THE DEEP POOL - March 2007

It's nearly showtime for Jackie for the first time in 2007 – next week I play John Dee in Oslo, Norway on March 7 th , then The Tower Arts Centre, Winchester, UK on Friday March 9 th . I've started learning new songs for both shows, sitting at home singing them at the time of night I'll be onstage, to hone my voice ‘ready for action'. I'll be playing songs from Oh What A Blow That Phantom Dealt Me! but also Doll By Doll songs as Warner finally release the first four Dolls albums individually in April. As I write, Phantom has entered the Norwegian chart at 82, just above Eminem don't ya know, and all four Dolls albums are in the Amazon pre-order chart in the twenties. It may not sound like much, but at this early stage, they are both great signs…

The Tower in Winchester is a lovely venue, with a small friendly bar selling small friendly drinks – there's a real sense of occasion in the theatre itself, and for some reason I always learn things about myself from performances there – songs suddenly sound different – I remember why I wrote a particular line, and questions afterwards from in the foyer from audience members are acute, like being grilled by the very best German interviewers. Oh yes, and afterwards we always go to a Nepalese restaurant  in this most charming of small Cathedral cities.

   I was in Berlin some days ago – the major radio statio there, Radio Eins, had made Phantom its album of the week, so Colette my redoubtable media manager chaperoned me to their studios in Potsdam to play some late night songs and talk about the weather. While I was there I was interviewed by Holger, one of their presenters, who always brings terrifyingly strong whiskies to the studio for our annual get-togethers. This time he brought one which, the label said, was ‘from Islay' and that's all it told you about its provenance. Islay has more good whiskies to its name than any other island anywhere, so I was interested to see if the Leven whisky-nose was still operational and could identify this particular over-strength bastard. It was Port Ellen, my favourite of these salty, seaweedy waters of life – I no longer drink whisky because it turns me into an axe-wielding homicidal maniac, but I made an exception here, lolling in my studio chair, listening to Lucinda Williams wondering if her man might be in Tuscon – heartbreakingly beautiful songs from her new album ‘West' –a strong Jackie recommendation.

   Holger then surprised me by giving me the most wonderful present – a whole set of airline sickbags belonging to airlines from the far east which I did not know. Some I was aware of, but had nevertheless not managed to collect, like Thai, and Bangkok Airways. These two were quite boring from a design point of view (although still very collectable) – others were most exotic and will doubtless cause jealousy when I present them at the next World Sickbag Covention in Riga later this month. Yangon Airways – don't know where this, or some others are actually from, maybe Burma, is a mustard coloured bag with a red happy flying winged elephant on the front. Most unusually, this bag is not liquid-proof in itself, so it has a protective secondary polythene bag inside. Unfortunately, whoever designed this bag had not really thought through the practical implications – the polythene only extends halfway down the bag and is thereby a small bag inside a big bag – if you were being sick in this bag you would fill it up very quickly and would most likely need a second or third (depending on how ill you were – a foreigner in Burma? – you could be in for the big hughie). Knowing airlines as I do, your chances of quickly making a Burmese flight attendant understand that you needed many more sickbags WHILE VOMITING, and the flight attendant complying with your request ‘in time' are next to nil. You can imagine the scene – horrified petite dainty women in blue silk print dresses frantically trying to get away from you on an overheated full flight as, bleeuurgghh!!!, that crab and chilli noodle dish you were dubious about at the airport café comes frothing over the top of your inadequate bag, cascading like a stinking hot volcanic flow through your fingers and onto the flying elephant patterned aisle carpet. Yes, this bag is a talkingpoint, of this there is no doubt, and I look forward to passing it round for inspection at the hotel bar in Riga.

   Other good ones too – Eva Air (!?), and one that just says air sickness bag in another language -‘Beg Mabuk Udara'. I like that – ‘mabuk' is obviously someone's word for ‘sick', and it sounds like it too – ‘MABUK!' – I can just see a Japanese guy leaning against a wall at night outside a London pub making this noise – it's so amusing how noises you would think were universal, like that of throwing up, actually sound different in different parts of the world. The Scottish barf for instance, is highly individual, a kind of ‘booaAAaargggg!!' (always stressed in mid-flow) and not at all like the noise made by Welsh gentlemen outside fish and chip shops in Cardiff after rugby matches, even though these two nations have a common celtic root.

   Anyway, Holger could tell I was really pleased, and I sat there answering his friendly questions on air, a glass of Port Ellen in one hand and my new sickbags in the other and I suddenly felt happy to be alive…

We were staying on the Ku'dam, the main street of the old west Berlin, at the Hotel California, such a lovely place, and the next morning, after having my photo taken next to a bronze statue of a bear shitting into a MacDonald's box, Colette and I went for lunch to a buzzy Italian restaurant next to the hotel. We'd had dinner there the night before – at one point a most regal elderly Italian gentleman arrived with an entourage of stunning women and sneering expensively-suited geezers. ‘Maestro!' exclaimed our waiter going to take the gent's hand and then bowing deeply. It was an impressive performance all round – the women were wearing tight black and white houndstooth tweed jackets and the kind of make-up you associate with Italian films from the Sixties. I liked them a lot – they were so clearly members of a superior tribe and it was important to them that everybody appreciated this. When we sat down for lunch the next day, to my surprise the chief tweed jacket lady was there again, sitting next to us – again.

‘That woman's here again!' I said to Colette.

‘So are we' she said opening her menu.

But something else was happening in the room. It felt like some event had ocurred maybe minutes before we arrived and now the room was adjusting to life after the event. In one corner a waiter was banging his head repeatedly with his serving tray – a kind of ‘thoong' sound as the thin metal slapped against the gel holding his spiky hair in place. Other waiters carried themselves through the full room with the air of men who had just won a fortune, but were prepared to serve one last spaghetti carbonara before taking off their apron and going to the nearest BMW showroom.  

Our waiter brought us two glasses of prosecco and I asked him about the atmosphere this lunchtime. He explained: it was the end of the Berlin Film Festival, those guys laughing goodnaturedly in the corner were colleagues of the American actor George Clooney -George had just left the building. Before he left he had politely complimented houndstooth lady on her beautiful jacket – she had thanked him with dignity and restraint, then swiftly returned to her conversation with her male companion, a rich young fool who had clearly never worked in his life.     

   I love these German cities – do I say this all the time? Hamburg, Berlin, Hannover, Dortmund – in one interview a guy asked me, no doubt understandably suspicious that I may just go all over the world in Hollywood vein saying ‘I LOVE your city!' what it was about German cities that I thought was so great. I thought about this, and I remembered how when I was very young in Scotland, in packets of cigarettes you got little collectable cards with line drawings of scenes from cities like Leipzig (the one I most admired) Dusseldorf, Munich etc and how, living as I did in rural Scotland, these depictions came to epitomise the souls of great cities. I still see them through that child's eyes – the murderous beauty of Hamburg main railway station, the ferocious bustle of downtown Dusseldorf, the austere squares of Leipzig – I could look at them forever. The reporter asked me what the hell these cards were doing in Scottish cigarette packets. Between us we concluded that they were luring in the next generation of smokers – ‘Here-ye-are-son – Stuttgart this time'. I don't smoke, swear or bet on horses – oh fuck, I've left my fags in the bookies – that's a crap old joke from the Sixties….by the way, the Welsh word for bookie is buki – you learn something every day round here.

   So now, at the end of the week, I shall be going to a funeral along the coast in the town of Poole in Dorset. A very good old friend of mine has died peacefully at the end of a long life – we should be so lucky. His name is Mortz, and he let me live in his house a long time ago when I was a mess. I spent most of a year sitting in his kitchen slowly writing the songs that would form the basis of my Doll By Doll output, walking to the beach, and being surrounded by kind and colourful people. It was a blessed time and Mortz put up with me with a careful eye and a measured word. In his later life it was a thrill to see him at shows in Bournemouth and Poole – he was a connection to that simpler time when the world stopped for a while so I could get off and recover from chronic motion sickness. For this Mortz, I thank you from the bottom of my heart – you taught me that it was possible, indeed necessary, to see the world with a gentle eye, and I shall remember this as I stand in the Bricklayer's Arms and look out at the church across the road.

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