georgina ragazza: collage with a touch of cyanide: Roy Harper, Balm for the Soul, and Great Friends

Here's what I learned yesterday. I have AMAZING friends. Properly solid gold amazing friends. I asked for help and I received it in abundance, so much love and gratefulness goes out to Simon, Sarah, Annie, Lorrie, RichTea, and Sunny for their advice and support. You people ROCK. I actually felt much better after sharing my fears, and injected with renewed enthusiasm and creativity, headed out to my balcony (it's a thousand degrees in the UK at the moment) where I spent the afternoon happily painting. Not painting a canvas or anything, but painting my new sketchbook, which is going to house ideas and starting points for later canvasses. I figured this was a good place to begin - the sketchbook is for my eyes only and doesn't have to be perfect so I could just paint for the sheer glory and joy of painting. And I did. Sun on my face, cup of tea by my side, mp3 player blasting Roy Harper through the headphones. I find that just the right blend of music can do wonders for getting me in a creative mood. And this brings me on to Mr. Harper himself (as I promised a while ago that I would blog about him).

"Buying rides on Mother Nature's funny belly dance"

I first "discovered" Roy Harper, a massively underrated British folk/rock singer-songwriter who has not only influenced and hung out with legends like Jimmy Page and Macca, but has continued to influence and hang out with new bods like Joanna Newsome when I was a little hippie rebel in my teens in the mid-Seventies. I used to hang out with my like-minded hippie rebel friends, listening to Roy, Pink Floyd, and the like and dreaming of a time when I could leave the suburban enclave in Hampshire where I spent my formative years and go off to be a Boho artist hippie freak. Roy Harper and Syd Barrett were our twin gods of freakdom - they seemed to speak to us in ways that teenagers like to think that rock gods do. His voice is like honey and he has an appealing twinkle in his eye, put it that way.

his voice is pure balm for my soul
he sits very firmly in the counterculture hippie way of thinking with fabulous ecological and anti-establishment lyrics
if that all sounds a bit too muesli for you, he also clearly is something of a sex fiend so there's some sauce in there as well
and he's uber cute

I'm saving my pennies to see him at the Southbank in October - he's coming out of semi-retirement and I absolutely cannot miss this. I'll be in the front row smiling like an idiot. If he does When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease, the greatest eulogy song EVER WRITTEN, which John Peel dedicated to John Waters after his passing, I will weep buckets. Take my advice and listen to the album Stormcock in its entirety and without interruption. Great friends AND Roy Harper - what a difference a day makes. xx