Mai 2011

Apple blossom and cherry blossom, all falling to the ground at the same time and making a terrible bloody mess all over the place, sticking to your shoes so you walk it into the house where it gets EVERYWHERE so you have to get your Dyson out, the dicky Dyson that's all taped up and makes an awful GUUUUURRRRR!!!! noise whenever used, and then do the floors AGAIN because of the bleedin blossom. It's the downside of Spring, but WHAT a downside...

My very old cat, the one who refuses to go outside in Winter, now wants to be outside all the time, enjoying the currently lovely weather, but she insists on coming inside to use her litter tray - she comes to the french windows and makes a sound that clearly says 'lemme in, i'm dying for a pee' - but this may be more information than you require about my domestic dramas.

As you will see from the live dates, my year is taking shape - new album out in August on Cooking Vinyl rekirds, and, as ever, i just canna stop writing songs - good ones i think. A few nights ago i was writing in the garden at midnight by moonlight. I was reminded of a beautiful idea by the poet Anne Ridler: 'the light of the moon is visible silence'. Also, the cherry, plum and apple blossom lying like a hushed perfumed carpet made me think of one of my favourite lines, by a Spanish poet whose name i have momentarily forgotten, and i will not even have got his line correct, but it's something like: 'the lemon tree in my garden means more to me than all the words of all the poets'. And as we're thinking beautiful thoughts, here's a couplet from a new song of mine called The View From Shit Creek:

'the blues can lead you down/to a terrible swift place/then turn and say goodbye/as the darkness eats your face'

Hmmm....in my little notebook those penned lines looked a bit squiffy and poor, but now, seen dispassionately in a font, it all looks, well, pretty good - amazing isn't it, how a little bit of distance changes everything? i often feel interviewers trying not to fall asleep when i explain my songwriting and recording in terms of landscape - the things which are close and require immediate attention, and the faraway things, the line of hill, a bird flitting through branches above a stream so far off as to be silent, although your mind can hear the silver rush of tears dashing against rocks...