I noticed this chap’s grave on my periodic visit to Bunhill Fields to say hello to William Blake and the other nonconformists. This being 2024 you can look up a performance of Shrubsole’s music. May he rest in peace.
Fooling around with 20m2 on a roof terrace in the centre of London, there are distinct limitations to one what can achieve in a garden. I could, as the genius Mark Ridsdill Smith does, grow a lot more vegetables. However, my own view is that whatever vegetables I grow to eat – and this year it’s been spinach, leeks, rocket, red cabbage, yacon, potatoes, runner beans, broad beans, beetroot, and tomatoes – is only ever going to be a token, for giggles…
For whatever reason, after growing cavalo nero, lettuces, and spinach erbette, I’ve cooled on growing leaves. I’ll grow spinach again over the winter but, although they are touted as the best things to grow in the city (because they are fast to grow and expensive to buy), I find leaves somehow boring.
Equally I find most ornamentals, often highly cultivated plants you couldn’t imagine happening in nature, almost products of a laboratory, a very tedious thing to grow. The flowers I’m growing, borage, phacelia, limanthes, marigolds, sunflowers, dandelions, nasturtiums are found at vegetable-growing seed suppliers as varieties that are good for insect life. Even my most ornamental flowers honeysuckle, poppies, zinnias, dahlias, (this last especially a concession to Mrs Ingram who loves them – they are beautiful…) are renowned for being attractive to pollinators.
What works very well among these select vegetables, trees, and carefully-chosen flowers, are herbs. Ever since I came across Juliette de Baïracli Levy and went on Kirsten Hartvig’s amazing country ramble at Forest Row I’ve been enchanted by them and their awesome potential. In the city they really work well, they don’t take up masses of space, the bugs love them, and they are fascinating. Currently, I am growing nothing particularly far out.
ThymeOreganoBayLavenderRosemaryChamomileMint
I believe that what one grows in the city should fundamentally address our urban alienation from nature. That selection should be geared to making us connect with the process of growing, with the seasons, with the cycle of life and death, and our cosmic alignment. In the city, we can’t pretend that we’re living wholly natural lives, but at least we can use growing to keep in touch with those things; like a diver underwater has an oxygen tank.
Created by David Attenborough “The World About Us” was a BBC Two television documentary series. Its central topic was natural history, but it had a wide remit covering people and geography. Running from 1967 to 1986 its list of contributors is remarkable.
“The World About Us” was the only TV show which, as children, we were allowed to stay up late to watch. It aired on Sunday evenings in the mid-seventies. I trace my fascination with animation back to The Pink Panther and The Rescuers, but before them “The World About Us” title sequence, commissioned by Attenborough, was the first thing that entranced me. What was this, this golden latticed globe, with its eerie aftertrails? Where was it?
My initial hunch was that the sequence was the work of Bernard Lodge who made the first Dr. Who title sequence, and I was correct. Blogger Tim Dickinson Pink for Your Actual Pterodactyl has a wonderful breakdown of it.
Lodge designed a skeleton ‘globe’ from bands of metal. The bands intersected both vertically and diagonally… Filming on 35mm, the globe revolved on a black background, and the camera tracked from one side of the screen to another. This negative was later replicated with the bands rotating in the opposite direction. The key ingredient was the duplication of the film six times, with each frame shifted by 2 or 3 frames. The resulting dupe (negative) consisted of a swirling array of bands.
An additional negative of the globe zooming into the screen was recorded, again using the same process. This faded out as the two tracking shots (the ‘pan from left to right, and right to left) cleared the frame. This left the sans-serif title caption to fade in, before the sequence fades to black in time with the final flute motif. Lodge used a simple and effective technique, using multiple exposures to create a world rich in mystery and intrigue. The repeated imagery fits perfectly with the swirling, echoing, multi-layered soundtrack.
The cue by John Scott was, I know now, straight out of the Paul Horn playbook. Jazz as it sheared into the New Age. The sequence has all the hallmarks of Hauntology, because (and this is my own definition), this was TV as a conduit of the countercultural current.
Animation is a very etheric pursuit, but refreshingly these metaphysical graphics and music were tethered to a TV show on… the world about us. As above, so below.
This mix accompanies the chapter New Age in my book “The “S” Word”.
Woebot Field Recording – The brook at Samye Ling Tony Scott – Za-Zen (Meditation) Paul Horn – Mantra/Meditation Don Robertson – Dawn Iasos – Aries Deuter – Aum Dadawah – Run Come Rally Keita – 流れ : Nagare Jon Hassell – Ba-benzélé Sheila Chandra – Quiet 1 Fumio Miyashita – 神/Kami Shiho Yabuki – Energy Flow (Ki No Nagare) Hiroshi Yoshimura – Dream Brian Eno – Quartz Manuel Göttsching – Ocean Of Tenderness Hans-Joachim Roedelius – Veilchenwurzeln Popol Vuh – Brüder Des Schattens – Söhne Des Lichts Laraaji – The Dance #1 Karlheinz Stockhausen – Mantra, for 2 pianos with percussion & electronics: Movement 4 John Cage – In A Landscape Harold Budd – First Light Deep Listening Band – Seven-Up Somei Satoh – Mantra Daniel Emmanuel – Wizards: Part II: Prayer Steve Roach – Reflections In Suspension Woebot Field Recording – The Grafton Peace Pagoda
I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and sat down under the huge shade of a Southern Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed, surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves rheumy-eyed and hung-over like old bums on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust—
—I rushed up enchanted—it was my first sunflower, memories of Blake—my visions—Harlem
and Hells of the Eastern rivers, bridges clanking Joes Greasy Sandwiches, dead baby carriages, black treadless tires forgotten and unretreaded, the poem of the riverbank, condoms & pots, steel knives, nothing stainless, only the dank muck and the razor-sharp artifacts passing into the past—
and the gray Sunflower poised against the sunset, crackly bleak and dusty with the smut and smog and smoke of olden locomotives in its eye—
corolla of bleary spikes pushed down and broken like a battered crown, seeds fallen out of its face, soon-to-be-toothless mouth of sunny air, sunrays obliterated on its hairy head like a dried wire spiderweb,
leaves stuck out like arms out of the stem, gestures from the sawdust root, broke pieces of plaster fallen out of the black twigs, a dead fly in its ear,
Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!
The grime was no man’s grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis’ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt—industrial—modern—all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown—
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos—all these
entangled in your mummied roots—and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form!
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
How many flies buzzed round you innocent of your grime, while you cursed the heavens of the railroad and your flower soul?
Poor dead flower? when did you forget you were a flower? when did you look at your skin and decide you were an impotent dirty old locomotive? the ghost of a locomotive? the specter and shade of a once powerful mad American locomotive?
You were never no locomotive, Sunflower, you were a sunflower!
And you Locomotive, you are a locomotive, forget me not!
So I grabbed up the skeleton thick sunflower and stuck it at my side like a scepter,
and deliver my sermon to my soul, and Jack’s soul too, and anyone who’ll listen,
—We’re not our skin of grime, we’re not dread bleak dusty imageless locomotives, we’re golden sunflowers inside, blessed by our own seed & hairy naked accomplishment-bodies growing into mad black formal sunflowers in the sunset, spied on by our own eyes under the shadow of the mad locomotive riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening sitdown vision.
[Obligatory moment’s silence to commemorate the life of Damo Suzuki.]
Thanks to the intervention of David Stubbs and generosity of the CAN organisation, I was able to license “Vitamin C” and “Dead Pigeon Suite” (variations on the theme) for my Vitamin C animation. I went to meet Damo in Hackney at the Total Refreshment Centre in May 2018 when he played one of his group improvisational concerts.
We chatted after the gig and later on exchanged emails. Damo wrote complimenting the film, “Good Afternoon, Matthew! It’s very educational and I liked it…” He did, however, express some frustration that, at this very early stage, he didn’t have a credit at its conclusion. I don’t believe I was completely aware of the scale of his contribution to the song, “I was as a singer of them, lyric is written my self, also melody what I sung. Strange world…….” He signed off, “Have a nice Evening! Energy!”
Thankfully I was able to immediately rectify the mistake which is reflected in the film’s existing credit sequence – and shared an updated link with Damo. May he rest in peace.
When I visited California researching my book “Retreat” in June 2018 I had wanted to visit Linus Pauling’s ranch on the Big Sur coastline which is depicted in the animation. I understand from my friend Patrick Holford that he visited his mentor Pauling there.
Lemon on a dining table at the Esalen Institute.
However, I simply didn’t have time to drop by Deer Flat Ranch in what was a massively compressed schedule. However, with Pauling on my mind, sitting at the canteen at the Esalen Institute, I found there was a lemon that had been left on my table outside. There was clearly a prosaic reason for it being there, but it still acquired gently cosmic overtones for me.
Promotional sticker for my animation of Vitamin C. Website now defunct.
Lemons were central to the history of Vitamin C. Although it was a handy and entirely appropriate motif I used throughout the film, Lemons rank quite low in the scale of fruits for their Vitamin C content.
Oranges for juicing.
The great proportion of Vitamin C in Lemons and Oranges is actually in the inedible peel. If you look strictly at the amount of Vitamin C in the juice, Lemon juice contains 38.7mg of Vitamin C per 100g. On the other hand freshly squeezed Orange Juice contains 50mg of Vitamin C per 100g serving. Oranges are therefore a better bet.
Researching my forthcoming book “The Garden” I recently came across a wonderful quote from Alan Watts in his book “The Joyous Cosmology” (1962) on the subject of Oranges, “Oranges – transformations of the sun into its own image…”
My OJ squeezer. No batteries needed.
Certainly these modest amounts of Vitamin C are nowhere near the quantities consumed by those practising Orthomolecular medicine. However, I think we shouldn’t underestimate the bioavailability of Vitamin C in plain old juice. I’m personally not a fan of liposomal Vitamin C – and I don’t care what science is wheeled out in its favour.
Ultimately, you simply can’t get enough Vitamin C. It has a significant role as an antioxidant, but its importance in regulating Histamine, and I would conjecture by extension Dopamine (which is troublesome in high quantities), is under-researched.
[Thanks to Jeff for the heads-up.] It seems like Shanin Blake is attracting as much attention as hate on TikTok, her native platform. She’s being slated for having parents who work for Lockheed Martin [this, I am informed, is apparently a meme], being a perpetrator of cultural appropriation, spreading misinformation about health etc.
I’m just totally fascinated that she’s bringing all these subjects dear to my heart to the centre stage. I do think, however, that Blake should be careful not to burn out on the weed, acid, and shrooms. She’s starting to look weirder and weirder to the extent that I’d be concerned if she was my daughter. This concern comes from a place of love though. It would be a pity to squander all that positive energy.
Shanin’s horny, verging on the softly pornographic, videos appear to come from that hippie quarter where naturism meets the erotic. They remind me of the Fidus pictures and the Lebensreform photos.
What’s her music like? Well actually I think it’s nice! It’s a perky, super-intimate take on the modern R’n’B of Erykah Badu, Solange, SZA, and Janelle Monae. Black music, yes. But therefore she’s sitting in what used to be a perfectly respectable tradition peopled by the likes of The Box Tops, Hall & Oates, and David Bowie. “Senses” below from two years ago is a pretty piece of ear candy which would sit well with the clockwork mouse music.
One of America’s legendary communes, Twin Oaks, originally modelled on ideas from B.F. Skinner’s “Walden Two” (1948) book, has been badly damaged in a fire. I haven’t written extensively about Twin Oaks in my upcoming book “The Garden”- but they are close on the heels of Tennessee’s Farm for being North America’s most famous and successful commune. Anna writes:
On Wednesday afternoon March 20th 2024, tragedy struck Twin Oaks when a nearby wild fire spread to our property, completely destroying our warehouse complex, our sawmill and our conference site. Over 200 acres burned through the night, forcing the entire community to evacuate. Luckily, no people, pets or residences were damaged. While we do have a disaster fund, the damage we’re facing is devastatingly huge. The structures destroyed include our large warehouse complex, our sawmill, 4 vehicles, our kilns, a hoop-house, a functioning outdoor kitchen and pavilion at the conference site, countless storage structures including 3 barns and 2 trailers, and many other small structures. We are estimating a loss of more than a million dollars. This loss also means the end of our 57-year old hammocks business, which was Twin Oaks’ beating heart for many decades since its foundation in 1967. Other Twin Oaks businesses experienced losses as well, but will most likely recover.
The Leaves of Twin Oaks #132
Vehicles and buildings destroyedDestroyed wood-working machine with ruined workshop / warehouse in backgroundRopemaking Twister ruined
