Three recorded thoughts that masquerade as something else. I decided to release them for the (approximate) 20th anniversary of my arrival in the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

I came to the Netherlands for three months, disembarking on its shores on a bright and hot April Fool’s Day, 2000. I worked in the Bollenstreek, packing plants for a mail-order delivery company. That three-month stint was the beginning of eight straight years working in bulb sheds, fields and the back of lorries; checking tulips for signs of disease, cleaning the detritus from under hyacinth packing machines, or chucking 25kg of lilies into a serpent-like washing machine. You name it, I did it.

The Netherlands has changed so much since then it feels like another planet. Maybe it always was. I have great difficulty when I think back, in accepting this other country was ever “real”… Was I witnessing it as a departing spirit? I really liked it. I wish it would come back.

The thoughts were originally created in 2014, to be performed at a poetry-come-music evening in Groningen that also boasted noise rock lords WOLVON and some others. Other times, they’ve been aired at Space Siren and The Avonden gigs and recorded with Lukas Simonis and Ergo Phizmizz, on diverse stages and places… more

released April 23, 2020