​​​​​​​I had a morse code machine, two metal boxes attached by a thin wire, a red and black one - with a dial and a small tapping arm you could play it in the dark.

 

I have a memory of the sound it made, the rhythmic irregularity which then turned into a repetition and found its own regularity. The ear was the eye listening for the familiar. 

 

On the top floor flat in central Madrid I listened intently to Sidney Bechet while watching bull fights on a black and white television. We lived on the top floor of a block of flats with a caged lift and neighbours whose two small dogs always peed on the way down for their morning walk. 

 

I wanted to play the trombone. The trombone teacher said, ‘I’m sorry, your arm is too short.’ I was left with the piano. I never became that good at reading notes. I won competitions because I could learn a piece by heart. 

 

The next house we lived in had a grand piano with bay windows overlooking a pond. I tried to play Take Five but never got beyond the first strophe.

 

Playing without notes seemed to impress the jury. Sometimes I ask musicians to play what I’ve written. The notes aren’t the problem. It’s the rhythm that gets me. 

 

I found an old saxophone in a garage in the outskirts of Gothenburg. which I paid a hundred pounds for. If I had had a choice I would have been a singer like my father. 

 

I like it when the voice begins with one sonic signature and then shifts into another. The voice I have is capable of such variations. 

 

My father had this gift. I never saw or heard him sing live. In fact, I hardly saw him. Maybe twice. Once in a flat on Earl’s Court Road. 

 

The second time was during an intermission at the Roundhouse. He was a singer known to be the man with a thousand voices, working the clubs in London. Later, he became a photographer, taking photos of hotel lobbies.

 

I cut my right hand so a friend leant me a small accordion and said, ‘Play this every day. It will help heal the wound.’ 

 

I moved to Stockholm and lived in a caravan by the sea building traditional wooden sailing boats. I was invited to work on a production by a friend. A tango opera. 

 

Those playing were the avant-garde of the Swedish musical scene – Fläsk Kvartetten, Bad Liver (Waits covers in Swedish translation!) and two lead singers, one operatic and the other a kind of lilting Swedish cowboy. 

 

Together, they sang the songs of Gardel, Mendizabal and Villoldo while we played – our instruments – accordion, piano, cello, violin, saxophones, trumpet and contra-bass. 

 

Sometimes we had a dog on stage. She was called Doris. She bowed very well.

 

I wrote for silent movies, performed spoken word pieces. Vertovs’ Man with a Movie Camera, Stroheim’s Greed, Murnau’s Nosferatu.

 

One day I was in London and saw an advert for a circus music composer. It marked the beginning of a relationship that was to span two decades.

 

This work with drama evolved into a particular method of composing which I eventually gave the name or epitaph of ‘fragment composition’. It seemed to work, allowing the compositions to cater for the uncertainty of the brilliance of the circus.

 

One day fourteen musicians for no reason at all began to rehearse, inventing pieces quickly. No one knew what they were playing. No one had any note paper. Nothing was written down.

 

We played as loud and as violently as we could, a mad unmanaged cacophony of sound. Zappa would have been proud.

 

Circus Bizarre Orchestra ran from 1990 – 1997. Beginning in Malmø, it moved to Stockholm and then Gothenburg. It’s difficult to explain exactly what style it had. The compositions were unruly – classical, opera, rock, cabaret, improvised chaos, noise.

 

The splintered cadence of …. Nick Cave. I place him on his own. We performed together in Sweden. He was touring his book ‘And the Ass Saw The Angel’. 

 

I was invited to perform because I was busy performing at most poetry festivals. We were in Gothenburg first and then Lund, Sweden. I think the place was called Mejeriet. 

 

There was a grand piano. He asked for it to be pulled out. We sat in the dressing room before the show. He asked whether there was anyone who could sing. I said yes. He took us through the chorus of John Fogerty’s – Rollin’ On The River’. 

 

He sang. I did the backing. Later, he gave me the book he’d used to read on tour.

 

At that time, I was living in an old factory on the edge of Malmø. The kitchen area was about 100 square metres, the bedrooms about 60 square metres each. 

 

We decided to pay the rent by having a club. Malmø was home to a small group of individuals who called themselves ‘The Non-Stop Kollektiv’. I met Marek. He was from Poland. He said, ‘You should meet the others.’ 

 

Together, we founded ‘The Kitchen Club’, a momentary and monumental Dada-esque occurrence in an otherwise mundane landscape.

 

I moved to Bristol where I met a man called Jess. He introduced me to The Cube and then moved to Paris. I founded the Cube Improvisation Orchestra on a whim. Now it exists without me. I suppose that’s some kind of legacy. 

 

There have followed collaborations with The Welsh National Opera, NFS Circus, Bath Theatre Royal, Bristol Old Vic Youth Theatre, Lyric Hammersmith, Circus 250, Yeknøm Dance Collective, Many Rivers Films, LIT Circus, Tobacco Factory, Shred Theatre Productions, Fairground Theatre and Kaaos Kaamos in Belgium. This last production, directed by Pau Portobello from Barcelona, left a lasting impression. 

At the moment I have been asked to compose piano pieces for the right hand only.