Zero.

Artists,heavy on the irony because I am throwing myself in here,are so fucked up.

There is not one single day that goes by that I don’t roll my eyes at myself in the least or make myself physically ill at the most. I wonder if we seek mayhem and heart ache? Do we court this agony? Do we hurt to produce? Is that it? Jesus fuckin’ please us.Ugh.It’s late and I am over thinking everything yet again.

Nightmares of one way streets, broken keys in the ignition and walking in on carnal carnage in a large bathroom only to have all the participants laugh at my blatant distress at the proceedings.Utterly horrible.

I turn and look at the framed photo of  my beloved Fleetwood Mac to my right and my neck cracks .Not a real photo mind,just one that I cut out of Mojo magazine.I know,I know….but if not the God’s that you know ,well then, who? I have never quite managed to grow up.Don’t think that there is much I can do about it at this point.Spend a sad afternoon crying to The Ramones more poignant songs.How you gonna act baby?

I am jamming tomorrow and I feel woefully under prepared as always.Every time I pick up my guitar, over the last year especially,I feel like some one is going to jump up and scream “FAKE!!!!!” and throw something heavy and made of glass at my head. That I will be unmasked as some kind of aural pretender to the throne. Look, I have written the most raw music of my career and I am absolutely petrified.

Brutal. This may take some explaining as it is just me and my guitar up there now…Nothing hard about that right? Ok ,so I have thrown down some metal in my time.Hell! ,for half my time up there, if not more ,no one could work out if I was a boy or a girl it was so intense and that was what I wanted,that was what I was hiding behind and I don’t regret it for a second.But for all the blood and mosh? I call bullshit.Fucking child’s play.  I gotta tell you,it doesn’t even touch the sides of what I am about to do.For once I didn’t try to be a smart ass,didn’t go for the lexicon devil triple scores. I have laid myself bare.

Just like I did with my 1st and now final love.

I am so tightly wrapped,a control freak. If y’all have read me for as long as I have been pumping this crap out,you know I ain’t lying.Beyond that?…. the one time I let go? I bloomed to the point of obscenity.I was magnificent. And this music is all I could sift out of the rubble.This is the open casket viewing. This is all that remains and it’s time to set it off.I never wanted to be this hurt or broken,somehow I never thought it could never happen to me which just goes to show you just how wrong you can be.I’m not 17 anymore, no matter what my internal clock tells me unfortunately.When you get to my age you don’t court disaster because unlike a teenager you don’t bounce and the scars don’t fade.I have dried the roses and they are in a silver dish by my bed by a picture of you.I still recall the beauty and it just may just see me right.

Doing my Andy Warhol/ Howard Hughes shut in hybrid, I natter to Miss Emma of the ethereal heart in her cave by the ocean. We lament and laugh over nutella and disarray.By small measure and great kindness she patches me up with her wisdom and sends me off to war once again. I am lucky to know such stellar people.. So onwards I strike surrounded by ratty notebooks and sing…..

I didn’t want to sing or write again.I wanted to starve myself to death.I wanted to fade.It was horrendous.I have never held down a real job ,all I have ever done is what I am.I have no idea how to be anything else and for the 1st time in my life I wanted to abandon myself fully but to do what?? You have no idea how totally done I was when I arrived back here almost a year ago,my life and accompanying dreams in tatters. Making deals with dead deities ,bawling my eyes out on a transatlantic flight.When it was good? Love? Well,it drove me to be the best that I could be but what I didn’t realize was how much shit I had smeared over my psyche and my abilities during the life long lead up so to speak..I’ve gotta tell you,you get to  building up some mighty fine walls when you have taken the paths and made the choices that I have chosen in life.It’s not a boast and I would never wear it as a badge.It just is what it is. I didn’t realize how big the callus was ,so to speak.How much the cataract was keeping me from truly seeing.

All self created from a very young age to protect myself from the wolves’s both real and imagined and I take full responsibility. I did what I had to do.Don’t we all?

But what to you do when its no longer serving the function that it once did? Remnants of teenage rebellion grown threadbare over time and no longer look all that imposing snapping tattered over battlements no longer worth defending,the bones of my misspent youth.

I got nailed and it almost destroyed me. There are pieces of my mind that are lost for good.I try to make myself feel better by telling myself that they were tertiary.I don’t believe a word of it. But me and him? We are tied in an an endless knot.I used to say that we were the same animal and I meant it.Away from lust and the deepest love I have ever know ,we were almost siblings.I know that it sounds perverse but it was true.The parallel lines were chilling to me. Picture it if you will,two super damaged angry alpha’s wanting love and acceptance so bad,full to the brim of shit and scars.Finally getting our hearts desire and ruining it with our past patterns and distrust that anything so good would last for the likes of us.I weep for us both.The people pleasers,the organ grinders monkeys,the bound foot geisha and the king of the world. I mourn for the discarded children we were, the sucking black holes inside that we filled with miles run or gallons drunk. I see it in us still.Maybe it will never go away but the point is that I see it at last.Know thy enemy.My enemy was,is, me.

And I am no longer afraid.Wary? Cautious? Sure. But afraid? No.

I wouldn’t wish the last year on anyone.I still am still terrorised by nightmares and crippling panic attacks and deal with a whole new jumbo pack of issues daily but I don’t bullshit myself any more.Loosing the self lie,the buffer? It makes life a lot harder day to day but it is a lesson that I sorely need to be taught and no matter or diminished I feel and how minute and pathetic on a bad day, it’s me.Its all me.I am no prize but it’s all I have got.No smoke and mirrors.I am back to zero and no one or nothing can take that from me.

Zero doesn’t sound like allot to be grateful for but on the day’s I don’t wish I was dead, I am.I don’t know if I am explaining it very well but just lying here in the cold at two in the morning I feel the calmest I have felt in a long time.I am coming from a place imbibed in a cauterizing white light and I feel that I have lost it all.My mind,my heart,all gone.I don’t horde the useless shit anymore.I move sure footed and fast. I still get brought to my knees but I understand why and I am trying so fucking hard to work with what life is dealing me….

And then its the music.These traitorous songs.No veiled references.The few gigs I have done alone were not as honest as I know I have to be to do theses fuckers justice.I wrote them about the one person and situation that has touched and affected me above all others so it is imperative that I give them the delivery and respect they deserve.I am absolutely petrified.I have never exposed myself like this in my life.Being in bands? All balls and bluster compared to this.A walk in the park.My voice has changed and it scares me.I can hear and feel color and texture in it.It tastes different.Sits heavy and poison on my tongue till I spit it out.I find myself crying without realising it.I hear the animal pain in it,it has surpassed my realm of control and I answer to it.It owns me.

I feel it so much that it makes me question the integrity of everything that I have done until now.

This show.I don’t know if I will be able to pull this off.Its total exposure.It will finally liberate or kill me. And I think that’s what I want and need no matter which way it goes.I feel like I am inviting people to a funeral but I wont say sorry any more.He taught me that and that’s why he is and remains a world beater.Me? I’m a late bloomer with atrocious teeth and a weight problem but I know that I have to do this.Its suicide,my heart is going to go off like a Muslim back pack and us creative types,well,pack of fucking wankers we are,I am gonna do it and make y’all pay for a ticket.

Some days I wish I was a chartered accountant.