temporary measures

Avalanche Christmas Album

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:12:00 +0000

The Savings and Loan have a song on the new Avalanche Christmas Album, a cover of "Christmastime in the Mountains" as popularised by the Palace Brothers on their album, Hope.

We're in good company, with Broken Records, Frightened Rabbit, Meursault, Ballboy, Eagleowl and all your Scottish festive favourites. The full tracklisting is at the foot of this post.

The album is available from Avalanche Records in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and via the web here. It costs a mere fiver, and proceeds go to street children in Africa and sick children in Edinburgh.

Godspeed you...

Temporary Poems (1995-2008)

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 12:52:00 +0000

For a period of maybe three and a half years, when I was at university and deep in my Bukowski phase, I wrote perhaps three or four poems every night on a student's A4 notepad, propped up in bed.

Most of these were just noise, workouts, a means to cut through the chatter and approach the clang of something sure and lasting: the few. I kept those ones; the others got binned every time I moved house, and some even earlier.

Each flitting presents a chance for reappraisal, and some poems that had made it through the previous filter inevitably got caught up in the next. Which now makes me wonder whether I threw out any good ones, impatiently packing my stuff through a hangover cloud, but you can't dwell on things like that.

Reading the handwritten sheets is weird: the survivors. My handwriting has changed, and the paper itself has yellowed - some of it at least - despite being kept out of the light. I guess it's a chemical thing.

So out of the thousands of A4 pages, these are the ones that lasted. They've been joined by more recent lines, lines that wouldn't fit into songs, or wouldn't fit my voice. Lines with long Scottish vowels that jar when sung. Would and could.

On reflection, I should really have preceded the poems with a quote from Gwendolyn Brooks: "Nobody knew where I was and now I am no longer there." I love those words, but maybe they'll work for something else in time.

Available from lulu.com

Paler Aye

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 11:34:00 +0000

So, the haiku book has been typeset and is now available to buy from lulu.com

I'm quite pleased with the outcome, which is a result I suppose. Learned a few things about a few things while writing it.

That said, when I didn't have to write anything on January 1st, I didn't miss it. What's that quote again? I don't enjoy writing, but I love having written.

Spot the fuck on.

Six thousand two hundred and twenty two

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 16:27:00 +0000

So I'm nearing the end of my haiku diary, having written one every day of 2008. So far anyway. When it's done I'll have 6222 syllables (17 x 366) to play with. A numerologist would like this number: 6 = 2 + 2 + 2. Coincidence? Probably.

But it's good to count. Like Beckett's Murphy...

"Seven scarves held him in position. Two fastened his shins to the rockers, one his thighs to the seat, two his breast and belly to the back, one his wrists to the strut behind."

One wonders where the final scarf is tied.

I've enjoyed bits of the experience, although I'll smile on January 1st when I don't have to write one.

Meantime, if anyone knows a good illustrator...

Goodbye Muirshin Durkin

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:29:00 +0000

"Anybody can be a non-drunk. It takes a special talent to be a drunk. It takes endurance. Endurance is more important than truth."
- Bukowski

"Coffee's for closers only."
- Mamet

So, the endgame: I'm chasing closure. The way things are panning out, my last drop will be in Sleazy's on Friday. Given the 13th Note's tribulations, this is pleasantly fitting: I pretty much started my drinking career there, fifteen years ago. Half a lifetime, so far.

I've made peace with the Leith and Old Town places, with the possible exception of Robbie's. Took a walk around the Shore yesterday at dusk, just to double-check. But no, we're good.

So that leaves Glasgow. Sleazy's is taken care of, 13th Note's just a shell, Victoria is no more, and I'm dealing with the Scotia and Clutha tonight.

Where else is there?

Old Shipbank - maybe, but I don't have a sunny spring Sunday left in me, and Tony's in Leeds anyway.
Stravaigin - hmmmmmmm.
Doublet - hmmmmmmm.
Wintersgill's - vicarious.
Chinaski's - not enough history in its current shape. But the Cross Bar, boy...
Ben Nevis - pointless without Walter L. RIP.
Kelly's - again a shell. For me it once had a time and a function. But I wouldn't want them back.
Heraghty's - can take it or leave it. Same with the Variety.

If I was really going for form I'd end up at the State, jaked and alone. Suppose it could yet happen.

And Jesus, the QM. Do I need a last pint in Jim's? I can't decide. It could break me.

"I can't rise above the church"

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 09:55:00 +0000

Saw Kristin Hersh last night at St Cecilia's Hall, which is a museum for musical instruments most of the time.

The show - KH reading from her memoirs, accompanied by her own guitar, and punctuated with live excerpts from her songs - is called Paradoxical Undressing, which is the hypothermia sufferer's act of removing clothes/ blankets despite the cold.

It was... moving. She really can write like hell, not just lyrics but prose that just grabs and rattles and shakes. It was sunny when I walked in; rain drummed on the glass ceiling during the second half of the show. I'm not big on performance, but this was powerful and twisted my head backwards and made me look.

So, fragments of the last fifteen years’ listening...

- stumbling into 'Not Too Soon' on The Chart Show: assuming TD was the group's frontwoman: a tiny KH strumming rhythm, almost off-camera.

- The Real Ramona, my first ever album, bought with Christmas vouchers from English relatives.

- a live version of 'Mania' tearing me to pieces on a walkman in a blazer in 1993. Downstairs at the Sauchiehall Centre food court, if memory serves.

- 'Cry Baby Cry' done acoustically on a bonus disc. "I'm not ever getting out, I'm always getting sicker."

- playing Hips and Makers for my cousin while we studied. "Bit depressing for me," he says.

- "They can no longer move: I can no longer be still."

- Stealing 'Touching Like Spacemen' for a title of an undergraduate work.

- a gig at the QM, having driven a hired car down from Mull or Inverness or Wester Ross for hours through the black rain. KH blank-eyed and screaming into the middle-distance, her sound almost metal, alloy.

- appalling excitement when the Muses' debut was reissued with demos: almost choked with anticipation.

- "How do they kill children, and why do I wanna die?" Touché.

I’ll add to these, but they’re all from the past. I don’t feel things as deeply as I used to.

Call me. Call me.

Ethical football

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:41:00 +0000

I support Celtic; I watch Hibs. At what point is it appropriate to trade one shade of green for another?

We've lived in Leith for about three years, and in that time I've been to Easter Road maybe five times more often than Parkhead. Can I support two teams in the same division? (I already know what happens when they play each other: any Hibs sympathies go out the window for 90 minutes. Maybe there's my answer.)

But perhaps I'm worried about loyalty, about authenticity. Should I be? I've noticed my accent becoming a bit more east-coasty, more sing-songy. Natural, I suppose.

And last but not least, I walk to Easter Road; getting to Parkhead involves only carbon footprints. Surely it's the right-on thing to support local.

Stupid modern dilemmas. Life's simpler when you stay put. But worse.

Time to market

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:00:00 +0000

The urge to express oneself, what is it?

I suppose it's a repeated ph(r)ase: means-tested, needs-assessed.

Yesterday I doled out 5 CDs to friends and a mag, and today I find myself blogging. Or perhaps meta-blogging. Increasing my sorry output by blogging about my sorry output.

An unsustainable strategy. And the poetry collection's been typeset for months...

Ah well. I've published two papers so far this year without lifting a finger. Delayed publication from when I was at the DCC.

Product. "Horse it into you, Sur."

I'm awake when the singing starts

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 07:01:00 +0000

Re. the insomnia: it endures. Got to sleep around half-one and woke up at half-five, for maybe the 10th time in the last two weeks.

But this morning was the first time I turned on the computer, and I have to say it's helped. Not 'helped' in the sense of getting me back to sleep, but helped with putting things in perspective. I'm awake, that's all.

A couple of months ago, my strategy would have been simple: a dram and a dose of Derrida or Deleuze. The only effective cure for sleeplessness I know, and I mean that in the kindest way.

Others have recommended: baths, bananas, and glasses of milk.

My mother will always sing the praises of Radio Forth. When I was a baby, Forth was the only all-night broadcaster and when I woke up crying she would switch it on and sit with me till I slept again. It's easy to forget how much of a godsend that must have been then, when the 4am television was nothing but static.

Stuart Murray

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:14:00 +0000

I had visions once of myself as Glasgow's Bukowski, visions that in retrospect I'm glad I didn't pursue with greater purpose. But I recently stumbled upon this guy, who seems to be staking a claim.

Sample book titles: In Pubs, 7 Week Filing Job, People I've Met While Working...

He does simple but well-observed portraits of old men drinking and co-workers in shit jobs, with a bit of Tom Leonard in the mix too. He even worked for the post office.

Gaun yirsel.

Caveat abstainor

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:50:00 +0000

So, apart from a couple of quite deliberate leaps from the wagon, I've been off drink since late September. It's so-so: long-term abstinence might be right for some, but I don't think it's for me.

Chief benefits: improved bank balance, minor weight loss.
Chief drawbacks: sporadic insomnia, significant memory loss.

Yep, memory loss. I was recently looking back at my appointments diary for the last few months of 2007, and I realised that I can remember very little of what happened then. It seems kind of like a weird, absent dream.

Anneli thinks this might be because we didn't actually do very much over that period, apart from a trip to Skye which I remember fairly well. But on the whole it's a bit like someone else has been living my life for the past 4 months.

Curious. I guess this is what drifting involves. Still, roll on May 1st...

Clint Westward

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:10:00 +0000

We drove past Eilean Donan castle today, for the first time in a few years. They knew how - and where - to live in the 13th century.

Also saw a house on Skye called Gun Ainm, which made me smile - it means No Name.

An Fear Gun Ainm, feeling lucky.

I do not know

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 21:44:00 +0000

I just got two emails from people I know on a Friday night between 10.30pm and 10.45pm. And I was at a computer.

My wife's rearranging the spare room. Something's wrong.

But I was there...

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:35:00 +0000

iRiver moment this morning: "Losing My Edge" by LCD Soundsystem on random - just when I was thinking I was losing my edge. Boy, that's a song and a half.

How I laughed. Internally.

And according to wikipedia, "[t]he single is based around the riff for a Killing Joke b side"[1]

Now that's beyond fucking clever.

James Murphy - respect.

Fr Joe Donnelly, O.Carm

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 14:12:00 +0000

My uncle Joe died on Boxing Day. A few weeks beforehand I saw something on TV about screaming as therapy, and thought that that might be good for me.

The next day we drove up from Glasgow to Inverness. Clouds and rain, the usual. I stopped our car on Rannoch Moor and scrambled to the top of a small hill by the roadside. Anneli stayed put. There was no one for miles around, just rain and hills and small lochs. Lochans. Lochánnan. I don't know.

I looked out over it all, and opened and closed my mouth several times. Nothing happened: no sound. I was afraid of what it might lead to. I might have become inconsolable, and unable to drive.

So I picked my way back to the roadside and we continued on our journey, fearful, uncommunicative, not changed at all.

On Wednesday in Carfin I helped carry his coffin, a scream inside that I can't let out until the next time I'm in the middle of nowhere with nothing to be or do.

No idea when that'll be. I should probably make time for it.

Cork

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 15:15:00 +0000

Cork cork cork cork cork cork cork.

Go, little booke...

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:30:00 +0000

January will be the month for this. I'll type or be damned.

The heart of Friday afternoon

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 15:31:00 +0000

Lots of flashing lights today. It never really got light outside - an all-day bruise, of sorts - and now the dark is rising etc etc.

Thoughts on the nature of performance. Stuttering, barely glimpsable.

Don't just book it....

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 16:04:00 +0000

Arranged this summer's holiday at the weekend. Have managed all of fifteen posts since returning from the last one. A slow year, then, apart from the one item of big news.

So it's Greece this time, or rather a Greek island. Read a few reviews online - mixed, I think is fair.

Ach, time will tell. At the moment we're looking forward to anything, anything at all.

All that new stuff sucks, but it's over there

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Wed, 18 May 2005 10:08:00 +0000

Just found myself thinking about Kids in the Hall, one of the all-time gems.

Bruce: I want you to steal a car...
Kevin: I have a car...
Bruce: Steal a car!
Kevin: Steal a car!!
Bruce: I want you to get in it and drive West. Play the tape full blast. When the tape ends, get out and get into a fight, then get back into the car, come to town and meet me at the Carcas Club.

Ah, memories of school. For misery and joy in roughly equal measure, accept no substitute.

Word of the day II: Menefreghismo

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Tue, 17 May 2005 16:34:00 +0000

It's Italian for the particular quality of not giving a damn. I like the fact that the Italians have a word for this. So it gets added to the list, along with schadenfreude and sisu.

- The Italians have a word for it
- What word what is it?
- A thunderbolt or something
- What, you mean the Italian word for thunderbolt?
- Yeah, something like that. I don't speak Italian myself, you understand
- No.
- But I knew a man who did.

The mime of the ancient mariner

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Tue, 17 May 2005 11:27:00 +0000

It occurred to me this morning that the weather influences more or less everything I do. Have neglected the guitar for a while, after a reasonably fertile singing/songwriting period from November to March. But I'm more into writing and reading these days, and I feel a pattern coming on....

April-August - prose and novels
September-March - songs and music

It's tidy enough, and there's a likely correlation there with the (main) university terms. Feel a bit like Coleridge, who couldn't finish anything, except a bottle. These novels have been swimming around in my head and on bits of paper for almost ten years now. Will Edinburgh be the catalyst for getting them done?

Clink.

I think I'm going back

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Mon, 16 May 2005 11:31:00 +0000

To Edinburgh, to live, in September. Almost twenty-five years since I left the first time. And to Selkirk, to visit, in June. Twenty years since I left there.

So a new(ish) town to inhabit, new football pitches, bar prices, bus companies, open stages. And we can live our days instead of counting our years....

A ride.

Four months in the blink of an eye

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Thu, 12 May 2005 16:43:00 +0000

Okay, so it's been a while. I do not know where the days go. Anyway, this could become a countdown blog after all: I'm getting married in a year.

Know happiness.

The sun shines, opportunities glint. Time for a drink, I think.

'She wears denim wherever she goes...'

noreply@blogger.com (martindonnelly) — Fri, 14 Jan 2005 21:51:00 +0000

So, concept albums: yea or nay? I have to say I'm edging towards the former.
That is all. I may commit soon.

Ding dong, the bells are gonna chime....