This rainbow appeared when I went to the cemetery yesterday to see Isaac, a full arch overhead- it was nice for a moment, this natural display lighting up the grey skies overhead. I try to go every weekend and at least pop by, leave some flowers and say hello. These small acts of remembrance have become important and it feels OK now, funnily it actually feels like we're going to see him in a way.
November is a fucker. Isaac's birthday is the 23rd (he was 23 when he died and would have been 27 this month had he lived). He died a week after his birthday on the 30th November 2021. Those two dates, so close together, make November really difficult. Last year, the third anniversary, was as bad as the two previous ones- oddly, the actual days themselves weren't too bad- we went to see him and then went and did something with the day that seemed to be fitting. But the build up to his birthday, the next three weeks, and then the week between the two- they're really hard and I think we can all feel that coming again now the calendar's ticked over into November. The day after the anniversary of his death it's December with everything that that month brings.
I was hoping that this year might be slightly better, a little easier but at the same time I'm not expecting it to be. A friend with experience in these matters but a good few years ahead of us said to me recently that, 'everyone assumes grief is linear and it most certainly isn't'. Which is very true. I'm also in a new workplace where people on the whole don't know my story yet- it just hasn't been easy to drop it into conversation so far- and that adds a new dimension to November.
As ever music helps. Here are some November songs.
I can't remember who tipped me off to Bathhouse by Steven Leggett. It came out in 2018, an ambient/ neo- classical, electronic tribute to the Turkish baths in Newcastle- upon- Tyne. Andrew Weatherall played some of it on Music's Not For Everyone so maybe it was one of many hundreds of Weatherall tip offs.
It's a beautiful album, very much a singular piece of work. You can get the whole thing digitally at Bandcamp. November is the album's penultimate track, it fades in slowly with found sounds (recorded in Crete) and drones and then cello. There's the low end rumble of a single dull thudding drum and the sound of water lapping against the sides of the baths. The ambient sounds and musical instruments drift in and out, the drum comes and goes, and there's the swell of something choral. Quietly stunning.
The only other song I have in front of me with November as its title is a 2009 Echo And The Bunnymen B-side, the flipside to Think I Need It Too (from the album The Fountain). Ian McCulloch had been recording with three musicians in London, trying to do something different. The results still sounded like the Bunnymen so Ian invited Will to go into the studio and they worked on the songs that became The Fountain. The Bunnymen duo of 2009 do indeed sound a little re- invigorated by this and their song November is decent enough.
There are other November songs- November Has Come by Gorillaz, Vashti Bunyan's Rose Hip November, Sandy Denny's Late November, Tom Waits' November, The National's Mr. November and Folk Implosion's Fall Into November could all find a place here but instead I'll go wth the latest in Richard Norris' ling running series of monthly ambient releases, Music For Healing. Richard releases a new twenty minute track at the start of each month. The latest one which arrived in my inbox on 1st November was written by Richard in the aftermath of his bandmate Dave Ball's death, using the synths and instruments that the pair of them used in The Grid- a Minimoog, some Roland, Oberheim and Waldorf machines and was recorded at Richard's studio in Lewes. Deep Down (In B) is most certainly a memorial for Dave, a musical eulogy. You can listen to it here.