# 47

Its the August bank holiday and I would like to say I am going to party it away doing holiday stuff. Alas not, there is work to be done but not before I sit at the back door in the sun and play a blues tune or two. I have come to that stage in my life where I am thinking, maybe I should write something different, behave like a grown up and get invited to readings and literary festivals. But there is something about writing a song that just buzzes. I have been doing some research for a book on songwriting and I came across something on Tom Waits. He said he had learned that after years of struggling with the creative process, some songs require that you sneak up like stalking a rare bird; some arrive fully formed, like a dream taken through a straw; some are like bits of chewing gum you scrape off the bottom of a chair and wad into a new form and some have to be bullied and cajoled and given lots of tough love. I know what he means. Not too different from poetry you might say, except that you are trying to roll all of this around the music too. The lines that sneaked up on me this week are, 'the lights collide with the fairground ride...' which is a reasonable August bank holiday in Brighton, dancing on the pier, rhyme and it just came whizzing out of nowhere as I strummed some appropriate chords - lucky I was playing a guitar at the time, I guess, or I might have missed them dropping by. Its an old anecdote but Tom Waits tells about the day he finally took control of his creative anxiety. While driving down a crowded freeway in Los Angeles, he heard a melody in this head. No pen, no paper, no tape recorder, no way to capture this new brilliant thing, not yet a song just an idea paying a visit, he said, 'Excuse me. Can you not see that I’m driving? If you’re serious about wanting to exist then remember I spend eight hours a day in the studio. You’re welcome to come and visit me when I’m sitting at my piano. Otherwise, leave me alone and go bother Leonard Cohen.' Maybe that's how it is, I get the scraps Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Randy Newman, Leonard Cohen, Steve Earle, Lucinda Jackson, Tom Waits et al miss while they are doing other things. As Nick Cave said, 'Well, as anyone who actually writes knows, if you sit down and are prepared, then the ideas come. There's a lot of different ways people explain that, but, you know, I find that if I sit down and I prepare myself, generally things get done.' And there it is, just a commitment to write. I have three piles of paper on the floor of my study awaiting my attention - watch this space - in the meantime, a song at the back door before breakfast methinks. As I was boiling the kettle for the early grey tea earlier, I heard this piece of music on the radio and it took me back to the time I first heard it. I had just moved to London from Edinburgh and the world was already a different place. For some reason, it always reminds me of walking home, across Waterloo Bridge at Midnight; no words necessary:

# 46

The most wonderful part of this summer has been having these two around. Their noise; their clutter in the kitchen; their stomping around at three in the morning, looking for digestive biscuits; having to sit on the floor because they and the B and G friends take up the sofas; and I have never cooked so much food in my life, but it is all worth it just to have them here. Being around them is such a joy. And they make their own way, Abbi has worked all summer coaching tennis to kids and training for a marathon, making friends as she goes; Dan has volunteered at the Scope shop, the Hospital and the Whoopsadaisy charity (https://www.justgiving.com/whoopsadaisy and still has time to be teased by the lads at Southwick Rangers FC who call him Rosey. Abbi has gone back to Okie and Dan flies out to Peru tomorrow (to work for the charity he raised £3000 for in his first year at Uni) before going straight back to Portsmouth. Disasters like the one at Shoreham Airport this weekend are a reminder of how fragile life can be and that we can't keep them safe forever (and I have spent thousands of hours on that road in the past twenty years - traveling to Winchester and back, past that very spot). All we can do is help them on with their wings and hope they fly safe. This is still our favourite car dancing song:

# 45 - Crete

Feathers,

wax,

binding string,

check;

the countdown

to flying;

soon we

will be 

gone,

flying over

olive groves,

vineyards,

music,
Vamos,

flying

the middle way,

for a new day 
in the north,

'patátes, ntomátes, rodákina,  pepónia, angoúri,'

winged words, caught in thought's tangled kite strings...

# 44 - Crete

Just as one thing passes another comes along. Today is our last day in Crete (for this year, I suspect we might come back next) and as I contemplated this, I received an email informing me that two prose poems I have written in the past month will be included in an anthology being assembled by the International Poetry Studies Institute (IPSI). I raise a morning glass of ice cold water, infused with lemon slices to say thanks (great way to start a day, by the way). And as I sipped the water I was thinking back to the week and what has been the highlight, well there is still today and who knows what it will bring, but this portrait of the Black Madonna has been a standout. The chapel isn't easily accessed  (its a 6km walk) and when you do get there you have to let yourself in and close the door behind you when you leave, so you know its not the Sistine Chapel. But that says all the more about art, religion and accessibility, with the pomposity stripped away. I am going to miss this house, the gentle hum of the early morning crickets, which turns into a racket of industrial proportions once they get going - and I can set that off by playing my guitar, I can never work out whether they are joining in or protesting; the smell of jasmine on the breeze; the early morning sung prayers from the nearby church; the clucking chickens and daily cock crow; the stillness... and now this has to be one of the great songs and performances of the twenty-first century, you are not alone from the wonderful Mavis Staples - open up this is a raid...

# 43 - Crete

The tiny black speck at the top of this mountain is Dan waving. He is in training for a trip to Peru next - a student who has his priorities in life sorted, huh!. Though to be fair he is going on the trip after raising £3k for charity last semester. But it doesn't take long for your children to take you back to your own youth. This summer break (and the only joined us for a week - first time ever) he and Abbi have been chatting about next year, when both are going Inter-Railing (separately) through Europe and they and their partners (Lewey Louis and Katie Logie-Beard) intend meeting up in Prague. Now I remember Inter-Railing, getting on at Calais and waking up in Marseilles, getting on in Marseilles and waking up in Venice, via Bologna (where there had been a bomb in the station). Life repeats, I envy him Peru though and South America is on my list - beginning with Cuba (lest we forget its not yet absorbed into the USA). And yesterday I wrote another 

new song, just as the sun was going down. Sitting at the table with coffee and a guitar and its working out well enough. And so during the evening down time in August you will find me in the Brighton attic. The days will be too busy though, with a chapter to write, an article to write, a book to edit, 2 PhDs to viva, a book proposal to write, a funding application to get right and an application for funding to re-submit, the kitchen and bathroom to paint - isn't it great we academics have long holidays (to compile a list)? But right now, its a coffee sitting outside at this table, laptop open just as pictured, while I write this, the house is still asleep and I will be slipping into the pool for my underwater lengths (improves the breathing - and as we all know, the secret of life is to keep breathing). Its bliss here, and do you know, I can't remember what day it is - how good is that. There was a blue moon this week - this is a blue moon song, I guess I could work this tune out before I swim - just once, in a very blue moon (ps - book of the holiday - and there have been some rejects drop-kicked into the sea - well the charity box - Ali Smith, How to be Both):

# 42 - Crete

The call of 'patátes, ntomátes, rodákina,  pepónia, angoúri,' 'potatoes, tomatoes, peaches, melons, cucumber,' in a rough Cretian Greek, from the man-in-a-van doing his morning round, has a musicality in its right, and wine that is syphoned from the barrel and sold in (our) re-cycled water bottles and the White Mountain water already bottled, feta cheese that comes in brick thick blocks and olives also in barrels (additional herbs, thyme, basil, fennel, grow wild by the side of the road), means you can live very frugally and very well in Crete. Just turn up with a notebook, a pencil and a smile (no pants required, it was a waste of time packing mine - Americans and Australians might read that differently from others, ah well, there is no ambiguity, neither kind needed). Yesterday was another walk in paradise and nothing much more needs to be said except, patátes, ntomátes, rodákina,  pepónia, angoúri...'

# 41 - ii - Crete

Old olive

An avenue of olive trees

Home sweet home - at the beginning of Jekyll and Hyde

there is a 'distressed door'....

Olive country

Not sure what this is - its a stone basin we stumbled

across

Inside the Church of the Black Madonna

Olives

Pear drops

# 41 - Crete

The walk Dan organised to the Church of the Black Madonna started with a healthy breakfast, water with slices of lemon, coffee, fruit and yoghurt (with honey for me) and bread for the non GFs. From there the pictures can tell the story, I snapped randomly as we walked... and you could listen to this while you look, if you like:

Turn left

Old olive tree

Crete is famous for its wild flowers 

Seen better days 

The Black Madonna

The Black Madonna and Jesus 

Fennel on the way back

# 40 - Crete

Last night, Mt Ida, the white mountain, stood in the reflected glory of the blue moon, a smudge red, night sky lingered but only the white mountain survived the shepherd's delight;  the accordion player in Taverna Tzitzifes played a love lament that dated from before the Nazi occupation, before that the Ottoman and before that...; we raised a thimbleful of Tsikoudia (not the Raki the Turks left behind) and knocked back the spirits as Sunday beckoned. The thought of timeless struggle and love lingering, survived the night, and the call to prayer, and the Orthodox liturgy, peeling out of the Byzantine church, opened our eyes and ears to a new day.

# 39 - in Crete

As a species we have this thing about leaving traces, even in the simplest of ways. I have often been asked - especially in University circles from the parents of prospective students - about the point of 'art'. Since I work in a Faculty of Arts, my answer over the years has been consistent, 'work is what we do, art is who we are'. These small pebble works on a beach in Georgioupoli, Crete, are temporal and unlikely to survive the night (I will check them again today) but I like the child-like simplicity in the creating and the narrative they come to represent for the makers and us who stumble upon them, even for a short time. John Keats captures it perfectly:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
its loveliness increases; it will never
pass into nothingness; but still will keep
a bower quiet for us, and a sleep
full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
The day is full of promise, the apea ptoroenta, the winged words, arriving as light and airy, on the back of last night's full moonlight, will only lie if you let them. I have always liked this version of Bob Dylan's song, Boots of Spanish Leather.