THE DEEP POOL - OCTOBER 2004

The Half Moon, Putney, 13th October, will be my only solo show of this year in London (well, i'll have bass player Kevin Foster, and Deborah Greenwood there too, as well as Sir Vincent Lone, singing songs from his October release album Songs For Lonely Americans), and will be my last solo London appearance till the same time next year - this is something that i'm able to predict from this distance, looking at my already daunting schedule. Oh, and i'll be playing lots of new songs. I mention this merely because we unaccountably left this show off the live-work update last month. Other than that, i'm looking forward to visiting Aberdeen, Leeds, Glasgow, Brighton, and Poole, then going to Dartmoor to routine/record new songs with Michael Cosgrave. What with my DVD 'The Meeting Of Remarkable Men' coming out in October, and with private trips to Lebanon and The Hebrides, it's going to be quite a month. The only thing i hate is coming into cities on trains when it's already dark: i don't know what this aversion is all about - i've had it for years but it's getting worse. I start to get really anxious, almost afraid, that something is going badly wrong, but i don't know what. It's just the same old station - i know where i am, and everyone else on the train is just eating chocolate and staring into space, or reading Chat magazine - 'my brother-in-law cut my ears off when i refused to sleep with his budgie'. So i make a big effort to get to the next destination in fading light so i can sit around my hotel watching Countdown while fondling a new set of guitar strings. 'Another consonant please Carol' - 'thank you Bob - 'D'! Once the only words i could manage were 'fugaffyicumt, and i kept wondering if they would find this in the dictionary as an old Lowland (Lallans) Scots word or two. Countdown has been consoling me for decades in funny bars all over Britain - i first became aware of it whilst drinking Brains Bitter in an old-time pub in Cardiff, and i thought in my addled state that it was a Welsh programme, and went around saying 'they've got this amazing Welsh programme in Wales called Countdown', then one day in someone's house in London, 'OH WOW! - they've got Countdown in England now - it must be the only Welsh programme on English TV!' (the usual funny looks and whispered explanations - 'he takes quite a lot of drugs y'know'...).

I've just returned from Bangor in Wales where i was editing and mixing the Ian Rankin/Jackie Leven live album, recorded in Edinburgh earlier this year. This i was doing with my good friend and colleague David Wrench. David makes better records than me, for a label called Storm, and he was showing me his array of white leather suits which the record company bought him for stage - i was imagining calling Cooking Vinyl - 'yeah, i was thinking of getting a few white leather suits made - why a few? - well the cuffs and extremities will get dirty real fast, and it would be important to image continuity that the suit looked pristine at all times on stage, hence...'

We went for a few drinks in a great pub in Bangor called The Bellevue (there was no view, except of a Chinese chip shop). I got there early so sat reading my current book 'Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky' by Patrick Hamilton. This is an amazing big book - how the guy could know enough at 25 to write this, i just don't comprehend. Set in a pub in Euston Road, London, in the '30's, it's a weaving of the stories of various underclass types, which is wonderful, but the long and rich descriptions of London pub life and street life, before television etc, in this era, are pure magic. Interesting small things, like that even the lowliest pubs had waiter service at this time, like in the rest of Europe, or is that just, like in Europe?

Patrick Hamilton wrote a shorter, more celebrated book with largely the same horrible plot, called Hangover Square, and that's a good place to start reading him, but if you like that, don't miss the one i'm reading now...

So there i was, sitting reading, cheerful friendly young girls behind the bar - one of them even showed me her nipple piercing - no, that's not true, but i heard her discussing it with her mates: at first i thought i was reading this in the book, and i'm thinking 'fucking hell, there was nipple piercing back then - well, why shouldn't there have been?' - then i realised i was conflating the book and the barmaid.

Also in the bar was a geezer who was boring another bloke shitless by talking about a new book which was the 'LAST WORD IN CURRENT NEUROSCIENCE DEVELOPMENT'. I could tell his victim was close to tears, and he had to keep admitting that he hadn't a clue what Brainiac was on about, so Brainiac kept looking at him with a contrived look of pity and amazement - 'you don't see how that works, even though you're doing old MacMurder's course?' (presumably at Bangor University) - 'RIGHT!' - (gets out piece of paper and pen, victim now in complete despair and putting empty crisp packet over his head) - 'IF we accept that' - starts scribbling furiously - 'you STILL can't see that?' - 'well look, if you ever want to come round and spend some time on this'...(pats terrified bloke's knee, bloke with knee gets up and leaves mumbling hurried and inept civilities...

God, please don't let me be next i thought, as Brainiac cast his eye round the room, then alighted on the only other customer - 'Hi! - how's the bookshop going - have you got two minutes?'

'Only two' said the new guy in a kind of Welsh Clint Eastwood 'don't fuck with me' voice. Brainiac paid no attention to this, just got out his piece of paper and started explaining what an idiot the other bloke had been not to understand this amazing advance in neuroscience.

At this point David entered the pub from an unusual door, swept over, long white hair flowing like the man in my song Mansion Tension (from Control) and we had a big hug, then sat down to discuss latest amazing advances in psycho-accoustic studio devices - 'it makes Aphex look like gaslighting' said David. I'd just spent four hours in the world of gaslight, courtesy of my book, so this remark intrigued me. It also intrigued Brainiac who was beginning to work out that Welsh Clint was on the verge of dumping him unceremoniously. He started casting longing neuro-glances in our direction, but then David was suddenly describing an audience he had played to in Scotland which had been savagely smashed, and this description was so virulently heavy that i felt Brainiac back off, badly alienated by David's lovingingly garish phrase-making.

'I've got some Czechoslovakian absinthe in the house' David told me - 'oh and if you leave your bedroom door open, Syd will come in and bite your feet - he loves feet'.

This was too much for Brainiac who went in the other bar to watch football. Syd is David's ginger tom by the way....

I just wrote this stanza: 'i couldn't get out of the mystery wood/ i once loved a woman who wished i could'...

I'm writing like a maniac - it just keeps pouring out, just keeps pouring out - i'm going to Leeds tomorrow to play a show with Michael Weston King and Sir Vincent Lone. Next day i'm in Aberdeen, a fabulous city that i ain't played in for some time. I remember playing at The Lemon Tree in Aberdeen some years ago, and i had to introduce Will Oldham onstage. He didn't want to be introduced, so i said fine, just go onstage. As i left his dressing room he said - 'Wait'...

I turned back.

He said 'Maybe you could just say - 'Will Oldham - Songs'.

I said fine, that's what i'll do. I went out and thus introduced him to a VERY smashed audience. There was applause, then silence. Will started stumming an out of tune electric guitar - for quite some time - then said to the crowd - 'This song's called - 'You've got cum in your hair and your dick's hanging out'. This deepened an already worrying silence. I feared the worst...

When Will finished, the crowd gave a him a powerful, sustained ovation, to, frankly, my amazement and relief. This is a bunch of people who really know what's what and bring a forensic power of soul to any occasion, turning it into a real ritual, as opposed to the mere ceremonial.

The weather is neither warm nor cold - if you think it's cold, you sweat like a bastard; if you think it's warm, you get 'flu.

I've been re-reading Boris Pasternak - i was surprised to notice that a line i love of his is not, as i thought, 'life is not a walk across a snowy field' - it's 'life is not a walk across a field'.

For some reason i brought snow into the image: i guess the field Boris was thinking of could have been snowy, but the fact is he didn't say it was, so it makes me think of a very clogged up slushy February field in which your feet get stuck, cold hard rain is driving into your face, and nobody is waiting for you - anywhere - in a world that manages to think and turn without you.

jl