
Rookling
Free video calls across the world! The delivery birds aren't happy, but you can't deny that's progress. Still, the bleeping and buzzing of a phone will never match the excitement of thick envelopes dropping onto the doormat; or of opening your postbox to see a handwritten letter.
That's why the mail service is the social medium that I'd like to reach you with during this time, while live music isn't yet possible.
In a very short story, I imagine myself as a Victorian under quarantine, when the penny stamp was first released. Here's an extract:
"Of course, I knew exactly who had sent it before I had even opened it, just by looking at the address. It is unforgettable and profound to see how a beloved friend or kinsman reshapes one's name between their fingers, with their unique contrivance of scratches, loops, and blots. When I read my name from the pen of another, I feel I am looking into an oracular mirror..." - Full story
JULY
GRIEVANCE
Young life takes leave.
A loved young soul, when loved ones grieve,
Is borne to the Lord
on the wings of their sighs.
Who prays when an old man dies?
Young blood runs cold.
A loved young tale is told & told.
But when a life of time
has frayed love’s ties,
Who tells when an old man dies?
A young life lost.
A loved young pearl is sold at great cost.
But who’s got a copper
for an old man’s eyes?
Who pays when an old man dies?
A young man falls.
Loved young throats fill grand old halls.
I’ll fall to the tune
of a raven’s cries.
Who sings when an old man dies?
Lombardy, June 2020
AUGUST
THE PROPHET & THE GIRL
A bright hot day by a sunburnt sky,
a dust-choked prophet
in a ghost-wracked street
stepped on a soapbox stand & cried:
“The Sun King’s soon to die.”
And as he hollered of the fall of the king,
nobody gathered at his soapbox stand
but the watchmen came
& they clipped his wings
& trussed his beak with a bullring.
They left him bound
in the dust-choked street
muzzled & bound & left to die,
so he scraped in the dust
with his road-wrecked feet:
“It’s the Sun King’s last defeat.”
But the night winds ravaged
the work of his claws
& the dawn dogs hovered
by his death-marked side,
so he sketched his last words
with the last of his force
in the blood that leaked
from his ring-trussed jaws.
The dawn dogs howled
by the blood-soaked ground.
A young girl followed
that ghost-wracked sound
& these are the blood-red words she found:
“The Sun King’s dead, girl
– take his crown.”
So a prophet dies at a watchman’s hand.
The Sun King plummets to the desert sand.
By a sunless sky in a bright hot land,
a young girl takes to the soapbox stand.
Berlin, July 2020
BLESSING
Pain be your daylight
when you walk the sunless valley,
Pain be your mainstay
when your mettle turns to straw,
Pain be your bedrock
when you brave the sands of worry,
Pain be your tailwind
when you sail out from the shore.
Love the pain that chose you
for it knows you like a lover –
Loveless or beloved,
your pain is yours
& yours to keep.
Listen for pain’s whisper,
& the truths it may uncover,
Listen for pain’s cry
& how it echoes in the deep.
Pain be your compass
when there’s rage in all the heavens,
Pain be precious flotsam
in the wake of every storm,
Pain be your beacon
when you delve in lifeless caverns
& find that in the fire long spent
the ashes are still warm.
Berlin, September 2020.
(Translated from Sebastian Bacchus, “Geh’ mit dem Schmerz”)
OCTOBER
ALL EYES OTHER
Now all your childhood castles
are with worries overgrown,
and all your childhood heroes
by new villains overthrown,
and all your dreams imprisoned
in a tower made of stone,
and you wish upon the mirror
any image but your own,
Now you’ve let down your defences,
told me tales of skin & bone,
how through all your years of solitude
you were scared to be alone –
Love, your mirror is a trickster
for you never see what’s shown –
Love, your beauty is a beacon
to all eyes other than your own.
for Louise
Paris, May 2019
THE CORNED-BEEF KEY
The man that checks his weather app
& not whether his window’s wet –
I must confess, through gritted teeth
That I’ve become that man & yet
the child that stole the corned-beef key
& left the meat upon the shelf
& put it in his treasure-tin,
– he lives in me & in rude health,
He tap-dances in my half-drunk skull,
rattling his treasure-tin,
I twist to check if today’ll be cold,
he trampolines on my skeleton.
Go now, child: Write no commands
but songs. Deal in songs, not gold.
Breathe no wind but songs
& take your songs
& soothe the world’s unsouled.
Berlin, November 2020
GRAVITY
I hunt between the streetlamps nightly
cries of ghosts in shuttered bars,
& feel my own life as light & unlikely
as in the darkness between two stars
where nothing else remains perhaps
but two bright planets spiralling,
each equal prey to equal traps,
a furious, loving fall & spin,
blind in furious revolutions,
raging as they spin & fall,
blind to all great machinations
like the last couple in the shuttered dancehall.
The more I hunt, the more I find
the more I find, I tread less lightly.
It should suffice the patient mind
to never know but know how likely.
Berlin, December 2020
Popcorn out, feet up, let the playlist play and transport you...
I've got a gift of gratitude for supporters who can give that bit extra to support me & my menagerie. So for a one-off contribution of €40+ or for the higher levels of monthly support, you get six months of letters, lyrics & visuals like everyone else, but with one added gift:
A live CD.
On the 12th February, me and a murmuration of starlings swooped down on a Berlin ballroom and played an unforgettable set. Some wise owls were on hand to record the whole thing and now I've published that as a CD.
I'm releasing the videos one by one over the next few days, which you can keep up with here. But the CD is exclusively available to you with the Seven Ravens subscription option.
It's not a perfect, crisp studio-level set of products. Instead, it's a sweet souvenir of a unforgettable night, or an insight into what my shows sound like. Most of all, it's a gesture of thanks for that extra mile of support - as the crow flies.
Most of you, most of the time, are not where I am. I can send you the occasional recording or email, but our interactions are purely digital. That doesn't quite cut the mustard for me - how about you?
Well, raven mail is here to change all that. Wherever you are in the world, my birds will find you. Tied to their talons: a new poem, an old photo and a finely crafted (I like to imagine) letter.
Great! How do I get signed up?
There are two ways to sign up for raven mail: by contributing monthly until December, or once. The monthly options you will find under a tab on this page called "Rewards"; the once-off options are under the tab called "Single Rewards".
What are the two choices?
I'm setting up raven mail as an alternative to playing music live. But the show must go on, and so I'm recording in the studio this summer. If you'd like to support both wings of this project, then call for that extra raven.
1) Six Ravens, one per month between the solstices, June until December. €5/mth or once-off €30 for six months.
2) Seven Ravens, one per month and a seventh for good fortune and in gratitude. You pay a extra as a way of supporting my upcoming recordings. The seventh raven will bring you a live CD, recorded in February with a trio and a choir. €10/mth or a once-off donation (from €40).
Finally, I'm working on how to present an option for those of you whose feathers have been ruffled by coronavirus and who cannot access the options above. If you want raven mail, I want to reach you, too, no matter how light or heavy your treasure trove grows.birds will reach you anyway. If that's you, don't hesitate to email me.
Every month, a bird will stop at your door bearing a letter, a lyric & an illustration. The first will arrive in January.
Order by Tue 15th Dec for the Christmas edition! It includes a free bonus envelope containing a hand-illustrated gift card & a personal letter that explains the concept of Raven Mail.
Save 20% by securing the whole year now - see the "Single Rewards" tab above. This subscription can be cancelled at any time during the year. For every euro €1 you spend, 10c is donated to XENION, an assocation that sponsors therapy, housing & cultural activities for traumatised refugees.
This one's for the patrons! This is an alternative model of involvement. Instead of buying tickets, music, prints & whatever else as it comes, you give a regular contribution & in return have access to every corner of the Rookling world.
So far, 2021 holds a number of exciting things:
(or a live stream, depending on where you live & the state of the pandemic)
Book a whole year of access now with any one-off contribution of €100 or more. See the "Single Rewards" tab above.
Ten cents of every euro you spend goes to Xenion, an assocation that sponsors therapy & creativity for refugees.