Saturday, January 23, 2010

renewed plastic time


while heroes sleep
turn another corner into song. bigger lines, no refusal, no fuss. the shock of renewed tears in my fictional desert.
the glittering lights that lead nowhere, really.
sweat runs down the older hero's face as he still sings of youthful abandon.
little lines cross horizontically across a gothic wedding scene.
the reds in the wedding cake remind you of the times you go back in that box.
i've rehearsed my lines for years, to explain what happened.
the emptiness near the motorways and the airports in the 50s and 60s.
snapping into mythological fatherhood. being so cute. homemovies for the future, assigned for you and me.
behind the fence, maybe a monster?
fast moving action time.
the low voice that wants to describe everything as it was, chicken, salad, the older singer's eyes, sparkling in eternity.
the huge snowman that never was.
my direction is for change, but i'm always stuck in the same old song.
i want to take care of you, ride that horsie.

aftershocks in the memory, when all the food is gone.
when did i receive that and where is it now, it's all so fluid in my head.
he remembered his humble beginnings, i'm flashing your images right back at him.
taken to be ideal. this is not a real life. i performed myself to oblivion. driven forever. no answer.
the end of being cool hangs out of your trousers...



...it's filling the room in odd intervals.
when you go to sleep and the lights go out.
i want to to be good. it's me with the wig, feeling bloated.
the truth behind the shades, going up and down, behind the man in black.
i'm on the wave, whooping like a tiger in the new plastic time.
memories mix, come together and mould a 60s hounddog, intellectual doesn't come into it.
when she speaks, i have all the time in the world.
he's sitting on a horse, riding off. the smoke was only yesterday.
it was you and the whole wide epic world, the electric shapes that made the sunset clearer, the passionate goodbye amplified over nature.
in endless copies we try to be ourselves in the old songs, and just before they were written.
i said yes reluctantly.
coming closer on the stairs.
the original figurehead, the original tone riding into the mind.
what's still plastic now, like those memories?

it speaks to me, it duplicates.
his telepresence, his letter head glory projecting into the holes in the ground. it was always the same. we're in a cloud. we're trapped. we can redeem this soul, and climb!




Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Hampstead (for Camilla)



Camilla called us from Stockholm on Sunday, said she was going to see the new Jane Campion movie about John Keats, set in Hampstead I believe, so we were just about to leave the house to go to the heath as well so I said "we'll both be in Hampstead then this afternoon",and she said "take pictures", so here there are, the good ones anyway.... and merry x-mas! thomas x

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Ali's 40th birthday party/jamming session @ West Hill Hall in Brighton


 another atmospheric shot of Brighton beach, it wasn't as windy as two weeks ago but it still looked fairly dramatic, ever since Aldeburgh I started paying more attention to the clouds when taking these kinds of pictures




and another shot of Waterloo Street... and onto West Hill Hall, a beautiful community centre in the Seven Dials area, sometimes used for acoustic, informal gigs and gatherings. For his fortieth Ali had organised an afternoon of mulled wine and some short sets of jamming with friends and other musicians from Brighton and beyond, even some morris dancing, etc. so here are some pics:











so happy birthday, Al!

Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Brighton breezy, isn't it?




Above: John and Sue's party, or is that a doctor's waiting room...

John plays cricket with this man, and Momus wrote a song about him apparently, he played it to me at the end of the night:



and here's some pics from the very dramatic sea in the morning and during the day, Brighton looks good when it's windy:



Waterloo Street, our old haunt The Iron Duke is as the bottom of this street

one of the big old windows of The Bristol, looking out from the seafront


North Laines


I'm halfway through Daphne du Maurier's "Jamaica Inn", enjoying it more than I thought, I recognize a lot of the places in Cornwall. Want to go back to places like Padstow and the Bodmin Moor...



in the Evening Star (the obligatory stop before getting the train back!), dressed like a not quite convincing "Le Donk"