…
October 2006
to October 2026
that’s a long time a-wandering
a long time with no home
…
where its always
one step after another
where its always
next stop the next stop
...
in a 21st Century version of the
eternal notion of the
nomadic poet
the troubadour
the strolling minstrel
the trovatore
the gleeman
the trouvere
...
the peripatetic
pootling
tootler
...
the rambling
roving
rhyming
itinerant
bard
...
while making a living entirely off the door
of performance poetry shows
...
which means i’ve been living wholly off poetry
...
which virtually no-one does
...
no books
no funding
no academe
no stipends
no workshops
no teaching
no fees
just the money the punters pay
...
something very few have ever done
...
twenty years a-wander
...
so there i went
and here i go again
upriver into the unknown jungle
...
across the Equator?
...
though i’ve had some stationary winters
Winnipeg, Edmonton, Edinburgh, Camberley
and twenty-two months in Lockdown Gokarna
yet all these were never permanent
so its pretty much true
...
twenty years of...
...
and now
after seven weeks on a green hillside above Sedi next Pokhara
followed by
some very agreeable family time here in South Sydney
a lesson in the virtues of normalcy
its...
probably
Samarinda
and the Mahakam River
...
“everything is fascinating”
isn’t so much a fact as a
mindset
...
while
as i once said in a show
and will say in every show i ever do from now on
“the
human
brain
is
built
for
fascination”
...
and everywhere IS fascinating
every city, every street, every yard
every path, every river, every tree
...
while i’ve had ever less possessions
have shed the books, the vinyl, the shirts
the Doctor Martens, the bits and bobs...
...
for, as i’ve been saying for a long time
all you need in this world is a passport, a bank card and a laptop
...
while back in the 2000s you only needed passport and card
everywhere in India had internet cafes
so you didn’t even need a laptop
...
so...
as the years pass...
ever less stuff
clutter
things
ever less possessions...
...
back in 2006
releasing myself into
wandering...
baselessness...
eternal mobility...
seemed a natural thing to do
...
where my original reasoning was that
in order to keep doing the fabulous Canadian Fringe Tour
which involved total artistic commitment
and where i actually made money...
so, in order to keep going there
i had to write new shows
and in order to start writing shows
i had to stop running shows
which i’d done masses of
hundreds and hundreds of
in London and Scotland
and i had to stop running shows because
like most people
i find it hard to run shows and write shows at the same time
would always be writing another banging press release
or some dull funding application
rather than creating new poems
yet
to make this new and best life, Canada, possible
i had to be generating new ideas, new poems, new stuff
...
many would agree that
“You Either Administrate Or You Create”
some people can do both
but not me
and not most
...
and so, compellingly
if i wasn’t going to be running shows
if i was writing shows
i could theoretically write them anywhere
while the money i made from tours was good
yet i’d never been to India
had wanted to go to India for decades
had been prevented from travelling by being nailed to
first Islington
and then fastened to Edinburgh
and then to Edinburgh winters with Canada summers
so i had not done much travelling since my Twenties
yet
in 2000
on my way back from here, Sydney
Alison and Patrick’s wedding
i had wandered for six weeks from Malaysia into Thailand
Perhentian Cecil
Songkhla
Ko Pha Ngan
Satun
Penang
and more...
gorgeously, easily...
and therefore i, of course, wanted more of that
lots more of that
months and months of that
and so
i left Edinburgh
and so
I went to India
and so
I went travelling
and i kept travelling
and touring
and travelling
and touring
through the years
for many years
and here i am
many odysseys later
here i am
older and no wiser
heading for another place i never been
Borneo
another city
another river
another newness
...
while this freedom gave me artistic permission
to burn for the aesthetic new, the undone
allowing me to pursue Performance Poetry
which i saw as a new medium
to any extreme i liked
...
to pursue those glimmers i had seen in the clowns
the physical comedians
and do my utmost to drink deep of all this
to fuse it
and make real something new
...
and extreme it was
with a motored lyricism
and an ever-widening physicality
...
so i threw myself out upon the vast and open ocean
and sold my soul to the god of motion
...
and so...
Indonesia
Borneo
Kalimantan
Balikpapan a few days
before Samarinda and
severe forest fires notwithstanding
up the beckoning river
North-West across the Equator...
...
where this might actually be intrepid
though little i do is intrepid...
...
for i can count the proper hardcores of these twenty years on two hands
...
the Annapurna Circuit
proper tough
...
the Via De La Plata
a Camino
from Seville to Santiago
in unseasonal November
with gout
...
a riverboat up the Rio Negro into the Brazilian Amazon
...
a hairy hitch-hike down the unfinished Zanskar Valley road
in Ladakh, just three months ago
...
at the time
i never counted the Camino Frances as hardcore
yet i now guess it is
while i did it twice
plus most of the Camino Del Norte
...
while
there have been a few unwise descents
and some long walks of dubious wisdom
like waist-deep in the sea
50 yards out on the flat plate of the coral
around most of Ai Banda
twice
...
though a long endurance of a bus journey...
Hanoi - Vientiane
Kathmandu - Pashupatinagar
etc...
is too short to be proper hardcore
...
and two long Pandemic years on the beach up from Gokarna was hardcore
yet didn’t involve actually doing anything
...
so, like i say
little i do is dangerous
...
though i should add that one Fringe Tour is hardcore
but twenty-one Fringe Tours is
BEYOND THE HARDEST OF HARDCORE
...
so why not wander?
why possess?
why stand still
when there is an endless newness in this
infinite world
?
...
so go on world
surprise me
...
so here i go
next step the next step
...
Borneo
...
have been reading about Borneo since i was ten
...
one of those names from books and maybe films
but chiefly books
the names of the faraway, the exotic, the difficult...
Timbuctoo, Mandalay, Trincomalee, Zanzibar
Rio De Janeiro, Sidi Bel Abbes, Addis Ababa, Battambang
and Borneo...
so here i go
its currently 33 degrees there
so its all change the all change
and ...
next stop the next stop
...
Borneo
100 k or so from the Equator
...
Borneo
me and some Australians…