Equus

Sometimes nature conspires to make its presence felt in an awesome and potent way. I don't think I will ever forget the day I met the horse and her child.

In the early 1990s I was working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Wales. The news editor at that time was a despicable little man whom I loathed deeply: a horribly insignificant specimen who perpetuated a regime of drunken bullying and tyranny that had its roots set in the very top of the company. These were failed journalists who used the strength of their number and their job titles to justify taking their inadequacies out on the rest of us. Most of us could see them for the pitiful clowns they were.

The feeling was more than mutual - so I used to get sent out of the office, and out of everyone's hair, a LOT. Often I would come back with a cracking story which I would write to my usual high standard. No room for false modesty here: I was a very good journalist. Other times I would be sent out on some kind of wild goose chase. I believe they wanted me out of the office, any which way, in case I went mad and put someone's face through a computer screen. There was a time this might have happened.

One morning, I was despatched in the office Ford Fiesta on a particularly ludicrous mission to a farm somewhere on the English-Welsh border (and therefore outside of the catchment area of my paper). I was to meet and interview a woman who had attended a well-to-do wedding... perhaps it was the nuptials of some minor royal or other? I really don't remember. All I recall is that it was way outside of our circulation area, nobody would be interested in anything this toff had to say, and I was the person assigned to the job. Whoop.

I remember pulling up on the lane outside the walled perimeter to the massive country house where I would meet Lady Haw Haw or whatever her name was. The estate was imposing and sprawling, and I didn't want to sully the driveway with the shabby, unwashed pool car. Instead I parked out on the road and proceeded on foot through the iron gates, feeling under-dressed in my crumpled suit, un-ironed shirt and holy shoes. As I strode up to the house, an animated woman appeared suddenly from a doorway, speaking to both me and someone on the wireless phone in her left hand: "Are you the gentleman from the Western Mail? Come in, my lovey..."

She led me into her kitchen, a massive stately home affair with cluttered French dressers against each wall, a massive aga cooker range, several sinks and a small cellarful of wine. She motioned for me to sit down at a colossal oak dining table while she carried on talking on the 'phone. Seamlessly, she popped open a bottle of champagne and charged two glasses without letting her 'phone convo subside. She pushed one glass across the table to me, then hung up.

"Darling - Andy, isn't it? - Andy darling I'm so terribly sorry I'm such a mess, my horse has just given birth and she's in a terrible state. The foal isn't able to stand up and it doesn't look good, darling, I'm waiting for the vet now and I'm afraid I'm in such a terrible mess too. Do have some champagne. Now what do you want to know...?"

I pulled the notepad from my jacket pocket and scribbled down whatever it was I needed to scribble down about the pointless weekend wedding that this woman had been to. As she related her tale of society excess, she seemed precisely as disinterested as I was. She was running on nervous energy, pissed up on champers and worried to death about her new-born foal. She talked non-stop until she was silenced at last by the rumbling of a Landrover creeping up the gravel driveway.

"Oh Andy, darling, do you mind awfully? That will be the vet. Come along if you wish, bring your champagne... come on now."

She scurried out of the door with me following behind her - champagne flute in one hand, notebook in the other. The vet - cloth-capped - climbed down from his cab and spoke in serious tones to my hostess about the complicated equine birth.

"Right, let's go and have a look at the little one," said the vet in his calming country way. We walked, as a threesome, around the side of the imposing house - two of us clutching glasses of bubbly. We turned the corner and...

It was another world - or rather, the world as I knew it had changed quite tangibly. The champagne undoubtedly helped, but the atmosphere had become charged. It was cold and a light breeze blew on my face as we made our way as quickly as we could out onto the field. The ground was clumpy and grassy underfoot and as the skies darkened with an impending thunderstorm, the light took on a newly surreal shade. Under my feet the grass glowed a vivid green, the champagne in my hand shone like gold, and the horse and foal ahead of us loomed both large and somehow very small; strong yet depressingly helpless.

The vet had already raced ahead and was gently trying to pull the foal to its feet. It crumpled on its delicate new-born legs like a spider, falling to the ground again. Its distressed mother snorted and whined in distress, looking from its foal to the vet to us. I believe I made eye contact with this new mother at the very second that a massive, brutal flash of forked lightning cracked through the sky ahead of us. The awesome rattle of thunder followed. The desperate horse must have thought this was the end of her world. The crying woman, who was now clinging to my arm, seemed to think the same. I was in the middle of a confused, bizarre and sad situation.

The journalist in me drank in the scene greedily, preserving as much as I could to memory. It struck me that the blackness of the clouds matched the blackness of the horse's eye. The savage blue-gold of the lightning that streaked across the sky matched the ludicrous accessory of the champagne - a celebratory drink, here being sipped while we watched a baby animal take its first and last breaths.

The vet sent us packing, knowing that the animal had only moments left to live. I walked back to the house, my head full of respect and terror for the forces of nature that could bring a new life to the world and take it away again, almost immediately. I thought about that foal's brief experience of this planet - a fleeting glimpse of its mother, some humans, the cold earth, the mighty lightning, and then back into the anonymity of death.

It was all terribly sad. I returned to the office, wrote about the bullshit posh wedding, and kept the rest of that day's events to myself. But I no longer felt like it had been a wild goose chase. I felt that a point I could never understand had been made.

It seemed almost like Mother Nature had wanted to be quoted: "Put this down in your notebook boy," she appeared to say. Then she showed me her best - and worst.

You're Fired.

You've heard the rumblings from the commonwealth, you've more than likely downloaded the record already (naughty bleeders) and you're in a state of anxious excitement like me. Maybe you've got friends in Canada who've seen them already; you've certainly read about them - probably argued the toss about them - on discussion boards the worldwide-interweb over. If you're one of the lucky ones, you'll have a ticket for their easily sold-out London show in March.

Arcade Fire as an event is imminent and, clearly, it's time to stop pussyfooting around. They could do without the responsibility, I'm sure - but I for one am pinning a lot of hopes and dreams on our cousins with the shared queen. I demand a lot from my music and I expect Arcade Fire to change my life. By summer 2005, in fact, I expect likely lads singing about skag and stupidity to be a figment of embarrassing memory.

That's not too tall an order. Arcade Fire's debut album cuts an astonishing dash. Vast, landscape-levelling sounds pulsate from its all-knowing brain. Precision-positioned violins scream blue murder over a soothing guitar, piano and vocal bedrock to produce a sound that is at once highly familiar (Bunnymen, New Order, Bowie, Suicide, Talking Heads, British Sea Power, blah blah blah) yet also utterly surprising, exciting and original. Chants and associated eerie oriental vocal antics, in both English and French, give this wonderful record a plausibly religious, possibly shamanic feel. The stuff of magic.

Onto this rich canvas are painted curious little ideas and images, of which the 'Neighborhood' four-part segment (oh yes, you can throw the traditional track one, track two format out of the window right now) is the most pronounced. These tales of family ties, family loss, deep memory, time-travel, catastrophe, astral flight and the 'escape' gene will shatter your heart one second; swell it with bravery and pride the next.

What an imagination! Chief fire officer Win Butler's grown-up but childlike tales are weird, dreamlike exercises that have no peer in modern music. A snowstorm engulfs the town and memories fade through eons to zilch in 'Neighborhood 1 (Tunnels)', a vampiric brother seeks a brave new life by destroying family photos while his tears are collected in a cup during 'Neighborhood 2 (Laika)'. Icicles grow over the hands and eyes of parents in 'Neighborhood 3 (Power Cut)' and the planet is plunged into desperate darkness.

Then there's 'Wake Up', a wavering call for action to children, powered by a tambourine-led beat. It covers the passing of the age, the betrayal of memory and the disastrous pursuit of man. "We're just a million little gods causing rainstorms," shrieks Win. "Turning every good thing to rust."

The record officially ends with sadness and hope, memory and loss, bravery and passion - all combined for listening pleasure in the wonderfully haunting 'In The Backseat'. Life is a journey, friends, and we're all still learning to drive.

Except, it doesn't really end there, you know. The last track, I find, is one of my own making. It's not on the CD - it begins moments after the plastic has stopped spinning around. It's a moment of blessed silence, and you're going to need it if the power and majesty of this thing is to sink in sufficiently. The last 'track', then, is your own heart, your own breath and your own brain ticking, clicking and seething away.

What an album.

The biggest kick, the cruellest trick

As I get older, I get more motivated. The more motivated I get, the older I feel.

The Stiky Wicket

I really didn't want to ever have to write (and worst of all, publish) one of these things while drunk, but I've kind of made a promise to myself that this one would be 'as is'. A slice of blogema verite, if you will.

I've just come from a quiet pint turned full-on night out with Stiky and Gwen. I'm hammered. There was always going to be an element of old-time talking to the night, but I didn't quite suspect that I would get quite so far back into the zone as Stiky took me.

We had beers, we shared reminiscences, we looked at pictures of Stiky and Gwen's children. I was astounded by Rafe, Stiky's kid. He used to be 6. Now he's 18. He buys his dad pints. Wow.

Gwen's 16 year old is Alice. She's mates with my mate's teenage daughter. Small world. They should join together, form a band, play gigs. Play with our minds.

Stiky reminded me about incidents from the house I lives in 18 years ago. He reminded me about the parking ticket he got all those years ago. We remembered the gag about his band, Rollerco. "I've got all your records!" I would laugh. It was true. I'd pressed up 1,000 copies and they were all in a cupboard in my bedroom for years.

We went to the Underworld for a gig. The first band was alright. The second band were great. The third band was incredible.m They were like all the hardcore bands I had seen in Newport TJs in the early 1990s, all stuck together. I didn't care who they were, who was in the room, what had happened today or what would happen tomorrow: from some 15 minutes on, I was in the zone. I felt my legs go, then my arms, my head. I was twitching this way and that - I was feeling the music. Stiky had his arm around my shoulders, was bellowing something into my ear. Just like 18 years, ago it was incomprehensible. Song ended, new song began. I knew nothing - NOTHING - of the lyrical content. But the delivery shoved everything through.

I looked around me at kids half my age, watching politely. Semi-transfixed. I saw Stiky approach the stage, mid-song, to congratulate the guitarist on his last solo. That's how we used to roll. Convention, history, decorum... bunkum. It means diddly squat. This is me, this is Stiky, this is now.

I blubbed like a fool. Gwen asked me if I'd enjoyed myself. I hid my eyes in the shadows of the evening and suggested that it was my round.

I had such a great night, I totally forgot to go to Echo and the Bunnymen.

I had the time of my life.

(Written and edited for grammar only within 20 minutes, 16 Oct 2009. No rewrites.)

You say you want an evolution?

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, a follower of Icke or a believer in UFOs. Nor am I particularly impressed by the various religions on offer to this world (although the Hindus seem like a pretty cool bunch).

I reserve a healthy scepticism for the many oddball theories about our human origins that are out there. The least believable, to me, is the six-day creationist stuff in the Bible. Of the mainstream theories, Darwin's evolution seems to hold the most water.

Human evolution has accelarated way beyond the development of animals and plants, though, and there are many theories as to how this could have happened. Perhaps the most 'out-there' suggestion is also the one that I keep returning to as the most likely. Ironically, this is the one where Darwinism and Creationism appear to meet.

The oft-repeated and refined von Daniken-esque suggestion is that our current species is a derivative of homo erectus that was genetically modified many thousands of years ago. The story goes that scientifically advanced extra-terrestrial visitors to planet Earth gave our ape-like ancestors a genetic kick up the rear: larger brains, a longer life etc etc. The stuff of science fiction? Perhaps, but as research into the human genome and cloning techniques advance through the 21st century, the theory gains weight.

Revisiting the Adam and Eve story in 2009 is an interesting exercise. It's an absurdly accurate analogy for laboratory development of a new human species, is it not? 'God' (our advanced alien friend) takes a rib (strip of DNA) from Adam (himself) and creates an Eve (supercharged amalgam of alien and homo erectus). And if YOU were going to create your own little slave from scratch, wouldn't YOU wish to impose the same rules that were applied in the Garden of Eden (laboratory)? Namely, don't ask questions or there'll be trouble...

Having made a little workforce, perhaps to build its pyramids, henges and cities, the aliens left or maybe died out. The books that make up the Old Testament are littered with references to giants, nephilim (crossbred humans and 'angels'), people living for several hundred years and messengers coming down and then buggering off. The Noah story would appear to relate a rescue mission from a dying planet, complete with a cargo of DNA samples. Somewhere along the line, the human race was abandoned, and left feeling orphaned and perhaps homesick by alien proxy.

It's these feelings that dominate the drive to question our origins and our 'creators'. If you want to take a proper punt on it all, isn't it a bit interesting that church spires are rocket-shaped? When we pray, we put our hands together in an aerodynamic shape do we not? We think of 'God' as being in the heavens. we think of Jesus in terms of coming back.

We've been dumped. As a race, we want our collective daddies back. We want them to come and collect us and take us back to their place, because locked in our genetic history is a misty memory of where we came from. Either that or the stories in the Bible are a record of our future - a prediction that WE are the aliens who will abandon our Earth, travel to another planet and create a new race 'in our image'.

There. How do you like them apples?

All the world's a stage

The concept of an audience spread out like a fan before a stage is as old as the hills. It makes logistical sense, of course, to have an orator, singer, performer, musician, film actor or whatever in full view of the people he is addressing. But does it go any deeper than sheer layout mechanics?

Back in the late 1990s I had a dream that I was at a live gig from the future. I could tell it was not the present because the audience had by and large abandoned the floor and were instead hovering in prone position, at various altitudes above sea level. The floating punters at the top of the building (which bore a very close resemblance to the old Leeds Town and Country) were tilting their heads slightly so they could look down on the musicians who were for some reason still rooted to terra firma.

The lower-level ones (which included me) sort of swerved around a bit, like they were lying on hoverboards, and there was also a smattering of people stood in the traditional manner, on the floor. The logic of the dream told me that the floating spectators had paid more for their unique P.O.V. And my dreamy head also suggested to me that this surreal effect was achieved through an air-thickening process that turned the air to something like water.

It struck a chord because I'd had a similar dream as a small boy, while at the dentist. I was put under with laughing gas and while the dentist prodded, poked, drilled and yanked at my gnashers I experienced the most surreal dream of my young life. In it, I was stuck floating in some kind of viscous air inside a cavernous cinema building. I was being sucked slowly towards the silver screen, with a tremendous atmospheric pressure all around me. A gentle ringing sound was in my ears.

It was only when I was considering material for this blog that it occurred to me how similar these dreams, which occurred 30 years apart, had been. A bomb dropped when I thought about the two scenes: one was a music venue, presumably because I was heavily into attending gigs at that point. The earlier one was a picture house. Why not a venue? Because I hadn't yet attended a gig - but I had been to the flicks.

Eureka? Two very potent dreams, both featuring a high density atmosphere and both involving large numbers of people facing a stage.

I've been trying to work it all out. Could the viscosity of the atmosphere and head-tilting towards the stage/screen be symptomatic of my suppressed memory of birth? Was this 'me', waiting for my call to stage? Or does it run deeper still?

I've always found it hard to be part of a church service or a good gig without feeling a massive emotional tug. I once wrote a review about crying at a gig, but what I didn't say at that time was that this is a feeling I have to fight most of the time. I frequently have a massive lump in my throat when I attend live music, almost regardless of content or quality. The good stuff takes me over the edge, but even the rubbish has an effect. You will only rarely see me smile in front of a band. Most of the time I'm fighting to keep control.

Is that how everyone feels? Is there something magical about the audience/stage configuration? Is it really just people on a wooden platform with a whole load of other people in front of it? Or does it go deeper into some matrix-like place? Does any of this have to do with my predilection for mulling over life decisions when I'm in the middle of a gig? I do find the atmosphere very conducive to big thinking. The church of noise, indeed.

Oh, this is tough! I guess it's harder than I thought to say what I feel sometimes, but if any of this strikes a chord please feel free to add your thoughts. I don't know if or how any of this is connected, but hey - I thought I'd throw it out there.

Morningfrown ride

We've all got dream stories - and here are a couple of mine. These are from my early life, they have a recurring theme and an interlacing pattern... and they're kind of dark. One of these was a terrifying experience that my brain would revisit night after night after night when I was a child, totally against my will. I was so glad when it ended.

Don't get me wrong, I've had plenty of nice dreams too. Lots of great flying dreams, for instance. One in particular was so vivid that I can picture it in perfect recall even as I type this, some 25 years after it fizzed around my brain. Oh, and then there are the ludicrously symbolic ones, like the time I dreamed the word 'tessellate'. That one was a bit Monty Python-esque: "TESSELLATE" turned up on shop signs, street signs, in speech bubbles, scribbled on pieces of paper... at one point, I even dreamed a gaggle of nuns saying that word over and over again.

But the grim ones were properly grim. When I was very young, my active imagination would throw up the outline of fierce tigers in my room. I'd need my mum in there to shoo them away. Then Dr Who's cybermen would be waiting for me. It didn't help, at all, that the early seventies were prone to power cuts. Not only would the front room be plunged into darkness, and usually during a Dr Who scary bit, but the outage would leave me with no closure, no resolution. As my mum would set out the little nightlite candles I would still be left in the dark (literally) over whether the Doctor and his sexy assistants had been able to vanquish their plastic robot foes.

I'm not sure where my wireless dream came from. That was pretty sinister. In that particular horrorshow, my brother's transistor radio (we shared a bunkbed-ed room) would fizzle and crackle as it sat on the windowsill, and then sparks and explosions would emanate from the soft fabric mesh grill on its front. Smoke would billow from it and I knew it would spell trouble. It might sound lame, but for an eight year old it was pretty bleak. And it happened night after night.

There was a worse one. That involved me being stuck at the bottom of a sheer, metallic-grey cylinder made of toughened steel and measuring some 20 or 30 feet across. I would be pressed up against one of the cold walls trying desperately to avoid the tight-fitting plug that would be descending slowly towards me. I knew I'd be crushed and I would feel the heavy metal slab pressing down on my face like an SS officer's boot before I'd wake myself up in a panic.

Some eight or nine years after this dream which, again, would repeat itself night after night, I had cause to visit the peculiar domed building next to the Greenwich pedestrian tunnel under the Thames. The liftshaft inside looked just the same as my dream-state prison. Funny, that.