The City, The Country

[yyaldrin]

What's music like out there? (Or should I say out here, since I'm currently at home with my parents in a village.)

Probably totally different to when I grew up, when you were at the mercy of what was on the radio/what CDs were stocked in the local record shop (with occasional bus trips to Oxford to visit HMV and Virgin). Probably now kids out here are into exactly the same music as everywhere else.

Aphex is a shining example of a musician that probably couldn't have come from a big city. Mind you, he's from Cornwall, which is reputedly like another country of its own.

tell us about the village you're in now. how's your old mates?

 

[luka]

Corpsey is from the Chilterns which is not really rural. There's a lot of open space but it's commuting distance from London and what farming there is is done on a remorseless industrial scale. Everyone there is a Tory and a flinty eyed sex murderer.

 

[Corpsey]

I don't know anyone here now — apart from people I'm avoiding, (some with complicated guilty feelings).

It isn't fully rural, as Luka says, but you do still get people with rural accents, like west country accents.

 

[yyaldrin]

do they consider you a traitor for leaving? also cos you were one of the brightest of the village probably? they call this braindrain i think.

 

[Corpsey]

It's more complicated than that, really, although there definitely is an element of that with friends that couldn't go to university.

Some people grow up here and live here happily forever, which strains credulity. But at least those people don't feel like they're trapped here.

 

[shiels]

A few photos from Donegal at the weekend. Couldn’t wait to leave.

 

[catalog]

looks horrendous. i was there once over new year. kilcar and ardara.

 

[yyaldrin]

what's wrong with it? looks beautiful to me, i'd put a tent out there, make a campfire and would enjoy the peace. only that hole in the water is kinda freaky.

 

[luka]

look at the sky. sullen, overbearing, sour and spiteful. you couldn't handle too many days like that.

 

[catalog]

the water is filled with chemical effluent, that's why it's got an unusually beautiful hue. If you bathe in it, you will suffer with rash and vomiting.

 

[luka]

low, oppressive cloud. trapped under it, desperate for a connection with the steady strong pulse of the sun, but you're not allowed. the low cloud ceiling will not break.

 

[catalog]

Also you wouldn't be able to camp or have a fire because it rains all the time and some officious meddler would stop you and most likely fine you

 

[luka]

everyone is tense and irritable beneath that bell-jar of sullen cloud. no expansive feeling, thought or gesture is possible beneath that oppressive lid.

 

[catalog]

when i went, we had some illegal salmon

 

[yyaldrin]

okay so it's the clouds well yes i agree with that. i assumed they were only there when the photos were taken. a bad day.

 

[catalog]

you should definitely go if you ever get the chance yyal, its really beautiful. connemara is even better, miles and miles of really scary brooding moorland.

 

[Corpsey]

I was going to say earlier how grey skies are so much more depressing in the countryside than in the city. In the city you don't need to look at the sky.

I used to love the wide open space of the country but sometimes it seems like a sort of terrifying blankness. An emptiness of incident and opportunity.

 

[catalog]

alcoholism and domestic violence are big issues up in the highlands

 

[luka]

alcoholism and domestic violence are big issues up in the highlands

also self-abuse, the sin of Onan

 

[Mr. Tea]

also self-abuse, the sin of Onan

I like Jonathan Meades' observation that "The city tolerate queerness and the sex trade; the countryside encourages incest and bestiality."