march 14th 09

-------------and all of a sudden we're deep into the mixing, just the two of us, myself and Tom Mcfall, in the house, endless biscuits and tea, and the clay jug begins to rear from the spinning board, we are just potters, pottering about, but it starts to sound like a record at last, for once I am being healthy and it feels badder, being alone with all your thoughts, just an endless montage of your worst mistakes on shuffle in your brain, If this is what normal life is like, I dont want it. I hate it, I can't even listen to the music and this is the most important week of all, the fourth of mixing, finishing the album that I have given a year and two months of my life too, it all boils down to this crucial week, the last week of mixing, and it as if my brain which I so much need right now, has been embedded in concrete like our footprints in the snow in Norway, and our spirits intertwined by the act of love and the sanctity of untold symbiosis, a time carved out in my dna, clear as day, I really need my brain but its stuck in this magical place, Before the fucking devil intervened and stole it all away, in its place he gave me a record, and that is this record, and that is this week, and the scars run deep, like the african rift valley, walking though the valley of never actually, coming face to face with the ghost that haunts me
-------------------what was the point in the first world war, when they had the second, what was the point in this recession, we've had shitloads before, in the olden days, they were called droughts, why did we cut down all the fucking trees, I'm not some free wheeling hippy but I like trees, they had the american civil war to stop slavery, but now half of America is made up of illegal immigrants working slaves wages, what is the point in Lemsip, with all these germs about, I remember things, Times when I could see straight, and I didn't wonder what the point in things was, I just took them for granted, why is it if you argue it makes it easier to get what you want, I can't argue to save my life, And indeed I wouldn't argue to save it, Take it pointless points, it seems we will never learn anything as we are not willing to listen, Moral and good faith, intuition and bravery are all dying out like our tadpole tales once did, we have nothing left to give, its all gone to recycling, and it isn't going to change a fucking thing. Down through Renelagh on the bike, where my Gran used to live, and the Dundrum mental hospital, the russian army hat, can't take it off, even though its getting warmer now, in london the first snow drop was late, but my crocuses and daffs must be coming out soon, the blue bells and yellow primroses in the wild garden, Always since she gone I have been isolated, thought if I remained stationery, things might go back to how they used to be, I waited and I waited and I will always wait, I tried going on tour but that just made it worse, I went to America three times and that just slaughtered me, couldn't stand to be 3000 miles across the sea away from my destiny, Shaking the whole time, that I had lost her, and when I came home, and she was still lost, there was nothing left, but I still wait, and one night I waited outside all night, but you never came back, so I waited again, and I waited again but you never returned, and I waited all year, and I shall not be moved, and I waited for the sun like a midwinter dawn,

and I saw your face on a milk carton
and you looked real young,
like you'd never hurt anyone, I waited through the storm,, and i waited through the fire
and i waited like a handprint, waited like a stone, Waited like a cactus, waited like a broken home
Waited on a high, just to stay alive

and i'll wait until the crows peck out my eyes,
and the bluebottles swarm
and their children are born,

and ill wait until my bones bleach white in the sun,
and I wait as Santa Anna whistles through my rib cage

Scorpions hide inside my broken elevator,

and I waited outside all night in the rain, but you never came back, so i waited again, and i waited in vain, but if i had the chance i'd wait again

--------So somewhere along the Siegfreid line realise I'll never stop waiting, and just accept that, the end has come Sassoon, and just: Wait, Experts say the nightmares come from within, there-in lies that conundrum, rubix octogan, it is true that you can only dream about things you have seen or heard tell of, in other words things that are part of your everyday life, meaning that you have merely extended your thought process and your brain has not shut down to sleep properly, I cry in my sleep, sometimes I wake up and I am crying and sometimes I wake up and my face is just all screwed up, but always when I wake up I have the fear, and I don't want to be here, when I try to explain the dreams to an old friend, he says what makes you so special that evil would chose to occupy your soul, why do you get to be taken over by an evil spirit and nobody else does, its the old "waiter there's a fly in my soup""shh sir or else everyone in the restaurant will want one", I was always shit at telling jokes, and so I find it hard to explain myself, people have always found me funny, although never because I was funny or said anything funny. The old friend tells me that ultimitaly we are responsible for ourselves, and cannot go around blaming things on evil spirits that have taken us over, and it hurts like hell, cause its kinda true, If they arent my dreams, whose are they, whos that guy inside my body, her friends hated, that can dream such fearsome mushroom clouds, Turin shroud, gagging my mouth, hated everything about me, and I agreed, still does, Hang thick in the air, such and such said you're a lying prick, I heard from some one from aberystywth that you were really wierd when you were there, smashed your guitar on the beach one sunny day, endlessly pounded it off the wall of the little icecream stall til there was nothing left, watched it float off on the tide in shards, and so began a long history of smashed guitars, I didn't know what to do then, and I don't know what to do know, so I waited, I believed, I wrote a song, the last one to go on the record "Petals open when reached by sunlight", I will wait always, and so, just: wait, tell myself things, like you have achieved something by making this album, like you promised you'd never work a day, and so far touch wood its been true, like you have a dog now and responsibility, tell myself you are lucky to be alive when so many people you know aren't, but still I am not a human, no matter how hard I try, even if I give my life, she will not know how much I love her, how empty the world was before and after her, I spoke true words with a true heart and she looked into my eyes and said there is somethign I cannot figure out about you, something sinister, and by nature of what I stand accused, something evil, Ever since just been waiting and wrestling evil.
--------------it was something beyond my average day, it was fucking interplanetary, I was up all night finishing the mixing in dublin, then fly over to shithole London, stanstead, on the train with all these angry commuters, refused to part with my case when dutifully suggested by banker type, all cufflinks grotesque double chin, honed bishops stortford many years mamas table, my case contains the year and a bits work on a single hardrive, get home and see my dog, and take him to mastering in kensal rise, walk out at five, dont know whether to live or die, It's finished, Listen to seashells the know everything, its finished, I made this record to try and save myself ans save us, but now that it has finished I see clearly that I have not achieved this aim, all I can do is wait, and I will, if it kills me, I'll wait: just : wait; down all the years, down all the days, life is there on front of me, by christ no matter how much it flaps its arms, I will fail to notice, with glee I will plead ignorance, happiness is a choice and I chose not to be happy, I looked deep inside me me and saw the evil of all mankind enshrined within my broken elevator, everyone knows that death is the truest form of success, the ultimate victory,
--------------------------listen back to all the albums, that first one, recorded in the bottle tower in aberystwyth, I walked across the bridge every day to record it, always stopped to look down for fish, never been able to resist looking off bridges for fish, the two albums with the crocketts, the three crimea albums, then listen to the seventh, the project which i layed the foundations for in january, my voice just gets lower and lower, my songs sadder and sadder, the music less and less commercial, the saving grace of these albums, the one and only ace in my hand, is that it doesn't sound like any other band, isn't attached to a genre or movement, but exists in world of its own, we have a place, we champion the unsettled, the fat and ugly, the nobodies, the people who feel that life is inexorable, I know a number of millionaires who are very unhappy people, I know people who have scaled the pop mountain and won brit awards who hate themselves because they abandoned their integrity at the first hurdle,, all told its a miracle that we're still going, at the end of the rainbow there is no end, but I'm gonna keep searchin til I die, my voice getting lower and lower, I never meant to be a musician, it just happened, now I know I will never do anything else, I swore to myself. it just took over, me and owen have been playing together for 13 years and I will never have another drummer, we used to share a house, when after many years owen moved out, i had never payed a bill in my life as owen used to do all that sort of thing. I was 29, he sheltered me from mankind all that fucking time.