i keep thinking about the very very last time he would have put his guitar down...the very last time him and his guitar held each other up...the parting...it was probably only hours before he died...or maybe a gig some days ago..the guitar packed in a van perhaps, with john being driven away in a car....that key moment where he put the instrument down without knowing he'd never reach to play it again.....and then i think about where his guitars are now....alone...in storage somewhere...stranded without him.


i'd seen him play a load of times over the years...the last time was two summers ago at cambridge corn exchange....it wasn't that shocking to see him hobble into view...walking stick..leg amputated and really really fat,wearing baggy sweat pants and one of those loose billowing summer hawaii shirts to flatter his mass as much as possible...and then he sat down to sing and play...it was truly gorgeous..some would have said it was disappointing ...he seemed less concerned with being all professional and clear...instead he just sort of languished in the sound of his own voice with only vague reference to the original lyric..it was loose...falling apart at every seam...but absolutely sweet and tuneful.........brimming with soul.

i was miffed this week reading all the tributes to his death..the pious tone...making a big deal of his supposed self destructive nature....lightweights taking an inventory on the man....i mean...how self destructive is anybody who leaves behind two dozen albums?...to me that's a highly creative nature..........

we all make our choices in this life...if john martyn didn't feel the need to go to his grave with brownie points for engaging in a good physical health regime,then so be it.....at the end of the day,he'll have left more than most of us......he made his own choices in this life.

and people say he died tragically young....sixty years is NOT young....
life is a frontloaded thing.....even if you live till eighty..those last two decades are a whole other affair...in those last decades,you cruise in sweet resignation[if you're lucky]....it's at the front of our lives where all the happening shit hits the fan....life is a frontloaded thing...and john martyn must have had the most exquisite of frontloaded lives....it's the opposite of the joke in these people who after years of dull conformity try and catch up and cover ground that they should have covered when they were younger...there's a cowardice and false economy to people who insist on getting their houses in order before they dare to fly.....i dunno if its the internet or summink,but i keep seeing all these over forty year olds suddenly 'having a bash' at writing books...or becoming poets or personalities..they think tech-aid or the dolly-net makes it possible,regardless of their wizzened scrotums... middle age crises used to mean a flash car,now it suddenly means taking up tech assisted arts,without there being any real and previous calling.
i'm not sure if i agree with myself on that bit...i suppose it's great that people buck their own nature,no matter what time of life...but people like john martyn who sailed by the seats of their pants when they were so very young, all the way up to the grave,don't deserve some safe as houses jim jim journalist in the independent newspaper taking inventory....the bigger gist is lost on these people.

i ventured into london the other day...there's a guitar shop on denmark street called 'regent sound'...in the sixties it was a four track recording studio...andrew loog oldham recorded the first rolling stones singles there...gene pitney....and john martyn recorded his very first album there called'london conversation'.....the goodlooking rockabilly guy who works in the shop was playing johns records ...it was terribly sweet......it was an unnerving afternoon...john martyn freshly dead that morning....the astoria all gusseted up in its gallows preparing for the demolition man...and as i write this, seeing an advert on telly for a programme on terry pratchett and his degenerative brain disease..........

we don't get a lot of time..i'll be fifty this year...the more time behind me, the more my perception of time modifies...every season passes faster and faster now...it feels so strange...we are here for mere minutes.


........................insomnia.

i'd like to show you my video

i was inspired by some jack kerouac recordings he did with a jazz pianist called steve allen....
so i took my own poetry and weaved it into my favourite jazz pianist[bill evans]
i suppose what i'm doing here is practicing the opposite of envy and jealousy,by celebrating peoples wayward flouncy behaviour, while doing something as grounded and humble as cleaning the toilet.

Belfast Flood Victims appeal

Donegal Road and Broadway, in the heart of Belfast, were both badly hit by the floods over the weekend. Victims were seen wandering around aimlessly muttering ' 'Bout ye ?' 'aaaaaawright mate' and 'fuuuucksake'.

The flooding decimated the area causing approximately 30 pence worth of damage. Several priceless collections of mementos from Benidorm and Magaluf were damaged beyond repair. Three historic bonfire sites were destroyed.

UTV News reported that hundreds of residents were confused and bewildered, still trying to come to the terms with the fact that the damage had not been caused by illegal means.

One resident : Alexis Crystal Paisley, a 15 year old mother of 5 said, 'It was such a F***in shock, my wean Chardonnay Mercedes cum runnin inta me bedruem cryin, Me youngisst two Tyler Morgan an Megan
Brooklyn slept fru it all so the did . But I was friggin shaken watchin the
F***in Lympics in the morning so a was. I've niver bin in a sityeashun like this in me life so a haven't.'

Apparently though, looting, muggings and racial intimidation did carry on as usual. The Red Cross has so far managed to ship 4,000 crates of White Lightning, Bavarian, Frozen Pizzas, Buckfast and Regal Kingsize to the area to help stricken locals. Rescue workers are still searching through the rubble and have found large quantities of personal belongings, which include signing on cards and jewellery, including thousands of Sovereign Rings, many large Medallions and Hash Leaf Shaped earrings from Elizabeth Duke at Argos also Fine Bone China from Cash Convertors.

This Appeal is to raise money for food and clothing Parcels for those unfortunate enough to be caught up in this disaster. Clothing is most sought after, items most needed include:

Fake Burberry or Kappa Baseball Caps

Hoodies (any type )
Rangers tops

Linfield tops (1-3 year old only)

Tommy Hilfiger Tracks Suits (his and hers)
Nike/Adidas Shell Suits (female)
White Donnay Sports Socks

Rockport Boots (and any other items usually
stolen in TK Maxx)
Anything from SportsWorld or InStore(nearest branches Boucher Road)
Food Parcels may be harder to come by as refrigeration may be a problem, but are needed all the same.

Required Foodstuffs include:

McCains Oven Chips

Heinz Baked Beans
Goodfellas Frozen Pizzas
Coke/Fanta
Magners Cider
Smirnoff Ice
Lambert and Butler 20's

And Remember That Your Cash Contribution Also Counts !!!
Just 22p buys a biro for filling in the compensation forms and Bookies
slips.Just £5 buys chips, crisps and blue fizzy drinks for a family of 9.
Only £4.40 will pay for a packet of 20 Mayfair to calm the nerves of those
affected.

Thank You Very Much For Your Help.

hullo.....
i would like to jiggle with your nice sunny day and give you some of my self penned/video'd darkness.
..but nothing can darken my afternoon...i have two roofers fixing the tiles and they have their shirts off.
i take them out big manly mugs of tea with custard creams...they're a bit nervous around me which i manage to find charming.

Tags: elderberry douching products

mary [drunk] delivers the gospel according to william burroughs from a cliff edge.

Tags: stamp collecting

i friggin love my new t-shirt.



here's a clip of me talking to you outside this hideous little house in west hollywood where bowie shacked up , during and around' the man who fell to earth'
amazing to think elton john was up the road in his secure fru fru villa in the chateau marmont, while bowie was unprotected down in lower depths of hollywood...
that's the difference in vibe between those two men, i guess....


i have to tell you.. i'm on a huge comedown at the moment
i'm beginning to think that going on holiday is like moving house in the way that it disorientates you.
it would be very easy for me to live completely in my own head and never leave the house...really....i don't need travel.
and it's not that the weather was great.. it was freezing out in the desert half the time, and it rained in hollywood too.
there was chunks of sunshine,but really ,no matter where you go... it's the people that lift you up..... or bring you down.
for me there is only two choices... people who can talk.. and i mean TALK... or no one at all...
i love going to the gritty bars in silverlake ...
there was one bloke there smoking the most exquisite cigars...
our eyes and ears made contact and the evening suddenly made clear sense.
the company of interesting strangers is a wonderful thing.
i hung out with him all evening and returned to the mondrian hotel in hollywood at four in the morning stinking of cohiba cigars...

and here i am gently easing the hangover



i feel for the musicians i know in hollywood...my friend jef is really strong...he sails close to the edge in that town,but its hard...
he played bass on tori amos 'little earthquakes'... and loads of other things...
but there are other souls, and i can really see the pressure getting to them... these are hard times for professional musicians...
thank heavens i was never a professional...a terrible terrible trap!

melrose avenue in hollywood is a great street to hang out on in the afternoon... tis a very funky place...
thomas bought a fantastic art deco drinks tray for his bedroom down there in one of the stores that sells old furniture from old style hollywood homes.
we do no art galleries..or touristy things..thomas likes to relax and read...he likes to get to bed early for many of the nights...and i'm an insomniac...so when he snoozes...i cruizes...over to friends or out to the bars ..where i'd just sit there waiting..for the man...

and he always appears..... you just have to be patient and be open to things .

there was one man in the desert in this bar called 'the toolshed'....a real dive of a place... old hairy bikers and pensioners.....
lonely men looking for someone to share the twilight years with... hope in their eyes, if you're at all friendly.... wild really...

one man came in and started hitting on me...i wasn't really interested in that,but then he opened up and talked....
he's been hiv positive for nearly thirty years and you'd never have known......a fit man...
he got infected before they had a permanent name for it.. he tells me it was temporarily called 'the grids'
his lover came home one day crying and worried that he'd given him this new disease... he was only twenty at the time...
a student at berklee in san francisco.. this older lover eventually topped himself with heroin and this poor boy found him...
he fell apart himself and ended up living on the streets...
and the thing that motivated him to get off drugs and the streets was not being able to have a bath in the morning...
it's funny , the simple things that turn a soul around...
but then his father in his eighties decided to shoot himself a couple of years ago and he found him too!
i wanted and didn't want the details.. if you understand... because my own father left this world in the same manner,i wanted,but didn't want the details...
in truth,i cleverly pressed him for details.... he could tell i wasn't being a mere voyeur and so he imparted them to me..
he told me the smell was very overpowering.. metallic .. because of the iron in the blood ...
that one detail located me completely.
this man now makes violins...i love that....i think making hand made musical instruments is a beautiful way to live...
so then we talked about the different woods used in stringed instruments....rosewood...sitka..and cocobollo ... rare exotic woods from brazil.

do you know that when tori amos became successful,and was able to afford her first really good grand piano,
the piano maker took her out into the forest so she could pick her own tree?.. they then 'knock' on the tree to see if it's ready...
don't you love that?!..
they can tell by knocking on the tree if the density and everything is right.

then there was the vet doctor... . a real animal lover...and this was in the afternoon in the sunshine over coffee and hangovers....
he too had been living in san francisco but he was a scuba diver in his spare time and made his extra money from cleaning the hulls of boats... a fit fit man..
but they had a disaster in the frisco bay recently...an oil slick,which would ruin his diving gear ...
so he left for the desert
and to top that he was the vet who cleaned the teeth of that poor tiger that got shot up in frisco recently...
did you hear about that tiger?
these horrid little scumbags doing crystal meth were dangling there legs over the edge and teasing the animal...
really winding it up..
they were high on grade a drugs,really teasing the beast....
so the tiger pulls one of em down and kills him.....
the tiger,being a bright thing hid around the place,stalking the other trouble makers and then went for them... and them only...
and wouldn't you know it,instead of shooting the poor animal with just a sedative,the authorities put a big old bullet through it... such injustice.....
so this vet was heart broken...he'd been that tigers dental hygienist ..
and of course the money grubbing parents of the dead kids who were high on crystal meth want to sue the zoo..... money money money........

here's a picture of me in the hotel room looking out over sunset strip...
the hotel behind me is the hyatt ,otherwise known as the riot house...
it's famous for hosting english groups in the seventies like led zeppelin ... televisions out of windows ect...
and the roof top swimming pool scene in the spinal tap movie was shot there..
and i can see the room where i lived in for six months... room 706..
i've a shockingly pristine memory.
i remember the night arriving and walking out on to the balcony and going wild in the knowledge that it was my home for six months...
but by the end of that visit i was DYING to get back to ireland ...
i'd had enough...
every single day you'd hear a car being pranged.. the constant purring of harley davidson motor bikes... overload!!!
and the black building in the left hand corner is the comedy store where all the big comedians like bill hicks performed..
and down on the street to the right, just out of view ,behind me, is the' house of blues' where phil spector picked up that poor girl and shot her teeth across his marble floor with his dreary miserable gun...
oh the joy???!!!!

you can really see my old age coming through in this photo...it's not the wrinkles...its the crevases............it's not the sex...it's the stairs.



here's a clip of me talking to you from frank sinatras grave in the desert....




thank you for sharing my desert/hollywood moment ... i hope it was fun for you.



by now,youre thinking...'what a fucking camera whore?!"



how fucking great do i look in this one though..imean...really?!


and finally me and thomas reporting for margerita and martini training.

Tags: bowie sinatra hollywood
Current Location: home
Current Music: none

this is me yesterday at five a.m... in the bay window...singing into the camera ... strung out on insomnia ...
but happy none the less .



tonights news finally finds me defecting from the labour party...i was so hopeful for gordon brown...i even wanted to get my leg over him..but no more.... from now on i'll just direct all my squelch interest towards alan yentob instead...
i simply cannot vote for a government that gets behind the resurgence of nuclear energy...i am no politically correct hand wringer by any means..but i intuitively know that this is a reflection of pen pushers being far too stewed in fiscal concerns...i'm so disappointed...why can't they get behind wind, water and light..they're gonna have to one day....i really feel so let down how the world doesn't home in on that science more ..it nearly angers me as much as george bush standing in the way of stem cell research..that's another science which i think is mind blowingly beautiful...but no..the one they get into is bloody nuclear energy....filthy queens!!!

i'm sorry... that was my one and only rant for the year.
i will return to music and sex immediately.

this is me in my living room this week , songwriting and singing live to camera .
in my delusion i like to think i look and sound like a child that was breast fed on lou reed,bob dylan and andy warhol.
what can a mary boy do?..
it's too cold for trawling piccadilly or shoplifting.

Tags: music- art- bollox
Current Mood: productive

i went to see chloe poems perform in the vauxhall tavern last night.
for the longest time i've had her poetry on my ipod..
it's a real blast when you set the thing to random,
then suddenly as you're on the tube or walking through some london sewer,
chloe poems 'london is paranoid' comes on.

earlier in the evening my young friend james richards took me to see a micheal clark ballet at the barbican which was truly great,
this was a very generous gesture on james behalf..he's not exactly rich,for even though he's just finished his degree at chelsea art college,he has to work hard doing other jobs around town to pay the rent,so when he buys me a ticket to a ballet, i'm blown away.
james screened a video clip of mine at the lux gallery earlier in the year as a part of a show he curated.... it's a text based thing i did called 'am i normal?"
it was the first time ever i'd seen any of my work in a gallery space...it was odd and new for me to be sitting in the audience around the people watching it..but really fulfilling too.
it's at the bottom of this entry,if you fancy a gander.

anywayyyy... so then after the michael clark ballet ,me and james missioned over to the tavern in a black cab to see chloe poems perform.
the thing that struck me about her is that even though it's poetry,she gives you many of the sensations you expect from a glam rock band like say mott the hoople.
she grooves in her delivery...she's flambouyant . there's a lot of sex too,and the overall effect is just very rock and roll .
chloe poems is really a one man rock show..
she's a mick rock photograph that's come to life.
one day i'm gonna video that creature..i'd like to use the camera and the computer to single out the rock beast of her style and blow it up.
the vauxhall tavern is very rock and roll also.
how i love that place.

i've been having a good time lately.
i was up on the north coast of ireland a couple of weeks ago hanging out with the small cluster of people from my school years.
it really is a music thing... a small handful of music loving groovers on the seaside who know the sixties and that little town like the back of their hand.
my best friends run a very irish jeweler shop there that's been in the family on the same premisis for four/five generations.
people obsessed with property, keep offering them huge amounts of money for their little patches of land, and they just shrugg it off... life and love mean more to my friends than status.
they are very much not for sale...
i arrived in portrush late...
around midnight actually..
there's a certain atmosphere of checking into hotels that late at night...calm and moody.
i threw my cases down in a really decent room overlooking the atlantic ocean and my nose just dragged me walking to my friends house....
they were all in bed..i tapped on the window lightly..
the dog barked... everything kicked off....
my friend, a groovy bassman who plays for henry mc cullough of wings fame,comes to the window in his pyjamas and nearly has a fright when he saw me standing outside.
he threw the door open and hugs me.
his wife,a close close friend got up out of bed..
we sat till four in the morning in love talking, and then i walked back to the hotel...
so good strolling past the closed amusement arcades...
a wool shop...
a fishermans shop...
more amusement arcades,closed for winter..
all these little shards of my own past on a lonely street in the dead of night.
i feel so grateful these days that i had such a gritty earthy place to grow up in.
people,when they talk about northern ireland,they always think of conflict,
and as real as all that was,there was always another side to life there up on the coast.
some of the locals there now worry than in times of peace,their lovely little seaside town will get whored out and sold out.
but what i love about portrush though is she's always been a whore.
in the summertime she's a town that's always opened her legs to the masses.
are all seaside towns whores?
is that why we love them?,
for i don't think its got anything to do with fresh air...

i then went to amsterdam wiv me uvver half.
we went to support this friend that's over fifty who runs a twenty six mile marathon every year.
sport really isn't my thing,so my main agenda was sitting in the coffee shops smoking the exquisite selection of waccy baccy.
it's a bit naughty of me really..
i have to watch my chest,but i really only smoked just enough to get me high...
i'm not so greedy these days... that's age for you.
the funny bit is always throwing the remainder of the grass away before heading back to blighty.
picture this..me standing on balcony of hotel on dam square ...feeling absurd...chucking a good bag of best northern lights spliffage over the edge.
what a waste eh?!.
should have given it away...but we was in a rush as usual to get to the train station.
much to my delight,when i got back to london,i found a half smoked pure grass joint in some mucky jeans,so i had that yesterday and wrote a song.
i love hanging out in the leather bars in amsterdam too...all the big bruisers strutting around in their uniforms is alright.
and there was a fairground right by the hotel in the square..so high as kite,with my camera in hand,i went down in there to video all the fairground rides.
however, one weekend of all that is easily enough...
besides...
i was counting the days till 'billy fields' would come to stay.

he's now settled in....he's nine weeks old now and sleeps ON MY HEAD.
he's house training really fast which is good.
i love billy fields...thomas is the same..billy's gonna have the best life with us...
even so,my heart is always missing barney...when i come home at night from london is when i miss him most...
so now when i come to the house i take a moment and put my hand on the grass where he's buried..it's a comforting yet heart rendering feeling.

another nice thing that happened last week was we were invited round to tom robinsons house.
he has a party every year to celebrate the changing of the clock.
tom throws the best parties...he lights a fire in the garden and rigs a bar in the backroom...
the house is full of singers ,and so the guitars come out and we all take turns in singing songs..
and everyone is real good...
then one minute your talking to a lady who worked at A and M records on the day the sex pistols went round there and caused all that chaos ..
the next minute you're talking to an ex gay copper who looks like a present day morrissey..and then a newsreader who's gay but has two daughters.
a couple of years ago i sat in toms garden talking for ages to steve levine who produced all the classic culture club hits...he was only 24 when he did all that.
toms fluidity reflected in his household and friends...the gifts of a lifetime in music.

y'see that's one of the interesting things about tom.
regardless of sexual labels, he's now with a formidable lady called sue and they have teenage kids.. a boy and a girl...
some gay people must have been very confused about all that,when they got together nearly two decades ago.
tom was very much at the fore front of gay rights in the seventies..very brave to do all that in those days..
but he did it,and he's one of the people who's made life better for people like me today because of his work.
so i'm always blown away when he and sue invites me and my man into their home.
i love that song of his 'war babies'. and 2-4-6-8 motorway is just a pure pop classic.
tom can bang out songs from the ziggy stardust album at the piano...a real gas.

i cleaned my bedroom today..it was a filthy chaos... dirty t-shirts,software,bounty bar wrappers and records lying everywhere.
it's all tidy and clean now..it looked more exciting when it was just a mess.

i just downloaded CCS 'tap turns on the water'
god its good! great great vibe...a real pans people moment.
that record would go down so well at duckie...they've probably actually been playing it knowing those boys.
'tap turns on the water' was produced by mickie most..and i had the pleasure of recording at his RAK studios in north london in the ninties.
i would see mickie most there all the time..nice man..always giving my producer stephen hague good bottles of wine.
little did i know he was dying cause of accidental asbestos exposure when they soundproofed a room for him years ago.
he showed me round the little eight track room where he recorded hot chocolate'you sexy thing'.. radiohead were in a bigger room doing the bends while i was there in another room.

i savour the memories...they always include music in some way.

here's me with billy fields...