DREAM WITHIN A DREAM:

In the heat of the night loners walk city streets,
boyfriends speed-talk to bleary girls, not pausing
to breath or let it slip they clocked us photographing
rotted graffiti dripping down the marble facades
of midnight shops. The fashion, like the music in
this city got stuck in the 70’s & it’s all the better
for it, a living museum for time travellers like us
to pick up where we left our kid heads. I’m mapping
streets, got to keep moving because it’s too noisy
in my head to remain still. Conversation about anything
creative physically hurts, so I move, looking fast &
snapping swift with this digital eye. Me & the feral
cats feed in the street tonight, hunt the dark between
lamp light with adolescent bug eyes.

‘Brainstorm‘ by Hawkwind is my latest obsession

(K)

LAUGHING:

The Essex night sky was illuminated by a fat diminishing moon
making people crazy. Faces hardened in bitter contortions,
frustrations, stress, emotions on a knife edge. Satellites
arcing between stars went un-noticed, the cool night air
went un-breathed as we dodged the wound-up & the righteous
wobbling around the house like a ball-bearing bouncing wild &
loose inside a ball.You can fight fire-with-fire for so long,
but where’s the fun, the sun, in that? Take a drive, listen to
the rhythm of the white line beneath your tyres, cats-eyes
flicking the underside of your rubber. Flip on the headlights,
transform summer nights into theatres of vibrant green,
tunnels beneath whose arches scurry tiny things, frantic rhythm
of their miniature limbs make you smile, slow down & chill
behind the wheel. Park up & walk between the rows of midnight
shelf stackers, sit on your bonnet in an empty car park, let
the heat of the engine make you feel good. Breath. Take time,
look up at the stars, counting satellites & the winking lights
of late night long haul flights. Reconnect with the moment in
the moment & laugh…

(K)

UP HERE AT THE TOP OF THE HOUSE:

Sitting alone for a moment-in-the-moment with the sun,
the sound of wind in the trees, shapes that peel off
from their sinuous branches dance in hews of translucent
greens. Sound becomes physical, builds sculptures, ripples,
fingers tousling the hair of late summer. The last few
days have been increasingly happy, laughter every morning,
no time to dwell in the dark or ride a spiral down.
Buoyed on the mirth of these generous companions, travelling
this road with them I have no choice but to join in – that’s
a good thing. Even here at the the top of the house I hear them
laughing in the kitchen three floors below. I want to join in,
be with them, copy & learn from them – they do it so naturally.
I don’t have that jean, but around them it’s easy, it feels right.
Left too long with my own thoughts I’m inclined to side with
Mr Williams who exited by the back door last night as we were
sleeping.
Keep laughing & dancing brother & sisters.

(K)

INFORMATION TRAFFIC NOISE:

When I’m surrounded by the noise of information traffic,
the random evolving conversations about plans for the day,
when I’m caught in the crossfire of too many ideas about
open ended possibilities I hear the alarm to run, the ship
is sinking…& I start to sing
‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. The twist & flow of words I don’t
understand, but sound like they know what they mean
open a crack into a parallel world whose noise is in
oposite & equal measure to the noise around me.
I slip through to silence.

Scaramouche, Saramouche…

(K)

LISTEN TO THE RAIN:

The tribe convenes in the kitchen to discuss
the day, “what to do in the rain”.
It was an easy drift,
get dressed, get in the car & drive, now I’m
reaching for the life raft of silence in an
upstairs room as the comity plans our every move.
I need to drift, follow no thread at all,
allow myself to be drawn by visual candy
& intrigue. At night, when everyone has gone to
bed, I sit in the dark hunting obscurities &
cul-de-sacs, drifting the electric highways
connecting random people.

(K)

OIL & WATER:

Shipwrecked on an island for the extreme mundane.
Clipped grass, cracked mac, sun bleached curb stone
concrete. Box buildings of red brick straight out of
the 1970’s, suck the life right out of you if your
boat runs aground on these rocks. Just off the motorway,
down a side road no one notices there’s a Sad little
Travel Lodge, a chocolate vending machine alone on
a linoleum sea, a solitary figure hunched over
two-fisted meat at the fast food vendors, smelling
of grease. No paths between anywhere, everything
built for cars, I cut a route from A to B & back
like a rebel explorer. Van drivers, caught
in the act of emptying their dogs in the bushes
cast guilty glances over shoulders as I photograph
road signs, attracted to their dynamism. Vibrant
colours, arrows, chevrons, circles, parallels &
cones. These are the elements of my first pallet,
the marks that lifted me as a youth from drowning
in a sea of grey & as I look back through my portfolio
I see these marks reoccurring. I’m still drawn to them,
sometimes hidden in the dance of brush strokes & scratches,
sometimes plucked direct off the street in curated objects
photographed in passing. They are as important to me now
as they ever where in balancing the grey clouds coalescing
between my ears that generate such restless noise it hurts,
marooned on this J.G. Ballard world.

(K)

NEW DAY:

I like making Art
I like making Music
I like being Alive

(K)

THE DARK HOUSE RATTLES:

With the sound of violent collisions, dirty dishes stacked
in sink like weapons stockpiled to retaliate against the world.
Outside the night is cool & comfortingly dark with stars.
Inside the heat clings to us & tiredness fatigues our bones.
We snap & snarl, light gone out behind the eyes, running
with the meter reading ’empty’ on a short fuse.
The Dark House Rattles, but the Light House Beams. I pack my
bags & move into the light where the house wraps around me
& breathes. Maybe I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.

Listening to ‘The Nature of Connections‘ by Arve Henrikson
who is playing at the London Roundhouse on 22nd of August.

(K)

MAKE YOUR MARK:

Four crows perch on power lines across the fields,
Four crows watching me, Four thick black marks on the sky.
Imagining them singing in Disney Southern drawl I stop to
listen & in that second realise they had their black eyes
on me as they scrabble off, painting thick black ‘W’s’ that
suck the light out of a canvas of pale milk cloud.

Rehearsing with uw today.

(K)

THE CENTRE OF THE ROCK UNIVERSE:

In our small town the iron mongers was the centre of the
music industry. I don’t mean it was where the stars of
the village hall circuit met, I mean ‘the centre of the
music industry’ if you loved your rock music & liked it
heavy. On the one side of town Geezer Butler, bass player
with Black Sabbath raised chickens on the edge of the
forest in a beautiful house replete with requisite
Zebra skin rugs, slot machines & platinum discs.
Every few weeks he would pull up outside the iron mongers
in a metallic blue Roller, run into the shop, wild hair
& wizard’s robes flowing, re-emerging ten minutes later
with a roll of chicken wire which he’d lob onto the
fine white leather upholstery before heading back to the
woods. On the other side of town lived Robert Plant,
legendary frontman of the equally iconic rock band
Led Zeppelin. You didn’t see Robert so often, but at least
one a week a rusty American flat bed would pull up outside
the iron mongers loaded with hairy gardeners all resembling
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull. They would load up with
chicken wire, pile back into the flat bed & head off in the
opposite direction. It was a commonplace sight in our little
town, as Birmingham was a just spit away & any Brummy with money
headed West to the fields & the forest to capitalise on the
extended buying power to be enjoyed amongst the country folk.

All the rock stars in town knew & befriended the boy who was
crushed at Molineaux.

(K)