Clergyman's

“And you asked why people always expected you to smile in photographs. And I told you it was because they hoped that in the future, there would be something to smile about”
— pleasefindthis

“I was once asked to pick a couple of records for an interview I was doing on Radio 2. I picked one by Will Oldham and one by Joanna Newsome. Someone on the production phoned me to say that I couldn’t have either record because they were ‘too alternative’ and I could just pick two from their playlist. Now, personally, I think that Radio 2’s listeners would dig both Joanna Newsome and Will Oldham if they heard their records, and that the fact they don’t get to hear them contributes to the cultural wasteland we live in. I told them that I’d been to see Joanna Newsome in the Albert Hall a couple of weeks before and it had been sold out. How could she be ‘too alternative’? ‘Alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ aren’t strictly to do with whether things are popular or minority interest. They are ideological labels. Someone like Joe Pasquale would be called ‘mainstream’ and regularly pops up on TV, but would play the smaller end of the touring-theatre circuit. If Joanna Newsome can sell out Albert Hall, why can’t she get played on Radio 2? I would agree that it’s because her work is too layered, challenging and interesting. Think about that. What you get to hear about is filtered, and not filtered to get rid of useless cunts like Joe Pasquale, but of things that might enrich your life.”
— Frankie Boyle

“Yet the story of Orpheus, it occurs to me, is not just about the desire of the living to resuscitate the dead but about the ways in which the dead drag us along into their shadowy realm because we cannot let them go. So we follow them into the Underworld, descending, descending, until one day we turn and make our way back.”
— Meghan O’Rourke