Leaving Stockholm today for Milan, Rome and finally Bergen, Norway, where I’ll be playing with Anekdoten. I won’t be in England again till next year, it feels like a new phase with the Anekdoten shows, the latest Noctorum album and other happenings in the coming months that I will get into as they approach. But all this and with the death of a musician you have played with despite not being in touch recently, the future seems to be blurring out the past at a tremendous rate. The past rather […]
Sixty Years On The Planet Earth – The September Of My Years – Frank Sinatra – 1965
On May 7th 2018 I will be sixty years old. It seems that each decade is some kind of landmark achievement and the more decades that go by the larger the gap is supposed to grow between you and your or anyone else’s youth. In my case obviously, married to a girl much younger than me, this simply isn’t true and the idea that people need to be approximately the same age to converse, to share a happy life together seems rather misguided. But that is another issue, reaching sixty […]
Walpurgis Night, The Wicker Man, Willow’s Song And The Fair Isles
It seems appropriate to post this rather odd collaboration on Walpurgis night – (in German folklore) the night of April 30 (May Day’s eve) and into Mayday, “when witches meet on the Brocken mountain and hold revels with the Devil”. Saint Walpurga was an English missionary from Devon cannonized by Pope Adrian II in 870. This aristocratic and saintly lass was the daughter of Saint Richard The Pilgrim (saintlihood ran in the family). She became an abbess and healer in the Frankish empire that occupied a large part of Europe including […]
A New Year In The Yucca Valley, California
January 1st 2018 in Yucca Valley, California, and the American melting pot gurgles and spits. Leaving Patti and Mike’s house on the edge of the desert for the cultural experience of Denny’s 24 hour breakfast, oatmeal with brown sugar, decaf with half and half, wheat toast and avocado, no butter. Our waitress (server as they seem to want to call her) is a lovely, friendly Mexican lady and as we order, another Mexican family arrives for lunch – their lunch is our breakfast. So close to the Mexican border one […]
Cornwall
Walking by the sea, the insects lost on the wind, fly with the salt spray into my face, careering into my cheeks. A break in the clouds reveals a cold sun that for all its power fails to penetrate the thick blasts that push struggling people into railings, fighting to keep their balance as they climb all shapes against bitter biting whirlpool swirls that leave the cheeks raw. A cat cowers in a doorway unable to see a path to home, the fur rug, the crackling fire, the sound of […]