Icarus @ 59 # 140

And so a second final in three days, this time we have to travel to darkest Worthing where strangers live. It was to be Dan's last game for Southwick before he goes to Australia and then on to University. Fantastic night, 5-1 (and they were a very good team) but Southwick just wanted to enjoy themselves, so they did. And so at the end of the game Dan and I were snapped in the dressing room with the biggest trophy I have ever seen far less handled. A good night was had. But what a great time to spend with Dan, he had a fantastic game. I have had thirteen years of coaching him its been such a buzz and this capped it off. We listened to this on the way to the match - I belong to you, you belong to me in my sweet heart.

Icarus @ 59 # 139

We all get that feeling every now and then, when ideas are not shared, or appreciated or even understood. It can be frustrating but also amazingly time consuming. To see book ideas come to nothing but froth is very frustrating because others don't share the vision you have for it and then you see others land on shelves and you think, well how did that happen. I guess that's the slings and arrows of thinking and writing. Hey ho and off we go to the next time but sometimes you just want to hide away to recover the energy already spent - because the wind is high it blows my mind.

Icarus @ 59 # 138

The worlds a different place at five in the morning. Peaceful and quiet with just some early traces of birdsong but it doesn't take long for the seagulls to begin the racket that takes them through the day and well into the night. They simply have no respect for anything but themselves, noisy blighters. I slept badly last night, something to do with dodgy breathing and knowing I was getting up to drive to work to give a paper on creative writing and doctoral research and I suspect no one will come to it. Its out annual research week so it will be good to catch up with some colleagues outside my own department. In the meantime I will listen to this on the drive in, to set myself up for the day. I remember this from the film, Truly, Madly, Deeply which I enjoyed at the time, poor Anthony Minghella (Dir), we shared a love of The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. 

Icarus @ 59 # 137

A quiet start to a Sunday, with early grey tea and the back door open. I will mark dissertations in the morning, gather groceries and once the garden dries out I will sit and strum this guitar in the fresh air. Yesterday's football win has already past. The boys (men actually - Dan being one of the youngest in the team) were all delighted and it was good to be part of the event, getting them organised, and making the changes when necessary. Its a simple life really, full of little events, and indeed full to the brim but simple. Of course that doesn't mean the heart has stopped beating, I can still read Emily Dickinson:

WILD nights! Wild nights!

Were I with thee,

Wild nights should be

Our luxury!  

Futile the winds

To a heart in port,

—Done with the compass,

Done with the chart.  

Rowing in Eden!

Ah! the sea!

Might I but moor

To-night in thee!

Where did you go on that big black night? Did you take the coast road back through your life?

Icarus @ 59 # 136

This picture is me and Dan, sitting on the floor, watching his first world cup. Football has been a big part of our lives since he was about six years old (playing not watching - he likes to chose his games but me I would watch three kids with a tin can) and football has taken us between Brighton and Barcelona (he loves both teams). He is now nineteen and today we (the team Southwick Rangers) have a cup final. He is in the squad and I am the coach for the game (the manager  - and artist, Paul Fullylove - being in the USA at the moment). We are a wee bit tense, nervous even, so I will keep this brief and report the score later - away the boys. C'mon Lou, we wanna play football for the coach:

Icarus @ 59 # 135

At 5am this morning I was wide awake, lying listening to the rain and instead of cursing the jet lag I was quietly pleased to be awake to hear it. It was such a gentle, soothing sound, familiar and yet new for a new day, simple pleasures. Last night before I went to bed I caught a copy of this picture. Isn't it stunning? Not being able to see things as much as we would like only heightens the anticipation and I hope to see these again soon. Yesterday I read a wonderful quote on art by a Guardian critic, "The making of art happens not in a temple but in the mess of real flesh-and-blood lives and loves." What he was essentially saying was that art is not there to be worshiped but appreciated, blood, sweat, tears and all as part of the human condition. These Kelpies are awesome concepts but they are also a testimony to Scottish industry and represent much more than the view they have created. Kelpies were working horses along the Scottish canals, and those canals represented industry, steel and coal and engineering and a pre-Thatcher world when Scotland made things in an industrial age. My own father worked as a miner and the world was a different place then. The place I grew up in now  hosts the Scottish Mining Museum instead of the pits the men worked in. Of course, it 's easy to be nostalgic, my Dad doesn't miss it, the noise, the grime, the back breaking work but the closures had a huge impact on the community - and still does. Sometimes we have to view art in the temples dedicated to display, like the Tate or the Metropolitan and spending time in the Metropolitan (for example) tends to mean a whizz around because its such a rare opportunity to even get to New York. I am trying to address this problem for myself by taking things in in small measures and I hope to be able to see the Byrne exhibition in Edinburgh soon. But its a conscious battle against the rigours of life and we have to remember the life that helped produce it. And that is what I was thinking as I sipped early grey tea and composed this morning's ten minute post - and the moon is a blind eye:

Icarus @ 59 # 134

Jet lag feels like a long walk along a long pier, you keep hoping it will end but it doesn't until you manage to sleep again and then get your body clock adjusted. But I find a good book helps. I thought my book of the year, so far, would have been Donna Tarrt's The Goldfinch, though it does have some very obvious flaws and isn't quite the classic it has been trumped as. Although the echo story works well, for me it got a little preposterous at the end and ultimately closed a little like she got tired of writing it. But that just might be me. Luckily, I followed reading it with A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. Rarely have I come across a novel so complete, a real story from start to finish. I really love the way it deals with the issue of Japanese/American culture on such a personal level. And the combination of Nao's narrative with Ruth, the writer, is truly inspired. A really wholesome, thoughtful novel, full of insight and humanity. My novel of the year, so far and by far. Oh, and it was nice to see the 'crow' motif appear because its a part of my Scottish culture. I was so pleased to see  it is not ours alone. The book begins and ends with an echo:

I wonder about you.

You wonder about me.

Who are you and what are you doing?

Me, I am walking along a long pier and going nowhere very slowly, listening to Paul Buchanan singing very quietly:

Icarus @ 59 # 133

Well the airline finally decided to issue us with boarding cards and I was no longer feeling blue. Clutching the cards we waited in line like the good people we are. And it was a strange queue to be in. On one hand there was a Jewish party flying 'home' to Tel Aviv via Heathrow and on the other a Christian group going on a 'pilgrimage' the same route. They were all eyeing each other up warily - I stayed out of it. Then we got to the gate and oh oh - sorry Mr Melrose, could you return to the desk there has been a change. Oh lordy, not again. Now we had heard mutterings that the flight was full but we had the boarding cards. And it was complicated, we had been transferred from UA to AA who partner BA. AA said, hmm, BA might not let us board. Getting the BA boarding cards seemed to have dispelled our original fears. So, rolling up my sleeves I approached the desk. 'Oh yes,' they said, 'we are giving you an upgrade....' Shocked silence followed my having been bowled over by a feather... but upgrade they did and safe arrival in Heathrow ensued - sigh. I like to read on planes and I will write about the best book I have read this year in the next post - and I have read a couple of crackers so it was a tight call but there can only be one tune for today:

Icarus @ 59 # 132

Well the planned flight back from Oklahoma via Chicago failed. Oklahoma cancelled, mad dash by taxi to Tulsa should have made the connection, but Tulsa flight grounded, sigh, was man ever supposed to fly even close to the sun. Its a good job I had the foresight to organise so I have marking with me and at least I can get some work done. Have pencil will travel. But hey ho - an unexpected stop over day in Chicago (if we ever get there) means I might get a chance to visit the art gallery again and that will be a treat. Though I am dressed to travel and we don't exactly have Chicago clothes - because guess what, yup, the bags are in the system, probably on their way to Albuquerque or somewhere equally exotic. And now I am all out of sync with this blog because I don't know if this is Tuesday's post (its Monday night here) or am I typing ahead for Wednesday... by the time I get to the uK it will goodness-knows-time - oh yay! I remember this song, from a long time ago - "we can change the world..." it was just an idea some of us had (I was 15 then but I still have those ideals)!

Icarus @ 59 # 131

Head in the clouds

So today we fly back to the UK, and we have been in so many places I am beginning to feel like a character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. Oklahoma I could take or leave, except today I helped in an Easter egg hunt in a huge house (probably the biggest private house I have ever been in). Truth is it costs about the same as my UK house but prices there aren't real - it even sat at the side of a private lake and had a gateman because the estate is private). But hey ho, they aint got what we got (to paraphrase the song)! But wasn't it F. Scott Fitzgerald who said you should cut out exclamation marks from writing - because it means you are laughing at your own jokes?!? TFH! It has been great being in the company of Abbi and her great friends - pictured here with her wee Papa, with whom she shares a birthday (give or take a couple of hours). But she will be back with us of a few weeks in the summer - and we might car dance to this track. We used to listen to Capercaillie on the road to tennis matches in the UK. I know I have posted this tune before but I am in the mood for it right now at 7 in an Oklahoma morning sipping coffee in a hotel lobby waiting to take Abbi to her first class:

Icarus @ 59 # 130

c'mon

And yesterday we saw a nail-biting local derby, Oklahoma versus Oklahoma State , it was tense and exciting and they don't call it Bedlam for nothing. After 4 hours of doubles and singles, all Abbi needed to do was win her match to secure the tie 4-3 - ochone! It was tense, she dropped the first set 3-6, then won the next 6-1 and then at 6-6 in the third she won the third set tiebreak 7-4. Phew! As all the other girls ran onto court to celebrate she stood stunned like a rabbit in the headlights of an oncoming super truck. Three hours on a singles court (and two litres of water - for me) and many a squeaky moment but so great to see (I can say that now that my heart rate is back to a steady sitting 60 per minute). And  now Oklahoma have finished their highest ever in the national rankings. I am extremely pleased for her - that and getting straight As in her Uni work, the girl done good. And just to reconfirm for Rocky (Councillor Gordon Munro - Leith Ward) we also car danced to this on Route 66:

Icarus @ 59 # 129

The USA is a strange place, on one hand there is the cultured cities like New York and San Francisco, even San Fracisco airport has some fine art exhibits in it, then there are places like Oklahoma which feel like a backwater and a cultural desert. Not that there won't be pockets in-between too - and I have been to lots, from Oregon to North Carolina - but living in a car culture, driving from one restaurant to a campus, to a tennis court, to a hotel it seems like the car has robbed the place of any idea of a cultural centre and I guess I miss that. And yesterday I drove on Route 66 but it was a big so what. Living in cities is like living in a village within a larger conurbation - London is very much like that, I lived around Dulwich for years. New York is like that, so too Chicago and San Francisco and parts of LA but Oklahoma feels like a drive from here to there, with sprawling roads and malls and the like lining the streets. I wonder how a wee chapel like Matisse's would have faired over here. But not to worry, I am here to see by baby girl and yesterday we listened to this on Route 66:

icarus @ 59 # 128

Buddha in the park

It is said that in Japan, some words have kotodama, which are spirits that live inside a word and give it special power. Kotodama a conjunctive word in its own right, koto means 'speech' and tama means 'spirit' or 'soul' and I like the idea of this - especially for poets but it works for all kinds of writing. We all have a little talisman of some kind, like juxtapose, or serendipity, or incidentally, or incognito (which is a favourite of mine). Its all just mumbled musing of course but there is a magic to some words just as there are to some actions and our sense of what is and is not. Well that's how it all feels at the moment - sans coffee. This picture of Buddha, which i took in San Francisco, has a light flaw in it - probably the sun catching the lens, but its like a ghost of a bubble floating in front of the held up right hand and for that reason it changes the meaning and symbolism of the picture a little (well for me anyway). Its like the captured essence of a kotadama floating by - just once, in a very blue moon.

Icarus @ 59 # 127

I am very open minded and adventurous (even if I says so myself) but yesterday as I was checking the mini bar in my hotel I came across THE INTIMACY LOVEKIT, goodness. First time I have ever seen such a thing in a mini bar fridge. For $20 you can get Vibrating Couples Rings - one use - last 17-25 minutes (ok); Add Magic Lubricant (ah huh); Don't Stop Massage Oil (yup) and 2 x Safe is Sexy Condoms (yay) all very San Francisco. Now imagine going to a conference and the Faculty Manager going through the hotel bill to take off the wine and M&Ms and coming across that expense - hey Jill Barnes, one day I will try to squeeze that one through, that is a promise! But look what happens when you put a load of Fender Stratocasters into the hands of players - they play, sheer indulgence:

Icarus @ 59 # 126 # 2

'Nice shot Dad, thank's Dan...'

This is the short film Dan put together advertising his Just Giving Page: 
http://www.justgiving.com/Dan-Melrose 
He is running a Heroes and Villains 10k in Brighton and raising money for Pass it On Africa, which is a very worthy cause - just saying. The music track is Departure From Normal which consists of Dan's mates - and if you are reading this Bam Fullylove, take care of that Strat of mine, its only 53 years old:

Icarus @ 59 # 126 San Francisco Revisited

Golden Gate Park

Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park

Statue of Buddha in Golden Gate Park

Japanese Garden in Golden Gate Park 

Golden Gate Bridge

Golden Gate Bridge

View from the bridge

Chinatown 1

China Town juxtaposed with the Financial Sector

Chinatown 2

Icarus @ 59 # 125

Strolling out of the hotel, Villa Florence, this is the view and a stroll sideways hits Chinatown, downwards hits the Bay and I could get to like this town of San Francisco. The hotel is an old art deco place, with matching furniture in the rooms - such a change from sterile MDF furniture; and downstairs the Italian restaurant is superb, where I ate the best sea food risotto (scallops and prawns) I have ever tasted - and of course sea food and San Francisco go hand in hand. Chinatown is the strangest place, even stranger than in New York. There is food everywhere, markets selling all kinds of stuff from coconut to huge bags of dried mushrooms and tons of noodles. And watching all the old Chinese guys fishing off the pier and keeping the catch says a great deal. It is a real eye opener of a city - thus far. Although how they can make tourism and money out of everything is very American. Alcatraz has become Disneyfied and the Pier opposite sells loads of faux America - including Bubba Gump Shrimp. But all the same lots of the city feels authentic and it deserves a San Francisco band - what a joker, I really love your peaches, wanna shake your tree:

Icarus @ 59 # 124

Only in Disney can you snap these pictures side by side. Its a Don Quixote tilting at windmills moment. In New York I love the Metropole Museum with all its huge bequests, not one Monet but loads, not one Picasso but tons... you get the picture. But there is something about the art of Disney which is quite extraordinary. Its easy to dismiss it as popular cultural frippery (and a huge cash cow too - with the most disgusting food) but there is something oddly Americana about the whole place - and in truth, snobbish as we are, the food in the Metropole is disgusting and money speaks a similar language, just with a different accent. High art and popular culture are too easy to dismiss as ideas with a simple compare.  And I have been listening to Lucinda Williams in the car - oh yay for sanity: 

Icarus @ 59 # 123

Just a small post to keep up the one a day as I run from the frippery of Disney (pictures later) to the naturalness of flowers and warm sunshine - oh and this great track about love and writing books:

Icarus @ 59 # 122

San Diego and a room with a view over the Pacific. A low lying cloud made a big effort to swallow the sun and just about succeeded; not quite but impressive light. And I write this after watching a trio of dolphins lolloping through the waives in front of the window. Only the second time I have ever seen that - and the other time was off the Florida coast. Like a lot of the USA San Diego is a city of paradoxes, the rich and the poor rub shoulders quite easily - but there is a lot of rich around the coastline. Culturally its hard to determine, very hispanic in places. 

Here is a picture of the band so bring on the dancing girls. These 'tin' figurines are about 3 feet high and I would really love to import them for the bottom of my garden, they are superb. The girls are real though and so I won't be importing them, after all why would they want to dance so far away from home. Oh, but as I write I heard some news, rest in piece Jessie Winchester:
 

Icarus @ 59 # 121

Tall trees and tacos seem to be the call of the day. And Danny thinks he has found his true vocation with this solar powered taco van which carries his name. I must confess I have always had a soft spot for Mexican food, even the tex-mex we get in California and a taco from a van has charm as far as fast food goes. I haven't gone all the way and succumbed to the marguerites yet but there is still time, oh and the sweet, sickly smell of marijuana is much in abundance on the promenade - not that I care much for that. But that is beginning to say more about a holiday as we slow down, wind down and slip into an easy stroll - no point in pretending (amen).

More Malibu Pier Postcards

The Ghost of Malibu Pier

Malibu Pier

The Hire Car

On Location on Malibu Beach

Malibu Pier

A flypast

Icarus @ 59 # 120

Its an odd thing really, but I love roller-coasters, really love them, the speed the tumbles, all of it. What Santa Monica reminds me of though is how much quicker the world is than it once was. There was a time when this roller-coaster on the pier would have been reckless and a weekend highlight. But to us seasoned riders its tame and scarcely worth a mention except that the much younger me would have found it the most exciting thing in the world - such was they way I viewed our annual visit from the travelling fair back in Newtongrange, right up until I was about sixteen, when I graduated into being a full-time working man instead of a part-timer boy. Excitement changes though, new places, new sights, new sounds; having spent my youth wishing I was in America - the music, the movies, the sunshine and everything that went with that view from a coal mining village south of Edinburgh - it is all a bit of an illusion. Don't get me wrong, Santa Monica is great and we move south tomorrow to San Diego, but there is a rose-tinted veneer. I overheard a conversation in a restaurant I have heard in many guises before (and seen exploited) 'We had Mel Brookes in the other day. Seems he comes here all the time. I wanted to say, "well you're a producer and I am an actress..."' Fifteen years ago I watched a couple of Producer colleagues (colleagues not friends) tell another wait-actress in Century City that we (yes me included) were in town because we were in the movie industry. Every waiter and waitress in the restaurant dropped by our table with a Hollywood smile (whiter than white). It made me sad then and now too, I guess. It was true, we were making a film, but those guys were just making fun and it wasn't pleasant by any stretch of the imagination. What goes around comes around, I suppose - and I could tell a tale about that but I won't. Though I did see something Californian today, they were making a movie just off Malibu Pier and on Malibu beach - I didn't pause except to take a picture of them making a picture - seemed just about right. Maybe I will post that tomorrow. For now I am going back to a fairground in the 1960s, when I first heard this as I spun on the waltzer with...

Icarus @ 59 # 119

And now I coming to you live from the Coffee Bean and Tea leaf at 7 in the morning in the morning via City Wi Fi which is unsecured free and. And I still feel that time warp idea that America is still a little backward, I mean the cafe is playing the soundtrack of my old life, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan have all been on in quick succession, oh and here come the Mamas and the

Papas, 'the darkest hour is just before dawn...'. Yesterday, Santa Monica morning started great, fresh coffee and then the farmers market on 3rd Street, for fresh strawberries which tasted nothing like the bland supermarket ones we get in the UK. The we walked up the coast to Venice Beach. This is a picture of that famous area, just up from Santa Monica and goodness what a dump it is now compared to the last time I saw it - then again, maybe its always been this tacky and I just never noticed as I bought my cheap t-shirts (this time I relented). Its been a long time since I have been in California. I started by making The Storykeepers films and ended as 'visiting professor' at the University of Southern California,  down in Anaheim, Orange CountySouthern LA and that was a load of fun. What I especially remember (apart from writing my first academic book in the library there) was the Mexican wedding I was invited to. I met Jorge on the bus to the university, where he was studying to be an accountant. He said he was surprised to sit beside me on the way home one night (it was about 9.30pm and I had been in the library all day), because I was the only non-hispanic person on the bus. I hadn't thought about it and actually I thought that was an urban myth. Anyway as coincidence would have it, Jorge and I lived around the same pool (in a small housing complex, where he worked as the caretaker)  and so  after dropping in for some provisions and beer on the way home (Trapper Joes, I think, do they still have those) we bumped into each other a lot, drank beer, ate tacos and generally hung out. And then one day he said, 'what are you doing on Sunday?' Turns out it was his wedding party around the pool, I didn't even know he was engaged to be married, and that was that, what a riot... and they danced to this tune,  below, which was the first time I had heard it. Every time I hear it I think about the hot, dry Californian climate and the sweet smell of jasmine and eucalyptus (which is especially prevalent just as the sun begins to rise). And its now 7.30 because the free Wi Fi took an age to load the pictures but that just allowed me to pencil some new words to the new song I am writing called Finding the American Dream - I have the tune on mandolin and everything sorted so let's see how it goes...

Icarus @ 59 # 118

After Brighton pier we have Santa Monica pier. Strangely enough Santa Monica is one of the places in the USA that could pass the European test. Some the 1940-50's style hotels could be Rottingdean, just up the coast. I will keep these USA posts to a minimum since I always seem to be running. And I am not even sure what the time of day is - over here its 8 in the morning and the UK will be well into the afternoon and Australia, goodness knows - do let me know how today went, I could probably go back to bed if its going to pan out bad since you have already lived it (weird to think about). I heard this on the pier as the carousel turned - yay:

Icarus @ 59 # 117

And today we fly out to Abbi in the USA, oh yay, its going to be great to be able to see her - even if she has turned over to the cowboy side. Well not really, although her musical tastes are closer to mine and the country side of life. I will be taking my mandolin to the USA with me, mostly because its the easiest to carry in my bag. I have a travel guitar but these days airlines have all kinds of rationing on space so I will leave it at home - pity though. Here is a pic of the mandolin, and I really do think its something special. One of the things about strumming on a different instrument is hearing the grace notes that inform new tunes and songs, and I hope to finish a couple this coming week. But you pick out different tunes because you see different shapes and hear different notes and things fall into different patterns. Struggling with words is the thing though, because I am so particular (though some of my poet friends might disagree). I remember seeing this band and it was a great kick ass time and as raw as country got (in those days) and Abbi loves this Bob Dylan song:

Icarus @ 59 # 116

Yesterday I had the pleasure of seeing Brighton from different angles, actually one angle, walking along the boardwalk because the marathon was taking up the seafront road. It was a fantastic event but it allows you too see parts of the world anew. And I had never seen the West Pier look like a Stonehenge before. And if I had my way I wouldn't worry about it crumbling but I would try to get some of Anthony Gormley's work to supplement it as a monument. I will post them here just for the view. But I am leaving Brighton behind tomorrow (for all you burglars out there) Off to California and new climes to enjoy, and I might listen to this as a wee treat at the same time. I don't feel one-hundred percent fit enough to travel but what the hell, who is ever one-hundred percent at my age: