Infinitely Distracting

Long nights stretched out between briefly glimpsed days. Songwriting and a debut in London. The story goes on. (Music: Birds of Tin, "High road, low road".)

this infernal reaching out… blindly… for something

Autumn quickly plummets into winter. Sometimes sleet, sometimes snow, often rain, or constant drizzle. Shoes are full of rain, and from salt on the road, … shoes stain. Feet soaked, toes wrinkling up like raisins. Socks are better … off. Hang them by the gas fire and watch the steam rise.

I lose myself at night and then come back again in the morning when I wake. How can that be. Where do I go. What exactly do I do there, that it is so hard to recall as soon as I wake. Do I leave my body entirely to float, to wander in the ether of dreams. Is this biology, chemistry, electrical engineering or metaphysics.

I am sent to the records department of the Law Society in Chancery Lane. Imagine my dismay to discover that they are not the kind of records I envisage.

Sometimes, things fall into place, mysteriously or methodically. Some believe it to be the work of stars, others put it down to numbers and maths, or even genetic design and disposition. There are those who feel the hand of some powerful being pulling strings, as if we were mere puppets, perhaps we are… (London skyline illustration by the author: EP cover design - Tiny Town, No Place Like Rome)

Small wonders win the day.

Faced with an empty pocket I am forced to leave aside, for a moment at least, my artistic endeavour in search of income and gainful employment, inevitably implying interruption of dreaming and a slap to the face from reality. (Music: Post-Birds of Tin. Image: Vigeland sculpture, Oslo.)

Immersed in distraction, one day leads effortlessly into the next.

We were not looking where we were going, running on intuition, hunches and illusion, or … delusion. There, in that dark sprawling city, spilling with life, on the troubled and brooding River Thames, writhing with history and with the shifting waters of now, I find a place to live, though under constant threat of eviction.