Drunken Angels & Indoor Fireworks

something old, nothing new

This is a post about the blues, like the picture aside shows, Palace Pier Blues is so upward in my heid, but sometimes your fave pop stars make you humble by being better and more relevant than you can be - sigh, I should have stuck to writing songs - but these two, top drawer and singing together. Get over the ads an enjoy - and no I did not chose the ad, nor have succumbed to this treatment (I lost the number):

Icarus flying home # 12

I know this makes us look as though we are off to the North Pole (or the South) but actually Dan and I are off to watch Brighton and Hove Albion play football at the Withdean Stadium. Sigh, I used to have to lift Dan up onto the seat when we looked like scoring because he couldn't see over the crowd. Now he is 3 inchest taller than me and will be 16 next week - hoo, where does the time go. But he is untouched by ageing, he is still as lovely, kind and caring as ever - and still my boy. And we still like the football, although he will be playing in the men's team next season - another sign of ageing, sigh. We both love this version and we played it in the car until the tape got lost:

Icarus flying home # 11

why look so miserable

I am not this miserable so I have no idea why I look it - I guess some of us have a face for comedy; others for radio and some just to be laughed at - oh well. The beard is not new because its only five days old - I know but I am a twice a day man (if I shave). But hey I have been working hard and well, every face needs a rest from shaving, smiling and kissing (after all, who would kiss that). But you know I am not convinced my left eye recovered shape after I smacked into a door. Ah well, never mind, I have another eye. I have no plans to post a new tune yet but I am thinking of doing so in the future because I have written some new songs, one today even, and well I though if I stick up here my kids would come across them at some time in their life and that would be good when they are 70 if this blogging business keeps going.Which is really why I keep this going as a kind of living diary. It is so immediate and ongoing and permanent, I hope (if anything can be) so that if I were to pop me clogs tomorrow someone out there would say, hey did you read your dad's blog and then... I was thinking back to being a guitar player in the Scotland days and I met a Welsh guy, older than me, by the name of Pete Ham and he wrote this great song, then this guy called Harry who I never met recorded it, but shit could he sing (see below) But Pete taught me how to use a slide on a guitar and one day i will post 'day - after - day', but not today because this is surely Pete's best song:

Icarus waits for the hour to change

Icarus flying home # 10

Oh...

tennis bums...

And like I have said before, sometimes you just have to blog. This is a song from the newest album i just bought and, hmm, love this track . LW is such a great singer of poetry, and with her parentage it seems clear why. Her father is a superb poet, but if she were a tennis player people would wonder how! I am too too tired to explain but hey - what the hell, I am writing this, with my tennis picture above, which was me being 'tennis dad' returning serves and doing my best. Actually, in my own head I got quite good but that was then. I was so much older then, I am younger than that now. And you know what, I think I might get that good again. If I keep playing I could be a good (enough for me) vet (no, that has nothing to do with dogs n cats). But look at that grip and that walk, i have all the moves, you should see me doing Elvis, I can do that too. But its in the news today and not a lot of people know this but the picture on the right is the front version of the bum on the left! Well it was confession time, how could you tell otherwise? Its nice to sow doubt, of course... but Lucinda William's dad's name is Miller and he is a poet too, just like her. My Daughter's name is Abbi and she plays tennis - me, I pretend, just like the poem says better than I can, right now:

Love Poem With Toast, By Miller Williams

Some of what we do, we do
to make things happen,
the alarm to wake us up, the coffee to perc,
the car to start.
The rest of what we do, we do
trying to keep something from doing something,
the skin from aging, the hoe from rusting,
the truth from getting out.

With yes and no like the poles of a battery
powering our passage through the days,
we move, as we call it, forward,
wanting to be wanted,
wanting not to lose the rain forest,
wanting the water to boil,
wanting not to have cancer,
wanting to be home by dark,
wanting not to run out of gas,

as each of us wants the other
watching at the end,
as both want not to leave the other alone,
as wanting to love beyond this meat and bone,
we gaze across breakfast and pretend.

Icarus flying home # 9

I was sent this picture today and I was asked which would I choose, Inner Hope or Outer Hope? Oh such choices! But then I noticed the Hope and Anchor is also on offer and that seems like a tempting place to mull over the implications of the question. In the meantime, perhaps  little Rumi will help to wax the wings of thought:

My head is bursting with the joy of the unknown. My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell, taking wings, flies about the world.
All seek separately the many faces of my love.

I have posted this song before but its an old favourite and I have no idea what she is singing I just like the cross-cultural feel of it, it helps me to think my inner outer and my outer inner:

Icarus flying home # 8

Spring

Spring is upon us today, sunshine and flowers and birds have decreed it, so it must be true. I have been writing the Bogeyman for what seems like forever now but I am pleased to say it is taking shape and Part I is in first draft. Yay - because I must confess there are times when I think, shit, I can't do this! it's too hard, there are too many words and ochone - the pain of not knowing which one's to choose. But I have chosen some, around 30,000 for now, which is a goodly number. And today I have been writing about our old friend Icarus which is always fun - he has so much to say that boy, even if Ovid never let him (and oh, that is such a good thought I can use - hmmm. thinking out loud or talking to others is good for the soul and the writing - note to self: get out more!). Here is Ben Harper with an Icarus song sent from afar, "...you may not want to see me, on your way down, from the clouds..."

Icarus flying home # 7

Banjo with red jumper

I have been thinking the world's woes and how much better we would all be if everyone played the banjo. Yes it can be played in a mournful way and yes you can play the blues on it. But ultimately it is such a happy sound and if I sit in the garden and pick away you might just hear it echo through the ether and the fug of forgetfulness - forgetfulness that the human condition really is a wonderful thing and it needs to be celebrated more than it is berated. In a tiny book by Claude Lévi-Strauss (Myth and Meaning) he writes:

You have sound, the sound has a meaning, and no meaning can exist without a sound to express it. Music, it is the sound element which takes over, and in the myth it is the meaning element.

I am not sure I agree entirely because in my head there is something inherently musical in words that appear on a page. But hey, this is only a blog - though Sappho mentions sight and sound at the end of 'In Adoration':

And cold drops fall; and tremblings frail
Seize every limb; and grassy pale
I grow; and then--together fail
Both sight and sound.

Ok - I know I have posted this before but up you get for a wee bit Foggy Mountain Breakdown:

Icarus flying home # 6

Surprised

There is some kiss we want with

our whole lives, the touch of

spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At

night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language-door and

open the love window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.

Sometimes you have no choice but to post images and poems that sneak up and bite you on the bum - like this poem from Rumi with a picture from Schiele - life in art and art in life is so good. And so music too is required:

Icarus flying home # 5 (again)

Blue Jumper - still

Although this piece of music below might be the Japanese equivalent of wallpaper music (for all I know) as a westerner I am happy to let it go because I like it and because it is allowing me to, 'stand back, stand back, take a pat on the back' for having completed 50 pages of my book. I am onto the next 50 but not before I post the Basho haiku sent to me - how true it is for too many:
Along this road
Goes no one;
This autumn evening.

Icarus flying home # 5

Blue Jumper

I am wearing this jumperas I write  today, and I indeed look just like this; hair slightly longer than usual; eyes a wee bit baggy, brow furrowed but that's because I am writing the Bogeyman book and it has a lot of words and sentences that are, well, baggy! For example, "The child is not. Any more than the adult. It is an incomplete phrase (certainly not a sentence) made to make us think by supporting its hypothesis in the silences that exist in the meaning, hitherto unsaid, unwritten and inarticulate because it is aimed at imagining its articulation." What a load of baloney that might turn out to be - but since its surrounded by thousands of other words it might slip through. Though it is completely first draft and with all of these things, writing comes first and thinking in the edit, to think again and re-appraise, says he, hopefully. It has been an odd week for music because I have been so entrenched in writing and reading and more writing that it seems to have passed me by. So I thought I would dig out an old favourite because I am in the mood for it, partly because I don't understand it but it somehow I have an empathy with it. Also it has that hopeful melancholy (an kind of oxymoron I know) which I would send out to Japan. And while this is probably less authentic than it sounds, its hard not to be sad while hopeful at the same time.

Icarus flying home # 4

Ramadan Moon

Spring looms but its still cold and that is partly because the skies are clear. Last night while I was driving east I was watched over by the slenderest of moons, sitting low and as a fragile as a baby's cradle in a blanket of stars. It was just a sliver, even thinner than in this picture which is often called a Ramadan moon, where it is said, on the first day of Ramadan the moon can only be seen at dusk, very low in the sky for a maximum of five minutes. Now that is a coincidence because today is Shrove Tuesday and Lent begins tomorrow - well blow me down. And I have already made my Lent vow but I am not telling because its like a new year's resolution, the anticipation is in the breaking. So what this blog needs is a sign which confirms my will power in winning the battle I have set myself. Of course this will not be an epiphany moment, nor will it be a religious experience in preparation for Easter - it will be a simple good health resolution in self-denial, goodness, does that sound righteous? You don't know what you got 'til its gone - hey farmer, farmer, put away the DDT now... wish me luck...

Icarus alsmost asleep

I am almost sleep on my feet, I am so tired but this was sent to me and I had to post it because next to Peggy Seeger (for whom it was written by Ewan McCall) its just the bees knees...

Icarus flying home # 3

When I posted the Nina Simone track last time I loved the wee chat she gave at the start, when she said you can't do everything and, quoting, "... you use up everything you've got trying to give everybody what they want." Isn't great! But I thought, hmm, there is something I can give, being a generous soul that I am - so ladies, here it is, parking for girls! Next week it will be advice on the offside rule in football as I turn this blog into a public information site full of knowledge, wisdom, acumen, intellect, dialectic imagination, erudition and all that jazz. 

Icarus flying home # 2

I have a friend who likes Peugeot cars. Its an odd fetish, I guess, but when this picture also came round on the screensaver (where all my pictures end up) I was thinking about when we stood watching this as a porcupeugeot - a hybrid of animal and engineering. And I was thinking about Lee Skoresby, the aeronaut in His Dark Materials because what happens, all too often, with cinematography, is the images presented are all so nostalgic and old fashioned - and I often think, how would a 21st century Icarus look. I would like to think Scoresby eschewed the traditional, Lee Van Cleef, plus fours and tweed jacket idea of ballooning because, this, to me, looks like a great balloon to fly in. Unfortunately, though, cinematography relies on so much nostalgia (which is a visit to a place that never existed). This picture is actually part of the Sydney Bienalle exhibition and I have been feeling a little nostalgic about it because Sydney and Cockatoo Island and all of that was such a dream for this boy from a coal miner's cottage (cute description) who delivered papers and milk at the age of 13 and has been working ever since, and yet managed to travel right across the world - gawd, 43 years - and yet unsullied by any of it (well, maybe a wee bit) but hey, I am feeling quite good for someone who never flew (in an aeroplane) until he was 23... I am in a wistful mood, the dental drugs are kicking in and i am listening to Sandy Denny, who I posted before, but maybe I will post another version of the same song, why not, after all, who knows where the time goes - the great thing about Youtube is the way it catches people of camera - give this a go from start to finish, where does time go, what does it do... jeez, Nina Simone, wow, turn this up and wallow in her voice, its like swimming in chocolate...

Icarus flying home # 1

I have been thinking about semantic, syntactic and pedantic grammatical nuances and this picture makes me smile. Firstly, is there any "game" meat - I can just see an old kangaroo rolling over and saying, 'hey, fancy a bit o' bush, fella?' While an emu, says, 'no, eat me, eat me...' If this is some kind of indication that I am going a wee bit mad, well you are not wrong. The solitude of writing does that to a person, especially when he is writing stuff he has to rather than wants to. I took this picture in Canberra and as I was writing it flashed up on my screensaver so I just had to share it. The shop was next door to the hotel I was staying in - what were those Australians trying to tell me, huh? but what is hard to believe is that I was in Canberra in 2009! seems such an age ago. Where does time fly to when it flies, Icarus like out of the window? I have no idea - the recording of this song is a wee bit ropey but its Sandy Denny at her very, very best, its like she is sitting in the corner, who knows where the time goes: