disintegrating lands
by uzwi
Making a playlist for The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again. Some of the tunes will be ones I listened to while writing. Others will be moods applied by hindsight, that best of sights. So far I have: The Disintegration Loops, which should phase in & out, especially during landscape & travel scenes, and never really die away even when something else is playing. Couperin’s The Mysterious Barricades. Random soundtrack items from Night Moves (dir Penn, 1975), not necessarily musical. Nico’s stupendous Janitor of Lunacy which is Our Hero’s favourite song. Iggy Pop, The Endless Sea. Brian Eno, Another Green World (track). Keely Forsyth, Start Again. Lankum, The Old Man from Over the Sea. The Caretaker, An Empty Bliss Beyond This World—especially in scenes with Shaw’s mother. More later. I wonder if anyone ever listens to these lists while they read the book? Anyone here use the one I made in–what? 2007?–for Nova Swing?
the m john harrison blog 
Hmph. A Certain Online Store is showing a release date for “Sunken” as 2021 which is a bit of a blow…. 😦
And yes – Janitor of Lunacy *is* stupendous! 😀
Hi Kaggsy: Ignore that. Nothing’s changed. Everything’s on track for June 25, 2020.
Didn’t listen to it while reading the book, but later, as a sort of commentary on the book. Mostly I just nodded and smiled.
William Basinski would, I think, go well with most of your work.
There was a Spotify version of that earlier playlist that I used to listen to while walking around town. I had already read the book so it was more that the book informed the way I listened to the playlist than the other way around. Some of those tracks are still in my long-term rotation & now that I think of it they do tend to make me think of Nova Swing.
I agree with Darko about Basinski – The Disintegration Loops seem to me a very apt background your writing, Mike. Lovely to see you mention Eno; I find that the only music I listen to while reading is ambient or soundtrack music – lyrics, for me, intrude upon the reading experience. Eno’s darker works (like Music for White Cube) work brilliantly behind Nova Swing, I find. Do you ever use the Ambient strategy of playing music at a very low volume while writing?
Ah, but which performance of “The Mysterious Barricades”? Couperin did not put any tempo indication on it, and as a result some version are literally more than twice as slow as other, to radically different effects. The wonder of it is, they all work. And this without even worrying yet about harpsichord vs piano.
(Terrence Malick used it quite effectively, BTW, in “Tree of Life.”)
Also: this video for Disintegration Loops 6 is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen on YT: https://m.youtube.com/watchv=9ubwgesjlww
FWIW, I can’t listen to music anymore while reading, or really as background in any form for any kind of even mildly intellectual activiy. If the music is too lovely, I stop reading to just listen. If the book is too absorbing, I find I’ve tuned the music out completely, and can’t remember hearing a single note of it.
Hi Andrei, Nick, Darko & Brian
Les Barricades. The use of it comes late on in the book—& as heavy satire. I think the character whose signature it is would prefer the Cziffra version.
Basinski’s landscape is mine, no need to say more. When I heard DL I knew I was home.
Nick: I always played everything very loud & repeatedly while writing, to get the adrenalin high going, until about five years ago when I realised that whole way of writing was burning me out physically. Lyrics never bothered me, in fact bring on that welter of cultural product. Now I rarely use music at all & when I do I’m a bit pickier.
I can understand people not wanting to listen while reading—especially to some of the stuff I selected for Nova Swing. These mixtapes seem to me to be a kind of self-critique, a rumination on what you’ve written after you’ve written it. So that dovetails nicely with Darko’s & Brian’s “later commentary” on the book.
I looked up the tracks I wasn’t familiar with but I prefer Cage’s 4′ 33″ on repeat while reading.
Very glad to hear SUNKEN LAND Is back on track. I pre-ordered it last Fall and Amazon recently canceled the order. I just pre-ordered it again.
Comma Press says SETTLING THE WORLD is coming out June 25 but Amazon doesn’t know it yet.
Hi Paul. A lot might agree with that musical choice of yours.
That happened to a couple of people, but it’s sorted now.The Sunken Land itself was never off-track–only its Amazon presence. They seem to be subject to convulsions like unpredictable (but not acausal) ripples of activity through a chaotic system. I’ve definitely seen the Comma edition on there in recent months.
So, I just looked up all the tracks I didn’t know… And “My Name is Lucy Barton” seems to be a novel. Is there a song I’m not finding? Did you mean for people to listen to the audiobook? (Which, admittedly, would be a very original choice of background music to read another novel…)
Ok, fixed that, thanks. God knows how it got in there.
Maybe one day they’ll release audio books with an author’s playlist as a feature (turn on/off as the listener prefers).
Was ruminating with a friend yesterday about the ‘lasts’ of anything we did before lock down. Conversation came round to live events. Mine was seeing Keeley Forsyth at Fleece, Bristol. The mesmerising immersion of what she did feels as if that was the transition to this. Everything about how to feel about now what introduced right there. It’s just that everyone was actually listening too hard to notice.
Also, everyone was opening toilets doors with their sleeves. Also a giveaway.
I’m find these to be massively rewarding so far. Thanks, Mike.
Hi Brendan, good. How are you doing over there? Things were weird when we last met but have definitely got weirder since…
Things are strangely placid in Queens. I’m finding that reading a lot of Richard Stark is good for my outlook and I’m writing a piece of fiction wherein I get to quote Gérard Genette on the pseudo-iterative, which I first learned about here (or, perhaps, from Uncle Zip’s Window). Leaving the apartment for ten minutes a day is stronger than any acid I’ve done. I hope you’re getting out into the fields and crags.
Well, you sound ok. I’m not getting out to crags–they’ve been interdicted; but we’re walking a lot locally & I don’t mind the other aspects of lockdown, not being Mr Social. (Disappointed, though, to miss the best part of the climbing season & all the fun I was going to have doing live gigs around the two new books.)
But Richard Stark + Genette, Brendan! Such a heady mix. I LOVE the pseudo-iterative & all the weird uses you can put it to. I love that book.
Any chance you’ll sell copies direct? Doesn’t seem to be a US release date…
Can’t wait for the new book! Playing this playlist on Spotify as we speak.
Out of interest, do you have any music suggestions for The Course of the Heart? One of your very best, I think. Beautiful, mysterious and ineffably sad.
Hi Sean. Interesting idea to play the music *before* reading the book… Risky from my point of view. You might end up preferring the music… I didn’t do a playlist for CotH at the time & I think 30-40 years later is probably too much hindsight–anything I did now would be self-conscious, thought-out, too much of a commentary on a vanished self… Glad you like it though. It’s always in the top three when I think about the books I’ve written.
Hi Jon. Thanks for the query. Not much chance, no. But I’ll look around for a service & do a post on it nearer the time. By then I might have an idea when it’ll be generally available in the states, too.
Jon, PS: I’ve had recommendations for Wordery (wordery.com) and The Book Depository (bookdepository.com). The latter is an arm of Amazon.
Kaggsy, a bit more information on that query: My editor tells me, “The US market doesn’t really work in the same way as ours with the same two-format staggered release, so we release the mass market paperback to them at the same time as we release in the UK (assuming we don’t sell US rights in the meantime).” So that’s what that is. If you want the world 1st edition, it’s still July 25, 2020!
Phew…… ;D
It’s a maze in there…
The U.S. Kindle version is available for pre-order, and I have in fact pre-ordered it. But I think it said *June* 25.
TCOTH is also my favorite of your books. Indeed, I’ve just read it for, ahem, the fifth time, just this past week. (FWIW, no. 2 is “Climbers,” no. 3 to whatever, depending on how you want to count them, the Viriconium books.) I could imagine my personal playlist for it including Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht.” Not quite sure what else. “Signs of Life” would be much easier to come up with a playlist for.
Jon: the US Kindle version is here, release date = June 25: https://www.amazon.com/Sunken-Land-Begins-Rise-Again-ebook/dp/B07WRBKMQB/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2YG8GZ7CS7HMW&dchild=1&keywords=sunken+land+begins+to+rise+again&qid=1589888073&sprefix=sunken+land%2Caps%2C226&sr=8-1
If you’re after a hardcopy, the British Amazon site will ship to you and convert the currency automatically.
Generally I can’t listen to music while reading, unless it’s classical, like Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, but when the sublime Dido’s Lament comes on I just have to stop, whack up the volume and listen. Writing can be different…..
Hi Paul & Andrei. That publication date is a fossil. For the moment (because who knows, the industry being the industry) it’s July 25. If you want the UK hardback, and an alternative to Amazon, you can probably get it via Wordery at wordery.com
Volume favourites: I guess my own top three would be (1) Climbers (2) The Course of the Heart (3) Things That never Happen. (3) sometimes changes, but (1) & (2) never do. Though if you included individual items from story collections there would be short stories that stood head & shoulders above any of the novels. “Science & the Arts”, “The Old Fox”, “Gifco”, “I Did It”, quite a list before you got to Climbers…
Umm… OK, but just in your first post here, two days ago, you wrote, “Nothing’s changed. Everything’s on track for June 25, 2020.” So now I’m confused…
Me too. I had stumbled over another fossil, this time at Amazon UK. Amazon exists in this nightmare landscape (which reflects accurately the new media & political landscape) littered with the remains of fact. Apologies. I’ve changed it, & from now on I’m sticking with what Gollancz has told me–July 25 for the UK hardback–and avoiding other issues whereof I cannot speak…
Hi Mike. Wonderful to see our musical tastes aligning, esp. Basinski, The Caretaker, Eno, et al. I wonder if you’ve ever heard anything by Tim Hecker? I listen to a lot (a lot!) of ambient music, and Hecker’s works are unlike anything else – they just seem to be crackling with some kind of neon light, I can’t really explain it.
Also, did you see Climbing Blind on BBC Four? Certainly seemed to be one ‘for the heads’, or as far as this non-climber could tell.
Speaking of “The Course of the Heart,” look what I just found: https://www.ebay.com/itm/the-cuxa-cloister-the-metropolitan-museum-of-art-postcard-p256-/323982801371pageci=9e3829ed-3de8-4f09-9947-accacb2fb2f7redirect=mobile
I’m impressed by how exact the description in the book is. Except for the hyacinths… 🙂
Hi Andrei: sadly, Ebay tells me that page is “missing”. They clearly have the same problems as Amazon. But I remember that postcard so well! I might even have it somewhere in the cellar. An early version of CotH emerged in about 1983/4 from that postcard, a black & white photo of a child on a New York balcony, and a Sunday supplement photographic article about the Coeur D’Alene.
Hi Wedekinder Surprise: I don’t know Tim Hecker but I will certainly follow him up. I saw Climbing Blind. Astonishing to watch him do routes I’d found hard enough as a sighted climber. As powerful as the Honnold movie, I thought, because climbing is about finding & tracing your own limits.
Andrei: actually, that’s not quite right. Memory is such a disaster area. The child on the NY balcony & the photojournalism of the Coeur D’Alene were 1983/4; but I didn’t come by the Cuxa postcard until later. By then I was on maybe the third iteration of the book. I also visited the Cloister at some point. Hyacinths: I’d add hyacinths or roses to anything in those days, out of a consciously unironic re-romanticising sentiment I’ve finally taken apart in The Sunken Land Begins To Rise Again.
Oops, sorry about that. Fortunately, I’d saved it. I don’t think I can add pics to comments, so here you go: https://ticsticsandtics.blogspot.com/2020/05/blog-post.html
I also added another image I stumbled upon in my search — a needlepoint sampler, sold by the Met, based on the Cuxa Cloister. Notice the word “heart”: https://ticsticsandtics.blogspot.com/2020/05/blog-post.html
Perhaps these dispatches from the Tees valley are relevant. https://letstrimourhairinaccordancewiththesocialistlifestyle.bandcamp.com/video
Hello Sean,
CotH feels like a different book every time i reread it… but I wonder what you’d think of fitting Nodding God, or Sun0)))’s Altar as reading companions along the way. Alpha’s Lost In A Garden Of Clouds I & II were almost made for the narrator of the book, ha.
I like the idea of starting the prologue with Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine, then switching to Altar (with the beautiful exception of Sinking Belle) after the prologue. And then Lost in a Garden of Clouds is a nice backdrop to the dreamy atmosphere. When things get really weird Nodding God may do the trick… YMMV; I’d be interested to hear what you think may be fitting for Lucas’ story for Pam? I can just imagine Lucas writing to the tune of КИНО’s Спокойная ночь lol. Anyway, hope everyone in the thread is doing well now. Thanks John for the playlist, looking forward to supporting you<3