AngelBread.: August 2011

Friday 26 August 2011

Summer Saves.

I'm coming to terms with the fact that this is the end of summer. It's a painful revelation. I am in mourning before my bereavement.
In the past week I have encountered many a strange sight, some more pleasant than others.

The most disturbing sight -

once grey

Cat;

Now nearly decomposed

at edge of road.

The most memorable thing -

The spine.

Looking like threaded shells,

Sunbleached and dry.

It made me feel very clean.

and bright

and lifted

To see the dead cat's spine.

It's little bones

Prettier than mine.

and howling,

in the dawning sun;

was a Magpie,

eyeing the fragments

of the feline.

Probably deciding

wether it's shell

is shiny enough to Covet.

Yes. I saw a dead cat on an early morning sojourn to the alps. And then went home to read Plath. Animals seem to be plaguing me. A lifelong friend, Ellie, had a gathering amidst the forestation behind her house, and we were descended upon by a herd of horses, who were silent and ominous.

Two days after the gathering I came up in bites, covering most of my legs, tender and purple like bruises. After some research I decided they were horse fly bites. It hurts.

As a kind of closure me and Ellie visited The Last Tuesday Society, where we realised that secrets have Hackney, in the form of many stuffed animals. Observing the taxidermy detachedly made me feel calmed by my animalistic experiences. Sure, I was perturbed by the horses and the bites but ultimately, no tiger will perfect my corpse to sit at it's dining table.

We escaped, for a good hour in The Last Tuesday Society's Little Shop of Horrors, and were thoroughly awed by the Wunderkabinett. I'll take anyone there if they wish for an afternoon of black magic.

In the past week, I have been followed home by a schizophrenic (or so he claimed) named Aaron, a nineteen year old who just left the army, and been shouted at by a wraithlike homeless woman with purple lips.

Oh, and a courgette grew in my garden.

xoxo

The Mangum Myth.

More often than not I'm pretty behind, and rather stubborn with my music. It's no wonder therefore, that I only recently learnt of Neutral Milk Hotel and the enigma that is Jeff Mangum.
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (NMH's second album) was a present on vinyl for my seventeenth birthday, and was first listened to lying on a blanket in the sun in my back garden.
Many may argue that this is a collection of songs not best suited for summery weather - I would beg to differ. It's an album for bonfire's, thunder, light filled kitchens or midnight, when the weather doesn't really matter. Or maybe I just like it too much.
One thing is sure, however, and that's that Mangum's musical lyricism is not for the faint hearted. Through this album he, I believe, exorcises something simultaneously ugly and wondrous from within us as his listeners. He'll build a tower tumblin' through the trees and then, all of a sudden conjure holy rattlesnakes that fell all round your feet.
Those that know me know that I'm obsessed with all things melancholy. Mangum's method of confronting you with disturbing yet beautiful imagery therefore really resonates in me, be it placing fingers through the notches of a lovers spine or milk and holy water pouring from the sky.
There's ritual and obsession laced through his wording. He pins down the physical, the awkward sick feeling on the awakening of intimacy as he tells of how he would push my fingers through your mouth to make those muscles move that made your voice so smooth and sweet. That all too familiar adolescent clumsiness that comes with anticipating another in a space.
This particular album uses the tragedy of Anne Frank as a basis for exploring the complexities in platonic and romantic relationships. It can feel as though one is shuffling in an attic with Mangum on hearing this album, occasionally stepping on his toes and apologising profusely. The actual presence of Frank in the album is open to interpretation, she could be the girl in the parlor with a moon across her face who's also floating and choking with her hands across her face. Holland 1945 is unquestionably about the subject, lamenting her death and capturing the sheer chaos that is world war.
NMH are chameleons. King Of Carrot Flowers has an almost Bowie-esque sound with it's quick changing melodies, whereas Oh Comely, a graceful dirge puts me in the mind of Nirvana's relentless Something In The Way.
Mangum points at phrases - all secrets sleep in winter clothes and times - one evening 1945 - and makes them stand, sparkling, in your mind.
He also frightens me, with pictures of little boys in Spain playing pianos filled with flames. The symbolism is magic, his poetry stuns me, and I haven't even started on the trumpets.

I sound like I'm in a cult.

I'm very tired.

xoxo