Looming deadlines

I think it's fair to say that if there are any underlying themes to this blog, one of the recurring ones is that of my attempts to reconnect with things which have been of fundamental importance to me, but which I feel I've lost touch with over the course of the last few years.

Music is one of those things and I've had, at certain times, some success in busying myself with the process of playing, writing and recording music again. Or, to put it a little more accurately, the process of mangling sounds.

Well something has cropped up which is very much the kick up the arse I need: I don't want to go into any detail at the present time because it would somehow feel like tempting fate (that's really without any rational basis but I'll allow myself to be led by it all the same), but basically I've agreed to the offer to play at a venue in a few short weeks from now.

Suddenly, what this has meant in real terms is that since Thursday I've spent several hours hunched over my laptop and monitor speakers recording, arranging, editing, layering, deleting, cutting and pasting, fretting, and generally being utterly absorbed in the whole process. It's been easier to spend the time doing this while I've been away from work, but now that there's a deadline against which I feel like I'm going to be judged, it now feels like I can't afford not to keep myself involved.

And it's great. I've had a break from it today because I'm giving my poor ears a rest, but it's reminded me just how much all of this used to keep me occupied on a daily basis. The main challenge at the moment is to ensure I've enough usable material to perform, but what I've really noticed over the last week or two is how my thinking has changed as a result of having something to work towards: no putting things off, I have to keep coming back to it, trying different things, reworking and re-editing, obsessively listening back over and over.

Actually, obsessively is a key word in all this. I was involved in a remixing project a few years ago and once I'd set to it I very quickly found myself rearranging the furniture in my flat in accordance with the way I was working. On other occasions, with particular ideas going through my mind, I might get up in the middle of the night to listen back to something or to change an aspect of it, and only then would I be able to settle back to sleep. I can feel that obsessiveness coming back to some small degree, and it's welcome in the sense that it's closely allied to something constructive and creative.

The main thing is, I'm starting to achieve a sense of continuity with what I'm working on, and that feels very healthy. It's also a balance against the things I'm pissed off with, and as such is much-needed. I'm already having the occasional stab of anxiety: what if things go wrong? Well the fact that things will be actually going in the first place is enough at the moment.

I hope to post more on this as things progress. But it makes me reflect on just how stupidly negative I can be: in general, when I've felt like work or other things are grinding me down, I manage to think of all sorts of disincentives for working on music (or anything else creative for that matter): yet on the occasions when I've actually made a start, suddenly I feel like I'm in my element and that everything is all right with the world again.

Ringtones

It's a particular source of frustration to me that I wake up at the same time on a Saturday morning as I do during the week, and rarely get back to sleep, regardless of the lateness of the hour at which I went to bed on Friday night. Such has been the case this morning, though on the brighter side it's equally a relief to realise that I don't have to get up and go to work.

This morning something else was impinging on my consciousness as well: a long, steady ringing tone, medium in register, occasionally fading for a brief moment before returning, sometimes seeming to come from the left, other times from the right. In other words, the internal orchestra that comprises my tinnitus (not that I want to give it too grandiose a description or anything) appears to have a temporary new addition.

I'd almost forgotten what this was like, lying there and listening in, trying to distinguish between external sounds and internal ones. I've become so used to the repertoire of ringing, whining and whistling that goes on, that for the vast majority of the time it really doesn't bother me at all. It used to scare the shit out of me: I'd be constantly finding somewhere quiet to sit and listen and work out whether the noises were fading or getting louder or whether there were any new ones (which would mean another nail in the coffin for my hearing). These days I'd probably find it more unsettling if the ringing disappeared.

The new tone I heard this morning shouldn't last. It was triggered by going to see a film last night: Control, the dramatisation of the life of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis. Normally I'd have the earplugs in for loud music (and the music is done particularly well in the film) but on this occasion I just couldn't bring myself to do so. Much like the handling of the rest of the film there was something very satisfying in how the rawness and immediacy of the band's live performance was captured.

I normally steer clear of biopics: if the subject is one you're very familiar with, I find it tends to be an unsatisfactory experience, defined as much as anything by what has been missed out, misrepresented or glossed over. Not so in this case: apart from one or two slight irritations, I can't see how it could be improved upon. My friends and I were talking about it long after it had finished, which is always a good sign: as is my willingness to tolerate the ringing in my ears.