Share a Cuppa Tea with..Gypsy Dave

Jun 9, 2016 | News Beat

By Jane Quinn

Gypsy Dave discusses the role art plays in the balance of life,  Mad Magazine, Knights of the Road and more…

Remember the line about the gypsy boy in Donovan’s 1965 classic song, Try for the Sun? Did you know the gypsy boy is REAL!

Gypsy Dave

Gypsy Dave, born David John Mills, is a sculptor, author, songwriter, and charmer. He was first in the public eye as the companion of singer/songwriter, Donovan. Today, he is a real, fully-grown gypsy MAN: a well-known sculptor, with studios in Greece and Thailand.

Are you sitting comfortably with a cuppa in your hand? Then, let us begin.

1. What are you afraid of?
Never been afraid much, but in my youth, I was always afraid of being locked up somewhere and I would lose my freedom. Still haunts me a little.

2. Paros, Thailand, or London?
I was very very happy on Paros. It will always hold a huge part of my heart.
London, for me, died a long time ago. I suppose that wherever you spent your youth, that is always a treasured place; but London in the mid-sixties was so so special that it was unique. It could not help going down from those giddy heights.

Thailand is a different kettle of fish, so beautiful that it breaks your heart sometimes with the pure innocence of the scenery. Wonderful white beaches with coconuts bobbing in the sea waves, the sky so blue you feel you can walk on the few white puffy clouds as if they were a bridge or, maybe, a chariot waiting to take you to heavenly places.

3. Writing songs, writing books, or sculpting?
All forms of creativity give you another balance in life, but when I started sculpting, I found it fulfilled a depth in my soul nothing else could satisfy. I felt connected in a strange and very direct way with my past lives. There is so much you need to know inside to produce good sculpture, that you feel a connection with your other learning in, it can only be said, your past lives or even possibly the past experiences of one concise life that belongs to us all – being human.

But writing gives you an altogether another feeling. Writing fiction, your mind spirals into images and ideas, like a bug into a juicy apple found hanging on a tree of imagination par-se. This has you making up landscapes and people as if you were God. Believe it or not, I once had a fictional being phone my girlfriend up. “Hi,” he said. “This is Jarcus Malawi.”

My girlfriend put down the phone in shock, as I used to read to her at night all that I had written that day, and I had invented the character Jarcus Malawi a few weeks before. Coincidence? Maybe.

4. Last book you read? Mine. Knights of the Road.

5. Have you ever had a broken heart?

Not in the sense that most people mean it. I believe that, once you love someone their freedom, as well as mine, is paramount. Your heart can hold many loves and should do. It’s a wonderful thing, love. Your heart usually gets broken when you are trying to pull love out from its tender care and try to destroy that love with hate or disrespect for that love.

Every woman I have ever loved is still in my heart and is a big part of me. Therefore, it’s the reason that I don’t believe that two people in love can be, as they say, “unfaithful”. No two loves are ever the same, so how can a partner be unfaithful to your love if they love another during your relationship? They are not using the love you feel for them and they feel for you.

They are being creative in love with another love that has nothing to do with you or your love for them. Jealousy is a stupid wanting thing that demands all of your heart as though love were only you and it. No, no, no. Your heart is a bigger and wiser thing than that.

6. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, or The Beatles?
Definitely The Beatles. It was my everlasting pleasure to meet these fine folks on many an occasion, and the loss of John, and then George, still tears lumps from my heart.

7. What is your favourite: Word? FREEDOM, Kiss? 69 Comic book? I have never gone mad on comics, but I really loved MAD as a young man.

8. Where do you keep your moral compass? In my underpants.

9. Who have you asked for an autograph? Never ever asked for an autograph though have given many to some lovely people.

10. What question do you wish I’d asked?

Well, ah, um. Would you like to see your autobiography, Knights of the Road be turned into a good film or documentary? Well, yes I would; and we have someone interested in doing just that, so keep your fingers crossed that all goes well.

If you could have invited anyone, living or dead, to this wee tea party; who would it have been?

Oh, God. So, so many, but I can only choose one above the others – my darling son Matthew Sighdawn. Just the thought of him still brings tears to my eyes to this day. He was the most wonderful soul. He died of cancer at 38.

11. Tell us a secret. If I did that, it no longer would be a secret now, would it?

12. What’s new?

Everything in this God-blessed world. Every day, see as much as you can with fresh eyes of joy and forgiveness and love Channel your hate, disrespect, and non-positive energies every day into looking at the Wonders of Nature and let them tell you that you are one small colour on the tapestry of life’s bright picture. Feel in your soul of souls, the truth, the wonderment that. if you were not in this picture. there would be a slight, small, almost invisible hole in perfection.

Take care all, and remember what a Swedish Artist of great renown said. “Love each other children, for love is all.”

Thank you for your gracious words of wisdom, Gypsy Dave. May they fall on responsive hearts.

Get to know the man in his captivating autobiography, Knights of the Road, available at  www.lulu.com

© JANE QUINN

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