Five Fine Things on a Thursday...
*guest post by musician Mark T. Vernon of band Yova
This weeks’s ‘Fine Things’ is a guest post from my friend and talented musician and music manager Mark T. Vernon! Mark is one half of band Yova whose single The Dream Catchers is out now. Mark has also managed numerous acts including PJ Harvey, John Cale, and BJ Cole, amongst others. Yova’s next gig will be at The Daylight Festival in Bethnal Green on Saturday November 18th more details here. Do enjoy Mark’s ‘Fine Things’!
Reading! Thunderclap by Laura Cumming
Laura is chief art critic of The Observer. Her latest book ‘Thunderclap’ is partly the story of the relatively unknown young Dutch artist Carel Fabritius who was killed before he’d reached his prime aged only 32 in a huge gunpowder explosion that rocked Delft in October 1654. His legacy is only about a dozen surviving paintings to his name. This includes his haunting masterpiece ‘The Goldfinch’. The other pictures in his studio being presumably lost in the disaster.
I am finding this an immersive read in it’s an imaginative exploration of the relationship between art and life. Laura achieves this by interweaving both the lives of her Scottish painter father James Cumming (who also died too young), with the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age - focussing not only on Fabritius but also on Vermeer and De Hooch.
As a huge art-lover and particularly having been fortunate enough this year to visit beautiful Delft and also the brilliant Vermeer exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam ‘Thunderclap’ is both prescient and timeless. To me it is all about what a picture may come to mean, how it can enter your life and change your thinking - literally in a ‘thunderclap’. The explosion of the title speaks not only to the precariousness of our existence, but also to the power of painting: the sudden revelations of sight.
Watching! Last Stop Larrimah on Netflix.
This very watchable two-part documentary follows the mysterious disappearance of Paddy Moriarty and his dog in December 2017. He was a resident of Larrimah a tiny and very remote community then with a population of only 11 in Australia’s Northern Territory.
The film documents the lives of Larrimah’s ten remaining elderly and eccentric residents as a long history of infighting is revealed. As events unfold they all become suspects in the subsequent police investigation.
The film’s portrayal of such a strange and unusual community in a deeply isolated outback community feels like viewing a real life Antipodean Lynch movie. By turns unsettling weird and deeply intriguing.
Absorbing! the aforementioned Vermeer exhibition at the Rijsksmuseum was spellbinding. Although only 34 paintings of his are known to survive, each one is a breathtaking illumination and vignette on Dutch life in the mid 17th century as if viewed through the naked eye.
Also Peter Doig at the Courtauld Gallery for his surreal and vivid use of colour. Whether depicting London or the Caribbean, Doig seems unmatched in contemporary painting for his realisation of the equilibrium between the specific and the inchoate, the remembered and the imagined.
Listening! for their inexorable but transcendentally and unexpectedly life-affirming amniotic wall of sound ( read noise capital N) the album ‘Pyroclasts’ featuring the massed guitars of drone metal band Sunn O)))
Equally the antithesis: so music and songs where silence plays as important a part as the sound. These silences and pauses are wonderfully referred to in the exotic lexicon of music terminology with names such as ‘caesura’ ‘lacuna’ and ‘fermata’ ! We use these silences in some of YOVA’s new songs.
Leaving John Cage’s ‘4’ 33” (4.33 of complete composed silence in its’ own orbit).
Obsessing!
over the fragility of Mark Hollis of Talk Talk’s eponymous solo album
Sebastian Roachford & Kit Downes exquisite ‘A Short Diary’
The deeply Autumnal minimal ambience of Brian Eno & Harold Budd’s ‘The Pearl’
‘O virtus Sapientiae’ written a few hundred years back by the first ever female composer Hildegaard Von Bingen in the 12th century!
BONUS: Miscellaneous!
Time/ Walking in new places as a form mental as well as physical exercise. Moving always onwards/ forwards whilst the concept of time as we know it feels as if it’s standing acutely still, best experienced whilst taking an un pre-designated or planned ‘route’ spiking the curiosity with every step.
During any unpremeditated journey the arrival of random information triggered by visual layers and energy levels. This in itself posing many - often unanswered - questions about time, potentially linked to the wave patterns of ‘History’ and - who knows - future history ( the next life?). Then how this inter relates with the concept of the Present.
I have a particular interest in Psycho Geography whether this manifests itself from visiting an unexplored building or outdoors in an unexplored rural landscape or new urban territory - how this can deeply arouse curiosity and etch itself within our subconscious. What’s been here before? What lies beneath our feet? How old is that tree? What happened on this exact spot or on that piece of land. Indeed, what will happen? The uncanniness of Dejà Vu and familiarity in a place never consciously visited to Pre Cog and the sense of premonition. Can time and energy be trapped in the fabric of a building (Stone Tape Theory)? The power of infrasound frequencies, (undetected to the human ear at a frequency of 19 Herz), and how they can affect the self/ behaviour patterns. Lost rivers. Ley Lines.
The writings of Peter Ackroyd, Iain Sinclair and Mark Fisher among others over the years have stimulated an interest in this. And above all Arthur Conan Doyle’s life (and death) affirming book written beyond the grave about life after death via a medium. It’s called ‘The Return Of Arthur Conan Doyle’ edited by Ivan Cooke*. Oh and by the way it’s as bonkers as it is ...’life’ affirming !
Thanks so much to Mark for sharing such a fascinating list of ‘Fine Things’! Do check out Yova’s wonderful musical oeuvre here, as well as their IG here. And if you enjoyed this list of cultural recommendations then do see my guest post with David Horgan Art here or for something completely different check out my Fish Out of Water tales here.
As always thank you for reading friends and please do forward, share, like and subscribe. Those who do will be rewarded!
Love Emma x o x o
*Editor’s note: coincidentally my grandparents Anna and Peter Roberts were friends with Ivan Cooke! More on them here. My book about them here.