PARIJAH DIARIES 14 And let us not speak falsely now, for the hour is getting late. –Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower In the garden at Bohemia there’s a brick circle laid into the gravel, and some months ago a young man called Theo fashioned a perfect yinyang inside it, using pale brown pebbles and […]
PARIJAH DIARIES 5 That gruesome quiet got inside me too, eventually. I have to shake it off. I had a friend who worked in theatre, and between jobs he used to drive trucks, and sometimes he had to drive a truck-load of cattle to the abbatoir. Most of the journey was on the motorway, but […]
Parijah Diaries 11 “Such a caring for death, an awakening that keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks death in the face, is another name for freedom.” ― Jacques Derrida After their gig the Filipinos like to go skate-boarding at midnight down on the beach road. It’s their new craze, and a great way to […]
PARIJAH DIARIES 13 It wasn’t fun, exactly, but I wouldn’t have missed it. A bad trip is still a trip; and quite a trip at that. My friend Jim worries about me doing this. Jim makes fine guitars; I call him the Just Artisan; he’s always saying ‘I’m just an artisan, but…’ before coming out with […]
PARIJAH DIARIES 12 There was something else I was looking forward to when I came back to Jamrock — to put myself under the mushroom again. I’d been thinking about it for a while, up there on my parched plain in the North-East. I’d been in Isan more than a year already, working with Red […]
PARIJAH DIARIES 9 An old acquaintance of mine has opened a new bar down by Rawai Beach. The Phuket Pirates, he calls it. I met him on an obscure beach about six years ago. It was early in the morning, and I’d had my swim and was mooching around bagging up today’s plastic from the […]
PARIJAH DIARIES 3 It’s the absurdity that bites. Children in social distancing hats. Chalk squares on the playground. These slave masks. These gags. Social distancing robots in the parks. Instructions to stand in the corners and face away from each other in lifts. The pettiness of bio-tyranny. The sheer reach of this insanity. The insistent tang […]