Coming Down Aisy

You GOT this!

I CAN do it and me Da has a Bon Scott flat cap.





Coming Down Aisy
___________________________________________


I blew in the door looking like I just woke up from a field circa 1974.
My tangled hair is standing on end like I may have crawled through a hedge to get out of abovementioned field, as although I have been showering daily, I have not brushed it.
It's my Patti Smith look, apparently.
Also I am wearing enough eye make up to take to the stage in the West End as Cleopatra, which I re-apply with shaking hands at every, and all opportunities -
mirrors of parked cars
mirrors outside the gents
tiny lip gloss contacts.
Why am I so bothered about my eyes?
What is with the layers of liner and lashes?
"You're looking very windswept tonight" says Eddie as I slide my black coat off and onto a stool, in a seamless move I am no stranger to.
In the preparation for Shellshock I was flat out batshit.
I micro managed every last detail and was informed sagely by an advisor the next day that it is possibly not a great idea to expend every last ounce of your energy in the minute details BEFORE you perform for 3 hours.
I don't know where the energy came from, nor why it has not left yet.
It's like somebody flicked a light on in my brain.
"You have NO off switch" shouts hewhomustnotbenamed as he threw his clothes into a bag for the thousandth time and I watched him and his long legs leave.
Again.
In the writing and performing, comes the therapy of memory, the laying bare, the stripping back of the onion layers of the self, and in that honesty comes clarity.
But at a price.
Their lips move but I can't hear what they say.
"Comfortably Numb"
I am listening to the sounds of another time, other voices, I process what is happening in the moment only many hours after the fact.
And usually when I am reminded.
I am speeding so fast I can barely breathe, I can't keep up with my head, stuff is fired everywhere, and yet I can't sit, or relax or sleep.
I need to have 51 conversations urgently and immediately.
I am thinking your things as you are, and trying to see out from your eyes, to inhabit your skin, in the mania of creativity and it is outrageous that 
I can't bear the laughter to stop, and the quiet peace come back in and put it's feet up by the fire and say hello, old friend.
Papers are interviewing me, photographers say hold it - hold on.
Hold on.
The messages move me to tears daily, the calls from strangers, the emails.
The phone, computer, doorbell and dog are mental.
And in the whirlwind of Michelle,
who is shrieking like a tornado around a Minnesota barn,
hovers the calm presence of the real woman,
looking out serenely from within the eye of the storm.
The eyes.
There is a reason she masks her eyes, as they are the windows of a very tired soul who is "Coming down Aisy".
I looked around the empty bar with tired eyes and left as quietly as I hadn't come in.


M.D.M. April 25th

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Diarium (Noo Yoik ) Part 1 "Running Uphill"

Image
"Should we start the packing?" enquires Vonnie Dooley  Monday Jan 13th   A mere handful of hours after this photo was taken I collapsed at the back door at misty midnight.  It is 24 hours before I fly to America for the first time in my life.  According to my diary I woke at 7,  dined on a banana then rocked up to a dentist to have my teeth boxed off before I stunned the craythurs in the front row.   My smile has been disfigured for years from the slap of a bottle that chipped a front tooth, not to mention staining from smoking and caffeine.  Amrish is a stunning man with sparkling gnashers and a heart of gold who came in on his day off to check the state of play and how much the teeth have lifted with bleaching.   A lot actually, although he wasn't lying about the sensitivity.  He took a mould of my mouth on Day 1 and then presented me with the plaster version of my own teeth as an aide de memoir, a keep ...
Read more

Frankly Speaking - An Essay - Part 1

Image
"I like the way you've done my eyes Meeeee shell" Artwork  © MDM I met Frank Sinnott when I was a Communion Child in 1971. I was brought across the road to be given a pound and have my dress admired. I was terrified of a parade of random hairy dogs that lay across the steps of Old Pound House like savage mats. I was almost more frightened of the hairy lad looking out at me from under his wild hair in the hall. He started to visit us, making wildly inappropriate suggestions to my Mother, each of whom had a soft spot for the other.  We were privy to all the comings and goings across the road, from the house going up in flames to Sonny Condell ringing the bell looking for divilment at 3am after a gig. He tried to teach me the guitar but I was more fascinated by the peas in his beard and the newspapers on every inch of the room. As I grew up I began to write, and it was Frank who gave me my first writing gig on his beloved "Boker". This time last year I...
Read more

The One about the Tour with photographic proof

Image
A Swedish man asked me would I bring a group of his friends around the roads and tell them stories. Things I remember, characters I have met, the places and faces that make up the heartbeat of a town, the social archive, the nuances and nostalgia, that colour the light and shade that life's rich tapestry invokes. I write about memories. I wrote my own and my Mother Siobháns story in Scourged , a memoir  - where  memories unspooled and unribboned  from her mind became copper fastened in mine. So I thought it would be lovely to tell the men the old stories of long ago when I was young, and remember those who went before us, and the legacy they left. He mentioned idly that there would be paper folding money involved. I was in like Flynn. I offer you this time not text, but images ..........as a picture speaks a thousand words. A Jemmy to start A breath of air  The welcome Nervous as young foals the pack leave the Inn...
Read more