Welcome everybody to the Patrick Duff Website. On this Home Page you will find pieces of writing and videos that will be regularly updated. A place for thoughts and ideas. The News Page will be the place for you to find out about up and coming performances. The Shop is where you can purchase my new album The Mad Straight Road. You can buy the album as a C.D that I can send to you through the post or alternatively as MP3 downloads. To listen to extracts of the songs go to the MP3 page which you can access through the shop.
The Mad Straight Road C.D of twelve songs comes in a D.V.D style case with six photographs, all of the lyrics and the credits. I will also sign the album for anyone who wants me to. You can leave your details at the checkout. I am happy to welcome you to this site and I encourage you also to visit the Archive Page. Here I have written a series of memories and reflections around my recordings with Strangelove and the other projects I have been involved in during my solo career up to the present day. Accompanying these writings I have included some photographs that come from the times and places that the pieces are describing. I would also like to encourage everyone to leave any feedback about anything they experience here on my Facebook, Myspace and Twitter pages.
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Today I am leaving you a short video of the end sequence of a film called Stalker made by the Russian Film director Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky is one of my favorite film directors and I have been fascinated with his work for many years now after firstly watching his final film The Sacrifice. The atmosphere of this film completely captured my imagination as a young man and inspired me to seek out all of his other works. His film Andrei Rublev about the journey of an artist is one of the most fantastic films I have ever seen. About ten years ago I read Tarkovsky's diaries from 1970 until his death in 1986 published in a book called Time Within Time. This book also had a powerful effect on me. I was truly inspired to read of Tarkovsky's struggle to make and release his films and his battle with the Soviet regime and the total commitment he showed to his life as an artist and to his work. When I first saw this scene you can watch here, that appears at the end of Stalker, I was deeply moved by it. I hope you too will enjoy it and if you don't already know his work it will inspire you to explore his films. I find that his work has stayed with me and deepens as the years go by. I am very grateful to Tarkovsky and his sensitivity as a film maker and for the gifts he has given me.
To me our society is like a well lit circle and most people you meet in it encourage you to stay within that circle and live out your life in a kind of safety within the parameters of what is already understood. Stay in here and do this and everything will be alright. That's basically what they told me at school. Occasionally there will be somebody who lights a candle and walks out into the darkness that is outside of that circle and they leave a trail of light behind them. There are no guarantees when you walk that road and it doesn't always mean that everything will be alright. To me those people send messages back to us about what they have found. A song or a poem or a film or a piece of music that you can feel in your guts. It is these people who have always inspired me and to whom I aspire. For these artists have been the ones who have fed my soul. To me it is these people who by following their deepest calling regardless of others and by walking out into the dark eventually increase the circle of light that society lives within by a little, and add to our knowledge of ourselves by the works they leave behind. As far as I am concerned Andrei Tarkovsky is one of these people.