Old Laughing Lady

Our Boston man’s dispatches fit perfectly – road trips either cease or go more underground in 2005. The theory of Costa’s low key festival circuitry is 99.7% likely, I feel. Slipping back into the fog when the band ‘make it’. Chinchilla fabric – a ‘hold-all’ term capable of containing the natural and the synthetic without revealing whether one or the other or else ‘wool mix’ combination.

The speed adjuster controls of a good mixer double turntable set up are indeed a potential means of achieving a variety of beat frequencies from waveform interference.
In the city squat this investigator abandoned overnight recently, such a two turntable set-up was included among the original paraphernalia present. The investigator recalls the fullsome sound of such interference some years previous. I have recently been researching non-electric wind-up turntables (originally called grammaphones, due to their frequent presence in the upper year social rooms of grammar schools, where 15 year olds would listen to swing, ragtime and early jazz). Standard grammaphones would have an analogue variable speed control. Later machines would have an analogue 3 way control between 78, 45 and 33. What I could do with is something capable of going lower – say 22. That way I could do the ’45 played at 33 speed’ trick on 33s, and listen to a whole album at ‘mong-out’ speed. I know of no modern manufacturer of wind-up, non-electric grammaphones. There may be one.

Approx 40 min ago, this investigator was on a bumpy old-tarmac / dirt track road, a regular tourist walker route towards the base camp of a large mound of highland mountain, when rounding a puddled corner there was an elderly lady, of short height, blocking said road, arms waving in air. I came to an easy halt among the puddles. She held a walking stick – Walking stick in one hand, wrinkled healthy-looking complexion, vibrant face, wavy white hair, with a look of eccentricity and foreignness to her. I walk over to her, sidestepping between puddles on this barmy hot day. In what I think is the broken English of an northern/eastern European accent, she asks for a lift, in upfront, confident terms. I reverse to give her a puddle free access route to passenger side of the vehicle, though she heads towards driver’s side at first – a giveaway of one used to left-hand drive cars. I run her towards a village restaurant – she has been up in the foothills, and is parched and hungry – overheating. I half understand her side of the sparse but friendly conversation. Just before reaching destination, she reveals that she is a tourist from Oregon.

But where are you from originally, I ask. I expect her to be German, for example. She says she is originally from Canada – that is the accent, she explains. West Coast? I ask. Yes, the west.The strange appearance in the road of this elk convinces me I have something to learn from the encounter relevant to the case. A Canadian, with an accent I could have sworn was European, who lives now in Oregon. I suspect that she is the Old Laughing Lady, who can be seen in many mythic sources including the cover of Neil Young’s After the Goldrush album. This album is about the exodus of the hip culture from the US west, or the passing of that culture into hiding.

On the cover image, the red Indian laughing lady is moving in the opposite direction to Neil, however the overlapping alignment between them on the ‘great shot’ makes it appear that she is actually riding in Neil’s backpack (and so actually going in the same direction as Neil, but facing backwards – like a rear gunner). With every movement I feel an opposite flow probably occurs, as per Newton’s third law. So, if this Canadian woman went from Canada to the US, she is the reverse of the movin’ up country hippies who went to Vancouver to avoid nam. Just like Neil, in fact, who travelled from his roots in Canada to the US west.