The Trees They Do Grow High

Cabin’d, Cribb’d, Confin’d is the new journal of folk suburb.  Folk suburb is about where the old countryside, on which the suburb is built, rises, occasionally, through (in the curve of a street following an old lane, maybe, or a left-over barn wall, or a name or a gatepost or a tree) and meets in the cul-de-sacs the attemtps to be ‘only the new’ of the suburb.  

And the old songs and old ways and old lore are let in to the suburb, and the suburb is let out to the old. 

And the old songs’ invading lets in the notion of a suburban folk tradition of itself too, to be created, celebrated and written, out of its own things, and lets the old folk be reborn anew, all of which is vital to folk just-about-anything?

Cabin’d, Cribb’d, Confin’d is done on paper and not on line.  Cut and pasted with glue and scissors, not mice.  Photocopied not pdf.

Cabin’d, Cribb’d, Confin’d is free to all. 

 

The First Manifesto Of Folk Suburb

To anticipate, notice and notice the passing of, the annual eruption of the hawthorn

To make the old songs sing to the suburb and the suburb sing to the old songs

To embrace empty time & sitting

To stand still and refuse illusions of elsewhere, and elsethings, for there’s a bagful of sound, sight and smell nearby

To reject the pleasantries

Seed Bomb! Knit Lamp-posts!

Life not survival

“The most certain chances of liberation are born in what is most familiar”

Mike Love not war

Part-time not Full-time

Plant fruit and flowers not decks

No garden lights

BLAST holiday destinations, slavish fashion, advertisement, spotlessness

BLESS the stillnesses of houses in heat, rose petal perfume in buckets

BLESS the blue tits, ragwort, dandelions, bees

BLAST convenience breakfasts, fear of food, Chardonnay

BLESS ale, John Clare, Panini stickers

BLAST breakfast tv, garden lights and outdoor rooms

BLESS breakfast tv, garden lights and outdoor rooms, and rain

BLESS Shirley Collins, Forest, Trembling Bells and Sha-la-la records

BLESS Swizzel-Matlow, footpaths & nettles

BLAST begonias, dogs, the news

BLAST weather forecasts

BLESS Oscar Wilde, Shirley Collins.  Dolly Collins, Subbuteo and Trembling Bells again

BLAST Metro

                                    The suburb is the front line in our consumer economy laid bare.  BLESS walking past houses, and strange lanes marking ancient paths, BLESS the plants

The suburb is the site of the struggle, the beauty with and of CONSTRAINT and CONFORMITY

Internal and external, the suburb is the landscape of many of our childhoods and adulthoods.   The suburb retains magic – the hidden corners, scents and structures

The suburb is a site of great hidden craft

BLESS tea and Lincoln biscuits!

The suburb is a place of nature, ancient byways and boundaries

(un)circumnavigated and unnegotiable

In the suburb the storm clouds rising behind the houses is the fear and awe of the country.  The lights of town on the horizon are the fear of the urban; the banging of the black Corsa the rage of conformist noise

The first manifesto of folk suburb