I peeped in on the Fabulist the other day, eyes shining with nostalgia, wiping the windows and blowing the dust off the furniture. And look! You guys are lovely! People are still leaving comments, and saying nice things. We have the nicest readers *ever* :D
Our hiatus is nearing an end, and soon we shall break free with song! and art! and as much brightness and light as we can grab by the armful. We'll gather back at this point, and tumble forth for a Brand New Adventure, and we can't wait for you guys to come with us. New site ahoy!
In the meantime, though, things are awfully quiet around here. It seems that the mailing list got broken (sorry Roger!), and it seems sensible that we should wave, and let you know where to find us (and where we'll post updates along the way).
We eachhaveTwitter accounts, which is where we hang out during the day and shoot the breeze. Do come and say hello! There's also a direct Fabulist Twitter all of its own, which we'll use as a de facto mailing list (mailing lists are so Web 1.0, dahlink). We love hearing from you, and if you've ideas or suggestions for the new site, do send them in. We're friendly folk, and we like to natter. Olga can also be found at her music website here.
Thanks for being awesome, and patient, and understanding that we needed to reshape things. We'd much rather take six months off, and reimagine what we're doing (and why we're doing it), then let things fizzle out ignominiously. Things that should fizzle include: rock shandy floats (when the ice cream hisses against glass), sparklers and the tail end of a rockets, pushing against the sky. Websites, we felt, most definitely should not.
So we got out our clay (and our mála) and we're building a better home for our art. It feels very, very good :)
This is to say: thank you. Thank you for being awesome, and for sending us emails and comments. Thank you for understanding. Thank you for sending us beautiful things. We'll be back soon :)
Sometimes, when I sleep, I travel for miles and miles and miles. I wake up, and my muscles ache. There are tangles in my hair, and tangles in my head - half-images and tired eyes, remembered and half-unseen.
I should totally go hang out with this lady. There are trains and clouds and steps and flying socks! It's exhausting sleep, yes, but one with cellos and strawberry-blonde curls flying in the wind. How on earth did they know?!
His words wrestle and fall, lapping over each other, a rhythm and purpose and song. It was neither poetry nor music alone, but both.
He was a social activist, and acutely politically aware.
'You need to have myths,' Oscar once said. 'You need to have people who don't give a shit about caving. And that what I wanted to be - that kinda guy. I always wanted to be with the stand-up dudes.'
And so he was. He wrote about breaking rocks with the chain gang, about conformity, about the poor and the weak. Brother where are you? he sang, looking into eyes of the people who pass by.
'The first time I voted,' he said, 'I voted for me.'
He wrote more than a dozen plays, more than 1000 songs, a dozen albums, and a Broadway musical for Mohammed Ali. He met his heroes (check out those interviews, they're *amazing*).
He was a beautiful, adept performer of his own work, an actor, a social commentator, a playwright and activist. He was not one thing, but several (for a person is never just one thing). He was remixed.
Olga just sent me this - Winnie the Pooh, in Russian!
Check out the crayon illustrations, and Vinni Puh's slightly husky, slightly world-weary voice. Also, he has little stubby legs. Winnie the Pooh should *always* have little stubby legs.
A friend dies, and Frank Turner wants to remember her as she'd want to be remembered.
So he writes. And yet he writes no sombre requiem, but a piece of his pain parcelled in joy.
'Long Live the Queen' was released on Monday, as a download only single (here, here and on iTunes here); no matter where you get it, it costs less than £1.
Lexie, Frank's friend, died of breast cancer. Her kids are in the video. All proceeds go to the Breast Cancer Campaign. This one is worth it, guys.
Edit: In his blog, Frank says: 'You need to be careful to buy the single, not the track off the album, but you can do that by following those links, so it should be easy. One you're done, if you send a screenshot of the receipt to longlivethequeen@frank-turner.com we'll send you 2 exclusive b-sides for free.'
'This is our love story,' she says, 'from my own point of view.'
Old love letters are bright burials, sore memories blinking out as the lid lifts. They are words offered up in tenderness, words offered up in passion, and words burned and crumbled into the hearth.
This song expresses it more beautifully than I could have hoped for.
Winter Family - Garden Edit: broken link fixed! sorry guys...
Going to the wedding of a former lover, with bittersweet love in your heart. She is getting married 'to a boy who loves you narry / One cubit more than you and I when we were both still young'.
You love her still; you wish her well; you remember everything.
She wrote songs for the Drifters, the Shirelles, Little Eva, Arethra Franklin and the Beatles. She wrote songs for everyone else and ultimately, finally, eventually - she wrote songs for herself.
She's Carole King and she wrote *everything* (or near enough).
No, actually, she did.
She wrote everything.
It's a wee bit shocking.
'You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down.' - Kahlil Gibran
'Why'd you think I put out your fire?
Why'd you think I put out your fire?
Don't you know I breathe in fire, breathe out fire?' - tUnE-YaRdS
From an interview with a centenarian: what was the secret to her long life?
The old lady paused for a minute, and then replied.
washthis on 
