Sunday 22 May 2011

IV

This here blog turned 4, a few days ago.

Happy Birthday blog. I'm really limping along with it at the moment, though, and perhaps need to decide what to do.

Saturday 14 May 2011

All I have

This last week could be divided into two distinct halves. We could start by calling them the "nice" half and the "any number of descriptive words which are the binary opposite of nice" half.

I'm grateful, at any rate, that there is such a distinction to be drawn, and that it hasn't all fallen into the latter category.

Work, anyway, has been stupid, stressy and miserable. The balance is such that, although I'm trying to address such issues, I'm now feeling that the answers no longer lie within the organisation. The more I meet with senior figures to sort things out, the more I feel like a turkey asking a chef to help resolve matters.

Onto the nice half of the week: despite feeling like my energy and motivation has really been sapped, I've spent significant portions of each evening working on music. After a fairly humdrum couple of sessions early on in the week, I've been progressively feeling like the drive and the momentum have returned, and that I'm beginning to turn a corner. The different ideas I've been working on have all felt rather disparate and scattershot - and that's been a purposeful thing - but now I seem to be reaching a point in which they're starting to reveal a common thread in some ways, and that's rather exciting.

Nice also to want to get home and get stuck into working on such things, rather than the times when I feel myself putting up barriers to any engagement with creative processes. Plus it's good to be at a stage where I can get into specifics: this particular track needs this to be done to it.

I can't afford to make excuses for not engaging with it any more, because really it feels like it's all I have.

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Disparate thoughts in different colours

So I got back to my music last night, after a frustrating period of inactivity (well - not entirely frustrating. Thanks to the nice weather I have many more bike rides under my belt).

I worked on a new idea, revisited an old one, and tinkered around with a couple of fairly recent ones.

They all sounded shit.

This is a good thing, since it serves to compel me to make them stop sounding shit. Also since it makes me less precious about all the work I have in progress. Perhaps a few weeks away from the stuff hasn't been a bad thing, but it feels imperative to regain a sense of compulsion (which happens to consist of a large amount of enjoyment) and push the whole thing forward again with the kind of momentum I was previously feeling.

I may have a couple of gigs coming up in the near future - nothing definite yet, but confirmation would certainly up the ante.

Tomorrow I exercise my democratic right, for what it's worth: local elections.

I hope the weather is good. Somehow it feels right to go along and vote on a beautiful, sunny Thursday evening. Voting is one of those few things which makes me feel like a grown-up. I wonder if this is true for anyone else who I see when I go to vote. I like the sense of purpose I have when I stroll down to the polling station.

I'll let you know if I spoil the ballot paper or write none of the above across it.

One post I never wrote last year was to mention my favourite lp of 2010. This just occurred to me as I was listening to it a little earlier. It's called Latin, and is by Holy Fuck.
It's one of those few lps which can make me feel like shouting COME ONNNNNNNN and dance and jump about and whatever else, which is no mean feat.

Oh and I will visit other blogs soon, I promise.

Monday 2 May 2011

Clockwork

My neighbour, like clockwork, leaves the house at 6.30am and gets back home at 8.15pm. You could set your clock, such is the steady reliability.

Today, he left at 6.44am and returned at 8.29pm.

Maybe it's just because it's the Bank Holiday, maybe because he slipped a little, I don't know. When things are so routine, you notice the difference.