Mountain*7

Eyjafjallajokull fallout...

A bunch of interesting stuff that's been up on the M*7 tumblr and Delicious of late:

Big picture images of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland.

Robert Macfarlane on managing Roger Deakin's estate

Oneohtrix Point Never live podcast

Einstein's letter on atheism, written to Erik Gutkind

Klaus Dinger on the Dinger beat.

Frank Kermode on TS Eliot

David Sheppard interviewed about his Eno biography. Mp3 available here.

Marcus Boon's brilliant Wire piece on Pandit Pran Nath

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 19:59 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

I've started poncing about with a Tumblr account as it seems a neat way to share links and simple stuff like quotes and photos that don't really fit in over here, or at least don't fit with the general longer format pieces that tend to appear here. It might be that I just end up bunging the stuff up here, but for now you can find the new site at mountain7.tumblr.com. Check out the Robert Hood mix, it's class.

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 10:15 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Sennen Cove

The site is going to enter a period of paralysis for the next eight days or so as I'm off to the wide skies and granite cliffs of north west Cornwall. Time to get some air in these lungs again. For now, there's a Fanfarlo review over at the TLOBF and a playlist coming up.

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 20:30 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

A long distance walk is a serious affair. You shake up every atom of your being. You arrive footsore, at your destination: lighter, shorter, hungrier. A stranger to those who stayed at home. Head emptied of old fears. With room made for the new.
Iain Sinclair

There's going to be a brief-ish period of silence around here for a bit as myself, mook (mythic progenitor of this site) and another are off on a long arduous walk. Well, I say long, it is in fact only 60 miles and we have four days; and I say arduous when in fact it's mostly flat. And we're staying in pubs each night so we have the lure of beer to pull us along each day... The walk is from Windsor to Winchester, via Odiham, and loosely follows the route King John used to take when visiting Winchester from his stronghold at Windsor Castle. It's thought that he rode out from Odiham for his first meeting with the Barons at Runnymede. If anything interesting comes of this madness I'll post it up here. But for now we retreat into England's green ways and await the coming of Wodwo...

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 15:34 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Yes, we are still here, in some form at least. Personally speaking it feels like I've been buried for a couple of weeks: the crunch-clutch of personal commitments, the soil of booze... Now the more I read about what the fucks going on around me I wonder if it's even worth the bother, as soon I'll probably be stealing corn cobs from the local farm and wondering what the asbestos on my garage roof tastes like. No matter. You have to go hide somewhere, so it might as well be here.

As you may have noticed we have a new plug-in on the right hand panel which allows you to see what crap we're reading when we should be working. Fill your boots. We'll be back soon.

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 16:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Sardinia

Away, away to Sardinia for a time; and today I have been listening to some of the island's traditional polyphonic singing and have been amazed. Take a listen to this Andy Kershaw show where he explores the music of both Corsica and Sardinia. Great radio. The music sounds ancient to me, from ago - there are elements of plainchant to this, but something else also, something almost Arabic in ornamentation. It makes my hair stand on end.

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 21:14 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Loch Lomond

Trapped inside the rattle-bag of my brain at the moment - those times when it's almost impossible to settle on any one thought long enough to stick; instead you flit, fly, even dreams charged with a frantic energy. So its off to Loch Lomond for a wee while to get the long view. Normal service shall be resumed forthwith...

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 21:42 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)

Swanage

Right, we're all off to Dorset for a week - 20 of us in a house with four boys under 2. Holiday my arse. We shall return with eyes like half chewed lemons and livers like parched coral reefs. Bring it on.

Some things may appear ghostlessly whilst we're gone. They may not.

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 12:04 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

New and unimproved!

We went away, we lost our clothes, skin stripped by undergrowth. We shed too much on the way, we have to go back, back in there to find it. It may take some time. In the meantime we get to start again which promises so many things, such chances for new beginnings...

But it'll probably be the same mish mash of neurosis, badly-formed punditry and nuclear fallout. Nevertheless, it feels good to be back. In a way, the absence of this anterior anchor point is like losing an element of the subconscious; and I missed it, both as a repository for the roiling babble of the inner voice and as a kind of creative comfort blanket - at least I'm doing something. As such, all that lost content is like a void - but it's a void we now get to teeter above, and maybe fall into - see what comes up. Stay posted...

If anyone has anything interesting to send us, or wants us to listen to some tunes or read any sort of publication then do and we'll do our best. Address is up at the top right of the right hand column, or try mountain7blog at googlemail dot com (with an @ for the at and a . for the dot).

I should probably add a couple of technical caveats to this - if you're one of the 1000s (9) of people who read this site through a feed you'll need to update it to reflect the new site*. Also, if there is a particular article you'd to see us put up as and when we free them from the database just drop us a line.

*I realise this opens up a mise-en-abyme of sorts in that if you read this by feed then you, er, wont be getting this so can't update your feed. But well, what else is a man to do?

Posted by poacher in Mountain*7 at 13:19 | Comments (5) | Trackbacks (0)