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Tuesday 27 October 2020

 Thoughts and Videos.

I seem to be feeling an attraction to blogging again, after a number of years. I don't know if it's strong enough to actually get me writing regularly or even non-regularly but I'm thinking about it. Anyway, it's a chance to blow some of the digital spiderwebs from this dusty corner of the internet.

Perhaps it's the need to find some sense of purpose at the moment as Covid19 has just been making me feel like I'm drifting even more aimlessly than is usual. 

One of the 'projects' that I have been pursuing is making videos for old songs by my band and putting them on Youtube. (I've actually been trying to write and develop a bunch of new songs but that will not be complete until we can actually get back together as a band when this current situation has ended..)

Anyway here are some of the recent videos I've assembled, mostly using silent films. This first one, however, uses footage I shot myself. 


Cold

Airwaves

Toothache

El Mariachi

Resurrection

Worse

Friday 2 October 2020

 


Derek Mahon.

Today, the death of the great Irish poet Derek Mahon was announced. It inspired me to try and capture the passing relationship I had with the words of his poem A Disused Shed in County Wexford. I read it when I was young and felt a poet was something to be. 

Although the ambition has borne little fruit, it remains a fascination. It seems to call me back but I am aware that I am an amateur versifier - while Derek Mahon made phrases that change how you see the world.


Thoughts upon hearing of the death of Derek Mahon

 

"Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought

And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream

At the flash-bulb firing-squad we wake them with

Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms." 

 

When first I read these words there was a shiver 

of recognition.

Once, opening the small door 

into the unconverted eavesliding attic

Confusion turned to fascination

And a slight unease.

 

The creeper from the front of the house

Had grown into the dark

White, grasping,

like roots above ground

searching for sustenance in the air.

 

Triffids, I thought 

Reaching for my sleeping throat

Marooned in the bloodless dark. 

 

Now it feels that I have sprouted

In the dark

Poems without soil. 

 

As you enter the wordless mouth-shuttering clay

I wonder will my unflowered stems

Ever feel the sun.