but old captain mission needs to write it to and i am somewhat cursed with the writing affliction.
you spend your life in obsessions, or you don't.
i always felt ones towards certain books like paul austers 'moon palace' micheal moorcock's brilliant multiverse novels, william burroughs ethos of word virus and howard blooms brilliant understanding of the forces that drive us in his profound book 'the lucifer principle' and many other fringe science fiction writers i could list who played more with ideas, while the manifestation of these ideas was left to those practical folks, like engineers and builders. that's why i love writing, for the the idea. plus my romantic ideal of sitting on a balcony drinking coconut drinks with some exotic lady and being free to use my imagination and get paid for it by writing. obsession one.
then there were certain girls, french ones with that hot librarian look, the ones who can stimulate my mind and still be sexy and cool and romantic. obsession two.
obsession three is my predisposition towards mystery, the occult and some kind of hidden reality.
and then twin obsessions certain bands and music which seems to have some significance to me. i always kept my standard high with music, because lots of bands created good music but only a few had the words to go with it.
that's the thing, the million dollar catch with music and songwriters, you can write a song, many millions of songs out there, but can you tell a story or paint a picture with words that match the music. i could hear a beautiful piece of music and it would capture me and pull me into it's spell but if the lyrics were crap i would loose interest fast and resent the people that made it. there were some musicians i obsessed about because they had this duel gift, bowie, the velvets, some post punk bands but there was one song writer who was really setting the bar high and sometimes his music would move me into another world and that's the church and specifically steve who seemed to share some of my own obsessions although i'm sure the french librarian girl obsession was absent, he's probably not that shallow.
tonight i hear david neil play again, it's a special evening despite my confusion at having tickets for last nights central coast event and not tonights but they very kindly let me through. i'm escorted to the dressing room and steve hugs me and sam offers me a seat and riki is david ruffin and the hoffmans are beautiful and humble people who have a lovely gentle way and it's surreal for me and steve offers me half his dinner and i eat with the band while steve has his head buried in his laptop, and later i see he's working on editing a video. in the next few hours he films two more and edits them together ridiculously quickly. it's a real cool atmosphere in that room, a band getting ready to play a gig, i can see these people are all individuals but there's that energy that is like a jigsaw, they fit together and somehow create a complete image. rikki is david ruffin tonight, he's playing the temptations and telling me the sad and tragic death tale of this voice. rikki is cat like, he's like the wizards cat man, supremely and infinitely outside all space and time, he's music itself, like jazz, soul, psychedelia, just all music, in one unique life. and then onstage rikki plays the most amazingly switched on guitar, he takes the rich tones and tweaks them, sometimes the energy he creates is like a wall of sound, i can physically feel it, you can play with it, build things from it. that's how it was for me, at the back of the gig, listening and closing my eyes and feeling the sound. if you let it work it will, it will take you away. tonight i really felt the band, the sound and venue was spot on, and although the audience were mixed, some left finding it not to their liking, the ones that stayed really loved it and responded well although sedated in that northern beaches bourgeois way, but it was appreciative and i think like me listening, listening to the richness and songs. the set was perfect, i would not change anything about the set, we were a way into it before the first david neil tune but it seemed to work very well and i very much enjoyed the apocrypha songs. the opening 'neverness hoax is beautiful, 'limbo' takes you to the pits of human emptiness and despair, 'thought that i was over you' is just such a unifying tune and well they are all good, all fucking brilliant songs to be honest, and no matter how critical one could be, i found the set faultless although 'almost with you' didn't need to be there, however the audience loved it because it's a northern beaches classic rock song and i guess ties in with the collective memory.
anyway back in the dressing room steve unveils his video he has made, and they are very good, fragments from david neils life, insight into his darkness. and then steve is struck by some theatrical idea and has wild child and i in the corridor, acting out some tense drama, poor adrian, i think i may have scared him with my intensity a little. after the show i return to that room and see steve play me the finished film, it's excellent, a narrative rubric cube when you play all three videos.
now here's the thing, steve's a genius, there can be no doubt about that, but watching him work is something else. i dunno, i'm just some fan, i feel like i'm 20 years old again when i see steve, like an awkward teenager. i don't know how people feel when they are supposed to meet their favourite artist, i met a few famous celebs, but no one really impressed this much or influenced me personally the way steve's writing has so i always default to awed fan, but when you see him working it's like being inside the atomic structure of the big bang because the mans synapses are firing so fast and so on it, the room almost fills up with his brains electrical energy, colours fly our from his head, that's how it feels anyway.
now i don't get out much, i don't socialise much at all and i've lost most of my social skills so i don't have the conformity of relating to people on most levels, i'm well aware of my freak status amongst people in my personal community, and my obsessions are not theirs, but when you spend your whole life really following an artist and creative muse you know is authentic and has delivered you something from a consuming end that speaks right to your spirit directly, you can't help but feel slightly awed. i never wanted to meet you because i was frightened of being disappointed but i am so grateful i have, it's true you saw me loose my mind totally, in ecstasy with the universe, the most profound event that had ever happened to me, my rebirth was shared with you, i have strange memory vagueness about the environment, who was there, what was said, although the fundamental experience was something i will never forget, the internal process was unforgettable, but i recall you being there and sharing that with me and then tonight steve shared half his meal with me.
yeah i know it's insignificant but i'm an awestruck fan remember
so for me it's like something i won't forget ever, it's gonna be one of those things i pass on to my grandchildren and they will look at me as say,'wow' becuase by then everyone will see what i see now.
david neil is a brilliant band, as good as the church, rich and diverse, quality over quantity and the musicianship is equally as good as anything i have seen the church do, the songs are magnificent, yes they grow after repeated listening, live it's excellent, and the videos are equally excellent but it confirms something for me, that artists like steve and ricki are societies and therefore cultures assets. yet they are undervalued and under appreciated. give me the genius poet, give me the raving visionary, give me the mage and the fool, give me something other than meaningless drivel spewed forth for profit and greed and attached to the worst kind of inauthenticity human beings can dream up. because i am dying out here, alienated and saddened by humanity and it's fabricated attempt to built something on such a weak foundation of ideas. the stock market blah!
well im raving but i know i make sense, i know underneath all the words when it comes down to it you know what im driving at.
steve talking on a radio show about plan b.
he said to marty 'what are you gonna do if we don't make it, what do you have to fall back on.'
marty replies, 'there is nothing else. no plan b.'
these are the people who risked everything for art.
value it!
obsession three is my predisposition towards mystery, the occult and some kind of hidden reality.
and then twin obsessions certain bands and music which seems to have some significance to me. i always kept my standard high with music, because lots of bands created good music but only a few had the words to go with it.
that's the thing, the million dollar catch with music and songwriters, you can write a song, many millions of songs out there, but can you tell a story or paint a picture with words that match the music. i could hear a beautiful piece of music and it would capture me and pull me into it's spell but if the lyrics were crap i would loose interest fast and resent the people that made it. there were some musicians i obsessed about because they had this duel gift, bowie, the velvets, some post punk bands but there was one song writer who was really setting the bar high and sometimes his music would move me into another world and that's the church and specifically steve who seemed to share some of my own obsessions although i'm sure the french librarian girl obsession was absent, he's probably not that shallow.
tonight i hear david neil play again, it's a special evening despite my confusion at having tickets for last nights central coast event and not tonights but they very kindly let me through. i'm escorted to the dressing room and steve hugs me and sam offers me a seat and riki is david ruffin and the hoffmans are beautiful and humble people who have a lovely gentle way and it's surreal for me and steve offers me half his dinner and i eat with the band while steve has his head buried in his laptop, and later i see he's working on editing a video. in the next few hours he films two more and edits them together ridiculously quickly. it's a real cool atmosphere in that room, a band getting ready to play a gig, i can see these people are all individuals but there's that energy that is like a jigsaw, they fit together and somehow create a complete image. rikki is david ruffin tonight, he's playing the temptations and telling me the sad and tragic death tale of this voice. rikki is cat like, he's like the wizards cat man, supremely and infinitely outside all space and time, he's music itself, like jazz, soul, psychedelia, just all music, in one unique life. and then onstage rikki plays the most amazingly switched on guitar, he takes the rich tones and tweaks them, sometimes the energy he creates is like a wall of sound, i can physically feel it, you can play with it, build things from it. that's how it was for me, at the back of the gig, listening and closing my eyes and feeling the sound. if you let it work it will, it will take you away. tonight i really felt the band, the sound and venue was spot on, and although the audience were mixed, some left finding it not to their liking, the ones that stayed really loved it and responded well although sedated in that northern beaches bourgeois way, but it was appreciative and i think like me listening, listening to the richness and songs. the set was perfect, i would not change anything about the set, we were a way into it before the first david neil tune but it seemed to work very well and i very much enjoyed the apocrypha songs. the opening 'neverness hoax is beautiful, 'limbo' takes you to the pits of human emptiness and despair, 'thought that i was over you' is just such a unifying tune and well they are all good, all fucking brilliant songs to be honest, and no matter how critical one could be, i found the set faultless although 'almost with you' didn't need to be there, however the audience loved it because it's a northern beaches classic rock song and i guess ties in with the collective memory.
anyway back in the dressing room steve unveils his video he has made, and they are very good, fragments from david neils life, insight into his darkness. and then steve is struck by some theatrical idea and has wild child and i in the corridor, acting out some tense drama, poor adrian, i think i may have scared him with my intensity a little. after the show i return to that room and see steve play me the finished film, it's excellent, a narrative rubric cube when you play all three videos.
now here's the thing, steve's a genius, there can be no doubt about that, but watching him work is something else. i dunno, i'm just some fan, i feel like i'm 20 years old again when i see steve, like an awkward teenager. i don't know how people feel when they are supposed to meet their favourite artist, i met a few famous celebs, but no one really impressed this much or influenced me personally the way steve's writing has so i always default to awed fan, but when you see him working it's like being inside the atomic structure of the big bang because the mans synapses are firing so fast and so on it, the room almost fills up with his brains electrical energy, colours fly our from his head, that's how it feels anyway.
now i don't get out much, i don't socialise much at all and i've lost most of my social skills so i don't have the conformity of relating to people on most levels, i'm well aware of my freak status amongst people in my personal community, and my obsessions are not theirs, but when you spend your whole life really following an artist and creative muse you know is authentic and has delivered you something from a consuming end that speaks right to your spirit directly, you can't help but feel slightly awed. i never wanted to meet you because i was frightened of being disappointed but i am so grateful i have, it's true you saw me loose my mind totally, in ecstasy with the universe, the most profound event that had ever happened to me, my rebirth was shared with you, i have strange memory vagueness about the environment, who was there, what was said, although the fundamental experience was something i will never forget, the internal process was unforgettable, but i recall you being there and sharing that with me and then tonight steve shared half his meal with me.
yeah i know it's insignificant but i'm an awestruck fan remember
so for me it's like something i won't forget ever, it's gonna be one of those things i pass on to my grandchildren and they will look at me as say,'wow' becuase by then everyone will see what i see now.
david neil is a brilliant band, as good as the church, rich and diverse, quality over quantity and the musicianship is equally as good as anything i have seen the church do, the songs are magnificent, yes they grow after repeated listening, live it's excellent, and the videos are equally excellent but it confirms something for me, that artists like steve and ricki are societies and therefore cultures assets. yet they are undervalued and under appreciated. give me the genius poet, give me the raving visionary, give me the mage and the fool, give me something other than meaningless drivel spewed forth for profit and greed and attached to the worst kind of inauthenticity human beings can dream up. because i am dying out here, alienated and saddened by humanity and it's fabricated attempt to built something on such a weak foundation of ideas. the stock market blah!
well im raving but i know i make sense, i know underneath all the words when it comes down to it you know what im driving at.
steve talking on a radio show about plan b.
he said to marty 'what are you gonna do if we don't make it, what do you have to fall back on.'
marty replies, 'there is nothing else. no plan b.'
these are the people who risked everything for art.
value it!
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