Parachute

It would seem that my parachute (see previous post) is going to cost some money. Actually, I suspected that it would initially (part of the reason why I had no interest in suggeting that the contract for my house should be dissolved.

This sucks somewhat. I either pay an extortionate amount to pay-off my commitments (a hidden surchage not clearly indicated in the initial legal document), or find new housemates but see my rent increase (presently it is subsidised by the presence of someone's boyfriend in the house).

Bugger! Don't quite understand why I seem to be ending up with some of the bill for other people's breach of contract. Message to self : don't get caught in the informal agreement with friends (or rather now ex-friends) again!! As financially you will be kebabbed!

I'm detecting some other rather less savoury vibes from the other side at the moment too. Get over it! Wish that I had the number of Ghostbusters...they could pull these ghosts out of my life right now! But I don't have their number...and so who ya gonna call????

Apologies, in a bit of a grim mood today but will try and blog some light and happiness back here on the morrow!

Tom.

On The Road Again...And Again...And Again...

Well the brief hiatus in my seemingly doomed house is now over, and we will all be moving out at the end of January (five months before originally planned). Staying there for everyone seems to have become an impossibility. I've lost two long standing friends over it, but that's been my choice, and a very positive one.

What is it with 2005? Friends and lovers seem to be biting the dust and heading to historyville with alarming regularity. Actually though, I think that most of these outcomes have been in my hands, and generally, its been me who walked. I don't think that I've really regretted any of these decisions. I am a fortunate man. I have many friends, from many places, who are into many things. I also find it very easy to meet new people, it would be a desperate situation to cling onto people purely on the grounds of your past with them. I do ofcourse, live in the present and constantly travel into the future.

So, despite what from the outside might seem like a pretty terrible plane crash of a situation - it appears that I jumped out with a parachute and landed on top of a very soft bale of hay! I'm in great spirits (though it would help not to live with the ghosts for a couple more months), my mini-opera about a stuttering boy and a flasher is nearing completion and I'm really excited about how, finally, its all come together so easily.

I skipped my planned live show on Monday (ah well, it was only an open mic') because I wanted to sit down and do some writing. At the moment, I do my work, I drink my booze, smoke my smokes, write my music and spend a few hours writing stories. It really isn't too bad. No crisis.

I've already started speaking with a few people about relocating to somewhere else in London for late January. It would be great to be in a house of real rockers, artists and writers (rose tinted spec surely. ED.), I'd like to stay around Camden but I'm keeping an open mind. It'd be great to have a weird bohemian house, with plenty of insanity, crazy and imaginative people.

We shall see what happens, but come January it would seem that I will be on the road again!

Tom.

Catharsis?

Met up with my old friend, former housemate, and the co-writer and producer of my short film 'In Uniform'. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years. He's in London too these days. If you watched the BBC's annual Telethon 'Children In Need', then you would have seen him. He was wearing the six foot, Pudsey Bear costume (the mascot of the charity) in the London studio from where the show was hosted. He's a remarkably intelligent chap, a far more naturally poetic fellow than I have ever (or will ever) be.

I have a gig tommorrow at The Spice Of Life off Charing Cross Road in central London. Just an open mic' night, but it will be fun to play. I'm preparing my mini-opera for performance. Believe me, its going to blow a lot of people and doubters away. I just need to tighten up the lyrics a little and get the structure really polished. I've had a lot of ideas too about vocal harmonies for it too. Every now and again, I'll be on a bus, or a train, or in the shower and I'll hear a bass part in it or a drum fill. I'm quite simply full of ideas at the moment, big and small.

I've been seeing Angels recently for the first time. No, I'm not mad. I bullshit you not. And they don't have feathers and they can't (in the physical sense fly), I've just been seeing them in people who happen to cross my path. I started writing a story about this yesterday, I got 2000 words into it and then hit a brick wall. Not writers block, but I found myself attempting to amalgamate recent experiences of mine and discovered that it was going to have to be a much longer story. I seem to find this a lot with my short story writing at the moment. I start off, and then discover that there's no direction home. Much like my behaviour in public, I write too much and I talk too much.

Still though, its good to be buzzing creatively speaking at the moment.

Aside from that though, I seem to have hit the rocks in terms of my romantic aspirations. An old flame, who I'd recently become involved with again has turned to smoke and dissolved said flame. Sad. I seem to be breaking off with a lot of people at the moment. Though I think in this case, there was a mutual agreement on both sides for various reasons. For me, I couldn't see the way forward into the future. She'd have been a fantastic mother to many children for me, but I couldn't place her in the glamorous fantasies that I envisage for my future. Though that said, an image of her walking into a club two years ago with dyed red hair, a red dress and heels is still burned into the back of my retina. That was when (as now though with someone else) she was in a relationship, and we had become involved. There was a connection between us that had completely knocked my senses for six.

Frankly, when she walked into the club, and I couldn't take it - I had been in some turmoil at that time, I had seen a lot of death around me, and had been watching, desperately, many close friendships and friends dissolve like flesh into acid - so in my heavily anaethesised state I cracked. That night was pretty hellish for me. The people around me were concerned, but I'd vowed to her to keep everything a secret from the others...and so I was being dishonest with some of my closest friends, including my drummer who as a friend I loved beyond all others.

The next day, I awoke in my room, with a desperate need to get the away, out, off to somewhere else. I packed up my home studio, my guitars and headed to an empty house in the north where I knew that I could be alone. I had to borrow money to pay for the petrol there, and all that I can remember saying to myself on the 3 hour drive there was "get the hell out of there". I recited it like a mantra, I didn't even play music and hoped to find some comfort in the reassuring chug of my car's engine and the sound of the wind breaking against the windshield.

When I arrived to where I was going. I sat down. Made a hot, simple meal and drank two bottles of wine in silence. I scribled some lyrics down, and lay back feeling a great sense of release washing over me, it was sensual, like the touch of gently breaking sea water over naked feet.

The next day I recorded a venomous song. I did a fantastic job of producing it, a real technical master-piece, but as a piece of music it was like a car crash. The verse was a frenetic strum into which I threw all the fire left in my badly broken ego, I also chucked in VERY LOUD and ANGRY fills with great precision. It was a very complex piece of music. The chorus threw in an upbeat break from the violence of the verse. The lyrics were the most bitter that I've ever written, but such often is the creative product of a cathartic process.

Once I returned to the South, I thought about throwing the song at the band and letting them here the demo. I chose not too, I thought that it was pretty transparent. There was no sophisticated coding in my words, it was very transparent.

So, that was that. I wrote more here. But I don't want to post that now. I will at some-point. Its a good ending to this particular story. Its very truthful. It involves feedingback guitars and bleeding fingers.

I'll be blogging again soon.

Tom.

More Progress

Had another good night of music fun last night.

It tackled another bit of poetry that I had left over from my Warren Street days, when I was writing a lot. This piece, Young And Overly Mobile was written on a train leaving Warren Street and taking me up to the north. I remember thinking about how I seemed to again be falling into the trap of constantly moving on, and never really settling for anywhere, anyone, anything at anytime. I never really intended it as a song, but yesterday as I strummed away I found a really tasty little melody and put the words to music. It all fitted very nicely.

My process at the moment is to work in solitude. I run just one microphone into my multi-tracker and if I find something that I think could be worth keeping then I just press the "record" button and take whatever I get. The definition is quite good. I'm not even using my AKG condenser mic' but a standard Shure SM58 vocal mic'. Amazing piece of equipment. Very versatile, and I also don't have to plug in my Phantom power supply unit. So, what I record at the moment is for reference not release, and what I figure is that I can come back to them at some-point and cut a polished demo, or if not just enjoy an afternoon of listening through them.

It really is a joy! I feel like I'm doing what I should be doing at this time.

The house is deathly silent at the moment. We shall see what happens, but whatever does won't be worse than some of the stuff that I've gone through in the past. I've still got my guiding lights and a lot of fire to throw into my life, so it could be a lot worse! There is after all, no route map to life and if the worst comes to the worst, I will no-doubt pick myself back up and find my new world in London with great aplomb.

I'm waiting to hear back from a Call Centre for a job (I went to the interview earlier today), incoming calls...so its not too bad. And the hours are flexi-time so I can fit my PR, film and music projects in and around it. It really is just a means to an end, and a temporary one at that.

I visited the 12 Bar Club in Denmark Street earlier today, a now regular haunt of mine. I love the atmosphere in there, and the staff are lovely people (who make the strongest coffee that I've EVER tasted). I tried to write down the lyrics for a song that I made up at the Sidmouth Folk Festival when I busked on the sea front, called Smuggler Sid, who has an eye for the ladies, and a bad case of rabies caught from a salty French sea-dog. 'Tis a scurvy song, argggh!

Ok. I've got a job to apply for, so I better email them. But wherever or whoever you are, I hope that your feeling good.

Tom.

Progress & Disaster

Had a strong upsurge in creative form this weekend. My hermit like existence last week has paid dividends musically speaking. I was enjoying the experience of just sitting down with an electric guitar again and playing, playing, playing. The gates have opened, and on Sunday I nearly completed my mini-opera about my characters Simple Silas & The Chevron Action Flasher.

In the space of four or five hours I wrote and recorded 5 new songs! Some of them just short ones that fit into the mini-opera and another one that I recorded as I wrote it in the space of five minutes using some lyrics that I'd written the week before. This song though, is rather downbeat. Good chords. Done on a whim. I reckon that at some-point in the future it will get recycled for something else that I do.

I recorded these tracks very simply with just one microphone, overdubbing some lead guitar on a few tracks. There is a nice little instrumental that I've worked into it too, really different from anything that I normally write (I haven't written an instrumental since I did the Overture for my musical play).

So, creatively speaking...I am flying high. Once I've polished off this opera I think that it will become a staple in my live sets...it could be great for the band. I'm playing to my strengths with it in the sense that I like to create characters, and then throw into them autobiographical stuff and bits from other people and the world that interests me.

On the disaster front...I fear that my house is heading for meltdown at the moment. There are a lot of egos flying around at the moment (including, though rather more defensively and quietly my own), and until things can be resolved (as they only ever can through balanced, mediated and fair discussion) I will enjoy my solitude, write music, seek out old friends from my phone book, and enjoy the strange trajectory that my social life is taking at the moment.

Speaking of which, I met up yesterday with my old buddy Ryan, and his lovely girlfriend Layla at the Caernarvon Castle in Camden. There was a SUPERB hard rock band on (I wouldn't have gone if I knew). Those guys were great. A veteran covers band thumping out HEAVY METAL THUNDER to the masses. The bassist had...A BUZZARD! The beautiful one-piece graphite guitar designed and played by the legendary John Entwistle of The Who. Spotting this beautiful piece of rock n roll war machinary I chatted with the bassist between songs and suggested that he should honour the much missed 'Ox'. The man did a stellar job! Though, it would have been amazing if he'd been using John's "Star Wars" type effects too.

Once again then, here I am in the middle of wonderful creative burst (for which I am truly thankful to the Almighty for because it literally keeps me alive), but at the same time with a shaky looking future in terms of where I live and who I'm around. All shall be well though. I am well equipped to handle whatever comes along I think now. Better than ever before. I feel surprisingly calm about it all, on the grand-scale of things it doesn't register (in fact, does anything that I experience register on that?)

Another amazingly bright day in England again. The sky is clear. Ray-ban weather in November. Never a bad thing.

Hope that your happy, honest and strong wherever you are.

Tom.

Misfits, we ofcourse never fit.

Another sunny day here in England today. Cold but bright.

Very clear. Like my head right now.

Went out for a run around Hampstead Heath this morning. Great stuff!

Feeling the burn...Rocky style!

The adrenalin has kept on pumping. I'm in a poetic mood today. Had a run in with a couple of my housemates earlier. Should I write about that here? Hmmm, tricky one I figure. But okay...lets do this.

So, what am I thinking about it (as with all small things there is, as ever, a complicated matrix of causes, emotions and thoughts interlinking behind the transformation of molehills into mountains). Lets cut to the chase on this one a bit more. I seem to be getting a lot of criticism recently, today I had another one and it snapped something inside of me. Its all more awkward because the criticism comes from an indivisible unit of two, good longstanding friends, but always ready to pull people up on things which don't sit so comfortably with them. But how do you balance this out, to constantly walk a tight-rope of fitting in with others expectations there is a danger. It is after all, a bloody tight-rope. Very easy to fall off at any time and hurtle to your doom.

For this reason, I don't take this approach, because if you love people then you dissolve their rough edges or things that wind you up into your love for them, because that's who they are! You don't reject them in their individuality or attempt to mould them into a perfect fitting ideal of what should be spinning on around you.

Ah, (apologies for being so coded about all this) so what does this tell me then about where I stand in all this. Its very simple, we misfits, no matter how good the break or how open the door, do not fit. It is also something that makes us a very strong breed. We have an emotional self-sufficiency that we always have to fall back on (or rather into). We become well acquainted with rejection, but still walk wide eyed into the very place in our lives where this will happen. Some of us, will offer love without condition - and then find it difficult to rationalise why everyone else doesn't. It seems so easy. I get it all for free. Its not mine, I just pass it on from far far beyond.

Well, I can handle all of this. I know where I'm heading. That is the only permenance that I can find tangible in this life. Everything else, people, places, memories, they are all temporary. Most obviously reflected in my/our own physicality - I looked this morning at my face in the shaving mirror, I noticed the lines around my eyes, the prominant flatspot on the bridge of my nose, the traces of many generations and their unique genetic make-up woven into the fabric of my flesh and bone.

You see, I was right. I am eons old. We all are. But I am ofcourse, older than chemical, physical building blocks that constitute me...walk into your soul for a moment and you will find a better idea of just how ancient we actually are. I wrote a song about this once. Long forgotten now by anyone who's ever heard me play. I found the old tape for it the other day. Interesting how truth can often seem so dark in the context of teenyboppers.

Still a misfit, and strangely because of that, everything fits into place for me with great clarity.

Have a good one. I'm off to the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square.

Tom.

Frustrated Wonders

I spent another night last night locked away in my little room. Some of the others in the house are getting annoyed, they think that I'm doing it to be anti-social or maybe melodramatic.

I, ofcourse, know different.

I've been very down (and very tired too), twelve months ago I got the shit beaten out of me. The attack was unprovoked. I woke up in hospital and had to have four teeth replaced (amazingly the NHS dentist did a near seamless job of it). I was close to losing my left eye and still had blood in it after Christmas. The weeks that followed, physically speaking, I felt like I'd been in a car accident. Exhausted. Filled with opiate based pain killers seeing very strange things in my minds eye. I figure that this is why my recent hermit like existence has come to pass, I was alone a year ago too. I needed to be. Its not contrived or deliberate. But for some reason a lot of the same vibes are going through me at the moment. Plus, I've got to give evidence at the trial on this very soon.

But its not just that. How can you explain to people your frustrations and express your anger, when you know that its unique to you. Not that these emotions are per-se, but the particular ones that I feel. They come from MY memories, MY emotions and are processed by MY head.

How do you deal with it? I'll tell you how. You pick up a guitar or a pen, and you sit there in the dark desperately trying to fight your way through it, and USING what you feel, not denying, not side-stepping, not ignoring it. So, this is what I've been doing. That, and thinking. Thinking hard. Trying to rationalise where I fit into the Almighty's scheme. I've always felt so sure, but at the moment I'm being tested.

Hmmm, tricky.

I write this to you today from Brick Lane in East London. I haven't been here since I interviewed the Boyle Family for my thesis. They are celebrated international artists, and lovely people. Old Metzger associates. In the 1960s they also did films and lightshows on tour with Hendrix and Soft Machine.

I am tossing up tonight what I will do in my little room (no, I don't mean 'tossing' in that sense), I discovered some great ideas for music last night. It was very rewarding. I didn't want to structure them into songs, I just NEEDED to play. Maybe tonight I will give myself a bonus, a half bottle of scotch whiskey. Is this wise?

I don't know. I haven't had much at all to drink this week. I AM NOT TRYING TO QUIT! I've just been force to take a break by my finances.

Ok. Hope that all is well in your world. I am re-inventing mine.

Tom.

What? Why? How? Who?

I've started taking to life a bit like a hermit.

I've really not been interested in talking to people much in the last few days. I'd rather sit in my room with the lights off and think, strum and write. I've barely had a drink in the last couple of days, and I always find this kind of experience a strange one because it takes me back into myself. Usually it reminds me of why I do like - or maybe need - to drink. It has this time too.

I find myself collapsing into my psyche. Booze is a form of self-abuse (or so a friend of mine recently pointed out when comparing it to something else that they do). I don't drink to ease a depressed mindset, I drink because it washes away frustration, anger, and self-doubt. I have these things in bucket loads...I always have, right from being very very young. So, it gives me the chance to step outside of myself - I, like a lot of us perenial misfits am self-obsessive to the border point of delusion - to drink offers me an escape.

The other thing that gives me this is the feeling of being on a stage, leaping around, and windmilling with my guitar that the blood comes out of my cut up fingers (see the pictures earlier in this blog if you don't believe me!). And at the moment, I can't do that. It gets to the point sometimes when, I can't even stand to hear music (I've always had a big reservation about watching any live band that I'm not on the bill for). Certain tracks will come on my cd player, that in better times let me fly out of my head in a fantastical, dreamlike experience - and when I'm in this kind of mood that I am now, I will HAVE to turn them off and crave silence.

Seems then that I'm caught in a trap - too hung up on the stomach twisting pain of not doing what I know I can do with a rock n roll band to not drink, and ofcourse when I do drink all the real depth that makes me good is absorbed up in this seductive, boozy haze.

The other problem is this - and this will sound really self-important and deluded to the cynics out there - I feel that I've got a duty to stop the world destroying itself. Ofcourse, I also think that we have a duty to do that, I just happen to feel very deeply about playing my part...and how I can achieve this I can only figure out from what my life experiences, emotions and dreams have told me. And for the moment (which is where one should always be in this business) that contribution has to come from rock n roll. In the future it might be films, painting or something else from the arts (because the work of an Artist is after all the vocation that chose me.

Must sound a bit crazy. But when I consider this, in my dark little, isolated space I feel like the whole world is folding in around me and that I'm to blame because I can't establish myself in a position to do what I've got to do.

On another subject, got turned down for a job today. Bollocks. Come on, give the boy a break.

Tom.

Is Swansea Heaven & London Hell?

Was watching The League Of Gentlemen last night. Tubbs, the wife of the local shop owner always believed that London was HELL on earth outside for the local people of Royston Vesey, and believed that Swansea was heaven. A promised land. Well, she was heavily inbred and sheltered so maybe that's how she came to the conclusion on the latter. Swansea? Heaven?

Hmmm, don't think so. Though I've always been keen on Welsh Lamb. Pity that the valleys are now flooded with multi-national telecommunication companies now (I think that Deutsche Telecom and Telefonica have got a big place there). Welsh is the fastest growing new (or rather old new) language in the world at the moment. Baffling.

As for London being hell, okay...we're not perfect. Its true that the hard winter is being made a lot harder with a the noise of the building work that's going on (and when you look around you realise that there's some budget m'larky going down, because the things that need to be fixed really aren't being fixed), but nonetheless, its not a bad place. You have a lot of stuff on your doorstep which is good, and for me anyway, a lot of people I used to know at university seem to have migrated here. Which is good (though I do seem to constantly be falling back in with people that I never thought I would see again).

Its quite bright out today. Went for drinks last night in a pub on Hampstead Heath (and drank the cheapest brown ale that they had). I think that its the call centre for me...tragic though it is, I think that its got to be done if I'm going to stay in this game.

What to do with the rest of the day then?

Think that I'll play some music, and work on the creative documents for my short film on the Goldhawk Road. This is pre-treatment phase at the moment. Just a synopsis, but maybe with some basic character outlines. The plot is already very clear to me. This will be the best surreal and authentic film about the Mods ever made. Can it be surreal AND authentic?

I think that the subject matter, which ultimately revolves around rock music in a particular youth subculture is an intensely surreal thing, its a mirror that reflects and distorts but in doing so open the pathway toward ultimate truths. I believe in all this shit. I really do. When I'm prepared to be more candid about the narrative and characters in this short film, then you'll see why there is a strange surreal twist to it all. Suffice to say though, I think that I'm going to get involved the one man alive, who actually saw this all at close quarters and who is articulate and literary enough to help me explain it on the page of a film script.

Hope that all is well in your part of the world...and especially ofcourse our Welsh friends in Swansea.


Tom.

The Right To Write

Hmmm,

Had some depressing news yesterday financially. Skin of the teeth time once more, I fear.

On the blog front, I read a couple of less than complimentary anonymous posts here today. Oh well, there are a lot of people out there. So, I really don't mind...you can't make everyone like you, and I figure that I can live with a few (because outside of cyberspace there have been at times...many). Still though, would have been nice if they'd put their name to it. Maybe I know them anyway, and they've got gripe with me. Anyway, I figure that they won't be back...that would defy logic and at least they "read most" of my blog, so at least they took some entertainment out of it. Such is life. Nonetheless, I retain my right to write (cue music).

Wrote more on my short story last night. Don't know how long it will be. I tackled last night the subject of those who become entertainers, the failed entertainers who are drunks and how often the line between the two is thin, if non-existent.

Drinking a bit too much at the moment. If things fall apart here, then I've got a back up plan, and will go on tour with a friend of mine (if I can convince him to share the back of his band van).

Catch you later,

Tom.

Bonus Blogging!

Hello,

You'll see below that I've posted some poetry and lyrics below today. I can't post pictures at the moment (computer troubles), so I thought that I'd make up for it by sharing these with you. So, something of an intense bonus blogging session from me today.

They're all from my 'Made In England' musical film project. In fact they're all rejects, that I jettisoned from my final theatre play script. Still though, I think that they stand up okay on their own. They don't really need explanation (so, why have I just written some?). What I've put next to them is just a bit of trivia, not really to contextualise but just because they fit in with my own story (and vain as I am, this blog is about me and my life isn't it).

Speaking of which, does that make blogging an increadibly vain thing to do? I suppose it depends who generous you want to be about bloggers in terms of their motivations (do we hope to exchange knowledge and thoughts or do we think that the world will be a much better place if we show the world our lives?).

The whole of Kentish Town (which is near where I live and where I catch the tube) is a fucking building site at the moment. Christ! This place is a dump. The faces of the people round here are generally miserable. Winter makes this part of London a depressing feeling place.

I, on the otherhand am not depressed. I wrote a little music this morning and am job hunting on the web all afternoon (this can never be done in a depressed mindset or you WILL die!)

Three wonderful Beatles albums are on the mp3 player today. I am, therefore, in good company.

Tom.

Stabbed & Stoned A.K.A It Don't Take A Hero

These are lyrics for a song that I wrote way back in 2000 (everything that I post today seems to be from the past). I produced a good, though badly structured demo...the track had some fantastic lead guitar work from yours truly (even if I do say so myself), to the point that when I rediscovered the four track tape for it three years ago I couldn't quite believe that it had been me on it.

This song was written too for the Made In England script. It was for a scene in the film where George gets beaten up late at night. For me, its about consequences and the moral cowardice of those who can only express their issues through violence. Think about it, one idiot with a knife can KILL you. They don't even need to know you. They don't even need to be after your wallet. You see it on the streets in England every Friday and Saturday night, pricks boozed up to their eye-balls, with the ego sucking up what was left of their self-awareness and kicking the shit out of some poor sod who just happens to be walking down the same street. I've always figured that its about frustration... the majority of people today do shit jobs, for shit money, spend their life in debt, working in shitty artificial lit spaces on some production line. I've been there and seen it. I've worked in factories, I've worked as a bin man, driven white vans (well blue actually), packed 3000 filofaxes in one day. You don't need to do that for long before you understand the mentality. There really isn't much to find out. It isn't fascinating, just tragic.

And with that kind of soul destroying stuff - boredom basically - a weekend with fifty pints, some head clearing violence, and the opportunity to reaffirm your sense of self, seems to be the pay off.

So, here are the lyrics. Am particularly proud of rhyming "mother's loss" with "granite cross". Good image. This song is sung in expert Dylan-esqure drawl, and with ballsy Daltrey-esque power toward the end.

Tom.

Stabbed & Stoned

It don’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned.

You aren’t a leader
If you fight in the pack
Like some low fanged gutter rat.

He isn’t a coward
If he turns his back,
His decision if he don’t attack.

But I doesn’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned,

No measure of a man
In bloodied noses
Or bleeding chests.

Your not special
If it takes a weapon
to challenge and threaten.

Just a number
If your reason for fighting
Is to give another beating!

One more sucker
If your eyes don’t bleed
When you realise you won’t break free.

And he follows the crowd
When he stabs a man
He feels so vengefully proud.

And it don’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned

And the coward
Holds a bloodied knife
Cut the fucker down in a single slice.

No real pride in a man
Who carved a mother’s loss
In to a granite cross.

And it don’t take a hero
To get stabbed
And stoned

Their Prayer

This is another piece intended for the original 'Made In England' script, which was a film with music about the redefinition of English national identity. This particular piece was a voice over for the lead character in the film, George, and was about club culture...and particularly how anything which subverts mainstream society is absorbed into it and heavily commercialised. Music, and dancing to music have the potential to be intensely spiritual experiences. Drugs to (and particularly when in combination with dance and music) can provide a similar experience (though, surely these are dead ends on shadow planes to enlightenment). Club culture represents to me the role that entertainment can play (particularly in this its most extreme commercial form) in replacing spiritual ambition. There is something desperate and futile within that whole culture (and yes, I've been there and done it and seperately futility and desperation seem to be constants in my life anyway) Ofcourse, that's just what I think...and I know that others have read different things into what I write, which is fine...I don't own them. They didn't come from me...as with all creative things, the source was beyond the beyond surely?

Their Prayer

Their prayer
shimmers and burns beneath their feet
from the dance floor alter
to the drowning river of followers,
as they prepare green tributes for collection
Like all the others, out in the street.

At the church door
The notes laugh and cackle
As the fattened poor box of the new God
consumes, then aches for more.

Side lines, cracks and corners
darken,
tainted by the stains of self by the unfaithful
who can ignite only blunt comment
or nerve plagued glance, and remain
gutless and vengeful.

Upon a strobe lit podium
the soiled, Nazi virgin struts
with her wanton sacrifice
for yet another fuck.

And the Messiah
preaches to the flock
from his opiate soaked decks

While the Disciples dance
as the Ice Light amongst a
frost bitten raging fire

As they say a prayer with their feet
because they never saw anything else to seek
and with their righteous vengeful stare
silence any man who resists
the burn that calls from the same narcotic flare.

Secondhand Life

I wrote this a while back, it was intended as a poetic voice-over for a film script that I was writing about the redefinition of English national identity. I also published it online at my original website as part of a collection of short form literature entitled "Rolling The Dice".

Looking through my folders today, I thought that it deserved a new lease of life and so here it is once more.

Tom.

Secondhand Life

drips, sickeningly
like treacle
from the plastic spoon

as all men equal;
in their boredom
settle

‘mongst the sweetness
of the trap

then slowly, in their weakness erode,

rot, disintegrate

and finally

decompose.

Breaking Into Films...well, almost!

I made a very easy £50 today.

I went to a studio in deepest darkest West London today (its not in my A to Z and somewhere toward Staines), to do some voice over work for a big feature film about (and get this) a re-incarnated penis. It turned out that I had to do an American accent in a rap at a Harvard fraternity party.

Anyway, so I turn up to this studio where they're dubbing the soundtrack to this musical before they start shooting and about 50 minutes later I realise that the people there aren't just voice over muppets like me but the stars of the film (well, the leading lady it has to be said is a beautiful, charming and sexy woman - and NO, not out of my league, I think). The director was there too, but before I could ask for a bit part acting in the movie (don't really think that this is my destiny anyway) he through a kiddy fit...cut my scene...and I was swiftly despatched with the production's driver off to my tube station with £50 in my pocket for doing not much more than eating pizza.

Not a bad day's work, I think. It would have been nice to have made it onto the soundtrack but at the moment I'm happy just to make the money. The cast were charming. The lead actor is another "Tom".

Bumped randomly into two seperate people from my past in Leicester Square this evening. I seem to attract random moments like this at the moment.

Despite my near poverty at the moment, I seem to have quite a glamorous life. PR freelancer, former intern to Art Review, published journalist, Who movie tie-ins, rock musician and bright futured film producer...well, at least my life isn't boring! Just wish that it paid, and....

(Draws deep breath, composes himself)

I was able to put what I see in my head out on a rock n roll stage with a band near you!

I wrote some good lyrics earlier on. Though, as I look through them now, I suddenly feel switched off by them again. I had the same after I wrote the lyrics for Beer Bottle Joe (the MP3 for which can be found earlier in this blog), then one day about two weeks later I wrote what I reckon is a really good Tom Matchett song for The Change.

I heard from a bassist today who is interested in playing with me. I hope that it works out. A bit of faith can go a long way.

Hope that you are all well out there in blogland.

Speak soon.

Tom.

P.S. The Garrick opposite Leicester Square cooked me a fantastic burger earlier on today. Almost as good as the beer at The Chandos.

Carly, Bach, Floyd, Mozart, Purcell And Me

Absolutely in love with my music today.

As I left the house this morning to get to the Internet cafe that I write to you from now, I was in a foul mood, stressed, self-pitying and an all-round pathetically minded prick. Then on my MP3 player she sang, like the angel that she is, I'd even forgotten that she was there (I think I only have two of her tracks), but Carly Simon charmed her beautiful voice into my head and I was set free from my own particular brand of bullshit. Its true Carly, "nobody does it better" than you (or me for that matter), oh "why do I have to be so good!", maybe its because I'm so vain, eh?!

Followed on with the wonderful Animals album by Pink Floyd. Pretty rocky stuff for the Floyd, great piece of work...a lot of truths there in Mr Waters' grandiose metaphor (a far tighter working concept than The Wall ever was). I've just been listening to some Bach Fugues, which I love too. Beautiful stuff, I hear them as bright orange and luminous green, glowing like some-kind of living colour, sweet and citric in taste. Life.

And now, after life, I have Mozart's Requiem on which I first heard in film adaptation of Peter Schaffer's play Amadeus. Did Salieri kill Mozart? No. He wasn't buried in a pauper's grave either. Genius killed Mozart, and greed, and behaviour brought on by a now identifiable form of autism. This is amazing music though. It shakes through my entire body touching parts of my emotions that I didn't even know existed. This surely is what all great art does!

The great thing is that I know what's coming up in a moment on today's MP3 collection. Purcell. Greatest English composer who ever lived in my opinion, I have NEVER failed to pick out his music when I've heard it. I used his piece 'Chacony' on a film that I made about the remains of the church in Canterbury where Christopher Marlowe (the playwright) which was blitzed in 1942. It was a rather dry film. A structural materialist piece, which was a great concept badly executed. The first half of it was set to Chacony (not only because Purcell for me is a quintessentially English composer but also because he was a contemporary of Marlowe) and the second half of the film was set to Ride Of The Valkyries from Wagner's Ring Cycle (as an allusion to the Nazi propaganda of Leni Reifenstahl).

Maybe I should go back one day and revisit this project once more.

Hmm, listening to some Gregorian Chants right now. I actually really love this stuff. Its very beautiful, it makes me want to fly out of the top of my head to somewhere much higher. It also trows me back into history, and my mind flashes with images (I wonder if I see these as image captures from my past lives?).

Well, as for me...aside from music, I'm stressed at the moment. More relationship problems. I'm constantly tortured by the fear of money and failing to pay rent. I'm not getting enough hours off the guy that I've been working for recently (he's cancelled work today for the fifth time in five days, calling me a 11pm at night). Not good enough. I'm thinking of setting up a bank account and running a blog where people can offer me their patronage by paying straight into it (as distasteful as this sounds, its a staple of the back pages of Private Eye).

A friend of mine (who is staying with us at the moment) asked me what I was up to musically, I talked about getting my new band together. It was interesting because he said that when I play in my group, he finds the conviction and sincerity of my performance captivating. He's not so keen on the noise we make though. Ha Ha!

But its true though, ofcourse I'm totally sincere about. Ofcourse I have total conviction about it. Its rock music. Its the bare fucking minimum requirement to being worthwhile.

So, I WILL be getting this band together. I WILL blow the fuckers away out there who ever crossed me with the supersonic spectacle of my band. We WILL break our balls for this wonderful thing called rock n roll, and I hope that we'll save our own sanity and lives in the process of doing so.

Right. Have to go and top up my credit. Just wanted to say thanks to Brina for posting so many responses her. They mean a lot. Any comments that get posted here almost always brighten my day immensely. They can literally change my entire mood, and I really do appreciate it.

Peace and Love,

Tom.

Treading Water or Drowning?

Its a sunny day today (yesterday we suffered the gruesome soggy grey skies of England's worst), the last few days have been crazy. We (Tim and Kat- housemates - and I) went to the Ally Pally on Saturday night for fireworks, and got there a bit later than we'd hoped for. Well, what we saw was impressive, though sadly from a distance. Trying to get out of there afterward was a complete mission and about 30000 people were all trying to exit over a bridge three people wide and surrounded by mud.

Once on the other side though, ALL the busses were rammed and so we walked the 5 miles back to Gospel Oak, where I'm living at the moment. We then through a party, but no-one turned up until 11:30 by which time we were getting quite well lubricated...someone realised at about 5:30 that it was, indeed, about 5:30 and the whole evening had gone from disaster to success. I'll post some pictures of it here soon (bloody forget to upload them on my MP3 player today!).

I'm in Fulham today, to recover some errant funds and am going to find a coffee shop, work a bit on one of my scripts and read through the Media Guardian.

I am the proverbial 'rolling stone' at the moment...with gravity pulling me in various directions. Am I drowning here already, or am I just treading water? I feel a little inert. Ah well, we are just starting this aren't we?! My booze soaked weekend has taken the wind out of me a little today, and so not everything looks upward to me...I feel a little crazy. Which is fine. I don't think that this square peg will ever slot into round holes.

On Friday night, I wrote 1400 words of a new short story that I'm going to publish here. Its a kind of therapy for me, I guess. A way to get things out and down on a page, to take stock and to turn the more painful, difficult things that I (and I'm sure most people) go through and turn it into something creative. To contribute.

Lets hope the sun stays switched on. In the words of Neil Young's slogan on the side of his converted bio-fuel car:
"Go Earth!"

Tom.

Damp Fuse

Damn! No display at the Houses Of Parliament tonight. What the fuck??????

Going to go to the Alexandra Palace instead (especially as Primrose Hill displays have been kicked into touch by the bastard council).

Will let you know about the fun. There's a beer festival there too!!!!

Tom.

Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun

And I'll see you on the dark side of the moon.

Gunpowder Treason And Plot

Hello bloggers,

Tomorrow night is the 400th anniversary since Mr Guy Fawkes, Thomas Catesby and their crew of Jacobean terrorists tried to blow up James I and the House of Lords during the opening of Parliament. Today, I live in a city in which religious extremists are still trying to blow people up to get their ideas accepted.

Hmmm, don't think that this will work! So, please go away. I am not the Devil/infidel or whatever you want to label me. You're giving a lot a decent people a bad name by association, and I really don't want to see the Far Right make any progress in the backlash of you being ass-holes.

I've written about this before. In 2000 I started writing a musical film called "Made In England" about the redefinition of national identity. Its now a play, largely a monologue with live music sequences. It was my first full play script. I was very inventive with the use of different dramatic spaces, the performance of Made In England will use fictive, real, actual and surreal spaces. I've done a very neat job of producing something that could be easily staged with a powerful narrative.

Enough of my swelling head. It doesn't matter until its performed, and then the story will really begin. I'd love to stage it, but I have a dozen other projects that I'd also like to see happen. I figure that when I'm with the right people, I will collaborate and bring the best of these off.

On the music front at the moment, I'm going to contact a booking agent in London today and get myself some shows organised. These will be solo gigs, but the band side of things will kick off soon too. I've started advertising for drummers and bassists. This is going to be a tricky process because no-matter how talented someone is, if they don't have the mindset or the passion then it won't fly. Oh, no!

Will blog again soon,

Tom.

When I Slip, I Do A Really Spectacular Job Of It

Hello,

Had some bad news relationship wise yesterday, which scuppered my non-smoking after 43 and a half hours of hardcore cold turkey. I employed my tried and tested tactic of finding a pub, drinking two bottles of cheap red wine and smoking twenty Lucky Strikes. I then reconvened in a different pub, a chinese take-away and an hour of loud rock in a dark room later, for several pints, ten more Lucky Strikes and The Wall on MP3 player.

Ah, nothing like a good binge drink and intense smoking to clear the dead wood away from the heart. I haven't smoked at all today, and am back on the nicotine gum. This time we will WIN!

I had a weird dream this morning. I woke up at 6:45, and lay uncomfortably in my bed for a couple of hours before dropping off again.

I dreamt of walking into a building, quite modern and soulless. There was the earthy stench of damp, like the changing rooms at a Rugby Club. Upstairs there was a dimly lit bar, and down a slope there was shower room with clods of mud littering the space. In the bar I ordered a drink, cider I think, and ended up staying with the barmaid in her room. Then for some reason in the morning she disappeared, and I just figured that this was typical form for all the women I get involved with in my life. She was attractive, I think that her accent was Irish...I looked down at my phone and knew that her number was on it, and that I wouldn't ever call it. It made me ponder all the people, who I have never contacted. There are many possible pasts that are weaved- ghost like - into the jet stream of our evolution.

I then found myself at Stamford Bridge football ground, near where I've been working in Fulham and where some covert relationship action has been happening recently (which it seems has now, for the second time imploded, hence my mini-crisis). Into the stadium there ran a super modern train system, like the TGV, in blue and highly polished chrome. Highly efficient, and worked on by neatly presented Frenchmen. Next to the ground there were Greek villas. I left one of the villas and found my way to the outside of the ground where I met this stunning looking woman, who was very much like the one before but much warmer in nature. I felt protective of her, I sensed that some great disaster was about to happen.

When the second train arrived, the police and security guards were there. As it approached (there were young families waiting on the platform) something went wrong and Algerian men started jumping out of it and vomitting blood. We all thought that there was some-kind of doomsday virus on-board. I stepped back from the platform but knew that if it was pneumonic that I'd almost certainly been close enough and that I might now infect the entire population. The sky went red, and the impending sense of disaster soaked into my mind.

So, I escaped. I escaped with this girl, in her car with the world destroying itself behind us.

Strange, eh?

Well, I tend to dream strange things. The whole relationships thing at the moment is frankly shite, but at least I'm not boring. I'm sure that this is just one of those twists.

I am in good spirits. I have written some good things recently. Here's the chorus of a new song that I've written called 'Magnetism And Stars':

"Come fill this space with me,
Come share this grace with me,
I am drawn to her like a magnet,
I am programmed by the stars."

Tom.

Quit Smoking Or Die Trying: DAY ONE

Well,

I'm just 17 hours into this, but I haven't cheated. Which is positive!

Shit though! This nicotine gum tastes like some horrible dream of some-kind. And why is it Hearing Aid Beige in colour?

This at least is keeping me safe from the usual mind bending tricks of nicotine withdrawl. Many a pen has doubled up as a pretend smoke for me today. I'm just taking every day as it comes, can't say fairer than that.

It will be good to have the ability to smell once again and to not stink people out. I remember when I worked at Art Review magazine, that I kept on going out for a sly smoke and then getting the odd dirty look when I returned because the office absorbed the stench of my Lucky Strikes. Barney, the Art Director there, particularly liked to make a big deal out of it. Though in a rather charming fashion.

Will post more soon.

I am NOT looking forward to the sore throat!

Peace and Love!

Tom.