rain steals my day, it's a beautiful thief, nourishing the environment and depleting my spirits, i can't surf in the rain. i want to throw a tantrum. i sit in my studio and look at it falling, drops exploding upon the palm fronds in morning light. big dark storm clouds black out, far out, it feels like sunday evening on a friday morning, and i feel like i'm dreaming.
later i pace up and down, in one room out the other, can't read as my thoughts are half formed. the 'limit' narrative gets mashed into my own. i float through space towards the sun adrift, isolated, alone, isolar, i think of... 'subterraneans' that magnificent sound, your vocals come out of the music like a ghost, man that was incredible. i see on bowiebook csm that stupid critic from the old nme who slagged you off saying, 'it's the last nail in his coffin' when he reviewed 'heroes' is now singing your praises. what a prick, i feel like writing to him and pointing out to his zillion followers what a wanker he is but you would probably have forgiven him long ago and found it funny, just like you did martin amis. 
'flash in the pan' ha! not many got the reference in blackstar, especially the video but i did, a very funny moment you always were a step ahead. i recall you saying how much you enjoyed 'money' i did to, i liked most of his books except 'yellow dog' which i should try again but 'zone of interest' is probably his best. 
anyway it's still raining here, and everyone says hi.   

i surf the blues away, every morning at the crack of dawn, each wave brings me home, each thought drifts over my head and out into the endless white noise of static. it's a strange feeling all this energy in the air and i fulfil my promise and work it out, work through it, work on it until it just works.
i surf, i think about you, i think about me, i think about death, your's, and mine. that's what it's all about isn't it? 

you went out perfectly man, with grace and style, and dignity and creativity and there's so much love for you, from humanity. 
i have only really played the blackstar cd, not listening to your previous recordings yet as i am still discovering blackstar. i did play 'in the heat of the morning' as i've loved that song for ages, the words particularly and i wanted to hear them again becuase it's a romantic song and i always think of you as a romantic despite some dark social commentary you kept a romantic heart.  
i see you stuck with your buddhism in the end. it's an elegant choice and top of my list although who knows what goes through a mans mind in the circumstances of ones death. actually i do. it's all about letting go, i understand it but nonetheless instinctively we cling to life. because we want to be with our children and family and people we love. because we are scared. just because. i'm so glad you were with your family. 
i played blackstar really loud at sunset, i didn't cry, even at 'dollar days', i like the way you rock out of that one and into 'i can't give everything' the sad songs now sound so strong when i hear them, so full of your strength. 
anyway, i feel this energy around, it may not last but it's there unifying people who celebrate your life. i can't think of many people who have ever done that, facebook is bowie book now and it means something. it means for a moment there is no hate, no division, no bullshit just a genuine feeling of love for you. that's what's happened man, everyone knows you now and everyone loves you.

the surf spits me out and sends me back to mission control where i start to clean up, i have a lot to look forwards to, a lot to do.   

     

Sigma Librae, Spica, Alpha Virginis, Zeta Centauri, SAA 204 132, and the Beta Sigma Octantis Trianguli Australis all very close to and pointing at Mars. That's a gift from Belgium but I think I speak for all us Earthlings when I say it's from us all. I heard they want to re name Mars itself, but I feel one cant play with mythology like that Mars has it's own place. I think perhaps this new constellation is more appropriate. It's shape is the ZIG ZAG from Aladdin Sane so as I am an avid star gazer I will be able to look up and see your stars man. That makes me happy. 

it's the sad days for a while here at mission control. i'm mourning you. i can't even eat (which may be a good thing) i need a big bag of weed for this one, while i comprehend this loss and this effect upon my very soul.

i know it will pass in some slow time and i know you would not wish me to stay in one place to long. 

i had a beautiful e mail from my father. it said, 'i know you must be heartbroken, he was your hero. god bless him.'

my old man! that's gotta make you laugh, he was always yelling at me to take that wretched ziggy stardust off the turntable so he could play his trini lopez albums ha, i bet that makes you smile. it was simple and heartfelt i guess but it was my mother that really surprised me a few days later when i finally spoke to her, she said, 'he was so much part of your life we feel like we have lost a son.'

my mum said that!

she reminded me how my room was filled with posters of you. i can't remember that, i know i had one massive 'low' poster but then my memory does have a few leaks.

this is a different kind of loss for me because i don't want to let you go just yet, i wanna keep hold of this moment in time and it's influence but a few days ago i wrote some words about light from the sun, and how it is a few minutes old by the time it hits the earth. it's the light from the past that enables us to perceive and motivate in the present and prepare for a future. so while i try to let you go, i'm going to embrace the light you left me and try to look for a better tomorrow. i know that's what you would want me to do so i'll just take this moment... to say... farewell, my hero. 

vale david bowie
strangely i'm about two hundred pages into the huge novel called limit where the main characters are travelling on the maiden voyage of the space elevator and they are about to meet a guest with different coloured eyes who is going to sing for them. the characters name get's mentioned about 10 pages later but by then it's obvious whom frank schatzing is writing about. 
there's a conversation where the inventor of the elevator and bowie are chatting and bowie reveals he's in his 90's only to be told, 'you look remarkably young.'
i read that this morning, and about seven hours later some one text-ed me bowie has died. 
i checked with duncan bowie's feed and it was legit. 

it's impossible for me not to shed tears, i can't even begin to write how much bowie meant to me and about a million other london kids growing up in the 70's. i must have been around 12 when i saw him on TOTP's preforming starman in glitter suit and with a star on his forehead. He leaned into the camera and thus my room, and said, 'i had to phone someone so i picked on you.'
from that moment my life changed.
pin ups, ziggy, aladin sane, i was getting my hands on everything.
i vividly recall getting diamond dogs and playing it in my room over and over until my parents went nuts, the vinyl wore down the needle, i knew the words inside out, candidate, sweet thing, candidate reprise, that whole epic was so amazingly cool, i went out and read 1984 straight away, i read burroughs and it was like education really began for me, my education. not some curriculum the government rams down your neck at the sausage factory, this was me hungry to learn everything i possibly could about this world bowie inhabited. it was my world now. 
bowie wrote our lives, he did. ask any london kid my age. without him in the world it's like our soundtracks just stop. thankfully i have an equal love of kilbey's music so let's hope he keeps knocking out the classics but with bowie i guess he came back, back from the dead. and then he died. it's stumped us all.
he gave us 'the next day' a retrospective mish mash of his past glories completely reborn into brand new songs that sounded fresh and brilliant, only the discerning listener would know what he had done, it was as though he had never gone away. and then blackstar. which now takes on a different light in the knowledge he knew he was going to die whereas we didn't have a clue. the lyrics all begin to take shape, reassembled in light of this dark truth.
i don't know what to say, i love bowie. i dragged my pregnant wife to see him twice over two continents, she wasn't such a fan but i wasn't thinking of her, no child of mine will miss out on the experience of bowie live, the thin layer of skin was exposed to many influences and the developing embryo evolved into a highly intelligent, beautiful member of the human race. 
i saw bowie play many times in many guises, and i saw the final sydney show, right in the front row. amazing. i took jaci my lesbian friend along and we screamed like teenagers and cried when he played fantastic voyage. 
but with his final album i believe he completely redefined himself yet again. not just lyrically and musically but also as a statement on the three most important aspects of humanity. art, life and death. 
i'm really sad, sad for him, his family and my selfish self because i want more yet i'm happy he died at peace and with the people he loved, and i'm happy that he came back one last time and surprised us all. lazarus indeed.
there's never going to be another individual like bowie again.
although i'm deeply emotional about this, i'm also very aware when you die it's not the end, you just transition to a different frequency. so david, i'm tuning in. god bless you.



  

obviously people will compare the new bowie album with his past body of work, it's important to apply some frame of reference, so i'll start by saying this fit's somewhere in the earthling / outside spheres but let me state, it's just a frame of reference because the blackstar album is unlike any bowies previous works and i think does a great disservice to apply that kind of comparison without acknowledging this is a unique piece of work. 
the other aspect is to make a big deal of the jazz musicians playing rock. yeah i guess all that's important if you need a genre but bowie is way beyond genre. possibly the only pop musician who deserves that status. there's never been any individual who has imprinted upon the lives of so many and spawned so many styles so lets just for this moment give him some credit and look at the music on blackstar for what it is, a new bowie album.
it's magnificent. there's so much going on in the mix even when you think there's nothing happening, there's layers to his sound that just keep revealing themselves. he's in good hands with visconti who had applied his magick here. bowie is not one man, it's a team of people contributing, the musicians here conjure some dark brooding, sonic tones, simple riffs become complex, drum patters shift and change like water, the sax drones and throbs, blurts and squirts, it's pushing forwards all the time over some incredibly organic bass. there's subtle tonality in here and then suddenly it clobbers you like a very hard massage but never assaults or batters, it's extraordinary.
then there's the voice. completely sweeping through everything, picking you up and taking you away, god, that voice is everything, it harmonises with itself, it shifts over itself like some personality disordered doppelganger, the song 'the girl loves me' is made up of two obscure languages, one being nadsat (from a clockwork orange) the other polari an obscure london slang for gays but bowie sings it with the kind of commitment only he delivers, it's a magnificent song which does remind me slightly of the obscure  'untitled no.1' from the soundtrack album 'buddha of suburbia' just fleetingly. 
the title track is saturated in darkness but suddenly halfway through becomes something else, a ray of light, a different song altogether only to return where it started from. there's talk that this song was written about isis, i think it may well have been, but at the end of the day it don't matter what it is about, it's opaque and could be about anything. it's a beautiful opening song, filled with wonder and mystery. there's drum patterns and loops and percussion textures that shift time signatures, there's saxophones going mental, there's bass lines that are unfathomable and even a space drum that actually sounds cool for once. the saxophone blurts and squawks as the whole song shifts into another phase and bowie does his vocal changes that make you wonder where he's taking you. that dark gloomy sound is now suddenly much lighter until he kicks in again with his backing vocals all dread and creepy. there's some great synth playing on here, just tiny runs that layer the whole song adding richness. i feel that what he may be doing is using free jazz styles but between electronic instruments.  
'tis a pity she's a whore' kicks in building to a cacophony of sax, keys and percussion. bowies voice on this as the song ends is great, he's really kicking back and just cooking along, almost enjoying the groove.
lazarus is my fave at the moment, possibly as it's related to the play bowie wrote and therefore connected to the final days of jerome newton, the alien who fell to earth. i adore it, music and lyric.

just like that bluebird. 
okay i can't write anymore about this album anymore, buy it. it's fucking the best few bucks you ever spent and you can listen to it on repeat and it will always be like hearing it for the first time. it's invaluable to anyone who thinks bowie is the bees knees, or those that wish to know why he is an important artist, it's all in here waiting for you. 

   

big waves, lot's of beaches closed, i sit on south avalon headland looking down at the hardcore surfers ride. they effortlessly slide down the face of giant forces of nature, make it look so easy. i 'm up there watching about twenty surfers wondering if i could body surf those waves but like clint says, man's gotta know his limit.
i see some old faces, chew the fat with some avalon people. it's nice but it also reminds me why i left. to much talking, sitting around drinking coffee although in those days i had friends, now i feel i don't really need any company. what's there to say that hasn't been said.
i think if i find a girl i wanna stick with she and i will just spend most of the time in silence. a silent girl. is there such a thing?
i leave avalon feeling i got out just in time, the place was a village now it's a town, the place was a community now it's a stage. it was magickal, now it's double bay and triple pay. the magick long gone. 

light from the past illuminates the present, the face of this moment is an explosion. all that we know fit's inside our minds, yet more is unknown outside. light is metaphor, it's not what we think, it's tied to a language we can only navigate with wisdom and knowing, a meditative practice perhaps but it's not simple buddhism or some eastern philosophy, it's the essence of a western tradition we like to reject in our fury and mindlessness. 

here i am bathed in old light, in the garden of an eden, in the temple of this present moment, thinking about nothing in particular. the abyssinian banana plants have such big leaves, they cast a nice shadow where i can sit in my cool spot watching the bees buzz and the big leaves dance over my head. the tiger grass gently configures in its corner as it grows protecting me from the intrusion of some yonder construction.

along i drift, sown streets and alleyways, roads and avenues, shopping malls, churches, farms, winery's, spas and wide empty spaces, sub tropical pockets of bushland and there waiting for me, the waves. 

true detective season 2. mild spoilers ahead but not enough to ruin the show.

despite the negativity surrounding true detective's second season i must confess to really loving it, not just for it's complex story but the characters and the semi mystical sub text, the soundtrack and the cinematography. 

the difficulty is that whereas season 1 was obvious in it's literary references season 2 is somewhat opaque.  

the original western book of the dead was written by a guy called  alfred schmielewski aka yogi narayana whom was also mysteriously murdered under unsolved circumstances.

the book claims that a yogi can leave his / her physical frame when they wish, therefore they have left the body long before it is dead. the body does not die but becomes something else. now things get tricky here as yogi narayana goes on to say, 50% of the population cannot transcend their own selves, they are not capable of understanding consciousness and therefore unable to contribute it. he mentions sufi mystic yazid who also says, ' humanity is asleep, few are awoken.'

at it's heart the characters are 4 completely different personalities one a gangster who are attempting to overcome their own natures and gain insight it what it means to be good while doing things that appear bad against a backdrop of corruption, madness, brutality and what one could be called evil. the world.

in the book of the dead travellers in the afterlife are given spells and enchantments to navigate their way into the afterlife and not the underworld. the underworld being rebirth.

clues are scattered through the narrative but they are not easy to find, it's all there. 

the last episode is particularly powerful, because emotionally we want these characters to make it, we know they deserve it and we know we have been their judges. 

i loved this tv series, such clever writing. so rare for tv.

 

“If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like.

Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God.

But if you shut up your soul in your body, and abase yourself, and say “I know nothing, I can do nothing; I am afraid of earth and sea, I cannot mount to heaven; I know not what I was, nor what I shall be,” then what have you to do with God?”

~ Hermes Trismegistus

more rain than a planet could possibly imagine, water world, the endless heavy downpour makes my night driving more adventurous as shriekback and i navigate our way through treacherous roads. it's incredible, like being underwater, even the wipers can't wipe fast enough. when i reach mission control i make a dash for the post box and see there's a parcel waiting for me. great, i can pick it up in the morning,
i hope it's the new bowie cd. i already got the lithographs. it could be anything, items come here all the time, from all around the planet. 
i just finished reading 'after the crash' by michel bussi a bestseller in france and as this now confirms that french culture is officially dead. usually i always find something positive to say about a book, i appreciate it's usually one mans single vision and hard work but this was just nuts. 
anyway i picked up a copy of limit by frank schatzing, it's a massive 1500 page brick of a book but it's already got me hooked. 
i'd read schatzings previous epic novel the swarm and enjoyed that so i can't wait until this kicks off. i'm enjoying all the information he includes, the science in science fiction. i mean who knew konstantin tsiolkovsky thought up the idea of a space elevator! according to wikipedia he seemed strange and bizarre to his fellow townsfolk, already making him very likeable in my book. konstantin is not really in 'limit' but his elevator is.

ah the big wet has arrived, treachery on the roads as cars upon the freeway scatter and slide, collide and spiral out. me i'm okay in my all wheel drive pleadeian vessel, the finest cosmic ingredients designed to withstand any planetary atmospheres, i just gaze out at the chaos before me and glide on by. 
insanity on the streets as the crashing force of water sweeps people away, out here in australia we are prone to extreme elemental forces. it's a terrible thing to have control wrenched from your hands by such simple things like fire and water. water here happens fast, floods in an instant, places get cut off, me i have to drive over water wheel deep where overflowing rivers spill out into the suburbs. many cars don't make it. i'm lucky.
the road home is treacherous, partly flooded, it's gone midnight and there are no street lights. the car is in lockdown, it's just me and shreikback. my headlights cast a circle of light into the strange foreboding bushland around me. it's tropical nature at night and in torrential rain not so friendly, the sinister plants  swaying wildly in the wind rejoicing in water, dancing with joy and thirst quenching madness.
the rain here is crazy, it's harsh and falls in a density i have not seen outside monsoon countries, raincoats are no protection and umbrellas are just silly. may as well wave a matchstick at the sky.
my street when i get there is covered in frogs, they hop around in my headlights as though on a stage. it's weird to watch and i slow down so i don't squish any. hundred of them hopping and jumping everywhere. 
eventually i reach the sanctuary of mission control.
i sit in the studio and watch the rain in my garden, the palms and ferns all alive and in undeniable ecstasy. i smoke a joint and watch them grow. 

dangerous moment, the speaker arrives, his words chosen are carefully... i don't fear the new world. what a mind blowing idea in an age of conformity, he speaks of national security and his aversion to google, he speaks of control and power but not in a deranged fearful way, he's curious like a cat, he knows we cannot go back. society can't hang on to an age that has passed, it's a new era coming and it's the conditions that need questioning. new forms of control can be new forms of freedoms. no nostalgia. he's a glass half full guy whereas i'm the water in that half empty cup has been replaced by poison. however i like his perspective, it makes sense. 
einstein says we can go forwards in time and offers two ways to do so, one in a spaceship leaving the earth and getting close to light speed and returning to earth. the other is a spaceship that hovers close to a black hole and then returns but his mathematics says we cannot travel backwards, those are the laws of this universe.

it's good to see val and olga on new years eve, we walk along terrible beach in the twilight amongst all the people, men in shirts, women in summer dresses, boys on skateboards and girls in skimpy revealing outfits. yeah that's blipped on my radar, the girls, all drunk dressed in hardly anything, the sex urge running hot. notice me, notice me, they are like beautiful coloured birds, dancing and cavorting for attention. it's incredible, i'm somewhat disturbed and aroused at the same time. the ocean looks good from here, fading light, beautiful surf, calling me to it's gentle peace and oblivion. instead we head for a small restaurant, with an unfortunate name. i like it, very simple style but very well done. simple menu, simple drinks, just right. the music is good, dub, groove, soft piano beats, i relax and settle into an easy evening with my friends. later we decide to walk, walk along the headland up to the lookout. the stars shine for us, i can see orion and the belt, follow it along outside of it's cluster by several million light years...to pleiades.
val and olga are telling me tales of strange things they have seen in the skies, we wander back to the town and hunt down butterscotch dessert for val but end up where we started at the little restaurant as new years approaches. 
as i get older i value mornings more, so it's early to bed for me, way before midnight. i fall into a soft sleeping state, where morning comes with it's solar power and kicks down the doors with a surge. i am reminded of the chariot from the tarot.

   

awaked by the sun i play in the garden for a while with the hound of love until he disappears. i dig two fucking massive holes and plant two beautiful abyssinian banana trees near my elephant ear plant, these two grow so fast you can see them getting taller each day, pretty soon libertaria will look like a fucking sub tropical eden. the fish are leaping out ready for breakfast and i notice i need to work on their pond again, some water anomaly plagues me. weeds invade and my resistance is being worn away. the water dragon is at my feet in expectation of some nibbles and pan is visiting his friend across the street no doubt to return when hungry. the beasts have me well trained.
a lone kookaburra watches me moving, he sits there on that weird gate, king of the bush surveying all. australian mornings are beautiful, especially at the beach where the crystal water meets the shore. i have to resist the pull this morning as i have to focus upon domestic tasks but how i would love to just go surfing.

christmas will break your heart LCD

she said her name was deadly nightshade, she offered me a cure. she kissed me on my lips softly and i fell into her allure, of dreams where bliss dances on the end of my fingertips and hunger and thirst are defined in longing for the promise of another... most deadly kiss. 
she revealed her body ravaged and haggard with use and wear and the brutal hands of men, who had taken her divinity and turned it against all sacred things, a commodity in the markets, a stock for trade and sale. flesh and blood and bag of bones, a weeping eye that sees, the elementary particle that secret vessel is revealed.
i clung to her like life itself but finally i came to know, the power was in her heart and the knowledge of letting go. i watched her fade away in time, my memory unclear, but some evenings when i see that moon i speculate she is near. 
her spirit form it is a light, that dazzles the spectator, it manifests incandescent glow and dissipates much later. you cannot resist the magnetic lure as she pulls you in to her, the nebulous truth that she is gone and whom is the true deceiver. 
it falls like flames, it burns asunder, it calls forth the yearning of taboo plunder, and when all is lost all that is found, is that ancient sense of wonder.
  

the subtle shades of dark falling down tonight, the green fading away, disappearing down the line into night, the fractal patterns of the darkening sky on the other side of the silhouettes of trees, the insect chorus chirping, bleeping away like some sort of divergent technology or secret cosmology.
the evening glides in from behind me, with the beating of wings, the grace of a gazelle and the silent approach of a serpentine albino warlord drawing their sword, drawing down the night, slashing away the tethers of memory and temporal gravity.
soft fading rays, an alien heat looking for pleasure and formless enjoyment. dancing through the trees, stepping over leaves, hopping like a goblin over fairy ring and circle, hiding out in wilderness that creeps and eats the crushed bones that carpet the ground. 
full moon over the ancient earth, civilisations crumbled and long gone, blown away upon the breeze of time, hard matter stone and rock all fall under the spell of chronos and daughter ananke. 
mere mortal i but flesh bone and breath, a weak skeleton that cages a strong beating and true heart lives in the shadow of inevitability and the consorts of fate. i care not for politik of men, i care not for petty arbitration and justice dispensed by man upon his fellow, the psychology of mercy lies within the spirit, only this truly escapes time. 

  

dawn surf patrol, sun rise over oceanic movements, the water is still cold and treacherous but it must be said it's magnetic pull is powerful as i find myself already waist in, one small dive and i'm committed. 
around me it churns like some vast machine, the rip pulls me across as i swim out and get crushed by a few freak waves. the sound surges around me, white and blue flashes of brilliance, the penetration of everything as my transmutative skin adapts and dissolves, i'm everywhere and nowhere.