On the Telly?

I have started a new blog here

http://garysuperstar.blogspot.com/

When a heart breaks...

When you're nursing a broken heart it's hard to do anything properly or tackle anything head on. It's a strange feeling which doesn't really burn you up like the flames which engulfed you when you first realised that you were in love with said heartbreaker, but still crushes you with un-requited pain just the same. It's as if some parasite is slowly sucking the oxygen from your breath until all that remains is ice and a feeble attempt at sarcasm. In fact, the more I compare the two states the more I see that they are not actually so different. If I lay the two situations out, one on top of each other like a sheet of tracing paper (which tears very easily) on top of a shiny neatly unfolded map (on which the directions and the place names keep fading and changing) I can actually see the striking difference between the two.

The difference between falling in love and being totally and demonstrably heart broken? When all the kisses lay smashed like cut crystal and the promises made, now belong to the heart of a stranger? The difference my friends, is HOPE. Right now HOPE seems only as far away as death. A lonely death, surrounded by pillars of salt and drowning in the frozen blood of a broken heart.

Paris

So today I find myself in a small rock and roll bar in a back street of Paris. I am alone again. I spent the last week or so in England travelling from London to Stockton and then onwards to Scunthorpe and then finally up to Edinburgh. From the closeness of the tour bus I find myself isolated in one of the busiest cities of the world. I seem to be an expert at seeking out solitude in the busiest of hubs. Paris is undoubtedly a little more forgiving than London, this is probably due to its hidden streets of dive bars with their unisex toilets and their darkly lit lounges. I can see why many famous writers and artists made Paris their home for the twilight of their existence.

Through the dirty window I can see an open air coin operated launderette. 

There are groups of people sitting around waiting for their past lives to be washed out of their clothes ready to take on the stains of another week's work. There is an old lady shaking a rug out of her first floor window directly onto the blissfully ignorant inhabitants of the laundry who are mesmerised by the spinning and tumbling of their smalls.

Diagonally across the room sit two beautiful French girls engrossed in a heart to heart. The one with her back to me appears to be heaping advice onto the frail beauty facing me. She is clutching a full pint of beer whilst still managing to appear so French and ladylike as only the French ladies can. 

Meanwhile Bill Hailey and the Comets thrash out another of their tunes, pulling the ghosts of this bar from the walls and for a split second taking me back to a post-war Paris of the fifties. This time however the two girls are being thrown around the room by the two twenty something French gentlemen engrossed in a lively conversation on the table to my right.  I am guessing that Paris hasn't changed so much. 

This is an announcement for the transcendental line.

Getting all Michael Palin about the amazing train journey accross the desert.

Are we there yet?

A sampler of what is to come in the next week.
We arrived at our final destination at the South Eastern corner of Saudi Arabia not too far from the Indian ocean and across 4 hours of desert ......more to follow...

By the way.. I am totally addicted to Dates now...

A public Beheading

The other day I witnessed, totally by accident a beheading. I haven't written for a few days on here because I really didn't feel like it. My head has been in a bit of a spin as I have tried to come to terms with what I witnessed. Though due to my past career choices I have actually seen and dissected former living persons I have never actually seen somebody cease to function  before my very eyes...let alone at the hands of somebody else still living.

I was out shopping for bits and pieces (including the sim card) when I saw a group of people mingling around the entrance to the huge mosque in the old town. I decided t go over and try to get some photographs. The next few moments I will not describe as I certainly don't feel ready to go into huge detail about it. Suffice to say that as a result of the former 2 minutes I vomited and passed out. I came round surrounded by well meaning people offering me water and taxis. I ended up sharing a taxi back to my hotel with an Australian chap who works for The Guardian and had been following the story of the young man who had just had his head cleaved cleanly from his body and then stitched back on by a waiting doctor before being neatly carted away by two small Chinese looking chaps in Yellow boiler suits. He had been accused of rape, drug trafficking and taking drugs and found guilty without a formal open trial. He was allowed no form of legal defense and his consular was not informed of his execution until after he had been dispatched.


Now, for me the first two crimes on the list would satisfy me that they deserve the death sentence. After all, the way in which the prisoner was deleted was with very little fuss and ceremony. I find the American gas chamber, the electric chair or lethal injection even more barbaric in some ways. (Especially as America claims to have supreme dibs on civilization and democracy (and yet is still infected with religious hypocrisy)). An American death row tenant is normally wheeled out whenever some adulterous crooked ponce requires votes and the sick twisted legal process is played out and the Christians begin to rub their hands together in glee at the prospect of sending another non-believer to hell.

The part that doesn't sit well with me is that he had no defense and his court was made up of religious zealots, who basically work under the guise that they shouldn't think too deeply about the case or they may be perceived as taking the judgment side of things away from God and therefore putting themselves at the gates of Hell. That's a particularly wise move and is all 'fair and well'..if..if...if there really is a God and if there IS one. that he is a JUST and FAIR one. (after all isnt that the American way too? Kill them all and let God sort them out?

I will refrain from giving my own opinion on the matter, suffice to say that after a few days mediation on the matter, I feel no more uncomfortable about capital punishment here than I do in the USA. There were no jeering crowds here or placards written by nasty Christians, just solemn observance and the fear of other people's Gods and their followers. I was reminded that that the most powerful nation on the planet and the richest one both claim to represent (albeit a different) God, but both have the power to take life based on their personal beliefs and therefore make life appear very cheap indeed. (Not something that either of their Gods appear to endorse in either of their scriptures).

There's nothing left but faith?

It suddenly occurred to me that I have an album coming out in three weeks time. All of a sudden the process has started of completing endless interview questions that go along with a new release. Last night was a refreshing change. A set of questions arrived from a very well known German publication it was obvious from the questions that the journalist had not only actually listened to the record more than once but had also bothered to research my background and the history of the band. I actually found myself being very open and honest in replying to her well thought out inquiries.

I have also started working on a huge international goth project for next summer.