Sunday, 1 January 2012

Music and Cities



Mark Twain once famously wrote that "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes". An astute observation of how people can interact. Actually false, metaphorically true. Similarly, you can ‘actually’ travel around the world in another way without putting your shoes on - through music and song. Whilst this is often the consequence of mood (of the music, or of you whilst listening), or of memory (how many of us have holiday songs that remind us of a particular vacation?), or indeed of instruments used (the Steel Drum brings you instantly to the West Indies, the Kora to West Africa), sometimes the globetrotting is as literal as the title of the song itself. Here as an example of what I mean...


Jewel - Barcelona
Kaki King - Montreal
Jeff Buckley - Vancouver
Blonde Redhead - Oslo

33 Degrees Of Stax

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Thursday, 24 November 2011

Friday, 7 October 2011

Poem: "Vujà dé"

Vujà dé


I led you down to a
Small pub that I know
By the sea,

But when we got there
It felt like my first stare, for
I was staring, with new gazes, all around

And though I am certain that here I have trodden
My feet felt these grounds like the touch of a virgin,
New routes were watered, and thus newly sodden
With new thoughts conceived within this new emerging,

I have absolutely no memory of this place!
Although I know that I have been here before.


© Jules Willocks

Poem: "One week and Eight days"

One week and Eight days


She taught me new sounds and new sighs
Heavy, with the alien of fear,
But she slew -
The God of anticipation
And his wife,
The Goddess, Taboo

For fifteen days we were,
On that bridge that was a pier -
Nervous, at the coming of the moon,
And we stood, if only for no reason,
But that reason
To keep serpents
From
Our
Room

She gave me brave signs, engraved skin
Catered, for new mazes of my mind,
And she shamed -
The angels of romance
And their kin,
The disciples of pain

Those fifteen nights we slept,
On grass that wasn’t fields -
Anxious for a stalling of the sun,
Although we were
There for but a season,
Well that season
And our two hearts
Were
As
One

© Jules Willocks

Erik Satie - Gnossienne No. 1 (Nachtvlinders)

Album Art: Henri René - "Music for Bachelors"

Henri Henri René - Sleepwalk



A great song for a dream sequence in a film, I think...

Ben E. King - I Who Have Nothing

Erik Satie - Gnossienne No. 3 ( Lent )

Wednesday, 21 September 2011