Infinitely Distracting

Coming down after a performance... it's never easy. (Song excerpt: "Big Fish" — Tiny Town flexi-disc, 1983.)

We have certainly travelled of late, back and forth across land and sea. (Song excerpt: "Big Fish" — Tiny Town flexi-disc, 1983.)

Sound check, and soon those songs set sail. We've built them as strong as we can, now we must let them go, set them on their way.

This improbable adventure advances.

This is the place to be. What we make of it, is yet to see,

The bungalow falls silent, but soon the silence is interrupted by the soft sound of snoring, of grinding teeth, and of huffing and sighing. The intention was to confirm that the bunks were adequate, … apparently, they are.

Eventually, with persistence, with perseverance, you get to your destination, in theory.

There is nobody here but us on this particular stage, on this particular part of the stage, on this particular island, at this particular time of day. We walk at the side of the road, in search of our accommodation.

We sight land at first light, an island resting on the sea, drawing near. (Song excerpt "Cloud song", from the album "The Faraway Near" - Peter Loveday)

I have paused and I have taken a breath. I have paused and looked up at the moon, my head no longer filled with the scenes and smells of old London, as it was back then, head, filled now by the scenes painted by these pages I am reading.

A discreet and distant moon is shining down to sprinkle a narrow path of magic on the sea, a path we are about to go down, and that I will tell you about, very soon.

Stimulating lies. That’s what they are, those songs, those stories, those memories, those other lives, lived and not lived, I mean to say, imagined, reconfigured over time to suit one’s particular needs.

A fictious account of the making of an album; the year, 1984, Brixton, London. Fiction is a category of its own. Not exactly truth, processed, coaxed or beaten into stimulating lies.

How encouraging that is, to feel that, in some small and fragile way, you can reach out to people, touch and be touched, which appears to be, which appears to me, to be, as a band I mean, what we thirst for, and probably not as a band as well, this connection we seek, this belonging we lust, this place we long to be, and when you see it there within reach, the object of your dreams, the goal of yo...

It’s dark down there, always dark, dark in the daytime, the tunnels funnelling down into the most absolute nothingness.

Delving into the drawers of memory, many treasures you can find.

Fanzine interview, recorded on a Philips N2227 portable cassette recorder, on a park bench, Soho Square, two-thirty p.m., and to be typed up … soon.

All this is just a stepping stone to … where I really should be.

Another day gone by, in this curious land that I cannot call home, for now, an alien I am, longing and not belonging.

When you start walking, different paths appear. And this path that I have taken, brings me, right now, right here.

I teeter for a time and then walk awkwardly like a newly-born fawn, venturing out and about, all the way downstairs and to the kitchen.

I wake from a strange dream in the early hours of some new day, the bed floating on a dense dark sea, a tenebrous glow on the horizon. (Quotes from “Peasants” by Anton Chekhov. Song: "Being born" from the album "Through the mirror".)

It doesn’t always go as planned. Often, there is no plan. Detailed drawings we do not have, simply brief reminders scribbled on back of hand, a scrap of envelope, or scratched in the dirt with a stick. (Music excerpt "Through fishes' eyes" from the album "The man who loved flowers" by David McClymont and Peter Loveday.)

We make our way towards the new year, supping in Soho and slipping books under sweaters and up sleeves, fuelled on cappuccinos and stout, treating hangovers with Feminax, while sitting staring into the depths of dark Rothkos at the Tate. (Music excerpt "Through fishes' eyes" from the album "The man who loved flowers" by David McClymont and Peter Loveday.)

Being on the cusp of festive days, I wander down Brick Lane, in search of a gift of some kind to send home, a token, a souvenir, a reminder, to let my family know that I think of them, … occasionally, … I do. (Music excerpt "Through fishes' eyes" from the album "The Man Who Loved Flowers" by David McClymont/Peter Loveday)