THE ART OF LAUGHING:

Good company & a trickle of tea to bring a spark to another
air conditioned box on the other side of the stinking
Emerald City. Wash the grime off my skin, the steely sweat,
the dust at the back of my throat encrusted with the dead skin
of millions.

(K)

THE BOAT IN MY HEAD:

In the Emerald City I can’t breath underground, sweating
bodies up close, long stares. Moving fast between stations
to get back above ground, irradiated by electricity, slouching,
hang dog, everybody checking each other out, power talking.
I dream of being back on the boat, slipping slow, unseen at
the back of the world.

(K)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD:

Mist rolls in over the far shore of the Volga at sunrise,
boats sleep at anchor, beautiful, peaceful, happy in my head.
Body wants to keep on dancing, ears ringing, faces smiling,
shaking hands & ‘thank you’s’. You know when you’ve done something
good, when even the security wants to convey their gratitude.
Check all the bones, everything’s still in place, the muscles,
tendons, all the joints doing what they should. Off stage at
3:30am, it’s getting light, breakfast on cheese sandwiches,
white sliced, lettuce, squeeze a couple of cheese & onion
Pringles in for crunch, times that by three. Mini Kit-kats,
a fat banana & water. Laughing, dazed, ‘did we actually just do
what I think we did?!’. These brothers, these familiar faces,
my tribe, my comfort & joy, pulled it off…again.
And was that you I caught from the corner of an eye between
buses waiting to take us to bed? You in colours so different
from anyone that I had to stop & look again & yes, it was you,
just standing there, happy, exploding joy, enough to be looking
as all your mates danced. I couldn’t just leave when you waving
your cell phone camera in hope, though normally I’d be gone.
But this time I was touched by your resemblance to someone
back on the island, who’s somewhere doing something with someone,
god knows who, but I’m hoping they’ll be as kind to her.
I put my bag down, smile & nod to your camera hit by the electric
your reaction, there’s a reward I never expected,
unseen by thousands, yet bigger than anything today & the security
guy, kind, gentle, offers to take the picture you can’t believe
is happening & neither can I. As we pull away I look back
& watch you jumping for bouncing showing the picture to your mates
& I hope that in some other field back on the island, someone is
being good to someone else.

(K)

AND YET LAUGHED:

Breakfast is at 6:00am, meet me in the lobby, 6:30,
we’re being picked up at 7:00 to be at soundcheck for 8:00.
Excuse me, where is breakfast? Breakfast is at 8:30 – 11:00.
But I was told it was earlier. That is on week days, it’s
the weekend now. Excuse me, can I help you? Yes, I need
breakfast, do you know when it starts, I was told 6:00?
I will find out, yes it is at 8:30, it’s the weekend,
we have snacks on site & coffee. I need breakfast!
It starts at 8:30, it’s the weekend. I work weekends!

Fifty minute drive behind tinted glass with water laughing.
Soundcheck with smilers, happy people doing their best, so
you can’t get angry. Look, it’s the sun! Hand-carved wooden
shacks line the road, log cabin homes crumble under tin roofs,
peeling, listing all the way to EDM paradise.

We got trailer luxury & tea, banana, fruit & nuts in a bag.
We got secure security to road black stop & check our badge.
Topless boys raise thumbs & grin, bikini girls shimmy & shake
in tinted shades, ruby lip smiles eclipse the sun.

(K)

TO DRIFT IS A GIFT:

Missing the peace between the ears & the calm of an English
countryside. Navigating to waterways of the West Midlands
has been the best holiday of my life. The company, the laughs,
the let-go-&-float-ness of these past fews days remind me
the ‘drifting’ is one of the most rewarding, replenishing,
rejuvenating things to do & yet I give virtually no time to it.
Drift often, with a good heart & with kindness dear friends.

Boarding a plane to Russia today, taking the groove East.

(K)

LIVING AT SPEED:

Back on the road the world moves too fast. I’ve slowed down to the point where I’m overloading behind the wheel. Too much information too fast & I keep going into shock, having to take deep breathe, bombarded by torrents of data. I liked it in between the fields & at the back of factories where, even in the heart of the Black Country, the images slipped down slow & easy. Got up at 6 am with the first diesel chugging past our bedroom window. Porridge & tea on the tow path, grab a lock key & start un-winding. With nothing to think about but emptying & filling locks my head detoxed from its addiction to stress & now (like alcohol) every scrap of information is too much, makes me shake & shiver, breathe deep & punch my leg for an adrenaline hit to block the pain from information overdose.

(K)

MISIC & VIDEO:

This is for Bret in Brum who sold us vintage vinyl before we set cast off, leaving behind new Birmingham fizzing with electric joy. I still don’t get what happened in the years between 18 & now, but something big has changed the heart of the Midlands, got it pumping with the rhythm of Smethwick drop hammers, the pride, the sweat & blood of an industrial legacy has eventually jump started my old homeland & I take everything dismissive that I ever said back, sad to be leaving. Thanks Bret, for the handshake, the bothering to find that website, thanks for: Johnny Cash ‘Ride this Train’, ‘Christmas at the Patti’, Chronicles ‘…Like a message from the Stars’ & thanks for keeping the Music & Video Exchange open in the exact spot I bought my first steel strung acoustic, still have it, still play it, now sounding like a reborn Brum.

(K)

UP ON THE ROOF:

Up on the roof of the Birmingham Library listening to the hum & hiss of a city so transformed I no longer recognise it as the miserable island I used to catch the X92 to as a kid. Back then it didn’t offer any hope for a boy desperate to realise his dreams. In the early ’70s Brum felt like a cul-de-sac, a twilight city where dreams came to die. There were few places where you could get a buzz, a visual thrill, Oasis, the Flea Market, the first Virgin Record shop in brown with aeroplane seats & a set of headphones for each so you could recline & listen, second hand gear shops full of cool road damaged stuff stencilled with the names of bands with record deals, all hinting at offering escape but not one of them showed me an exit out of the area or even a smile. Positivity was low around here in those days. So, what happened? Ever since we got here we’ve only been greeted with warmth, generosity & a positivity underpasses by anywhere I’ve been in the world! Had Birmingham felt like this when I was 18 I would never have left & the history of techno would’ve had one less name on the roll-call, ha ha ha!

(K)

MESSIN’ ABOUT IN:

It was a sleepless night again, I’d moved to the sofa from a bed that gave me bad dreams, woke up stiff all over, the sound of a stuck water pump making it impossible to even rest my eyes. Mornings like this the head fills so fast with noise the only antidote it to start singing Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. “We’re out’ve water, you won’t be able to shower until we re fill the tanks” she said as I squeezed the last drops out’ve the tap for a cold cat-lick, enough to dress to get the boat off its moorings (did I tell u we’re on a boat?). “There’s a water point just up ahead” she said, running the boat aground as we headed upstream. We tried everything to refloat our boat, but nothing would budge it. “Throw us a line!” Shouted our mate in the other craft, but that did nothing either, so I started rocking from side to side to see if that would help, but the morning rain had made the deck so slippery even my deck shoes couldn’t stop me going over the side. The heavy waterproof I was wearing dragged me down but I remember feeling sure I wasn’t going to drown “he can swim!” She screamed, which wasn’t true & I remember feeling right pissed off she’d embarrass me like that as I was drowning. I swallowed some of the swill before remembering ‘this is a canal you idiot’ & stood up. It took three people to haul me out – Oh how we laughed, still stuck on the mud bank, still with empty water tanks. “Go & have a nice hot shower” she said. “There’s a hole in my bucket…” I started singing as the noise in my head subsided.

(K)

ON CREATIVITY:

I’m standing on the edge of a field full of sheep in a light rain that makes the electric fence in the hawthorn fizz. There’s an old wooden style, patched with packing tape, an arrow on a pole pointing across the field to another & a stone spire that points to the sky. The sky comes low to the ground, puts bird song right inside our ears, the sound of lapping water, a stream, the rain on the roof of my hood from within which I’m concealed from the world. All day yesterday I just did manual work, winding gears, turning heavy greased cogs, pulling, pushing industrial doors carved with their birthdays. 1998, 2005, 2009, 2012. Stone work beautifully carved by master masons, numbers with serifs, meticulously precise in every dimension from an era when such things were normal. I turned off the ‘thinking’ yesterday, stared into hedgerows, cornfield grooves, the reflection of sky in water, allowed myself an occasional photograph of a tree, but mostly just ‘brain off’ doing manual stuff, drifting.

(K)