The first was a run of The Rules of the Game , a community theatre piece, by Partisan Productions, about ‘secret’ sectarianism. Ms. McGreevy, who you might remember from my teenage years, and myself were responsible for the music: a sort of Weillesque plod through the scenery. I found myself on accordion, an instrument that I can barely brace across my chest, let alone play, which is, of course, the reason I gave up GCSE Music; that and the momentary misstep that I should probably train to become a doctor.

I was lumbered too with accordion responsibilities in Wireless Mystery Theatre’s successful production of Mercury Theatre’s War of the Worlds . All of which makes me regret buying the thing from that poor, dying woman that sold it me. I don’t see that my £10 would have been much help at all.

The worst and most troubling event of last week, though, was Wireless Mystery Theatre’s other endeavour, which was something of a departure into reputable theatre. The company was invited, nay strongly recommended, to perform Carlo Gebler’s Charles & Mary, in Mr. Torrans’s lovely No Alibis bookstore. The radio play was originally broadcast in January of this year and it was hoped we would recreate it for the launch of Mr. Gebler’s new book. Which we did, down to the tinny, distant quality of listening to the original through a transistor radio.

Now, some will suggest that it is because Ms. Clarke, the producer of WMT, is also my Beloved that I was cast as the male lead, Charles Lamb. This couldn’t be further from the truth; the truth is that, because Ms. Clarke is also my Beloved, I couldn’t get out of playing Charles Lamb, however much I begged, as she already has too much information against me. Thankfully, I never have to act again, unless I fall on hard times.

Mr. Gebler’s play is a marvellous piece of work though. It tells the true tale of Charles and Mary Lamb, the authors of the early-19th Century children’s primer, Tales From Shakespeare . Also, incidentally, he was an alcoholic and she was a paranoid schizophrenic who killed their mother. It is easier, I think, to play people without issues or extenuating circumstances, but there is probably a reason why such ideal characters are seldom written. If the intense Ms. Lamb were only plain, there would be no story, and the excellent Ms. Bronagh McCrudden would not have received such plaudits as “capital,” “excellent,” and “a Tour de France.” The last didn’t seem to make much sense.

What affected both the Lambs is dreadfully complex: they were poor, but educated; their mother was overbearing; Mary, the elder, raised Charles, and their relationship was completely co-dependent as a result. Yet, Mr. Gebler, who gave an engaging mini-lecture at the end, was both warm and humane in discussing them and Ms. Lamb’s one fierce and conclusive act: although people may do terrible things, they are not defined by those terrible things. Or, at least, most are defined by their attempts to atone or overcome. This comes from his many years of working with prisoners in Maghaberry and his views on rehabilitation, recidivism, and mental illness were refreshing.

Of course, the other thing that knocked the Lambs off-kilter was books and surrounded by them in No Alibis, one can understand why. The childhood of the Lambs was spent reading romances and fantasy and the Shakespeare that would make their names and lead to their downfall. They could not translate the ideals of fairytales into real-life behaviour. I spent far too much of the performance eying up the copy of Trois par Georges Perec that I had been reading during sound check, unable to translate its ideal French into real-life English. This is, of course, why I gave up GCSE French.

Beautiful woman, New Escapologist

The exciting new issue of New Escapologist has arrived, at last, at my home, where it is now being read by everybody. It is the longest issue yet released, with over one hundred pages, and looks as beautiful as ever. Moreso, even, as the lovely Ms. Samara Lieber has designed a new-look cover.

It deals exclusively with the subject of Bohemianism: a subject distant from my heart. The self-professed Bohemians that I tend to meet are lumbered with privilege and a stubborn, teenaged contrarianism. Thankfully, none of them made it. Instead, Issue Five features articles from the likes of the lovely Mr. Dickon Edwards (on bedsits), the lovely Mr. Neil Scott (on beards), and an interview with the -I’ve never met him, so I can’t say- Mr. Alain de Botton (on record). One of my typically long-winded essays appears, this time on the topic of Mr. Satie, who, himself, was never long-winded.

In glorious revelry over this release, I will include, over the next few days, a few pieces that I wrote that did not make the final publication: some short, fragmentary extrapolations of Bohemia’s appearances in pop lyrics and on rock records. Why, though, you might ask, would I publish here, articles deemed insufficiently good for proper paper release? Well, they have been sitting at the back of a drawer for several months now and the study is really beginning to stink.

Master Flea was, of course, the full-length novel of German Romanticism that my erstwhile collaborator, Mr. Martin White of the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra, had spoken of in great detail through a series of e-mails months before. So great was the detail, in fact, that no clarification was required with the package. He hoped that we might work together on converting the work into a musical. Unfortunately, when the book arrived, I had forgotten all about this. Frankly, I thought I had acquired yet another secret admirer with an inclination to communicate through gruesome fairytales.

Master Flea, our concert musical in one act, was debuted on Monday, February 21st 2011, in the Leicester Square Theatre, which is not a boxing arena in the East Midlands. It starred (and I truly mean starred) Chris Gilvan-Cartwright, as E.T.A. Hoffmann, Colin Hoult as Theodor Hippel, Thom Tuck as Eduard Hitzig, Catharine Rogers as Julia Marc, Martin White as Johannes Kreisler, and Jeremy Limb as Police Chief Kamptz. Music was provided by the Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra and Mr. Foz Foster (from favourites of my adolescence, David Devant & his Spirit Wife ). And appreciative noises were mostly provided by the audience, except for the lovely Ms. Aislinn Clarke, who was trying to capture the performance for posterity, and I, who was largely hyperventilating.

Colin Hoult & MFMO – If I Could Step Inside Your Mind

Most of the songs have been in differing states of completion for years. Since the novel arrived, I had been scribbling lyrical ideas under my desk in work or sneaking to the bathroom in order to check the spelling of character names. Writing lyrics as I read the book – actually, an epic, scholarly work of seven incomprehensible adventures – meant that we ended with much more material than anyone would care to hear. It was too much even for the first, two-and-a-half-hour-long draft that we intended to press into the mouth of Cameron Mackintosh. The script that was used, in the end, was written over three afternoons a week or so before the first performance. The cast managed two rehearsals, I believe. It was slightly shorter than two-and-a-half-hours. Cameron MacIntosh didn’t show. And thank goodness for that; it sold out and he would just have proved a fire hazard.

Cat Rogers & MFMO – I Sleep Amongst The Tall, Tall Flowers

The under-rehearsed nature of the performance was perfectly suited to the work. Unable to understand Hoffmann’s tale ourselves, Mr. White and I agreed that it was best to present the story of how the author attempted to salvage his banned and censored novel as a play. However, if anyone can actually explain to us what happens at the end of Master Flea, we would be eternally grateful.

Mr. Hoffmann wrote the book in 1821, the year before he died. It was to be serialised in a newspaper, but, unfortunately, when sending the first part to his publisher, he forgot to keep a copy for himself. When he wrote the second part, he could barely remember the names of the characters and began to get himself a little confused. By the time he submitted the second section, he had already insulted the Chief of Police, his boss, in a vicious satire and was beginning to fall ill. The conclusion, then, was written in a fug of bodily breakdown and mental turmoil, mostly in the hallucinations of fever, I like to think; in all, not the sort of cohesive narrative that allows one to tell a story through music. Of course, I didn’t know the story was quite so perplexing until I’d reached the second chapter, by which point I had already written forty-five sets of lyrics.

Monday, February 21st 2011 was, also, incidentally, closing night. This draft of the script has been sent to our publisher and I am beginning to feel a little ill. I think I remember most of it though and a Belfast production is sure to come together with as little hands-on effort from me as was this wonderful London show.

I extend my thanks to everybody involved. And thank G-d that Mr. White and I didn’t have to play and perform the whole thing by ourselves.

In one afternoon, it was agreed that we would write and record as many one minute films as we could possibly. In the end, though, we wrote and recorded slightly fewer than we could possibly; I attribute this to very interesting radio documentary about the Derry Walls that came on in Mr. Costello’s car.

If I recall correctly, three films were recorded in all. Maybe four even. And, of course, all the busy contributors missed the submission deadline. However, they will all appear, at weekly intervals, on www.talesofthe.com and things started, at the end of January, with A Serious Matter, a piece starring the excellent Mr. Andrew Croskery and my own Mr. Costello. More will follow.

This week, they posted the following: Robbery for a Minute. In it, one can see m’colleague, Mr. Costello, and myself acting roles not dissimilar to our own characters. It is a veritable cinema of verite. This is something Mr. Costello has threatened to do at every rehearsal since we first played music together at the ages of 15.

Thanks must be extended to Mr. Jim McMorro who edited the whole show. I don’t pretend to know what the music is, but it certainly makes the film exciting, if not listenable.

Sadly, nothing is safe from the Shadow of Death encroaching from the left.

The works of my comrades, Mr. Costello and the divine Misses Parsons and Clarke, are unavailable for various reasons.

The pleasure of compiling the play list was the ease with which one could include female voices. I try always to include my favourite female performers, but, when kissing the bedrock of roll, as one must on genuinely listened-to radio, women will appear only sporadically, tokenistically at times. That is how the canon has been compiled. And, yet, here they are.

However, it is clear that women’s roles in these collaborations are of specific types: the Grand Dame, rescued from drunkenness or insignificance, by young gay men with stars in their eyes (PBS & Dusty Springfield & Liza Minnelli, Bronski Beat & Eartha Kitt, Morrissey & Sandie Shaw, Marc Almond & Gene Pitney, Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballe); the on-loan larynx of the electro track (Tracey Thorn & Massive Attack, Liz Fraser & Massive Attack, Neneh Cherry & Massive Attack, Shara Nelson & Massive Attack); the ventriloquist’s doll (Serge Gainsbourg & France Gall, Prince & Sheena Easton) or the pretty object of the duettist’s desire (Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, Bobby Gillespie & Kate Moss).

In most cases, it seems planned. There are few examples of that old story of studios side-by-side, of how Alice Cooper worked with Donavan, how Miles Davis worked with Scritti Politti, or how Peter Gabriel worked with Paul Weller. Even when the female component of the pairing is the most brutal, esoteric, or daring (Anita Lane with Nick Cave, say, or Lydia Lunch with Rowland S. Howard), it can seem that she is used as much for her image as for her musical contribution.

When a female performer guests with a male or group of males, there is always the presumption of sex, if not in the studio, then at least in the song. As the guest, as supplicant to the tune called by the male songwriter, she is exploited, used, almost always, as a voice and not an instrumentalist. The same is not true in the reverse: when Rolf Harris appears on Kate Bush’s record, when Thom Yorke appears on Bjork’s record, or Charlie Mingus appears at the request of Joni Mitchell, there is no frisson. They appear as equals, no more or less than the Bulgarian female choir that Ms. Bush called in or the Inuit housewives that Ms. Guðmundsdóttir’s hired. Their roles, musically or narratively, tend to be more impressionistic. Even when Prince appeared on The Red Shoes, he was a total gentleman.

I was once asked why there were so few all-female bands that had lasted as long as The Rolling Stones. The only solution I could imagine was that the notion of the band was uninviting. In pop music, woman appear to succeed more easily as solo performers, not because they wish to work in isolation, but because they want to collaborate more freely. The credits of any pop starlet’s record or of any acclaimed songstress will be filled with contributors and guest appearances, far more than would appear on that of a band or, even, most male soloists. And, thus, perhaps, the gang mentality of the band explains the odd position the female singer assumes when she joins them: not wholly at ease, not fully integrated, incapable of becoming part of the hyper masculine aesthetic and, thus, appearing all the more female. Pop music persists in being a male-dominated world, so any female performer will seem at odds in it. However, those few – like Ms. Bush, like Ms. Guðmundsdóttir – who create their own worlds within the world are able to invite anyone they like into it.

Anyway, tonight, 10.15pm or thereabouts, Radio Ulster.

I wrote several pieces for Edinburgh’s The One O’Clock Gun, at least one of which I recall slogging over, full of cold discipline, in a Spartan bedsit, miles from the peaceful Athens of the North. I gather that The Gun is now to be decommissioned and some of its most explosive elements remembered for all time. One inclusion in The One O’Clock Gun Anthology is a piece of mine, which I now realise punches the final line a little too similarly to a work by Ivor Cutler. No one else noticed though. The book also includes one or two poems from my dear housemate, therein Mr. Plume, in which the three-personed G-d is battered, and, most excitingly of all, an Alasdair Gray who I like to presume is the Alasdair Gray.

The other anthology is Survival Stories, pieced together by the very hard-working Sleepless Phoenix collective. The tragic story of its existence can be fully explained here, but, needless to say, people with more dedication than I did more work I could have thought possible. It includes my first attempt at writing a comic script and I have not seen the final artwork yet, but I have absolute faith in other human beings. The uncharacteristic setting of the story (who thought I would ever write about a war?) is, hopefully, balanced by the much more fitting weak pun that is central to everything I do. The book, to be launched, I believe, at BICS , includes submissions from such close friends and associates as Mr. Andrew Croskery and Mr. Stephen Downey. Hopefully, they will be appearing at the convention to cheapening the work with their signatures.

“Incidentally, the most accurate translation of Brel’s works, meeting the standards of the writer’s widow, are by Professor Arnold Johnston, of Western Michigan University. But, naturally, his recordings are hard to come by, due to lack of demand.”

Several weeks fewer than several weeks ago, Professor Johnston extended to me the olive branch of explanation. The issue, as really I knew well, was not lack of demand, but lack of distribution to meet the demand. It is a problem that many musicians face at present. Mr. Costello and I have found that the best way to deal with it is simply to wait until asked directly; this is how we passed around our Awkward Entry epee. Professor Johnston pitched me a similar deal too, offering to send me his record all the way from Kalamazoo.

To flesh out Professor Johnston as character: he is a poet, an author, an actor, and a translator. A Scot by birth and an American by choice, he wrote The Witching Hour, a novelisation of the life of Robert Burns and, with his wife, Deborah Ann Percy, he has written plays that have been performed all over the States, translations that have been read all over Europe, and a collection, Duets, which the Professor was kind enough to include along with the CD.

I haven’t asked, but I like to imagine that Deborah Ann Percy is related to Walker Percy, the author of the lovely The Moviegoer. I will not be told otherwise; not by her, not by anyone.

Regardless of literary connexions, Professor Johnston’s record I’m Here! (a more restrained translation of J’arrive than Mr. Almond’s I’m Coming!) is quite lovely on the whole, especially when the whole is placed in the CD-player. The piano and guitar accompaniments are spare, but pretty, allowing one to focus on the lyrics. While Professor Johnston’s voice, far from the standard academic drone, is clear and articulate – close to Mr. Walker, though perhaps not quite so low and warm; not so harsh and persecutory as M. Brel himself. Although, of course, you should probably ask him about it.