In Dreams We Are Helpless

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I have been sleeping-in lately. Demanding dreams from my subconscious. Every night before I fall asleep, I pray that I’ll dream. Good dreams. Dreams that once awake and I have even just a fraction of lucidity of the dream, that it’ll turn to fruition.

This morning I had dreams.
In the first I was with Jim and Charlie. And we were sitting around, chatting and laughing. I cannot tell you how much I wish for that to be real! Or to continue to dream it over and over again every night.

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The other is a VERY rare occurrence (dreams of Jim – with or without Charlie – are rare enough these days). My mum. I couldn’t tell you the last time I dreamed of her. But this one will haunt me.

It was loaded with metaphor and symbolism. I had been contacted by what appeared to be government authorities and/or health professionals. She was meant to be in care…but she wasn’t. She was on her own in this remote, desolate place completely unfamiliar to me.

She was roaming around outside. I’m not sure how I was seeing this as I was, but these people were showing me video footage of her. Like…CCTV footage…but this place was so remote. Maybe it was being recorded from a drone? I don’t know. Certain things in dreams make no sense.

I digress. She was roaming around outside. Working. Walking around finding weeds and rubbish. She was carrying some kind of tool. Not a light thing. And she look as she did when I left in 2016. Thinner than I have ever seen her in my entire life. When I went home in 2015…I hadn’t seen her for eight years and she had became a shell of herself. I had never, ever seen her so thin. I don’t think she had been that thin since she was a child. The shock of it stunned me for days. It took days for me to get my head around this woman who looked like my mum but was waaaaay thinner than my mum had ever been was indeed my mum!

I digress again. These two people – a man and a woman – showing me her on the monitor (I sensed I was watching live footage, or very recent recorded footage…mere hours old) were saying “She won’t rest. She’s doing too much. She just wanders and wanders.” And I am sitting there thinking “habit of a lifetime, guys. She’s been like this since time immemorial. All the years I have known her.”

Even in 2015/16. Up and down like a yo-yo. Endless retorts of frustration from me “PLEASE SIT DOWN! I’M HERE NOW. PLEASE LET ME GET THAT FOR YOU!” Over and over. Every day. A person too used to being alone. Too used to just having to get up and do it herself. No one else there.

I’m watching her on the screen…and she just looks lost. Really lost. I’d never seen her look lost before. Determined. Focussed. Busy. Pre-occupied. Happy, even. But never lost. Never confused. Never unsure. Somehow still happy though.

Happy. But tired. And lost.
I awoke feeling further away from her than ever.

Limbo is hell.

The Tees Tease

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Dang! Okay, so it was a SFY shirt…and well, it isn’t looking too dissimilar in concept to the Grandslam Summer design, to be honest.

I know Stuart is the current designer. And he’s fabulous…oh, but to just DREAM of something like that! One break! One special one off. And not even for monetary gain or anything, but just to be able to say “Frigging wow! What an honour! The band I love are allowing me to design a shirt!” It would be unreal.

But there we are. That’s not how the world works.

Still, one could argue I’ve had my five minutes.

Damn! I hate when my green-eyed monster rears its ugly head. But, god…it would just be so amazing.

I always want more.

Boy On Film

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I upgraded one of my art apps a few days ago. The previous Prip piece was done incorporating one of the new settings now available to me. Of course I start off a new piece tonight thinking I’d use more of the new things available to me.

Nope! Much like the muse I doggedly work with…I stuck to all the settings and options I had available to me for free.

I’m an old stick-in-the-mud! Lol

I cannot wait to get my own space for painting and drumming. My own little art studio. I’ll probably freeze to death, as I envisage this thing being a glorified shed down the back of a garden somewhere in the southside of Glasgow. Soundproofed, of course – to protect peoples’ ears from the drumming and the wails of frustration as I paint away.

I am definitely from the Howard Hodgkin philosophy of art (ie: art is pain and there’s nothing enjoyable about it). It sets off my depression BIG TIME – painting…but there’s a compulsion too. And I miss it.

And I will continue the digital art. Always. It’ll be a counterbalance. The digital art *IS* joy, and therapy. It is the thing I love. Esp. when I am working on Mr Muse. How can it not be? LOOK AT HIM! Like I need more excuses. Lol

We Passed Upon The Stair

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I was feeling very tired still this morning, so I slept-in. While I slept the extra hour or so, I fell into a dream.

I was going to a gig. And I was seeing David Bowie. The venue from the outside looked quite grand. One of those ornate old style theatres, you know. The stairwell was kind of circular. Plushly carpeted. The stairs were short stepped, so they seem to go on forever. I must have gone up about 3 or 4 levels.

As I neared the top, there was David…just sitting at the top of the stairs, with an acoustic guitar and someone from the entourage. He was just softly strumming away. Just kind of musically noodling. He was softly chatting away with his mate and they were having a giggle.

I stopped in my tracks. Even still to this day and in my dreams I was awestruck and utterly gobsmacked to find myself in his presence. He looked at me with an expression that read, “Why be so awestruck? I’m just a bloke.” David…you were NEVER “just a bloke”. Lol.

I never came face to face with him like this in real life. I only ever saw him play live once, and I will be forever thankful of that.

Well, he smiles that amazing smile of his to me and I stand their on the steps listening to him strum away. The noodling now also includes some unintelligible vocal sounds.

Just behind me, over my left shoulder, something grabs my attention. Scurrying along and stopping just behind me is a tiny little mouse with the biggest ears. Very soon after, little mousey is joined by a friend. And they are both just stood there, looking at us looking at them. The three of us humans all smiling at each other over how cute these two mice are.

And then I wake up! Just like that.

A very surreal dream. And I awoke so happy, yet so sad that it was just a dream, and the dawning realisation that David is still gone and the only way I’ll ever experience anything like that ever again is in my dreams.

The dream just encapsulated everything that was David. Surreal, gentle and beautiful.

And When You Dream…

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…”Dream of kisses with me”?! I never expected my comment to get a like. BUT…what was the like for? Just an affirmative of me saying “it’s a fab review”? An agreement that I am indeed dreaming (thinking I’ll ever get a kiss from him)! Or…the notion I want to find out for myself if Chrissie was (is) right?

My dreams will get ever bolder!
I dreamed of a hug…pretty much fulfilled.
I wished and prayed for him to say my name…again, tick!
I keep dreaming for the doughnut “date”… sigh – as yet, nothing.
A kiss? Well…in my dreams I would take that like on SMO FB as a “one day” dream that I’d find out! He certainly has the most gorgeous mouth and lips.

Oh, in my wildest, WILDEST dreams! Lol

The three images below…let me explain. There was a review shared on SMO early this morning of the gig in Cleveland (now several weeks back). The first pic is an excerpt of the final part of the review. Second is the comment I left on SMO about the review. Thirdly is the notification of a “like” of my comment. From Jim himself? Who knows for sure…
But the timing it happened would suggest…maybe?
And, well, I might as well link to Julie Finley’s full review (with pics) for you to enjoy…click here to read it

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Don’t Let’s Ask For The Moon – We Have The Stars

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I know I shouldn’t say this. I shouldn’t share it here but…I WANT TO BE JAINE!

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Just…something so innocuous as seeing a film with him. I just wish. And for a TARDIS. For it to be then…as much as I would still want it to be now.

I can see the imagery in my head.

I fear that I probably will, in all brutal honesty, dream the rest of my life away.

It is just…above all else…that chance for the luxury of time with him. A chance to be away from the music. For it to be apart from the music…although it could STILL be about the music…just not SM. At least, not a gig. Experiencing a different gig, maybe – with him being viewer/attendee rather than performer/frontman…a film…a meal…a binge viewing of a TV series…an art exhibition…a hike, even! I’d bloody climb a mountain for him. Lol. Yeah, I’d go “off hiking” with him…

Just, time to be. A scenario that isn’t rushed. A scenario that allows me to be speechless. Lol. Because there is time for silence…rather than I am rendered speechless because the time is so precious that it makes me lost for words because I have a ton of things I want to say, but can’t say them all, and my mind gets in a muddle and I am put into a stupor.

Time to be relaxed with him…instead of some heady, silly school girl. Oh…I know it will never be. Only in my dreams.

And so, while Aix-Les-Bains is less than three weeks away, and I get my next chance to be in his presence…I shall think of the words delivered by Bette Davis in Now Voyager.

A Powerful Image

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I’ve had the privelege of shaking this man’s hand, as well as being embraced by him – both things wonderful, the latter in particular. As I said of it in the past…I felt as if he was telling me I’m “a good egg”. It felt lovely to be acknowledged like that.

I probably read far too much into it, as I often do with most things.

I’ve never really had an interaction with him like that while he’s performing, though. Always far too self-conscious to want any interactions with him while I am watching the gigs. I try not to look at him directly for too long…always making a point of watching the rest of the band, lol…when really all I want to do is watch him.

I love singing along, never really out loud…my voice sucks arse. I don’t want anyone hearing my voice! There is only two times during a gig that I’ll let my voice be heard…during the “la la la la las” of Don’t You and…because I love the song so bloody much – the “ameri-ameri-ameri-ameri-americaaaaan” chorus of The American.

In the past couple of gigs, I have wanted to be some kind of help to him. A support. A crutch (and for a change I am really not wanting that to sound like innuendo). It’s a stupid notion. He doesn’t need it…well, okay, he may do for the lyrics…because I am a complete arsing pedant, and I want him to get the words to the songs right. He wrote them after all, and they are amazing, and should be heard properly. My pedantry is wrapped up in the praise of admiring his work. I’m not doing to be a narky bitch. I’m doing it because, despite how it seems most days, I’m a perfectionist.

Anyway, this is taking the most extreme course of digression.

It would be nice to experience it. To feel relaxed enough in his company to…reach out to him like that and have him hold my hand while he is singing.

A few times I was close enough at the Acoustic gigs to try and initiate it, but I was too scared and stayed rooted to the spot. The only other time recently that it could have happened was in Paris in February. I nearly tried. Well, at one of them, I did put my hand out as he was saying his farewells at the end of the set…and it must have been Paris…the barriers made the stage too far away at the UK shows. I think I tried…but my arm was in amongst several others vying to be touched…and well, I quickly retrieved my arm, fearful I would look desperate.

But to have your hand held like that while he is singing must just feel like the most special thing in the world. A human bond, through music, it is the most precious of gifts. And the way in which their hands are locked is just beautiful.

I need to stop having dreams involving this man. Dreams of talking to him for more than a few minutes. Dreams of wanting to lock hands with him as he sings to me.

I have had more than my share. I have been so lucky. And he no doubt thinks “you’ve had your five minutes, give someone else a turn. Sod off!” He no doubt wishes me to sod off every day.

Perhaps I should. Stop making demands and fuck off. Be happy with my lot and go away now.

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Magnificent people who make you feel that everything will be fine, a singer with values and without barriers, who loves his audience and shows it again and again. They made us dance and dream, they are @simplemindsmusic at the @fpedralbes More photos in: http://www.metronome.press/2018/06/14/simple-minds-toma-els-jardins-de-pedralbes/ PIC📷: Montse Melero . #simpleminds #festivalpedralbes #concertestudio #jimkerr #walkbetweenworlds #montsemelerophotography #barcelona #musicphotography #musicpictures #instamusic #guitar #festival #music #canon5d #barcelona #canonespaña #musicphotographer #bestphotomusic #musicphotography #bestmusicshots #fotografadeconciertos #montsemelero

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