I was five and she was three
I was 12 and she was ten
Were we all that different then
Look how free we'd be
I was 13 so she's eleven
The storm came through in '87
All those summers run together
What it means to me ain't what it means to you
She's nineteen so I'm 21
I become the fortunate son
By the time the winter comes
Where we're two now only one
I'm 27 plays nineteen
Thirty, thirty three, three seven
The lights are on but she's not seen
the intervening years between
Nineteen and forever
Nineteen and forever
Borrowed time on the never never
Nineteen and forever
Saturday, 24 September 2016
Nineteen and Forever
Tuesday, 6 September 2016
Just create. Create.
I have just been reading a bit of this while listening to Bowie giving an interview to Alan Yentob in 1978: and I've realised that I have to create something. Work will fit around it. It has to be made. It must. I must start tonight, and not stop until something is written. Force it. Make it into a thing out of nothing. It's this or a penniless, angry ex-marketing writer with nothing in the locker. I can't have that.
Watched a lot of Tony Robbins stuff in the last couple of days too - proof if anything that there is nothing wrong with me, a lot of people with bigger/more problems do more with their time, and it is in me to do this. Write something, I mean. Just create. Just create. Create.
David Bowie, 1947-2016
EDIT - I've left this blog alone for a year, as is my wont. I've just found this draft post, and was going to extend and finish it, but I like it the way it is, sort of.
Bowie's passing makes me sad even now. I never met him obviously, but would name my first male child after him in a heartbeat. I think the fact that Finn is my favourite name for a boy puts my love of the Veils in perspective (I wonder what Finn would think if he knew?), but Finn Bowie Hutchings is a pretty rockin' handle.
Anyway. The Dame went, then about a fortnight past. Time took a cigarette, as they say.. and I wrote this:
"As you're sat there in the future, you'll be inimitably aware that David Bowie has died, and will probably have processed this fact. Back here on my sofa in Devon it's only just happened (well, it happened while we were asleep this morning). We woke up to a more-mournful-than-usual Shaun Keavney intoning glumly about someone's 'amazing legacy' over Sound & Vision and I instantly thought something fell had happened overnight. He had his Sad Newsreader Serious Voice on, the poor man.
'Shit, I think Tony Visconti's died', I said to a half-asleep Tam. What I really meant was: 'Shit! I hope in my heart that David Bowie's not died, but in fact someone seminally important to his life and work has instead.' This is not to wish ill on Tony Visconti - he's pretty awesome by the looks of it - but you know. To actually articulate that David Bowie, the great unknowable avant-pop overlord, has finished with this plane of existence, is out of the question when you've only been awake for 32 seconds.
Typically, a quick scan of Facebook brought up my beloved mate Rob's characteristically unfluffy prose style: 'BBC are reporting that David Bowie has died.' he said, if not flatly, then matter-of-factly. Rob is not one for great emotional outpourings, as I'm sure you'd agree.
It is now quite late, by my standards - five to eleven as I type this. I'm still not entirely sure what this means. This is very difficult to articulate, but David Bowie meant a great deal, both to me, and to my generation, and to our parents. He was, I think it's fair to say, an icon of the 20th Century. That he's gone at 69 (jeez, liver cancer, thanks so much for that) feels unjust and early and yet, as details emerge of his life in that self-imposed 10-year 'exile' from the public's gaze, my respect for him just grows and grows.
So it seems that after suffering a heart attack (or at least a major scare, I'm not certain) in 2004 he decided not to tour again, and this master of the showbiz disappearing act took to his new role as a stay-at-home dad to he and Iman's youngest child. Laudable, but he probably also felt it necessary. After all, during the childhoods of his other children, Bowie was very busy being Bowie on an international basis, and wouldn't have been all that present in their lives. Speculation aside, that seems to have been his routine, but we also know that he was a prolific consumer of literature, arts, films and music throughout this 'exile' period and it seems he began writing new music, both for a stage musical and for his own ends during this time. As well as, you know, just enjoying being a quiet, massively successful cultural icon who's married to an impossibly beautiful former supermodel and activist. Sounds alright.
Then on his birthday in 2013, The Next Day dropped. Cue pandemonium, reverent cross-examination and general freaking-out. I have to say for the sake of full disclosure that I've not heard a great deal of this surprise from beyond the horizon, but the bits I have heard - Where Are We Now and a few other cuts - I really liked. As ever, Bowie was on terrifically oblique form, but looking back at it from here, with The News still dominating the media, there was a finality to it all. There's always been a sense of melancholy, either explicit or implicit, in Bowie's work, but here it was closer to the surface than recent releases would suggest. In the video for Where Are We Now, we delighted in seeing a man clearly still in possession of considerable powers reminiscing about his time in Seventies Berlin 'sitting in the Djungel' and 'getting the train from Potsdamer Platz - you didn't think I could do that'. It was heartfelt, and wry and touching. I loved it, and thought that, even if Bowie wasn't going to tour, he was at least out in the world, being Bowie. Being quietly better than everyone else at being a super-intelligent taste-making cultural polymath. That made the fact that Katy Perry was the biggest-grossing pop star in the world more palatable. Because Bowie was still out there, being cool enough for all of us.
A few singles arrived subsequent to The Next Day, as if signposting this very fact: 'I'm still here, please carry on', they seemed to say. Videos featured Bowie, and then not, but that was OK too, because you don't need to be in a pop video to be in a pop video. It's all artifice and suggestion, and who's better at that than Bowie anyway?
Blackstar subsequently emerged, and weeks before his death, this great chameleon at the centre of our culture appeared to be preparing us for his departure, lamenting his own mortality, celebrating his achievements /and/ leaving us witty little riddles to play with in his absence.
RE-EDIT: Almost a year on, and nothing has changed. Blackstar is still a landmark in a career of landmarks. To have done everything he did so well and to still be full of passion for his work despite knowing what he was facing is a mark of the man. I still miss him, and the world really is a little dimmer without knowing that he's around.
Maybe there will be more material subsequently - a new album of material from the early Eighties is mooted, for example. But still, a truly unique figure of immeasurable influence leaves us. Thanks, Mr. B. :)
Bowie's passing makes me sad even now. I never met him obviously, but would name my first male child after him in a heartbeat. I think the fact that Finn is my favourite name for a boy puts my love of the Veils in perspective (I wonder what Finn would think if he knew?), but Finn Bowie Hutchings is a pretty rockin' handle.
Anyway. The Dame went, then about a fortnight past. Time took a cigarette, as they say.. and I wrote this:
"As you're sat there in the future, you'll be inimitably aware that David Bowie has died, and will probably have processed this fact. Back here on my sofa in Devon it's only just happened (well, it happened while we were asleep this morning). We woke up to a more-mournful-than-usual Shaun Keavney intoning glumly about someone's 'amazing legacy' over Sound & Vision and I instantly thought something fell had happened overnight. He had his Sad Newsreader Serious Voice on, the poor man.
'Shit, I think Tony Visconti's died', I said to a half-asleep Tam. What I really meant was: 'Shit! I hope in my heart that David Bowie's not died, but in fact someone seminally important to his life and work has instead.' This is not to wish ill on Tony Visconti - he's pretty awesome by the looks of it - but you know. To actually articulate that David Bowie, the great unknowable avant-pop overlord, has finished with this plane of existence, is out of the question when you've only been awake for 32 seconds.
Typically, a quick scan of Facebook brought up my beloved mate Rob's characteristically unfluffy prose style: 'BBC are reporting that David Bowie has died.' he said, if not flatly, then matter-of-factly. Rob is not one for great emotional outpourings, as I'm sure you'd agree.
It is now quite late, by my standards - five to eleven as I type this. I'm still not entirely sure what this means. This is very difficult to articulate, but David Bowie meant a great deal, both to me, and to my generation, and to our parents. He was, I think it's fair to say, an icon of the 20th Century. That he's gone at 69 (jeez, liver cancer, thanks so much for that) feels unjust and early and yet, as details emerge of his life in that self-imposed 10-year 'exile' from the public's gaze, my respect for him just grows and grows.
So it seems that after suffering a heart attack (or at least a major scare, I'm not certain) in 2004 he decided not to tour again, and this master of the showbiz disappearing act took to his new role as a stay-at-home dad to he and Iman's youngest child. Laudable, but he probably also felt it necessary. After all, during the childhoods of his other children, Bowie was very busy being Bowie on an international basis, and wouldn't have been all that present in their lives. Speculation aside, that seems to have been his routine, but we also know that he was a prolific consumer of literature, arts, films and music throughout this 'exile' period and it seems he began writing new music, both for a stage musical and for his own ends during this time. As well as, you know, just enjoying being a quiet, massively successful cultural icon who's married to an impossibly beautiful former supermodel and activist. Sounds alright.
Then on his birthday in 2013, The Next Day dropped. Cue pandemonium, reverent cross-examination and general freaking-out. I have to say for the sake of full disclosure that I've not heard a great deal of this surprise from beyond the horizon, but the bits I have heard - Where Are We Now and a few other cuts - I really liked. As ever, Bowie was on terrifically oblique form, but looking back at it from here, with The News still dominating the media, there was a finality to it all. There's always been a sense of melancholy, either explicit or implicit, in Bowie's work, but here it was closer to the surface than recent releases would suggest. In the video for Where Are We Now, we delighted in seeing a man clearly still in possession of considerable powers reminiscing about his time in Seventies Berlin 'sitting in the Djungel' and 'getting the train from Potsdamer Platz - you didn't think I could do that'. It was heartfelt, and wry and touching. I loved it, and thought that, even if Bowie wasn't going to tour, he was at least out in the world, being Bowie. Being quietly better than everyone else at being a super-intelligent taste-making cultural polymath. That made the fact that Katy Perry was the biggest-grossing pop star in the world more palatable. Because Bowie was still out there, being cool enough for all of us.
A few singles arrived subsequent to The Next Day, as if signposting this very fact: 'I'm still here, please carry on', they seemed to say. Videos featured Bowie, and then not, but that was OK too, because you don't need to be in a pop video to be in a pop video. It's all artifice and suggestion, and who's better at that than Bowie anyway?
Blackstar subsequently emerged, and weeks before his death, this great chameleon at the centre of our culture appeared to be preparing us for his departure, lamenting his own mortality, celebrating his achievements /and/ leaving us witty little riddles to play with in his absence.
RE-EDIT: Almost a year on, and nothing has changed. Blackstar is still a landmark in a career of landmarks. To have done everything he did so well and to still be full of passion for his work despite knowing what he was facing is a mark of the man. I still miss him, and the world really is a little dimmer without knowing that he's around.
Maybe there will be more material subsequently - a new album of material from the early Eighties is mooted, for example. But still, a truly unique figure of immeasurable influence leaves us. Thanks, Mr. B. :)
And suddenly...
...I'm depressed again. Always looking for the next thing. What am I doing? Who should I be? When will I know what's right is here? How do you move foward? Inertia creeps, moving up slowly. Everything is fine, everything is fine.
14 years
Last week, I met Finn, Sophia and the rest of the Veils. 'Never meet your heroes', they all say, but hey, I did, at a signing and mini-gig at Rough Trade East - coincidentally the place I heard them for the first time in 2003. Fantastic people they are too. Signed record clutched to my breast I wandered off to the nearest bar, and having taken a few cold drinks, started scribbling, like some sort of lunatic seer.
This, then, is what I saw. It starts out like fanboy nonsense, goes a bit boycrush for a second there, and then sorts itself out into some sort of Stephen King mystical bollocks/nutter-on-a-park-bench verse, just for the hell of it:
"It's not every day you meet an idol. Not the swaggering, already-there kind. A humble purveyor of his own truths. A man with his own candles burning. Perhaps they burn in the same places as yours. But they aren't yours. Theyare his, and he's able to share their glow with others, of which you are undoubtedly one. Tonight I met just one such guy. Slight but strong, and possessing the kind of voice bestowed on only a few. Teh music beats on eternal in this guy. He can't help but bring it out, heaving, raging and thrashing. Barely controlled, but contained enough. The perfect middle between bombast and heart. Singing and lamenting, because and why.
Normal for the whale, armageddon for plankton. Snacking for the leopard, but brutal murder for the antelope. Dancing throuh grass as antelopes stroll, calm in high grass means death.
At midnight they go dancing, reeling and rotting, searching and feeling, the spirits accompany feeling.
I can't here you right now, but I know you're there , and everything I am worried about is nothing to worry about. It is all one strange, fleeting dream. I can control it but in the end it will control me, whatever it is.
Whatever you write, it's better to bite the hand that creeps through pockets of time and will. Beginnings, looking for magical endings, unbound by the past we roll forward, betting the future, stacking the past. What will be will be until it won't, then it don't.
My baby is missing. Caught up in something else. Parade's over, did you lose yourself? Tantrums and reachings, glasses and waiting - look out for the past through the window-soaked glass. She's coming to get you and you know she'll last.
Beautiful shapes and brilliant sounds.
A jaguar roars despite its confines.
Bass through chests and floors besides.
Outside the rain of hearts still pours
Besides the clatter, under the dust, a will, you must.
Become and grow against the unjust
Ghosts and serpents, soil and rust
Who walk and talk alongside us, just because, just because
But what if you don't crest the wave?
What if you never reach the high?
If, but, maybe - what have you wasted?
Spend too much time to belie
What really gets you through the night
Pretend if you like, but you'll know why
The shake of a pen, the bottom lip tries
To hide a moment in consequence.
You had to shake that hand, and tell him why
Always meet your heroes.
They are heroes, after all.
All the moments are justified
You can do nothing but fly
You'll feel mighty and unified,
Uniquely of purpose and ratified
I feel perfect and impossible and deified.
I have shaken my idol. I have told him where he stands.
I am grateful and unbowed.
I'll learn new songs with the same old hands.
Today, I stand.
I must scribble first, to learn to write
I must write, to become myself tonight
To embrace flight and falter
I must try to alter my other, to bring out what is inside.
To go, tip forward towards the light
I will not grow tired, nor will I fight
My demons and spectres are all here tonight
I divide. I multiply. I am in my right."
Must've been good, then. The new album is fucking cracking, too :)
This, then, is what I saw. It starts out like fanboy nonsense, goes a bit boycrush for a second there, and then sorts itself out into some sort of Stephen King mystical bollocks/nutter-on-a-park-bench verse, just for the hell of it:
"It's not every day you meet an idol. Not the swaggering, already-there kind. A humble purveyor of his own truths. A man with his own candles burning. Perhaps they burn in the same places as yours. But they aren't yours. Theyare his, and he's able to share their glow with others, of which you are undoubtedly one. Tonight I met just one such guy. Slight but strong, and possessing the kind of voice bestowed on only a few. Teh music beats on eternal in this guy. He can't help but bring it out, heaving, raging and thrashing. Barely controlled, but contained enough. The perfect middle between bombast and heart. Singing and lamenting, because and why.
Normal for the whale, armageddon for plankton. Snacking for the leopard, but brutal murder for the antelope. Dancing throuh grass as antelopes stroll, calm in high grass means death.
At midnight they go dancing, reeling and rotting, searching and feeling, the spirits accompany feeling.
I can't here you right now, but I know you're there , and everything I am worried about is nothing to worry about. It is all one strange, fleeting dream. I can control it but in the end it will control me, whatever it is.
Whatever you write, it's better to bite the hand that creeps through pockets of time and will. Beginnings, looking for magical endings, unbound by the past we roll forward, betting the future, stacking the past. What will be will be until it won't, then it don't.
My baby is missing. Caught up in something else. Parade's over, did you lose yourself? Tantrums and reachings, glasses and waiting - look out for the past through the window-soaked glass. She's coming to get you and you know she'll last.
Beautiful shapes and brilliant sounds.
A jaguar roars despite its confines.
Bass through chests and floors besides.
Outside the rain of hearts still pours
Besides the clatter, under the dust, a will, you must.
Become and grow against the unjust
Ghosts and serpents, soil and rust
Who walk and talk alongside us, just because, just because
But what if you don't crest the wave?
What if you never reach the high?
If, but, maybe - what have you wasted?
Spend too much time to belie
What really gets you through the night
Pretend if you like, but you'll know why
The shake of a pen, the bottom lip tries
To hide a moment in consequence.
You had to shake that hand, and tell him why
Always meet your heroes.
They are heroes, after all.
All the moments are justified
You can do nothing but fly
You'll feel mighty and unified,
Uniquely of purpose and ratified
I feel perfect and impossible and deified.
I have shaken my idol. I have told him where he stands.
I am grateful and unbowed.
I'll learn new songs with the same old hands.
Today, I stand.
I must scribble first, to learn to write
I must write, to become myself tonight
To embrace flight and falter
I must try to alter my other, to bring out what is inside.
To go, tip forward towards the light
I will not grow tired, nor will I fight
My demons and spectres are all here tonight
I divide. I multiply. I am in my right."
Must've been good, then. The new album is fucking cracking, too :)
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