LAND OF THE RISING FUN:

Double Breakfasted to jump through the sky-hole, Tokyo on my mind.
Bag full of brushes & Jackson Pollock strides, paint-trashed
superstars & boxes of red & white tape. Last time we flew from
Heathrow my brain was in backwards, didn’t even know my name.
Today with eyeballs facing forward, we climb the sky, to land,
stewed by aircon & altitude radiation & stagger through
the streets of Shibuya, making art & jabbering with a hi-speed
bullet train mouth.

(K)

MOTHERS DAY:

Never let me down, not once, always delivered no matter how
ludicrous my demands nor how impossible the time-scale.
I’d go to bed, leaving her with some unsolvable problem to
fix or create a fantasy I ‘had to wear’ the next day that
she knew would break my heart if it wasn’t delivered on time.
Most parents would’ve refused, or laughed, but she just couldn’t
let me down, it wasn’t in her to let anyone down. The thing is,
I’d realised at an early age that ‘nothing’ was impossible for her.
This is what is was like growing up with superwoman for a mom.
A master craftswoman who had the gift to transform tired
cloth into works of art. Garments brought to her for repair
by people who often had only a few pounds spare for food
were processed through hour’s of sleepless toil. Unable to
rest until they had been transformed by a meticulous love &
skill that would’ve made Saville Row tailors tip their hats.
Astonished owners would barely recognise their precious
old clothes, as they had become better than new, fit for a catwalk,
a banquette, a boardroom. Her customers worked factory floors or
wined-&-dined with billionaires. Some were born local, others
migrated to our town in search of work, bringing with them the
exotic aromas of home. Whatever the size of the purse or the
colour of their skin she treated everyone the same.
As a tot all of this was just normal, but as an image conscious
teenager, to have a Grande Wizard in the family who could make
you look sharp, cool & individual when there wasn’t enough money
to do any of those things was like playing in the Conference league
but having Pelé in your team.

(K)

A STONE FISH CRYING TEARS OF PAINT:

Shaking for reasons unknown, information attacks in random waves.
Late international phone calls interrogate what remains at the
end of days. Words tumbling from a loose mouth, fractured images
collide, recalled between muffled ears.
Get in the car, drive, keep driving, focus on nothing, the road,
soothed in the underscore of radio 3. A single piano beautifully
recorded, clear as a single bell, a light in the dark needs nothing,
offers everything. Sonically rearranged slipped into the first
parking space of the day it starts snowing.

Listening to Motorpsycho ‘Here Be Monsters’

(K)

MAKING LISTS FOR A HOLE IN THE SKY:

Street trawling, scraping words from cracks to daub on the walls
of a room in a Tokyo tower. Nothing is dirt, everything is singing.

Listening to Mathew Bourne ‘Moogmemory’

(K)

THE SUN-N-STUFF-N-EVERYTHING:

Weirdly, one more good start, could grow to like it.
Driving, radio surfing, sun clings to naked sticks,
thick & gold. Last day of rehearsal before Tokyo,
don’t forget to pack a paintbrush.

May go see Mathew Bourne perform live at London BFI this saturday

(K)

THE MANAGEMENT BEGS FORGIVENESS:

A day of laughter, jammin’ & the aroma of fresh buttered toast.
A day so good I forgot everything else (including this diary entry),
felt like surfing the perfect wave.

(K)

BEAUTIFUL MORNING:

Kiteman is sleeping, artgirl is sleeping, a denim radio
built by elves in the night. A night of continuous dreams
wakes to eyeballs rolled in sawdust. The kitchen is silent,
peaceful, table holds a bowl of steaming porridge up to
the sky. Sky of dirty milk comes down to the ground, damp,
chilled. Windows flecked in condensed mist. Driving to
see you, rendezvous 08:30. The road strokes the rubber late,
usually in the corner of a cafe, in the sanctuary of paper
& pen by now, but this morning I’m driving to see you.
Everything else is insignificant.

Listening to ‘Hibernation’ by SPASHGIRL

(K)

GARDEN GATE:

The whole crew were gathered today, well… ‘some’ at least
of the whole. In-house family, some we’ve worked with since
’83. Assembling details, the tweaks. Studio buzzing in last
week run-up to Tokyo. Next Berlin, gateway to the world.

(K)

THE SUNDAY THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN:

Well…it sort’ve did, but…

(K)

SWEET NUT CRACK:

Shared a room with the strugglers, the sufferers, the loners,
the doin’-it’-their-own-way-ers, the clean-off-their-headers,
the carrying-the-messagers, the keeping-it-in-the-dayers,
the ones that work it & the ones that don’t. Listening to
lethal half-truths & watered down translations of directions
that work if they’re worked & wont if they’re not. Glad I’m
not still searching for loop-holes.

Listening to ‘She Sleeps, She Sleeps’ by Fire!

(K)