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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

In death we are all equal but David Bowie transcended even that truth. I see a queue, as long as eternity, shuffling feet slowly moving forwards towards the precipice of the unknown. Mostly anonymous but here and there a glimpse of recognition as you watch the line tumble into a bottomless pit of final days. One by one they fall, leaving behind loved ones, relatives and followers, and it’s the living who suffer as the darkness descends as it inevitably will. The last breath of a stranger that you knew, […]