We all bob in a sky blue ocearine, sky blue ocearine, sky blue ocearine...

Cross-referencing papersky on collaborative reading.

Funerals and dawns

I haven't been writing about the deaths of Joe Scurfield and Keith Morris, and I don't want to now.

Chaz has this to say about Joe's funeral, yesterday:

It was the day of Joe’s funerary rites, which were scheduled to begin this morning in the park opposite my house. ... [W]e were just gathering up our coats and heading towards the door when we heard the distant strains of music coming along the road. And went out, and there was Joe in a white coffin on a handcart bedecked with flowers, being towed by his brothers, while I don’t know how many dozen fiddlers walked behind, all playing the same repetitive line. And behind them came a long parade, and half my friends among them.

The last time I saw Joe was at Julia's funeral, when we emerged from the chandeliers and Georgian splendour of the Assembly Rooms to see off the hearse drawn by horses with black plumes; yesterday we followed the handcart, and the more fiddlers fiddling than I have ever seen in one place before, into the park where we sang Bandera Rossa. The minutes of silent reflection were not broken but filled by the sound of a passing plane, one of the smaller children saying "Aeroplane!", the birdsong. Both occasions were immensely moving, because both were idiosyncratic, and right for the person.

And later, because yesterday was the Friday nearest to the longest day (which in this part of the world means it wasn't dark at ten at night, and it was already twilight at three in the morning) we drove up to Lindisfarne, as we have done for probably thirty of the last thirty five years, to fail to see the sun rise over the sea.
( Like so: )

Not on this day

Damn. Missed it. The recording of Bob Dylan's Like a Rolling Stone, 40 years (and two days) ago today.