back to black

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 1
Level of conviction in own genius: 7.5
Listening: lovely folky duo Smoke Fairies
Hair Day: quite perky

Made my solo debut on Monday in the intimate surroundings of the Poetry Cafe for the sweet if odd Littlest Birds night. I'd been asked very last minute, so spent the weekend thrashing out three numbers using Sarah's loopstation, ending up slightly re-inventing 'shamansong' with some overlapped storytelling beforehand, doing a long-awaited loop-de-loop version of a folksong called 'all things are quite silent' and finishing with my poetry-Camille-esque vocalisations in 'catalunyanpoem'. Felt like I'd been punched in the stomach all day, I was so nervous; I did fine in the end, if to an introverted crowd. Think I was better received than the girl who stood by a large cardboard box for one minute before climbing inside it, when after another minute birdsong emanated from it, before she got out abruptly and left, all the while her man snapping noisily away to document it. Baffling. Better was Zoe Marling, who sang bluesy quirky lo-fi snogs accompanied by her dad on electric guitar, whilst she very slowly took out her hair rollers. We'll see, maybe it'll be the time for my nu-folk-leftfield-vocal alter-ego, girlscout, to rear its coy head...

Coy, or maybe rock'n'roll head, seeing as I now have a substantial tattoo on my back. Have been meaning to do this for a few years, and the thirty-life crisis was enough to send me to the sweaty confines of Happy Sailor on Hackney Road, the walls bedecked with skulls and masks and fun things, to the waiting inky gun of lovely Tota, who spread-eagled me over a recliner thing and went to work on our deer/leaf/tree design smack in the middle of my shoulder blades. She kept complimenting me on my unflinching quietness, and I was thinking how double hard I must be, taking the scratchy pain so well; til it came to a break during the filling-in two hours into it, when I burst into gushing tears and had to be given sweet tea to calm myself. The back is apparently a pretty painful place to get something done. Dang, it really freakin' hurt! So I'm going back in 10 days to finish off (possibly champing a bone between my teeth or something), though already it looks cool, if totally in yer face (well, if I'm wearing a backless top and turning away from you, anyway). Needless to say, Dad doesn't know... gulp.