Icarus skywriting # 17

Phew

Man alive, what a time, last Monday Middlesex, Tuesday and Wednesday York, Saturday Norwich, Sunday Keele, Monday Winchester and tomorrow, Wimbledon in London, Friday, Saturday and Sunday Nottingham, I am a travelling man, yes I am, oh yes I am... So I am taking this opportunity to get my feet under my own desk, after a day of writing reports and filling in forms, what a place to be, with your knees under your own desk. And today I was thinking about rock and roll and writing a chorus:

She was a roller-coaster baby

loved the highs and lows alike
a roller-coaster baby
on a white knuckle ride
no time to slow down
running fast into the night
And I was wondering, can a man my age get away with singing something like that. Damn right he can but I also leant on Rilke today as I ventured into another elegie:

Here is the time for the sayable, here its homeland.Speak and bear witness. More than ever the Things that we might experience are vanishing, forwhat crowds them out and replaces them is an imageless act.

Sometimes when your favourite players and singers get together you get magic like this. I love these guys and this track:

Icarus skywriting # 16

Achilles

On a long train journey to York and back I did the most sensible thing - I read a book. Lovely, 352 pages of verbal jouissance and storytelling bliss. It was called, The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. In some ways I regret having read it because I wanted to keep it for a hot summer holiday, but once I had begun reading it I couldn't put it down. I even read it at breakfast in the Churchill Hotel, York (nice place to stay). But the narrative voice of Patroclus is quite superb, Briseis is wonderful and the portrayal of Icarus as the hero but a bit of a popinjay is wonderful. There is a nice take on the story, where Patroclus as the 'better man' has to die before Achilles can re-enter the fray and the battle. But apart from the evil Pyrrhus I felt the ending slipped into sentimentality. Of course we as readers crave that ending but Thetis changes character too easily for me and we don't really see her development. So that is my cultural event of the week, that and taking some pictures of the beautiful York St John campus - oh to work there, so beautiful and nice people too. And I ate the best steak dinner ever, there, ribeye, with salad and freshly made chips, washed down with a glass of Montelepuciano d'Abruzzo and a slightly sparkling water chaser. And on the way home I also listened to this as the train chugged along, listen to the guitar chug slowly in the background as the voices weave themselves around the song, it is an Achilles and Patroclus coupling:

Icarus skywriting # 15

Mandolin wind

I was sent this song and I just had to post it because its superb but also because I have been writing songs again and I am very much getting into the underlying currents in the wordplay. But also I am hoping that after the next 2 weeks of University stuff oop north I will get a free run at writing and even recording which I have started but have yet to really develop. But that's just a wistful sigh I deliver, from time to time. Its Sunday, and wet and raining and summer feels so far away. But oh, I was also sent another Icarus poem and there is some symmetry between that and this song, enjoy...

Muriel Rukeyser (1973)

He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry

I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing,
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying:  Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added: Women who love such are the worst of all

I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.