10 Weeks Since You've Gone....

I got home (on the flight with the blathering man-child) after 10 weeks away only to find that absolutely nothing had changed. There were no problems, nothing to complain about, no new streets to navigate. In fact, an unkind judge could say that the Upper West Side had hardly noticed I'd been gone. Fickle bitch.

Still it was good to be home and while I had a ton of work to get stuck into I first exploded a couple of luggage bombs in my apartment. And then left them there - like a good single boy does - for most of the week until even I got bored of stepping over 10 weeks laundry. (Not strictly true, but not far wrong, either...)

So aside from realising I don't know what I like to do now that I'm home (True, sadly. Spent my first couple of days incapable of making decisions to do anything. Even going to see a movie was a HUGE decision), I reverted to my default position and settled onto the sofa to read. I reccomend Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez Pinol. It's perfect for anyone with a dark, gothic disposition; and Tourism by NIrpal Singh Dhaliwal, which is a very English (not British - and there's difference) almost tabloid read, but well-written nonetheless and with a great narrator. He's such a tosser.

I've also been listeing to Ok Go and The Tyde's new records. While buying The Swayze's genius "She's Like The Wind" from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack (it's time to re-stock the i-pod) a friend showed me the Dirty Dancing Havanah Nights soundtrack and Wyclef's on there with Claudette Ortiz singing Dance Like This. God Bless the 'Cleff. He had that one thing about shouting one-time, two-time over everything, now he's on his second idea of using the same song with a different singer - good luck to him. He was given two lemons and he's made gallons of lemonade out of them. And I really like the Shakira version. But if The Cleff stretches it anymore it'll snap. He should teach classes.

I can't read on tour, I can't concentrate for any period of time, but I do have to plan some travel for when we finish so I'm taking guide books with me on the next leg. I'm supposed to be going to Istanbul for mater's birthday (although after today's bombings I don't know if that still qualifies as a viable birthday present for her....) and when we finish touring I'm hoping to go to China for an extended period. That seems like a boss idea. But when doesn't it, eh?

We're off to Mexico soon. Just when I'd got used to being me, again. Oh well, time to dive for the last leg. I'm off to bed and then I'm going to take my personality suppressants....

Silly as it sounds....

I used to feel as though I were on the bottom of the world when I visited Australia and New Zealand, removed from everyone and everything. These days I feel much more as though they are both places I could live in and they feel more familiar than ever. For some reason they don't feel so remote. Even walking on a beach next to the Indian Ocean near Perth didn't feel freaky this time (usually I weirded-out thinking about how far away everything is). Everywhere's only twenty four hours away, these days.

I never get to see Brisbane. This time it was because I was catching up on some paperwork and I spent the whole day watching the city go through its day from my room, that overlooked the pedestrian access to the station. I felt like I was in one of those time-lapse photos. Still, I made a start on the tour accounts….






My current favourite game is trying to figure out what to do once this tour is over. I’ve a few vague concepts floating around, but most involve relocating from New York, semi-permanently. Consequently everytime I go somewhere new I imagine settling there. Sydney is beautiful but I don’t feel connected with it. Melbourne on the other hand, feels special. The bay it sits on seems vast and still (none of the gauche showoffiness of Sydney’s Harbour and poncy Opera House).

I’m a sucker for big f***-off freighters (See Korea entry) and there were a couple of those floating about. I had to take someone to the doctor’s office and the neighbourhood the doctor’s was in was amazing. Cafes, low-rise buildings, very neighbourhoody but still only a stone’s throw from the city centre. Melbourne, though, had me at the view from my hotel room. The thing I liked was that how distant the horizon looked through the spooky twilight haze. Dreamy, dreamy.




We passed through Adelaide, which felt like a quaint country town. On the giant video screen in the pub they were playing Transvision Vamp’s I Want Your Love video. Over and over. That was random. Wendy James – you can go to Adelaide and make a few quid, I’m sure. You could even visit Cliff Richard's mum, she lives there too.

We finished in Perth. Place where I formerly got the willies. Not this time. I had a blast there. Running around the Swan River, scoffing scones in the London arcade (Which is a misplaced Olde-Worlde English style shopping arcade in the Middle or Perth, buying rugby shirts, walking along the beach at Scarborough. All good fun. I don’t think I could live there, but I could easily spend some time there writing. After so long being in close proximity to so many people, personal space--and the opportunity to make ones own schedule--are heady prospects.

In Perth, as the entire tour party was leaving to fly back around the world to go home or on vacation we got the news about the terror plot that British Police had discovered. It was interesting seeing this news unfold around the world. First, the Australians reported the news that British Police had foiled a huge plot, etc, etc....then the BBC started updating their bulletins with more information, including a press conference where the British police admitted it was an inter-agency operation with Europe. A few hours later the US authorities started with their press conferences - the head of Homeland Security sneaking in the information that the Americans had been involved in the investigation (not that this was mentioned in the Aussie and European New Reports). By the time The President got involved he was speaking of the plot as an Islamic plot....you know how that one goes (Now ignoring for a minute that acts of terrorists bear as little relation to Islam as do the Klan's activities to Christianity). What was interesting was seeing a whole world's spin on the story so that what started out as a foiled attack turned into evidence to support an opposition to Islam. Oh, and the US was really involved in the operation too. Everyone gets a star. Hmmmm....

But enough of this. On the way home I stopped off in Hawaii for a week….as you do.



Pictures are worth several hundred rewritten, copy-edited words. Here’s my week in Hawaii. The first few days were strange because I couldn't adjust to the lack of stimulation. (Pay TV options notwithstanding!). As at the end / intermission of all tours I went from exhilerated to despondent at the drop of a hat, changing emotions very abruptly and often with no obvious reason. That would have happened had I been anywhere, so being in Hawaii only cushioned the blow somewhat.

Yes, I'm a lucky bastard. I make no excuses or apologies. And hate the playa', I say. Why wouldn't you?



And there were things to do in the hotel, too.



Although quite what the subtle differences were between Japanese Extreme and the Explicit Package, I'm unable to tell you....not at those prices.

I tried surfing and had only slight success (My floating and falling-off skills, however, are at International standard). It was excellent fun and as I was leaving I was already scheming to go to California to learn how to surf properly. One of the things I like about surfing is that outside of the pleasure of the actual moment, it's absolutely pointless. (Not that this takes anything away from it). Reading some surf stories and literature I was interested in the level of obsession around this kind of activity (And I'm speaking as a fan). It's strange that the ability to float on moving water can become so all-encompassing a passion, and I do understand. I was reminded of a time (last year?) in Beijing when some skateboarder had been sponsored by a corporation and had jumped the Great Wall of China on his skatebaord. The PR Person was talking it up and quoted the Skateboarder as saying he'd fulfilled his life's dream. What? To jump over the Great Wall of China on a skateboard. Erm...life's dream? I'm sure it was fun and all, but....

And now what does he do? Sit in bars getting loaded telling everyone, "I was the first guy to jump the Great Wall of China on a skateboard. Hey! Buddy! I said, back in the day I was the first guy to jump.....". It's all downhill from there.

I'm being mean, of course. Everyone needs a dream. I was going to try to help relieve African Debt or cure AIDS but if I'm really honest I've got this po-go stick....

On the Northwest tip of Ohau is a strip of very beautiful beaches. I drove there to watch the sunset one night. As I got further away from the town of Hale'iwa I noticed that the road and area got less and less developed and touristy. In the end there were just amazing beaches populated by Hawaiins all spending their Friday night cooking up BBQ's on the beach. It didn't seem like such a welcoming place to an outsider (not that anyone gave me a hard time, either. But people wouldn't respond when you said hello.) It was an interesting scene.



However, I can understand not wanting to share this. Especially with everywhere else on the Island overrun by tourists.



One thing that was common were burnt-out cars littering some of the less travelled roads. It seems it's a sport to nick a car, drive it into the ground, strip it of anything of value (or not) and either torch it, or f*** it up beyond repair. I've only ever seen this to this extent in provincial England before now...if it's something that happens everywhere, maybe it could become a new urban sport...









Pounders Beach pounded my bodyboard so thoroughly that it snapped in half. Then it tried to strip me. I took the hint and left. It won.



Maybe it was because I was leaving Hawaii but F*** me were people annoying on the plane. I know America champions its freedom of speech but couldn't the Government introduce a law to monitor quality of speech. Why are the dumbest F***s the loudest? The guy sitting behind me had no idea how close he came to me throwing food at him just to get him to shut-the-f***-up about how many miles he travels every year and why he has to fly business, blah, blah, blah. Me. Me. Me. Like a five-year old. F***in' peasant.

And on that note, I was back in my New York state of mind.

Korea:


Two days off in Berlin after Lisbon. Genius decision. I did laundry and ate lunch with friends and hung out in children’s playgrounds (with a friend’s child, not just by myself). Very mundane stuff; it was a well-needed intermission. It’s not normal to spend your life flying around with Rock-Stars. It does bad things to your self-image; in all sorts of ways. On our next break at the end of Australia I was offering to do people’s ironing for them. Do you think it’s a cry for help?

We all met again in a departure lounge at Frankfurt airport. The tour party--who‘d flown in from places as varied as Berlin, Malaga, New York, London, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Nice & Leeds--and three hundred Koreans flying home. It was a precursor to being in Asia: very busy; very noisy; and very exciting.

On the flight there was a problem with the air conditioning, they couldn't start it while we were boarding at the gate. It was so hot for the forty minutes prior to the engines being turned on. People were getting testy, everyone’s clothes were soaked through. It wasn’t a good start. One doesn’t like to start a ten-hour flight smelling like yesterday’s meat, never mind share a plane full of people doing the same.

Once we got going it was okay. There were enough things to play with on the business class seats to keep everyone amused.

We didn’t go to Seoul. The airport and the show was at Incheon, about 2 hours outside of the capital. The rain drizzled and everything looked oppressive, in quite a cool way. In fact, although we all wanted to go to Seoul it never happened. The 2-hour drive seemed impossible and I suspected that no one could be bothered to take us and consequently used a convenient rainstorm as an excuse as the "roads would be too dangerous." Even though the storm was bad it felt like a very Korean way of telling us to stay put. I got the feeling as with Japan and China, people don't like to say "no" directly.


Instead we wandered around the backstreets of Incheon's Chinatown (allegedly the only one in South Korea) before the show. It ended up being quite interesting, if only because wandering through the backstreets of any big city gives you a sense of place not always afforded to the visitors of Downtown or the tourist routes.




I liked the gritty, industrial feel of Incheon. The view from my hotel was of two scrap metal freighters being unloaded. I’m a geek for things like that so in many ways I felt right at home. The whole city felt like an industrial grinder, second-hand tyres stacked high by the roadside; store fronts selling only huge chains and shackles for the ships in the harbour; giant freighters full of cars putting out to sea.















It rained constantly while we were there, giving everything a post-nuclear holocaust kind of feeling. Our Korean hosts, and the staff at restaurants we visited, insisted we use umbrellas all the time to protect us from the rain, even when jumping from taxis to the restaurant. We asked why, and they told us there was so much pollution in China it made the rain in Korea acidic. We were lucky; the rain in the winter when millions of Chinese are burning so much more coal is allegedly much more toxic.

That was a stroke of luck, eh?

Lisbon: A Tube of Meat Toothpaste.

Maybe it’s because it’s the end of the tour that I feel so listless here and can’t settle. It’s beautiful enough, although as the day goes on I keep expecting to see Nick Cave riding a mule down the backstreet behind my hotel. He'd be wearing a suit and a hat and riding his mule slowly. He'd probably ignore me altough we'd be the only two people on the street. Then I'd get scared and sit in my room and read a book to pretend that I wasn't hiding from Nick Cave, but in reality I wouldnb't be able to concentrate and I'd just read the same page over and over and over. Oh yes, my friend, you say you wouldn't be scared if you saw Nick Cave riding around Lisbon on a mule, but let me tell you, you'd be terrified. Just like I imagined I was.

Once everyone leaves for the three-day tour break suddenly I get that Perth feeling (I get the willies in Perth when I realize that in some way, by being in Perth one is at the edge of the civilized world. I think it’s the most remote major city or something…I mean Perth Australia, btw, not Perth Scotland. It doesn’t do to talk about the willies one gets in Perth Scotland). After one night in Lisbon I get up at 4am to fly to Berlin to see my friends. We did go for one good meal in Lisbon and feasted on so much flesh (No chicken –we were only eating things that talked, not squawked) that by the end of the meal I felt stuffed as a tube of meat toothpaste.

I’ll leave you with that image, I think. It's how I like to think of myself.