Rammed-Earth Workshop Maxville 2023

Opportunism is a many edged sword. Every moment affords a chance, and we write our lives with our thoughts, our actions and often our words in those perceived increments in our way of being. In that sense, being an unrepentant heretic is a cigarette paper away from being an unrepentant opportunist: and to boot, I confess to being a repeat offender. 

One of my teachers, the most articulate man I think I have ever know, one Steven Murray, whose father was a diplomat, and whose brother was the captain of the English shooting team, spared my ears no respite from tall tales and high philosophies. To him everything with a modicum of nobility had the hue of a prince, the courage of a warrior and the resolve of a saint – man could he spin reality into transcendent beauty – I was a willing accomplice, I’m afraid. Oh I see and saw the flaws in every fractal of existence, although mostly I chose to substitute the uglies with stunning edifices of ineffable beauty, but I always knew, and know still, that,

“that ain’t the way it’s s’pposed ta be.”

This truth I will live and die with, just as I passed it on to my mother as she left this mortal coil with me singing her, I guess, across to astral paradise. It was only fair, as she had passed it onto me, without a word, with no airs and graces and without the slimmest of thoughts for herself and with absolutely no sense of loss, only love and quiet prayers.

I am not an English native by birth, far from it, I am a wayling from distant shores even though my English air and eventually, culture was what I first breathed and later imbibed. But on such a time, the world was different, England was different, I was perhaps equally so.

Which somehow brings me back to this video, perhaps the most informative of them all thus far, and why I chose this music to back it and the antiquated film effects to replicate perhpas the last age of what should have been our greatest learning, WWII, the prequel : (

Vaughan Williams Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis. (3% speed accelerated)

Tallis was a choir master, and polyphonic renaissance composer of the early 16^thC. I am no expert on classical music and neither on Tallis, but that Vaughan Williams picked up this particular chalice 400 years later, as if to to reveal its sacred provenance of fairer and greater times could only be lost on the most profane of ears and souls. This music is transcendent. My formative years were steeped in absorption of ideas on chivalry, justice, sacrifice, honour, love and heroism and this musci speaks that language in a very English and yet universalist way. As in the evocative utterance of Steel Pulses seminal reggae master-piece, ‘Tribute to the Martyrs’, I hear again the declaration in the Kingian mould (MLK) with all its gravitas of hope and intent, 

“I ‘ad a dream Gidney, I ‘ad a dream...” 

This dream, this Kubla Khanic reverie that swept all the way from the pristine and undulating desert sands of Omar Khayams Rubaiyat, to the green and mysterious hills of Glastonbury; that can be heard and felt in the waves that crash upon the ancient envelope of Merlin’s cave in Tintagel seemingly intransigent of the aeons and ages that relentlessly passed to shape it, seeps, irrespective of creed, race or circumstance, boundlessly, almost furiously into and out of the souls of we that dare to embrace it, and thus we who dream more boldly than most.

Within moments of hearing the opening bars of this piece, (which has of necessity, been mercilessly cut down from its 17 minutes to under 2), conducted by Andrew Davis of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, revive again feelings tethered to spirit that overflow from my being like a neophyte drowning in a transmogrifying ecstasy, and I am again renewed. 

“What has this to do with Rammed-Earth!” I hear you bellow as you smash your wine-filled goblet upon the table-round.

‘Well, if the penny ain’t droppin’ wid dese posts (and you are duly warned that there’s more to come), I donts knows if ah can reely help ye, but I gottsta try.’

Noble pursuits, my friend, noble pursuits...

We live in an age of instant gratification, semi-second click-oriented attention spans and a penchant for nonsense, pap and grotesqueries, and yet...

[Yes, you’ll note that my scribbling are replete with ellipses (the 3 dots of infamy...), because most things of value that I wish to impart within a punishingly limited word count demand inference and beckon, invoke, nay, demand imagination].

It’s the way of things in communication worth having but oft so poorly executed and miserly in quanta that it beggars belief. And yet, that is in many ways what Rammed-Earth is ensconced in, the unrestricted use of it,  i-m-a-g-i-n-a-t-i-o-n. 

In the concept of planning, in the use of the environment and in creating an environment to design and enhance the way and quality of space in which you live, breathe, sleep and move. 

It is a mistake to underestimate the effect of atmosphere creation and mood setting upon your life and mind-state for all these are intimately and indelibly connected with the geometry, volume and sound, yes, sound, of the place you live in.

After 25 years of studying sound, its reproduction and effects upon the psyche and psycho-emotional apparatus I can tell you that the sound of your environment is critical to your condition.

Here’s an illustration to explain; normy-builds have sand and chem-composite binders etcetera, are shallow, loosely packed and require battoned plaster board spacers. The sum effect is that the inner wall acts like a sound reflecting drum skin, because it moves, resonates and sends sound waves back into the living space often creating unsettling echoics. 

The frequency of plaster board walls in general is not conducive to relaxation, calmness and a sense of security. The brick walls are much better from this view point but they are usually outside, of poor density and in any case, lack durability.

Rammed-Earth, by way of contrast, is very dense, highly durable and secure and that is what the sound of it tells you. It absorbs sound rather than reflects it, has a very low resonance in both frequency and solidity, insulates against noise and energy transmission as well as reflects and absorbs EMF. It really is a game-changer in so many ways.

It’s natural beauty connects you to the outer world and yet protects you from its excesses, and for peace of mind its maintenance requirements are virtual whilst its longevity is set at around 500 years some care. Cost, if well planned, designed and executed is affordable, and yet the dividends are according to its advocates, incalculable.

You may accuse me of being a romantic, and I have to confess there is some truth to that, which in part is where the music comes in, but even so, I caution the rationalists against hasty judgement for I can assure you that, there are more things between heaven and earth, that drive and affect us, of which music at its best, is but one magical ingredient. To illustrate the point here is one of many similar comments left 3 years ago on the Youtube post of Vaughan’s Fantasia by someone called ‘skygerspacher6891’.

“...in 1959 I was 4 and I had a life changing experience because of this piece of music. I had been asleep in my bed but woke up suddenly. My parents were playing this album on their old record player. I had never heard anything like it before and it literally took my breath away. Its never been something I could put into words, but it was if it were so completely a part of every cell in my body it killed the old me. I lay there inbetween the old and the new and then it brought me back to life in a different way, as though all my cells were laced with bits of gold. thats overly dramatic but I was four and that is how I remember it, to this day. That I was simply never the same after. I lay in that bed and sobbed such a deep painful sob, as if the music had given me memory of a place I had come from, as if I had a foot in two worlds. Its just true. Ill never forget it.”

Mystical music, mystical homes and mystical lives, whatever next?

Yeah, well, ‘that’s the way I like it’, said the chart topping group of the 70’s, KC and the Sunshine Band, I’ll let ya know what’s flying next on the alchemical radar in the upcoming post.

Cheers till then.

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