Monday, September 01, 2003
Peculiarly English
posted by John Davies at 12:21 PM
I am a queen of the circulating library
I have declared an amnesty
All books may be returned without a penalty
Return the books to me
Return the books
Don't burn the books
You cut down the trees to make paper disease
It's in the trees: it's coming
Return the book of knowledge
Return the marble index
File under "Paradox"
The forest is a college, each tree a university
I am a queen of the circulated library
I'm here to answer your enquiry
All knowledge resides within me
Your membership has expired
You are way past expiry dates
Words, words, words, words!
You may as well listen to the birds
Coil's Queens of the Circulating Library, in all its wierdness, strikes me as somehow peculiarly English. You have to hear it to get the full impression, because this is boundary music, electronica of the very edge. But somehow, here, the edge feels like an ancient green woodland.
Perhaps those words do it, "The forest is a college, each tree a university ". I could live with them for hours, and have been doing since World Serpent sent me a copy of Coil Live One. And reading Ackroyd's Albion probably got me into this frame of mind, too. His book surveys those things which are at the origins of the 'English Imagination' and the very first chapter is devoted to The Tree. English art/lore has always been cast among trees, from Druidic rituals through Robin of Sherwood, to D.H.Lawrence's expressed desire, in 1922: "I would like to be a tree for a while."
Trees speak "the ghostly language of the ancient earth" (Wordsworth); woods are "places of refuge and sanctuary" (Ackroyd). And so, in more sense than one, as Coil express, they contain libraries of deep knowledge..... (er, discuss....)
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john davies
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