06/18 - Who The Hell Can See Forever

February in my parents’ home. -10°C outside

Iron & Wine - The Trapeze Swinger

In the morning, the sun fleets into the room on a gust of memories. The sheets, cool on top of the body, absorb the light, but let the past seep through. Every object around the bed gives off an echo of childhood. I remember my friends. I remember us as teenagers, when we used to listen to this song. It resounds now as a guarantor of indestructible ports, solid moorings, stalwarts in snow storms. 

Kings of Convenience - Sorry Or Please

At breakfast, the blue tits swirl around the kitchen window while a squirrel stares me square in the face. We switch place. I am it, clinging to a seed-tray, momentarily transfixed, in the tension between remaining in place and escaping. The stage of my old life meets the cast of the new… 

Fairuz - Talj Talj

Strange vistas beckon from a laptop screen. Dreams of new experiences, unburdened by nostalgia. Lebanese sounds, South American art residencies.

Call Super - Arpo Sunk

It’s 11 am, everything is in harmony again. Black coffee, winter light, books and parents. No speaking, just reclining in the moment, nest-like and doted. A father’s clarinet slips and slides on a son’s electronic ice rink.

Against All Logic - I Never Dream

And after the coffee, a solid block of sunshine smashes through the living room window, and engulfs the body. The garden lies blistering white beyond. Snow and ice crystals shoot beams in all directions. Blinded, heated on one side, I stumble into ecstasy. Endorphins pump through me flanked by an army of fotons. I dissolve, blissfully, into the crisp winter air, mixed with shredded Nicolas Jaar-beats, and sprinkled with sampled vocals, in a delicious February sorbet. Let me melt on your tongue.

05/18 - You're Not Going Backwards

Aye, it was freezing that week. We wrapped a house in plastic and correx, so to create a shell within a shell, an infinitesimally smaller house within the house, which might then grow, and molt into a home. Breaking out of its chrysalis it would turn its insides into outsides and radiate warmth into the streets and backyards circumventing it. Or so we hoped, before the plumbing broke...

Baby Huey & The Babysitters - California Dreamin'

Aye, it was freezing that week. Twas the week when the sun shone further and further away, with a brighter and brighter light. At last it was such an intense pinlight scream, that the sky around it turned all white, like an empty slot in a slide projector. And on that empty screen, black spots started to appear, dancing, promising imminent tales of faraway countries and fast-paced romance. But just as fantasies of warmer seasons started to form in the blank, the hail hit. 

James Blake - If The Car Besides You Moves Ahead

Aye, it was freezing that week. Twas the week of traffic stuck in crystallised smog. A sickly grey-white, stiff mousse, where cars' headlights fractured in a thousand tiny beams in their attempts to break through. Where the roofs of double-deckers floated like abandoned surfboards on top of a frozen exhaust-sea. Where the green lights at the crossing lured you into a face on collision with a solid cloud of brittle vehicle parts mixed with the crunchy stool of pollution. If at last you managed to make your way around the icy ridge of solidified smoke – which stretched almost uninterrupted along the entire Lewisham Way – and down to the overground, you found the train stuck permanently to its track, nothing but a temporary shelter for a mute and shivering collection of foiled commuters, their faces scratched red from the abrasions of the morning air.

Princess Nokia - Brick City

Damn, it was freezing that week. I stayed in bed most of the weekend. Fevers and a splitting headache, what else could I do. I made up excuses for why most things in my life had come to a halt. I made up unlikely scenarios for a week that had gone by with nothing much happening. I listened to this strange eclectic hip hop record again to try and punch a small hole in the air through which I might slip out into real life again.

Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol

I propose that you may judge a TV drama by its bad guy. Deadwood and Justified being two cases in point – the former with its Al Swearengen, the latter with Boyd Crowder; two of the most amazing and complex villains I've ever seen, and two of the best TV shows ever created. Now, Fargo is just lining excellent baddies up. I mean, they had Billy Bob Thornton in the first season. Hard to top. Second season there was a whole slew of multifaceted cold-blooded types. Now, with its third season, they're bringing David Thewlis. David. Thewlis. And it is, of course, fantastic. Plus of course Ewan McGregor in double roles, a razor sharp female detective duo, and the most delicious combinations of music and image imaginable. This tune here being just one of many a good example.

Jenny Wilson - RAPIN* 

Jenny Wilson - RAPIN* (Official video) from Gustaf Holtenäs on Vimeo.

04/18 - Some Days I Think I'd Feel Better If I Tried Harder

Here, then, are the sad songs I promised last week. Hope you're happy now!

Mountain Goats - Wild Sage

At the bus stop on the Strand outside Somerset House. A sparse and random rain falling. It's a dark Thursday evening after the cinema. Even the drops dripping on my dust streaked work hoodie seem isolated, lonesome.

Joan Baez - Once I Knew A Pretty Girl

A gibbous moon hung low over the city. It dwarfed and outshone the lights from the financial district at Canary Wharf. Got obscured behind dark profiles of buildings closer to the train. Was ignored by most of the other passengers in preference to their smartphones. Tiredness seeped in through my limbs and up to the cerebellum. My head slumped forward, and I dreamed.

Eric Chenaux - Summer & Time

Skypecalls and WhatsApp messages. Scribbles and to do lists. Almost getting transfixed by twitter feuds and music news, but managing at last to break away and squeeze in a chapter of rural prose before sleep. And suddenly a childhood memory appears. 

Nancy Wilson - Guess Who I Saw Today

I was in the garden. I composted the compost. Weeded the weeds. Surveyed my domains. Stood still. The robin appeared. Then a blue tit. Wood pigeons. A cat. Two blue tits. One great tit. No coal tits today. Three feral pigeons. Parakeets swooped through. I subdued myself. Put my self into brackets. Attempted to forget who I was amongst this uproar of life. Tried to stop worrying and doubting for just a little while. But it came back later.

Miles Davis - All Blues 

Work makes sense. Going running makes sense. Drawing makes sense despite all. Words literally make sense. John Coltrane's saxophone makes no sense and therefor all sense. Miles transcends. Like Joanna Newsom sang in the song that shall be played at the end of all of this: transmit. transcend.