happy shoebox words

i found this in a shoebox... written during a happy gang jam in aoife's room, way back when :)

eyes glazed over like that...
what's going on in there?
a hundred little angel feet
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . lineing up . . . . .
-a centepede of saviours marching into your mind
,           some working together bringing ideas
,            some marching alone carrying dreams
                          enter in a deep breath

moonbeams light your face.
, age
,   expierence
,           tenderness
         and          youth radiate from within you
-                           fill the room with love
-thats whats going on in there
-i love this!

twenty-four lovers' feet send dreams into the night.
i hope we can love this way forever...

style

i have my own sense of style.

by that i mean that how i look and act changes with my mood, my mood changes often and i don't really pay heed to such trivia. you can't dress me up - well, you can, but if you do, i'll be uncomfortable and want to go home - it's no longer me and i enjoy being me!!!

what's really important to you? if it's me, then here i am, if you want to change me, then go find that person elsewhere - i'm sure he exists, there's enough of us in the world!

style is so short term... i mean, i shave my head today, it grows back in six months! i change my shirt today, i can put the old one on tomorrow - but i probably won't; i'll have moved forward!!

i want to create something that lasts... all i have to offer falls on your ears... i hope you enjoy listening! (www.facebook.com/floatinghomemusic)

you know that feeling when you're sitting on a train and you don't know yet in which direction it is going to move? if you're going to be taken backwards or forwards? i feel that way now! album finished, what next?


watch this space... le grand discours... coming 2012...

words of a lost girl

i've just read the dark and passionate words of a lost girl.

someone who has denied herself for the sake of social conformity; someone who punishes herself for her desires - most of them good and decent - as she's been so convinced of their being bad; someone who has been brutally punished by the very reverend for each time she sidestepped from the popular path; someone who became so damaged and lost by not listening to herself and not allowing herself to grow into herself, that she has become hidden - her best kept secret; someone who allowed herself be so consumed in her lost love that she has been unable to fall out of it and has instead sunk deeper and deeper into lonliness, recreating an image of her ex-girlfriend in a dream and projecting it into her reality - getting out of bed becomes difficult, she dreams of living late nights and early mornings for all eternity with her lost love... the image is incomplete, though, containing only remarkable moments - its the bits in between that strengthen relationships and make them special, yet it's so difficult to grasp onto these... how did we become so close?

"this pure, pure evil grasping, twisting, pushing me forward."

i have the most distinct feeling that my internal monologue has not always been here, yet i can't remember a time when it wasn't... "your mind is a sponge for information", said a good friend last night... "and forgot almost nothing", says the lost girl... it's getting so loud and sometimes it's hard to work out what's past, what's present and what's future! it's like she wrote it all down in one breath and i breath it too!... "will you still love me when we've nothing left to say?"

the church has had such a stronghold on young irish people's lives for so many generations - it shatters the self-confidence of all but the few that find truth in its teachings and fall into that mould, - it's dear departure will be only a small loss, suffered by few good and genuine people. i respect those that find inner peace through the practices of the church but fear that most followers are either lost or exploiting "the gospel" for personal gain. anything that promotes peace and strength and self-worth is positive, but my experiences with the church have not yielded such a bounty - i visited a mostly spiteful, greedy, dishonest and impersonal mass... i find my own way through right and wrong and though there is much overlap, my lifestyle would not please their god!

i hope she finds the strength to step out of the version of herself she is currently confined to, and finds the new, more honest and appropriate girl bursting to come out and play.

our life is a celebration

as i sit on the train to munich, full from a monster feed that i allowed myself in salzburg, i wish to share some moments from the past four days...

i stepped into a fresh, summers morning accompanied with the dawn birdsong at 5h on thursday. i was on my way to catch a train from bruxelles to graz for peter and andrea's wedding - i didn't yet know what we were in for, but knowing peter and andrea, i knew it would be special! the 15 hour train journey took me through numerous dreamlands: the low haze hanging just above the belgian farmlands as the sun rose; breakfast and bathroom lights flicking on as the train drifted through koln and collected work-going passengers; a croissant and a coffee in frankfurt; finishing the pre-mix work on the west cork song as we pulled into munich; the alps growing on the horizon and then coming at us from a great distance until we were among them; forrested hills giving way to bare-stone cliffs and mountain peaks; coffee and classical music in salzburg; winding pale green meltwater rivers and chalets on the rich green hills as we gained altitude on our way to evening; all the time drifting in and out of sleep, infiltrated by the landscapes we passed through; waking up properly in eveningtime graz and realising that i left all my phone numbers in bruxelles; driving with rupert and alex (who luckily found me) up the winding mountain roads to puch, with the sun setting in the rear-view mirror.

in puch, we were met by four tables full of friends and trisha planted a beer in my hand - the wedding celebrations had begun! we sat out enjoying the fresh alpine evening as couple by couple of people left for bed. in the end, verena and i found ourselves sitting at a table full of empty beer and wine glasses with orange segments laying in their bottoms, waiting on a bus carrying the last thirty-five guests. they all spilled out one-by-one on to puch's main street at 2h in high spirits after their adventure from vienna airport!

the following morning we got up at 10h and had breakfast in the hotel beside where we stayed before sitting out on the lawn in the sun playing music: wallis, ben, aoife, sarah, anna, michael, floic and i. i was honoured to have been asked to play my west cork song during the church service, and we were going to sing it all together :)

at 13h, we all met in front of the hotel where max assigned everyone to cars for the trip to peter's childhood hometown of birkfeld for the church service. some were dressed in suits, some in jeans and t-shirts, some in liederhosen, some in quirky atire, some in formal-wear, standing witness to the diversity of peter and andrea's friends and family - this weekend was going to be nothing if not interesting!

in the cafe beside the church, we assembled over a drink - there were beers, wine, coffee, water and coloured liquids that i couldn't identify!

the service was accompanied by peter's dad and michael zlanabitnic playing organ; the local town choir, led by peter's uncle singing; a full rock band; and the song that peter and andrea had asked us to play! andrea's dress was beautifully simple, white with a pearled motif around the neck, and both she and peter looked amazing.

after the service, jens climbed up a ladder and took some group photos with the austrian countryside rolling out behind us as we all stood around chatting and laughing over bread and wine.

both peter and andrea's families come from austria, they grew up at opposite ends of the country and in their adulthood went wherever their dreams took them. they lived a long distance relationship for many years before moving together to london and then to berlin. as you may imagine, their friends come from far and wide, living in a number of different countries, coming from a number of different backgrounds, with representatives from almost all walks of life and all with an important thing in common: they are all decent, hard-working and soulful people... attending, were amazing friends that i know well and a bunch that i was eager to get to know better - the day was interesting and long, continuing, for some of us, until 7h30 the following morning!

as we arrived back in puch, we were greeted with prosecco and a cool, smiling quartet of double-bass, percussion, trumpet and clarinet that arrested everyone's attention and, for a moment, conversation stopped! there were three generations of people gathered together, from babies still growing in their mother's bellies to an age higher than i can count, and here, before dinner, i got chatting to the french contingent - floic, catherine and isabelle... the band played four or five songs and then walked us into the dining room like the pied-piper! we followed obediently into the old converted wooden barn with long tables laid out for 150 guests, each place identified with an orgami crane, handmade by danni and inscribed by her father in a tasteful caligraphy handwriting, marking where each of us were to sit. peter and andrea made a speech together before the soup came out, walking from table to table introducing the guests and saying a few words about how they knew each of us in german and in english. between each course, there was a speech and when we were directed to the desert table, the band that had greeted us in the courtyard outside, began playing on the stage, beginning with a jazzy set, that flowed seamlessly into traditional austrian music, followed by a host of more popular songs, swapping instruments and playing, not as a typical wedding band, but from the soul.

philip had set up a screen-test booth in the entry hall, where people were invited to sit in front of the camera for 30 seconds to make a silent presentation of the guests - like the factory screen tests of the 1970s. aoife wandered around with a polroid camera photograping the guests for a scrap-book that we were all to write a note in the following evening. andrea's sister and brother-in-law put together a slide-show that had the whole room in ribbons of laughter. wallis passed around a handmade scrapbook to get peoples thoughts, and later on, we slipped off - constantin, maxxi, marcus, wallis, aoife, ben, anna and i to prepare four songs (the beach boys - god only knows, the carpenters - close to you, the cure - friday i'm in love and fata morgana, an old austrian pop song) on 2 melodicas, ukulele, guitar, piano, clarinet, loads of voices and small percussion instruments.

then wallis, aoife and i played perfect by fairground attraction accompanied by the band, before they took back up and continued with their final set of the evening. afterwards, as they were clearing away their instruments, myself, ben, wallis and a host of other guests (including the double-bass player from the band who had been playing all evening!) swapped instruments and got a jam going which went on until they had cleared up the room and were ready to go home, at which point peter took 5 bottles of wine and we sat around in the morning until the matchsticks holding our eyes open finally gave way and we could keep them open no more.

i missed breakfast and instead set up a picnic for the tour we were to take on the saturday afternoon. 3 tractors stopped outside the hotel, each pulling a trailor, to show us around the region. we visited a cider brewery, where every bottle is apparently blessed before it is leaves the brewery, ready for public consumption. we laughed our way around the winding mountain paths to a celtic settlement museum where a local lady told us stories of the celts of 4000 bc who had lived in the area. paul arrived and added yet another voice of dry irish wit to the trailor as we rolled on to moarpeter, a restaurant where we were to spend the rest of the day and evening. we were greeted by a traditional brass band and a glass of elderflower sekt. anna and i found a red slide and relived a bit of our youth with a bunch of others, sekt in hand!

we saw the first rain of the weekend as we sat down to lunch on a covered terrace. it cleared as we cleared our plates and we went down to sit in the sun and watch a pair of hot air balloons float off on the wind above the drying land.

a local theatre group entertained us with songs about hollywood and marraige before joining forces with the brass band, led, again, by peter's uncle to get the whole wedding dancing. he's some character!

as darkenss fell and the air cooled, i sat out with wallis' parents, liz and others, watching the mountains dissappear under the veil of night. the stars lit up the sky and there was more dancing over dinner!

at 2h, connie, ben, anna, patrick, jens, brita, catherine, michael and i jumped in a taxi for puch as people were starting to dance on the bar with glasses raised to the ceiling and the whole bar singing bon jovi along with the dj at the tops of their voices! the taxi driver coincidentally played the hollywood song from a cd - connie got him to turn it up and we sang our way to bed! apparently, the evening we left behind us continued until 6h!

as we stood around waiting for the bus to graz this morning, ben and i played guitar in the shade of the church, and we all swapped stories of our favorite memories from the weekend. we aggreed that the highlights were too numerous to mention without having another four days to talk about the four days that we just lived together... everyone offered what they could to make this weekend as special and inspirational as it was!

the four hour trip from graz to salzburg was filled with warm thoughts of friends and special moments and on leaving salzburg, a haze had formed over the river and was creeping up the land as darkenss fell.

have songs - need money - will swap!

one of the main purposes that facebook serves me is to promote my music and make it available to people that may want to hear it. i am constantly torn, though, between trying to gain intrest around my projects (which i believe are good) and really not wanting to bother people or invest too much of myself in these time-sapping networks!

i make music - that's what i enjoy doing and i feel that after 15 years of making mistakes and fine-tuning, i've got pretty good at it! it's a long solitary process capped with very special moments that i'm lucky enough to be able to share with good people when we put together arrangements and play concerts. i enjoy sharing that music with people whose presence i'm in, and given half a chance, a guitar and an audience of at least one, that's what i do! i especially enjoy it when i have the opportunity to present this music with my friends (the italian weather ladies).

i subscribe to the belief that it takes at least two people to make art - the creator and the appreciator! i find it hard when i'm playing a concert to open my eyes and see how people are reacting, prefering to try and vibe off the energy they are feeding back to us. i can't get to grips with the idea that behind the flickering computer-screen are people that could appreciate our music as much as those who come to see a show, even if i am one of those people myself, so i find myself constantly in conflict as to whether i should do mailing lists (which i consider spam!) and advertising (i don't do well selling myself - and i feel my music is a large part of myself) or not. promotion distracts me terribly from my principal occupation of writing and playing music.

because of this conflict, we find ourselves with very few people who follow what we do (on facebook, or whatever) and a complete blank as to how to proceed once the recordings are finished... my desire is to move on to the next project while an amazing team of people, who get off on getting things moving, turn the cogs to make what needs to happen happen (to make the project progress and reach new ears), but if i don't get things happenning myself, well then, who else will? so i end up trying to spread the word in bursts - a few concerts, a low-budget release, loads of emails, no responses, an enormous lack of confidence and i'm back to square one: sitting in front of my multitrack, broke (after spending all my money on the previous set of recording/gigging) with a litter of instruments around me, trying to forget about what's on the radio and concentrate on what i want to say, what i wish the radio played.

i have no idea how to approach selling music, i end up going around in circles and spending all my money! we are now nearly finished a new studio album and are looking wherever we can think of, for people who want to see us continue making music, to help us get it out there!

so if you, dear reader, have been directed here familiar with our music, please spread the word far and wide, and if you don't know what we do, please take the time to visit www.floatinghome.org or www.facebook.com/floatinghomemusic. if you like what you hear and see, don't be a stranger! tell us how it makes you feel; what it makes you think of; what you do when you listen to it; tell us where you think we should play; who you think we should contact; and we'll add them to our list with bremen! we want to get on the road but have lost our gps (maps are so 1998!) - get your pointing finger out!!!

stuck on the eurostar

we've been here for about an hour now... about half an hour into the journey, the train beeped four times and the engine stopped. the eurostar sits now, like a limp caterpillar on a farming plain south-east of lille. every 15 minutes, the train shakes as another passes by at high speed - oosh-oosh-oosh-oosh-oosh-ooooooooh - and it's gone!

the electricity is out and the younger children voice their irritation and discomfort with each extra degree of heat.

adults search for questions to ask and find themselves reverting back to the same one over and over again - "when will i get home?" - but the fact remains: there's nothing we can do, so we may as well sit and relax through the wait! chivolrous men fan their girlfriends with magasines - certain parents shout "calm down" at their children, others invent them games to divert them from the boredom:
- imagine its the wild west and this is a train stickup...
- i spy with my little eye something beginning with...
- the less imaginaive shove an i-phone in their childs hands!

phone conversations the lenghth of the train relay the same message - "i'll be home late... the train has stopped with an electrical engine fault... i don't know... i'll let you know as soon as i can..."

and wallis and i sit with a beer in our hand, sunglasses on, playing cards to cover up the holland that's up to our eyes.

the first part of the journey was accompanied with the trip that is the beatles white album!

we reached the end as we pulled into bruxelles. i left wallis in a station café and jumped a taxi to leave francois' 1957 gibson (back when the company was worth a shite) tenor guitar in my home... she was leaving the tour today...
"hi stef, see you in a fortnight" as i greet my housemate...
"eh... hi... bye... we're going to see villagers tonight in the bota...
i'm jealous, "enjoy it!"

we have broken into led zepplin I, but i think i'm not in the mood for this right now - onto mark holis - that should lighten the weight of the heat a bit :)

... we've been waiting an hour and a half now, i've finished my accounting and am about ready for beer number two. some doors are open for air and we are waiting for a new engine to arrive from lille. the train inched forward a metre, maybe she has arrived!

the place where we are stopped leaves the whole train inclined slightly to the left. things keep sliding off tabes and into the aisles, everyone walks at a 15 degree lean and the piss that missed the toilet flows under the door and forms a little puddle opposite - the lights are out and it seems that most guys today are too lazy to light their phone up and aim!

18h10: we inch another metre forward... could this be our depart? we gain speed - the trees and fields that i've been watching take on new perspectives before dissappearing into the distance behind... next stop - lille!

mark hollis continues to unintelligibly mutter some lyrics that must be really increddible to sit on top of such a bed of music!

love as a fire

whenever i am falling for someone, whenever there is that spark, and especially if we kiss, i feel compelled to give it my all - i feel that anything less would be insulting... i'm like a kid blowing vigorously at the embers, hoping for a flame!

maybe love is not like a fire - maybe it needs to be treated gently? maybe this feeling is passion? lust? maybe all of this would be more rewarding if i'd just calm down! maybe love is a trip and i should just sit back and enjoy the journey? i strive to take each moment as it comes and then to let it pass, when it's gone... not to dwell on it and dwell on it and dwell on it...

maybe love is like water, a mass of individual drops, constantly flowing together in the same direction - sometimes seperating for a moment but usually being pulled back together by an uncontrollable magnetism.

i read somewhere: "i will stop struggling to succeed, but allow myself to submit to the pace which surrounds me - all success will come in its own time" (or something like that)... at first i thought "bullshit - i'm strong enough to make my own path", but the more i think about it, i realise this is the root of most of my frustrations!

i will be water, i will relax and flow with the stream.

(or maybe next week i'll have something different to say on the matter!)