WELCOME TO THE FUTURE:

The sun shines on Essex, but not on the intermittent ‘service’
we laughing refer to as ‘the internet’. Broadband, a trap
baited with promises of glittering high-speed worlds,
sucks us in, to watch to listen to send & receive & yet…
drops connection throughout the day between top speeds
in our begging bowl of 2.2.

(K)

I WANTED TO BE AN ARTIST BUT I GOT A CAREER INSTEAD:

Don’t have to build sculptures, I find ’em lying around,
scattered across cities, allies, tracks & fields, you
leave these cairns to mark your passing, dumped, ditched,
spattered, meticulously arranged, I follow where you leave.
Started as distraction from the boredom of waiting at bus stops
as a child, getting lost in minutia, the details & stuff
between the cracks in concrete & blacktop. Brutalist constructions,
ritual spaces, the red & white cones & poles of Navvies laying &
digging up roads. Industrial packaging, cardboard, sticky tape,
the marks accrued by passing through postal systems. Road markings,
tar, chalk, white & yellow lines. I have a piece of Cardiff in my
studio, a chunk of yellow painted inadvertently across a scrap of
card left lying in the gutter when parking restrictions were laid.
It languishes between the Pioneer CDJ’s & the Technics deck.
Art, squeezed between the tracks of a relentless groove.

(K)

WALKING AT 45 DEGREES:

At 4:30am this morning, ragged from an excesses of technicolor
dreams, I ran, growling, into the wind, rescuing the flags of Essex,
straining to escape pegs & lines, fly free across sodden fields of
mud to impale themselves on the amputated limbs of hawthorn hedges.
Heads buried deep beneath duvets we groan, surf the rim of sleep,
agitated divers hunt elusive dark as windows fling themselves wide,
welcoming the storm’s forced entry, grinning, hissing, spitting
broken grooves like shattered teeth at our woeful attempts to sleep.

(K)

ESSEX FLAGS:

Washing drying in the wind, the sweat soaked stripes of nights
beneath the lights, filtering the breath of smoke machines &
random whiffs of ‘erb blown in between cheeky grins, celebrates
it’s spotless sweetness, born-again as ‘nice’, returned to
civilian life as garments good enough to go see mom.

(K)

THE LAST OF THE DUBNO…BUNK SCULPTURES:

Back in Mother Essex I miss the tour already, the team around us,
the venues, the house crews, caterers, traffic cones, debris,
the signature sounds & the charismatic odours of the cities we visited,
the buses that were our home-from-homes, the fresh towels 7 the shower
stalls we scrubbed in every morning behind stage & the trucks that
were loaded-unloaded every day, carrying our heavy metals as delicately
as hens eggs. I miss mapping unfamiliar streets, scraping words,
snapping sight-specific works off pavements,
notebook & camera, notebook & camera, capturing the cracks, the marks,
the beautiful dirt you left for me to find. The energy that’s gone
into this run of shows was enormous, made good people ill & yet
produced results that gave thousands of people happiness & left me
with one clear thought, that, of all tours that I have ever been on
this one was my favourite.

(K)



PALLADIUM KOLN:

EINDHOVEN SHOW DAY:

Testify!
Apple & cinnamon cake of Heaven trips me out, best drug on Earth.
Apple & ginger, beetroot, black tea & lavender,  sunlight streams
through walls of Crittle windows, wood on wheels, jungle plantations
perched on illuminated glass tables, sing to mirrorball reggae,
naked bulb festoons celebrate waitress smiles.
Paradise, was waiting as we rolled in, names on the guest-list,
triple ‘A’ passes, comes out to greet it’s Prodigal children,
patient at the gates with open arms, seats us around it’s table,
feeds us gentle soul food, bathes our bruises from the inside out.

(K)

ON THE ROAD TO EINDHOVEN:

The maitre d’ takes my hand in both of his &, smiling, shakes.
The waiter does one more balletic flourish across the floor for
me as I swing my bag onto a shoulder. He twinkles, beaming,
pristine, crisp in black & white, manicured & perfectly sculpted
hair, dances away between the tables, waving.

“Thank you for staying. Please come again”

Big blacked-out car waiting at the curb to take you away, we shake
& make that rarest of hugs, the best one of all, neither of us
capable of finding words enough to express our feelings.

(K)

PARADISO #2:

I hear a woman’s chocolate giggle, in the room across the
corridor, muffled by the fire door as I leave to comb the
streets for poetry in the rain, dance between the cracks
again. They’ve been up all night & at it, cocktailed to
infinity, traveling back through time in the dark recesses
of the hotel bar, girls in tight torn jeans, exotic, magnetic,
to the boys in heavy jackets with close cropped hair.
I remember this hotel, 1991, too drunk to stagger, legs up on
gothic stone balcony balustrades, feet in the night sky,
an animal mind cut loose & hungry for more than could be found,
burning from the inside.

(K)

PARADISO #1:

Avoid street dealers, white heroin sold as cocaine,
three tourists died last November, says the message
on the electronic billboard alongside the road over
the canal as we drive into town. Black car, white car,
silver grey, bicycles ride in packs of giant rolling
metal, the flowers of Spring, Loveland, high-rise homes
with windows big enough to let in light, inspire a nation
to look up to the sky.

(K)