On what I would consider one of the more eventful nights of my life, I met a very strange man.    As the Durango-95 and I purred through the night, I could feel the cool wind against my mashed and blackened face. But all I could think about was the bullet holes recently pierced into my left arm, the pistol in my lap, and the cougar in the back seat of the car I was in. Had you’ve asked me then, I honestly couldn’t tell you how I had gotten myself into this situation. I ‘d had one hell of a night.   Steering with my knees, I used my hands to try to stop the bleeding in my shot arm. It was about then that my excursion was interrupted by a very strange man. A very strange man who called himself Paul Klee. The Durango screeched to a spinning halt right before the mist-blanketed silhouette. I limped out of the car and squinted at the sight.   Was I dreaming? I am still not sure.   As the mist cleared, there he was. Standing nude in front of me in the middle of the street, his sweaty, bulbous… read more

Kneeling before you on a cold January day, my hand still clenched round the hollow imprint of the coin that until recently I had held, at forty eight, barely remembering my youth, born a cripple in Dunfermline, a weak child, separated from my parents and raised by strangers, good people, who taught me to walk, eventually reuniting me with my family, only to see my brother, Henry, die of typhoid when I was twelve, mourning him with my sister, my fair and gentle sister Elizabeth, who was to marry our friend from Palatinate, fondly remembering my adventure in Europe, travelling to Spain at my father’s request, to meet with a man whose daughter I was charged to marry, briefly resting in Paris, where by chance, I met with the love of my life, Henrietta Maria, so happy, so free, so different from my intended wife, that I could not pursue that false union, would not pursue it to be true to my religion, my love and myself, instead returning home to urge my father  to break the covenant and asking Henrietta to be my wife, our life lived in mutual happiness, tolerance, and peace, our six children brought up to… read more

The sky was a violent crimson; the clouds burst dark, ominous shapes against the massacre, clashing and hurtling with an epic ferocity, dramatised in the classical literature of celestial immortality. Below, the cinematic pomposity was stripped by savagery and shredded by the grim realisation of human suffering.  Mud choked the strained Earth and fissures heaved with asthmatic hysteria, pained by the sickening prospect of cold, clinical ignorance in those who trudged solemnly through the remains of an era; eyes wired shut. “Company, forward!” the command scarred his fractured mind, terrifying in its hypnotic objectivity, settling in its hyperbolic surrealism.  He grasped the first rung of the ladder with white knuckles; a wavering grip which remained firm, despite the appalling uncertainties that lay over the top.  The wood was grizzled, splintered and worn but it was concrete, an undeniable truth that could be depended upon in its basic principles of vertical assertion.  Under the tattered remains of waterlogged boots, the outcome of this last stand seemed far less entrenched.  His future was opaque; the continuation of existence as dependable as the marshy sieve of shrapnel, faecal vomit and scattered corpses that sluiced through channels created by his curling toes. Whatever did… read more

 When Lang, Roberts, Rosenman and Kornfeld sorted to bring what would become the world’s greatest music festival to 600 acres in Bethel New York, it was to be an “interesting business venture”; a mediocre celebratory affair that would produce a reasonable profit.   But when 500,000 young idealists descended on the field, any notion of a fledgling capitalist endeavour was scrapped in favour of peace, love and music.  The hysterical residents of Bethel filed eighty lawsuits, a “state of emergency” was declared and National Guard “enforcement” narrowly averted.  What remains unique about Woodstock ’69 however is that the human spirit overcame the hurdles of pig-headed ignorance, epitomizing the best of an entire decade in three drug-addled days.  There was no merchandise, no time allotments (see The Who’s epic 25-song set list that kicked off at 4AM or Hendrix’s apologetic era-defining performance as the weekend drew to a close) and most importantly, no sense of hostility.   The same cannot be said for Woodstock ’99.  The concept of “free love” which had come to symbolize the original festival was patented and packaged by conglomerates determined to cash-in on the previous success.  Where Jefferson Airplane had preached unity as the sun rose… read more

"The Gypsies themselves have no heroes. There are no myths of a great liberation, of the founding of the 'nation,' of a promised land. They have no Romulus and Remus, no wandering, battling Aeneas.They have no monuments or shrines, no anthem, no ruins. And no Book" -Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey, Isabel Fonesca, (89). Scapino dropped onto the splintered stage, now an unsteady raft floating down a narrow mountain pass. The stagecoach exploded behind him against the rocks. The Doctor's horse, who had veered with the road, came back to the shore to watch them drift away. The acrobat looks into the vellum sack. His expression hardens in dismay. "What?" The Captain asks. "Is it not the gold?" Scapino turns the bag upside down, and Dottore's book falls out. Capitano walks to the edge of the raft and stares back at the wrecked coach, as if looking for glints of their lost fortune. "You grabbed the wrong sack," he says in disbelief. COMMEDIA SCENE THREE: book of lazzi CHARACTERS: Scapino, youing acrobat and theif, CAPITANO: Braggart soldier. SCENE: 1679, Mountains near Bergamo. The comici malfati (a disreputable band of improvisational actors) were rehearsing a new commedia scenario,… read more