THAT’S the trick

Putting off a nice thing until you’ve done a task.

I do that. It’s a trick that works.

But it still makes the task look like…well, a task.

Now, turning the task into a nice thing.

Well THAT’S the trick.

###intent It happened. And now the tent is up, the intent is to keep going for a week. And then carry on with the Friday’s.

The Intent

The Intention
Is to sleep in a tent tonight.
That’s The Intent.
The tension is palpable.
I always get nervous when I’m going to sleep
Outside
In the dark
On my own.

Do I sound like a scared little boy? Maybe I am one inside.

Partly I just don’t do it enough to become familiar and comfortable. The uncertainty breeds fear. That’s how it works with almost anything that makes us nervous or scared.

So, I have another intention.
To sleep outside in my tent on a Friday
Through the spring and the summer.
Whether in the garden, or out and about in Kintyre.
Get a habit going.

I’ve gotta help the little boy grow up.

And perhaps help the grown man to become a little boy.

Gannets

The Gannets were diving in numbers in Campbeltown Loch first thing this morning. It’s always a beautiful sight. And particularly now, after the avian flu that has devastated seabird populations.

They make quite a splash, even from a small distance, when they are all plunging down, like a flash of white torpedos.

I hope they recover fully.

Funnily enough, last Saturday I was at my Dad’s house in Newark, and we had lunch at a cafe called “Gannets”. Very nice it was too. But Newark is a long way from the sea by British standards. No fish on the menu.

I wonder why it got that name? And does it really matter?

We put a lot of stock on choosing names, but at the end of the day we don’t really judge anything, a person, a cafe, a bird, a band or a building, because of what it is called.

We value them because of what they add to our experience of living in the world.

Ya gotta love a boy named Sue.

Time Enough

Take the square root of infinity
Times by seven oceans of love
Then divide humanity
Add the wings of a dove
Take away sanity
And multiply everything
Everything
EVERYTHING
By the heavens above.

You will find
That there is not enough time
And there never will be
To make sense of it all.

But there is Time Enough

To make a cup of coffee
Kiss your lover
Walk into a storm
Drink from a mountain stream
Be helped by a stranger
Help a stranger
Amaze yourself by breathing every day
Sing a song
Read a book
Make friends with a pigeon
Be a friend to someone
Grieve
Laugh at silly things
Count sheep

And to start making something beautiful…

…that might never be finished.

Homework

Another confession.

I sometimes write a song to avoid doing something else. It’s a great excuse. It’s something creative. It’s the thing I’m good at, if I’m good at anything. There is a definite end product. How could time, for a songwriter, ever be wasted by writing a song?

But of course there are other things, which I find more difficult, and which take me out of my comfort zone. And need to be done. The biggest task I avoid is managing the mountain of creations that have been and gone.

Today I was tempted to write a song, I still am, in order to avoid archiving this very Homesong Blog that you are reading right now.

In my mind it feels like Homework more than Homesong work. But when I did the same task before, I quite enjoyed reading back and categorising my own work. So I"m going to embrace it. And that song will have to wait.

I’m sure I must be the only person who has this issue!?

Only Now

Only Now.

A theme I will constantly return to, if only to remind myself.

Only that thing which you or I are experiencing right at this second. The past has gone. It can’t touch us for good or bad. The memories of the past are just that. They come and they go, but even they are happening NOW, not then. They aren’t “Then”.

It’s the sounds, sights, smells, and sensations we experience now, as we write or read or do whatever we are doing, that really matter.

We can get distracted of course. Lost in thoughts that try to drag us away from the present. But those thoughts are ethereal too, even if they lead to a lot of the suffering we experience. But really, they have no control of us unless we let them.

Maybe sometimes we want to let them, thinking that suffering in our minds is some thing that we have to do. And maybe that is our experience right now, but does it have any value? Do we need to give it value? Does it benefit anyone?

All the time we are being presented with a smorgasbord of experience, laid out right out in front of us. Free of charge. Amazing things to see and hear and smell and feel. Even in a dark room with our eyes closed.

Maybe we choose to turn away from the opportunity. But there is only today in which to experience it. More than that. Only Now.

Why would we miss the opportunity?

Humaning Something

I tried to teach a parrot to sing Happy Birthday To You a few days ago. It was on a trip to an animal park with my Grandchildren.

The parrot was definitely trying. I could recognise 3 or for notes before I left him or her to practise alone.

Later on i was trying to teach a brand new song to family members for a singalong. Turns out that humans aren’t bad parrots either. The family picked things up quicker than the actual parrot.

Perhaps Parrots call the ability to copy sounds Humaning Something.

You just never know, do you?

The Habit Donkey

I am not a creature of habit.

The habits that I do follow are there in order to prevent me from drifting to the edge of the precipice, and plunging over the side of whatever it is in that far off unforeseen place.

I like to drift. I am a drifter. And drifting can be fun for a while. But the edge of the precipice is where my drifting would undoubtedly take me.

So I don’t begrudge HAVING to do some thing every day, every week, every month. Though, every day is undoubtedly the toughest. And, as you well know, I don’t always manage EVERY day.

But if I don’t, I have to get back on The Habit Donkey.

The Habit Donkey doesn’t like to get close to the precipice either. And that suits me very well thank you.

An Event

Events. They take an awful lot of planning, and they often have unpredictable outcomes. They create expectations, and those expectations are not alway met.

In fact there is a lot to be said for an organic, spontaneous, c’est la vie approach to life, whether in music, or family, or political, or personal spheres of existence. I personally much prefer that approach.

However, one thing that can be said for events. They create commitment. Often the people who are taking part, whether organisers or participators, really WANT to make it work. After the big build up it BETTER work.

Is it necessary to have An Event to create something special. I don’t think so. But, for better or worse, they are part of our lives, and we learn something about teamwork and living together when we hold them. We learn about optimism and hope. We learn about failure and success.

And when everybody commits, they can turn into something that is truly wonderful and remarkable.

Or at the very least, memorable.

Messing About

Yesterday I wrote a song with my daughter-in-law.

She didn’t know we were writing a song at the time. She was just messing about. Coming up with words that worked, and words that didn’t. Trying to express the experience of being away with family.

If you said to someone “WRITE A SONG!” they might well be intimidated if they had never done so before. Blimey, that’s something only people with The Gift do surely?

On the other hand: “Let’s mess about with words and music for a while”. That’s different isn’t it?

Well, no. It’s a part of the process. Messing About. That’s how all of us kids…..small, medium and large…..learn to make anything.

We were just playing. And then, all of a sudden, we’d made a song.

Time Out

Time Out.

What’s that about? As though it were possible to pause time.

Time out is still part of the game, not separate from it.

Perhaps we simply need to remind ourselves not to rush. To stand back and look at things as though from the outside looking in.

But Time Out is really just “Time” by another name.

The Second Floor Spiral Staircase Shuffle

Yesterday I travelled
Up, up, up.
Then down, down, down.
Then up, up, up.
Round and around.
Then down, down, down.
Then up, up, up.
Around and around
Then down, down, down.
At least a thousand times
Clearing a flat out
In Campbeltown

So if you really wanna feel
Your Achilles Heel
And you think your tough, well
Come and do it
Yeah, step right to it
Do the Second Floor Spiral Staircase Shuffle

That’s all I’ve got for today folks. I’m DONE!

Comedy Songs

Yesterday Mr Chris Annetts, friend, fellow music maker, homesong4lifer and generally good fella, turned 60 years old, and he came round for a wee celebration. It’s great to have him around in my life. I’m grateful for a friendship like this.

Chris is a fantastic songwriter in general, who honed his skills writing lots of musicals, including award winners, in the past before I got to know him. But he has got one particular songwriting knack which is more unusual but very much needed, I would say, in these sometimes anxiety inducing times. He writes superb Comedy Songs. That’s not an easy skill to master, but he’s up there with the best in my opinion.

I’ve been on the same bill with him a few times, and he’s a tough act to follow, or precede, or to anyway try to compete with, when he’s got people pretty much crying with laughter.

But one thing I’ll tell you for sure.

I definitely don’t even try without a hard hat.

Two By Two

So here’s a new idea. It’s not even fresh out the oven. It’s still at the pounding the dough stage. For now I’ll call it Two By Two.

I’ve always wanted to build a more communal Homesong experience for artists. I felt that in all the Homesongs I’ve hosted, we touched on that experience the most when Rosie Nimmo and Norman Lamont came to play in Kintyre, and then later with Gary Carey and Kevin Farrell. Those felt far less of a lonely experience for me, even though I was playing the usual organising host role. I think it was more of a shared experience all round for everyone.

So maybe the seed was planted there, but it just sprouted up after reading an article Kevin Farrell linked to recently on Facebook. That’s your background reading!

The Idea
Two artists who live in similar locations link up, and then connect with two other artists somewhere else. Each pair would commit to organising two gigs over a weekend (each responsible for one, but working with each other) either in their homes, or someone else’s home, or even a more public location. Each pair of artists would go on separate weekends to play at the other hosts gigs.

Even though I thought the big task of “Homesong” was to find music loving hosts, I have increasingly come to realise that it is we, the performers, who are the most motivated to “find an audience”. And it really is our responsibility alone. We can’t wait to be “found” when the amount of music being made out there is so immense.

It’s on us. But why not make it a shared thing?

That’s it really at the moment. Maybe I just need to get the ball rolling to see if it works. I think I will. But, of course, I don’t know if IT will. That’s the nature of ideas for you, even if they get past the “pounded dough” stage.

They’ve still got to survive the oven!

Blue Or Grey

I got a phone call just now, which reminded me of a low moment in the lives of ourselves and one of our foster children. A moment when everything could have fallen apart.

But it didn’t, and that particular foster child has come a long way, and as an adult still comes round to visit. In fact at the moment he’s helping me out with a project in the back garden.

The bad moments in time are just that. Moments. Clouds. They pass by, and they don’t have to define anything in the long term.

That is also true of any “bad” moments we experience today. In fact, in that respect they are just the same as “good” moments.

They will all contribute to this experience that we call life. And while we are right to try and make things better, we should also fully live the experience of that which already is. However it presents itself.

Whether Blue Or Grey, the sky is full of wonder.

Doing What I Can

Yesterday I released my 131st song on the fourth of the month in a row. I get a lot of positive feedback about the quantity and consistency of my output. Go me. If nothing else, I’m prolific. In fact that’s often how I’m introduced.

They say build it and they will come. But the truth is that, outside the crazy pseudo popularity world of hyper-hype and mass-marketing, they will only come if you build something so remarkable that even your worst enemy is talking about it with her friends.

And I haven’t made anything that good yet. I don’t even know if I ever will, or even if I am capable of it.

But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m Doing What I Can do right now. And I like doing it.

Free Speech

I have a recommendation today: a podcast called The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling.

It centres upon an extended interview with the author of the Harry Potter books, but is a simply fascinating insight into the way in which a very confused, divisive, sometimes violent and frightening culture has developed online and offline during this age of the internet.

It covers every view point possible, and really lets them all speak for themselves. But if it has a message, it is the absolutely vital importance of upholding the opportunity for Free Speech to every kind of view point, including those we vehemently disagree with.

I haven’t reached the end. It’s a very extensive series. But it provides very useful insights on almost every aspect of modern culture for anyone who has the time or inclination.

A Pile Of Junk?

A Pile Of Junk?

A house clear-out can feel like that.

Lots of “things”.

But all of those things had once been created. And though many of those creations came into being because of economics or expediency, some were created with a great deal of care and love.
And all of them have held some meaning to the previous resident. At least at the point of acquisition.

We could try and look at those “things” through their eyes, and discover why they may have mattered. Maybe it’s impossible to tell. Creativity in a pile, will usually still seem like a pile of junk from the outside looking in.

And the value within can take time, focus and energy to uncover.

We can try and spend that time.

Or it can all go to the tip.

Sometimes Stuck

Is there always something to say?
Or are we Sometimes Stuck
Gazing across this chasm of silence
Without a bridge to take us over to the other side?

Clearly not.

There always seems to be a bridge. Even if it is constructed from the creaky planks and fragile threads of ignorance and desperation.

But at least whilst crossing over
We have the chance to learn for a moment

-the sensation of vulnerability
-a little humility.
-to allow everything to remain as it is.

Words, for better or worse, change things.

That’s their job. But they too sometimes need to rest.

The Gather

Last night I was at a lovely “open mic” called The Gather, 40 miles up the road in Tarbert. That counts as a local event for us.

There was an Australian comedian.
A local choir who took several starts to start for each tune.
A songwriter friend who cracked everybody up with his funny songs.
Three older poets who cheerily read their poignant, uplifting poems.
A local guy who borrowed my guitar to do some covers, a little bit drunker as the evening went on.
A young lassie who read an Angela Mayou poem, and a lovely one she had written.
And me.

It was an effort to get there. And it wasn’t an actual gig. But it was undoubtedly worth getting out the front door for.

I’ll be back.