SEEKING SEASON
by Sean
Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.


 

Image by Jason Holley


Otouto - "Plum". Crack an aspirin like an egg; make an omelette. Maybe a forest will be a salve, maybe a coffee with friends, maybe some strangers' call and answer. It has been a rough year; it's over now. It has been a long weekend; don't worry. Forget the migraine, hangover, fatigue and pneumatic drills. Lay your head on my shoulder, listen to the strum of this beat-up old guitar, the one I found in the cardboard box for an organ. Where is the organ? The organ is covered in mussels. [buy / thank-you andrew c]

Joe Goddard - "Apple Bobbing (Four Tet remix ft Cassie)". I like to tell people I grew up in a small town, but really it was a town that was sometimes small and sometimes very large. I liked it best when it was large. In June the bay filled with a hundred colours of boats, big & little & nimble & slow, and the boats had African masts and American sails and prows adorned with Italian lemons. It was the Malin Herring-Gutting Festival. Our town was called Malin. Visitors traveled miles and leagues to stay in town and watch the finest herring-gutters in the country. These competitors lined up on the pier and from dusk until dawn they gutted fish. Bent over the herring they made quick, precise gestures, careful as clockmakers, grasping and gutting and slipping the filleted fish into their allotted barrels. The boards were littered with silver fish-scale.

The audiences of Malin marveled at the herring-gutters. They hooted and hollered. They bought them pints of beer and drams of whiskey and new red apples. Vendors sold cotton-candy, sold peanuts. They strung paper lanterns across the streets and children scampered between the adults' legs and all of Malin smelled like mermaids' breath.

Every year, my mother transformed our home into an inn. Its rooms became other rooms. Instead of managing the books for Mr Lowry, she spent June making suppers and sweeping the floors. I slept with my mother in her bed. I helped her butter the toast and fold the sheets. She wore her hair in a bun and she was happier then than at any other time; for five weeks every summer the house seemed full. We fell asleep to snores and in the morning there were fishermen laughing, eating strips of bacon in two bites; in the evening there were barristers from Newcastle who passed their fingers through candle-flames; in the wee hours there were Norwegians who played card-games in their bedrooms, games with rules I did not know. I knew one June I would have my first kiss. I knew one June I would fall in love, one June I would run away, one June I would gut a herring and give my mother the trophy. I knew all these things would come one June. And so every January I lay in the cold, still house, in my lonely bed, and I remembered the taste of new apples.

[buy / song via the Guardian]

---

Just noticed that my old friend Richard Parks is raising money to fund a documentary about Music Man Murray and his half a million records. Support the project & get a DVD.

(image by Jason Holley - source)

Posted by Sean at January 10, 2011 12:41 AM
Comments

I really love the writing very much on this site, and have been inspired and moved by it for such a long time but this is the first time I've been moved to respond with my gratitude; which is not to say that the preceding piece is any better or worse than its predecessors per se it's just that it iced the proverbial cake. I don't know where Malin is or if it is but I thank you for bringing it to us here in this place in this way: the sea smell, the song the wonder and . . . thank you. Goodwin

Posted by Goodwin Low at January 10, 2011 2:56 PM

This is awesome. Inspired by the songs to write?

Posted by Kaci at January 30, 2011 11:40 PM

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about said the gramophone
This is a daily sampler of really good songs. All tracks are posted out of love. Please go out and buy the records.

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"And I shall watch the ferry-boats / and they'll get high on a bluer ocean / against tomorrow's sky / and I will never grow so old again."
about the authors
Sean Michaels is the founder of Said the Gramophone. He is a writer, critic and author of the theremin novel Us Conductors. Follow him on Twitter or reach him by email here. Click here to browse his posts.

Emma Healey writes poems and essays in Toronto. She joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. This is her website and email her here.

Jeff Miller is a Montreal-based writer and zinemaker. He is the author of Ghost Pine: All Stories True and a bunch of other stories. He joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. Say hello on Twitter or email.

Mitz Takahashi is originally from Osaka, Japan who now lives and works as a furniture designer/maker in Montreal. English is not his first language so please forgive his glamour grammar mistakes. He is trying. He joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. Reach him by email here.

Site design and header typography by Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet. The header graphic is randomized: this one is by Neale McDavitt-Van Fleet.
PAST AUTHORS
Dan Beirne wrote regularly for Said the Gramophone from August 2004 to December 2014. He is an actor and writer living in Toronto. Any claim he makes about his life on here is probably untrue. Click here to browse his posts. Email him here.

Jordan Himelfarb wrote for Said the Gramophone from November 2004 to March 2012. He lives in Toronto. He is an opinion editor at the Toronto Star. Click here to browse his posts. Email him here.
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