my life as a artist
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dreaming of a white easter
Wednesday 26th March 2008 12:03 AM
On Good Friday the Corinthians celebrated, and at the same time illustrated the reasons behind, Vic's imminent departure to Australia, by playing a game of football in outrageous arctic conditions. Our hail-stung flesh singing, eyes creased against the icy blast, we trudged across the endless frozen wastes of that polar nightmare. The last I saw of Derek was when he said he was going up for a corner, and that he might be some time.
On Wholly Saturday I did a gig at the Winning Post with the fabulous Travelling Libraries. The as-advertised 'free raffle with disappointing prizes' went much better than I expected, with the prizes turning out to be surprisingly exciting and desirable. Fourth prize was a battery-operated, three-inch diameter disco ball and a bar of Swiss chocolate.
'If that's fourth prize, what the hell's going to be first prize?' I could hear the audience thinking. Third prize was a book called 'Psychic Warrior', the true story of the CIA's paranormal espionage programme, and a swede, which I claimed was the head of the programme. Second prize was a cafetiere, courtesy of my mum's magic cupboard, complete with a small sachet of 'Dewy Egbert' coffee, and another bar of silky smooth, seventy per cent, mm, it's really lovely, Swiss chocolate.
After presenting the second prize to a nice man, who I honestly felt would honour the chocolate and cherish the cafetiere, I showed the audience the first prize, which was twelve of my mum's biscuits, six almond and lemon, six chocolate chip, presented in a daringly see-through, crush-proof plastic carton. The tension in the room was palpable, but unfortunately, I didn't have a palp. As arranged, my sister, Rachael, won the biscuits, and we met up later at a motorway service station, and she gave me them back.
On Sunday I got Mark the farmer to put a huge boulder in front of the caravan door, and stayed in bed all day, doing crosswords. On Monday morning he rolled away the stone, and I rose again, and went unto the newsagent, to buy a Guardian. Although the mystery of Golgotha hung in the air, Greg-behind-the-counter was still keen to know if I'd had sex the previous night.
Posted 12:03 AM | 5 Comments | Permalink
street life
Monday 17th March 2008 6:45 PM
Two years ago, James Street was a dead-end street. He was going nowhere, except to some death-grey industrial units, and the council tip. He wanted to go to Layerthorpe, but couldn't be arsed, so instead, he petered out onto a concrete, grass-scabbed wasteland, boarded off with pale ginger chipboard, and sulked.
James Street was scruffy, lonely and unlived in, and because of his disability, was shunned, and sometimes abused, by the other roads and streets in the area. Even the cycle-path turned her nose up at him. He'd tried getting some traffic lights at his junction with the Hull Road, and he'd had his tip modernised, but he still felt inadequate and alone. Maybe he should change his name to Jim and grow a moustache?
One day last spring, I collected all the broken dreams and useless fantasies from my secret shed, put them in the back of the Mazda, and decided to take them to the council tip. When I turned into James Street, I was amazed to see that at the bottom, in place of the usual chipboard amputation scar, there was now a long, flowing, new limb of fresh tarmac, stretching out towards undreamt of vistas, and Layerthorpe.
It was all so thrillingly disorientating that instead of turning off to the tip, I found myself, and all my broken dreams, driving down this strange new road, on a journey whose destination was deliciously unknown. I was drunk on wonder, and if there was such a thing as a spiritual breathalyser, I could have been arrested for driving while under the influence of mystery. Through the warp and weft of existence we rode that rebel thread, until, in a tumultuous fusion of ending and beginning, we spliced into the silken continuity of Hallfield Road, just off Layerthorpe.
What incentive, I wondered, could James Street have had to make such a remarkable transformation? What primal urge could have enthused such a dowdy, dead-end street to suddenly, and magically, blossom forth like a Glastonbury thorn? A few months later I had my answer, when huge billboards appeared on the old wasteland, announcing the arrival of a new wasteland, in the form of a giant Morrison's superstore.
In the years before he started up in the super-market business, Jim Morrison used to sing in a band called The Doors, and I distinctly remember him at the time, urging us to 'break on through to the other side'. If I'd have known he was talking about going shopping, I suspect I would have been less inclined to dabble in drugs.
Despite my disappointment with the gross commercialisation of the music biz, myself and the Travelling Libraries are still going to charge people five pounds to watch us perform at The Winning Post, on the Bishopthorpe Road, York, this coming Saturday, at 8:30pm.
With it being Easter Saturday, I thought it'd be a fitting time to resurrect the band. Chip Phatt'll be on bass, Ry Veeter on lead guitar, Bryn the Welsh wizard on dwarf clarinet, fiddle, accordion and sleigh-bells, and yours truly on vocals, guitar, harmonica and air Hammond organ. There'll be a free raffle with disappointing prizes, and hopefully a couple of new songs, including 'Fulford Prison Blues'. Be there or be oblong.
Posted 6:45 PM | 8 Comments | Permalink
first poo now spit
Friday 7th March 2008 10:38 PM
Shepherds pies rarely have shepherds in them, except, maybe, in the Todmordon area, but rather contain the object of the shepherds care and protection, i.e. sheep. Similarly, I expected bird's-nest soup to be made of eggs, or maybe even tiny little birds, and was very surprised to discover that it really is made out of bird's nests.
The nest in question is the home of the swiftlet, a small swift from South East Asia that fashions cup-like dwellings on the sides of cave walls. The swiftlet builds its nest like the swallow, but instead of using bits of mud, it uses its own spit, which hardens into a sort of semi-opaque plaster-board material. A nest takes about a month to build, and I don't know what sort of a percentage the bird's on, but I'm told that a kilo of it can fetch up to £5,000.
To be honest, I'd never really thought of spit as a food product before, not even in my famished years, but I was so impressed by the incredibly high price it commanded, and the fact that it was vegetarian, that I thought it might be worth experimenting with spit from different animals.
Although Jimmy the donkey and Poppy the dog would have provided an obvious, ready source of saliva, I was after something a bit classier, so, with Mark the farmer's permission, I've collected and dried about ten grams of chicken-spittle from some of the Old English bantams in the yard. It's been a tricky and time-consuming operation with mixed results.
On the one hand, as a food product, you can't get away from the fact that it tastes like dried bird spit, and I'm not convinced it's got much nutritional value either, but on the other hand, I've got much closer to the chickens, and because of it's novelty value, I managed to sell three grams of it to Greg-behind-the-counter at the newsagent, for fifteen quid.
The relationship with my flow of income from art and literature, or 'our Flo', as I like to call her, has always been capricious at the best of times, but last month we had a blazing row and she left me, and she won't answer her mobile. I said that I thought she lacked a sense of humour and was too materialistic, and she told me that she thought I was vain, selfish and lazy.
Then she smiled mockingly, and gave me a cheque from the Performing Rights Society. It was related to one of my songs, 'Eric Cantona', being played on a karaoke machine somewhere in Hong Kong, and was for two pounds seventeen pee, and in retrospect I wish I'd kept it and bought some sweets, but I was impassioned and wanted to make a statement, so I gave it her back and, rather childishly, suggested that she give it to Paul McCartney instead.
A man's got needs, and until I can win back 'our Flo', with a concerted display of humility, selflessness and hard work, it looks like I might have to go with another flow, and sell spit. I'll still keep writing the blogs, of course, and I promise that soon I'll try to do one that's not about waste body products.
Posted 10:38 PM | 8 Comments | Permalink
