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HAIM - Fabrique, Milan - Sunday 3rd June 2018


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After

I wonder what I’d say if the Haim Sisters walk into the hotel.  It’s possible.  It’s more than possible.  It’s the hotel closest to the gig venue and the support act has just walked in.  We ask at reception.  They can’t say either way.  They think we’re mad.  We might be.  We sit back down.  My eyes are fixed on the automatic doors.  I could be a Haim Husband by this time next week. 

They open. 
Is it HAIM? 
Not this time. 

They open again. 
Is it HAIM? 
Not this time. 

They open again. 
Is it HAIM?
Not this time.

But at least I can put it to rhyme.


Before

‘I want to go on a boat,’ I told my friend. 
‘A boat?’
‘Yeah, a boat.’
‘What kind of boat?’
‘You know, the floaty kind.’
‘With sails or without sails?  Oars or…’
‘Either/oar.  OAR.  Get it? 
‘Very good.  Leave it with me.’


After

Sat at the bar.  Watch the barman juice three oranges.  Send a message to all my music friends. 

Mad scenes.  Milan completely LOST THEIR SHIT over HAIM.  Never known anything like it.  Their very first gig in Italy.  Huge songs, and huge fun! 


Before

Saturday.  HAIM Eve.  We drive north to Arona and my desire to go on a boat is fulfilled.   Lake Maggiore crosses a border.  It’s part Italian and part Swiss, but we don’t go as far as Switzerland.  Isola Bella – literally ‘Beautiful Island’ – is our destination.  It’s definitely an island and it’s definitely beautiful. 

“I’m on a boat,’ I said.  ‘I’m on a boat!’  Scare an Italian.  Rein it in.  Saturday Night Live darling Andy Samberg made the phrase famous.  It’s a silly song, but ever since he married Joanna Newsom, I say it at every boat-boarding opportunity.  Samberg may not be a natural lyricist, but his wife most certainly is.  And she writes a lot about water.

—    while, elsewhere,
estuaries of wax-white
wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped.

From ‘Only Skin’


After

“What happened to your voice?” My boss asks. 
“HAIM happened.”


Before

Write to Abby, my favourite person in all of Scotland.    

By the time you receive this, I would have seen HAIM in Milan and one of five things may have happened:

1.     I may have overclapped my way into hospital.
2.     I may have eloped with one of the sisters.  It doesn’t matter which.
3.     I may have a HAIM forehead tattoo.
4.     I may have got the commission to carve their Granny’s headstone.
5.     I may be a HAIM brother.




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