KENNING

Shape-shifter
Metamorphoser
Posture imposter
Yoga poser
Arch deceiver
Inbetweener
Cat's back
Swan song
Wolf pack
Cobra sprung
Shed my skin
Skin my fur
On a wing
On a prayer

MANUSCRIPT III

Imaginings of the past

We had been walking for seven sunrises when the walled city at last came into view, stretched out expansively below us on the edge of the dusty plain. It was an impressive sight, the setting sun casting long shadows in the sand. We laid down our burdens, tethered our beasts, and set up camp for the night. Lembo and I took some gourds down to the waterfall to collect fresh water. We knelt beside the stream and splashed our faces with the cool water. We took off our threadbare leather sandals and sat for a while in the gathering twilight, bathing our feet in the shallows and soaking the dirt out of our cracked blistered skin. Our shoulders ached from the heavy load we had carried many a league from the wintering grounds. It had been a long, exhausting, dangerous journey, and its end had come none too soon.

Back at the camp, meat was already roasting on a spit and the group’s spirits were higher than they had been for some time. Hannibal sat alone by the hearth, apart from the other travellers, his tanned serious face illuminated by the firelight. He stroked his beard, seemingly lost in thought, as he stared into the flames. ‘There’ll be rich pickings tomorrow,’ he murmured quietly.

A cry went up from the look-out behind us. Lembo and I and some of the women rushed to the top of the slight rise just in time to see a sea of tiny lights sailing silently into the sky above the walled city like a swarm of fireflies. It was a breathtaking sight. ‘Paper lanterns,’ cried Uma, ‘the Moon Festival has begun!’

We rose at dawn, packed up the camp and headed for the walled city. As we approached the huge east gate, flanked on either side by tall turrets manned by archers, every one of us was fearful, terrified of being apprehended by the guards. All except for Hannibal, who appeared as cool and immovable as stone. In our scruffy robes, dirty and frayed from the journey, we looked more like mendicants than merchants. But at the gate Hannibal pressed something into the hand of one of the guards and we were waved through into the jostling crowds of the city.

MANUSCRIPT II

Memories of the future

Centaur tapped lazily at a small white icon on the screen of the Cloud, lay back on his pillows and waited for the pharmaceuticals to take effect. He didn’t have to wait very long. Almost instantly, a rush of pure pleasure coursed powerfully through his blood stream and into his brain, a flood of ones and zeroes digitally simulating the effects of pure heroin. After the initial rush had abated, Centaur lay there in a dreamy daze, musing absent-mindedly on the safely mediated wonders of the Cloud. In the bad old days, he had heard it said, people used to spend large sums of cash on such pleasures, risking the perils of a contaminated needle, a criminal record and the untold horrors of addiction. But the Cloud rendered all of these inconveniences quaint relics of the past. Centaur drifted off into a relaxing haze.

When he woke several orbs later, he was feeling pleasantly aroused. He reached out for the Cloud on the bedside table and tapped again at the screen. Toggling idly through a series of avatars, he found the one he was looking for. Tonight he would summon Elektra. He had missed Elektra’s charms lately. Centaur dropped the Cloud on the bed, closed his eyes to the brightness of the room and found himself sitting in the garden of a Greek taverna. It was a sultry Mediterranean evening. Cicadas buzzed among the trees. Birds issued fluty calls. The air was heavy with the perfume of exotic flowers. The table was lit by a solitary lantern. Elektra was seated opposite him, wearing a long flowing dress of purple silk. Her honey-brown hair was tied up in a bunch above her head, emphasising her long, brown slender neck. Spiral-shaped earrings dangled from her lobes. Her almond eyes smiled sadly at him as her lips began to move. ‘How could you neglect me for so long, Centaur?’ She wore a fragrant scent, which teased his nostrils. The overall effect was so intoxicating he couldn’t take his eyes off her. At that moment waiters dressed as satyrs appeared from the darkness armed with plates of food: dolmades, hummus, and delicious flat breads. One waiter filled the couple’s silver goblets with blood red wine. ‘Never mind that. Let’s eat,’ Centaur murmured, taking a deep draft from his goblet and for the first time noticing the spangled stillness of the starlit sky. They ate in silence. The meal over, their stomachs full and their minds gently intoxicated by the wine, Centaur and Elektra strolled hand in hand down to the plunge pool beside the stream. Slipping off their clothes, they bathed gratefully in the clear waters. Elektra was an eager lover, taking him to heights of ecstasy that he could scarcely have imagined. Afterwards, they lay exhausted for some time on the bank of the stream, their bodies entwined, gazing up at the blinking stars. Centaur couldn’t remember falling asleep. It wasn’t until the Cloud’s insistent bleep roused him from his deep slumbers that he realised he was back in his room in Century Towers.

MANUSCRIPT

The Sense Filter

On the terrace outside, Griffon tuned up doggedly as the traffic sped by along the dual-carriageway. His recent acquisition of an electronic tuner barely seemed to make the process any less laborious. As he adjusted his capo and twiddled stubbornly uncooperative tuning pegs, navigating the murky microtonal waters between D sharp and E, his mind was on the gig ahead. As usual, he felt under-rehearsed and under-confident, worried about fluffing his words and muffing his chord changes. Armed with only an acoustic guitar and without a band behind him to bolster the arrangements, he often felt exposed. There was nowhere to hide when things went pear-shaped, which they frequently did. That said, experience had taught him what to expect from this venue. A third of the audience would spend most of the set chatting away to their friends. Another third would be mostly texting. Of the remaining audience members who at least gave the impression that they were listening, Griffon wondered how many were actually paying him their full attention. He consoled himself with the thought that whatever he sang and played, it would always be filtered through the senses of each listener and experienced uniquely. That was the great wonder of art, he mused absent-mindedly. It was as if each individual had his or her own personal frequency, just like a tuning fork. What resonated perfectly with one person left another completely unmoved. Griffon sometimes thought of his songs as a mirror held up to the world – or even the wider cosmos – reflecting back what it saw before it in words and music. What got reflected back was unpredictable. Sometimes it was beautiful and magical. Sometimes it was ugly and cynical. Sometimes it was hazy, kaleidoscopic or fragmented. Compounding this filtered reality, each member of the audience carried their own mirror, cracked, flawed and imperfect, which refracted and distorted the original image, often to such a degree that it was barely recognisable. That seemed an inescapable, but oddly reassuring reality.

‘Hey.’ Griffon glanced up and glimpsed Megan as she sashayed past him and disappeared into the gloom of the bar. The coolly polite response to Griffon’s support set would almost certainly be in stark contrast to that elicited by Megan. Megan was the one the crowd had come to see. When Megan sang, everyone suddenly sat up and listened - as if a magic spell had been cast upon them. Phones would be hastily put away. Conversations would abruptly tail off. Megan possessed the kind of charismatic stage presence that held the audience’s rapt attention. There was something about her voice that demanded to be heard. It wasn’t power per se, although she could certainly summon enough steel when she needed to. Neither was it pureness, even though her voice had a distinct fragile, crystalline quality. It wasn’t exactly a sweetness or a roughness or an earthiness. It was somehow all of these qualities at once, her voice modulating effortlessly between subtle emotional nuances. Megan’s voice melted hearts. It seemed to resonate with everyone’s different frequencies at once – as if she was able to set a myriad tuning forks vibrating simultaneously. As if she could bypass the sense filter and mainline straight into the bloodstream. Meanwhile, her fingers struck the piano keys with a sureness and deftness that Griffon could only dream of matching on his own instrument. Megan had the X factor in spades. And no matter what happened, she always managed to surf the waves that threatened to drown other performers. Griffon recalled an acapella set one night that had floored the audience after the bar’s keyboard had been inexplicably loaned out for the evening. A sore throat only added an alluring huskiness to her voice. And Megan had just the right putdown to subdue the occasional heckler: ‘Look at the tits on her.’ ‘Yeah, and they’re not the only tits in here tonight, mate!’

The bar was slowly filling up. It was time for Griffon to go on.

WILD CHILD

it is our time in eden
three nights camping with hannah woo
on the banks of windermere
at the summit of a small hill in the woods
we pitch our tent among the bluebells
the air is thick with the scent of wild garlic
h is anxious to explore and i let her loose
our night is punctuated by the hoots of owls
bats flit silently among the treetops
we are woken early by jackdaws and songbirds
while i make coffee and cook porridge
h queues for freshly baked croissants at the shop
later we go for a barefoot walk by the lake
h makes a long daisy chain
and relishes ascending an outdoor climbing wall
at near sawrey we find a congenial pub
serving mouth-watering pints of brodey's prime
and drive home through an enchanted dusk beside esthwaite water
the next day we are out on the lake in a canoe
h finds it difficult to reach the water with her paddle
and i do most of the work
but she acquits herself well
we hike up from grasmere village to easedale tarn
in the footsteps of wordsworth and coleridge
there is great rock scrambling to be had above the tumbling waterfalls
back on terra firma we dine at the best pub yet
the kings arms in hawkshead
where pints of lancaster red accompany an apricot nut roast admirably
our final day fins us out on windermere again
in bright sunshine

this time we share a kayak and our fortunes are reversed
h can paddle much more easily
but the low seating position does nothing for my creaking joints
and the headwind makes it tough going
a few moments of frustration flare
as h tires and i need a breather
oars are banged meaningfully against the hull of the kayak
i am obviously slacking
but we eventually make it back to port
with nothing more serious than damp bottoms
a postcard home to grandparents reads:
'i am being a wild child'

WOLVERINE

I hear the whistle of the wind
I feel a storm is blowing in
There's something brewing

I see the banks are going to burst
I fear the floods will do their worst
There's nothing doing

Wolverine
You curl up in a ball
Wolverine
You stumble and fall

Dry your eyes
Don't shed a tear
Hold me close
Hold me near
For here we stand
And here we fight
There's something brewing tonight

I know it's going to be so hard
I suppose I'm afraid of losing heart
Something's brewing

Wolverine
You cuff me with your paws
Wolverine
You cut me with your claws

Dry your eyes
Don't shed a tear
Hold me close
Hold me near
For together we stand
And together we fight
There's something brewing tonight

DIGITAL SLAVERY

caressed like rosary beads
precious devices
borne heads down
relentlessly monitored and prioritised
dominant theme
the self
me
my needs

THE SLEEP OF REASON

yesterday i complete the artwork
and burn the master of the new album
it's always a satisfying feeling
to hold in my hand that first copy of the finished artifact
my best shot at beauty, personal expression and creativity
to transfer it from its cardboard sleeve to the hifi downstairs
to turn the speakers up nice and loud
and to finally hear the individual songs played in sequence
within the context of the whole album
to hear one track melt into the next
sometimes seamlessly and almost imperceptibly
sometimes in complete contrast to what went before
the whole experience feels like crossing the finishing line
at the end of a marathon
a strong sense of exhilaration mixed with a tinge of regret
'if only i could have have nailed that vocal better'
'what a pity that arrangement didn't quite work out'
oddly the hifi system seems to pick up flaws
that my computer monitors and headphones don't
it's like an external critical ear
a magnifying glass that detects the flaw in the diamond
i have learned to live with this
my perfectionist streak has struggled to accept the concept of 'good enough'
but i'm getting there
another oddity of the recording process
is that rerecording vocals doesn't generally work
songs can go through almost complete remakes in terms of arrangements
but a vocal seems to be a vocal
i've discovered that there are just some songs that i can sing
and others that i can't
at least with my raw untrained musical voice
it's something to do with the register and tessitura of the melody
and the necessary balance of power and delicacy
try too hard and it sounds raucous (not quite the word i'm searching for) or strained
hold back too much and it sounds wimpy and half-hearted
but there's also the mysterious factor of texture or timbre(?) that i can't pin down
a kind of difficult-to-fathom warmth or tone
some songs i can nail on the first take
'relationship' and 'remnants' fall into that category
others i'll never really be happy with
in a band situation i guess they'd fall to someone else to sing
if i listen back to previous albums
the vocals are always the number one weakness
although they have steadily improved over the years
(aided by a developing awareness of production values
reverb, equalisation, compression and the like)
the first few albums are fatally compromised in this respect
(also by the rather synthetic drum samples that i started out with)
the timescale of this album is interesting
ten years ago when i was learning the ropes
'mustard seed' took two years to record
in complete contrast i've dashed this one off in just a couple of months
a real sprint
and hot on the heels of 'coming home'
which itself took only around five months to complete
this record is a curious hybrid of five brand new songs
plus half a dozen left over from last year
and one that was kind of hanging around unloved
in a notebook from three summers ago
and needed some work to bring it up to scratch
although it seemed very prescient
as for the album title
right until the very last minute
i was going to call it 'ideology'
(partly in homage to ball and dagger's insightful book)
when suddenly as i was designing the sleeve
the obvious hit me in the face
'the sleep of reason'
what a cool ambiguous title
courtesy of senor goya of course!