Coming Home

We're leaving for Russia tommorow - to play in Moscow and St Petersburg courtesy of the delightful Serezha from the equally delightful Bad taste Records (the Russian home of our friends the Tiger Lillies). I had bought a new (fake) fur hat in preparation but was dismayed to hear that it's actually very warm in St Petersburg at the moment. We are very much looking forward to the trip despite that disappointment.

Then we shall come home.

Speaking of which, if you click on the 'Coming Home' title above you will be connected to a remarkable piece on the subject by my friend and colleague, the all round musical polymath Clive Painter. Clive, as you may know, has lent his wonderful abilities in various capacities to The Real Tuesday Weld over the last few years - whether it be studio wizardy, his beautiful evocative guitar playing or hosting our many recording and rehearsal sessions at his strange rambling house. We produced 'Dreams that Money can Buy' there over several months of laborious needlecraft.

Anyway, this lovely piece is by him in the guise of Wolf. He has also released many records with Martine Roberts as 'Broken Dog' - a long time favourite of the late great John Peel. It features Cibelle, Tracy Lee Jackson, David Piper, Glen Duncan and yours truly amongst others

Enjoy and love him

www.brokendog.co.uk

Wanna Buy a Dream?..

Joe enters his newly rented room

NARRATOR:
"Well. It’s a room anyway Joe. Better than a tent.
But there’s the minor complication of the rent.
Take inventory son:
Assets: none
Liabilities: none
Prospects: none
Well, that’s the list.
Wait! There's one asset you missed –
The paternal watch that ticks away your life minute by minute."

Joe gets out an old-fashioned watch and looks sadly at the photograph of a girl in the fob

NARRATOR:
"Look! There’s a liability in it –
The dream girl. She resigned from the dream – why not?
She wasn’t so dumb –
You are a self appointed bum.
Hey look here!
Are you shedding an old fashioned tear?
You don’t cry nowadays.
You live or die nowadays.
Things could be be tougher –
And after all, an artist has to suffer.
I guess it must be a grain of Italian dust left over from your last campaign
Or put it down to eyestrain."

Joe takes a mirror down from the wall and looks at his reflection

NARRATOR:
"Look at yourself - you’re all mixed up
Snap out of it. Get yourself fixed up
Even if poets misbehave,
They always remember to shave."

Joe suddenly sees the image of the girl within the reflection of his eye’s pupil

NARRATOR:
"Say, what’s the matter Joe?
Something gone wrong?
Is your head on wrong?

No! It’s terrific! Here’s something on which you can really pride yourself
You’ve discovered that you can look inside yourself
You know what that means? - You’re promoted
You’re no longer a bum. You’re an artist!
Remember a poem you once read?
“The eye is a camera” it said
Suppose like a film it could retain
The images that glide so secretly through your brain
Have you ever tried to see the shadow world inside photographed by the retina and held suspended in its memories?

This is one of the more unusual talents – and it’s yours it seems
Maybe this could revive your bank balance. Remember, everybody dreams Joe , if you can look inside yourself, you can look inside anyone
Customers? There are so many, one can’t count them
What’s the population of the world?
Almost two billion. A potential of two billion customers
All with a dream to untangle
You’ve figured out a new angle
Get it? Dreams on the instalment plan!
You’ll be in the money man!
It’s a miracle – just as you were a complete bust
Re-adjust!
Wait ‘til you’re in the chips
Then watch the dream girl warm up those chilly lips!
Get on the phone
Make a small financial loan
Convert this tomb into a consultation room
And go into business on your own!"

STEPHEN:
"It's finally done. Phew!"

Check out the podcast "Dreams That Money Can Buy for a listen or click on 'Wanna Buy a Dream?....'

Without superficiality there can be no depth

Sorry, I've been away for a while on the Isle of Skye in the far north. I lost myself for a while there.....

More soon I swear but in the meantime, I thougt you might enjoy this

with love

Valentine

RIPied Piper

I have to say I'm very sad at the news just came in that Syd Barrett is dead. How sad - and it seemed in many ways his life was quite sad too - but who knows? -at least he had the enormous integrity to not do the comeback that he was continually hounded to do and which many of his contemporaries embarassingly did do. I love his music - particularly 'waving my arms in the air' and he had a few really magical years. Beautiful then too.

Of course, Syd actually died many years ago - it's Roger Barrett who just passed on

bless you both....


(syd painting by hu mendes)

For The Dreamers

"This is a Story of Dreams mixed with Reality".

When Marek first showed me Hans Richter's film 'Dreams that Money Can Buy" as a potential project, I knew from this introductory salvo that I was in. It's a difficult, deeply flawed film in many ways but it is also remarkable, extraordinary, ground-breaking, massively influential, comic and poignant in turns. It says things about Surrealism, film, art, the American Dream, dreaming in general and the emergence of therapy-practitioners as the new priestly elite, that hadn't been said before - and possibly haven't since. It captures the mysterious, confusing, meaningless-meaningfulness of Dreaming in a way that few films have - apart from perhaps David Lynch's work - and it's obviously no coincidence that Lynch himself has declared it as a major influence.

I've always been very interested in dreams myself. I can still remember some from childhood and, particularly a few years ago, I felt very guided by them - the decision to make music, the name of the band for instance were nocturnally inspired. I actually dreamed of Valentine before I met him.

And last Saturday evening, playing our score to the film in the Turbine Hall with David and Cibelle felt in many ways a Dream itself. The building now called" 'The Tate Modern' - in fact the old Bankside power station - was my favourite building when I first came to London. Martyn and Sophie from The Tiger Lillies were squatting in a little ancient decrepit building (now demolished) on the area near the west entrance. The giant empty hulk brooded as we crossed Blackfriars Bridge from St Pauls to come to see them. It was very quiet then - and there were rats. But the transformation is also wonderful and it was amazing to stand where the giant machines formerly rumbled and play our music with the giant images by Leger, Calder, Ernst, Duchamp et al flickering above us. If you came, Thankyou - and I hope it felt special to you - because it really did to us and I never would have thought three years ago playing that first reluctant show at the Horse Hospital, that we would be here now.

But then that, I suppose, is the power of Dreams.

THE EYES HAVE IT

On May 27th, the Real Tuesday Weld will be performing their alternative score to the Hans Richter's wonderfully strange 1946 Jungian surrealist drama in the awesomely august surroundings of the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern in London. If you wish you can buy tickets here:

< THE TATE >

I will be there, I don't know about you.....

And, I do believe they have gone and recorded the said score for the British Film Institute for the first ever DVD release of the film in July.

Well, if I don't see you there, on the right is a new podcast: 'A NIGHTINGALE SANG IN THE WASTELAND" for you - a little taster of the past and something from the future featuring the remarkable and eccentric English Alchemist David Piper....


with TLC from TCK

elephantism

It's been an incredible year for animals in London. Apart from Alex's Mad Monkey, we had the London Whale and then, this weekend just gone, the absolutely incredible London Elephant. I swear, I have never, ever seen anything like it in the city and I doubt we will see its like again.

Parading up from Horse Guard's parade along the Mall, and down Picadilly to Trafalgar Square doing all sorts of odd and funny peculiar things along the way - this was pure real joy. I actually thought I was tripping at one point. We were singing all the elephant songs we could remember - 'Little Blue', 'Nelly the Elephant', 'Effervescing Elephant' and so on. Valentine even broke into a jig at one point.

I hope if you live here, you saw it and if you don't that you get chance to one day.......

Blessings on those with elephant sized imaginations and ambitions - and particularly on those who managed to keep the Health and Safety Nazis at bay -a gargantuan task in itself .....but oh, what a sight!

May you Plod preposterously on.......

ALEX BUDOVSKY MADE A MONKEY OUT OF ME....

I'LL SEE YOU IN MY DREAMS

“The Trans Pennine express will now be leaving. We’d like to apologise for the delay and for any inconvenience caused to passengers”

The announcer didn’t sound particularly sorry and as the train started to move nobody really paid any attention anyway – well, certainly not me - who had other things to think about. But then, of all the many inconveniences caused by late departures and arrivals over the years, I couldn’t have realised the particular significance of this one - though there may have been a clue a little while later when, gazing out the window at passing fields, I felt overcome with a strange, gentle but intense feeling of unexpected contentment.

My sister met me at the station with open arms.

“He just died.” She said and started to cry.

The time I last saw him, the window by his bed was open and the spring breeze wafted the sound of Astrid Gilberto’s ‘How insensitive’ into the room from the little radio on the ledge. The handsome, skinny, black French man in the next bed was depressed and defiantly resentful with the loudly cheerful nurses. But who could blame him? This was a waiting room - and for him, dying with cancer before his time - what point was there in social niceties?

My father's skin seemed like a membrane wrapping his shrinking body but it had become strangely beautiful in its detachment. The purple and blue bruises, the copper-green wriggles of veins, the parchment like transparency blended organically with the plastic, plaster and bandage fragments of various recent,fruitless, surgical interventions. As with apparently anybody whose body is fading, his eyes had assumed a dark, bright luminosity.

Things were said – too personal to record here where they might seem clichéd or banal – but which of course in that place had a poignancy and depth amplified by the context and our previous emotional reserve. But profundity jostled with non-sequitorial nonsense, dream seamlessly mixed with reality as the morphine ebbed and flowed. Expressions of affection were chased down labyrinthine corridors by peremptory instructions dryly issued to imagined companions. The ward itself became superimposed upon a room in our family home and floating names from the past attached themselves to passing visitors. However, it was a mistake to try to empathise by pretending to concur with his hallucinations for he could at any moment open his eyes, stare straight at you questioningly with complete lucidity.

I tried to keep him alert by talking about things from years ago. Childhood holidays, favourite relatives, a shared love of old English dance band music. We sang "I’ll see you in my Dreams" and a few other old favourites together a few times. He fell asleep again and so I sketched him as the afternoon slipped away. Then, just before it was time for me leave for London, he opened his eyes and said:

“Thank you”

I was shocked

“For what?!”

But he just looked at me and the distinctions of parent and child seemed to disappear. I suppose it was simply just one person being grateful with another for having been alive. No need for explanations or protests or polite humility. And, amazingly, that would be the last time I spoke to him.

The funeral was held at the Church that had been such a significant part of our childhood. I had rarely visited it since but the old words slipped out as easily as if I had said them only the Sunday before. So many turned out for the wake that we were startled into a re-evaluation of the respect in which his peers and a wider community of acquaintance held him. My friends Glen (who feels like a brother anyway) and Jed - who had known him since we were all children - came up with us to say goodbye. Afterwards, we climbed the hill onto the moor behind the house and drank and laughed with my sisters and the kids.

Who knows what the soul looks like? And who knows how another really sees or really feels themselves to be? At the hospital, I had spent some time with his body. The priest had gone but I was thinking of that traditional Catholic vision of the final journey to the Pearly Gates and suddenly a very palpable image of my father appeared in my mind. But strangely, I didn’t imagine him struggling up the steep road towards St Peter on crutches as I last remembered him. Nor striding purposefully toward his maker as I recall him from childhood – a tall, strong, implacable defence between me and the world. Nor, even as he must have been in his prime - in soldier’s uniform in some train carriage - before I even existed or before even my Mother knew him.

[ LISTEN - I'll See You In My Dreams ]

No. It was most peculiar. What I saw was a dirty faced, dark haired, eleven year old boy in short trousers turning, looking up and then running wildly up a green hillside toward a brightness on the skyline.

RIP

SONNY BLAKE

There's a little man called Sonny Blake who wears a grey trenchcoat and a furry cap with ear muffs and he smells of piss and faintly, of shit. He has big dark eyes and looks a little like a monkey. His shoes are long, shiny and black like Chaplin's. He carries an ancient red kit bag and pulls a decrepit old lady's shopping trolley with what looks like some Victorian underwear poking out the top. He whistles and wheezes and talks to himself and now and again he breaks into song. He frightens you and repulses you. You see him round Clerkenwell and he leers at you knowingly.

One quiet Sunday afternoon, I stumbled, devastated, back down the stairs from Amina’s flat. Sonny was at the bottom in the alley poking around in his bag. I pushed past him toward the street and, as I passed, he struck up one of his old jazz numbers in his reedy, phlegm filled warble…

'Who's sorry now......'

Unaccountably, of a sudden, I completely and instantaneously lost myself. I rounded on him:

'Shut up you fucking scumbag. I'll kill you - you fucking shit-filled, stinking scumbag. Shut up or I'll rip your fucking eyes out!'

Before I knew it, I had the collar of his coat balled up under his grimy neck pushing him up against the wall so hard that he had to stand on tiptoe not to choke.

'I fucking hate you, you little shit, following me around, whispering your fucking insinuating little songs'

His monkey eyes seemed bigger than ever - though strangely they appeared to be staring through me not at me. The stench of his mouth and his nose and his clothes was so bad that I was gagging. I almost felt for a moment as if I really could kill him but suddenly, with shock, I realised that in fact I was totally terrified of him. I let go his coat and stood back. He sagged, lost his footing and landed on his arse on the concrete in the corner of the alley.

'You sad fuck…’ I was still trying to shout but I felt strangely weak and was increasingly nervous of being overheard. I looked at the pathetic crumpled little bag squirming beneath me and tried to re-summon my rage:

'You're jealous of me aren't you, you sad fuck? You're broke and lonely and old. You stink of shit and no one gives a fuck about you. No one gives a fuck if you live or die. And you will die soon and they'll stuff you in your fucking bag and burn you ‘cause they won’t want to waste a bit of London land on you. And nobody will be there and nobody will notice you've gone and if they do they'll think: ‘Thank God that fucking awful smell's disappeared…’’

He just lay there in the corner staring and wheezing. I felt a migraine beginning. I turned my back on him and went on mumbling for some time with my head against the cold, damp brick wall next to the fire escape stairs.

After a couple of minutes, I realised that there was no longer any sounds coming from behind me.

'Fuck.’ I thought ‘I've killed him.'

I panicked and spun round.

Impossibly, Sonny had disappeared. On the floor whre he had lain prostrate was a piece of paper. I picked it up with no small amount of fear and unfolded it. In a beautiful copperplate hand was written:

"I love you"