Category Archives: Travel

Reflections on Coventry Cathedral: a poem by Kenny Wilson

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The ruins of Coventry Cathedral

The ruins of Coventry Cathedral

childhood memories of times gone by
sitting outside the ruins
gazing in
looking at the destruction
and then the phoenix rising
the coloured glass the broken stones
the tower still standing like
some kind of miracle growth

how did that happen?

we learnt more that day than i ever realised
sitting on the grass with our packed lunches
and someone was laughing
but i couldn’t see who it was
lost in some reverie about lady godiva
burning in the courtyard

the mist descending
covering the darkness
no light in this history of gloom
the droning engines
and bombs dropping

no escape now
no more meaning
in this world of flame and heartbreak
and unreasoning death

let me rise in the phoenix light
until there is no tomorrow
and nothing left to cry about
and then there will be peace
then i will be able to live again

2013-03-08 16.40.12

Unknown civilians killed in war

Day Trip to Hull

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I woke up early this morning and decided to go somewhere. But where? Well, there are many places I have never been to that I want to see. Not all of them are pretty or picturesque but there is always something worth seeing and interesting people to meet. So, I decided on Hull. It’s not a place with the best reputation and it’s not the sort of place you pass through. You have to make a deliberate decision to go there. So, here I am on a train headed for Sheffield, then to Doncaster, then to Hull. Total travelling time three hours but you couldn’t drive it any quicker. I’m quite excited really. What will I find when I get there? Many interesting things no doubt. It will also be nice to be by the sea although I won’t be doing any sunbathing today, or any bathing for that matter!

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Humber Bridge

Travelled on a tiny two coach train from Doncaster to Hull that stopped at every station. Had a good view of the Humber bridge which is pretty amazing. The Hull station is very nice with a statue of poet Philip Larkin who lived in Hull for thirty years. He’s the one who came out with the famous line about sex being invented in 1963 between the trial of Lady Chatterley and the Beatles first LP. Good stuff. Initial impression of Hull is quite good. It’s got a nice feel about it and the people are friendly with a great accent. Now to find the interesting bits.

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Philip Larkin at Hull station

Hull is bigger than I expected and there are many grand civic buildings attesting to it’s obvious great wealth in the past as a major port. It is also colder than Leicester presumably because of it’s proximity to the sea. Actually, it’s not as near the sea as I thought. The main tributaries are the mighty Humber River and the River Hull where the main docks were. There are some nice anomalies like the cream telephone boxes . Very strange after a lifetime of seeing red boxes (although I know many are just glass now!) There are also some really nice Victorian shopping arcades with delightful specialty shops.

Cream telephone boxes!

Lovely shopping arcades!

Of course, my first stop was Caffe Nero where I had a nice cappuccino. Then I walked into the centre of town where there are many museums and galleries. I was amazed to find a major Andy Warhol exhibition at the Ferens Art Gallery. This was totally unexpected. I hadn’t done any research before I came so to find this was quite strange. Warhol seems to be everywhere! I’m beginning to think that rather than being famous, in the future everyone will be Andy Warhol for 15 minutes. This exhibition is huge. There is a room full of later paintings, a room with stitched pictures and a room full of posters for the many events and films he was involved with.

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Ferens Art Gallery

I’d never come aross the stitched pictures before. There are his trade mark multiple representations of the same picture but not like his silk screen prints. They are exactly the same picture but sewn together with thread, with bits of cotton dangling down which show exactly how they are done. Venus In A Shell alludes to Boticcelli but is set in the garden of a 60s Las Vegas house. Very intriguing. One of the remarkable things about the early screen printed multiple images is the way they change across the canvas because of the random way the technique works. They are all the same, but different. Like the images of Elvis that gradually fade away. There are no changes in the photographs. The only changes are caused by the dangling thread.

Venus in a Shell by Andy Warhol

Poster for Chelsea Girls

The room full of posters is very interesting and evocative. There is the iconic poster for the film Chelsea Girls and many of the other films he made. There are also some great ones of live performances like The Exploding Plastic Inevitable (although I see it’s called Andy Warhol and his Plastic Inevitable on the poster) which advertises a residency at the Filmore West on the same weekend as my birthday a year before the first Velvet Undergound album was released. What great joys I encounter!

Poster for The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. I like the bit that says Nico “Pop Girl of 66”! Doesn’t quite fit the ominous ballads she comes out with!

The room with the large later paintings sees Warhol returning to his earlier themes. There are soup cans, Brillo boxes and multiple screen prints. The one that attracted me most, although I’m not sure why, is the huge canvas called Repent And Sin No More. This is a typical evangelical statement that doesn’t quite seem to make sense. There is an element of contradiction and irony in it. Warhol would no doubt insist that it has no meaning beneath the surface.

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Repent and and sin no more

The permanent displays in the gallery are very good. Some really nice Renaissance pictures.

Ferens Gallery. Renaissance section.

More Renaissance!

Of interest in the gallery are pictures by two women artists from the 19th Century, Rosa Bonheur and Emma Sandys. It is one of the few galleries I have visited recently that have work by women. Rosa Bonheur’s painting is on a large scale and is quite striking.

Rosa Bonheur Lions at Home 1881

Emma Sandys The Beautiful Wallflower

Well, time for lunch before I go on to see the Transport Museum and Wilberforce House. Went to Wetherspoons and actually did have a curry this time which was pretty good. Not bad to have a drink and a meal for just over £6!

The Transport Museum was fun with interactive displays and film shows. A great place to take the kids. There is a good display of early cars including electrical powered ones from the 19th century. It seems strange because electric cars seem like a new idea. There is also a tram and various buses and reconstructed streets and shops. Great fun and quite nostalgic.

Bus in Transport Museum with the tram behind it.

Actually, the bus looks like something out of Harry Potter and as I walk around the old town the street names seem to be out of Harry Potter too. You can’t help but like a place that has a road called Land of Green Ginger or Bowlalley Lane.

Land of Green Ginger

Bowlalley Lane

Yes, Hull is a nice place. The last place I visit is Wilberforce House. William Wilberforce was one of the most prominent slavery abolitionists in the 18th/19th Centuries. It took him years to get an anti-slavery bill through Parliament but eventually succeeded and deserves great credit for this. It seems incredible that the slave trade lasted as long as it did and makes a mockery of the idea of Free Trade. There is a hard hitting exhibition about the history and background of slavery in the museum that, quite frankly, left me in tears. It is astonishing that supposedly civilised people could have allowed it to continue for so long. As a crime against humanity it is as great as the holocaust and lasted much longer. Almost contradictorily, Wilberforce didn’t seem to share the same concerns about working conditions in England at the time. In a period when William Blake referred to Dark Satanic Mills and the exploitation of children was rife Wilberforce was a signatory to an act that outlawed trades unions. Of course, this doesn’t lessen the importance of what he did but it does raise other questions. Namely, WHY? It could be said that wage slavery is not much different to actual slavery. Still, it is an important and sobering exhibition.

Statue of William Wilberforce

Department at Hull University concerning slavery.

A Week in Florence

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Pensione Ottaviani where we were staying. Excellent and friendly small hotel in the heart of the city.

Here we are. First day on a trip to Florence staying at a delightful little hotel called Pensione Ottaviani right in the heart of the city. The beautiful church of Santa Maria Novella is just across the road and the Duomo is a short walk away. The weather is good but not too hot. Perfect weather for sightseeing. The only problem is deciding where to go first. It’s Sunday so there may be problems visiting churches unless we attend mass. No, I think maybe the best thing is to visit the Piazza del Duomo and then to the Ponte Vecchio and across the river to the Boboli gardens and the Palazzo Pitti. Yes, that’s a good idea.

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Palazzo Pitti. Grim palace that looks a bit like a prison. Home of the Medicis at one time. The Boboli Gardens behind are very nice.

The Palazzo Pitti is a pretty grim looking place that was the residence of one of the wealthy dukes that dominated Florence. It looks a bit like a prison from the outside and there are no benches or chairs to sit on in the square in front. They obviously still want the peasants to suffer! The Boboli Gardens in the rear are very pleasant and afford a very good walk if you can afford it. The reason for going inside is to view one of the best exhibitions of Renaissance art there is with works by Raphael and Titian and many others. They are hung in the way they would have been presented originally and so give a different perspective to the paintings than in a normal gallery. There are some excellent pictures in there but also quite a few that I would consider mediocre. In some ways I found it quite a depressing litany of images of the rich and powerful who don’t really deserve to be remembered. They stare blankly from the walls and you feel they are trapped forever in their own conceit. The whole experience is like a homage to a vacant and meaningless materialism. The religious pictures sit uneasily with the portraits. Why did they want pictures of the dieing Christ on their walls? The sheer scale of the opulence of the palace scream out against any kind of humility or charity. This is a truly bizarre experience and one that is quite tiring because there are so few chairs and benches inside as well. Time for a nice cappuccino I think.

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Florence, place of great cappuccinos!! Or should that be cappuccini!

OK, time to move on. The Duomo is a truly astonishing place. It’s size is immense. Apparently, it took over a hundred years and the genius of Bruneleschi to work out how to put a roof on it without it falling down. It represents an amazing ambition to create something that had never been done before. This cathedral dominates the city of Florence and is clearly visible from all the vantage points in the surrounding hills.

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View from Piazzale Michelangelo

Another view of the Cathedral and the Campanile. Astonishing buildings and so big!

Florence is a lovely city and is very self contained. The people are also very friendly even though it is packed with tourists, even in October. It is easy to walk to all the main attractions and the restaurants are also good. It’s a bit on the expensive side but I suppose that’s to be expected. Next stop is Ponte Vecchio which is truly remarkable lined mainly with jewelry shops.

Ponte Vecchio

The first big exhibition we went to was at the Palazzo Strozzi called “The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism”. This was a fascinating exhibition that demonstrated the variety of artistic expression that was taking place even under the cultural,totalitarian restrictions of Fascism. There were some disturbing examples of Fascist and Nazi art alongside experimentalism and expressionistic work. Things got really bad in 1938 though when Italy enacted it’s own racial law under pressure from the Nazis. The holocaust had reached Italy! This is what the curator says about the exhibition:

“The Thirties. The Arts in Italy Beyond Fascism comprises 96 paintings, 17 sculptures and 20 objects of design and tells the story of a crucial era characterised by an extremely vigorous arts scene in the years of the Fascist regime, against a backdrop that included the embryonic development of mass communication in Italy – radio, cinema and illustrated magazines – which stole numerous ideas from the “fine” arts and transmitted them to a broader audience. This retrospective illustrates an era that profoundly changed the history of Italy. The 1930s also witnessed the increasing mass production of household objects, which led to dramatic changes in people’s lifestyle, allowing ordinary families to live out a dream of modernity surrounded by designer objects, a practice that continues to this day”.

I would recommend this exhibition if it comes your way.

Programme for the exhibition

Palazzo Strozzi

Josephine Baker.

Crude propaganda using Futurist techniques with a touch of Art Deco!

Dream Complex No.1

It’s a hard slog walking around exhibitions (but in this case worth it). Time for a nice sit down and a rest outside the Santa Maria Novella church.

Santa Maria Novella

Sue outside Santa Maria Novella

Nice caffe!!

Beautiful cloisters at Santa Maria Novella.

Mmm, Special Effects! That’s what that button does!!

The church of Santa Maria Novella is beautiful and contains many astounding frescoes. Unfortunately they don’t allow you to take photos ( a common thing in most museums and art galleries which I think is a bit mean really). The stand out feature though is the crucifix painted by Giotto. It is a sublime and beautiful piece of work.

Crucifix painted by Giotto.

We spent two days travelling round Florence on an open top bus. Fortunately, the weather remained good for most of the time although there were a few heavy showers at times. The view from Piazzale Michelangelo is breathtaking and it contains one of the many copies of David, the sculpture of which Vasali said that once you’ve seen it you’ll never need to see another sculpture. The original is in the Accademia which we visited and it really is breathtaking. The hands and feet look like they might start moving any minute! It is enormous and seems to be alive!

Michelangelo’s David

Thursday night we went to the open mic at the Irish pub “The Fiddler’s Elbow” on Piazza Santa Maria Novello. Not many people there but had a really good time. Was asked to play at a Bob Festival to be held next May. That’ll be fun!

On the last day we went to Pisa where we were flying from. Spent the afternoon having a meal with the leaning tower in the background. Very nice!

The leaning tower. Nice hat!

The cathedral at Pisa.

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Day out in Derby

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Well, here I am in Derby in the grandest looking Wetherspoons I’ve ever been to.  I think it used to be a bank. Very impressive. Can’t decide whether to have one of their curries though. The decisions I have to make!

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Derby Wetherspoons

Derby is interesting. Never really looked around it before. The cathedral is quite boring, very Protestant, but there are some interesting plaques of eminent figures of the city’s industrial past. In fact, I didn’t realise that Derby had the first self-contained factory and is therefore at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Around the Silk Mill is a World Heritage Site. Quite picturesque with the River Derwent flowing past it.

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The Silk Mill

Went to the Museum & Art Gallery. There is quite a disturbing exhibition of the town’s army regiments. I didn’t realise the extent of British agression overseas. Not just the obvious ones but South America and other places I didn’t realise the British ever went to. For all the talk you hear about Free Trade, it was actually Forced Trade! It also contains information about how the military controlled riots and civil disobedience at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Frightening stuff! There is also an interesting historical connection with Bonny Prince Charlie and the Jacobite rebellion where local troups were used to repel them. Thought that was just going on in Scotland. Me? I’m on the side of Charlie!! And the workers!!

The art gallery is quite limited but there is a good exhibition of Joseph Wright. His paintings exhibit great technique but really just pander to the status quo. Some interesting portraits of the Arkwright family who were the arch capitalists of the 18th/19th Centuries. It’s interesting, like the de Medici’s of Florence, people from humble backgrounds who achieve great wealth need to immortalise themselves in works of art. Joseph Wright is no Leonardo Da Vinci though!

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Sir Richard Arkwright by Joseph Wright

I like Derby. Next time I’ll bring my guitar and do a bit of busking.

Nottingham Contemporary

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A strange thing happened to me on Thursday. On a complete whim I decided to take a train to Nottingham. I had a bit of a walk round and then went to Caffe Nero for a cappuccino. So far so boring. Then I decided to visit a gallery. I’ve never been to Nottingham Contemporary before so I decided to give it a try.

There were two exhibitions on. One was an exhibition of drawings by Alfred Kubin, an Austrian artist and writer who I have never heard of before. He is described as a late Symbolist and all the drawings were made as a young man in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. They are incredibly powerful and predate but are similar to later Surrealist works. This is what the programme notes say:

“Haunting drawings of death, trauma and fantastical creatures inhabiting imaginary worlds sprung from Alfred Kubin’s pen at the beginning of the 20th century. His work, executed in a delicate, atmospheric ink wash technique, anticipated some of the horrors of the First World War, and the following decades, at a time when Europe’s empires were toppling. His exquisite, yet nightmarish black and white drawings came from his own imagination, or from illustrating works by writers like Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Edgar Allan Poe.” I would definitely recommend visiting this exhibition.

The other exhibition was of Francis Upritchard who is a New Zealand artist. At first I couldn’t quite see what her sculptures were aiming at. The more I looked at them though the more it became apparent, helped by the exhibition notes! Again, they are very impressive and quite haunting. I was most impressed by the “Hippies and Holy Fools” section. There seems to be a weariness and almost hopeless feel to them as though it is the last clinging to  a lost ideal. This is what the notes say about it:

“Francis Upritchard’s psychedelically coloured human figures “live” on islands of ornate furniture. There is a festival feeling to their gatherings, emphasised by Upritchard’s acid-bright colours, hand-woven blankets and tie-dyed silks. Upritchard has said “all the things that hippies hoped would happen, or felt might happen, didn’t.” In one sense her exhibition is about the failure of the 1960s and 70s counter-culture that is still celebrated at festivals – and its gaudy, individualistic “alternative” aftermath.”

What really struck me about this exhibition is how close it was to what I’ve been thinking about my own past as I write about it in “My Life In Music” and also what a coincidence it was that I had discovered the exhibition by chance. I’d only just finished writing about how the year of the Woodstock festival had seemed like the end of an era to me. I haven’t referred to any other sources other than my own memories and here I was confronted by my own feelings. Even more astonishing was a talk by James Riley that I saw in the study area of the gallery. In this he speaks about ” the symbolic status of 1969 as a terminal point at which the decade’s earlier optimism gives way to death, violence and ‘bad craziness’.” Almost exactly what I’d been thinking and writing. I came away feeling quite strange and determined to follow up some of the leads he discusses and to continue my own work. It’s taking on an importance I never really intended!

Busking in Nottingham

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Haven’t blogged on this page for a while. That’s because I’ve been busy writing “My Life in Music” page and that’s taking up a lot of my time. It’s getting very long but it’s really good reflecting on my past life, what I can remember of it that is.

Am sitting in a Nottingham Wetherspoons at the moment making use of their free WiFi and enjoying a pint of Abbot Ale. Very civilised! Have just finished busking because of a downpour, which is a shame because it was going really well. Lots of people taking an interest and stopping for a chat. It’s my third busking trip and I’m really getting into it now. Went to Melton Mowbray last week with Steve Cartwright and that was really good as well. It’s easier to create an atmosphere with two people. It’s not just about making money although that helps, it’s about creating an event on the streets and meeting people I probably never would otherwise. Playing in bars is OK but there are a massive number of people who never go to them. Busking cuts out the middle man and sets the music free!

To find out how my music developed from an early stage go to “My Life in Music” page. It’s still being written and edited but there is plenty there to be getting on with.

Reflections and Recollections

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Have been back a week now and have decided to write about my feelings about visiting New York.

The reason I went was to fulfil a long ambition to visit a place that figured large in my imagination and was a place where many things happened that were an influence on me. In my mind at times it was a place I should have been. But I never went and, in fact, never visited America until now. Why was that? Well, chiefly it was financial. I simply couldn’t afford it. But I am sure I could have found a way if I had really wanted to. Money never stopped me from doing other things I wanted to do. I think the main reason was fear of disillusionment. That it would not live up to my idea of what it was. That all the things that I found attractive were not there any more or that I would not find it or fit in to it. And also fear of leaving my comfort zone and what I was familiar with. In many ways all these fears applied to me on my recent trip, it was just money that was no longer a problem!

I spoke to a friend last week who was enthusiatic, perhaps too enthusiastic, about my recent trip. He said I was living the dream. He’s the second person who has said that. He was raving about how I had done what Bob Dylan did and how I was an inspiration to him. I know this is quite a compliment but it is not really true. When Bob Dylan went to New York he was young, poor and ambitious. I was old and relatively well off and not ambitious in the same way. I wasn’t seeking fame and fortune, it was more an act of redemption! At the same time I think I probably felt some of the things that Bob felt. It is a scary thing to go to a big city where you don’t know anyone and you have no idea what is going to happen.  On the other hand, we were both driven, in our own way, to do this. I’m very glad I did. The experience has been better than my most optimistic scenario. I met lots of nice, interesting people and felt I achieved something special doing the rounds of open mics and jam sessions. In fact, I felt accepted in a way I never expected to.

Another more recent influence was reading Patti Smith’s book “Just Kids”. I thoroughly recommend this book. In it she chronicles how she went to New York in a similar spirit to Bob Dylan. She slept rough and on subway trains and eventually had great success as a poet and singer. Inspirational. I can particularly relate to her description of visiting Jim Morrison’s grave in Paris. I’ve done the same thing. You’ve got to step out of yourself to find yourself.

The New York scene is not the same as it was in the 60s or 70s. The same focus is not there. But, I think, that is the same everywhere (as far as I know). Music has become far more diverse and there is not the same audience for live music as there was. On the other hand, interest and desire to play and write music is possibly even higher than it was. New York is full of great musicians and song writers and other acts. There is a vibrant poetry and spoken word community. In fact, you can find more than one place to perform any day of the week. On top of that busking is accepted in parks and subway stations. The general standard is pretty high! There is also a strong community feel amongst performers, they are supportive and interested in each other. From my first open mic spot onwards I was invited to many events and was even offered a job in a band as a lead guitarist! I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

There are many places to play. Bars and cafes offer one hour slots through the night. There tends to be no official pay but a bucket is passed round at the end of the set. Where there’s a decent crowd people tend to be generous and it is possible to make a reasonable amount of money. People are also more inclined to buy CDs than here. I took thirty and came back with none. Should have taken more!

My favourite place was Penny’s Open Mic on St. Mark’s Place. There was an amazing variety of acts and they were all incredibly good (well, nearly all). I’d go back to New York just to go there! But there are lots of others. Path Cafe is good and that is where I made most of my contacts. It was also, conveniently, just round the corner from where I was staying. The spoken word event on 116 MacDougal Street is worth going to. I was the only musician but they liked my song so much they videoed me and put it on their web site. They were very encouraging and the poetry was brilliant. Paddy Reilly’s and National Underground were good for jam sessions and I also made lots of contacts there. By the end of my time in New York I felt like a part of the local scene which like everywhere, considering the size of the city, is really quite small.

One of the good things about New York is the public transport. For $29 you can buy an unlimited ticket that you can use on any bus or subway train. This can take you to any part of the city including Brooklyn, Queens and The Bronx, and they run all night. The Staten Island ferry is free! No excuses not to go anywhere. There are many places and things I didn’t see but I had such a good time I’m sure I’ll be back.

Gigging In New York

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It’s going very well. Played at what was the Gaslight last night. It’s now called 116 (that’s the number of the building). Had a job finding it as there is no big sign and MacDougal Street is the ultimate BAR STREET. Every night is like Saturday night in Leicester! The Gaslight is the place where Kerouac, Ginsberg, Corso et al read their poems in the 50s. Then it became a centre of the burgeoning folk scene of the 60s. According to the organiser it has hardly changed although the stage is in a different place. I was the only musician in a night of poetry. Did OK though and was invited to a night next Monday when I am being filmed. Whoo hoo! There were some really good poets and rappers. Very enjoyable!

Spent today in Central Park and looking round the Upper West Side, including the Dakota building where John Lennon lived. Strawberry Fields was a bit disappointing with crowds of tourists queuing up to be photographed sitting on the Imagine mosaic. Not very peaceful! The park itself though is heavenly especially by the lake. It really is quite magical. Was asked how to get to 5th Avenue by someone who thought I was a local. Told her but she thought I was wrong and walked off in a huff.   But actually, I was right!

Spent tonight playing at the Path Cafe. Went very well and will get more gigs from it and am being interviewed by local radio on Sunday. Will be playing at the Cornelia Cafe tomorrow.

Speak to you soon!