THE DEEP POOL

 A leisurely lunch at the Hotel Neptune in Bergen, Norway with my good friends Frank Nes and his lovely wife Randi and Frank Ostevold. Outside cars writhed up the slight hill from the quayside, spraying left and right in the Bergen rain - inside we talked lanquidly of many things over excellent coffee. I asked how my old friend Rolf Seyersted was doing - Rolf is a kindly bear of a man who looked after me on tour some years back, and i hadn't seen him yet on my Scandinavian trip. Frank and Frank assured me that Rolf was well and doing fine - 'he's managing a parrot' said Frank Nes.

'He's what?'

'He's managing a parrot'.

'What kind of parrot - is it alive?' - a stupid sort of question i know, but i had to start somewhere, and, of course, i was wondering if the parrot was a Norwegian Blue, as featured so memorably in the Monty Python sketch. 

'No, it's not alive' said Frank Nes - 'it's a puppet, but really quite famous here in Norway - on television a lot: it's called Gullars and it has a bad attitude - it's a bit like Phil Mitchell from Eastenders, and Rolf's doing really well with it.' I must have been looking bemused because Frank Ostevold said ' We can send you a photo of Rolf and Gullars if you don't believe us'.

It wasn't that i didn't believe them, just that, well, i guess that's Norwegians for you - you just never know what they're going to say next...

BERGEN - i know i've said it many times before, but what a city. There's a bar there called Borsen, actually a beautiful space in a warm wooden way, but with a dark local reputation as a hangout of desperadoes of both sexes, fishermen on terminal benders, and other colourful assorted members of the lost tribes. I love it and always go there when i have some time to myself in Bergen - not to get smashed, but to politely watch the constant amazing to-ing and fro-ing of the denizens.

I went into Borsen one evening quite late. Men sat alone talking to themselves and the bar was going through a quiet phase. Along one wall, the wall which faced the sea, some fifty-ish years-old women sat in a row with a couple of very subdued younger men. One woman in particular, with frizzled blonde hair was clearly some sort of star in this world. She unquestionably had 'presence' as is said of horses, and real, solid charisma. She looked like the crying woman in the famous Picasso painting, maybe of that name - The Crying Woman - i can't remember, with the same harrowing facial faultlines, like a mirror cracked by unresolved and unresolvable grief. She was holding court in no uncertain manner, and every man that entered the bar, she called them over, and they gladly took the seat in front of her, nodding with respect as she questioned them, replying with care until she was satisfied with what she was being told. Other, much more dramatically destroyed women sat on either side, watching these exchanges as if hypnotized, making muted whispered interjections which the queen acknowledged with the faintest of sideways eye flickers. It was a fantastic display of mystery - when the men were dismissed from this company, they made their way to the bar with the universal rolling gait of the permanently drunk, seeming to be slowly falling backwards, like a bale of hay falling off the back of a trailer, whilst actually moving forward - maybe this is where Michael Jackson got his idea about moonwalking or whatever the stupid shitbag calls it.

STOCKHOLM -  Later on tour i was in Stockholm where i was staying on a hotel ship called The Red Boat. Or rather i wasn't. I checked in - the Red Boat was beautiful, and i stood admiring it as the receptionist took my details. She handed me a key with a smile and i said 'where is my cabin?'

She said 'You're staying on the White Boat, which is the next boat along'.

I had noticed the White Boat as i came on board the Red Boat - a gang of Danish death metal teenage boys was just leaving it, making that death metal sound - 'WHHHOOOAAAARRRRGGHHHH', and i had thought to myself 'thank god i'm not staying on that shitheap'.  

And now here i was - sitting in a tiny cabin in dim light, unable to fathom the heating system and without the energy to make my bed which was just a collection of sheets and blankets piled on top of each other. I was starting to feel like Michael Palin in the footage you never see of him, when he's depressed in Stockholm harbour on a horrible boat, sitting on the edge of his bunk with a syringe full of heroin and his sleeve rolled up. There was a knock on my unlocked cabin door, so i said 'Come in'.

I heard the receptionist outside say 'Do you have some of your clothes on?' I did - not all of them - i rarely wear eight shirts at the same time.

'Yes'

The receptionist carefully opened the door, not looking in the room in case it was a trick and i was naked with a rolled up map of Stockholm sticking out of my arse.

'This came for you' she said, waving a white letter in my direction - i knew what it was - instructions from my Swedish record company about the location of the whisky tasting we were doing the next day with a food and drink magazine. I was going to discuss my ten favourite whiskies of the world and i had brought a bottle of Leven's Lament with me, which would come in at number ten.

'Thank you' i said, taking the letter and sitting down again, heavily on my unmade bunk. I could feel the receptionist lingering in the doorway, but was too dejected to turn my head and find out why.

'You have not made your bed - you will feel better if you make your bed' she said with what felt like a discreet note of pity.

'I will make it in a minute' i said - 'i'm just sitting here for a while'.

'Don't you know how to make it?'

Fucking great - i'm too down to move and now a Swedish feminist hotel receptionist is asking me if i'm such a geezer i don't know how to put a sheet on bed. 

'I know what to do - i just have not done it yet' i replied - it sounded like a very strange sentence, something you might insist should be on your gravestone whilst being aware that it wasn't funny, clever, or anything at all.

'I am going to make your bed - then you will feel better'.

A unexpected but moving offer from the receptionist - she bustled into the room and began swishing the sheets around. The cabin was, as i have said, very small indeed, and suddenly, without any motion on my part she reversed her bum into my dick as she flurried with the undersheet. She stopped and looked round at me quickly - 'this is only going to work if you stand outside the cabin'.

I nodded - 'yes, of course, so sorry - i do appreciate your helping like this - i was just a bit stuck'.

'Quite so' she retorted, now turning back and putting on my pillowcase - she was finished less than two minutes later, and as she left she said ' there is another blanket under the bed if you get cold tonight - there is a wind coming from Russia'.

It was the kindness of strangers, and i remembered that i was lucky to be alive. Like in Old West African Song on my album Fairytales For Hardmen - 'To be alive to hear this song is a victory'...

MUNSTER - I re-read my Deep Pool from this time last year in Munster the other day, just after the death of my mother. And now here i was, back at Augenweide Gallerie, playing for 3 nights, and being cared for by the deeply-loving Judith and Rolf Ruckert-Schramm who run this remarkable gallery. On this occasion they gave me an apartment to stay in which was next door to the gallery. Germany was having a heatwave of sorts, and for 3 days i sat on the small balcony, thinking about my dead parents, and all my friends in the world. Strangely i often think that i have no friends, but i don't know what i mean to myself when i think like this - maybe sometimes there is a loneliness which cannot be filled by human beings, and which possibly should not be filled at all - it's the space that counts. Maybe i just think i miss an intensity of exchange with men, an intensity i imagine i used to have, but then again, maybe this is part of getting older, and you have to steady yourself toward some extremely serious challenges,and move away from the very idea of such friendships.

I've been reading some of the books by the English writer Graham Greene, books which i have always resisted reading in the past - i particularly liked Brighton Rock, an awful story about hopeless teenagers in the 1930s in the English seaside town of Brighton. The language used by the teenagers, as evinced by Greene, is so unusual -- a kind of eternal slang which allows you to see down through many centuries past to a heartbroken pre-industrial peasantry, in charge of almost nothing except hideous mistakes and a maddened desire to escape life entirely and exist as a loyal stone animal at the feet of a knight entombed in a far-flung cathedral - perhaps Exeter...(maybe Truro)...

Between Osnabruck and Munster i visited the home of Mirjam Ruckert, the wonderful woman whose painting is the cover of Elegy For Johnny Cash. Mirjam showed me around her workshops where she paints and creates the ceramics for which she is rightly feted. Beautiful rooms full of colours and ideas and an inhuman, invisible touch which i think i sometimes experience myself when an image comes to me that carries a power as impressive and impersonal as a passing whale - you're glad it didn't just kill you with a flick of its tail, but you wish you could go with it to wherever it is going - an immense and wild burst of tiny thrashing bubbles, a drenching sense of violently folding salt water, and a fading series of giant echoes that leave you with a hunger for the king.

jl