MALTA

Valletta on the Island of Malta

Hello Everybody,

Here are some pictures of a time I spent recently on the beautiful island of Malta where I gave two solo performances. I was initially contacted by a man named Tim Ellis and asked whether I would like to perform at a club that he runs in a bar called The Coach And Horses situated in the district of Msida/B'Kara on Malta.

I flew out from Bristol airport at six o clock in the morning on 17th February after having my luggage searched on three separate occasions by 'officials'. I was within seconds of missing the plane because of this and in a state of acute anxiety. Staring blankly from the window with sweat on my forehead as we rose out of the foggy gloom of Bristol and up into the blue skies that stretched across as far as I could see to the horizon. A dark haired young woman sitting next to me then proceeded to tell me, as the journey unfolded, about the extremely complicated love triangle she was immersed in which involved lawyers and sisters and vast amounts of money and property on Malta. By the time we landed I was fully relaxed and myself again. My new friend waved goodbye as she sheepishly stepped into the car of one of her lovers.... whom incidentally I knew a lot more about than I should have.

Tim met me at the airport shortly afterwards and I was immediately at ease in his presence. The sun was shining and I felt greatly uplifted in the clear Mediterranean light, a light which never fails to inspire me. We tore along through the streets of Malta at breakneck speed where the cars just go wherever they want. As if nine or ten year old giant children are playing a crazy and complicated game of remote control cars and you've been shrunk into one of them. Tim as good natured a man as anyone I have ever met in my life was the perfect host. His black framed glasses, his smiling,slightly unshaven face, his boundless courtesy and his never ending selection of jumpers that were revealed as the trip went on. His English speaking was note perfect as it was with everyone I met. The first place in Malta he showed me was a medieval look out point on the rocky cliffs overlooking a sparkling blue sea with yellow sand beeches. A tower that had been built to help protect the islands. In 1530 Charles 1st of Spain gave the islands to the Order of the Knights of the Hospital of St Johns of Jerusalem in perpetual lease. These knights, a military religious order now known as the Knights of Malta built cities, walls, towers and fortifications and their presence is strong in most places you go on the island.

As I sat on the edge of the promontory looking out to sea it was like the havoc of the previous months and my usual preoccupations came oozing out into ground and were absorbed into the cliffs beneath. I experienced the fresh coastal breeze and the sun beating down on my face and on closing my eyes I sensed the ancient spirits of Malta putting their arms around me. Myself and Tim sat in silence for a good while and the sound of the waves breaking in two separate coves, one to our left and one to our  right, became the meditative music of a vast peacefulness that made everything start to really come alive . The dead knights were walking around the towers and still keeping their vigil over the island and its inhabitants.

We climbed down the cliffs and a beautiful young woman of about eighteen years of age was sitting in a chair on the beech wearing a Beatles T-shirt strumming an acoustic guitar and next to her a huge 70's television set was half submerged in the sand. She was being filmed by students as part of some art project and to watch them and their self conscious film experimentation was almost comforting and almost amusing and almost embarrassing at exactly the same time.

Tim and I continued to wander together along the coast and I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my trousers and walked in the sounding sea . I spotted a number of hand sized translucent blobs that were being carried in by the waves as they broke over the sands and stopped to investigate. I picked one up. It looked to me to be some kind of a jellyfish and I ran over to Tim "What's this man" I said. "Drop it !" he shouted "Drop it ! Drop it ! Quick ! Drop it !"  I'd picked up the most deadly jellyfish in Malta whose sting has killed many people on the islands. I let the blob fall to the sand and miraculously, for whatever reason, the jellyfish had not stung me. However for a while afterwards I was imagining that perhaps the sting would kick in slowly and although not in any immediate pain I was going to die. I realised deep down that actually I didn't want to die right now and that actually I loved life and was really looking forward to the concert.

As it became clear that I was going to survive Tim took me to an old Maltese cafe, away from the tourist streets, in order to give me a taste of the atmosphere of the real people on the island. Inside were flaking catholic icons hanging on the walls. Coming in from the bright sunshine it was dark and full of old guys all sat on separate tables shouting at each other. "What are they arguing about" I asked Tim and he smiled " They are not arguing. It's just the way the Maltese people speak". It got funnier and funnier. These old guys literally screaming at the tops of their lungs with their brooding scowls and dark brown faces, cragged with lines from the sun and the sea and the salt and the wind and the bottles of beer and wine they swigged. Tim told me they were unemployed fisherman and you can see them hanging around in these old cafes everyday...... killing time....... talking about politics, waiting to be stung to death probably. I'll never forget that cafe.. a truly disappearing world. Amazing !

Afterwards Tim took me back to the hotel as I wanted to run through the songs I might play the next evening. I had a beautiful sea view from the balcony of my room as I sat high up on the 11th floor. The sun was going down now and the full moon rising over the waters. I sang songs to the moon and the sea and the darkening blue and purple skies. To the stars and to the aeroplanes and to the lights on the cruise ships on the horizon. I can say the time I spent playing songs that evening was one of the happiest of my life. A special magical atmosphere came and I was playing to the whole collective consciousness. It felt that I was being listened to by everything...... and I experienced that me and the songs had in some way been recognised.

Later again Tim came and we went to the most fantastic restaurant on the island called Taverna Sugu run by David Darmanin who was the very definition of what some people like to call a charming patron. There was rabbit, frog and horse meat on the menu which is a speciality on Malta but I had the best tuna steaks that a man has ever eaten instead. Tim told me how much Strangelove had meant to him when he was a young man and that really moved me. Being in Strangelove was such a difficult time  and when I hear somebody tell me how the music has inspired and helped them in their lives it means so much to me. It makes sense of that part of my life and helps me to accept and even honour it. I felt so grateful to Tim...... a perceptive, imaginative and intelligent man as he spoke about Malta and his life and as the evening went on I had the feeling of really being at home and it was like me and Tim were family. This feeling of connection with the people on Malta grew and grew and grew. After the meal we stood up on the historic walled citadel of Valletta overlooking the port of Malta and its myriad of lights. We listened to Tim's band Stalko as we drove back in the car and they were properly brilliant. Tim sang and played piano in that band and his voice reminded me of the great Jeff Buckley.

Caravaggio-The beheading of John the Baptist

The next day it poured and poured with rain which apparently never happens on Malta. Tim said the gig that night might have to be cancelled because all the roads around the venue were flooded. We went back up to Valletta in the morning to visit St John's Co-Cathedral. The high winds of the storm still blowing were loosening huge chunks of masonry from the roof of the cathedral that were falling down and smashing on the cobbles outside. A huge yellow stone fell and smashed just in front of us and a woman from New York was freaking out saying someone was going to get killed( I picked up some of that stone carved in the 16th century and I have it now here in my room). Inside the cathedral it was extremely ornate and decorated in the height of the Baroque period. The interior was largely adorned by Mattia Preti the Calabrian artist and knight. Preti designed the intricate carved stone walls and painted the vaulted ceiling and side altars with scenes from the life of St John. The figures painted into the ceiling next to each column initially appear as three dimensional statues, but on closer inspection you realise that he's created an illusion of three dimensionality by his use of shadows and placement. Every inch of the marble floor was taken up with the tombs of dead knights who vie for position closest to the alter in the Holy ground of the Cathedral. The tombs adorned with paintings of skulls and dancing skeletons, flags and incantations. As we strolled around the beautiful cathedral I was suddenly approached by an 'official' who angrily told me to remove my hat which I did. A few minutes later he came back to me and said that I had been told on entering to remove my hat (which was not actually true) and so why had I put it back on. "This is God's House, have some respect" he shouted. As I had not put my hat back on the guy was really starting to bug me as he continued his aggressive tirade. The truth was that no-one had told me anything about hats in the first place Eventually I interrupted him "Look man, the only reason I took off my hat is out of respect for what you believe in. Not because of God. As far as I'm concerned the God that I believe in doesn't care about whether I wear a hat or not. God is inside us man. Inside here ! Inside us ! Respecting God has got nothing to do with hats." I was brought up with all that so called respect for God that's really about the surface of the matter and I could feel the frustration of years gone by boiling up in me as I stared into that guy's angry blatherskite eyes. We stood looking at each other for a few seconds and then he backed down. It was a moment of some significance for me. I'd stood up and held my ground and I watched him walk away. Something from my past was resolved in that encounter. I had a real strange sensation in my stomach but felt reasonably certain I'd done the right thing. Usually I can't be bothered to argue. I just want to walk round a church when it inspires me and marvel. I have always felt enriched by the atmosphere of sacred places wherever I've travelled to and I've come up against these 'officials' in all sorts of places...... some of them are great and some just seem to be looking to spoil your day. For me respect has to come out of authenticity. I don't mind falling in line with most requests out of respect for a tradition but that respect needs to be returned by the guardians of that tradition. When that is absent then so is my patience and tolerance.  After that we came to a room where there was a special chair that only the Pope is allowed to sit in. I was feeling pissed off with the whole thing by that point so I jumped over the rope and went and sat on the Pope's chair. Funnily enough no bolt of lightening came out of the sky to electrocute me although it did feel a bit weird as I sat there defiantly laughing. However I could also see Tim, who like me was brought up Catholic and was getting nervous...... so gratefully we moved on. After that we went into the oratory where Caravaggio's painting 'The Beheading of John the Baptist' hangs. Everything from before immediately drifted away into the meaningless. It was a profoundly enlightening experience to witness a work of such genius. I stood transfixed for what must have been ages trying to grasp at the experience it informed in me but I was not able to bring it into conscious. In a total state of bliss as I drifted out of the cathedral with Tim.

That Friday night I gave my first performance at Tim's Club 'The Coach and Horses'. The road outside was completely flooded with water but we got through with Tim's  'the show must go on' attitude.....spraying water up as we drove through the floods. Remarkably a good number of people showed up. The club was like an old English pub from the fifties with pictures of the Queen and the royal family from times gone by hanging over the walls. There were a lot of blue lights cascading from the higher furnishings that were nothing to do with the police thank God. The long bar and the floor and the walls were all dark wood and there were wooden tables with candles on them and sofas scattered everywhere. I met the best sound man in the whole world that night a young guy called Emerson. A songwriter in his own right with a proper beard and a deeply reassuring presence. Emerson did everything at his own pace, in his own way, which was not of this world and things all started coming together with certain gravitas...... and with Tim's fantastic ear out front we got a great sound in that room. It makes such a difference when you work with people who care about what they are doing. I played really well that night and there was a deep connection in the room that everyone said they could feel.......that is what playing is about for me today. When this connection happens the experience becomes more and more effortless and less and less about me. That experience is one of the things that keeps me alive.

That night I met a couple of really cool people both from a great band named Brikkuni. The first was Mario. I'd heard a lot about him already as he is infamous in Malta. His band are really big on the island. On National Television he got drunk and said that everyone on Malta was a total moron and that the music they listened to commercialised bullshit. Tim had told me "if he doesn't like your concert, he's going to come up and tell you". I was a bit wary of him from what I heard so it was such a surprise on meeting him after the concert to find a deeply sensitive and intelligent man with a great sense of humility surrounding him. I felt a connection with Mario that was also like a feeling of family and it was really inspiring to spend time with him and his girlfriend Maria. I was really starting to feel like I had come home in some strange sense and that was to do with the comforting warmth and vitality of the people I'd met. Also a guy named Danjeli who played keyboards in Brikkuni and who wrote a brilliant song called The Village Idiot that Tim translated for me and Mario gave an incredible vocal performance on. Danjeli spoke with great passion and humour about life,love,music the universe and everything. Babbling nineteen to the dozen and breathing beer fumes all over me but thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining to listen to him. It was a truly great evening. Everyone I spoke to had been really inspired by the concert. Back in the hotel I lay in bed feeling totally spaced out and grateful.

Mdina- The Silent City On The Hill

   
The next day was a Saturday. The sun was shining in Malta once again and the flood waters receded. I spent a really pleasant day with Tim, Mario and Maria eating fresh fish in a restaurant overlooking the sea on the quiet side of the island feeling totally relaxed. That night many many more people came to the gig because the flood was over and the club sold out. The vibe in the room that second night was so powerful that I thought I was going to disappear or float away on it. An unearthly silence seemed to surround the proceedings as I played and sang and it felt like a great honour to perform in such a profound atmosphere. I spoke to so many beautiful people after the show and it was really gratifying and humbling to hear people talking with such enthusiasm regarding the concert, Wow..... thanks people ! That night after the gig at about 2 O Clock in the morning we went to Mdina- The Silent City. Tradition holds that the apostle St. Paul resided in the city after his historical shipwreck on the islands. Much of its present architecture reflects the Arabic Fatamid Period which began in 999 AD until the Norman conquest of Malta in 1091 AD. I walked along the battlement walls looking across the lights on the island and out to sea. Inside the walled medieval city was one of the most beautiful man made places I have ever seen. We all walked around together Myself, Tim, Becky, Mario, Maria, Andrei, Daniel and Alexandra. There was a beautiful deteriorating shrine of flickering candlelight to the Virgin Mary hewn into the walls of stone. As I stood there staring into the mild eyes of the statuette a beautiful woman called Becky recited to me an ancient catholic prayer to Mary which I remembered from the depths of my childhood. She was kind enough to write this prayer down for me in purple ink and I keep it with me in my room today as a momento. There was an amazing ancient tree in one of the squares of Mdina which had grown around itself and formed a space in it's trunk in the shape of the letter O about six foot off the ground. It seemed to me to be an invitation to a rite of passage to consolidate and finish my time in Malta. So I set out to climb through the shape which I did at the expense of totally splitting my trousers. The sound of the tear echoing around the Silent City. ( When I got back to Bristol my ex-girlfriend Delphine sewed them back up for me. Thanks Delphine x)

My time in Malta had come to an end. I want to say a most profound and sincere thank you to everyone I met there but especially to Tim Ellis without whom this amazing experience would never have materialized.

Love Patrick x