Music Arcades: Robin Rimbaud: The Garden is Full of Metal

I think I was aware of Derek Jarman's garden in Dungeness from a TV feature when I bought this CD in 1998, and Lucy and I have since been there a couple of times, in 2004 and 2006. To complement the picture Of Jarman's cottage and garden on the cover of the CD, you can see my own photos, taken on the second trip, among the many on Flickr.

That second trip was a difficult weekend. We'd planned a couple of days in Kent some time ahead, but Lucy had her second miscarriage in the space of a year on the day before we were due to make the journey. We decided to go anyway. (At least an article about the garden came out of the trip, and I am quoted in it, albeit under an alias and with invented biographical details.)

But I have a happy postscript to this story, something I've been looking for an opportunity to mention for a while, and Valentine's Day is sort of appropriate: Lucy and I are expecting a baby in July.

Robin Rimbaud knew Derek Jarman for the last ten years of his life. This sound essay is composted out of recordings of Jarman speaking, treated and untreated, and bits of of acoustic ecology from Dungeness and Jarman's London haunts. It's occasionally interesting, but — and in this it shares some qualities with Jarman's filmmaking — if you're looking for straightforward pleasure, you're going to have to work for it.