"Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
Buddha




"Through my weakness I became strong…."


“I wish to be at any time hereafter only a yea-sayer!”
Friedrich Nietzsche


"Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
Albert Camus






“We live in a rainbow of chaos”
Paul Cezanne


In a song from my last album called “Ulysses” I wrote about “having to begin at the journey´s end”. The song is really about the irony that often it at the end where you find the true beginning. It has taken 10 years - through various different projects & guises - to feel that I have reached this new beginning.

The underground has nurtured me, and its rewards have been not in the occasional successes, but in the ways it has shaped me as each new challenge has asked its different questions of the spirit - especially the “failures”, fuck up´s, come downs, lost paths, ego battles - and all their brothers & sisters.

The irony is that in reaching the starting line, you carry the weight of your past, and make no mistake; it is heavy.

This year I played 44 gigs in 50 days, and during the process I had tonsilitus, bronchitus, food poisoning and finally - a measly little cold which visited as if just to complete the wretched set.

There is little time to catch breath, because things have been set in motion. And gladly. Some things I´ve been working towards are somehow beginning to bear fruit.

It is a little miniature whirlwind. And within it I feel I am making paradoxical transformations physically and spiritually - and they seem in someways to be in reaction against this previous “self” which has brought me to this current bus stop on this particular road.

Namely, for the first time I feel a sense of burn out. It´s a new experience, because I have a good engine, and for the last few years I´ve felt in a near hyper active space in my songwriting.

But where I´m at is something new, and it is pretty surreal, given that there are exciting developments happening, momentum and the gradual fruition of a lot of hard work. But it´s making me think again about things. I guess this is the first voicing of these new imperceptible changes….

I feel the need to cure myself of ambition. I have met ambition many times, in myself, and in others, and for the most part, I have found her ugly. She continually over-reaches, propels herself forward, holds the moment with disregard. I guess she is actually a man for that matter….

Hell, ambition, like most things, has many faces, and how she appears is really about what pair of specs you have on.

But I guess i´ve just got to the point where I feel I need to redefine my relationship with her/him. If there is to be ambition, let it be spiritual ambition, in the capacity for a more developed self, towards the occasional insight. It´s from there that the rest follows surely….

I felt deeply uneasy about becoming a “solo artist” for the first time in 2010. I always wanted a “band”. I like the “abstract” quality of a band. Of putting forward an “idea” rather than a “face”, a “concept” rather than a “person”.

But for whatever reason, my life has led me to becoming a solo artist. And I think I now understand why. Despite all my best efforts and intentions, band life was a form of dilution. For better or worse, my songs come out of the everyday wrestling with the self & the world. Both are in transit, and their relation is often uneasy. I am aware of too much “inward looking” - of the perception of indulgence. But frankly I could not give a dam. The wars of this world, the abuse, the evil - manifest from a lack of self knowledge, not an over-dose of it.

Self is the laboratory, the body the temple where songs spring from. And yes, I am a solo artist. After all this time. Finally. Against my intended will. But the path asks things of you & you either follow it, or you spend a life ignoring it. And I am the “face” of it. But really I don´t look at the relevance of myself in this project. It is about being a vehicle for a set of ideas. Trying to channel the little insights that you “eek” out of yourself along the way.

For better or worse, there is something called the human “spirit”. And somehow all too often in this modern world it ceases up and becomes “static” once we reach a certain age.

I am sure of two things; first, that it does not have to seize up. Second, that to resist this “seizing up” is a tough fucking job.

But there you are, there´s the challenge. Personally I don´t think there is an easy route. But I do believe that effort is eventually rewarded. Chaos exists, but you can do you damdest to face it. Ultimately how we choose to live is about courage. And every day you have to renew it, because everyday it wanes.

So I am looking at my “burn-out” as an opportunity. To stop, even while in motion. To re-commit to my path in a purer way, where ambition is a bystander and, hopefully, success, a consequence of attempting to live in a way that is right - at least for me.


“What is to give light must endure burning” Viktor Frankl


“I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends’ floors, was happy, was miserable”
Ben Okri


“Sometimes you want to give up the guitar, you’ll hate the guitar. But if you stick with it, you’re gonna be rewarded”
Jimi Hendrix


“A thought is an idea in transit”
Pythagoras


Sometimes I´m not sure whether I am running away from something or whether I am running towards something….then I realize it´s usually both at the same time…..

“Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away” Goethe


"If you don´t live it, it won´t come out the horn"
Charlie Parker


“Every human heart is a revolutionary cell”…..funny how the same statement can be at once utterly beautiful and utterly terrifying…..I guess it just depends what specs you have on….


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