Above: today is Thanksgiving - a national holiday in America and part of the American ritual year. Obviously it is an American event, but since New England was an English creation the day has made me wonder if there are any corresponding influences on England we can trace (I'm talking about the specific New England cultural identity rather than the more general influence of American culture). There is certainly evidence of absence - the original colonists left behind memories, preserved in local traditions.
Above: the Pilgrim Fathers memorial on the east coast. I took this photograph just as the sun was coming up. Hardly any American tourists come to look at this pillar, probably because it is so remote.
Above: a few yards away is the salt water creek where the Pilgrim Fathers planned to set sail. Bleak but also beautiful. Lots of place names in the area have correspondences in New England.
Above: Sweet England is a folk song about a family emigrating to America and everything going wrong and how they long to come back again. I listen to this CD all the time in the car. Shirley Collins has an amazing voice.
Above: I never watch X-Factor so all the performers that everyone else seems to know about are usually a mystery to me. But usually once a week I watch the top 10 videos on MTV and this week One Direction suddenly appeared at No 1 (or No 3 depending on the chart). Although the band is British the look is unmistakeably New England, set in one of the small colleges the area is renowned for (I know Lake Placid is technically New York state but it was in the old Dominion of New England).
Above: I am not sure who the director is (a Google search produces nothing). Ostensibly simple, the video has a subtle brooding quality. If I had to guess I would say the video was directed by John Urbano (who did the band's previous video), written by John Knowles (author of A Separate Peace) and based on a poem by Thomas Parke D'Invilliers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvfejaHz-o0
No comments:
Post a Comment