CHRISTMAS FEVER

pictures by Adam Walker

A fever burns up in my head as the snow is finally falling breathlessly around Ocean Parkway. I cough and splutter between shuffles to the kitchen to boil up a fresh cup of green tea and shuffle back to bed to read my a book or jot down an idea.

But this is not a sympathy post by all means. This is to tell you what a real Christmas is like on the borders of Little Russia.

Luckily I found a friend who a friend who matched my self imposed solace and we decided to cycle down to Coney Island. We wandered along the boardwalk gawping at the freaks and gangsters that seem to populate this area in such arctic conditions. The sea was wide and dark and I could see the snow cloud moving across the Atlantic. There were groups of Russian men smoking and fishing on the pier and young families chasing birds and riding bikes and a few bikers in their leather chaps and tasseled jackets wandering and taking pictures.

In summer this place is packed full of city dwellers escaping the heat and others seeking the dark revels of a seaside resort. It has such an eery quality to it. The huge fun fair wheel still and looming over the desolate beach. The rides coated in bubble wrap to protect from frost and birds. Everything boarded up, shuttered pulled tightly down. Everything facing you silent. Even the people look at you silently, not knowing your language and surprised that you'd be here at such a time.

We stopped by a deli on the way to the station to grab a Christmas lunch bagel and off we went to the cinema. The film we watched was True Grit, the new Cohen Brothers film-

To most of you who enjoyed a traditional Christmas with lots of meat and potatoes and sizzling christmas pud and port and the whole deal must think that I had a pretty unconventional festive day. But alas, this way of celebrating is past down the generations in the Jewish community (as I have been told) as the only way to celebrate his lord's birthday. And of course the film must be followed by a Chinese takeout which we added just for good measure.

La Radio

(Me and Stuart, so you get the picture.....sorry Stuart.)

Just a really quick one- A lovely Mr Stuart Rogers let me loose on his radio show All Over the Shop on East Village Radio which he normally shares with the charming Ben and I had to share it with you.

http://www.eastvillageradio.com/shows/nowplaying.aspx?contentid=1214&showid=97796

All you need to do is follow this link above and click on Dec 18th posting.

You have to picture it, I'd been on the Four Loko all night with the Americans at a warehouse party where they had people on homemade fairground contraptions and they only played 90's drum and bass. And I was feeling very shaky and a little sorry for myself. The studio is a shop front in the east village with a wide glass front so we could watch the freaks pass whilst pumping our fists to our favorite tunes.

Me and Stuart rocked on for two hours, we even got a double helping of M.I.A. in there.

One of the best ways to cure a hangover.

Keeping it Christmas. x

Patchwork city

This city is born of opportunity and discovery, hence why eight million people have turned up here. The history of this place is so near you can almost touch it. You ask people where they are from and no one is an American, they are Scottish or French or Caribbean or Dutch or Mexican. Everyone is excited about being here. Freshness and a strange trust exudes from the faces of the people. It is a hard city, admittedly, but with the world at your fingertips who couldn’t be excited?

I have been inundated with recommendations from friends of names and numbers of their various New York acquaintances. Everyone has a friend in NY it seems. It’s as if you are being set out on a blind date. You arrange a place, a time, ‘Yes, I’ll be wearing a red scarf, holding a rose, etc, etc.’ And they are always thrilling. Suddenly realize that you don’t know this person from Adam, you might not even get on. What if you have nothing to say to each other?

And so on the eve of one of these ‘dates’ I was readying myself to go and meet her for dinner when I had a call. It was from another London set-up who I’ve been trying to contact since I arrived. He was frantic on the phone with news of a secret gig of Neil Young in some dive in Brooklyn that night. Of course, you do not turn down an offer of this kind so I dragged the first ‘date’ along too.

But now I have two strangers who I am meeting for the first time together, this could be a disaster. Luckily the second date was late and I had just enough time to catch a little bit of history from the first before Neil entered the stage.

He was backing his wife Pegi Young, who at apparently 50, was just starting out her career as a musician. The music was somewhat ballsy and a little brash at times. Neil Young kept in the shadows moodily playing back-up with the rest of the ‘Survivors’ that were supporting her. The final song ‘Dog House’ was met with cheers and howls when they invited another crony up on stage who looked like something in between Pasty from Ab Fab and Ozzy Ozbourne.

But the real excitement came when Bert Jansch entered the stage. His jeans were low slung like a teenage boy but his voice and guitar was like something I’ve never heard. From the first refrain my heart was all a-shudder, even when he played a song about Pete Doherty. There was such sensitivity about watching a man play such delicate songs. His fragility might have something to do with his recent recovery from cancer.

The separate ‘dates’ did meet finally and did get on, though definitely very different people, but that is New York right?

What I realized listening to Bert Jansch play was that music transcends history. Just like New York, the essence and the soul of the place and the music is the same who ever enters it, who ever plays it. Bert sings songs older than anyone alive and they still ring true. This city is seeped in a newness that I don’t think will ever go away. The feeling of adventure and opportunity.

The American Dream

The world is changing and London seems hot with blurs of hoodies and bovver boots and slogans. I keep getting flashes of burning benches and photos spread across Facebook of friends in the heart of the violence. Everything in Britain seems fraught and ready to blow, the politicians on the radio are fretting, and the royalty look on shocked. It feels like finally my generation has kicked the bucket and are screaming for our lives, our rights.

I have run away to New York at a very interesting time and people here look on with blank faces. They are leading decedent, frivolous lives. Just like the kids in this Bertolucci film, caught in the middle of the student riots in Paris and all they can do is look inward at themselves and fuck and smoke fags.

Well I’m only doing half of this, less fucking more music. I suddenly feel like I have stepped down into the real life that is New York and all I can hear is music.

Everything is beginning to flow here, without effort. I go to a gig and then meet someone there, a musician or a poet and they lead me to another gig, a party, or wild Balkan gypsy bar. This place was particularly interesting, it reminded me of one of my favorite films Transylvania directed by Tony Gatlif.

The doorman was dark and rough looking, still young but you could see had lived many lives already. He looked like a musician, but when I asked him he shrugged and answered in a broad Brooklyn accent that he did nothing, just worked. He told me this was the place where Gogo Bordello was born. A dark shabby corridor led to a steaming bar full of the strange smells of hooker pipes and foreign voices. There were many women dancing and men drunk smashing glasses and calling to each other across the bar.

Apparently a friend has told me I am getting into the New York spirit. This means that I have dropped my British awkwardness and am chatting to people. At first I found this unsettling the way people in the corner shop ask you how you are feeling or the ticket guy at the subway station wants to know how your day is getting along. But now I seem to be making new friends without that strained British smile. It’s very different from the blank looks you get from Londoners if you try to spark any sort of connection. They think your either hitting on them or you are selling something.

In New York everyone wants to be your friend, even if it’s for one night only.

Ithaka

‘ Ithaka gave you a marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn’t have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.’

C. P. Cavafy

I’ve never been good at my own birthday parties, always made miserable with worry conscious that I MUST be having the party of my life. I think that’s what New York had become in my mind. Everyone was telling me what an incredible time I was going to have etc, etc. That from the moment I set foot off the plane fireworks would be launched in the sky and there would be dancing girls and lights and camera and ACTION.

But this is just a city.

Cities exist without you being there, right? They are tough places, where the cog keeps turning and the people bend into the next day just the same as the last.

So I realized that this was not a destination, but a journey on the road to the next place. And that is it. I am here to create. That is my mission statement.

I read the poem by Cavafy the morning I couldn’t get out of bed. My limbs were aching and I felt as if my head would fall off due to the amount of mucus that was circulating around my tube. It made me realize that it was OK to take it easy.

Although feeling utterly shit, I took the Subway into Central Brooklyn to find the place where my brother Jesse used to live.

Me and the two other brothers, Pasco and Rollo and Rollo’s now wife, Elly all went to visit Jesse in New York some 6 years back while he was living here being an undercover waiter at Balthazar in Soho. All I could remember was the route from the subway to his apartment and how cool everything was in his neighborhood.

I got the L train up to Lorimar Street because it sounded slightly familiar…yes that is how I work these days. The street was mainly residential, with a few diners and paper shops dotted around and a huge menacing expressway at the bottom. It felt a little bit like coming to Hackney Wick for the first time. I wondered up the street and in one of the windows was a huge papier-mâché animal with pink and yellow and orange crape paper feathers all over it. Inside there was two geeky looking guys surrounded by books and magazines talking about a Comic Book convention.

The convention was a few blocks from the store a few days later, and after some wonderings I found the hall by the amount of cool bikes that were chained up outside.

I had planned to meet a couple that I had been put in touch with by a lovely friend back home. So wandered round the extravaganza waiting for their call.

I didn’t realize how cool comic really are. People take this stuff really seriously. I set in on a lecture about the Semiotics of the Comic, where they deconstructed Nancy! These people had flown from all around the country to come to this thing. One girl, native to New York, had come back from her Swedish residency to exhibit. To be honest I think there were some big shots there, but I had no idea and battled through the glasses and Spiderman t-shirts to find my friends.

Other stuff has happened that are probably better stories, like trying to find this trendy bar to do some writing in and ending up in the hood with my laptop in my bag and the only white girl in a mile and feeling seriously like I was from the Cotswold’s. Or watching a film about a guy trying and failing to be a rock star when proposing my intentions as a serious musician to a guy in the industry, and suddenly feeling like a failure. Or getting into a fill blown argument with a guy with no teeth only to work out later that he couldn’t speak a word of English.

But they are all just stories and I will bring you more. I guess my conclusion from this one is that it’s OK not to be doing shit loads of stuff all the time and the fun I’ve had on my own little journeys has given me so much joy that I’ve started writing again.

New York landing

After getting in a seemingly unlicensed taxi when I arrived in a hase at JFK I was surprised that I wasn't found three days later in a body bag washed up on Brighton Beach. The driver was actually the nicest guy and told me all about his family and his brother who's a rapped and so on, but don't worry, I won't be doing that again.

Feeling better now, having my morning coffee and porridge in my darling Godfather's apartment and it's hellish rain outside. It's situated on a wide stark suburban road with nothing but bent trees and people fighting the wind and rain. The apartment itself is very quaint with ornaments lining the shelves and soft brown furniture.

So last night I went on date. A little ambitious I suspect, but when in Rome...

We went to a place called BAM, Brooklyn Academy of Music to see a Icelandic production of Metamorphesis. The production was innocent and fresh, not like the cynical theatre of London. I loved it, did even though I got caught nodding off several times by my date.

The building was incredible,a dilapidated music hall founded by Mr Harvey Litchenstein, BAM's president in the late 80's for Peter Brook's production of The Mahabharata. They've hardly touched it and with all the original paintwork still intact the space felt like a secret. A surreal and magical place for my first introduction to the city. We were snuck in through the back door by a very jolly stage manager called Pascal. He took us through the stage and we got to poke around the set where later the actors swung and climbed about the set. My date did seem to know everyone at the aftershow drink with strange Icelandic nibbles and I stood there enthralled and slightly reeling from tiredness and displacement.

I felt slightly in awe of myself, landing so smoothly on only the first night.

But now the rain is battering down and there are talks of buying a guitar in town.