Beulah Land

Daniel Menche-Animality








So here I am in France. I don't know how many of you have been following. But for the past month I have been residing in a luxurious flat in Barcelona. Pictures thus far have been unavailable due to Anton's obsessive camera hording. No, he's just busy taking wonderful photos. Soon I will post them in one giant flood of jpeg's for you all t enjoy/envy. hah ah ahaha.
We took the bus to Lyon at night. We were supposed to board at 1:50 am at gate 28. Instead we boarded at 2:30 am at gate 26. It involved a torrid series of conversations with people much more attractive and well-dressed than us. That's all I'll say. When we arrived in Lyon we had to make our way to L'Arbresle, a small town allegedly 25km outside of Lyon. This turned out to be more like 50km. These two egregious errors led me to speculate the French leg of our adventure to be a disaster. However, when we arrived in L'Arbresle our thoroughly attractive host, Vincent, had the car running. And we proceeded to take a 15 minute car ride through possibly the most picturesque parts of Europe I have ever been through. We arrived in Bully at about 3:00 pm. When we finally pulled onto the road to the main house of the vineyard I was ecstatic to be in France. Briefly, our roommates are fantastic, everyone except Vincent's parents, Renee and Collette, speak perfect English, and I have since been spending my days waking up at 6am to tend to Beaujolais grapes until noon, and eating and drinking the rest of the afternoon away in the most beautiful countryside on the face of the planet. To give you a bit of an idea, today I cleaned the fields (weed whacking/whippa snippaing, as the aussies would put it) till 10am. At which point Renee (Vincent's dad) came traipsing up with a fucking bucket of wine. I am henceforth very drunk and lazy. Henceforth, the best part of living here is the irresistible draw to forget the rest of the world exists. Everything is so peaceful. I can't even hear a car in the distance. My world revolves around the sound of the wind in through the foothills and the babbling of the river. That is perhaps the most hippie thing I've ever written. But I don't know how else to describe it (because, once again, I'm very, very drunk). I've NEVER felt so at home on the countryside. Let it not be said the French don't know how to live. Good food, good tobacco, good wine, good music, good conversation. That's all.

More about that when I'm a bit more coherent.

Daniel Menche is a huge inspiration of mine. His collaboration with John Weise, Behold the Scathing Light, is one of my favorite things of all time, including the foothills of the Alps. This is one of his most recent excursions into poly-rythym and drone and stuff. It's a fucking monster of a record. Please take the time to have your mind blown.

Also, he is pooor, with three 'ooo's. So, as always, if you can afford to, please give graciously to the suffering musician:Here

That's all for now. I'm gonna go eat local Brie in chunks the size of pieces of pie.