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By TNV, January 17, 2011

Sleeping States is the recording and touring name of Markland Starkie, and various friends and collaborators. Markland previously contributed a piece of writing to this website. But the text of The Next Village stayed with him, and a song of that name appeared on his subsequent album, In The Gardens Of The North. Below is a film of Markland performing the song solo as part of the Bandstand Busking series.

This website has not really taken off in the way I’d hoped. Perhaps people were intimidated by the notion of saying something back to Kafka. Perhaps The Next Village is not something that stimulates a lot of people. In any case, most of the people asked to contribute to the site have not done so. And it hasn’t gathered any momentum in terms of unsolicited contributions – there have been very few.

But many have contributed. And I’m happy that this website contains some remarkable pieces of writing, and film, and music and photography. It stands as a small but I think moving testament to the power of the little piece of prose that inspired it.

I am no longer soliciting pieces for the website, and in truth I haven’t been doing so in some time. If contributions come to me in the future I will of course post them. And this website will remain on-line and accessible.

Many thanks to all the contributors, and to all the website’s visitors. Enjoy the music.

P.S. Sleeping States are currently on a short tour of the eastern US. Go and see.

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By TNV, July 6, 2009

As we grow older we take in and process less and less information from the world around us. Of course. Which, say, is why it seemed to take such a crushingly long time until my next birthday when I was at primary school, yet these days it feels less and less exciting and more and more embarrassing to throw a party each year when the last one has really only just happened. Again. With this in mind, a friend recently told me that while, physically speaking, the average person reaches the mid-point in their life somewhere in their late thirties (terminal illness and accidents notwithstanding), in terms of what we actually perceive during our lifetime one’s mid-way point occurs around twenty. Here are twenty memories from the first half of my life:

Top-loading washer
Kidnap
One cat
Edgehill
Choir
Three cats
Piano scales
Summer biking
Sonic the Hedgehog
Florida
Four cats
Badminton in gardens
Kissing in a tent
Stratford Music Centre
Lunches at Safeways
Spun
Head-spinning whiteys
Videos with Pete
Norwich
Three cats

_____

Markland Starkie is an occasional musician, mostly under the name Sleeping States. A new Sleeping States album, In The Gardens Of The North, will be released on August 17th 2009. Markland currently lives in Bristol.