Phoenix airport is a buzzing hive of spiky intercom bleeps and indecipherable tanoid announcements. It is South Park on hallucinogenics. The problem with the post-performance drink is it invariably starts late at night. I have a hang over. I can just about keep a handle on what’s in each of my five bags. And doing a good impression of a vagrant I spend half an hour exploring every single pocket in every single case until I find the ticket. The check in lady - I AM SORRY SIR ONLY TWO BAGS ALLOWED ON THE PLANE AND TWO BAGS IN THE LUGGAGE HOLD. yOU HAVE FIVE. The number five echoes through my head. Sesame streets famous purple caped Dracula character The Count appears behind the check in counter FIVE CASES OF LUGGAGE he says with slight reverb HAHAHAHA HARr. I spend another half hour squeezing zipping pushing and harrumphing to get to the requisite four. Please let it end. Read more [...]

Lightening strikes. At 5.30am I am awake. Same as it has been for the entire two weeks of my visit here. I write my morning pages. Morning Pages are an invention of Julian Cameron. Her book The Artists Way is one that I can recommend to you whether you are an artist or not. The morning pages are one cornerstone of Ms Cameron's teachings. Three pages a morning as soon as you wake. The pages can be about everything and anything or nothing. They are not to be re-read, not to be edited and not to be improved upon. They set the tone of the day for the artist. Engage. Read more [...]

The Americans are a complex turn of events for the English. When faced with the American the English, often revert to stereotypes. This portrays not only a lack of understanding but an unwillingness to see. It reflects more upon the English than their subject matter. Read more [...]

When you travel as much as I do across the ebb and flow of time zones then the body learns to adjust. The body clock tunes in to the international biorhythms that the earth lives by.. Jet lag does not affect experienced international travellers such as myself. If you are going to survive in this world you must be hip to its flow. It’s 3.43am and I’m sat by my computer wide awake like a freakin’ Duracell bunny tapping away on this computer like a loon. Read more [...]

But never, NEVER, book a smoking room in an hotel. I never do. Except for this once. It was already booked. "oh, you asked for a smoking room" says the receptionist avoiding eye contact with me. Normally I make a point of asking for a non smoking room. I struggle with my bags to the second floor. As the lift door opens the stench hits me - the entire floor reeks of cigarettes. It clings to the carpet and fills all space in between. I am sure I can hear a respirator machine inhale and exhale as I pass through the corridors. It feels a little like The Shining. America is telling me something and America is right. Smoking sucks. Period. Read more [...]

I secretly wish the Limousine driver was more attentive to the job in hand than to turning his head. The limo uncoils outside the airport "It's the best hotel in Tempe" he says "The best". My flight was nine hours long and I'd just smoked my the first cigarette . It was 2am in my body but 5pm in Phoenix Arizona and I was enjoying an oxeygen deficiancy high from the smoke. The drivers words shot through my head like a distant steam train. "and it's one hundred and one degrees". He had the habit of repeating the end of his sentences "one hundred and one degrees". Maybe he wasn't repeating his lines - Maybe my mind was playing tricks on me. Playing tricks. On me! Read more [...]

Another brother falls another mother calls another family wants to break down the walls and cry for their son that died. Some live and try to live a lie. Cold mornings and preachers bow heads in respect of a dead youth. The truth crouches behind the hearse between the lines of a poets verse. Read more [...]