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I saved Jesus and then she saved me.

“Wake up! Are you still dreaming?”  Over the last six months, I have been telling one story consistently and fervently - the story of my friendship with Jesus…the fox. Storytelling is my creative lifeblood. It brings me in this wonderful state of excited urgency where I can explore and dream. Some stories take epic effort to write. Others write themselves or have always been written. Such is the story of me and Jesus - the boy and his fox.  Ever since the four-legged fairy walked towards me on Good Friday, with that heart-wrenching air of anxious bravery, hungry, ailing and pleading for kindness, I knew that this was big. It was as if she had chosen me to tell the world about her in what was going to become my best story. Our best story. “God…you are obsessed with this fox.” You think? Well, erm…yes, I am obsessed. When have I not been obsessed with the matters that move me? What should I be doing instead? Skimming the surface? Dipping in and out? Sounds like a bloody waste of effort. 
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Banya

My recent visit to the traditional Russian “banya” in the London's Docklands is an event I shan’t forget anytime soon and one I’d strongly recommend to anyone with a taste for the authentic. A dear friend of mine had dared me to go and witness “the most raw & real bathing ritual”. It was a challenge I could not resist. The outside was intimidating enough. The dingy alley along the railway track in Canning Town where the establishment was situated reminded me of a back street in Bangkok minus the heat and the radiant mango-selling grannies. Barricades of rubbish led me to the entrance of what resembled an unemployment centre in Northern England, left to its own devices since the 70s. The reception area featured a plain eatery / vodka room with a constellation of sturdy square tables covered in green vinyl tablecloth - undoubtedly high-camp material in Shoreditch…but not here. Two big-belied comrades in baggy swimwear had positioned their giant pyramid torsos in front of a tv sc
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London

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This is my 10th year in London, the brash, alluring, cruel, sexy giant of a city. Almost 10 years ago, I left my adoptive (and forever second) home - the wondrous dollhouse village Amsterdam.    I dreamed of coming to the jungle that is London and here I am - almost a Londoner. I feel love for this mesmerising jungle, a love that’s fed by the many songs of innocence and songs of experience I sang and heard.  I am the (almost) Londoner who sheds a tear down the tube escalators and smiles at street musicians as he jumps over puddles of rain, then sighs at the sight of bird ensembles pirouetting above black cabs.    Like the half-opaque buildings in this photograph, there is always more to excite and lure in this jungle. The beating heart of the West End on Saturday night, the soul-nourishing cheer of the farmers markets on a spring morning, the weathered hands of the homeless, the kindness of strangers, the dead pigeon splattered across the asphalt, the dawn of a new beginning…it’s all p
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Let me buy a ticket

Good Sunday. Let’s see how easy it is to buy a ticket for an event on your phone in 2021, from the comfort of your bed where you are enjoying a well-deserved lie-in. It’s 9:50 on a Sunday morning and I’m still in bed - rather unusual as for once, I’m not in my excitable child mode, fearing that I’m missing out if not constantly active. Facebook flashes an ad for “An Evening with Nigella Lawson” at the Southbank Centre. Now that’s a lady whom I’d love to spend an evening with. Well-spoken, lushly feminine, maker of rich, life-affirming food (which is not two pieces of extra vegan beetroot in the middle of a massive plate). So, let’s go. The Southbank Centre website looks well designed and is likely to have Apple Pay - I’m not prepared to leave my bed and look for my plastic card and its “long number”. We begin with seat selection. I know that these interfaces were created for desktop (like, 10 years ago) but the Southbank is making it extra difficult. I literally need to be Ilko Needleh
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Draußen ist feindlich (lockdown diaries)

Words of fiction   Upon rumours that selling coffee may be banned and nothing but grocery shops will remain open for the foreseeable future, I venture out of the house. I put on my warmest hooded jacket and conceal two thirds of my face’s real estate with a covering. A hesitant step over the threshold. It drizzles and it chills. It’s mid January in Northern Europe (which Britain is now remotely associated with) and the winter is finally kicking in.  Goldfrapp’s “Utopia” has been chosen to accompany me on my perilous journey to my local cafe slash bakery. Escapist pop for an escape from home. The chainsaw of a bass dictates the tempo of my steps. The police can fine me if I trespass the five mile radius I’m allowed to play within. The State only allows for “essential” shops to stay open. The State will be tightening the restrictions in the days to come. Memories of growing up in communism cloud my head. Queuing up for oranges and bananas stocked once a winter in each town. Being afraid
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Ode to the Sabbath (lockdown diaries)

O glorious Sunday! You are awake and alive. Time to put on your bestest, most ornate face covering, dash to your local cafe slash bakery and reward yourself with a nice double espresso and a chocolate croissant (maybe even a chocolate brownie to keep up your lockdown curves). You can then enjoy the treats whilst walking back home, severely avoiding any naughty early riser who happens to invade your assigned corridor. Particularly the woman barking “Jesus loves you” through a megaphone on the corner of Wyndham road (seriously gurrl, that early?) O the little things in life.
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Worst gay man's nightmare (lockdown diaries)

You’ve run out of your only-available-online coffee capsules, so you nip out to your local cafe, slash bakery (in a timidly gentrified Zone 2 neighbourhood). It’s Bank Holiday Sunday, technically still August, temperature-wise it feels like November. Still, you decide that you ought to acknowledge the end of the season and you throw on a pair of old shorts that really should have been binned last summer. You combine them with a Gold’s Gym T-shirt your ex boyfriend gave you years ago which, just like him, has had its time. Final touch - trainers and socks that clearly don’t work together but then again, you don’t have to put on a show for your local cafe, slash bakery. In terms of fashion sense, you feel closest to Miranda Hart or Celeste Barber. Thankfully, the cafe is empty as Britain (including timidly gentrified neighbourhoods in Zone 2) is unanimously hungover and feeling sorry for itself (I won’t mention Brexit - oops, I did!) at this moment in time. You collect your double esp
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BCN night street vibe

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Can you breathe it (through your funky mouth covering)? Can you smell it? Can you taste it? Can you feel it (crawling underneath your skin)? The BCN night street vibe. It’s in the smile of a shadow. In the sigh of relief, the nod of camaraderie, the resonance of distant guitars and all the muffled echoes and laugher you permit yourself to hear. It’s right here, tonight.
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The unmaking

Taking apart furniture in order to destroy it is a strange concept. Especially furniture that has been custom made for you, to fit your space and meet your needs. Like this wardrobe. One by my one, the planks surrender and collapse as the screws wiggle out of their holes betraying the construct that holds all parts together.   These same planks used to be the shelves on which my clothes rested - the clothes I’d grab swiftly in the morning before going to work or p ick carefully in the evening ahead of an exciting date. And here I am - unmaking, freeing space, letting go in a home that will be “mine” for four more days. The new owner will reclaim this territory and make it their own. Soon another wardrobe will grace this space. Its dimensions, colour, facade, posture, gaze and spirit will be different but they will feel just right...to the new owner.
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Together apart (lockdown diaries)

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In this upside-down or downside up, we are together apart. Our heart-to-hearts morph into slapsticks as you lie on your living room floor for hours on end, surrendered to the camera eye. There is joy and bliss in our clumsy witless slo-mo banter and even your carpet is smiling at me. We switch between languages and time zones, mixing memories with daydreams. “This train is being held to regulate the service”, we are told and hence we wait together...apart. Cause upside-down or downside-up, we are friends. For life.
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Let's go to NYC

Let's go to New York City tonight. Let's have sushi in the Meatpacking District. The tunes will be dreamy. The girls will be wearing halter tops and big, big sunglasses. The boys will be hatted. And handsome. The music will be spreading itself thin across the rooftops. There will be magnetism and chemistry and tears and break-ups and every...thing in-between. Just imagine.
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Hello Godstar

“You can only be a Godstar when you’ve passed on” Genesis P-Orridge has left us. Genesis - the wrecker of civilisation, the parent of industrial music, the new social order priest/ess, the singer, the artist, the poet, the philosopher. Someone who literally cut himself up, William Burroughs-style, to live their life as an art experiment and prove unconditional love. Categories, styles or pronouns couldn’t define h/er/them. The sound of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic tv (two of their most significant musical projects) was often intentionally unlistenable and Gen’s musical legacy will likely remain dear to his devoted order of followers only. But it is when they spoke that the magic happened and it was convincing and accessible to many. H/er interviews were like sermons, articulate, relevant and educational, which told the story of a non-binary, non-exploitative, infinitely free better world. A world based on love, trust and (comm)unity. "It is courage, courage, courage, that rai
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Beyond the tunnel vision

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Is it an iris or a peacock feather? Or the iris of a peacock feather? Is the concoction of memories, aspirations, traumas and biases that enables my vision connected? Are my volumes of life experience by my side to guide and mentor me or in the way to obstruct me from discovering the world uninhibitedly? Let’s see beyond the tunnel vision.
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Angels for an hour

There is something selfless and infinitely generous about the act of piano playing in train or underground stations. The random performers don’t do it for money. They don’t do it for fame. In fact, they are mostly anonymous and invisible. They simply enjoy playing music and pleasuring the passers-by, providing a soundtrack to a transient moment to remember. Maybe they are Angels...for an hour.
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The mesmerism of Dead Can Dance

I would have felt poorer if I hadn’t seen Dead Can Dance at the Ancient Theatre in Plovdiv. I would have felt less heartened than I am today, less immune to “the insatiable thirst for power” and less certain of our mandate for generosity of spirit. Lisa and Brendan sang with uninhibited joy, kindness and compassion of historic proportion, breathing life and “dance” into the white Roman marble and uniting the hordes of happy humans who joined their celebration. After the concert, in fact, after the last note of “Severance”, a flock of white birds soared and circled above the amphitheatre for hours, as if guarding the habitat of positive vibrations. Hundreds of happy humans stared at the white birds in the sky, smiling in the balmy night.
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Song for Wednesday

The Mexicans next door cantillate and clap again. The female voices soar like tilt-a-whirls. The male ones sink like the heavy hearts of drop tower riders. This hallowed hymn fuels my modest midweek migraine whilst the shadow of a bullied cat dogs my footsteps.
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This man

These are the songs that let me be. These are the words that spoke to me. These are the tears that cleared my vision and made me see that  these are the wounds that spurted the lava that melted my heart. This is the man I grew into. The man I once drew. He's walking me forth through the day with a pace sometimes unfamiliar. And sometimes I wonder: where on Earth is he leading me to? This is the man. The man who is now drawing you.
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Carry-on

Sleep-laden eyelids. Eyeballs covered with the thick sticky syrup of lethargy...itching. The vulgar yellow light panels at the airport signposted a labyrinth of lies. They promised you a homecoming but took you to...the baggage hall. Sleepwalkers, just like you, are trapped in this upside-down, this detention limbo of almost-home-but-not-there-yet. You count the disconnected pairs of itchy eyes, evacuated by the flicker of life, transfixed on a perpetually revolving empty belt. The conveyer of your belongings. A carousel of the no-fun kind, no frills, no golden horses and fairies, only steel and black rubber. Welcome to the longest minute sequence of your life. It is past midnight and your very last train is departing soon. But wait...the PVC slash curtains are now bulging with suspense and the flicker of life graces your itchy eyes again. One by one, the bags of your fellow sleepwalkers appear on the carousel, like stage-fright ridden members of a rock band after a dramat
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Wishbone

For Brian It was a bright sunny morning in San Diego and the day held a mysterious promise, like a surprise wrapped in a clenched hand begging me to unlock it finger by finger. I had just eaten the richest omelette ever imaginable paired with the sweetest blueberry pancakes and I was in the middle of a kiss more nourishing than sustenance, when I heard a voice. "Forgive me for interrupting you", the voice said. "Could you spare some money to buy me something to eat?" The voice belonged to a man who looked like a messiah of sorts: longish-hair, dark-complexion, haggard body clad in baggy black garments. A man who, as it turned out later, went by the name of Chris. Was there an extra "t" at the end of this name that remained silent? One couldn't help but wonder. Something about hIs humble approach made his ask remarkably audible. I didn't have any cash on me and there was no supermarket around us, so I turned my back on Chris and start
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#LoveIsLove

On my way to the city this morning, my eyes sparkled at the sight of the grand rainbow slogan  # LoveIsLove  proudly crowning Tottenham Court Rd tube station. I was surprised and impressed. An inclusive slogan of such proportion was more likely to be spotted in my former home Amsterdam. It was a bold statement with beautiful design bringing warmth and colour to the busy London crossroad and its hustle and bustle. I tried to take a snap of it, one that would do it the justice, b ut gave up in the end. I am not good at shooting postcards when I can't attach a story to them. Just as I was processing this thought, an attractive trans-woman walked past me. Her elegant attire emphasised her femininity. Her gait was proud. There was a quiet strength to her appearance. Unsurprisingly, I was not the only one who registered that. Two middle-aged British ladies paused their Sunday stroll to Primark in what seemed like utter shock, craned their necks in the direction of the disappearing b
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