¦ dialling in from Sky Bunker ¦
20:21 GMT, Thursday 22nd October 2009. Yay, sitting at my desk, head bopping up and down to the funky bass-line of this fantastic album. Vibrasphere (Archipelago) has unblocked my creative dam. That and 10 hours sleep last night. I came home from work yesterday, feeling drained and apathetic... I had no appetite for writing. So I cooked up another massive pan of pasta, my comfort food, and settled into the sofa with half a litre of Leffe and watched Lon Chaney,Jr as The Wolfman.
9pm I was bushed, so, padded upstairs, wacked on the space-heater in the bedroom and fell into bed. Zonk... out...
Jo crawled in at some point - she's been out partying three nights on the trot - freezing cold and snuggled deep into my heat, and we both lay there, curled up together, not moving until the alarm went off. Still groggy, I forced myself out of bed, brewed up a mug of tea, got dressed; skipped any early morning writing ... skipped my early morning chill out... sat on the bed whilst Jo got dressed and ready for work, sharing a few moments of giggles and catch-up, then bailed into the Rocket and blasted across to the office. Got there 8:15. Time for 45 minutes of bashing my head against the proverbial wall of mental bricks. Except... the frustration of the past three days melted away as I started-up the 2nd of the albums I'd bought (by Vibrasphere).
Ohhh my God. I was immediately hurled from the desk into a transport module barrelling above the remains of New Tokyo... a vast Dead Zone below. The music was perfect. The words began to stack together in my head. I had pages of notes scribbled down about this chapter and now they were all forming into holding patterns around the control-tower operator of my imagination. Utterly blissful moment. Back into the groove.
Work was good. Projects projects projects.
Back home in a flash.
Hot bath, lying there in water with vast clouds of steam billowing up in the chill air of the house (still not bothering with heating)... and playing Dead Can Dance (Within the Realm Of A Dying Sun) and I experienced a wonderful few moments of intense nostalgia, remembering lying in the bath at 51 Osborne Avenue, in Jesmond, back in autumn of 1990, around the same time I first ever heard of Dead Can Dance. Can't really describe the feelings or the emotions, but they were good, fond friends in the collection of memories to meet up with again.
Then upstairs, up into the Sky Bunker. Soft lights on. Lava Lamp on. Starsky and thick wool Norwegian socks on. Life Support still stashed in a cupboard. Laptop on, MP3 player plugged in and Vibrasphere playing through big speakers mounted either corner of my desk.
I'm back in New Tokyo... picking up from my lunchtime writing session. All good.
Other news: spoke to my mum today. Discovered the doctors/nurses haven't fixed the excessive morphine situation... she was rambling, giggling, off her head. I've realised that I've been focussing / dreading a date in the future when she stops breathing and her spirit passes over to another realm... but in fact, the truth is a little more grim. She's already leaving... in tiny featherlite pieces, day by day, as the morphine erases the personality and character of the woman I've come to admire and love these recent years. Damn.
Damn!
Damn!
Damn!
I want bang my fucking fists on this keyboard.
So the phone call ends. I ring my sister straight away, uneasy and freaked out. "Do I need to come up sooner than planned?"
She reassures me there's no need. She'll make "the call" when she needs me to come up.
So I relax again, and just...deal with it.
Here's a link to the 2nd Vibrasphere album, the one that's unlocked my creatives juices again:
ArchipelagoEnjoy!