Ok so I disappeared a little bit there. In the words of Adrian Monk here’s what happened: 

Eight years ago I fell down the stairs at the Art School nightclub in Glasgow. I busted myself up pretty bad. My eye closed over like a beaten boxer and I lost some teeth, which I got replaced in case you’re thinking to yourself “but I don’t recall him having missing teeth”. It seems dentistry has come a long way in the last while– all the Elizabethans had apparently was a bucket of white paint and the madness that came with the consequences of painting your teeth white and inevitably stripping away tooth enamel leaving only raw nerves. Yes my friends we can all be thankful of progress (some progress anyway). I got asked one time by a journalist which time period I would loved to have lived in. I can’t remember what my answer was then but thinking on that question now I’m saying no time period before the invention of modern dentistry and the discovery of penicillin. So I’m never going to bother finishing building that time machine after all. 

A while back I was telling a story… 

So I took a bad fall eight years ago and was such a drunken asshole when Jonny Quinn (bless him) got me to the A&E (that’s the ER to our American brothers and sisters) that none of the seen-it-all-before-on-a-Saturday-night nurses gave (and rightly so) two shits about me upon my terrifying next morning wake-up. I tell you this people, waking up in a hospital bed you don’t remember getting into with missing teeth, only one eye and the worst hangover (ok come down) I ever had is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. Not having a single enemy (maybe some folks don’t care for me but believe me when I tell you it’s pointless because I love all) it’s a moot point but I wouldn’t wish for an enemy to wish it on either. Because of my previous night’s arseholeness to the nursing staff the only thing they wanted was rid of me so there were no head x-rays taken at the time. Let me be clear right now I am not pissed off with the nurses at all. They take shit like I gave out that night (and worse) every weekend and I am only ashamed of myself not annoyed with them. Anyway a few years after that incident my jaw started to get very sore and has been a source of pain (often excruciating pain) for years and I have seen all kinds of people about it. My mistrust of western medicine meant though that never once did I get it x-rayed. Idiot! May I say to anyone in considerable pain right now, whatever way you go about treating it in the end the first thing to do is go get an x-ray or scan, then decide to go east or west with your cure. Anyway after we finished the Tired Pony record in Portland and I came down to LA with Garret to mix it and to start a film soundtrack my jaw got to be so sore that I couldn’t take it any longer and went to a doctor who promptly x-rayed me and discovered that it was dislocated. And for quite a while too. It was then that we traced it back to that incident at the Art School as it’s the only time I landed on my head from a great height. 

Wow, long story this time eh? Cut to now and I decided to stay in LA and get it dealt with. So here I am. Being treated by both east and west. West amounts to a dental appliance I have to wear for a few months and we’ll see where we go from there. Easternwise or at least holistically I’ve been getting acupuncture and this thing called Rolfing (sounds like a weird sex thing eh? Well it is. No it’s not. It’s very deep massage and manipulation of the muscles concentrating on, in my case, but not exclusive to, the jaw muscles). Plus I’ve been cycling and doing yoga and doing things to clear a very cluttered mind that never switches off and relax a body that hasn’t stopped moving in a decade or more. 

The more I get into it the more I realise it’s down to me. I can, we all can, heal ourselves (for the most part anyway) with living well and trying to as happy and content with what we have as much as possible. My breaking point I guess came when I went straight from the take back the cities tour to the reworked tour and then, at the start of this year, tried to make three albums – actually two albums and a movie soundtrack – in the space of two months. 

A lot of people said this shit would catch up with me if I wasn’t careful and I paid them no mind. It seems, again, I was wrong, and they – people that cared for me – were, again, right. If I could give anyone some advice from all this is that you need to find time just for yourself every day. Doesn’t have to be a long time but just some quiet place or open space you can go by yourself and breath as deeply as possible for twenty minutes every day. Listen, don’t listen, up to you but it’s sure helping me. 

I’m not some born again dafty all of a sudden and I would never start preaching piety of any sort as I still love a drink and a night out as much as I ever did. I just have to decide what’s more important: living well for 40 more years or living the way I have been for another ten if I’m lucky. I can’t imagine many of you reading this will have put the same amount of poisons into your bodies as I have over the years (sure was fun sometimes too although I wouldn’t recommend it) so I don’t expect anyone will need to think very seriously about what I’m writing here. Irish people, however, don’t do therapy so writing this is as close as I’ll get to that I suppose. Hope it wasn’t too boring to read. I am however, as always, an open book. 

Went to see Alice in Wonderland last night. Fucking hell it’s amazing. If you see it see it in 3D. I have never had so many moments in a cinema of pure wonder and joy since my first ever trip to the cinema with my father to see Return of the Jedi. I had the same feeling yesterday watching Alice as I did then. Thank you Tim Burton and, oh my good god, thank you Jonny Depp. The academy next year have to finally give that man what he has deserved for such a long time and it’s one of those gold statues of a well built man with no penis. He has been the most unusual and versatile actor of his generation and this is his very finest performance. He slips in and out of the Hatter’s multiple personalities so deftly and quickly you can barely believe your eyes and ears. Run, don’t walk, to see it. 

Sorry I’ve been quiet on the forum but I’ve had stuff on my mind. Hope you are all well and are having an amazing year so far. Lots of love.x