Dan Haywood's New Hawks
(of the Great Interior)

An interdisciplinary vision
of the high heather and elsewhere!
Folly, Lancaster.
16 April 2005

First they gave us beer. They also gave us whisky. I'm remarking on this because usually at events you get wine and I have to say I think the beer was an excellent call. The woman behind the counter had a bird-mask on. I ran into my friend Marian (the one who took me to Barbados last year, not that I'm bragging), "There are birds of prey upstairs", she whispered. They made us feel right at home.

Upstairs there were truly Birds of Prey. A jolly, avuncular chap introduced them as raptors (seizers of live dinner), starting with the cute little one (I understand there was a Peregrine Falcon, a Common Buzzard, and a Common Kestrel. I couldn't tell you which was which but they had very nice fluffy legs, pretty wings and non-pc eating habits), and working up to an enormous great big f-o fluffy Eagle Owl with huge eyes and a wingspan as big as the angel Gabriel's. They were all rescued birds so it's all right-on jic you were wondering. Isn't it funny how owls look a lot like cats? You don't usually see ears on a bird. When people go to stroke the owl, they go into its neck under its ears like they would with a cat. It pays them no attention whatsoever. It has lovely fluffy legs too. I'd like to stroke them but decide it's innappropriate. Ahem.

While this is going on, there's this other thing going on too, which is the bird-woman. She's perched on a pouffe, or rather sat (very much like ladies sit in that book from the 1950s on 'How to be Charming' that Perksy read to me from when I was too ill to stop her), with knees together and feet drawn up onto toes and hands presented neatly together palm-down on knees and so on. But with feathers and a long black birdtail and a beaked mask and feathery hair (remember the bad girl in 'Swan Lake'?). Every now and then she kind of reshuffles her shoulders and her feathers, and it's cool. She's got lovely bones and definition in her neck and shoulders and we get the benefit.

The music comes after. This is the main event and celebrates the launch of the Dan Haywood's CD, New Hawks of the Great Interior. Dan Haywood has an attenuated frame, as if he has spent some time clinging to the event-horizon of a black hole by his finger nails. His lyrics are intense, obsessional, each phrase is milked to a point beyond sense. He sings in a nasal, almost antipodean accent and plays guitar accompanied variously by Paddy Garrigan on violin, Bill Myall on percussion, including a reverberating gong and Gordon Blackwell on sitar. The music is complex but clean, melancholic - and frequently enjoying it.

There is a video - made by Jenny McCabe it accompanies one track on the CD. It dwells lovingly on Dan the sensitive young man on a hillside. He sings a song with meaningful pauses. You are left with the impression that here is someone who takes himself very seriously indeed. It's a bit overwrought but it's also novel and there's a strong sense of potential in the room - something special. I'm frustrated with musicians who shuffle about, back off from going totally into their stuff and deny themselves out of embarrassment. I admire the courage of exposure. It involves risk. He briefly has an enormous shotgun in the vid too, though you never see it cocked.

The Birdwoman is Vicki Van Mechelen. She dances as they play. Her chic black frock is scalloped artistically at the rear to present a neat butt from which depends a long, stiff, flat, black tail. It takes some management as she swoops, glides and hovers with elegant poise and balance. She has remarkable feet. When she goes up on her toes the movement articulates through the muscles in her feet one after the other and I am reminded of synchronised swimmers at the beginning of their performance, lined up on the poolside and diving in, one after the other in a line. The balance and physical control are great to witness. She has an intense and vibrant presence and it's great fun just to be there. On the wall behind there is a patch of light where clouds and sky and occasionally raptors wheeling in flight are projected.

The choreography if anything, is too elegant, too poised - occasionally too charming. This bird is beautifully aloof and I cannot see it seizing a terrified bunny or a lamb and ripping bloody chunks out of them anytime soon. This bird lives on clouds, over the rainbow.

We sit like mesmerised fieldmice as she floats above us, under her wings rises the music of minds picking apart the threads of illusion, of eyes reflecting each other, of loves that miss and try again.