Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon tea break with our Afternoon Tea curators.
Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by BEN SURES.
Ahead of his upcoming 2022 LP, The Story That Lived Here, Edmontonian songwriter Ben Sures is sharing “Boring People,” a piece of acute folk introspection that wrestles with the zeitgeist.
“I was trying to be honest, asking myself real questions. So much of what we tell ourselves and others is just to navigate society, to get along, to function, to not be outcast, and so much of it can be at the expense of our own truth, our emotional and mental health,” says Sures.
Connection is at the heart of this song, Sures speaking plainly about the honest realities of human nature. Recorded live in the studio, his acoustic guitar is complemented by upbright bass and violin.
BEN SURES
Music: “Old Friends” by Guy Clark
“In my twenties I practically wore out my cassette of Guy Clark’s album Old Friends. So today for your afternoon tea I am curating Old Friends by Guy Clark from the album of the same name. During this period I remember looking at the back of the cassette and saying to myself if I could work with any producer it would be with the person that produced this album. His name is Miles Wilkinson and I feel like I wished it and willed it because years later I got to work with Miles on a number of my projects. Not my latest though ha ha, Richard Moody and David Travers-Smith made the sonic magic happen, still it was inspired by the album Miles produced all those years ago.
Visual: Sturdy Stone Centre Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Mosaic Sculpture by my father Jack Sures. A mural in Saskatoon that he spent over a year building and installing on the Sturdy Stone Centre in the mid 1970s. From the pictures it’s hard to tell but it’s well over 20,000 pounds of clay. If you really think about it, in addition to being a great sculpture, it’s also deceptively simple in appearance but a complicated bit of math, construction and creativity. It is a good piece to look at and meditate upon, because it is mathematical you can experience a sort of zen contemplative experience.
There are a lot of different street angles from which to view the piece, but I feel like the best would be on the top of the building across the street, seated at a table on the roof drinking my favourite Queen Anne Tea from Fortnum and Mason.
Tea: Fortnum and Mason Queen Anne Tea
“Until I started touring the UK, I could only get this tea once a year at Christmas from Holt Renfrew in downtown Edmonton. I know what you are thinking but this cheap ass is not paying that much to ship a box of tea, besides I liked being made to wait. One epic cupful with a hint of milk.”
Tea + Me 