very soon with ‘zen words’ so that I can distribute them both at once. I am slowly building the mailing list too.

On the ‘new words’ side of things I have been steadily producing poems for ‘the alice conversations’ collection. This is a collection of poems in the voice of a character called Alice, who represents my anima (Jung’s theory of the feminine characteristics within the male).

Reading material at the moment includes looking through an old collection of poems by Michael Schmidt which I stumbled across on the bookshelves at home. It is called ‘A Change of Affairs’ and was published by Anvil. This book was published the same year that Brian Eno began recording ‘On Land’. I think that is the only link though!

I mentioned in recent weblogs that I am listening to a lot of music from The Wire compilation CDs. This is really challenging material, and, as ever, I am interested in the parallels between the use of sound and potentials for use of language. I’m experimenting with ideas.

Also published on Medium.