Hilton, Albuquerque, NM

It's about 11:16am here... last night I was in Denver, where it just happened to be the coldest place in the US... but the snow never came. Still it gave me a song idea, so that's all that matters. Today I'm a bit run-down and tired, and I'm reminded of some lyrics I wrote when I was in Minneapolis a couple of days ago... so I thought I'd revisit that...

The view from my window is of a busy intersection, great place for a hotel I guess, but it seems like more than that to me. It's kind of a metaphor for how I'm feeling right now, nomadic, displaced... always moving on somewhere else. Don't get me wrong though, I love this to bits... wouldn't swap it for anything else right now... I would just rather be less tired. It's hard to relate to people back home with there more stable environments... stability is a kind of illusion anyway.

HEALTH WARNING

When you read the lyrics and so forth in this Blog, you may feel that I'm talking about you or something that we have experienced together. It is true that I draw on real life events and feelings to inspire me, but that's as far as it goes. Often I'll combine two or three different events with something entirely imaginary to try and produce the right feeling or emotion in the song. Please don't take any of this personally... it's my way of dealing with life, but more importantly, it's just art baby!!

That having been said, feel free to share your thoughts and comments and experiences with me, either via the Comments page or via email.

Got a great new song/album title via my friend Alex: Lullabies From The Wheels Of The Bus

Catch you later,

Dxx

More raw footage, from Minneapolis:

I’m tired, so very tired,
Tired of waking up, not knowing where I am.
Is this the north or the south, the east or did we go west?

Is that girl over there making eyes at me?
Or am I just out of my tree,
It wouldn’t be the first time.

I was in a city today,
I don’t know which one or what time of day,

I miss you so much,
And I wish you were here,
And I could just touch you… or even hold you.
And we could get drunk all over again.

Strawberries and cream,
And a champagne dream
I wish you were here.

If the bus has to break too hard,
We’ll all be two inches shorter,
Or crushed in a pile of metal
Somewhere on the road to Omaha.

But we all have to go sometime,
And if I keep moving, perhaps time will never catch me up.
Perhaps I'll cheat death and live forever.
Catch me if you can.

Paramount Theatre, Denver, Colorado

So I'm in the back of the truck counting T-Shirts... as I often do. The air is cold and crisp and the sky (what I can see of it) is ice blue. Snow is coming (so they tell us), and after a night of weird dreams and reading my friend Sarah's Blog (see Links) I get all sentimental suddenly... weird 'cos up 'til now everything has been very corporate and unsentimental... planes, trains and automobiles. But the threat of snow brought back memories and made me think of friends and times from the past... another lifetime ago. So I wrote down some words (below)... and went for a walk... there's a song in there somewhere I think.

Of course it hasn't actually snowed, but artistic license is a wonderful thing... not sure if this is one song or two or three... but here is the raw footage, so to speak:

When the snow fell on Denver,
I thought about home,
I thought about Christmas long ago,
Way up north,
A lifetime ago.

When the snow fell on Denver,
I thought about love lost,
And friends departed,
And the women I never married
A lifetime ago.

When the sky wept white candy floss,
I felt the passing of time,
I felt the tracks of my tears,
I felt empty and hollow.

Last night I dreamt I married you,
You didn’t want to, but we did it anyway.
So we pledged our lives ‘til the end.
With barefaced lies and double-crossed fingers,
But somehow we were content.

If contentment is all that you seek,
Surely you will find it.
Hold me, kiss me, let me explore,
And somehow we need nothing more.

So here's how it is... I'm on this crazy road trip in America... selling T-Shirts for the Pet Shop Boys. Seems unlikely, but it's true. America is an exciting, scary, fascinating and ultimately, inspiring place. From the Gotham City-esque buildings of unrepentant gas-guzzling Detroit, to the Sim-City unrealness of New York. From the beach paradise and tattoo shops of Miami to the sterile semi-police state of Washington DC. From dustbowl shopping centres in Austin, Tx to the theme parks of Orlando. From the snows of Denver to the real-ale of Omaha... it's got it all!

So like countless musicians and artists before me, I feel inspired to create something to match the experience... so it's time for a project. Selling Cotton To America is the working title (a bit like Coals to Newcastle...) and the idea is to write 10 songs and put together an album... and this is the story of doing that. Hopefully. Or not doing it as the case may be... anyway, it should be an interesting story either way.

So standby for stories, dreams, lyrics, tunes, pictures, art, bullshit and a whole lot more... catch you later!