The Courage Of Others Midlake Rar
Ashlie Hagenson
It's hard to imagine that Midlake's earliest music, back in 1999, sounded more like Herbie Hancock, and that the band's first love was jazz. At times, you can hear this Denton, Texas, group's love of '70s rock, particularly of the Fleetwood Mac variety. But what I hear in Midlake goes back to 1969 and a song from the first King Crimson record called "Epitaph." Without a doubt, this isn't a throwback band, or a band with nostalgia on its mind. The music of Midlake has set a tone heard on records from Bon Iver, Blitzen Trapper and Fleet Foxes, among others.
Tim: Yeah, "The Courage of Others" was a song I wrote after Occupanther was completed. It was intended to be used as a b-side, but after recording the first version of it we felt it should be on the next album, so we saved it. The lyrics start out: "I will never have the courage of others, I will not approach you at all, I was always taught to worry about things, all the many things you can't control." So, we had our title for the next album.
Tim: The biggest influence on the new music has been bands like Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Jimmie Spheeris, Pentangle, Strawbs, The Incredible String Band, Amazing Blondel, Bread Love and Dreams, Black Sabbath, Sandy Denny, Yellow Autumn, Mellow Candle, John Renbourn, and many others. So I guess we got into more of this British folk thing and a 'fair maiden' thing as I call it, but I don't think we really sound like these bands, though there is more than a hint of it on the new album.
Eric: I actually got involved with coffee accidentally. Robert Gomez, myself, and a couple others were going to start a bar/cafe here in Denton and it never quite got off the ground. In the process I met the people that were going to supply our coffee and I found out more about the cause they were involved with. The coffee is through an organization called Growers First (www.growersfirst.org) and they help coffee growing families in remote areas through fair payment, economic development, agricultural teaching, and more. On top of that, it tastes amazing and is freshly roasted every week with my friends at Halo Brand. People can check out my coffee at www.cappulido.com and pick up their own bag(s).
Canea was no pleasant abode at that moment. Allinns, cookshops and coffee-houses, except the meanest,were burned or barred, and no cook or body-servantwas for hire. The consuls, smoked out of Halépa afew days before, had broken into a deserted inn on thequayside, where their wives were setting before themsuch victuals as could be begged from the fleet. Thejournalists, who landed from every passing boat, lodgedwhere and how men might in a ravished town, and afamous limner of battles kept life in him for thefirst few days with little but cauliflowers, oranges, andGreek brandy. Mine was a better fate. An old acquaintanceof Cyprus days was commanding the Albanianpolice, and I found lodgment with him in the onlytenanted house outside the walls, except one. Inthis last Chermside was living, who, like my host,sustained the British name for cool courage and quietdischarge of duty in those unquiet weeks. He showedme the lie of the land, talking of things Turkish asfew men may talk, and franked me through the innerlines, where we found shoeless gunners with rags boundon feet and legs, stedfastly serving antique field-pieceswith the slouch of woodmen who handle ox-carts onAnatolian hills.
My fellow-journalists were for the most part a genialcrew, which looked on the wine when it was red, orindeed of any other hue, and took life as it came. Afew were tiros like myself; the others had seen manycampaigns and much of the habitable world, where theyhad learned a little of most men and tongues by the way.But I found that almost all had tried other callings, andtaken at the last to their actual trade, less in love of itthan in disgust of all others. Our common talk wasof warriors and war, when it was not of our despatchesand their effect on the civilised world. In this companyone was taken at the value one set upon oneself, and allwas held fair that might serve the interest of a masterat the other end of a wire.
Imagine those years. The village was frozen as bya spell. A special police-post was established landwards,and all neighbours were searched as they approachedor left the suspect community. The weeklymarket ceased, and all commerce of men whatsoever.Houses gaped to wind and rain, but they might notbe made good; and lands went out of cultivation forlack of seed. This state of things endured weeks,months, a year, till, sick with hope deferred, some householders,abandoning all they had, slipped away of darknights aboard Castellóriziote caiques, and passed onto free Greek soil, fearful of being retrieved from theirmother-isle. Round the remainder in Dembré thecordon was drawn closer; but a few others managed toflee as time went on, leaving their houses tenantless andtheir gardens to the riot of weeds. Outsiders, evenkinsmen, shunned the banned village, and were shunnedin turn, if bold enough to enter, lest suspicion attachof trafficking or plotting escape. No formal taxes werelevied, but the police had to live, which came to thesame thing, or to more, in the end; and currency grewrarer and rarer in the village, little or none coming fromwithout. It was the survivors of a lately prosperouscommunity that we had seen hanging about the streets,fearful to act or speak, watching for a release that nevercame. My informant supposed nothing could be doneto help them. He himself would suffer, of course, assoon as we were gone, for his entertainment of usto-night, forced though it was. His plaint was uttered52less in anger than with a certain air of apology, as a man,conscious of futility, might complain of the weather orany other act of God. The idea that the Common Lawhad been shamefully abused to his undoing, had probablynever occurred to him, his view of Law beingthat of most poor folk, that it is wholly external,the voice of an irresponsible will to be endured orevaded like any other tyranny. And his Padishah hadonly acted as Kings have ever acted in the East, fromthe Great King, the King of Assyria, to the latestSultan or Shah.
In the village I found several houses destroyed, andmen still labouring to clear others of the mud left bythe collapse of their roofs. I was invited to go on tothe Mill and see what evil work the flood had donethere. The coffee-house emptied itself behind me of86some twenty men, to whom were added presently halfthe women and children of the village, all surprisinglycheerful, and vying with one another to be first inpointing out this or that result of the disaster. Godhad willed it! So each murmured piously at the endof a tale, which lost nothing in the manner of its telling.The principal sufferers were brought forward, and wereplainly proud to be so distinguished. They, too, saidmodestly that God had willed it. The mill proved tobe no more; and the miller pointed out its situationwith so manifest a pleasure that I almost suspected,absurdly enough, that the blessing of excessive insurancewas not unknown in remote Cretan villages.
The lake floor here has so slight a slope that a milefrom its marge the water is still only inches deep, and thegrounded feluccas must discharge their freights on tocamels, which are trained against nature to receive theirloads standing and wade unconcerned to the shore.Naked children splash all day in the shoal-water, plyingtiny javelins and little casting-nets, so far out as toseem no bigger than gulls; and there could be nohealthier or happier babes than this amphibious brood,whose playground is the Lagoon. Their fathers andmothers seem to pass the day on the vast stretch ofsandy beach, coopering boats, buying and selling fish,chattering, sleeping in the sun. It is astonishing to seeso clean a life in Egypt, a life unfouled by the viscous107ink of the Nile mud. Even the huts are not built of clay,but of ancient Roman bricks dug out of mounds southof the Lagoon, and long ago mellowed to a dusky redthat tones to admiration with the yellow dunes and thedark greenery of the palms. Bee-hive shelters, byresand fences are wattled of dry palm-fronds.
More, however, they did desire. We were Westernmen, with an itch to be doing, and we tried to fulfil oursouls a little among the fallen churches and rock-tombsof Apollonia. But, with all our leisure, we made nogreat discovery there; and I doubt if the best thing wefound were not wild watercress growing thickly in the138conduit, which we taught the Cretans and the soldiersto relish. What is left of Apollonia is only a longlandward slice of the city, which in Christian timesoutstripped dying Cyrene. All the seaward face of it,with the harbour-wall and gate and port, has been eatenby the waves. There is no doubt the coast has sunkhere since Roman times, and is probably sinking still,and that the shallow bay, all rocks and shoals, in whichwe had made a difficult landing, is not any part of theold harbour of Apollonia, but was dry land when thatharbour was sought by shipping. The reefs and islets,out at sea, over which the surf was now breaking sowildly, remain perhaps from the old foreshore. Furtherwestward we found tombs into whose doors the wavesflowed freely, and, had it been fairer weather, we mighthave espied others altogether submerged; for the calmsea on this coast is of such a wonderful clearness that whenour leadsman was dipping for an anchorage on the firstevening off Ras el-Tin, he could see a bottom of rockand sand, which, nevertheless, his plummet could notreach.
The daily life of the little garrison was good to watch.The old commander had turned farmer. With the water-conduitunder his control and thirty of the sturdiestknaves in the Levant at his orders, he was makingmore out of the red plain than any of the Cretanswhom he had come to guard. The full privates hoedhis garden: the corporal drove up his ewes at nightfall;and under the moon the old man himself would tuck hisbraided cuffs, tie half a dozen milky mothers head totail, and tug at their teats. The soldiers, peasant conscriptsborn to such a life, seemed only too happy to goback to it, and the field-work filled their time andthoughts, and kept them in the rude health of shepherds.
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