Odessa:

All of Me:

If This Is Civilisation:

If This Is Civilisation, from a different angle:

Give Me Detumescence:

This I Ask of You:

This I Ask of You, unamplified in the little church in Llangollen:

The Chinese government plan to build the world’s biggest hydro-electric project in Tibet, all in the name of mitigating climate change, so they say.

The article explains, “A large dam on the Tibetan plateau would amount to a major, irreversible experiment with geo-engineering,” said Peter Bosshard of International Rivers. “Blocking the Yarlung Tsangpo could devastate the fragile ecosystem of the Tibetan plateau, and would withhold the river’s sediments from the fertile floodplains of Assam in north-east India, and Bangladesh.”

And what is it all for? So millions of Chinese can continue to consume without conscience, so factories producing junk for the rest of the world can continue to function? The status-quo of growth and consumption must be maintained whilst dealing with the limits that climate change clearly presents us with.

The most horrifying quote is this one, “For the sake of the entire world, all the water resources than can be developed should be developed.”

It leads me to wonder, what exactly do we want to save? An ugly land strewn with concrete, marching metal towers, jumbles of wires in the sky, and a crude population without guts? There is an irony here somewhere: in order to save our land, we must first ruin it.

Culture, tradition, and landscape are the very soul of humanity, and they are intrinsically linked to one another. Without them, we cease to be, and yet all are considered mere trifles in the process of modernisation, the scramble for resources, and as it becomes increasingly obvious, the tackling of climate change.

If this is all for the “sake of the entire world”, then count me out. I want nothing to do with this madness.

Wood festival 2010, was the source of my ultimate joy this year so far. A small gathering of about 800 people, camping in meadows in the middle of nowhere. It couldn’t have been further from any festival experience I have previously suffered. No one was in my way at any point, there was distance between bodies, no officious high vis jackets, and no angry voices. Even the naked toddlers running around causing mischief, which by the way I haven’t seen since the 1980s, could mar the feeling I was experiencing. In fact, I might have even thought that children weren’t so bad after all, funny little blighters.

Now I know it’s just camping, but really, why do we not do more of it? Why is it a novelty, a past time, when it was once daily life? Emancipation from the elements, a higher standard of living, always moving away from that shabby floor that ultimately sustains us. What thanks we give it.

I puzzled over the constellations above me while Cate Le Bon was wafting softly around me, my head was spinning, but I wasn’t ill, quite the opposite, life couldn’t get any better. But then it did, I took her place on stage with my own band, and we played an incensed set to an appreciative  sun-baked crowd. The final word of the festival was from Timber Timbre, who sounded like Roy Orbison trapped in a shower banging, in time, on the door to get out. In and out of consciousness they took me, and set me up for a massive fall.

After 2 days in the pure unadulterated countryside, waiting for the bus back to Oxford, stood on the highway, maniacs in cars shot past us, ruthlessly slicing all my joy. By the time I was in the plastic box watching the sunset on the fields I was not a part of anymore, it had been shredded irreparably to bits. Back to the city, back to someone’s so called “civilisation”.

Sigh.

This Sunday, May 23rd, we’ll be at Wood Festival in Oxford, onstage at 1.30pm. Touted as Britain’s greenest festival, a civilised celebration of the natural elements with, hopefully not a Trustafarian in sight. If there were such a wealth of festivals around in the early 20th century as there are now, DH Lawrence would no doubt come to this one.

And of course, the great man would also condescend to visit the Uncivilisation festival on the following weekend, May 28th to 30th, where I’ll be putting on a Power Down in a little chapel in the heart of Wales. Uncivilisation is the Dark Mountain Project’s creation, who have been causing quite a stir in recent weeks, under fire from environmentalists and neo liberals alike, the weekend promises to be one hell of a discussion, with George Monbiot, Tom Hodgkinson, Alistair McIntosh and many more speaking.

If you happen to make any of the above, do come and introduce yourself, I should love to meet you if we’re not already acquainted.

Until then,

Marmaduke

I shall be arranging a Power Down on the first night of the festival, Friday May 28th, and bringing some of the familiar stars with me: Monooka, Will Miles, Rebecca Jade, and Citizen Helene. It promises to be a wonderful weekend, and quite different to any of the usual festivals.

Dark Mountain

With an emphasis on discussion there will be some notorious loud mouths such as George Monbiot, Tom Hodgkinson, and many more. Tickets are just £60, and the festival is being held in Llangollen in Wales, in a valley, between two (dark?) mountains.

It promises to be a most inspiring weekend in the countryside, and I invite anyone intrigued, you are very welcome.

Every day another step,
One foot closer to my death.
It’s the art of decay,
Better to burn, than fade away.

Every day is like the next,
I can’t help but regain conciousness.
No one to devote it to,
That someone, it once was you.

Every day a deeper breath,
I don’t know how much i’ve left,
In me, i’ve lost the will,
To live, now all is still.

I shall be on Resonance FM this Wednesday from 9.30pm – 11pm Greenwich Mean Time, playing a few songs live, and a cover from 1964. You can listen on the airwaves in London at 104.4FM, or online for those who are too far away http://resonancefm.com/listen.

Hold Everything Dear

for John Berger

as the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journey

as the rose buds a green room to breathe
and blossoms like the wind

as the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the wind to the urgent in the trucks

as the leaves of the hedge store the light
that the moment thought it had lost

as the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren in the turning air

as the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the sky
and unwrap them in each other in the teeming dark

hold everything dear

the calligraphy of birds across the morning
the million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earth
one step ahead of time
the broken teeth of tribes and their long place
steppe-scattered and together
clay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jug
carrying itself towards us through the soil

the pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walking
the map of the palm held
in a knot
but given as a torch

hold everything dear

the paths they make towards us and how far we open towards them

the justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searching

the vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days as it sinks to become what it loves

memory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seed

the words
the bread

the child who reaches for the truths beyond the door

the yearning to begin again together
animals keen inside the parliament of the world

the people in the room the people in the street the people

hold everything dear

19th May 2005
Gareth Evans