Blog on Thursday 7th July 2016

 Blog on Thursday 7th July 2016

I am in the middle of writing a book. An autobiography which focuses on the music that inspires me and how collectively they have nurtured me and ultimately, changed my life.

I have been in the "writing void" that place of emptiness, for 8 weeks and although I have written and tidied up other things, I am finding it difficult to get back into the "pool" where all my words and ideas come from.

I know if I keep writing at least 500 words about  anything, that it will return, hence starting this Blog site.

I have placed some of my poems which have been videoed onto the site and would love to read your comments on them.

I am hoping to write at least the 500 words every day. 1000 would be nice, but I will settle for 500.

Have a lookout for my current book on Amazon in paperback and kindle:

" Walking In The Shadows Of Death" - (Copyright Roy Merchant 2015)

Link: 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Walking-Shadows-Death-Roy-Merchant

Below is an excerpt from  my upcoming book

"The Rhythms Of My Life" - (Copyright Roy Merchant)

 

"By the time I was nineteen, I had had my share of gropes, pokes, one night quickies, married ladies whose husbands had gone away for the week and everything else. Let’s say that I was no longer a virgin. I don’t know that I ever was one.

My first real love was for a married woman from Argentina called Anna and it started in the Fireplace nightclub on Orchard Drive in downtown, or should I say uptown Singapore. I knew from the moment I first laid eyes on her that she and I were going to be intimate. She did not see me, but I saw her and it was in her eyes. The eyes that incessantly scanned the dance floor looking for something tangible, something she could hold on to, a challenge to occupy her thoughts for a bit longer than the Chinese guy who was holding on to her as if his life depended on keeping her close. He was so afraid of losing her that he had already lost her.

It took a while for me to create the situation that made her notice me. It took a favour from the DJ, it took my friend Neil going over and asking her for a dance, with me just ignoring her. It took me sending over a glass of Drambuie and lemonade and giving her my best smile when I raised the glass to her as she urgently looked all over the semi lit club to see who had bought her the drink.

And Anna and I danced to Sam Cooke and then Otis Redding singing “You Send Me, one after the other and there was no going back after that.

She was blonde, with light tan complexion. Not the chalk white complexion of the china dolls, but more a Mediterranean look, lithe and dressed in an ivory kimono like dress made of silk.

She was killing time and looking for fun in Singapore, whilst her husband rampaged all over South East Asia, making this fortune.  She lived in France, was over in Tokyo with her husband doing some business when she decided to take a 2 week break in Singapore.

She would tell me that Tokyo was too claustrophobic for her, too hemmed in, almost too western.

She loved me because when we got too deep, she ran away back to her children in Paris, abandoning me to the quizzical look of the manager in the Mandarin hotel where she was staying and when she could not stand being away from me anymore, she came back to the Mandarin Hotel in Singapore, where we played lovers for 3 gorgeous months and then we said our final farewell in the summer of 1969. And it broke my heart for 3 years. I had not heard of Millie J at that time, so I listened to O.C. Smith and Derrick Harriot’s “What Can I do” until the pain went back into the background from whence it came".