I had a long and very deep sleep earlier this afternoon. It was so good to catch up on some rest. The past few weeks has been absolutely flat out and a few days ago, I started to come down with something nasty.
All hands to the pumps at the moment. The Who Convention 2010 is taking off and hitting London next weekend. Sounds terrifyingly exciting, doesn't it! I met up earlier in the week with the Chief Executive of the Teenage Cancer Trust and Angie Jenkison who recently organised The Whodlums show up in Newcastle for the charity. They were very supportive and have taken a few headaches away from me.
I have some time to really focus on this event over the next few days without kamikaze late nights sandwiched by long days at work. This is good and will really help me stay sane.
We are well set. There will still be hiccups along the way but I think that we are going to deliver a great weekend. People are coming in from around the world for this show. Its crazy, but it says something about rock n roll and its ability to bring people together. The thing is, "convention" is such a geeky title for it. I could have sexed it up - I always loved the title they had in the states of Wholapalaza - but in the end, a convention it is and a convention it shall be.
There won't be much rest for me until a week or so.
Aside from The Who Convention, I am also helping organise London's Biggest Pop Up Art Exhibition at 210 Pentonville Road for the Cross My Art Exhibition. The Private View is this Thursday. It came about very quickly, I linked up Art & Escape Gallery, who have masterly put together this show in a very short space of time with the building, which we have got for free. I maybe could have stepped away from it there but it was too much of an opportunity not get more involved with. I decided that I wanted to learn how to do an art exhibition. I'm not very keen on his stuff but we've got Damian Hirst's work there.
You see, all of this is experimental for me. Its all lessons. All learning. I would explode if I didn't push myself out into these places. I need to know how to do it. Its very important for what comes next with The BoHo Scarecrow and The Light Gate opera.
SITTING here, about three weeks to go until Convention day, I am in a strange mood.
A friend of mine once said to me that we are tied to the memories of the past and that over a period of time we process things. Part of this is how we diffuse past trauma through the on coming wake of life.
I must be going through something like this at the moment. I feel quite distracted. Panicked, even. I know why this is happening. Two years ago, I was in Seattle. What a huge trip that was and how terribly burned I was when I came back from it all. I was in a relationship that collapsed and all these things that I had been building my life up on for months disintegrated in a matter of days.
It really was the most traumatic of experiences. I am slap bang in the middle of the second anniversary of this fall. So, I found this time of year, last year tough and at the moment I seem to be going through a relapse.
The timing is appalling, as right now I need to working on all things Who Convention orientated. It seems to be stripping me of my confidence, just as I need to be on top form.
If I remember correctly, this time last year I performed my mini opera in London's Regent's Park to close the Treehouse Gallery.
So, I am little sketchy at the moment. I just need a little bit of Rocky style tenacity to make it through the next few weeks and the fortitude to dig a bit deeper in the discipline stakes at the moment.
Its tricky. Very tricky. I have stuck my neck out with this whole thing. It was never going to be easy but it gets harder when my head gets clouded. This seems to happen every few months. I have to question what it is that I am actually doing with my life and find out how I get to where I really want to get to. I absolutely detest mediocrity, particularly in myself.
I have about twenty days until it all happens. At the moment I am packing in as much as I can into The Who Convention 2010. Its looking really good. What a journey! This has been nine months of my life.
What is it?
A two day celebration of The Who in London with the ultimate goal of raising more than ten thousand pounds for the Teenage Cancer Trust and the Meg Fox Kids Educational Trust. Saturday is at the Good Ship in Kilburn and the main day, October 3rd is at Dingwalls in Camden.
Who will be there?
Bands include Who's Next, Who's Best, Who Are You?, The Beatbrothers, The BoHo Scarecrow (me), The Dukes Jetty, Thunderclap Newman and The Wholigans.
I spoke a couple of weeks ago with Keith Moon's mum and the Moons should be there in force. Also, Thunderclap Newman have Josh Townshend on guitar, and there will be quite a few other special guests.
Why?
The Who are The BoHo Scarecrow's favourite band. I was master of ceremonies at the legendary 2006 event. Nothing has happened since then, because all the organisers from that one have done their bit. I took this on in January. I'll tell you why.
I briefly hooked up with someone who was doing a couple of days a week for a cancer charity. At the time, I was still struggling badly with a failed relationship that was too recent. I woke up one day and thought, "fuck this...I'm going to inject some positive karma into the economy." Most of all, I wanted to do something for my friend Meg who died a couple of years ago. Aside from being a massive Who fan, she was a spectacularly positive personality, but tragically left four kids with no college fund and terrible American medical bills. If you come along to the event and have a good time, please don't thank me...thank Meg!
What next?
So, The BoHo Scarecrow. What is this? Where is it going? Why has it been distracted?
The Who Convention 2010 is a test for The BoHo Scarecrow. It is an experiment. It is hard, it has been immensely challenging but the lessons learned will pave the way for a variety of BoHo Scarecrow projects into the future.
The models are changing. The world of music and the arts has become unrecognisable. This is not an issue to BoHo Scarecrow, as it was never a part of the models that were in place beforehand. The BoHo Scarecrow has not yet even scratched the surface of experimentation.
This is not a new type of art form. This is a new form of interaction. This is the development of the experience, to facilitate accessibility, engagement and legacy of the creative experience.
The BoHo Scarecrow believes in popular/public art and the creation of a model in which a multiplicity of practitioners and audiences can co-exist. The notion of the self-existing artist is a fallacy. All artists are dependent upon audience. Otherwise the art does not exist.
The BoHo Scarecrow is interested in developing new works that cling and reach simultaneously.
After this project, The BoHo Scarecrow will complete The Light Gate: An Opera. The BoHo Scarecrow is dependent upon its audience to realise this in performance and will deliver a crowd sourcing experiment to realise these goals.
I have just had some sad news about a friend of mine, who for the moment, we shall call 'Syd'.
Syd is dead. I remember dancing with Syd in the underground caverns of night club when I was at University. When they played Break On Through by the Doors, Syd literally did try to break on through and clawed at the white bricks in the walls. It was a magnificent moment.
Syd had the courage to speak his mind and often did. Syd was a mystery. He was my rival. He was a legend in his own particular duck pond. He was brilliant. A bright diamond. He could have been very brilliant but I don't know if he ever managed to end up delivering on it all. Syd was charismatic. Truly. Syd was my friend. He could inspire and frustrate me in equal measure.
He was one of the few people who knew my friend John, who died six years ago around this time. I've actually been trying to cut a video version of the song that I wrote for John over the last couple of days. I remember being able to speak with Syd when John died. He understood it. He really did.
So, its a sad day. I'm quite numb from it all. It hasn't sunk in. I have no idea how I feel. I am listening to Pink Floyd. It seems so appropriate, as my Syd always seemed to have a quasi spiritual link with the soul of Syd Barrett and everything associated with the idea crazy diamonds who shine too brightly then get extinguished. I question my own mortality. I see myself make leaps and bounds, wondering what is missed between each step.
Shine on, Syd, shine on...I will be remembering you.
HAVING an absolute nightmare uploading the promised rehearsal video to YouTube. Like 2.5 million people in the UK at the moment, it doesn't work.
But in other news, I have just recorded a video demo of, "What's Your Poison?", which I am quite happy with. I wrote the music today. Nice song. Nice? Is that a word we use in rock n roll? Not a fucking clue. Its semantics.
Still a bit rough around the edges, but once I've got it together, I'll record a proper version and post it up here.
Spent yesterday having a BBQ here at home with my housemates. Lovely day. Lovely? Is that a word we use in rock n roll? Not a fucking clue. Its being pedantic.
Beautiful rain today, at 9am. Which I saw, smelt and revelled in because I stayed at home last night. I am finding spending time at home at the moment really quite enjoyable. Enjoyable? Is that a word we use in rock n roll? Not a fucking clue. Aren't I supposed to be suffering for my art? A tortured soul?
SHORTLY before my last show in Camden, I filmed a few songs that I was rehearsing. Today, The BoHo Scarecrow presents to you a song originally written in mid-2008.
I had written the words as part of the original burst of activity some time before, I think in late 2006, when I was in the middle of moving house from Camden to Shoreditch, whilst deciding that I had to follow up my mini-opera, Attack Of The Chevron Action Flasher, with a full blown meisterwerk that was called The Light Gate, and would be the biggest and brightest thing ever to emerge from rock n roll.
The music though came from a very different place. When I picked up a guitar and came up with the tune, I was feeling very inspired. In the midst of the first couple of months of a new transatlantic relationship with another musician who had made me come alive again as a writer. But despite being dizzyingly in love, I was becoming increasingly isolated. I had some quite terrifying physiological symptons manifesting, bits of the body going numb and all sorts of other maladies such as frequent, intense panic attacks.
My life was spent revolving around work, music and daily phone calls. It felt really quite wonderful, and I would have recitals of this warm, beautiful american acoustic folky music by my then girlfriend and her troupe most nights of the week down the telephone whilst she rehearsed. This was a salient, dream like period of time but I was very unwell in many respects, drinking heavily and on the verge of an inevitable breakdown that finally blew up and consumed me a few months later.
For some reason, the good period though flicked a switch in me and wrote the music for this song. It has changed since, I beefed it up a bit when recording it at the splendid studios at TVU in Ealing to break it up a little and give it more punch.
What became very interesting in terms of how The Light Gate project developed was that it was only during the breakdown, that I finally was given a label for what I had suspected was wrong, which was post traumatic stress disorder.
So, who is trapped in the head? The writer? Our fictional hero, Edward Sun? A dear friend of mine, another ex in fact, pointed to the writer the other day. I can understand what she was driving at, it could be true. It isn't really for me to clarify for you. You can guess! That's what rock demands of its audience. Use your own instinct and intellect to decide, if you can ofcourse be bothered.
But in the case of The Light Gate, it is about how we internalise our pain, our fear, our terror, frustration and confusion. We let all these things go on and on, until it becomes like a prison cell with a big red flashing warning light. You are going to die! You are in danger! You better scream, scream, scream and hope that someone out there will help.
It takes a lot of courage to scream.
All sounds rather heavy, doesn't it?! Well, that's just my take. I'll leave you to make up your minds on it. Writing takes us musicians to strange places. We write things of which we are not conscious of at the time. We find things in our own music and writing, that we didn't know were there. Putting this up for you today, with above description, with this highly personalised and auto-biographical context, feels similar to one of those dreams when you are inexplicably naked in front of your peers. This is easy for me. It is second nature. I'm cool with it. Seriously.
The whole of The Light Gate, is for me, some kind of therapy. A kind of emergence. It is liberating. I have played this and other songs of a similar context many, many times in public but I love, and I mean this sincerely, love the fact that it always seems to give me some kind of connection with a bit of me that would fester otherwise. It is the most tremendous blessing.
Looking forward to posting more content here for you very soon. God bless. Take care. Keep in touch to all those who keep in touch.
Your friend,
The BoHo Scarecrow
Trapped In The Head
I heard you praying, That you were dead,
You were complaining You’d been easily led, begged hungry, As their lies were fed. Bleeding, bleed until, Your bile is bled.
How did you get trapped in the head? Its like a prison cell, And the lights turned red. Now you’re trapped, Trapped in the head.
You walked, Walked the line,
Pretending that All was fine,
But wasn’t it easy, To swallow their wine,
Whilst getting crushed By the goosestep of time.
How did you get trapped in the head? Its like a prison cell, And the lights turned red. Now you’re trapped, Trapped in the head.
YOU will find embedded in this post two videos of a new song, written recently, with words from lyrics written in late 2008.
In the Light Gate opera, this song is about one man splitting into two halves. It is the moment when, Edward Sun divides and his alter ego, Edison is born. For me as a writer, it is about someone who I loved, love, beyond comprehension. Its beautiful. Tragic. Reassuring and terrifying simultaneously.
And when I wrote the words, I was in deep stuck. I was literally dreaming of tomb stones covered in moss. I think that it was the first bout of serious depression that I had ever truly experienced. I thought that I was going to die.
BUT lets fast forward to today. I am fired up like never before at the moment. In the last couple of weeks I have been working hard to resurrect myself from the end of the above and its working. I was going to post more of the last show in Camden here, but I really feel quite uncomfortable about how far down Pie Alley I had gone and so will post just one of the songs here for you.
So you have today, In The Eyes Of The Storm. A rehearsal and a live version. I hope that you enjoy them. I am really tremendous form at the moment. I am going great guns on so many fronts. Managed to finish in the top half of the field on the Finsbury Park 5km run on yesterday, I play tennis a couple of times a week, football too and running most days.
My confidence is back. Its tremendous. The dates and venues for The Who Convention are about to be announced and we are hoping that it will be at Dingwalls.
The music used to introduce the rehearsal video was one of my Lifehouse Method portraits from Pete Townshend's interactive music project, that uses harmonic composition based upon the golden mean to generate musical portraits of individual sitters. I was one of the twenty Beta testers, who first tried out this software, and I think that from memory this was the first Portrait that I generated. I woke this morning with this playing through my head, again and again and again. Its rather beautiful.
After me, the storm. There is a new benign storm brewing from behind my eyes at the moment.
Adventures in music, art, film through technology, rock n roll and light.
This blog is a journal, a digital music court circular, a launchpad, a starting point, a beacon.
Scarecrow Manifesto One
The BoHo Scarecrow is more than one man.
The BoHo Scarecrow invites musicians, artists, film makers, racounteurs and other assorted breeds of creatives to join.
The BoHo Scarecrow believes in the capacity of music - particularly rock n roll - to bring people together.
The BoHo Scarecrow is intended to demonstrate that ROCK MUSIC IS A LOW FORM OF ENTERTAINMENT CAPABLE OF DELIVERING HIGH ART.
The BoHo Scarecrow is a pin badge, a slogan and a response.
The BoHo Scarecrow is about having a good good good time.
The BoHo Scarecrow is aware that we do not always have a good good good time, but likes to stand up for fellow BoHo buddies when times are bad.
There are no bad times.
The BoHo Scarecrow will aspire to integrate a broad scope of multi-media tools to create temporary experiences in disposable environments.
The BoHo Scarecrow is apolitcal but not apathetic.
Like The Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh, the BoHo Scarecrow is flesh and blood.
The BoHo Scarecrow will eat itself.
The BoHo Scarecrow will regenerate...
