Infinitely Distracting

All about the magic of typewriters and text miraculously appearing. That kind of thing. You'll just have to listen to find out more.

Success, failure, how does one measure such things, with a sexton or a yardstick, or simply with the thumb. The story continues, now in the depths of Hackney. (Song "Being born" from the album "Through the mirror" 2019)

Taking stock of an unloved abode cut crooked by intersecting destinies in the backstreets of Hackney. It looks something like the Earnshaw farmhouse of Wuthering Heights, just a couple of scrawny irritable hounds lacking. Possibility is in the eye of the beholder. Listen in to find out more.

My list, of course, unsurprisingly not unlike anyone else’s and not worthy of analysis at this point in time, or perhaps, ever. I am standing on the corner with a suitcase in my hand, …

Just what would you do with the last few days.

Everywhere you look something you have not seen before, these glimpses and glances, insights and out takes, insinuations, hints and intimations, all grist for the mill, material to tailor into a unique new suit.

From the city centre I radiate out, taking it all in, taking in the immensity of it all.

Think of London, small city. It's dark, dark in the daytime. People sleep, sleep in the daytime.If they want to, if they want to. I'll find myself a city, find myself a city to live in. (Talking Heads - Fear of Music)

There is clearly much to learn about this life, as every step reveals, and curiosity reigns, as reserve is suppressed and restraint denied.

This day has only just begun and here I am in the capital, entering this Roman shell in all its outgrown glory. I disembark at Victoria Station, trailing like a tramp my meagre goods and chattels, looking all about me, dazzled by the old newness of it all.

The saga continues, crossing oceans and lands, to end up in London. Travel, of course, opens the mind, ... and more sometimes. (Photo by Bleddyn Butcher. Song "Let yourself go" from the album Standard Ideal.)

Learn all about how songs get the better of us. Sooner or later, one has to … let oneself go.

The things that may seem insignificant now, could well be even more so in the future.

Well, I am not steering home at all, but in the opposite direction, to a kind of non-home, perhaps never-to-be home, or then again, what do I know. A fortune teller I am not. Merely a swaying wayward adventurer.

Of nights I have seen many. Nights of pure fancy. Nights of boundless energy, others of inexplicable lethargy. Frantic nights rife with antics and misbehaviour. Unrepeatable nights of unrestrained fervour...

I ponder nights. I ponder myself pondering nights, this night that stretches and stretches, out and out and out and out...

On you fly, on a different tangent to the sun—just a glow now—an arc of orange light, sailing on you go, into the night, in peace, into nowhere, released, high above the Earth, your beautiful wings spread, new blood pumping through your veins, new language in your head, those engines roaring gently outside your porthole.

Down below, the city you leave is turning like some kind of mechanical toy in a shop window. You are nowhere now, hanging in suspension, high above the Earth in your winged, metallic cocoon, drinks trolley already rattling down the aisle, to fill with sips the emptiness, the enigma of departure.

As dusk settles—a gentle afterthought and subtle show of colour, tangerine to rose, mauve to indigo—the sun slips down behind the back of the stage, briefly infuses then fades, leaving brushstrokes of clouds deftly done and momentarily aglow.

Engines ignite and suddenly you are accelerating down a runway … towards tomorrow.

I took on a night job, with the aim of saving up for a ticket to somewhere, working as a night watchman in the city house of horrors, a gothic-looking building on the side of a hill, surrounded of course, by twisted and bare spindly trees, reaching up at the moon. (Ending with a song from the album "Moving Along" 2006)

Could it simply be that, really, the heart is a lonely hunter, always was and always will be.

Each day is a blank page, if you choose to read it in that way. And on the blank page, much can be written, and much has been written.

I was thinking in song, stalking it, walking all around it and looking at it from different angles. I wondered if there was a greater audience than the nocturnal creatures I entertained each night,

Someone might be dying to find out how all this is going to end, someone might be.

One thing leads to another, always it does. We cannot avoid that or detain it in any way.

Things lost and found, kept and unkept, kempt and unkempt, disregarded and discarded. There's no stopping time, no time to look behind. This episode comes with a song, "Saving grace" from the album, "Sea-shanties for Landlubbers" (2004). (Image of a Toowoomba sunset)

The Polaroid clicks and then spits out a blue grey square of captured moment.

It sure is dark down there, but this is where one wants to go, so, … one must go on.

Is that where you want to be?

By the time she gets to the bottom of the stairs a light evening shower has sprinkled magic in the streets and all over town, releasing the perfume of freshly crushed rain. On

And here we are. Chapter 100. Cause for celebration. A feat of resilience, example of endurance, a grand folly, one could think.

Soon, very soon, chapter one hundred. Ah, but these are merely numbers. Days come and go. Surely, it’s what we do with them that counts.

There is no indication of what lies … ahead, just a step or two away.

The current protagonist is released into the outside world, there in all its glaring and glorious splendour. (Image: Photo of wall detail in Gaudí's Casa Vicens, Barcelona, 1885)

The title says it all, really. Where would we be without a touch of humour. Where? (Image: Photo of wall detail in Gaudí's Casa Vicens, Barcelona, 1885)

Something about animals, in particular, a dog, what it (does't) think and does. Ending with a song, "Animal" from the album "Moving Along", 2006. For your listening pleasure.

Who rocks the boat, who pulls the strings, unleashes the dragons, and makes the butterfly wings. (Song from "Sea-shanties for Landlubbers")

Taking stock can never be a bad thing.

You never can get enough … of a good thing.