Forgot to post recently when I went to the isle of dogs. If you’re ever in Tblisi, highly recommend @georgian_flavors cooking class (cheese bread!), also: heading up to the mountains to the north and accidentally walking into a bishop being installed; going to Gori, Stalin’s hometown and both touring his official museum and doing the great @gorifreewalkingtour tour to get the non-hagiographic take on his life and Georgian-Russian relations today (Gori’s next to the part of Georgia Russia’s occupied); eating a lot (high calorie cuisine weirdly reminded me of Yorkshire); and being followed by dogs everywhere. The scared child mural weirdly appears on the Russia-Georgia Friendship Monument. Perhaps appropriate…
Somewhat bizarre week; the benefit of not stoppjng vox popping even when it’s 2 a.m. Thanks to @theo.skudra for taking an actually nice photo of me, which I was oblivious to at the time as it was 2 a.m. Also thanks to work for not firing me given somewhat damning evidence of drinking on the job. To maintain objectivity, I will happily vox pop Pusha or Kendrick at future memorial sites
Of all the work music trips I’ve done this year, think Black Sabbath/Ozzy’s final show up in Birmingham will end up being most memorable. Was like metal Eurovision. So ridiculous and over the top. This dump includes me outside Ozzy’s childhood home, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine) soloing with his teeth, a knitted Ozzy postbox cover, the BSL signer, and Ozzy himself
I went up to Yorkshire to spend a day walking with and profiling Andy Goldsworthy, the great land artist. Expected him to be a mystic woo sage - he told me he could have once “set up churches in California” as the hippy/tech bro set were so obsessed with him - but he was totally no nonsense, clear and simply dedicated to exploring the land, then making art that connected with him. While there, a local pub owner, Brownie, showed me the second photo of Goldsworthy lying in a road. Brownie said when he saw Goldsworthy there he thought he’d had a heart attack, and rushed to get a defibrillator. Was a bit surprised to learn it was art. The profile’s in today’s paper - with excellent photos and that lead video from @sambush_ and you really should go to “Hanging Stones” now, or Goldsworthy’s show in Edinburgh this summer. Limited photos of the art as I think you need to experience it
Walked from Bologna to Florence along the Via Degli Dei or Path of the Gods, and the gods seemed to be in the mood for the most absurd weather: 36 hours of constant rain, then fog so dense I walked next to four wind turbines without noticing them, plus a few days of sunburn clear skies. Had a great time to be honest. Very last minute trip thanks to seeing a post on here by author Rebecca Watson who’s just done it in similarly mad weather so suggest you buy her amazing Little Scratch and potentially amazing (I only bought it today) I Will Crash to say thanks on my behalf
Went to Andy Goldsworthy’s “Hanging Stones” sculpture project up in the North York moors - where he’s put things in old barns and cottages and it’s just brilliant, part folk horror, part woo, part climate change parable, maybe a bit of a meditation on the decline of farming. Don’t really want to post images as would spoil the surprise. If into art, though, you should go (hangingstones.org is the website) #hangingstones I may have got more of the horror vibes because it was Halloween and I saw a decapitated rabbit outside one of the barns so don’t blame me if those vibes are not present in the middle of summer
And good music to drive across the US to with a cracked windscreen included Brat, Astrid Sonne’s “Great Doubt,” that 1010benja album everyone’s ignoring, and weirdly the Blue Bendy album which went very well with Monument Valley even if I didn’t get Monument Valley itself. Thanks to the Avis person who told me to keep driving with the crack (no thanks to the other person who told me to drive six hours to Vegas for a replacement vehicle)
Am now in New York but to finish off my trip this is what the main Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City looks like. I assume, like religion, a work in progress. Spanish language Book of Mormon in my hotel because - again, I assume - South America is the growth area. Salt Lake is a bit like going to the north of England in that everyone says hello to you, they just happen to be Mormons wearing those badges….
Went out to Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty,” one of the original pieces of land art (if you ignore all the Nazca stuff) in the Great Salt Lake. Enjoyed it a lot, although it did feel a bit like Smithson impossibly trying to make a monument able to stand up to Utah’s own geography, and you can’t win that battle. Even the salt lake itself is nuts, all pinks and greens and whites and the reflection from above… A mum turned up at sunset to show her kids the big snail in the caked salt, and some teenagers turned up on dates. Very odd to see the place just treated as a cool make out spot! It’s a two-hour drive from Salt Lake City. Apparently afterward you should go to a thermal springs called Stinky Pete’s and pass out from the sulphur although it was closed by the time I got there dammit
Part of this trip was to walk up/down the Grand Canyon. But it’s been in the middle of a heat wave and so decided a bad idea (did meet some people who did it anyway, and halfway up the rangers stopped them and made them sleep for seven hours so they didn’t pass out!). Anyway, dropped by Dead Horse Point, which is the Grand Canyon by any other means, and loved it. So you might not get what you want, but you can still get what you need
Love the peace and serenity you find visiting the world’s natural wonders!
(To be fair, it is pretty stunning. And also stopped at a place called something like Nature’s Bridges National Monument earlier and it was essentially the same thing except with no one there 🤷♂️)
