Summer looked the same
As it ever had before
The grass cut close
As a barber's throat 
Wet diamonds in her jaw

Summer looked the same 
As it ever did before 
An August haze, a petrol glaze
A sleepwalk to our door 

Summer fell like lead 
And pinioned to the bed
We lay like butterflies
Until our wings turned dry

Summer looked the same 
As it always had till then
A bridal veil, a ship set sail
The dazzle of a green, green gem

And the night that wrote your name
Cast a shadow on the dawn 
We didn't hear it's hand 
Move over the pages like a storm 

Turn me like a light 
Blind me to this sight
Circling my mind
Like scavengers in flight

Summer turned it's face
And it never seemed the same
A broken bowl, a wind up doll 
A waxwork in it's place

And you didn't speak a word
As they led you to the door 
You were dumbstruck by the ghosts 
Who waltzed your body down the hall

And I watched the faces of so many strangers
Come ricochet through him like ghosts at a ball
A soft-footed priest with his eye to the steeple
My father, a poet, a conquistador

And the summers stumbled by 
But my love was just the same
Though this hope pinned like a stolen brooch 
Grew rusty in the rain

And I loved you to the bone
Loved you more than I could say 
Though my arms held fast, I could not ask
Those weary bones to stay

Turn me like a light 
Gather me from sight 
Visions in my mind
That blur and fade to white

Go down to the edge 
Where calla lilies bend
Roots that in the dark 
Remember seasons past 
Tendrils with blind sight
Still reach towards the light

In faith 
Not sorrow 

3. Love, Love Me Do!

There's that apocryphal tale of the guy who handcuffs himself to the record company executive's door handle and refuses to leave until said exec has listened to a scrappily recorded demo EP that nevertheless reveals the artist to have all the makings of the next Bruce Springsteen. The story ends with a soft focus lens panning in on the million dollar recording contract and a ten page spread in Rolling Stone magazine. (But hold on, it's the 21^st century and fat cigar smoking record company man is now weeping into a Pot Noodle soup as he auctions the last of his rare vinyl collection on Ebay to pay February's rent). In my experience, it's far better to put your focus on those who already love what you do, and don't need much convincing. They will be loyal and they will be in it for the long run. For just like the game of love, not only does being persistent a) not usually get you your desired results but possibly will get you a restraining order and b) waste a lot of time when you could be enjoying the company of those who already 'get' you (so inadvertently making it more likely that you will stumble into the arms of your one true love), don't waste too much time on those who don't respond to your professional overtures.

At most, keep them in touch in a low-maintenance way on the off chance that they have a change of heart/finally actually check out what you're up to and find that they dig it. But no more than that.   

1. “No. No. No. No thanks. N.O”. Don't take it (too) personally. I know that you know this already, because it's the sort of received wisdom that your grandma tells you in between sucking eggs. But I think its fair to say that if you have high expectations of yourself and are ambitious with what you wish to do/create/be, most of you'll hear “No” many more times than “Yes”, especially at the start of a fledgling artistic career.
   
   By the way, as much as the media enjoys the 'JK Rowling's book got turned down 20 squillidillion times before it was published' , it enjoys so very much more the tale of Overnight Success. “Last month, Bob was living in a bungalow in Brent. Since signing a contract with X, he's had ten hit singles, got John Legend on speed dial and employs a minion to peel and de-seed his favourite grape variety”.
   
   I say: be patient, be appreciative of the support that you already have and expect, even welcome, th 'No's'. If you're aiming high, anticipate an – I don't know, 70% rejection rate, and be joyous about the 30% of Yes's. Take the No's graciously. Some people will like, even love what you do, some will blow hot and cold depending on how well you seem to be doing, and others simply won't like it at all. That's fine. Don't start spitting about how you're gonna get your revenge on the HATERZ one day (we all have our moments, even if its an internal conversation).
   
   Each 'No' is a useful challenge to see how committed you really are to what you love. I've had many dark days feeling miserable after certain performances, and that have made me question why I am doing what I do. And the answer always emerges: Because I absolutely love it. Remind yourself why you are doing what you're doing. I have found the more I can diminish the role of my ego, the better. Each time you get up, dust yourself down and keep going, you are re-committing yourself to your art, you are re-stating your love for your muse and she'll repay that loyalty as thousand times over. 

The birds are coming back like the circus does each year
These swallows -
Etching their lines in this picture
Waves above corn rows
Tides above furrows still frozen
Compass drawn arrows
Circles drawn gold in the water
Halos -

I came up early like twilight 
Porous with sorrow 
And the sun pulled its roots from the winter
Leaving us all alone -
Suddenly wide-eyed and fearless 
I held your hand by the road
Watching the mist in the trees, like halos

And like these birds, my thoughts returning 
Tombs in the last glow
Months past, since you were turned in the grass
Beneath the wakeless snow...

I grew up in a room as small as a penny
I was certain of love but we didn't have money
At the end of the garden, a lawn spread with honey,
I was soothed by the pines, it was endlessly sunny

In that cool, dark room, I lined up my soldiers
They marched out to lands of ochre and cobalt
I read about sailors, who dreamed about Jenny
And Jenny wore L,M,N,O pearls by the many

I was certain of love, but we didn't have money -
I was certain of love and we didn't want for any -

I grew up in a house that was neat as a button
With the shiniest bell, and a lap made for sitting
And a door well-hidden by the tall green reeds
That made ablutions with the dew nightly

We went creeping about when the walls were asleep
Found secrets rusting in the crockery
There's a jewel of devotion, resides in the eaves
And can still hear it humming, oh coming on the breeze

I was certain of love, but we didn't have money
I was certain of love and we didn't want for any
We didn't want for love and we didn't want for any ---

I saw spring uncombing her hair by the quays,
Made a hundred score sailor men weak at the knees
And she turned, and she scattered the dandelion seeds
That made time's pulse quicken and strain at the seams

I wrote: I and my child and my mother long dead
Her eyes like a haunting appear on this head
There's are ghosts who wait in the chambers of breath
I sang this song as I sat by the bed
I sang this song as I sat by this bed

I was certain of love, but we didn't have money
I was certain of love and we didn't want for any
We didn't want for love and we didn't want for any ---

The memories undig themselves
Uncurl themselves
In this small part of a large town
Like earthworms
Brought by sudden rains
Unwelcome, pink and raw in the mud
Leaving spring trails

And oracles
That will take me down
To where feet resound
By the school and the auction house
Galleons cast on painted seas -
Oh, like Ulysses
How I longed for this sadness to pass

Little boy
If I could pin
Your butterfly wings
To the page of our past
I would give,
Give anything
To catch you spindle-legs
Home from the park

Hold my breath
Fingers and thumbs
Count to a thousand and ten
Till you come home again
But the bunting is down
And just one candle burns instead…

When you were young
Our mother held
You up to see
A palace that was burning
And on that hill
There was a boy
Who grew to be
The brother that I'm yearning

And if I glance
Back fast enough
I'll catch his heel
Just as his body's turning
Oh my sweet heart
A broken heart
A clock that stopped
Made of a morning, such dark

Little boy
If I could pin
Your butterfly wings
To the page of our past
I would give,
Give anything
To catch you spindle-legs
Home from the park

Hold my breath
Fingers and thumbs
Count to a thousand and ten
Till you come home again
But the bunting is down
And just one candle burns instead

I'm not really one to talk
Love and all it's strange disports
But all I know is I wanted to stay

Down the stairs and past the porch
Taxi drive away my thoughts
But they're brighter than this shade of day

Through your window
Watch the leaves
Butterflies of red and green
Flying south before the early snow

Put your wallet in your jeans
Button up the part of me
You keep in some quiet corner
Of your soul

And in the morning you will miss me
As you board at Monbijou
You stay standing on the 50
Though you dream the things I'd do...

You're the song that goes around in my head
Like a letter on a fire, we're unread
I've been turning like a coin what you said
For so many days

There a tiger in this house that's unfed
Keeps on clawing at my mouth and bedstead
I've been duelling with these doubts, it's reckless
In so many ways

I come home and turn my sheets
Tuck your memory underneath
Sinews hard and sweet unto the bone

Let the fingers of my sleep
Trace you, lips down to your feet
Wake once more to find myself alone

In your room, you stand awhile
Listening to that distant bell
Stirring coffee till your thoughts get cold

Pick a tune that you know well
Now you hear the cadence swell
Longing for this story to be told

In the seminary garden
Altar boys, they raise the dead
But you don't need that sentiment, oh
No, you walk on by instead

You're the song that goes around in my head
Like a letter on a fire, we're unread
I've been turning like a coin what you said
For so many days

There a tiger in this house that's unfed
Keeps on clawing at my mouth and bedstead
I've been duelling with these doubts, it's reckless
In so many ways

I'm not really one to talk
Love and all it's strange disports
But all I know is I wanted to stay

Down the stairs and past the porch
Taxi drive away my thoughts
But it seems my love,
They're here to stay

Catherine wheels
Flailing gold
Never leave the earth
And though they burn
Dreaming of
Some far skyward world
Simple stars
They remain
Giving fire to dark

Catherine wheels
Flaming gold
Never leave the earth
And though they turn
Dreaming of
Some more fateful world
Simple stars
They remain
Giving light to dark

And Roman roads
Steadfast bows
Never change their course
And these long rows
Of country stone
Never cleave apart

Time enfolds
Restless bones
But not your faithful heart

Catherine wheels
Trailing gold
Never leave the earth
And though they turn
Dreaming of
Somewhere skyward love...
Simple stars
How do they know
When they're home at last?

Back in May, I was invited by the Roundhouse to work on a series of new songs with the backing of their choir, to be performed in February 2011. I am knee-deep in this piece, and though it's not quite done, I am currently working on it alongside a dear friend and talented musician, Alex Curtis.
My concerts will be on the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Feb 2011, tickets on sale soon.

I first dropped by to hear the choir in rehearsal on a warm and hazy Election Night. As it happened the majority of the choir were AWAL at various polling stations (who says the yoof aren't politically engaged, huh?), but those who were there displayed a great energy, facilitated by the engagement and generosity with which the conductor Danilo Walde directed them.
So, the book was left wide open for me. To have a choir at my disposal, with no remit was a bit of a dream come true though a daunting one.
I'd been playing with the idea of a song cycle for a while - to take in a whole spectrum of emotions that somehow formed a coherent story, or at least, articulations of archetypal emotions - bliss, grief, longing, fighting, leaving...
When I was 12, I took up Tarot reading, and like a lot of people, I was drawn more to the way that these images create archetypal narratives rather than to the clairvoyant side. ( NB: It's too tempting to sweep the deck when an undesirable reading comes up, and to repeat until the Lovers appears in an auspicious position).




These images are so evocative and have kind of lingered in the back of my - and I am sure, many people's - mind, subtly providing cues as I write this work.

Wandering along 7th Avenue in Brooklyn the other day, I dropped into the community bookstore. Not only do they have an affectionate black moggy in residence, ready to curl up on the sofa while you read (cats seem to rule the roost in Brooklyn stores - there are even a couple sitting in paper trays at the Fed-Ex store), they also have a fine poetry section.
I had heard of Anne Sexton, but never actually got round to reading her work, but the lyrical persuasion of her images was a revelation:

Just Once

Just once I knew what life was for.
In Boston, quite suddenly, I understood;
walked there along the Charles River,
watched the lights copying themselves,
all neoned and strobe-hearted, opening
their mouths as wide as opera singers;
counted the stars, my little campaigners,
my scar daisies, and knew that I walked my love
on the night green side of it and cried
my heart to the eastbound cars and cried
my heart to the westbound cars and took
my truth across a small humped bridge
and hurried my truth, the charm of it, home
and hoarded these constants into morning
only to find them gone.



It was all the sadder to read this ecstatic poem, and know that she killed herself at 46.
I remember sitting in an Italian cafe in Russell Square a few years ago (you might know the one - by the station, red leather booths, dully lit, a deli counter, a bustling air) stirring my coffee and feeling pretty low, when I got chatting to a Parisian lady. She noted I looked glum, maybe a little heartbroken. She smiled and said "Have you been to the Pont Mirabeau?" I said not. So, with the air of a quest, she made me promise that one day, I would go to that bridge, and read the poem that Apollinaire wrote:


Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.

Under Mirabeau Bridge the river slips away
And lovers
Must I be reminded
Joy came always after pain


I haven't been yet, but I will one day and that's what Anne Sexton's 'small humped bridge' reminded me of. There is something magical about bridges - how standing on one reveals a whole shining panoply of a town, and yet the arch below is somewhat darker, danker, sadder, but where a truer, more elemental life runs.

So my song cycle (I think) will begin with these lyrics:

'I stood under a bridge
On the eve of his birthday
And I watched the snow drift
Round these houses and walkways
How I watched the snow drift
Past these thousands of dark days
Night unclenches a fist
Night breaks bread
As this town sways'

Finally, writing a piano line for the more blissful song of the sequence, I remembered a song I used to sing by Ravel, which were based on excerpts of Mallarme's poetry. In 'Soupir' (dedicated to Stravinsky), the violin line at the start arrives light as angel hair, dancing on water, the madness of autumn love:

My soul rises towards your brow o calm sister, where there lies dreaming
An autumn strewn with russet freckles,
And towards the restless sky of your angelic eye



The Roundhouse choir are currently collaborating with the remarkable band Wildbirds and Peacedrums - concert at Union Chapel on the 27th November:



Roundhouse Choir dates: Feb 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th

“Loving is so short, the forgetting so long” - Neruda


A room filled with midday sun; dust motes, delicate and backlit are waltzing by the French windows.
I am three years old maybe, so light as to balance on the sliding paper tray of the oak desk, and then my mother scoops me onto her hip, half-hoovers, half-dances, the record player's needle undulating gently to the swell of a guitar.
At dusk, my brother Daniel and I sit on stools at the foot of the large arm chair as she reads books to us: Burglar Bill, Moving Molly, The Tiger that came to Tea. She had to us as children, an indefinable magic, so playful and willing to enter into the worlds we'd imagine into being. Night blue eyes, a coltish face, a brush of dark, wilful hair; small but mannish hands (“peasants' hands", she'd say proudly).
Beyond the French windows, our garden, the golden lozenges of evening light on grass, honeysuckle by the shed, the pine that seemed to stretch to the clouds, and that Daniel and I believed was the very one described “when the tree bends, the cradle will rock”.

When I was born, Daniel - 16 months older – embraced my arrival from the start, and I think that is a testament to the outflow of love, never rationed, so absolute, that our mother gave us.
I, in turn, wanted to be Daniel, and despite secretly coveting those patent Mary-Janes that I had seen at Clark's, gleaming and hard like boiled sweets, requested red velcro trainers instead, to match my brothers'. Almost every photo finds us side by side, smiling shyly, conspirators, twins. I remember shared codes, magic words, signs and short hands invented to seal off our unique universe. Radio programmes that we presented on cassette tape to our captive imaginary audience, I always the impulsive one, and sweet Daniel, the calmer voice of reason. Despite everything that came to pass later, it was that love between us - familiar to me as my own skin - that I could sometimes, painstakingly, call him back towards even after words had lost all meaning, even when his face and hands shook with the effort of being alive.

How one evening we covered the floor in islands of books, pirates leaping over treacherous stretches of sea-carpet, fishing for sea horses, which I knew to be elegant and melancholy.
How some anxious nights as a child I would crawl into Daniel's bed awaiting our mother's homecoming, ears strained for the unmistakeable harmonics of her car pulling up – it's prow safe to harbour.
And how, smelling of winter air and white wine and perfume, she'd climb the stairs and kiss us goodnight, laughing fondly at our relief for her return.

*

When I was 6, we moved without much warning into a new place with our mother's fiancé, Michael, and all was upended; Daniel and I were separated into different rooms, on different floors within that cavernous damp house. Our mother retreated to her bedroom, furiously tapping out multiple drafts of her theatre script, and drifting about us with a newly distracted air. Michael went away a lot to Turkey, or China, and returned with novel gifts - golden candlesticks, fez hats, frankincense. He taught me how to count to ten in Cantonese, and the fundaments of chess. But other than that, Daniel and I weren't entirely sure what he was there for.
At the back of the house, the yard was marshy and dark, and a magnolia tree dominated it's small lawn. A few days of glory, and then it's pale candelabra fell upon the turf, rotting and grey for weeks to come. One day, our mother burst into tears. I remember the curtains pulled to, despite the daylight, rows of overlapping daisies that in that moment made me feel both angry and sorry for their unknowing ugliness. We stood flanking her, unsure, afraid, an edifice quietly crashing down. Does every child feels that way the first time they see their parent cry?
The sudden awareness of an incomprehensible, adult terrain in the midst of the known.
She left Michael and we moved on again.

*

Our mother was never one for conforming which was bound to make for a childhood full of excruciating episodes. The complaining in restaurants and haggling over prices, the unrestrained crying or laughing so publicly and unpredictably; in short, unforgivably Middle-Eastern, a constant affront to the esoteric laws of English propriety to which my brother and I were acutely sensitive. The inexpert pliés and arabesques of her free dancing made us writhe with shame, always the smoking (John Player extra mild), hippy rebel to her bourgeois origins.
Contradiction articulated in that fine boned face and stubby hands: Cleopatra inking blue black lines onto lids, mouth just ajar with the strain of a steady hand, exquisitely feminine, artfully seductive. But this, we knew, was a temporary ruse for the man of the hour. Her real self swore like a sailor, drove demonically down bus lanes at the height of rush hour traffic, rejoiced barefoot and toe-deep in tile grout, crouched among the dusty matrix of wires and valves, the aortas that pumped life about her ever-changing homes.

Three years now since I touched her face, and sang close to her ear, and dabbed her lips with wet cloth. And even half-paralysed, her right arms busied itself about me, her only daughter, tugging my t-shirt to ensure that no draught could chill my lower back.


[Death is a foreign country. It is anywhere but here. Ships sight it dimly, a purple horizon smudged into the shore, such deceptive shallows; it's sun a cold, white sliver, pushing through the herniated disc of the clouds.

A foot tapping over, over, counting out the weeks, and months, blank mouths, no time. Unending and never beginning.
Horatio to Hamlet: The ghost that 'might deprive your sovereignty of reason/And draw you into madness'.
We hid secrets among crockery and went stealing through the sleeping house.
Daniel in the Lion's Den: “God has Judged Me”
You who carried me through a field of nettles despite the stingers that welted your legs, both of us too small to see the lichen gate that eventually led us to safety. Beloved Daniel.


I awake with a sun breaking in my heart, it's yolk in my mouth].

Sometimes you come rushing over like a river
And leave me breathless
Sometimes I am overcome and underdone
By your doubts and your purpose

Sometimes you come rushing over like a river
And leave me speechless
Sometimes I am overcome and underdone
By your senselessness

You gather me like flowers
And leave me on the hillside
You gather me like flowers
And leave me cold


You gather me like flowers
And leave me on the hillside
You gather me like flowers
And leave me torn

You would be more constant
But you've forgotten how
I would be more patient
If I had peace somehow

I saw a grey bird
Rise and fall like thunder
I saw your fingers
Rise and fall like hunger
I saw you fingers fall away like
Shadows in the last hour of the day

Sometimes you come rushing over like a river
And leave me stranded
Sometimes I am underground not heavenbound
In your embraces

You gather me like flowers
And leave me on the hillside
You gather me like flowers
And leave me torn

You would be more constant
I know, I know you lost the faith
I would be more patient
But I don't recognise my face

How can we find a peace between us
When we're always crossing lines
When we're always hiding and fucking
And firing and touching at the same time

I saw a grey bird
Rise and fall like thunder
I saw your fingers
Rise and fall like hunger
I saw you fingers fall away like
Shadows in the last hour of the day

Directed by Ryan Foregger (www.burntfacejake.com)

It was my total pleasure to hijack the gorgeous Steinway in the old brownstone that was Baeblemusic's HQ the other week...with wonderful Noah Hoffeld.





The full session is up on www.baeblemusic.com