Was this to be my fate
Doomed to my destiny
A flame burning in obscurity
I made a promise to the stars
To stay loyal to my heart
In affairs of love and art
Believing always that
This dedication
Will be its own reward
Things will be fine
I am the master of my mind
But if in staring at the sun
I end my days
Blinded and bewildered
By these visions
And lose the meaning of it all
Still I have seen that light
That seared its form
Onto my burning lids
And now
Through my mind's isolation
A fountain of frustration
In idiot tongues
I struggle to express
Strange transmutations of the flesh
Torn between kinship and contempt
A shattered vessel whose cracks vent
A strangled scream into the world
Not for the ears or eyes
Of those who cannot comprehend
The suffering of dogs
This weight of mortal existence
The burden of time
We're tethered to this flesh
Like a load around our necks
And made to stand on auction blocks
The poet as prostitute
A noble profession
But one cannot sell a soiled soul
That no one wants to buy
And if I cannot fly
Then let me and my vision die
So others may be born
From the horizon where I'll fall
Into the blazing sunset
Of my own creation
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RESPECT
The two old ladies
Who came to sit at the other end of our table
Recoiled in disgust when I kissed my boyfriend
âDo you mindâ - one said
âI'm sorryâ I replied
âI'm just kissing my boyfriend goodbye
I won't be seeing him for a whileâ
âCan't you get a room!?â she continued...
âWe don't know what it might lead to!â
Her friend then piped in with...
âIt's just a sign of respect!â
Respect
So to not kiss my boyfriend is a sign of respect
To you
As if you would have known I was respecting you
By not kissing my boyfriend
Had we not kissed
And respect for what?
For your generation
For Margaret Thatcher
For Section 28
A law she brought in which denied any discussion
About the existence of people like me
That was implemented when I was ten years old
And lasted throughout my schooldays
Where I was spat at
Beaten up
Called faggot, poofter, queer
And pushed toward suicide
Silenced by law
With no one to turn to for help
When I tied a noose around my thirteen-year-old neck
And fell
Hoping to end this suffering
Only to find that my feet just touched the ground
Respect has to be earned
And I owe you nothing
The healing that I feel
In expressing affection
Toward the person I love
In public, without fear
Is the greatest comfort to that inner child
Who wanted to die
Because no one allowed him a voice
So fuck you
And your respect
For now I have self-respect
Understanding
And love
Not only for the man whose lips met mine
Under your judgmental glare
But also for the thirteen-year-old
With no hope
And a noose around his neck
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My birthday gig at The Hope & Ruin this year. Come early as Iâll be opening the night with a few songs at half seven. Also featuring my band SPLEEN, Human Leather and Plague Arcade.
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Thought to have been lost until today, the music video for the title track of Oli Spleen's 2013 debut album is now ten years old.
Join Oli and friends at Brighton's Hope & Ruin on February 10th 2023 to celebrate his 45th birthday as well as ten years as a solo artist and twenty years since the creation of his first band The Flesh Happening.
Fag Machine by Lucky Tooth films, directed by Fox Fisher and Lewis Hancox, shot at Brighton's Queen's Arms. Eternal thanks to all involved.
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In ten days Iâll be releasing my fifth studio album âStill Lifeâ comprising of ten original tracks. The album is something of a concept album on nature, life, mortality, grief and death.
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In the folk tradition, particularly before the days of recording, when songs were passed on by word of mouth, songs would be constantly evolving and changing as they were retold.
When I write an original song I very rarely take my inspiration from other music, Iâm more likely to draw from my own life, or get inspired by books, poetry etc. I have however adapted a few lyrics whilst crediting the original writer.
The first example of this was the opening track from my covers album âFlowers for Foot Footâ which was a song I called âFuneral Dirgeâ and was originally from the TV series âFraggle Rockâ which was my favourite show as a child. The original song I adapted my version from was a funeral dirge which Boober Fraggle had written called âDixie Wailinââ, I loved the song but as an English person the Dixie thing didnât make much sense to me so I adapted the lyrics whilst still crediting the original songwriters when I uploaded the song.
Since then I have also recorded my versions of two French songs which I love, Jaques Brelâs âLa chanson des vieux amantsâ (Song of Old Lovers) which I developed and rewrote from the Mort Shuman translation, and Barbaraâs âLâaigle Noirâ which I translated myself from scratch.
As for my original songs they are 100% original, though undoubtedly we all take inspiration from somewhere. I have ADHD so my ideas tend to come from 100 different places at once.
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In 1999 I was across the road from the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho when a nail bomb went off killing three and injuring many more. Had the bomber known the gay bars as well as I did, he would undoubtedly have targeted the bar I was in at the time; the more popular âComptonsâ.
Five years ago today I was sickened and horrified to hear of another attack on LGBT+ people, this time in Pulse nightclub in Orlando Florida. With American gun laws as they are, more people died that night than in the Soho attack. 49 people were massacred and many more injured.
I was in London at the time that the news came through, I remember stopping at a gay bar on the way to the Janeâs Addiction concert where I was headed, we had five minutes of silence to honour the dead and wounded. I felt powerless, I wish I could have done something to help.
Five years on and itâs been an absolute honour and a privilege to be included on this album among a great many fantastic writers, as well as those closer to the events of June 12th, 2016. I was commissioned to write and read a poem to commemorate the wounded and dead of Pulse, Orlando. The album is also a response to the âDisarm Hateâ documentary.
My poem âLet That Bulletâ takes its name from the last speech of Gay Rights activist Harvey Milk, which he recorded nine days before he was assassinatedâŚ
âThis tape is to be played only in the event of my death by assassination.
I fully realise that a person who stands for what I stand forâa gay activistâbecomes the potential target for a person who is insecure, terrified, afraid or very disturbedâŚ. Knowing that I could be assassinated at any moment, I feel itâs important that some people know my thoughts. I cannot prevent people from feeling angry, frustrated and mad in response to my death, but I hope they will take the frustration and that five, ten, one hundred, a thousand would rise. I would like to see every gay lawyer, every gay architect come out, stand up and let the world know. That would do more to end prejudice overnight than anybody could imagine. Only that way will we start to achieve our rights. ⌠All I ask is for the movement to continue, and if a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet doorâŚâ
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LâAIGLE NOIR
So Iâve done a lyric video for my translation of one of my favourite songs LâAigle Noir. The EP; âThe Eagle & The Doveâ is set for distribution on my birthday, February 9th, the day before my collaborator (on this, Gaslight Illuminations and the next album Still Life) - Mishkin Fitzgeraldâs birthday (February 10th).
The EP was recorded and arranged by Birdeatsbaby at The Nest Studios Brighton and features vocals and whistling from Catherine T of Belgian group The People Underground.
In a way this EP is my protest against Brexit and an expression of my love of European culture. I plan to sing these songs and more in French eventually.
For those who arenât familiar with this song and what itâs about I might need to put a...
â ď¸ TRIGGER WARNING â ď¸
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LâAigle Noir is a metaphor for the deep trauma its author and singer Barbara experienced as a child:
As a young French Jewish girl she was hiding from the nazis with her family when her estranged father returned to the family only to sexually molest her and leave again. In the song her father takes the form of âThe Black Eagleâ.
As the word eagle doesnât rhyme with much in English my translation hinges around the phrase âbird of preyâ.
I did my utmost to retain the heart and essence of the original lyrics and the intent behind the words as well as retaining her use of rhyme and alliteration where possible.
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So undoubtedly 2020 was for many of us the worst year in living memory. Tragically I lost some friends and acquaintances to suicide and it was the first year of my entire life where I havenât seen my mother. Plus the best run of live shows of my life had to be cancelled. All in all itâs been a terrible year but Iâm very grateful to have had the support of my sister and her family throughout this time so Iâm going to try to focus on the positives with my rundown of the last twelve months.
2020 started for me with great anxiety; fires were raging throughout Australia and the political landscape was horrific with most governments of the world having voted in narcissistic sociopaths as their leaders; people who have no regard to the environment or human decency whatsoever. In the UK, despite my best efforts we were stuck with four more years under a conservative government. With Brexit looming and more austerity ahead, my last vestiges of hope were crushed by the general opinion that the greatest sociopath of them all Donald Trump would be sure to secure a second term as President of the USA. As a climate change denier (on top of a long list of other atrocities), four more years of Trump was sure to have a negative impact on the whole planet. To take my mind off all this I focused on the work I had started in 2019.
In January my main collaborator of the moment Nick Hudson and I were wrapping up the albums âFlowers for Foot Footâ and âNight Sweats and Fever Dreamsâ and we embarked on what was my first trip to Ireland as Nick had composed some music for the Derek Jarman exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. It was a fantastic few days soaking up the culture of Joyce, Bacon, Wilde and Beckett and soaking up a lot of whisky and Guinness too.
In February we released the covers album âFlowers for Foot Footâ digitally and made plans with Straydog Pictures for a music video for the opening track âFuneral Dirgeâ in which I was to play a corpse who jumps out of his coffin to conduct his own funeral. We booked a stunning church, St Maryâs on St James Street Brighton for the shoot in March and made plans organising costumes, props and extras.
Then on March 1st my band SPLEEN joined with Nickâs band The Academy of Sun and our friends in Idle Bones to release SPLEENâs self titled debut album at Brightonâs Hope & Ruin. Though there was talk of coronavirus hitting Brighton then, no measures had yet been put in place and little did any of us know that our plans for the year were about to drastically change.
SPLEEN had some of our best gigs ever lined up with our first proper shows in London and beyond to look forward to. However, one day when out on my daily shop I couldnât move for people panic-buying, the supermarket had four times the usual customers and no one was wearing a mask. I couldnât get my usual food and toilet roll and I soon started to feel very unwell and decided that it would be unwise for us to go ahead with the video shoot as planned.
Talk of a lockdown became common news and the thought of being stuck in my tiny Brighton flat with no supplies and possible contagion all around was so horrifying that my sister made plans for me to be brought to her place just outside of Hastings where she converted a shed with everything I might need to get by in isolation. My friend Amelia had felt sure her family had also been in contact with the virus so we took the precautions necessary with PPE and disinfectants and she gave me a lift to St Leonards where my sister lives.
For the first few weeks while I still exhibited symptoms I stayed in the shed with my sister posting me meals through the window. I was also able to walk down the garden, into the adjoining field and commune with nature. At this time the main road at the front of the house was so quiet that I was able to capture the dawn chorus uninterrupted which I planned to use on the recording of the song "Nature Boy" which Birdeatsbaby and I had already started recording for the EP âThe Eagle & The Doveâ. I also started making daily vlogs which Jake of StrayDog Pictures asked me to send over as he thought it could make an interesting documentary.
I guessed then that the great run of gigs we had planned would have to be cancelled but I didnât expect that first lockdown to last for four months. After a couple of weeks my symptoms disappeared and I got to spend more time with my family and the other animals who live with them. Additions to the family included a new puppy Daphne who I bonded with greatly, also Doris the sheep surprised us all by getting over the neighbours fence and becoming pregnant with twin lambs.
I realised how lucky I was to be among nature and with family throughout these terrible times; it was springtime, the sun was shining and life and beauty was bursting all around me. On top of this no airplanes in the sky meant that my usual anxiety around climate change and the environment was temporarily calmed. The world was living a nightmare but there was nothing I could do. It was as if the whole world was panicking (as I had been for years) so perhaps for once I could give myself a break and focus on just being there for my family.
I halved and eventually came off my antidepressants for the summer and made plans to release the AIDS themed album âNight Sweats & Fever Dreamsâ whilst working on a charity single âThe Western Pierâ with Mishkin and friends to raise money to keep venues running after the pandemic. Also fortnightly Zoom chats with the band meant we were able to outline plans for new songs as well.
With the music video and gigs cancelled and the new album scheduled for release twenty years on from the events that inspired it; (my hospitalisation at the hands of AIDS defining complications in the summer of 2000) - I decided to learn video editing myself to make my own promotional music videos for the album. The first of these âJust a Dreamâ echoed thematically with the anxieties of the current day. With no budget and only myself to shoot I found a green antique glass that my grandmother had owned and shot the whole thing through the glass, interspersing the selfie footage with clips of old horror and German expressionist films. Later I did videos for âDestroyer of Worldsâ, âKamikazeâ, and âThe Bedroomâ among others.
When the first lockdown was relaxed I had a couple of friends visit my sister's for socially distanced outdoor gatherings and soon we tentatively made plans for my return to Brighton and to resume band practice. SPLEEN developed our new song âBeastâ and we performed a live stream from our rehearsal studios at Brighton Electric for Coastal Currents. This performance was watched live by a few thousand people and a small clip of it was aired on local BBC TV. We also performed our first (and only to date) socially distanced gig at Bar 42 in Worthing.
Jake released his documentary of my lockdown from the footage I had sent under the title "At Risk: Surviving a Pandemic with HIV", the film won the audience favourite award at Brighton Rocks film festival.
When the second lockdown looked to be nearing I returned to my sisters in the country and made plans to release the covers EP which Iâd recorded with Birdeatsbaby and Catherine T, called âThe Eagle & The Doveâ. Sadly, due to problems around getting clearance for my translation of Barbaraâs French classic âLâAigle Noirâ, the EP was postponed and instead I released an edit of the opening track, Eden Ahbez's âNature Boyâ, to which I edited a video using footage from James Bidgoodâs queer classic âPink Narcissusâ. The amazing artist John Lee Bird continued his âIs a Dollâ series with a doll of me which got to hang out with my dear friend and mentor Salena Goddenâs doll, as we couldnât in real life.
As autumn turned to winter I could see how hard hitting this year had been for those of my friends who werenât as fortunate as I in having family and loved ones for support. I did what I could to keep contact with friends online, when I discovered a couple of these friends had taken their own lives I felt devastated and wished I could have done more to help them.
This year has been a year of upheavals and altered plans for all of us and though itâs not been easy Iâm hoping that all these upheavals in the world can be a catalyst for positive change.
I had become dismayed and utterly frustrated at the political landscape here and abroad. I loved being a part of Europe and hated to witness the ugliness and xenophobia that Brexit had unleashed amongst my fellow inhabitants of this doomed plague island which I now find myself stranded on. However, to witness the downfall of Donald Trump was for me a real ray of hope amongst the chaos, confusion and despair. Hopefully his brand of dishonest, hateful, scapegoating and gaslighting politics will be a thing of the past and we can all look forward to a far brighter 2021.
A Happy New Year as is possible to you all wherever you may be. Hereâs to a far better 2021. đĽ
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My band SPLEEN now have a YouTube page.
Please subscribe and enjoy!
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Today is Bandcamp Friday and the new EP âThe Eagle & The Doveâ has just been released. This is a free download but as I could do with a little extra income; for today only Iâm reducing my entire back catalogue by 65% so you can get EVERYTHING for just ÂŁ9.45.
The EP was recorded with my fantastic collaborators in Birdeatsbaby who you can also support on Bandcamp and on Patreon. It consist of three cover songs Eden Ahbezâs âNature Boyâ, Jacques Brelâs âLa Colombeâ (The Dove) and Barbaraâs âLâAigle Noirâ which I translated myself as âBird of Preyâ which is easier to sing in English than âThe Black Eagleâ which is the direct translation. ...That song was even harder to sing than it was to translate but thankfully I had the help of my dear friend Catherine T of âThe People Undergroundâ encouraging me and adding her voice to the EP, you can also support her band on Bandcamp.
The fantastic cover art is by Natascha Artworx who you can support on Patreon.
#bandcampfriday
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SPLEEN the band are live streaming an hour long show on Audiotrope tonight from 8pm (BST).
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So it was about this time, twenty years ago that I had recently come out of hospital having survived (among other things) tuberculosis and a pericardial effusion. I was learning to walk again, slowly regaining the use of my legs and getting the strength back in my body and eating lots as the AIDS defining complications had left me skeletal thin with severe muscle wastage. I still had years of ongoing complications ahead and was housing an inflamed lymph node in my lung the size of a golf ball as well as tuberculosis which remained in my blood and lymph system and would not be discovered until much later.
If I were to tell myself then that I would be writing this twenty years later, having written a book which was inspired by my experiences in hospital, as well as upwards of a hundred songs in three great bands and released four âsoloâ albums, one which was inspired by my hospitalisation and launched twenty years after it; Iâm not sure I would have believed it.
Okay so I didnât choose the path to money, I didnât achieve fame, didnât pursue formal academia (though I constantly educate myself), I have no material possessions of great worth but I have a very strong connection with my family now and a great many friends and collaborators who I love and care about and who I can rely on if I need them.
When I was facing death aged twenty two I looked at my life and felt as if I had done nothing. I would be dead soon and that would be it. I promised myself that if I lived another year I would write a book and if my health improved and I lived a bit longer than a year I would try to learn to sing and develop my poems into songs.
By the time I faced my thirties I had achieved all this so I faced another crisis as I had prepared myself for death far better than I had prepared for a life beyond those goals which I had set for myself. Little did I know the best was yet to come.
Today Iâm okay with the idea of living a long life, but whether I die soon or live beyond my eighties I think I will be able to face death with much more confidence this time around; with the sense that I did what I could to bring meaning and purpose to my life. Until then Iâll just keep on as I have been, being creative, for myself and for those who care and support me in what I do.
Hereâs to the next twenty years!
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Twenty years ago this Sunday, (exactly twenty two and a half years to the day from my birth) my life changed forever. My niece Matilda was born and I had what I thought would be a routine HIV check up before visiting the newborn baby.
When the doctor examined me they said I was in no fit condition to see a new born baby and I was promptly checked into to an isolated room at St Bartholomewâs Hospital London.
I had been feeling unwell before my hospitalisation but the doctor in Hastings had assured me I was just adjusting to the new antiretroviral medication. Apparently this was not the case, I had full blown AIDS with symptoms which the doctors would later discover to be tuberculosis, pneumonia, peripheral neuropathy and a pericardial effusion (infection of the heart) among other things.
My sister hadnât planned to have children but my HIV diagnosis had changed her mind. I felt convinced that I would die and my niece would fill the void that my death would leave in my family.
Within a week I was very ill, had fully lost the use of my legs, had extreme fevers and chills and was hallucinating due to the medication the doctors were trying out on me. At around this time another doctor came and told me that I was within my rights to turn down the medication they were prescribing me and I could be dead in little over a week if wanted. I was given the choice of death and in spite of it all, for the first time in my life I knew for sure that I wanted to live. If I could live one more year I would write a book. Maybe my niece might get to know me before I die, I might even live long enough to be remembered by her.
The road to full recovery was long but within a month the medication was effective enough that I was let out of hospital and told that I was well enough to hold my niece (see first picture). The book I promised myself I would write was called âDepravikaziâ and was published in 2003 by Running Water Publications. At the Brighton book launch that summer I formed my first band âThe Flesh Happeningâ, some of the songs I wrote with that band made it in to this yearâs HIV / AIDS themed album âNight Sweats & Fever Dreamsâ.
Two decades on and Matilda is about to turn twenty, sheâs an expert in ancient history and cultures and has some fantastic tattoos. Iâm so glad to have been a part of her and her sisters lives, to know them and watch them grow up has given my life so much meaning, hereâs to a great many more years!
Happy Birthday Tilda!
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The Bedroom (feat. Nick Hudson)
From the album âNight Sweats & Fever Dreamsâ. Recorded with Nick Hudson, Forbes Coleman and Lizzy Carey at Audiobeach Studios Brighton.
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LâAigle Noir (my first translation)
So among the tasks I set myself for my next collaboration with Mishkin and Birdeatsbaby was to translate and cover a song by my favourite French singer Barbara.
Translating the song wasnât too bad. I had attempted others of hers before LâAigle Noir. ...For this I started with a direct, literal translation and then rewrote the lines in my style, keeping her original use of rhyme, alliteration etc. I first showed the lyrics to my friend Catherine Thieron who had translated my poetry into French and she told me I had captured the essence of the original. Some things had to be changed to better fit though as is always the case in translating, âBird of Preyâ was a better fit than âThe Black Eagleâ for instance.
Then it came to singing the song. I have sang covers of everyone from Kate Bush, to Roy Orbison, Brel, Bowie, Patti Smith and many more. I choose to cover songs that I love and feel I canât possibly do justice to as I know this will push me out of my âcomfort zoneâ (not that I ever had one) and test my limits. ...But boy is this one testing my limits.
Yesterdayâs attempt defeated me, though I got well past half way and recorded my vocals for a second Brel cover too. I will try again next Friday. Wish me luck.
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