The Best of Burial
The talented designer of this CD cover is Burial.
Burial is from South London (the image on the CD cover is an aerial shot of South London), he is practically unknown, and this month he releases on Kode9’s label hyperdub, a CD that will be to the 00s what Tricky’s Maxinquaye was to the 90s. If you want to know the direction that sound art must (and will) go (to survive), then listen to this mix of Burial’s new and darkling music by Kode9 on Radio One’s electronic music show Breezeblock, which is hosted by the beautiful, blond motorcyclist Mary Anne Hobbs.
Now to my point (and I always have a point to make): This recent comment by Burial, which was made during an interview with the blogger Blackdown, offers a vital (if not the most vital) lesson not only to those who make art out of sound but those who use words to make art. Burial says: “I’m not a musician, and I’m still not, in any way, but when I heard those tunes, I realised you could make tunes without being `a musician.’” This is something poets of our post-human age can never say—a person who writes poetry wants to be known, recognized, revered as a poet.
In the middle of the 19th century, the French poet and translator Charles Baudelaire offered the poet two paths: one was to be found in the prose poem “The Lost Halo”; the other, in the poem “The Albatross.” By way of “The Lost Halo,” the poet dumps the holy importance of being a poet, and he/she heads in the direction that will end in their saying exactly what Burial now says about not being a musician. The “The Albatross” is a path that heads in the opposite direction of the total rejection of the holy halo. Along this misty way, “the poet resembles this prince of cloud and sky,” the albatross, the saint, the beautiful soul—the poet, the writer, the novelist. Go to poetry slams, open mics, literary readings of any kind, and what you will see, what will bore you to tears, is this albatross, flying and flying and flying in circles.
What literature really needs, if it is to survive, if it is to be of any relevance, if it is to make clear progress, is no more albatrosses. One must be able to write poetry, write a novel without being a poet, being a novelist. Burial is not a musician (the word makes him sick, suicidal even—”[If I were to make music like a musician,] I’d throw myself under a train at Clapham Junction.”) and this is the reason why his music is so much better than anything you will find on the poetry, fiction shelves of today’s bookstores.
Good notes. The world doesn't need poets, writers, or musicians. It needs ordinary people doing their jobs like policemen and firemen saving lives without fanfare.
I hate people who consider themselves "writers". Writers never have anything interesting to say. I'd much rather listen to a cab diver, a dishwasher, anyone but a "writer".
As soon as someone claims that they are a "writer" whatever they say is going to be baloney.