Icarus @ 59 # 352

Now the hard to see guy standing between the front legs of the giant reindeer is me. The silly season is just about upon us and now I am counting down the last days of this blog. How strange it all seems because even in this relatively quiet year I have been reflecting on how much my life thus far has stretched well beyond any dreams I had for it - well maybe I dreamed but I could never have expected it to have panned out quite the way it has. So the plans for the next half (oh yes, it may not be exactly half in years but it swill be in experience) are already taking shape and I am excited about them. New songs (have already started recording the Attic Tapes), new books (I am 40,000 words in) and I already have an invite to spend a week in Montana in April, how cool is that (actually it will be cool). But this morning I am in the kitchen with the early grey tea and its still pitch black, coal dark outside, Sunday started early (for a Sunday) and I have a study to tidy, I reckon there are around a hundred books stacked on the floor against the fireplace - where do they all come from because I am running out of places to build shelves (a very cathartic exercise, if I say so myself) and then what do I do with the five or six pictures awaiting framing and hanging, and then there's the limited edition Hockney prints, oh and then there's a 'box full of water' poems that cascade down from the shelf onto the desk, there must be a way of displaying them better. Sigh, I won't get the new shelves built today, nor will I get the pictures framed but I will have an idea which I want to keep here and which I can take to Winchester - ah, its what Sundays are made for. I have a very nostalgic attachment to this Tom Waits song, let me hang it on your screen, just for a breath:

Icarus @ 59 # 351

A little-known medieval poem written almost 800 years ago is called the Melrose Chronicle. It was written in the 13th century by worldly Cistercian monks (thanks Geoff)  and is an account of what happened around the signing of the Magna Carta - and the plot thickens on that particular event. The poem, written in Latin, is remarkably clear. It begins: 'A new state of things begun in England; such a strange affair as had never been heard; for the body wishes to rule the head, and the people desired to be masters over the king.' Ah, the them and us situation between the Scots and the English was apparent then and still is now. Of course, 'the body wishes to rule the head' points to republicanism and that too is fraught. I mean I am all for it, but look who it has potentially brought us in the past, Maggie, Tony, Boris, Ken... goodness wee Eck and Nigel on opposing sides of the border - I shudder. Mind you playing to type is the nature of history - and we shouldn't be surprised. While we are concerning ourselves with issues of state (and Chaucer's medieval poetry with courtly love, warring nights and dodgy church people) a new translation of comic French poems written in the same medieval period and known as the fabliaux has been translated into English published. They are comic, often anonymous tales written by jongleurs in northeast France between circa 1150 and 1400, and are generally characterized by sexual and scatological obscenity, and by a set of contrary attitudes—contrary to the church and to the nobility. So while the Melrose brings you a commentary on the Magna Carta and not the saucy French ideas offering cuckolded husbands, randy priests, lusty women—and a fondness for scatological humor - don't you just love those érotique française? It is Saturday morning and I am am off for a run. I have a copy of this and have had it for years, can't remember why I never posted - not so fond of the angelic voices in the background but the Brenda Fricker intervention is something else - and hearing Yates spoken by a woman gives this an altogether different meaning - enjoy, happy Saturday:

Icarus @ 59 # 350

I am feeling this colour this morning, 5am and its dark outside and I barely slept, and now with a long drive to Winchester looming I guess I best get rolling - hey ho, as we say, just get up and go, everything will fall into place. Thank goodness for Audible, the talking novel site. I like to listen to a novel while I drive and the day when they supply the book with the audio will be better for the coming long dark nights too. But something good happened this week. I resurrected another song. Having completed a song I wrote forty years ago (which I posted here) I remembered another chorus and tune and blimey it really works well. So this weekend I will complete it. I read recently Bob Dylan has been doing this for years, mashing old stuff into the new - I must be getting to that age, I guess because I am also doing that with a book I am writing, mixing and matching some old material with some new in a dual narrative piece - ooh, that sounds good, watch this space. But it is Friday morning and the loneliness of the long distance drive awaits - hoots, its Friday and the weekend cometh. This year I am thinking about Womad and wondering if this is the year I should go - and if you have the time, let this album roll, I often do when I am writing, I like the hypnotic roll of their playing - its Ali Farka Toure and Toumani Diabati:

Icarus @ 59 # 349

Carl Jung says the the finest symbol of manhood and his potent libido is the portrayal of him as either a devil or a hero, caught in his paradoxes and I guess he is essentially a bit of both in that context. Most of us are not hugely devilish or heroic but the madness that is called love and libido surely draws on those extremes, although most of the extremes are buffed away by cultural conventions and social acceptability - and of course the influence of the church, in this country certainly. And indeed that thought reminds me of a short Stevie Smith poem called Angel of Grace:

I was talking one day

To a lady gay

When my Guardian Angel

Plucked me away:

Where can she be

Oh where does she wander

The lady of whom

I grow fonder and fonder.

Ah well, I guess I could always just sit in the garden and play the banjo instead. November is nearly drawing to a close and with it the rest of this year looms. The realisation that you are actually hitting the last furlong doesn't linger, I confess, indeed I never think of it. I thought I would but I don't and that has to be good. Today I get to work at home - I have tons to do but oh yay, I will be in my own study, with my own desk and stuff and endless cups of citrus early grey - small pleasures on a grey day, while talking to a lady gay, just once in a very blue moon. 

Icarus @ 59 # 348

Young free and single and living in the most amazing flat I had bought in East Dulwich, South London. Well not so young, I am thirty here, half the age I am now, goodness but how time has flown since those days - and look at the dark hair. Nostalgia is never a good thing but the things that have happened in the last thirty years would have confounded this boy. There is no way he could have seen them all coming, but that's not to say he wasn't happy here, he was, very. Yesterday I strummed some songs and one of them I wrote on that sofa, with that guitar, way back then and that is what brought this memory back. Its a curious thing, memory; listening to our own thoughts can remind us that staying this happy all the time is a real challenge. In fact its a challenge I feel every single day of my life and I can't be alone in thinking that, surely? But of course we change and with it our efforts go into making others happy and that is just fine too - and this track is I dont want to change...

Icarus @ 59 # 347

The view from over here is a quiet one, a small voice speaking quietly from a long way off, and I am not sure anyone would listen to it, but I can't be the only one worried about the word democracy and what it really means. Yesterday, a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Police Officer Darren Wilson for the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager. The community response to Mike Brown's death, and the response that is likely still to come, surely marks a pivotal moment in the U.S. human rights movement and indeed in U.S. history. It's a moment of passion and of frustration, that is very clear but its more than that. It's an international issue and a moment in our time when the United States, who use the word democracy is a stick to beat their drum throughout the world, must stand up to ensure that each individual's human rights - including the right to freedom of speech and peaceful protest - are respected, protected and fulfilled. Anything else amounts to hypocrisy. Its not a clear cut situation, nothing ever is, but this is a human rights scandal, no question - maybe I should speak a little louder, just like before:

Icarus @ 59 # 346

The albino cat lying on the Mexican wedding blanket, on the reading chair, decided the weekend was too wet for cats, never mind human beings, so she yawned and went back to sleep - and who can blame her? Yesterday was a day of guddling, a day when spaces were tidied, paper was shuffled, notebooks were marked up and the week's list noted down (note to self, you are still playing catch up), marking was done (though I couldn't get through it all - sigh) and sadly the old Strat next to the chair lay unplayed - maybe next Sunday. But I was up, bright as a button this morning. Five forty-five, though I don't have to rush in, its just the time I awoke, feeling that was enough sleep and it was time to move on - isn't that a good start to a working week? One of the things I did do this weekend was appraise the pictures I have to get framed and maybe its a time for a shuffle around in this room. I had no idea there were so many or what I am supposed to do with them all - and then there are the Hockney's too - though I still haven't decided whether to buy this little man. I saw him on Thursday again. Its not the money its spending on myself at this time of the year when I should be buying for others and I am not sure anyone else will really appreciate him the way I do. Isn't that just the way it is with these things - ah well - happy Monday. Back in nineteen eighty-six I was an affirmed non opera lover until someone gave me a tape for my car and I heard this for the very first time (hard to believe it took so long really - sigh) I hope you are having one fine day (and I am having trouble clipping the music this morning - I will keep trying):

Icarus @ 59 # 345

And here is the third Hockney in the series, I really must get them printed out properly and frame them but looking over my shoulder, I have so many other things to frame and I am running out of wall space to hang them. But I marvel at how he can do this with his fingers on an iPad,  I really do. But back to Ekelof's Songs of Something Else, I am reading Sommarens önskningar or The Summer's wishes, 
The summer is fulfilled wishes, but not mine
Winter is the time for new dreams and wishes
Now I have a feeling I was just saying this the other day - but the winter, for me at least, is a time for writing and making while the winter sun barely lifts the gloom of the day, when 'Only then do the light and colours taste!' And this week I have a whole host of friends heading off to New Zealand for a conference I like to attend - but not this time, more is the pity, and they will be nestled in their summer that will stretch out like a long balmy evening. Instead I will make some breakfast and listen to this instead, and be content that I can - happy Sunday, I am not shut in a box, I love the orchestration on this - reminds me of The Godfather (and I love the music on that too):

Icarus @ 59 # 344

This is another of my Hockney's, quite fitting for a Saturday morning, especially one like today when rain is predicted all weekend. But no matter, at some time today I will read a new book I have been sent by an old friend. It's called Songs of Somewhere Else by Gunmar Ekelof and I already like the title. And I hope he will not mind if I quote a few lines. This is from Jag skriver till dig - great title isn't it, it means, I write to you - and this is how it goes:

I write to you from a distant land

It has no colour

It has no images to give you

It doesn't give a thought to think

It is a distant land

How did you get there?

How does that line work, 'How did you get there, and not, how did you get here... it goes on:

It is a distant land

There is no nearness

If you come there you will find

simply a distant land...

I was thinking that should read, 'If you go there you will find...' and perhaps its a mistaken translation from the  original Swedish, but then again not because in its entirety it makes perfect sense. Now if we understand this sense we will understand why it is right that football chairmen don't make anti-semitic comments, that shadow cabinet ministers dont embarrass all of us socialists with their patronising pictures of the working class. As a working class son of a coal miner and a school cleaner, I could easily have had Scottish flags draped from our council house windows, while a white van sat in the drive (which it often did when I was young). UKIP have shown their prejudices and rallying against them (as we surely should - I am with Dennis Skinner on this) is right and proper but it cannot come with such a blatant disregard and understanding of what actually constitutes multiculturalism. But Ekelof's lines say more than this to me, they say if we pick and chose at random, without reading the whole message we miss out on the meaning. This is what religious fundamentalists have being doing for years, Christians; Muslims; Jews and so on, the list of intolerance and misreading and misappropriaten in the name of religion is its biggest failure, and the question remains, 'How did you get there?'  Now I was sent a link to this the other day, and goodness is it good. Call me a heretic and I know we are not supposed to mention it, but I never liked that Band Aid song; this I like, please go into iTunes etc and buy it - you know it makes sense even for the old fishing story. Give the people fish and they will eat well tonight, teach them how to fish and they will eat forever, this is Africans helping other Africans.

Icarus @ 59 # 343

Autumn is begging winter to take over, the witches, wolves, vampires and ghouls of halloween are howling for attention as they start to fade into the holly and ivy, the mistletoe and baubles, the twinkling lights of Christmas and with it the promise of happiness that always remains temporal and no room at the inn, and we, all of us, get a chance to say whether we have been good or not, to stand on the cusp of both sides, to look at the "other" in our lives. Baudrillard says the other is never given to us by ourselves but exists only thanks to the fatal declamation of others - which means we are mostly encouraged by others to be "other". I like that thought. It means I have a reduced responsibility for myself and when my ghostly, ghoulish and half devil personality appears, while facing the season of good will, it is the fault of someone other than myself. Indeed, those who encourage me to be this other should question their own motivation! I am currently researching a new piece on "otherness" entitled Dangerous Graces, and what they might be. The Three Graces in Greek mythology are the goddesses of joy, charm, and beauty and at the moment I have three parts to the story which seem to make sense - but oh, time is such a problem for all of it. I was listening to Radio Four yesterday and there was a great interview with David Hockney who says he does little but work these days. He is too deaf to enjoy parties and socialising and so apart from working in his studio he totters down to the dentist and the cannabis store. And then as I listened to him speak, I remembered the time he gave me this picture (above), which I adore - yes he did give it to me, he posted it online for a limited period and said anyone who downloaded in the time allocated could have it - so I did just that. I think he painted it on an iPad using his fingers, it has such vibrant colour and texture but look at the vase, how does he do that? I think I will spend the Christmas break in my studio, working, only tottering down to the cannabis shop for respite and recreation. But double oh, Jimmy Ruffin died yesterday, now this is a song from my younger days, I was ten and this was a voice of real soul, and the key change into the chorus, wow, who did that stuff, 'happiness is just an illusion... what becomes of the broken hearted,' oh, I can barely type this listening to it, I did right to chose a blue picture for today's post...

Icarus @ 59 # 342

One of the things I have noticed more and more of in the past few years is the rise of the pawnbroker. I never thought I would see the day in this new and shiny twenty-first century. I will have an old, gold pocket watch which will be mine when my Dad finally decides to let me have it. It belonged to his Dad and while its probably not worth a huge amount its an heirloom. We did take a look at it last time I was up. It has all these marks inside the clasp, pawnbroker's marks from when money was really desperate, before there was a welfare state, before the Labour Party took the country out of the Second World War years, into the sixties and beyond. Now look at where we are; pay-day-loans shops and pawnbrokers,  where money lending is back on the agenda big time. What has provoked this? Well consumerism is part of it, and Christmas is a time when the pay-day-lenders are rubbing their hands, Scrooge-like. But its more than that, isn't it. Austerity isn't just a word, it has its victims, it has a price and those at the bottom of the food chain are worse off than the rest of us. So the government thinks a Mansion Tax is worse than a Bedroom Tax does it? Well you know why that is, they tax the poor and help the rich, its the Tory way and I despair that they are in government - and being supported by so called Liberals, surely just as bad. On another note, I have been getting the most curious spam style messages in my University email account, which say such random things - not the usual stuff offering me 'tax refunds,' 'sex aids and advice on getting women to adore me,' I already know that stuff, so I thought I might share one of them here: test message. Ohio University provides many options for transportation and parking for students and faculty members of the college. Vatican is intentionally spreading lies that HIV can pass through the membrane of the condom. Armenians, irrespective of age and gender, for the duration of 48 hours. Neither side kept its promises and the war broke out again in the autumn of 1015.

Pretty random huh? I guess there is an explanation but I rather like the randomness of it, its like an erasure poem or a Bowie song, random phrases cut and paste together. This is Damien Rice - yup, I could use some of this, '...come let me love you, and then... colour me in':

Icarus @ 59 # 341

Autumn on campus and the leaves have nearly gone, November has that feel to it, not yet the celebratory month yet still holding winter at bay. I guess its a bit like the Thursday of the week, the bulk of the year is over but the weekend isn't upon us yet. But I like the year like this, on the turn, neither Autumn nor winter but a time of questions and being unsure. It makes you think twice about decision and ideas and the things you will address when the dark days of winter demand you sit at your desk and make them happen - and I have plans evolving (which I am pleased to say). Yesterday I saw the most amazing musical instrument in action. Stevie and I had a wee strum in the music rehearsal rooms on campus and he unveiled the lap steel guitar he had been talking about. Very nice indeed, it was a teardrop shape and had a very distinct sound, nothing like my resonator dobro style (which also has a distinct sound and is for playing slide but in a different way). Stevie plays with a 'bar' and I with a 'bottleneck' - getting technical here - and we are very different players in that respect. I have a much bluesier style. Its good to hear new things, new runs, new grace notes ringing through. I was well taken with it, though I don't see myself buying one. Ben Harper plays one, remember when we sang songs like Ohio and thought we were going to change the world, there is a long narrative on there somewhere but surely we made some inroads - this is a homage to Neil Young, Ohio and the lap steel - hmm, I may just buy one one of these days, not in November though:

Icarus @ 59 # 340

Me and Dan talked about Barcelona last night and decided we should go back as soon as we get the chance. Not sure when it might be but January sounds about right although we are considering a Barcelona trip in Winchester, which would mean him coming down here for the evening, which would be good. I shouldn't really have gone to Barcelona the last time (when this picture was taken last January) because I had just fallen off a ladder and could hardly walk - goodness but was it that long ago? How this year has flown by. This morning I am at my desk in Winchester, the sun is shining and the day is unfolding quite nicely. I have a list of things to do and I will be here until about six or seven I guess, a long-ish day, just like yesterday when I got off campus around nine fifteen in the evening, but that's ok. All is ok, all is fine, the day is young, the air is clear, the sun is out, and its not raining in my heart, so all is fine.

Icarus @ 59 # 339

Its that time of year, Autumn is losing its grip and once the damp seeps in there is only one way to get this old Victorian house really warm and given the fact that we had the aged outlaws visiting all weekend this became a necessity. But that's ok, I have been making fires since my dad showed me how over fifty years ago - and being that he was a coal miner a coal fire was the measure of those days. And I was thinking at the weekend, we have come a long way since then, a long way indeed. Its Monday morning and Winchester beckons for another huge day with meetings beginning in the morning, then a six hour teaching stint that ends a Masters class at nine and it will be ten before I can eat. But it's ok, it it what it is, like many things in life, you adjust, make do, compromise. I have sisters and nieces working the night shift on the NHS, that must be a hard one and my Dad worked dayshift, backshift, nightshift on repeat all his life. As I type this its dark outside and quiet, I can hear the very faint rumble of the trains as they signal the start of the day - they don't run over night - and soon they will be criss-crossing the viaduct I posted the pother day, which will look like this right now. I love living in a city - its not for everyone but I like the buzz, the noise, the ache but now all I can here are seagulls which also reminds me that I live by the sea, which I also love. As a boy, making the fire in a small, overcrowded maisonette (there were eight of us) in a small village in Scotland from the fifties into the sixties, I used to imagine doing just that, but you never really imagine such a thing would come true. And now too, I work at a University in a Cathedral town, have written books, have had films broadcast on Christmas day, with the listings in the Radio Times, indeed I have done many things and have travelled all over the world - but in three weeks time I am going back to that small village to see my dad, who taught me to make a fire all those years ago. 

I have booked the flight and a car, and I can't wait to get there. Last time we had a chat about books - and he is a great reader, The Time Traveler's Daughter, which he thought a good short story told too wrong (and who was I to disagree). Happy Monday! Jessye Norman isn't everyone's cup of early grey at this time of day, but everyone should hear Four Last Songs of Strauss:

Icarus @ 59 # 338

An imposing sky facing the wheel end on as it stands like a huge stairway to heaven. An autumn Sunday morning down on the seafront with some pictures to cheer. Its a busy morning and a busy post and  still have a lunch to negotiate. I may write another this afternoon but the pictures tell a story in their own right. It was the Brighton 10k and Diane was running with her Brighton and Hove Ladies runners, but I thought this sky was an impressive backdrop to the promenade; and this track is for Rocky (aka Gordon):

Icarus at 59 # 337

 

Cathedrals are amazing achievements of industry and they are buildings I really love to see, but also in unusual lighting, at night for example. Cathedrals of industry are no less impressive, though. This series of pictures reveal such cathedrals of industry in a state of textual intervention. This is the viaduct I would travel over on the one stop to Brighton station from London Road Station (at the bottom of my road) if I were to get the train into town. It is also the bridge everyone drives under when they come down the A27 and onto the London Road into the town. In some ways these arches are a gateway to the city. I walked down past them on Thursday night on the way to the theatre but I didn't have my camera or phone to snap them (lesson to self always have one) so I took a walk down last night just to see them again. They are just amazing. Its not a hugely relaxing view, I mean it is the main route into Brighton and the top picture is a rare one because there rare no car lights heading towards me. Its easy to see what the textual intervention is though, they have been tampered with by attaching lights to the sides that change colour, lighting the bridge up in changing colour as up as they do so and they are quite spectacular to walk under. I love city art like this - its almost incidental and then one day you are walking (like I was last night) and the colour changes and you realise, I never knew they did that. Some of the observant might have noticed I jumped from Blog 306 to 327, well that's cos the less observant didn't realise I had made a mistake down the line and substituted a seven for a five which threw the whole thing out by twenty. Its up to speed now but I was beginning to think it was odd, I had sixty posts to go, yet only thirty days until sixty turns the corner. So for now in this re - ordered blog, I will let the pictures do the talking along with this tune (if you can bear it - I love it - and somehow I can here at as I stand by these arches, listen to the trains shunting along the top as the cars pour into Brighton. But whatever your thoughts, I hope you like the pictures of a nineteenth century viaduct in the twenty first century):

Icarus @ 59 # 336

Last night we attended a performance of the controversial Spring Awakening (1891), a play set in 19th Century Germany and based on an original play by Frank Wedekind, and adapted for a musical stage by Duncan Sheik and Steven Slater, at the Emporium in Brighton. The Emporium is an old church that has been converted into a performance space (with bar and restaurant), but like a lot of these things in Brighton its been done on the cheap, more like a pop-up performance space than anything else because there is no money available, just enthusiasm. Brighton is good like that, lots of get up and go performances with a huge shortage of plasterers and paintbrushesers. But none of this could take away from the performance itself. It was a Bird Studios presents production and while its all a very hand to mouth existence the production was superb. Great singing, acting and all round performing, and the sexually explicit scenes were well presented. We were invited by Kate Lavender whose son Curtis played the leading role to great acclaim, and I am so grateful because seeing such a cutting edge piece so close up, being performed so well was a rare treat. It is also a reminder that while the Arts Council and arts projects are always in the firing line when it comes to funding - especially from this government's political persuasion - good theatre will find its way through and onto the stage. A top event, well worth seeing and I am so glad I was there - ooh, smells like teen spirit.

Icarus @ 59 # 335

Philae was formerly an island in the River Nile and was the site of an ancient Egyptian temple. And I say was because the temple was dismantled and relocated to make way for the construction of the Aswan Dam. The Temple itself was dedicated to the goddess Isis, the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. These three characters dominate ancient Egyptian culture and their story is all about tragedy. The god Osiris is murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth. Isis searches for the fragments, collects them together and with her magic powers brings Osiris back to life. They then conceive the god Horus. Osiris becomes god of the under world and judge of the dead – who must answer to him for their deeds on Earth. Meanwhile Isis gives birth to Horus and protects the young god. Later when Horus is grown he avenges his father by defeating Seth in combat... are you keeping up? Of course like the Icarus myth the story becomes appropriated and misappropriated. But there is a story to it in the new Philae, you see pictured above. This Philae was indeed named after the island in the Nile, where an obelisk was also found and used alongside the Rosetta Stone to decipher Egyptian hieroglyphics. And then it makes sense, the Philae was launched from the spacecraft Rosetta in the pursuit of knowledge, in pursuit of the narrative of our very existence, the alphabet soup of our DNA - neat huh? It doesn't mean a huge amount set out like this but I so like the idea of knowledge and language and ideas still being connected to their antecedents and their roots. Knowledge is never primitive, it is always of the moment, always of its own time and all we do is add to it. We couldn't know what we know now, without that which came before. If you hear the intro it is a song about 'sirens' seducing in the 'Oh Brother Where Art Thou' movie...

Icarus @ 59 # 334

Been a while since I have seen this picture by the Belgian artist, Folon. And I was recalling yesterday where I first came across him, it was in Camden Market of all places, in nineteen eighty three, when I lived in London. Goodness but how time flies, and looking back I remember who I was with - I wonder how she is, since we have now lost touch. Isn't it funny how that happens, we were really good friends and never fell out or anything, we just drifted apart. She came to Brighton a couple of times and I traveled back up to London but I guess its been about twenty years. Goodness, again, how time flies indeed. But while recalling yesterdays is not a pre-occupation of mine (though some might disagree) I do find myself reflecting from time to time. In my own mind I miss Edinburgh though I am not sure I could live there, or if I did I would have to pick and choose where and it wouldn't be where I once did. But today I will be planning a wee trip up to see my dad, because its been a couple of months now and I don't like leaving it so long. What I do miss about Edinburgh is the art scene and the constant invites I receive from my friend Gordon to attend events which I can never get to. I hope to be able to rectify this in the future by planning my time better - while this semester has shown how it was impossible to work to a long term planner, things aren't always like this. So onwards, with one of my favourite all time tunes, which I was reminded about last night. I love seeing shambolic live shows and I would have loved this - as I do Gillian Welch:

Icarus @ 59 # 333

Winchester in the dark last night, cold and wintry and it had been a long day, but still all was calm and surprisingly quiet (is it surprising that a cathedral town is quiet on a Monday, I guess not) but still the bells tolled as they do. Dreich is the Winchester weather right now but I hope to drive home this evening, however late it may be. But right now I am sitting at my Winchester desk, contemplating coffee in a paper cup and listening to Bach as the day begins to unfold.. I will read some PhD material, organise meetings with the PhD people and then teach at 12 but before I do all of that I need to write to my Afghani doctor friend, who I met last week, to tell him I have sent him a book called the Oxford Guide to Plain English. He said he needs guidance on basic English and this should set him up - I hope so. But time I was rolling... I will blog a better one tomorrow (I hope). This is the Bach I am listening to right now - it seems to go with the cathedral:

Icarus @ 59 # 332

A humdinger of a storm last night. The first sign was a flash, I thought at first it was a firework but as soon as it forked across the sky the thunder clapped. It was right overhead and so loud the cats scurried under the sofas. And then on it raged for a couple of hours, cracking and crashing and growling and it made me realise, the noise was nothing compared to what must have been taken for normal during the wars we have just commemorated. And yet here is the paradox; I was inside looking out, safe and secure, warm by the fire I had put on earlier, strumming guitars and a mandolin and able to let it wash all over me. And later, while it still crashed on, I had a shower finished off with some sweet smelling avocado cream, climbed into clean sheets and read until sleep enveloped itself around me. How lucky am I? I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form, come in she said, I'll give you shelter from the storm...

Icarus @ 59 # 331

I took this image in Arezzo in Tuscany when I was there in the summer. But I came across it when I was thinking about something that happened twenty-five years ago today. I know this is Remembrance Sunday but one of the things we have to be grateful for is the freedom that was fought for in our names. Twenty-five years ago the Berlin Wall came down and, it might be said, the last brick built against European democracy came down with it. Of course that has not turned out to be the whole case but surely it was the start to something new, something better? The unbelievable optimism of that event was a major part of my life, no longer need the East Berliners climb trees to peer over at the west, knowing that an attempt to cross could mean certain death. But the crossing itself was symbolic and the difference between Communism (gone wrong) and Democracy (still not right), and even now Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union is saying the potential for a new Cold War is still with us - and with what is happening in the middle east we do rather have a propensity to shoot ourselves in the foot. But today is one of remembering and remembrance, lest we forget. This clip is of people mixing cultures, through the ages and getting on with it - I adore this track and often play it at my desk in Winchester before my evening teaching session - and I just remembered, it was also brought to a wider audience through the TV show, Queer as Folk - there are nowt as:

Icarus @ 59 # 330

Three hundred days of this blog, of this my sixtieth year, and last night was a full moon (I think - certainly a big moon, and Big Moon will mean more to my children than other readers). This picture is Winchester Cathedral on Wednesday night. I had been out to dinner with a visitor to the university and I snapped it on the way back to my car. There is something quite majestic about the old place and it has seen many stories unfold in its time. Me, I just liked the scene, the picture it presented, I was just sauntering by, not in any rush, not thinking about too much except the cold night air and the guy who stopped me and asked if he could buy a cigarette. 'I don't...' said I. 'Neither do I,' said he - a strange exchange on a cold night. Although something else occurred to me after I took the picture; I have carried this quotation around in different forms for a long time and I am not sure this is an accurate version of it but it goes is something like, 'Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, some have entertained angels without knowing...' 'I don't,' said I. 'Neither do I,' he said... I wonder if  I was hospitable enough, I wonder if he ever spoke to an angel, I wonder if he ever saw Icarus fly, I wonder if he saw the whole of the moon:

Icarus @ 59 # 329

And here is the cyclamen, isn't it great? I love these little pockets of colour that spring up around the University campus. Here it is nestled in beside the fallen leaves and there are clumps all over the place. It has been a long week with visiting poets and visiting examiners and suchlike but that's ok. But last night I finally managed to get a fire on and picked up my favourite guitar to just sit and strum through some tunes. One of the tunes Dan and I can play together (him on bass) is Stand By Me, which I love to sing along to and having him playing bass along with me is great - and safer than me trying to play football still. I am going to have to admit to defeat on that, it just takes too long to recover from a wee knock - I sigh at the thought, I was in A&E yesterday as part of the knock on. But having mentioned Stand By Me it would be a shame not to include it here - and I guess to say thanks to all who do - and who knows maybe one day Dan will film us playing it so I can blog it. I know Ben E. did it best but me and Davie Jack were fans of the Rock and Roll album, back in the day, and this is on it and if I close my eyes I can here the Scottish burr of us singing it back then - maybe next time I get up to Edinburgh (which should be soon) - but for now its 5 in the morning and I have a drive back to Winchester to negotiate:

Icarus @ 59 # 328

I may have to post the cyclamen picture separately, its on my phone and I can't load it onto my laptop because, duh, I forgot the lead. I guess there is a way but hey, I had to get help to take my iPod off single song repeat today so getting cloud stuff sorted is a whole new gig. And also its a wee bit disappointing because as well as  the cyclamen picture, I have a picture of me with tubes in my arm and a picture of Winchester Cathedral in the dark and an email from an Afghan doctor (connected to the tube in my arm) who needs help with his English (don't we all - and I have promised to help him), curious connections huh? Well it was a long day and as I have said before, I live a busy life. Last night, as Wednesday flipped into Thursday I was playing this guitar (pictured) and some memories flooded back. In 1968 I was thirteen going on fourteen. I had been playing guitar for a couple of years and looking for songs and ideas and I heard this (below) on the John Peel show, Oh! Its so easy to forget how wonderful it was hearing it for the very first time and then hearing it now. Not for everyone, the Spanish guitar weaving through, and the flute which was derigour those days, but it is for me, 'beside you... you breathe in you breathe out...' - and I am thinking that these two lines are the opening to some thing bigger, a bigger piece, perhaps:

But it is for me

beside you

Icarus @ 59 # 327

Oh to be here today, faraway from the maddening crowds; faraway from the piles of paper; faraway from the mindless and the thoughtless and the downright obnoxious; let the day begin again and anew. The one saving grace this morning was the site of cyclamin pushing its way through autumn leaves as though it was spring. I took a picture which I can post tomorrow, but tomorrow will do, this has not been a cyclamin day, no way, Jose - and to add to it all, my iPod is stuck on repeat - its playing this song - an omen, perhaps...

Icarus @ 59 # 326

I love this time of year, the cold beginning to break trhough, the wind picking, the big seas and the sheer drama of it - and it got me thinking of this:

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea,

But sad mortality o'ersways their power,

How with this rage shall beauty hold plea... 

No prizes for guessing which Shakespearean sonnet that is but as I was writing an old friend of a tune slipped onto my airways and so I am going to post it here - I am in Winchester, teaching this afternoon and then later hosting Tami Haaland, the Poet Laureate of Montana but this music sets things off nicely - I could listen while watching the sea and maybe drinking coffee:

Icarus @ 59 # 325

The bookshop in the market which I visited at the weekend. Look how cosy and inviting it looks, though its just a concrete lock up. Diane and Nicola ran the New York marathon in winds of 75mph yesterday, freezing cold and had to wait 4 hours to start - oh I don't envy that. But they now have the sense of achievement, now that its finished and I guess that's part of the deal. Well done to both, we tracked them on the NYC Marathon app - isn't new technology great? And the App sits alongside the books on our cultural shelves. I like looking for poetry that I have read but don't possess and occasionally they have some good things - but they don't stay on the shelves long. And so now the working week has begun, yesterday I did indeed see a flock of murmuring starlings, unfortunately they were a distance off and I had to be somewhere else - but I will stay on the lookout. Happy Monday!

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Now the artist called this the 'ordinary angel' but actually, to my eye, that was a mis-naming because the boy Icarus is hardly going to reveal himself, is he? I mean, he is supposed to have perished in the sea - and yet here he is defying that story by his rapscallion of a father. And actually the 'ordinary angel' idea is lost on me too, because if I had an angel in my presence wouldn't I want him to be extraordinary? I haven't decided to buy this piece yet, but perhaps I will but angel or Icarus is a good question. Søren Kierkegaard wrote, 'What if everything in the world were a misunderstanding, what if laughter were really tears?' And of course the reverse works too, what if tears were really laughter. There is no certainty, not really, matters of opinion and perception are absolutely fine and that is absolutely fine for a Sunday morning. I found myself having an extra few minutes in bed to listen to this, this morning. Not sure its morning music but it is pretty fine mandolins and guitars:

Icarus @ 59 # 323

Oh dear, with the OMO packet in the window I find I have become a cliche. After a chat with a fantastic poet in Winchester yesterday, I drove home around eight, grabbed a supermarket curry and two (yup two) bottles (of AF and GF beer) and watched the tennis on TV, followed by Have I Got News For You; QI and Later with Jools. Then I dumped the dishes in the sink (to be washed this morning) had a shower and read in bed until 1 in the morning (Richard Ford's Independence) then, this morning had my first early grey in bed with The Guardian and the radio on. Oh my goodness... it could have been so different because last night being halloween I filled a bowl full of sweets, laid out the long black cloak, fangs and fake blood capsules and cued the scary music but no child rang the doorbell... hah, got you interested now, huh! Well who knows, their yummy mummies and daddies might have taken pity on me, taken me with them as the scary vampire to weadle treats even out of the hands of Scrooge (oops - mixing my metaphors). Happy November, I will not be growing a moustache (although Dan is for charity). Now what did I do with my clothes... this Sunday I might cycle down to the sea, to see a murmuring of starlings over the ghost of the West Pier...