shiny, shiny, new, new

peter wyethLeave a comment

Met up with a friend in Birmingham a few months ago and noticed he was using a Silvine notebook. This instantly took me back to my youth, where these little red books were staple features of a Post Office or corner shop’s stationary shelf and would always be longed for – the allure of fresh, new, unwritten upon pages.

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So my friend picked one up for me the next we met. But what shall I use it for?

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I went to the funeral of a friend….

peter wyeth1 Comment

Last week I went to the funeral of a friend. The service was where I grew up as a teenager. I had to catch a bus across town, arriving at this place so familiar yet strangely new. Like parallel worlds overlapping, the edges of dreams like a flicker book. I could remember individual trees, footpaths, sign posts. Each step another memory, another recognition of something gone but still felt.

I walked past the rows of headstones, passed slow moving cars, people in summer clothes tending flowers. I could just hear the birdsong above the roar of the roads that corner this spot and above the groundsman carefully driving around the plots on his motorised mower. Then I rounded the corner of the crematorium to shuffle amongst the small group of friends.

A hushed politeness and smiles, of dressing up, of looking around for the people we might recognise and the family we don’t. Do you remember me? We’re here to remember him.

Slowly the car arrives and we all take our places.

There’s that Robert Frost poem, a lovely Elizabeth Frye poem. Some songs. Words to make us remember. My mind contiually wanders then comes back to the point each time thinkng of the sorrow of loss and the poor children left behind.

We quietly, politely, slowly, gently file outside. I hug an old school friend, we share our stories. Then we ponder what to do next.

What we do next is sit in an old pub in town and share stories, remembering friends with friends. Then go off our separate ways. Me to pick up my children, others to remember the days spent with one another, being young, revisiting old haunts.

And each step another memory.

nojoined ep release available for download now. For free.

peter wyethLeave a comment

In July I posted about how a snapshot recording I’d made on the iPhone using the Soundcloud app (and posted to my Soundcloud profile) had been used by the artist nojoined ( David Priestley ) as pat of his composition ‘a lack of faith‘.

The track track now features on a 4 track ep called ‘the colour of monotony‘ that is avaialable to download from aReW recordings for free now. Go and hane a listen and/or download here –

http://www.archive.org/details/ArewRecordingsPresentsrw-056Nojoined-TheColourOfMonotony

Just listen. Please?

peter wyethLeave a comment

Recently, over the course of a week or so, I’ve stumbled across three things that have lead me to posting this. The first was a tweet from the excellent La Cosa Preziosa from her Twitter stream here. She posted a link to a short Film Board of Canada film from/about R. Murray Schafer. It’s called Listen and it’s pretty fascinating.

http://twitter.com/#!/lacosapreziosa/status/107839524637376512

A few days later John Rushton of wearealtered and make recordings posted a great link to some work that Sound and Music are doing in schools in the UK. The idea is to get children to listen to 60 seconds worth of audio a day and then get them to talk about it – their thoughts, experiences, ideas and so on.

Then, this weekend just gone, my eldest daughter’s homework was to listen to the sounds around her from a specific point for five minutes at three different times across the weekend. She sat on our front doorstep and noted down the things she heard.

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This is something we don’t do enough of, particularly musicians and all those people that tell me ‘they love music’ – when was the last time you dedicated specific time to listen to something – be it music or the sounds around you? I’m betting it was a long time ago. We tend to do a lot of hearing but very little listening. The Sound and Music article contains the following words.

Listening, and the way we experience sound, has a huge impact on our lives. Yet in a predominantly visual culture time is rarely dedicated – particularly in schools – to exploring our aural experiences and developing our ability to listen in a concentrated or imaginative way. Minute of Listening aims to highlight the importance of listening and create a structured, daily activity that allows teachers the time and the means for their class to explore the joys of listening.

I think it’s a really good idea that could benefit all of us. Try it.