NOMAD FEET:

Dylan’s been in my head since 5:00am singing ‘Ring Them Bells’
on a loop. I don’t mean the studio version, I’m taking about
the one on the Bootleg series with the fluffs & mumblings.
I like that one best, been listening to it every train, plane
& bus ride I been on. Been craving a pedal steel player to jam,
hang out, throw stuff around with for years & for that this version
just kills me.
The pedal steel is a  seamstress’ needle, threading everything
together. A healing hand, the sound of the surf, the harmonic
overtones of long wave broadcasts. Now the black’s turned grey,
the night turns back, leaving the sun with it’s face pressed up
against the glass behind another milk sky & I’ve exhausted all
the versions I can find, cooking up another train ride.

(K)

SHAKING OFF THE DARK STUFF:

Back from Manchester, Essex pulls the sky-milk over it’s head
like a duvet diver.
I was liberated walking the streets up North. The muscles flexed,
the legs strode with purpose. Blood pumped, eyes looked, colours &
sounds flowing in like the most basic food to the undernourished.
The energy & rhythm of a city buzzing with hope-filled youth is a
beautiful thing. I realise now how starved I’ve been.
Back here last night in the Essex I love, the night was damp &
clinging. The carriage lights of the train cast a lonely light.
Passengers dressed in black sat alone hunched in corners, avoiding
eye contact with me like they know what’s coming, but don’t have the
love to say. I flinched, stepping out into what used to be the first
sweet hit of clean country air. That green aroma used to lift me.
Now I resume the defensive position, remembering wait’s out there.
Tense-up, what direction will the first blow come from? In 24 hours
I’d shaken off this heavy overcoat. Now I find it waiting for me,
like road-kill hanging in a tree, pockets filled with self pity.
A scarecrow mantle, a state of mind. 18 years leaving that one
behind. But now I remember, I’m thinking ahead again, not living in
the here & now, so starting with the basics, counting my fingers
again & ‘Thank you for this’ & Thank you for that’, looking
out at the fields lay under their milk duvet & starting to recall
how used to feel every time I saw them.
Still in love with Essex.

(K)

NORTH:

Blue man points at picture of frost on TV grinning. Manchester 08:45. The view out the window is pure Eastern Block, desolate between the backs of blind bricks. Loud rock at the breakfast buffet & I’m on the road again, walking streets up North in love & porridge.

(K)

ALL THE BITS ARE WORKING:

Talking long into the night & early hours, the fall-out of
another heating one – shell-shocked. Good news feeds the soul,
get a little sprinkled on the day. The radio & papers obsess on
spreading bad news, prodding festering wounds to make sure there’s
enough hurt to go around. Things may not be the way I’d like,
people say & do stuff that makes me flinch. I’m no two fisted
geezer, it’s not black & white to me. Maybe I’m too soft,
too forgiving. I never was one for a punch up, developed 360 vision,
early warning systems, saw it coming & ready leave before it all
kicked off & dragged me in. If the radio & papers could get a hold
of what going on here they’d have plenty to infect the nation with,
but as I wake to greet a new dawn, watch the sky turn from bruised
to blue I’m moving on from yesterday & building on the good news.

(K)

THE RADIO SAYS:

“Drawings of teeth”
which though it made no sense I chuckled.
“Drawings of teeth”
The word ‘teeth’ has cropped up in my prose for years & mostly
hasn’t found it’s place in our tracks. Which is down to
a difference of opinion & taste – the taste of teeth.
I get it, don’t get me wrong, I really do. Teeth isn’t everyone’s
idea of a song lyric, so I’m cool with it not appearing in our
recordings as often as it might. Songwriting differs from making
artworks in that artworks can explore the same idea again & again,
taking it on a journey, even seemingly repeating. With a song the
tendency is to want something different said with every one.
“You said that on the last one” or “You use that word a lot” are
things I often hear & this is largely down to my roots as an artist
being at the core of me as a lyricist – which really I’m not.
I collect stuff & words happen to be some of the ‘stuff’ I collect.
So I’m drawn back to certain things repeatedly. Not my fault,
it’s just the way I’m built. I believe lyrics could be more like
sculptures, objects collected to fill the draws of Fluxus boxes.
A tooth wrapped in tissue as a keepsake.

(K)

SUN SHINES ON ESSEX:

The bins are in the sun, the body is in the menders, the head is
on a stick, the fingers dance on the keys. Sun shines on Essex.

(K)

REST?:

No, body took the decision to check out. Up sniffing in the night
playing Boggle to get tired. A cold that was waiting in the wings
came in for a little action on my bones. Sometimes it’s good to
get ill, lye on the sofa watching bad films, sometimes I’m keen
to take a guilt free break, but I’m not feeling either.
Heading to bed early to shake this off.

(K)

ELECTRIC EYE:

Pulling art off the walls & trainers out of boxes.
Photographing with Perou at the shed of dreams.

(K)

WHAT YOU LOOKIN’ AT:

Avoiding Down-Time I cycle off between the fields in search of
‘Up-Time’, nodding to the weekend Lycra. Rose hips excite the eyes,
dangling from coils of nodding barbs in the thin light of a
gossamer sun. The camera still thinks it’s a phone, so I left
it home, recovering from forty eight hours in the city. It’s
all about perception.

(K)

PORRIDGE HOTEL:

Woman in a Blue dress laughing talking fog on the M25, still alive. Last night talking to philosophical Glaswegian living in Brentwood in a tie-dye T watching bands givin it in the back room of the Shacklewell arms. The toilets through the dancehall demand night vision super powers pissing in black out for the black-out pissed. Lovin’ Dalston’s energy drops a groove on me infused with natural aesthetic that celebrates a life outside the box.

(K)