Poem: Shouts from Downstairs

Today's only getting warmer
Too hot, too close for dog's paw or man's feet
The pavements compete with the concrete heatsink
That grey-glowing, surrounds each bright house

Barbecues lit, at a social distance
Embers and cold bottles warming
Screw the pestilence
Paddling pools for wading
Shorts and wet socks
Cut grass and birdsong
Glass in quartz flecks on pavements
And shouts from downstairs

Reverie #2

It will be quiet and full of dappled light in the large, wooden shack. My clothes and everything I need will be on a table in front of me, and sunlight will creep through the gaps between the old planks. I’ll realise nothing hurts, I’m stood up, and I feel great. I’ll get dressed, and bergamot and vetiver will scent my fresh, new clothes. The sand will tickle the soles of my stupid, flat feet. A warm, jasmine breeze will blow through a window to my left, through which a broad, lapping ocean will glitter. On the table in front of me will be a watch, three silver bracelets and a leather one, inscribed TH & AJ. I’ll put them on my left wrist, and my wedding ring on my left ring finger. Everything in its right place. 

I will by now have realises what has happened, and be afraid. I will panic, and try to go back, but there will be no door. I will worry, feel lonely, cry, and then come to terms, and realise that I am OK, and can only go forward through the door into the unknown.

I will dust myself down, breathe a painless and sweet breath, stretch my limbs for the first time in ages, and smile. I will open the door in front of me to find an enormous, idyllic beach - a perfect ocean, with multitudes of people I have known and many I have not, laughing, playing, walking and greeting each other. The surf will be perfect, and I will know that here, I am a perfect surfer. 

There will be a really nice beach bar, with no queue.  I will grab a drink at the bar - most likely a martini - kick my flipflops off, and wander into the warm surf, the sun heating my back. After a time, I will find Lucy, who will ask where I got the martini from. She will take me to Mum, Grandma and Grandad, who will be wondering whether to put the windbreak up. I assume that even in the afterlife, my sense of direction will be crap, too. We’ll greet each other like lost souls, cry and laugh, and stroll around. Grandad will suggest some sort of walk to a distant smattering of rockpools, but I’ll swerve that, as a cheerily-waving Bowie will float over on a bright yellow lilo, and start playing The Prettiest Star for us on Robert Johnson’s guitar. That’s sure to be good.  

After that, I’ll just circulate with the great and the good, top up my tan, eyeball Marilyn Monroe a bit and get a round in. Maybe I’ll sit and play cards with the fam until Hendrix, Elvis and Prince do the sunset/acoustic thing and someone lights the bonfire. Maybe I’ll go and book a meeting on a pedalo with God, entitled Shit That Doesn’t Seem To Stack Up (1 hour). Maybe all things will be revealed unto me, and all this will make perfect sense. Maybe it is my job in life to leave one good man on the Earth to be upstanding and grow old in my stead? Who knows? Chances are, I’m going to find out before you do. Anyway, one night, around the time the stars come out, you guys might even start to show up. No muss, no fuss - take your time.

Practicality

Before I actually pop off, I’ll leave a will, so everything I want to be done will be done right. I’ll be cremated, and I think I would like it if my ashes were scattered in or near water - partly on Barton beach at high tide - where I started - partly in London’s Thames, where I defined myself - and partly in a river in Dartmoor in Devon, where we brought new life into the world and I left it. 

I like the idea that my body will become one with the air, the sea, the fields and the clouds, and this way, will eventually join the cycle of the earth, my ancestors and the entire universe, as we are all made of energy, and energy is indivisible. I would like to think that I will be part of everything and everywhere, all the time and for all time. Carl Sagan, who I will chat with on the beach, will no doubt confirm all this. He’s a smart man, Carl. 

I am only sorry that my son and wife will miss me, but I feel like I will be able to watch them somehow, nudging and trimming their fates, just as I feel my mother has done for me since she died. There is a poetry to the arrival of my son, in some ways, don’t you think? I’ll be rooting for him and all of you, just around the corner, and you might be sad for a while, but you’ll be fine without me. 

I know I will see everyone again as clearly as I know tomorrow is a day of the week. Death holds no fear for me whatsoever. I don’t like pain, or liars, belittlers, or people who let me down, but people are human, too. I have loved far more than not. I have had a good time, despite some bad times. I have plenty of good times to come, too. I have learned a lot about people, and this set of events has finally convinced me that when true friends are truly needed, they truly appear. Everyone is either excellent or capable of being so if they try.  

Religion

I do not really believe in God - I am open to Him being up there, of course, but I sincerely doubt He exists. I love the idea of an idyllic, permanent afterlife, though - as a freedom from pain and suffering experienced here, and a reward for living and dying well. That idea sustains me as I go on this journey. I feel like if that’s what I want to believe as I reach the end, that’s my choice. I want to go to that beach, and rest and recuperate with my relatives, and have fun. So, since that’s my vision - the one I have carried with me ever since I did some hypnotherapy a few years ago, and the one I revisit in times of stress - that’s the one I’m going to at the end. My perception is my reality. 

As far as God’s will is concerned, I can’t help noticing that every time I’ve ever needed help, I believe I have received it not from a spirit, but from a real person. Their motivations to do good by others are sometimes religious or spiritual in origin, but real people do all the heavy lifting. While I believe that my ancestors sometimes seem to have ‘willed’ something into my life - my Mum especially - real flesh-and-blood people are usually the actual architects of change. You don’t need faith or hocus-pocus to build a church after all - they are made of bricks, mortar, people’s effort and willpower. That’s not God carrying bags of cement around - that’s ordinary folk, either working because they believe in Him or because they are being paid to. Simple. 

That said, I sometimes envy the succour that people derive from an unprovable notion that ‘someone up there’ will look after them in the end. Their adherence to an idea that cannot, as far as we know so far, actually be the case, is as impressive as it feels unfounded. I don’t want to denigrate it - faith has, historically, made ordinary people do some extraordinary things, after all. 

I can’t claim religious belief in that way - science makes more sense to me. Then again, science is the enemy of mysticism, and I am quite into that - while I want to believe in the essential goodness of people, I truly hope that all of that positive energy goes somewhere else when the body stops working. 

If it doesn’t, so be it - I will become nothing, with no consciousness - just worm-food; part of the rock you’re standing on in space. Sounds good to me. If that’s the case, I won’t even be there ‘intellectually’ to realise I’m dead. Either way, I am fine with it - my ‘afterlife’ will exist in the form of the legacy I leave for my child and Tamsin’s future. 

In a way, as long as I do good things and leave a mark, I don’t really die at all, and I find that hugely comforting. I don’t regret anything I’ve done, or what I became, or who I am. I am proud to have called everyone I know a friend. To me, this whole thing is just walking through a door. Everyone does it, and it doesn’t even hurt. Just a blues player gone to another town. I’ll see you in the next one - don’t be late. 

I will continue to love and treasure you all, and you know I’ll see you soon.

Selfish New Computer Post

I bought a new computer. Despite it being a Macbook Pro, and having, at first glance, lots of grunt and all of that stuff, my existing laptop was a depressing companion. I've owned it since 2011/12, and flogged it to death, creating a career and sanity-saving video-editing sideline at work. I've also used my venerable metal friend to create over 200 songs in Garageband, as well as a bunch of heavy-duty uploading, downloading and general digital tomfoolery. As a result, it's completely funked: it's slower than molasses in zero-gravity, loading things is an almost Biblical struggle sometimes - like, tabs in browsers, not InDesign, for crying out loud. It even has a few dents where my trademark sanguine, laissez-faire attitude has - gasp now if you like - slipped a little, and I've wanted it to die. Hard to believe, I know.

So, I did some research, some soul-searching, went on a retreat or two, meditated, listened to my inner spirit animal and realised that really, all I actually do is write things in various places, watch various bits of digital media, and listen to songs on computers these days. I also like the idea of a computer being what I believe the originators of the Internet foresaw when the web was created - millions of nodes, feeding an unimaginably diverse galaxy of connections with information, which has long since made the leap from the printed word to the virtual one. The internet is now cloud-based, and in my case, light, fast and agile. So, I bought a Chromebook.

I am tapping this out on it now. I got a Pixelbook Go, the basic m3 model of Google's latest fast'n'light machine. I love it so far. The keyboard is sensational. The speakers are hands-down the best I've ever heard on a laptop of this size. It's faster than a greased ferret down a Welshman's trouser-leg - mainly because it doesn't have a great deal to actually occupy its time, other than throwing the characters I ask it to up on its 1080p screen. I like it a lot, so far. Initially, I'm a bit fearful that it might be too limited - too one-dimensional, and too much like a big, fast phone with bells on. But hey - I've done it now.

I went back and forth over the various ramifications of buying either (a) a cheaper Chromebook, (b) a Microsoft Surface thingy, (c) a new Macbook Pro, or (d) nothing at all. In the end, I decided that a new, fast, responsive computer would encourage me to write more, and I'm allegedly a writer, so a brand new, flexible platform on which to document things would get me back down the word-mine. And it has. There will be drawbacks, unforeseen fuckery and missteps aplenty, but in the main, I love it already.

In Dreams

Simply one of the best songs I've ever heard. This is pre-'fame' Finn Andrews of the Veils, aged about 18. It's as true a song as they come.

I've been seeking to avange my design You're in keeping with what I've had in mind The night will come for us and there we'll meet again The skies will unfold and shift in seas within I've learned to live in dreams and I will now part with them for the lenght of the night and ever after Is this how it works? Is love just what we've said? For the lack of a heart and for want of a better word Well I, I guess, you've heard by now The night, I guess you've heard by now And I've been seeking to avenge my design You're in keeping with what I've had in mind The night will come for us and there we'll meet again The skies will unfold and shift in seas within I've learned to live in dreams and I will now part with them For the lenght of the night and ever after Is this how it works? Is love just what we've said? For the lack of a heart and for want of a better word Well I, I guess, you've heard by now The night, I guess you've heard by now I've been seeking to avenge my design.