TO WHERE I AM NOW

I had four sessions in the diary today, Stephen in Melbourne, Noelle in Montreal, Chris in New Jersey and Noel in Surrey. Reaching out to the world from this little room in Penzance. I need this, I need to be travelling, even if it’s simply communicating with people in different parts of the world. This is the worst thing for me about the lockdown and the cancelled gigs. I was going to be in Canada with Anekdoten, the US with Olivia (and Salim), in Germany where Olivia and I had a show in Berlin booked. We planned to tour in the UK in December. We still have shows pencilled in with Anekdoten in Sweden (and Poland, if I’m about). Plus Olivia and I were/are still planning to travel to Portugal. The trip to Portugal is perhaps the most serious of all as we are looking at the possibilities of living there, the only real alternative we like for Europe in the wake of Brexit. It seems like it’s a tricky language, but it has a lot to offer. Lefty government, sensible drug policy, warmer climate, Fado, the Portuguese guitar, Ronaldo, Pastéis de Nata (custard tarts), the Algarve, Lisbon, Porto, the Vasco de Gama bridge, the Lello bookstore, allegedly the inspiration for Hogwarts and did you know “The alliance between England and Portugal, ratified by the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 is the oldest alliance in the world still in force”. There is also the chapel of bones, above the entrance the sign boasts “Nós ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos” (‘We bones, are here, waiting for yours’).

“I haven’t found anywhere in the world where I want to be all the time. The best of my life is the moving. I look forward to going”. – Sean Connery

What is Fado? – “In popular belief, Fado is a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sentiment of resignation, fate and melancholia”.

So as soon as the lockdown is over, as soon as we have covered as much as we can in the studio with Space Summit, the Jerome album, Noctorum, when we’ve figured out how Olivia and I are going to record and see what happens with the plans for Salim in Texas, Paul and The Wild Swans in Liverpool, Steve and Lynne and Atlantaeum Flood plotting in Scotland and Arno and Sweet Gum Tree in France. When we have MOAT’s Poison Stream – that’s where we will be going, Fado land. I realized tonight that I don’t know any Portuguese writers. Paulo Coelho, famous for his book The Alchemist (and others), writes in Portuguese but he is Brazilian. I know four Fado singers: the legendary Amália Rodrigues, Mariza (who I’ve seen live at the Sydney Opera House) Cristina Branco and Ana Moura. I know little about Portuguese artists from music to cinema, painting to writing. I need to change that. So much to know, so little time.

Going to Portugal, a place I’ve only been once for one night when I played there with the ex band, Tom Verlaine was the support. I have vague memories of going to a late night bar after the gig where a Lisboeta or Alfacinha took an interest in me. I soon found out she was a lady of the night. I remember telling her at some point, sorry but I’m not interested in your wares (ha ha). She looked at me with a harsh look on her face and scowling said to me “you are cold” and moved on. That memory has only just come back to me.

I couldn’t wait to see the world. It’s not like I was looking for adventure, I didn’t want to bungee jump off a bridge in Vietnam, I didn’t want to go white water rafting. I thought India sounded scary and although my old mate Yeb from Cameroon lived in my one room flat in Ladbroke Grove whether I was there or not still hasn’t got me to Africa. It’s not like I was looking for first class travel in strange lands, my scariest moments have certainly been in Western countries, but I wasn’t necessarily looking for the exotic, although I think seeing a giraffe in the wild might be quite something. I wasn’t ever interested in Eastern religion, I was more into Western literature and travelling to the countries that spoke European languages. I liked hearing French and Spanish. As a teenager and Hawkwind fan I read twenty something Michael Moorcock books. We had Dickens at school so the Science Fantasy feast and books on the school curriculum had me liking a good story. Then I discovered that amazing world of literature for myself. Still I only ever read five books from the first period of 200 years when the modern novel was born, Cervantes’ Don Quixote,  considered to be the first released in two parts in 1605 and 1615 (he died in 1616), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels released in 1726, Voltaire’s Candide (1759), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Stendhal’s Scarlet And Black written in 1830.

After that came the riches of the 19th century and from then till the turn of the 20th century there was enough to keep you occupied. Here’s some of the more famous ones that I actually got to read: Edgar Allan Poe’s tales of the 1830s and 1840s, Gogol’s The Nose, The Overcoat and Dead Souls (1835-1842), Jules Verne’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea (1870), Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (1865 and 1871), Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866), Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1867), Oscar Wilde’s The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1890). The poets, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) and The War Of The Worlds (1898). After all this there was the whole of the 20th century. I read everything by Sartre and Camus (although as an Algerian, he was brought up in Africa). The writers that interested me the most were Zola, Dostoevsky, Strindberg, European writers. Storytellers, it was fiction from the continent I wanted to experience the most, Europe, including Scandinavia and into Russia.

But then came the computer, the mobile phone. Thank god that I read Lord Of The Rings before all that happened, I’m so happy to have become an adult before the computer age. Olivia and I were just commenting on how we live in front of the screen. How do we get the voracious reading that I had in my past back into our lives? It’s the choices you make, the priorities you make. Nobody is forcing me to look at my computer and the opportunities it gives me are infinite. But when I look at that list of books and think of all the reading I did before the digital revolution, I feel nostalgic, a craving for a bygone age. I suppose you can’t live in a world where people ride horses and enjoy the fact that dentistry is so sophisticated. Does anybody else hate that term ‘time management’? I think I need a Time Manager, but then where’s the freedom to live?

Music tonight took some turns. I was looking at some new releases on Spotify and listened to some of Ozzie’s new record whilst pottering and thought it’d be nice to hear Black Sabbath. ‘Nice’ is not the usual word that people associate with Black Sabbath, but I realized some time ago that Sabbath Bloody Sabbath (1973) is a really melodic and catchy album. (Rick Wakeman plays on it.) Amazingly it was recorded in September and released in December of that year. Those were the days. What a terrible pressing it is though. I need to play my original copy over this reissue, it has to be better sounding. What a stoopid thing when an album is re-released, repressed, remastered and they do a terrible job. Or like my Kinks’ Arthur record, sealed, big scratch on it! How is it possible?

After this I went and had a small browse in the aisles and found the second, self-titled Third Ear Band’s album (1970). Really great moody Chamber Folk with violin, viola, cello, oboe and percussion. Out there, half jamming, half planned. Check it out on Spotify. I liked it so much that I also played the first album, Alchemy, from 1969.

After that, with all this talk of Portugal, I dug out my Amália Rodrigues albums. Known as the queen of Fado, you really don’t need to understand the words to feel it, share the melancholy, be moved. She died in 1999 at the age of 79. These days contemporary Fado singers I mentioned earlier, Mariza, Moura and Branco, are your chance to experience this emotional music in the modern era. If you get the opportunity don’t pass it up.

Song Of The Day today is sung by Dare and our friend Julie Elwin as a duet with me playing bouzouki and the 6 string bass. It’s of course Victorian Vignette from Noctorum’s Honey Mink Forever released in 2011.

 

Victorian Vignette

“Come my dear sit here and tell me
What it is that troubles you
If you can confide in me
Then we’ll see what we can do”
Be still, my heart
See how she suffers
“Lady take this moment
For there may not be another”

The comfort of friendship
Has turned into something not planned
How can I tell her
I crave the mere touch of her hand

The words left unsaid
Go ’round in their heads
Will shyness and shame
Defeat love again

“How kind of you sir, to ask me
What it is that’s on my mind
I assure you it is nothing
But tiredness from this work of mine”
Be still, my heart
His eyes are not for you
“Pleasant though it is to chatter
I have duties to resume”

These two years I’ve known him
His dear heart I never addressed
Yet all that I crave
Is to minister to his happiness

The words left unsaid
Go ’round in their heads
Will shyness and shame
Defeat love again

(Willson-Piper / Mason)
Noctorum – Honey Mink Forever (2011)