back to the present...

 People promote mental health awareness, and that is good and it is essential. Those people who promote it suggest that we speak up and reach out with issues without shame. Those same people ghost anyone who they don’t find attractive or useful in their daily life. Of course, I am old now, I have seen most patterns 1000 times or more… those who feel they need help are quick to promote that others reach out for help… and even quicker to ignore anyone reaching out because the only mental health problem is, of course, their own. 

                  Nine years ago, today, I was on the stage in Vigo, Galicia, Spain, singing for The Handicaps in a celebration of Vigo and the club Celta De Vigo at an event called Palmer Fest. We headlined, but it was late, the club was loud, and I had lost my voice. It almost felt like a chore getting through the show, it was punishment. Once it was over, we flooded out into the Vigo streets with the usual sense of elation that follows a show (even a bad one). The next day we played a small and intimate show on Isla de la Toja. 

                   I recall such beautiful people, such a feeling of happiness and satisfaction in what I had achieved in moving to Spain, finding such good friends, and eventually even being in a band that played concerts and festivals… and even had the amazing experience of recording an album. What made the recording even more interesting, for me, was that the studio was the same one at which Tim Armstrong recorded Tim Timebomb and Friends, and he stayed in the same little guest house, attached to the studio, that we stayed in. I remember entering the vocal booth and thinking "this is where the great Time Armstrong stood to sing songs like ‘No Reverence’." 

                  Back to the present, I spend too much time in the past, and a pale grey sky promises rain… and yet it just remains elusive. The forecast said ‘100% chance of rain at 9am’… there was no rain. Now it says, ‘65% chance at 2pm.’ I shall not hold my breath. I’m in the office and, even with a headache that is attacking my right eye, I am trying to do some socialising to make the most of the moment. 


Fabrica de Chocolate Club, Vigo, Galicia

Supernova 3.1, Isla de La Toja, Vigo, Galicia. 



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