Kerala Diary Excerpt Pt. 4

Here's the fourth and final instalment of a diary I wrote while I visited Kerala, India, this August with my family.

"14/8/09

Our second and final day in Munnar. No one seems too happy about our accommodation. A rat was running through my parents tree house last night and my brothers are similarly unimpressed by their night time visitors.
First today we head to Erivakulam National Park, which is home to a rare species of goat, the Nilgiri Tahr. Initial impressions are less than hopeful as the drive to the park is eclipsed by mist. The park itself is not like any national park I have ever visited, seeming more like a large hill with a man-made road acting as a walk-way. Although we are told that the goats are not out today, my older brother and I spot two when we reach the top. They look like healthier, cuddlier versions of the common goat we’ve been seeing all over Kerala. Not incredible, but not a disappointment.
We head for an excellent lunch in a pretty plush hotel in Munnar. For some reason they are playing dance music from the 90s here. I identify Underworld amongst others. The hotel is nice and sparks my parent on to ask if there are rooms available. There aren’t, but it sends Saji on a quest to find an alternative to “Nature Zone”. Eventually we find one in Munnar that seems perfectly fine. I am pleased as there is internet and so I will be able to finally email A., a task I have been unable to do for eight days.
Today I have been mainly listening to “I <3 CAMPING”. I’m in much more of a compilation style mood today. I start to think about how itunes may have revived that old wonderful tradition of making mixtapes. They are so easy to make using it, I wonder if purists would argue that something has been lost in the lack of having to sit down and physically transfer every song to tape. Still, I love mixtapes and like how accessible they have become. Making people mixtapes is a lot of fun.
The dinner at the new hotel is excellent, I have a beer and settle down to listen to “Wind’s Poem”, the new Mt. Eerie album, and play some Kirby on the DS.
I was recently joking with a friend that there appears to be no appropriate time to listen to this record, so dark and elemental are its sounds. But listening to the rain falling in the mountains and I think I may have found the perfect occasion. I think this record is a big step up from Phil Elverum’s last Mt Eerie album proper. Although I enjoyed “Lost Wisdom”, I was dying something more akin to his Microphones releases, which I love so much. I think much ink will be spilled discussing the alleged “black metal” influences in this album, but it sounds very much, to me, as a maturer Elverum at work here. It’s dark, sure, but there are some epic moments of emotion and sustained cavernous melody found in the droning keyboards and Twin Peaks references. As a songwriter, Elverum appears to have overcome what has recently been holding him back, a morbid self-referentiality that bordered on outright boredom at points, and replaced it with a rediscovered awe at the elements, in this case, the wind. The wind is all over this album, in the lyrics, in the heavily spacious production, in the liberal use of the ride cymbal, and the aforementioned keyboard motifs. This renewed focus makes “Wind’s Poem” a truly fascinating and, most importantly, a rewarding listen; it’s an album you can spend hours with discovering new things. It’s so nice to see Elverum regain his sense of wonder again, even if it is a dark one.

16/8/09

Today we leave Munnar and head to Madurai, the “city of temples”, in neighbouring state, Tamil Nadu. Madurai is roughly 5 hours south east of Munnar. To get there, we have to drive out of the mountains. While we drive down, I check my ipod. I don’t have much charge left. I elect to listen to two Neil Young albums, “Harvest” and “Living With War”, “The Body, The Blood, The Machine” by The Thermals, and “Wind’s Poem” again by Mt Eerie.
Neil Young is someone I got into relatively late, “After the Gold Rush” being the first of his albums I purchased (from Fopp for £5) at roughly 22. Despite this, I keep wanting to get more and more of his material, and I am slowly building up a small collection. “Harvest”, from 1972, is not as easy an album to listen to as “After…”, using more, and harsher orchestration. I am enjoying it though. “Living With War”, one of Young’s more recent records is, in my opinion, vastly underrated. Sure, the production and politics are a little thrown in the listener’s face, but there’s something powerfully sad and angry about this music and the time it was written was certainly a time for a call to arms. The Thermals album is similarly inspired by the Bush era and is likewise angry, although heading more towards a pop punk aesthetic. Still, this music kills when it’s done well (see “Pinkerton”), and this is definitely done well.
The change from Kerala to Tamil Nadu is more intense than any of us expected and catches us all a little off guard. The land is flatter, sparser, and almost dessert-like. There are more people here and the poverty is more intense, much like the north.
We arrive at Madurai and check into the hotel. To my delight, there is internet here which I will later use to email A. again quickly. We meet out temple guide, Meena, who is named after the famous Meenashki temple, which we will be visiting. “Meenashki” means “fish eyes” and seems an unfortunate name on this basis. Meena takes us to a palace and the temple, which is one of the most impressive temples I’ve seen in India, containing numerous towers covered in statues and painted various bright colours, of which, blue and purple are used most often: the colours of Vishnu, whose wife Parvatti this temple is dedicated to. After the temple we return to the hotel and have an excellent, but late, dinner (9pm) and depart to our rooms."

Kerala Diary Excerpt Pt. 3

...and here's another excerpt from a diary I was writing in Kerala, India this August.

"13/8/09

Today we are travelling to the Munnar Region, one of the few mountainous parts of Kerala. Situated roughly 150km to the west of Kochi, Munnar is famous for tea plantations and exotic wildlife.
We also switch drivers and cars, from Sajeev to Saji, and from an estate to a twelve seater coach.
I decide to spend the four hour journey listening to my ipod. Driving through Kochi, and struggling to pick something to listen to, I eventually settle on “Catacombs” by Cass McCombs. For whatever reason, this has become my default album, meaning that I tend to listen to it in situations where I can’t decide what to listen to. There’s something beautifully relaxed about this record, despite containing some pretty intense music. McCombs’ sense of space and his willingness to let songs play out as long as they need (almost six minutes in some cases) fits my desire to relax and take in the sights of driving through Kochi, which today looks as inviting as ever with its mix of green jungle and brightly coloured houses. There are less people here than there are in the north which makes it a far more comfortable environment to traverse. “Catacombs” takes me all the way through Kochi and into the surrounding jungle. I change my mind about the two tracks near the end, I like them more now. It occurs to me that I am always soundtracking my life and that the only other places where soundtracks occur are tv and film. I wonder if this involves me more in my environment or creates an imaginary boundary. Could this be unhealthy?
Next up, I pick Elliott Smith. I remember that his has been the only “celebrity” death I have lived through to have had an emotional impact on me. There is something so personal and particular about his music which makes the listener really feel like they’re listening to him the man rather than a pop singer. I pick, “From the Basement on the Hill”, his last, and posthumous, release.
In many respects, “From a Basement…” shouldn’t have been as good an album as it is. It had been a long time since Smith had released anything, and his last, “Figure 8”, was not particularly good, and “From…” was compiled after his death. All these signs point to a potential misfire of an album which is why it is so surprising that it actually serves as good a “final” album as any Elliott Smith fan could have hoped for. The production is not as stale as “Figure 8”, the subject matter sticks pretty closely to what Smith’s best at – sensitive, semi-miserable, often heart-breaking songs about mistaken relationships and substance abuse, and Smith himself sounds, somewhat tragically, very alive. It’s nice to listen to it and think about the man and his music as I watch the jungle woosh past. It would be remiss of me here not to mention that “New Moon”, the compilation of rarities released after “From a Basement…”, is similarly fantastic, and even more intimate a listening experience.
We’re driving uphill now. The Munnar region is 6,000 feet above sea level so we’ll be driving uphill for a while. We stop for tea and afterwards something draws me towards “Life is Full of Possibilities” by DNTEL.
I think that this album may achieve forgotten masterpiece status at some point. It was at risk of this not long after its release when The Postal Service album became far more popular than the Ben Gibbard DNTEL collaboration on “Life…” ever was, despite the latter’s superiority, at least in my opinion.
“Life…” trade in organic keyboard swell, glitchy beats, and just enough guest vocalists so that it is not overwhelmed by a multitude of actors. The subject matter is shamelessly bleak, but the music itself, as so much great music does, transcends this totally. It’s an album of incredible depth and warmth, something that you can bury yourself in entirely. It can be an intense listening experience, but an incredibly rich one nonetheless. I have so many memories attached to it, so obsessed with it was I when it came out. For instance, it reminds me very much of various trips I made with a friend to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Dundee from Aberdeen, my hometown, on the megabus. I have a distinctive image of the grey and green Scottish countryside with rain pouring and hitting the windows of the bus. Other strong memories are attached to “(This is the Dream Of) Evan and Chan”, the aforementioned Gibbard collaboration. It’s a song that itself inspires nostalgia, containing lyrics like, “He then played every song from 1993, the crowd applauded as he curtseyed bashfully, your eyebrows tickled my neck with every nervous blink…”, and still stands as the my favourite track Gibbard has ever contributed to. It’s amazing.
We’re almost there, we’ve climbed quite high now. The jungle looks so beautiful with a combination of rubber palms, eucalyptus trees, and banana plants. Every now and then I catch a glimpse of an amazing looking flower or insect. I start listening to Tiny Vipers’ “Life on Earth”.
I must be a sucker for intensity at the moment, as this wonderful folk album, which has only recently been released, is a lot to take in. Still, the singer’s voice is incredible and there is something so rough and damaged sounding about the music that give it such a fragile and commanding presence. It’s a long record, perhaps too long, but like “Catacombs” there is something admirable about music that takes as long as it needs.
We arrive at Munnar, which is a small town overlooking incredible bright and dark green coloured tea fields that are eclipsed by a kinetic grey mist that makes the place feel like a Myazaki film. We have to transfer from our coach to a jeep to get to our hotel, “Nature Zone”, which is further up a rough stone-filled road. We drive up past more tea fields and jungle, all looking mysterious and interesting.
“Nature Zone” itself is composed of free-standing tents, a restaurant structure, and some tree houses where we will be staying. The tree houses are high up but are well-constructed, with some flaws. Because the structures are built around the trees themselves, there is a giant, living tree trunk in the room with holes surrounding it. Holes are no good if mosquitos are to be kept out. Living tree trunks are no good if tropical insects are to kept out as we will learn later, when a giant stick insect will visit Owen in the night.
The staff at “Nature Zone” seem unfortunately deficient of any knowledge about nature, which is sad although we identify from our balcony some of the giant squirrels native to this region. The look like something in between a monkey and a squirrel, more like a lemur than anything else. Kind of cute. Dinner is good but takes a long time. In the evening I play Kirby on the DS and work on a letter for A."

Kerala Diary Excerpt Pt. 2

"8/8/09
I arrive in Dubai airport. It’s roughly 6.45pm here. I try to convince my body of this. The airport itself, or what I have access to, is impressive. Near my gate is an elaborate indoor garden complete with Koi Carp pond. I approach the water and the fish come up to great me. I’m reminded of a similar pond in some public gardens at home in Scotland that I used to visit as a kid. The fish would suck at your fingers thinking it was food.
I restart, “I <3 CAMPING” and “Dayvan Cowboy” by Boards of Canada comes on. It’s appropriate music for being so spaced out right now. I think that it’s also one of the few serviceable songs from “The Campfire Headphase” which was such a dissapointment after “Geogaddi”. I buy some samosas and an apple and pear drink from a store. Both are very good although I have no idea how much I paid.
“This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)” by Talking Heads comes on. I have lots of good memories attached to this song, mostly too private to share but two stick out: being on tour in Brighton and hearing “Speaking in Tongues” for the first time, and a trip to Toronto waterfront last week where we accidentally stumbled on a free showing of “Stop Making Sense”, the live Jonathan Demme film of Talking Heads.
Talking Heads are a difficult band to negotiate at first, I think. Simultaneously accessible and inaccessible, the lesson learned from time spent with their music is that sometimes it’s best not to over-analyse things. “I’m just an animal, looking for a home”, what a line! I wish I could write lyrics like David Byrne, who can say so much with so little.
Waiting for the plane that will take me to Kochi, Kerala, I listen to The Rural Alberta Advantage and The Antlers. I enjoy both although find each albums relentless commitment to the same distraught tone a little overwhelming. Also, “Sylvia” by The Antlers rips off “Somewhere Only We Know” by Keane about half-way through. Still, both are enjoyable and “Don’t Haunt This Place” by RAA is fantastic.
I notice that I’m still hungry. I return to the same place and pick up some spring rolls. “Back again?” the woman behind the counter asks. “Still hungry”, I reply and smile. I use the washroom and come out to find my plane being boarded. Really not feeling The Antlers album now, but I’m not sure why. Too forced, perhaps?
I board the flight, listening to Cass McCombs. “Morning Shadow” sounds especially good at the moment. This plane is less impressive than the previous one. There are still T.V.s in the seats but it looks like the movies stream live rather than providing the choice. The flight will take roughly five hours, a lot less than expected. I take a lemon drink and a hot towel. I spend five minutes with the latter, rolling it up to see if I can still remember how to roll a cigarette. I turn off my ipod for take-off and start making faces at myself in the reflection of the T.V. screen. I hope noone is watching.
I sleep for a bit but keeping banging my head off of things and waking up. The in-flight meal, a vegetarian curry, is good. I end up watching half of “The Devil Wears Prada”. Feeling slightly strange now, and consider listening to the amazing “Wind’s Poem”, by Mt. Eerie. I decide against it. It’s such an intense album. I struggle to find a good time/place to listen to it. Recently, on a late bus from Buffalo to Toronto, I put it on but kept falling asleep and waking up during the most intense points. There was a storm going on outside.

9/8/09

I arrive at Kochi airport after an hour or two more. It takes me roughly half an hour to an hour to get my bag and go through customs who are, generally, fairly efficient and reasonable. At the entrance of the airport I meet Sajeev, the driver for the next nineteen days, who is holding a sign saying “NICHOLAS FENN”. It’s four thirty a.m. and I discover that poor Sajeev has been waiting here for three hours. Luckily it takes only half an hour to arrive at Le Royale, the guest house where my family and I will be staying in Kochi. I go to bed and get roughly five or six hours sleep. After waking up, I shower and dress, and wonder what I’m going to do today on my own.
Going downstairs, I find a place mat and cutlery set out for me. A man, whose name I forget, makes me an amazing breakfast with papaya, mango, pineapple, toast, and eggs. In the middle of this, Jenny and her husband arrive. My father has booked this holiday through Jenny, who talks to me a little about Keralan politics. I discover that, although the Indian Communist Party has been in power for a while, they will be being voted out next year in favour of the Indian Congress Party, who are slightly more right wing. Similarly, the Communist Party haven’t really been progressive, Sajeev informs me later, since prior to the reformation of the state Jenny and her husband are history professors, and have four children, one of whom is studying medicine in the Philipines, and the other three are triplets (two boys and a girl), twelve years old and still at school.
After breakfast, Sajeev drives me on a sight-seeing tour of Kerala, which I am finally seeing in the day light. Everything is very green. It’s like an Indian Massachusets, but with palm trees. There is so much water here, too. Apparently there are four large rivers in Kerala. We visit Sajeev’s house in the village he lives. So nice to be invited here. I meet Sajeev’s brother, nephew, niece, mother, and father, and eat local Keralan delicacies; banana fried in rice flour, popadoms in rice flour, a savoury crispy fried semolina and something else I forget. Later we visit Cherai beach, where Sajeev tells me the locals like to visit. It’s beautiful, and so amazing to see the Arabian sea. I feel to privileged to be here. I listen to the ocean, one of my favourite sounds, as it roars and I fantasize about going on a motorcycle adventure. Must email A. about this. We walk along the beach. On the journey back to Le Royale, I am falling asleep. Everything is like a bizarre beautiful dream right now. I need coffee, though. It’s five thirty.
Later, I listen to “Rolling Home Alone” by Jason Lytle from his brilliantly understated solo album, “Yours Truly, the Commuter”. I love this song. The melody wilfully tugs at the heart-strings but does so so effectively that you forget how simple it is. Another effect use of lyrics that would fall outside of their musical context; “I bought you something nice”. Freed of the Grandaddy moniker, “Yours Truly…” is free of any grand ambitions and is, purely, a great album. Perhaps it will soundtrack more of this trip."

Kerala Diary Excerpt

I was in Kerala, India this August for three weeks with my family. During the trip I kept a diary while I was listening to music. As it's relevant to the theme of this blog, I'm going to publish (relevant) excerpts.

"7/8/09

Airports are the way I imagine heaven is; lots of light, constant repetition, sterile, static, and stuck in no particular time whatsoever. “Heaven”, David Byrne once sang, “is a place where nothing ever happens”. I’m sitting in Toronto Pearson airport where I will catch a flight to Dubai, then Kochi (Cochin), India. I think the flights will take me, in total, 23 hours, but I am unaware of the accuracy of my calculations.
I’m listening to the Wooden Birds album which seems to work perfectly in jolting some kind of life into the dead canvas around me. I’m listening to the Wooden Birds, but I’m thinking about Thom Yorke, who has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance on my headphones ever since I heard his cover of Miracle Legion’s “All For The Best”, which is Yorke’s contribution to “Ciao My Shining Star…”, a tribute album to Mark Mulcahy whose wife was recently tragically killed in an accident.
On first listen, there is nothing remarkable about “All For The Best”. A glitchy, unremarkable beat begins the song only to be accompanied by some fairly basic keyboard swells. What works so well about this track is not groundbreaking production but, as demonstrated more than ever by 2007’s “In Rainbows”, Yorke’s fantastic ability to isolate and emphasize the right melodies at the right time. Though the accompaniment to Yorke’s singing builds subtly and effectively, it’s his perfect, lethargic singing that really stands out here. I listen to it again and love it, especially the “say you love me” coda.
After listening, I revisit some other Yorke albums. First up, “The Eraser”, Yorke’s only, to date, solo outing. It’s not brilliant by any stretch, but there is some fantastic stuff here, particularly the title track, “Black Swan’, and “Cymbal Rush”, of which there is a good remix by The Field.
Next up is the recently released “Harry Patch (In Memory Of)”, a tribute to the last surviving UK soldier from WW1. Using just strings and vocals, it’s effective, and touching, utilizing well on the lessons learned from the luscious production on “In Rainbows”. I read a review of this track on Pitchfork today that gave the track 7/10. Almost the right score, but the review itself was bizarre, concentrating mainly on the author’s apparent desire to claim that they liked it while admitting that they could see why their friends didn’t. More assertiveness please.
On the bus to the airport today I listened to “Amnesiac”. Although I like some of the tracks, it always seemed, and still does, like a collection of random tracks whose main similarity is their being recorded at the same time. It really lacks the flawless cohesiveness and immaculate sequencing of “Kid A” and stands, with “Hail to the Thief” as one of the weaker of Radiohead’s recent work, “Kid A” and “In Rainbows” being my current favourites.
I’m not sure what time it is but I think it must be boarding soon. I put on “Document”, by REM, but quickly get bored of it. It’s by no means bad, I love REM, but as I watch the que of people board the plane, I get a pang of nostalgia and put on a mix I made for A., “I LOVE CAMPING VOL.1”. The reason behind the name is that we seem to have spent a bit of time recently driving places in New York State and camping. “Exhuming MCCarthy” gives way to “Stand-Ins, One” followed by “Lost Coastlines” both of course from “The Stand-Ins” by Okkervil River. I’ve started my mix with two tracks that follow each other on the same album. I wonder if I’m breaking some sort of mix-tape code, but quickly dismiss this. The instrumental followed by the lead single sound fantastic together.
All of these tracks are themselves from other playlists I’ve been playing in the hired cars we’ve been taking on our trips, although some have been played on these neat $10 portable speakers we bought in Wall-Mart that came with cool patterned jackets that allow them to stand. The majority of the tracks are taken from one specific playlist, “Great Party”, which was constructed for, fittingly, a party. Six hours long, it comprises mostly of tracks I was listening to last year. The party itself I have few good memories of as a visiting friend made me drink too much tequila.
Ah! Shady Lane! I love this song, and now it reminds me of Allegany State Park, where we sang it a cappella, while hiking. Later, Jens Lekman will play, which I strongly associate with seeing bears for the first time ever in the wild. I can’t believe this was the cheapest pen in the airport shop, $3.98! Should I be listening to “Music for Airports’, I wonder?

*******************

This plane is insane. There are T.V.s in the back of the seats with touch screens and a database full of popular (and recent) movies and T.V. shows. I’m easily impressed. I switch from “Dylan In the Movies” by Belle and Sebastian, to an episode of the Office. I wonder, is this free? It seems to be… this is ridiculous.
“He died, alone with not even his own head to comfort him” – fantastic line. I watch three episodes then the second half of the new Star Trek film, the first of which I had watched online. I get that this is certainly better than the other Star Trek films I’ve seen but haven’t we had enough of “origin” stories recently? Similarly, Leonard Nimoy and Simon Peg kind of push things into camp territory the film would be better keeping out of.
After the film, I fall asleep. It’s impossible to tell for how long but I reckon I manage a respectable five hours. I awaken to the sound of bird noises being played over the P.A. It makes me wonder which morning Emirates airlines is referring to, given that we’re traversing time zones. I put on “Mars Attacks”. There’s a camera at the front of the plane that can be accessed through the T.V. Soon I’ll be arriving in Dubai.
An advert welcoming passengers to Dubai interrupts the end of the film, accompanied by that song with the chorus, “it’s a wonderful, wonderful life”. Dubai is marketed as an exotic paradise, although unfortunately comes across as a tasteless moratorium of excess, at least via these images of creepily clean and empty hotels devoid of an distinct personality. For me it’s always been the place where friends parents go to work in the oil industry, and has never struck me as a place for a holiday. My housemate’s girlfriend told me at dinner two nights ago that bankruptcy is a crime here, literally; they’ll arrest you."