JIM CARROLL 1/8/1949 - 11/9/2009

Jim Carroll died on Friday at his desk at his place in Manhattan. He had a heart attack. Its very sad - there was word that he had finally finished the novel he had been working on for so long 'The Petting Zoo'. i hope that that is the case and it is published posthumously. i loved Jim carroll's poems and diaries - it wasnt an originality that made him special - they called him the american rimbaud - but it was the ferocious hard work that he put into his writing and his street-rat poetic that he sharpened and defined from an early age. his teen story is the great american coming of age story. well thats what i think.

read: 'living at the movies' or 'forced entries' or his most popular diary 'the basketball diaries'
listen: 'people who died'

There will always be a poem
I will climb on top of it and come
In and out of time,
Cocking my head to the side slightly,
As I finish shaking, melting then
Into its body, its soft skin
--Jim Carroll, "Poem"
from Void of Course (1998)

out of town

Im in Bretagne, just west of the now ugly St Malo, in a little town called Pleurtuit - sleeping at a B&B on a farm which has the curious added touch of an airfield occupying the rear land behind the house. Each morning i sit eating breakfast in the front garden with all manner of light aircraft lifting a few feet above my head. At 7 am there is a ryanair flight to southern england that feels as if it is going to take the roof of the house with it. The hanger at the foot of the runway houses a number of 2 seater planes brandishing delicate wings decorated in mustard yellows with deep burgundy stripes or military green with silver stars. They tear into the sky one after another, dipping west almost immediately to travel along the coast. It is straight off the page of a Ballard novel.

At breakfast i smother sweet breton honey on pumpernickel bread. i take this with bitter local coffee and orange juice so sour it leaves my taste buds weeping. The days are spent driving along the coast to small villages, stopping off at flea markets along the way. It is easy and slow here. There is a film festival in october so i hope to return then.

Moving down the country on Saturday, right down at the bottom, to spend a while in Seillans where Max Ernst stayed in the last years of his life
- need to put things in order, have many ideas/projects to be realised fully but lack of time and no patience at all at present
- i. make a grid. ii. fill it

Watching - Beau Travail, Claire Denis
Listening - Screaming Jay Hawkins 'I put a spell on you' and Miles Davis 'Moon Dreams'
Reading - Imagining Reality by Kevin Macdonald

j ~ s ~ a

aaron mckay, pirate, poet, polysexual and soon to be married



JSA
I counted the hours that i had had the pleasure of sitting in the council's plastic chairs. We were certainly up in the teens by now. i stared out the window and a great muted ashen slab of borough wall stared back in.
My officer, Sarah, was a channel 4 documentary's wet dream - the archetypal single mother that bourgeois TV film producers salivate over monthly - all 6 stone, glassy half shut eyes, itching jaw bone and the odour of a primary schools changing room. she smelt as if she had wet herself and as she stared around my midrift and nodded off i wondered what i was doing there.

' Have you found any work then?' Her voice was like a rusty machine gun spurting sporadic nasal whines - her words chugged along in one tone, her voice was an amplified wasp on downers.

'No' i replied

'Have you been looking?'

'Very much so'

'Well, what jobs did you log in on your declaration sheet? were they broad keywords?' She paused and took a few minutes to blink.....

'Completely' i finally answered when she had re-focused

'What were they?' she croaked

'well, let me see...they were, Stuntman, Firearms officers' assistant and Killer.'

'Killer!?' she looked at me as if i was her ex-husband.

'Yes, pest control and all that evil...its not really my thing but i figure i can break them apart from the inside etc..'

She winced. 'Oh'

A long pause.

'How would feel about stockroom at heathrow airport?'

I stared at Sarah. i stared at her long and hard and took a deep breath in from my gut - held it - and slowly let it out. i could smell her all about me - i thought about taking her out of there and plonking her in the local swimming baths but i knew she would turn the water purple so i stood and walked to the door. I turned and watched her head drop and decided i was better off hungry.

dead end

Last weekend TPIA played at the southend fringe festival. we played in this piano bar that looked out across the estuary to some island - i think it was canvey or maybe not - i dont know what was going on but to me it seemed that the island was buzzing away in the distance, alone, no inhabitants , just machinery screaming at each other some kind of post nuclear floating gomorrah oozing black tar and yellow smoke. i stood there for ages. staring.
i quickly snapped out of all that and got some bleach and made some tee shirts.


there was this guy in the corner - he really made an effort



t p i a played solidly and the spirit of the surrounding landscape was definitely heard - you could hear it in the drums - it was swelling in the bass waves -

We drove home in this rickety old van - i didnt mind i was lost in a cloud vodka & badnesses $$- everyone was asleep and i stared out onto the empty A roads and B roads and felt alone


as i rolled about on the floor i found a hole that went straight thru. i stuck my camera on countdown and dangled it under to see what this van was all about and to see how friendly the road was at 80mph. these are the results of my research.







i tried to poke my head down the hole but got an eye full of dust and grit. i wanted to see the mechanics of an aged tour van. id reminded myself over the last week of the mechanics of touring - the long, empty journeys, the rattle of sound check, the catchphrases, the anti climaxes and the unexpected highs. i went on a health kick the week before we started playing, i hadnt looked after myself completely over the last 18 or so months, id started to lose inspiration, memory, focus, drive - everything was a fog but this short tour secured me back on course and i now sit here looking out of the huge open window above my desk onto the busy summer street below and feel alive and thirsty. i have new songs and new ideas and im grateful. im about to begin a very exciting film/music project with a truly inspiring man.

tpia tour 5ive

We had a day off. i spent it nearly being knifed by some street rats in an alleyway near my flat and then met with keating and his brother arr shaan. shaun had come to visit and fed us stories from 'the site' in his hushed kilkennian tones. Ben celebrated his brothers visit by cutting up a variety of his best moves.

1. the tangle shirt ( i have a more explicit version of this particular move)

2. the suicide hump (open window essential)

3. the elephant


Unfortunately B's finger started to bleed for a long time so now i had two invalids on board.

slightly wrecked from the week tpia brothers went to winchester on a sunday evening.




so we played a show - i forgot photos again.
later, our friend ryan threw up in the back of our van into two of those petrol pump gloves you get at gas stations. the huge ones. he filled two. he blamed it on motion sickness. max blamed it on 12 stellas. before it got too 'brits abroad' we were home and i made everyone a pretty psychedelic dinner.

tour - day 4

so after a rather boozy breakfast at bernies, we made our way to leeds.
aaron always disappears in service stations - i now have fresh surveillance footage of where he sneaks off to.



we got a few silks and furs to go to lunch in.




these shades had the shortest life - i bought them at about 2pm....







and by 2.10 they went completely off the radar - i paid £.80p for every minute i owned them



the show in leeds was great. im really enjoying playing at the moment, touring can sometimes become a monotonous drag but i am enjoying this set up and approach...
winchester tomorrow

tour - day 3

ok so we are back in the van and en route to Leeds. last night we played in manchester. the show was great and the people very friendly. the band that supported us were called from the kites of san quentin and are great and you should take a listen..







after the show we stayed at this amazing house somewhere just out of town. this lady below, Bernie, well she likes the idea of opening up her house at 1am to sweaty drunk loud bands to come in and fall all over the shop. of course we were the epitome of princely charm....she had cooked us dinner and got the drinkx and smokex in and we sat up late into the night with her listening to her record collection and getting the dirt on the others who had stopped by -----i wish she lived in every city.i never want to stay in a hotel ever again. and from now on, we only play manchester.

in the morning max the tour manager and i tried to hit the garden swing with a football for a while and then i breakdanced on a trampoline .





now to leeds.