Notes from the Boneyard: Everything and nothing has changed

By Mark McCausland

Here I go on another ramble. Straight from brain to paper.

I hope you can bear with me while I untangle the knots and attempt to squeeze some kind of meaning from it all.

I’m back out on the road for a three week tour, playing guitar with Jolie Holland.

We’re halfway through the tour now with a two day break, and find ourselves spending the downtime in Liverpool, my old home.

This time it isnt a social visit.

Rest and recharge is required.

Maybe some figuring out as well.

Maybe a higher force plonked me here on purpose.

Something is coming full circle but I dont know what it is yet.

A chapter is closing behind me and another one is opening up ahead.

I’m back where i started, 25 years ago.

I’m beginning to remember who I was, who I am, and who I will be. Am I making sense here?

I’ve spent two days walking the Liverpool streets, the same streets I walked a zillion times.

The city still smells of weed.

The karaoke bars are still rammed at 2pm on a Tuesday afternoon.

The young aspiring musicians are still standing with guitars slunk over their shoulders, waiting for the 82 bus.

So what’s changed?

Maybe the only thing that’s different around here is me.

An older version of myself.

I gravitate to the theatre to watch the documentary about The Coral, and I’m transported back to a 2001 Liverpool.

Everything about it, that whole scene, was like a different lifetime ago, but it still seems like yesterday as well… Still seems like right now.

It hit me how young everyone was back then.

Kids, really.

Still finding the path.

And where did that path lead to?

Right back here by the look of it.

I texted Nick from The Coral to tell him how much I loved the film.

They were setting up in the studio, getting ready to record another album.

Still doing their thing.

Still those same 40-year-old kids.

And it was a year ago today that Nick and I released our own album together.

Another full circle within the circle.

I get a call from Ann, my label boss at Deltasonic, the same label that took us all under their umbrella all those years ago.

I recall the day we signed that record deal back then, with Alan and Ann.

We partied all night, until John lit a firework in the living room that nearly blew the house up and vacated the party onto the street.

And I’m getting ready now to put out another album with the same label; this time the soundtrack for the film, ‘The Spin’.

All of us… We’re all still on that same crooked path that started back then. Are we still those same people? Those same freaks who picked up a guitar one day as kids and never looked back?

Is it the same hunger that drives us all?

Or has it now become a force of habit? Like muscle memory.

Or maybe it’s something else entirely.

Like an itch you can’t scratch. An impulse. An insanity. It comes as naturally as breathing.

It’s what we do, wether we like it or not. It chose us, not the other way round.

And where has it gotten anybody?

The Coral are still setting up in their practice room in Hoylake.

Ann is still holding open a portal to unleash the madness of madmen into civilisation.

And I’m still standing here in the rain, outside the Adelphi Hotel, in that between-gig limbo.

Still trying to figure it out. Past and present begin to merge.

It’s like 25 years ago is happening right now; a double image. It’s all taking place in the same instant.

Everything has changed, but also nothing has.

A kid with an army coat and a guitar case runs past me.

I squint my eyes, and when I look closely, I realise it’s me.

Are we living inside a groundhog moment?

A continuous loop?

I’m not sure what any of this means, where the journey leads to, or what the point to any of it is.

Yet I’ll keep doing it.

Probably for another 25 years.

Because what else is there…?