No Show

A list of things that happened and more importantly stuff that didnt happen.

Started sleeping better, sleeping earlier, less nightmares and more dreams about mermaids. Those ones you need tokens for

Learnt about double objectives for characters in a scene – subtext and not showing you already know but rather play it like its the first time – every bunjee jump is different – everytime you walk a city it’s changed.

Started taking up contact improv it’s like a mix between falling down and dancing with a French girl – I haven’t had the pleasures of a French girl yet – but I said I wouldn’t take off my shoes to reveal just my socks and I’ve done this

Also like the Chinese I have NO French friends, this is disturbing.

I have only taken this photo in over two weeks apart from some portraits and moving footage which is another weird drop off – its like I can’t cycle anymore.

I’m annoyed at myself that although I know lovely people I don’t necessarily want to have long chats with them risking insult – I feel like I talk too much and I make no sense. Also that I think I’m brilliant and this actually isn’t the case.

Money is dirty – I might start doing things for free.

I had forgotten about how good Chinese food is. On Sunday nights.

Mend bridges – even though they’re made of matchsticks and lies.

I miss Hill 16.

I’d like a Boston Terrier for a pal.
But settle for a king Charles.

Need more soup and juices, mangoes are really worth the effort.

Think it through twice before you mention the word ‘old’ in a sentence when talking to women. About ANYTHING.

Don’t hate the post office. They eventually retire and replace the lazy staff.

I might write another script about a family in the woods who don’t believe their son is an actual ghost.

Water myself.

Read more good books.

Stop looking at girls arses.
Or wishing on a star – they’re extremely far away.

I seen Phil Lynott today

Has his old town changed since the last days of the 70′s and early days of 1980. Phil Lynott the Black Pearl of a rock and roll city might not recognise our place, maybe more startling would be that if he was still with us would we recognise him. Imagine Bartley Dunnes is long gone but there are dark streets offside to escape to, pokey corners and old man bars to hide in, would he go there in a thin moustache and a ponytail, hide behind small shades and pass off affections of older girls who fancied him rotten hooked on X factor porno. He slowly got off the bad stuff ages ago but still thin lizzy he has his hair cropped with a catstail at the back, he keeps to himself and yet if you take your time he’ll show you his notebooks and the words he’s using now. “What about the new bands now Phil?” – I can just see him pulling on a rollie and thinking through the smoke (he’s allowed to smoke indoors because he’s Phil Lynott and that’s a free pass for whiskey coffee and the odd drag) “Its all a bit techno he says – very machiney, but I like that Richie Jape fella he’s a bit rock n roll still”
He’s got the Bob Geldof retired footballer kind of look he’s driving a Triumph or a Citreon.

Out the door of a smoke shop I thought it was him drifting in for a pack of marlboro lights, a big black coat with his collars up he sits down outside Simons and the rain comes down, he has a denim wrangler on underneath and leather trousers don’t suit anyone except him, somehow he goes unnoticed on George’s street – its like that in Dublin now you would care less seeing Bono have cake in Coppinger row would’nt you? So what Phil Lynotts having milky tea outside Simons!

“Phil?” looking up he’s a little grumpy “What?” – “I don’t mean to annoy you but did you not think at the height of it all it would have been better to go out in style like Hendrix or Morrison and Joplin?” he’s staring at me like I have two heads “That’s kinda what actually happened but then somehow I’m still here amid all you flutes casting dispersions” he takes a sup of his tea and I try again “But all icons of rock n’ roll fade away right?” – “Yes of course I may have gone up the stairway but I’m here and there on the streets making sure the town doesn’t go completely mad, although I’d never stand that Fender on its arse, who said that was ok?” he’s getting angry now like if I talk anymore someone else will come over and take a pop at him but he goes on “Don’t get me wrong I love this town but things have changed haven’t they? Like we all went to Spain and came back with Spanish accents lookin for sandwiches and olive oil on them what’s wrong with tea and toast in Grogans, eh….pen and paper or I’d rather speak to you on the phone?” I see what he’s talking about, he’s out of the loop a bit, he just became a memory of the city and less it’s hero we turn to “are you still writing Phil?” he drifts off pulling on the last of that cigarette “yes I am but no-one wants songs about thunder in the mountains and poetry,that’s like being a weird uncle”

There’s the distance between how naive we were and now the saturation of a music generation that doesn’t love music but consumes it, then some will say that music has saved their lives but I don’t believe anyone on TV.

Phil would have sadly drifted across our media like a grumpy old Morrissey but at the same time would have probably been right, made sense. He is a hero for ever more and his imprint left a mark that helped our identity and much like Rory Gallagher or Luke Kelly gave us Irish the permission to be more reckless and legendary, don’t forget we’re still looking for the way forward even though thousands of years of music go by and even though he’s gone and distant we could still do with his view of the world no matter what he would have ended up like. Nothing wrong with straight talk and a bit of madness thrown in, sounds like Geldof actually

Drift Backward

I can only begin to imagine what it’s like to eventually embrace the time to finally fade away. Where to think to go, why the place exists and will it resemble the image I have built up over the decades of it. I think like travelling, trainwise those people who simply cannot bear to be seated in the opposite direction to the way it’s travelling, the world moves forward for them but you actually retreat. All those trees and houses, all those lying down loving shifting in the morning shine.

Imagine the memory needed to remember it all, I can only recall some early important days, I can’t stuff all those lost ones in and like those whizzing by leaves and closed eyes, they’ll never be seen by me again.

Tragic loss that! I can’t fix it so like any normal person I breathe out and let it go, that could be the same way the end will arrive to me. And with closing eyes one last time the defocus fades to a long horizontal back and silence, glorious peace and quiet.

Dead womans shoes

Nothing so sad as lost kids gloves, photographs that have people’s faces cut out of them or a pair of shoes left on the side of the road. Who said that you can tell a great deal about a person by just looking at their shoes? I thought the absolute worst when I saw these.

Frozen Planet

Sometimes for the sheer fun of it I’ll get straight out of bed and throw clothes and coat on like the place is on fire. The result can be a bit disconcerting, I’m a little drunk or stoned and woosy its like the first 30 seconds of cold water before the hot or you go down to the shops to get juice in cold trainers forgetting your socks ( I know very Un-Mod like )

So sometimes I see things I can’t comprehend, deceptions at first but when I rub the sleep out of my eyes I see clearly mirages turn into realities shimmers die and reveal concrete sublime back to normal. Yesterday was a perfect example. Whether it was the scene or my sleepy peepers, but someone broke up the remnants of some polystyrene foam on the street next to the flat and for half a second in that early sunshine it looked like I was walking on water and it was the north polar ice caps breaking up strewn and floating. Not to be, faintly in the distance I could hear Attenboroughs easy lament and the nasty traffic brings me back to life.

/BadDreams

So those of you who know why this entire project started, I’ve bent the ears off some in my time [over a year now] talking about ‘Stay Calm’ and it’s hidden meanings of not being able to sleep through most nights so I invariably end up writing at those amnesiac times to help with this. The other way of getting better sleepy times is to get involved in taking photos of a horror comedy movie in locations such as Enniskerry, Rathgar Graveyards and a kids school in Cabinteely for 12 hour days, that’ll tire you out. being an upside there’s also a downside. Bad Dreams have made an appearance over the course, well that’ll learn you for hanging around a northern bad clown called Stit.ches or hanging around graveyards thinking you’re seeing and hearing things that aren’t really there.

I did hear raucous laughing on Cruagh Lane at 3 in the morning, but I bet it was one of the fantastic crew I worked with and not my earholes playing tricks on me. The dreams started involving longer strides around mucky knolls, weilding a blade of sorts and stabbing blondies that asked for Britney Spears instead of decent music that didn’t sound like coked off their heads chipmunks. also I noticed in the distance of these dreams a strange tricycle that was used in the movie. I can’t give away too much about this film just yet but the tricycle was ominous. You’ll be delighted to know I’ve returned to dreams of catching king crab off the coast of Alaska near the Bering sea. cold but happy.

 

Moving fast slows me down

Noticing I completely switch off when I travel in a bus or car, train or plane, the world fizzes by and I mute. In Galway Avril Stanley would drive to Connemara at high speed after the gigs on fridays or the one time Stephen Frick drove me through the Swiss alps at one in the morning, the blue of the moon bounced back in our cold faces. I slow down as it speeds up, the 50 metre spaced lamps constant beyond the white guide lines and the interrupting street signs.

Layer that with laquer black and the millions of shut eyes and trancey you become. There’s the highway carriageway wet under the rain water and dew of winter, the tungsten bulbs golden and holding.

My long bed with its open arms, silent waits. My little eyes peek the stars and the future sleep. I heard the day creeping away.