Dead Crow

Anyhow.  You have to laugh.  I’d given up on synchronicity – just called it coincidence.  I’d given up on magic – just called it mind games.  And then, while I was in Cornwall at The Pause, I was woken up by the loudest bird I’ve ever heard.  It wasn’t just cawing, it was cawing right outside my bedroom window at stadium rock gig level.  It was the Ian Gillan of crows, the Ozzy Osbourne of avians. 

So I went down to breakfast and took my bowl of Bircher muesli to the table out on the patio and…shit.  Literally.  Bird shit on the table.  Not just a little plop but a great stinking puddle.  So I went in to get a cloth and, when I came out, there was more – all over my chair, all over the wall behind it, all over the ground around it.  A veritable splatterfest of shit.  No wonder that bloody bird was shrieking – it clearly had a shit-storm of diarrhoea going on.  A right belly-ache. 

Anyhow, nobody else seemed much interested, or even much aware of it at all – it was obviously my shit, and nobody else’s.  I forgot about it until that afternoon when we sat down and each picked out a card from the Medicine Cards Pack.  And, lo and behold, what did I pick out?  Crow.  Bloody crow.  Shitty old crow.  Well of caws I did. 

But actually, Crow is really really interesting.  Listen to this:

“There is a medicine story that tells of Crow’s fascination with her own shadow.  She kept looking at it, scratching it, pecking at it, until her shadow woke up and became alive.  Then Crow’s shadow ate her.  Crow is Dead Crow now.”

Yeah. That’s about right.

Crow can shape-shift and that chimed too.  I sometimes feel as if I am too many people, too many things, too many personas all fighting against one another.  Maybe I just need to shape-shift a tad.  Maybe I also need to throw up some illusions. 

And then it said, “Human law is not the same as Sacred Law.”  Oh yes.  I have no truck with human law, I really don’t.  And, curious, that law thing – see yesterday’s post. 

“Crow sees that the physical world and even the spiritual world, as humanity interprets them, are an illusion. There are billions of worlds.”  Right on, Crow. 

And so it went and so it did.  It said I have to be willing to ‘walk my talk’ (ouch), that I have to ‘speak my truth’ (ouch ouch), that I have to ‘know my life’s mission (*frown*), that I have to ‘balance past, present and future in the now’ (do I look like that much of a magician??). 

Later that day I found myself drawn to pick up a pen and a paper pad for the first time in years and, of caws, I scribbled out a crow.  And it grew and shifted and gave birth to all sorts of shapes and creatures and faces and forms.  Creative Crow.

And then, when we went to the beach…ah, but that’s another story.

I wonder...which totem would you pick from the Medicine Pack?  

A message from Pisser summons me to the Past

‘Mum, are you ever going to answer that phone?’
‘No. If whoever it is wants to talk to us, whoever can damn well leave a message.’
‘But they’ve been ringing for four days now and, if you answer it, you can tell them to leave a message next time. It’s not some kind of peeing contest, Mum.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake.’

I snatched up the phone. ‘YES???’
A tinny voice emerged. Obviously a text message. ‘Blah, blah…Pisser…blah blah…three in a bed…ha ha…blah blah…Daddy wants to see you…’
What the…??? I threw myself over the machine so James wouldn’t hear what was clearly some pervy nutter. Fat chance.
‘Who is it? And why are you tackling the phone? And who’s John Warren and why isn’t he coming?’
‘I really don’t have the foggiest.’

But, hang about… John Warren. I knew that name. Way back in the mists of time. And, slowly, I deciphered it. It was my friend Fi, at Pisa (not Pisser) airport asking if I wanted to stay at her house as there would be room (because JW wasn’t coming). And Daddy? Another friend, usually called by her surname Dady (Daydee).  Stupid phone, as Milla would say.

Turned out that tomorrow, now today, was the City Limits reunion party, in London. City Limits was a London listings magazine, a worker’s co-operative, which started when Time Out stopped paying parity. I left my nice well-paid job doing the accounts for the Royal Tournament (where I was fed champagne and had my own pet Commander) to become the magazine’s office manager (on a pittance).

On my first day, I walked in and said hello to the first person I met. ‘Oh good. Glad you’re here,’ he replied. ‘The cellar’s flooded. It's full of shit - literally.’ Kinda set the tone.
I met some wonderful people there and, truth be told, some totally repulsive ones. I started reviewing (theatre, books, food and, weirdly, museums). Ended up as Shopping and Travel editor before being poached by the London Evening Standard. And, to be honest, by that point, it was all over. The spirit and soul of the place had been sucked out. It had lost its way.

But, in its heyday, it was wonderfully, blissfully bonkers and packed with some serious talent. John Fordham and Nigel Fountain were the editors. Duncan Campbell, Bea Campbell and Melissa Benn were in the news room. Ros Asquith and Lyn Gardner were the theatre editors. Sheryl Garratt was music editor. Kim Newman used to wander in swishing his black cape. And on and on..  Ah, the memories come flooding back… some good, some bad.

‘You are going?’ said Lyn (Gardner) on Twitter.
‘Yeah, I guess. Though I think I may be wearing dark glasses.’
‘I’ll have a wig,’ she responded firmly. I could her her voice in my head, clear as a bell.
‘Will we recognise one another?’

I wonder. I also wonder this, as I pack my overnight bag and try to erase the bags under my eyes. Should one revisit the past? All those people who shone so bright…will they still shine? Many won’t be there. Some, like my lovely mate Nicky Pellegrino, cos they live so very far away. Others because they are, not to put too fine a point on it, dead. Daddy sent me an email (she was always of a depressive bent) giving a list of our deceased former workmates. 14 of ‘em. Fecking sad.

Should one go back? I dunno. But I do know I’m looking forward mightily to going back to Dalston to stay at Fi and Andrew’s house (and seeing Daddy of course). Cos, in my twenties, I spent so much time there – at their kitchen table drinking wine; in their back garden chatting over the fence with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (and drinking wine). Arguing animatedly about art and politics, waving our arms around, laughing our heads off, occasionally shouting our heads off.

Should one go back?  Time will tell.

Four questions?

Ah, apologies, my sweet companions of the road. I have left you high and dry. All these bank holidays have befuddled and confaddled me. I am juggling a lot right now and Time is playing tricksy.


But fear not, the Pact remains and the Journey is starting. Who is coming along? Well, every kind of person, I suspect. I love those who trust, so much – the ones who just launched in and waved their hands eagerly in the air - without having a clue where we're going or what we're doing: Louise Nash, Vivienne Tuffnell, Sessha Batto, Mud in the City spring to mind. But then again, I love those who question and those who doubt too. Will every person be sweetness and light? I hope not. There is room for the tricksters and the plain awkward squad as well as the sweet honeys (cos you can’t make pearls without grit).

Must every person be an artist and a bleeding heart? Hell, no. We need someone to make the sandwiches; someone to pitch the tents; someone to tell us when we’re going just too far, going way too bonkers, and that playing hopscotch in the storm in metal gumboots isn’t the brightest idea. Fire alone burns too bright, too fast; Earth alone gets mired in the mud; Water alone seeps and evaporates; Air alone gets spread too thin. We need one another. We need the contrasts.

My lovely niece Sophie (wise Water) came to stay for the weekend and we talked books and music, life and love, spirit and soul. But above all we talked about people and assumptions and generalisations and about jumping to conclusions. We’re so quick to judge, to condemn. Someone on Twitter said he could never countenance talking to a royalist or anyone who wasn’t a socialist. Another said she was going to unfollow anyone who had tweeted about the royal wedding. It’s interesting what pushes our buttons; what makes us decide a person is okay or not.

I’m seeing it again today on Twitter as the world erupts with fevered excitement over the death of Osama bin Laden. It’s that tribal ‘you’re with us or against us’ thing and I confess it puzzles me. I hate terrorism, I really do but I can’t punch the air at a man’s death; no, not even his death. Hate the acts, not the person, surely?

Anyhow. I told Sophie how one of the most wonderful experiences I have ever had was going on silent retreat for a week. I hadn’t a clue what people did ‘for a living’ or any of the mundane facts about their lives. I just got a sense of them from – what? – intuition? A feeling? Heart?  Soul?  I snatched clues too from their images – some of us painted (obsessively in my case) in the studio. At the end of the week I felt extremely close to a few people. When we talked, I found my favourite people were, variously, a psychiatrist, a surgeon, a nun, unemployed. All titles that come laden with preconceptions.  Halleluyah - we’d by-passed all that crap.  We knew one another as people, as fellow 'pilgrims'.

‘We ask the wrong questions,’ I said to Sophie.
‘I hate that we’re defined by what we do,’ she replied.
‘It’s always the same four questions, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘What do you do? Where do you live/come from? Are you single/partnered? Have you got children?’ I suppose we’re trying to pin people down – to fit them in boxes?
‘What are the questions we should ask,’ I pondered. ‘If we really want to know what makes a person tick at a deeper level?’
‘Questions that open up stories, I think,’ said Sophie. ‘Questions that stir emotions.’

We debated this for so long we lost track of time and Sophie nearly missed her train. We didn’t really come up with any concrete answers either. But we sort of roughed out these for starters...

• Which is your favourite sense? If you could only experience the world through one sense which would it be?
• Which piece of art (music, book, poem, film, TV show, performance etc) most rocked your world?
• Your house is on fire – all people, animals and vital documents are safe – what one thing do you rescue?
• If you were a god/dess, which one would you be?

Did we pick good questions? What would you pick? What are your answers to these four?