It Comes To An End
I’m at that age when people I know have started dropping off the end of Life on more of a regular basis.
We call this happening “Death”.
It’s still a subject many people have a problem talking about or thinking about. I’m of the opposite inclination, not through any morbid inclinations, or because I’m especially brave, but simply because I think it helps me appreciate the preciousness of Life. So I regularly contemplate it’s one very specific limitation:
It Comes To An End. For everybody. And who knows when our turn will be?
Happy days, while we can enjoy it!
Below is a song I just released based on a little story that my mum told me while she was still alive. It’s about her not being allowed to stay with me overnight, during a week that I was in hospital for an operation when I was 3 months old.
Cry Little Baby is for anyone who feels that sense of desperate loss.
Because it’s not the end of things, just yet. We’re here still. And we feel how we feel.
The point is that we have the chance to feel.
Nice Surprises
“Pack your bag and be ready to leave”.
That’s a sentiment that has probably been heard a lot down the ages and not always (probably not often) for good reasons.
I’m lucky. I’ve just been told that by my lovely wife, and it’s a surprise present. I love surprises. And obviously Nice Surprises are the kind you want.
It’s another privilege. It’s another reason for reminding myself daily of how blessed I am. Not only with the big opportunity we all have of conscious life, even though it be for the briefest of moments, but the additional fortune to be born into a time and place in the world, where plenty of nice surprises are a real possibility.
Anyway, I’ve had my orders. I’ve got a bag to pack.
I hope you, like me, have got some nice surprises on the horizon.
But even more than that I wish us all the ability to enjoy and appreciate this moment now, however it may appear.
A Song For Every Eventuality
A Song For Every Eventuality.
That’s a kind of aim I have in my writing. More realistically, I really don’t want to limit the subject matter.
When it comes to the songs I write…well, you know what it’s like, if you write… don’t mess with The Muse. Just go where she or he takes you. But definitely don’t go putting down any daft restrictions.
Apart from anything else, you’ll have a lot less fun. The mystery and uncertainty are undoubtedly a big part of the joy of songwriting.
What’s going to turn up today?
So, anyway, I’m playing at a wee eclectic, arty open mic night for the third time this evening. It’s called The Gather. And I’ve just remembered a song I wrote that has got a bit lost in the mists of time. It’s called The Gathering.
Yay! I appear to have a song that just about fits this eventuality anyway.
The Storm Before The Calm
Maybe it’s The Storm Before The Calm.
I mean, why not?
These things work both ways. Maybe we should be preparing ourselves for some blue sky and sunshine.
What to do with ourselves, once the problem is solved?
Batteries Leak
A battery is stored energy. Whether it be the batteries in our brains, our bodies, our cars, our torches or our phones, they give us the flexibility to travel away from the safety of home base. Or to have some independence at home when the bigger networks of energy go down.
But Batteries Leak. It’s a problem that we’ve never really solved. In theory if we’ve got some stored energy we can carry on in the confident knowledge that, should our access to direct energy disappear, we will be able to continue on with our journey or our task.
But eventually that battery is going to wear down. It may become unusable. And we need the resilience, the patience, the creativity, and the courage to find new energy, when our usual sources have run dry or are inaccessible.
Thankfully there are a lot of alternative sources of energy out there. Ones that we aren’t even yet aware of. But we won’t find them unless we look.
And we won’t look unless we realise the truth that batteries leak. We should be ready for that to happen.
*Yes, I went metaphor fishing again. What you make with this fish will involve finding a recipe to your personal taste.
**I think I just stuffed the first fish with another fish. You’re welcome! And my apologies if you don’t eat fish. Or batteries.
Make Hay While The Sun Shines
The sun is out, the sky is blue.
And why is that alone enough to make us feel good?
Ooh. Ooh. Ooh!
Who knows? But, like the old aphorism…Make Hay While The Sun Shines…it undoubtedly makes it easier to do our work.
Of course, if you’re in the job of making hay, you have to make the best job of it whatever the weather. But it is unforgivable to miss those blue sky days.
When inspiration strikes, don’t assume that it will be around forever.
Get Haying!
The Starting Point
I just remembered a song I’d written.
I remembered it. Which means I’d forgotten it. It is called Premier Man, and I remembered it because I wrote it in a Premier Inn, and that’s where I am right now.
But how many things have I forgotten? How many things have I forgotten that will never come back to me again? How does my brain, without the obvious reminders like the one I just experienced, decide what I should remember, and what should remain forever in Oblivion
What is important for my survival? For my revival? For this one life?
The crazy thing is, that I just don’t know the answer to any of these questions. My own attempts at keeping anything at the forefront of my mind are arbitrary and highly subjective. And my brain makes all the other decisions independently of my input.
In other words, I don’t really know what I’m doing. And on the surface that seems like a bad thing. A very bad thing.
On the other hand perhaps this crumb of knowledge is the starting point for everything. Maybe it can breed the humility that strips away those delusions of personal omniscience. The first step to seeing things as they really are.
Anyway, hopefully I’m not bringing you down with all these seemingly nihilistic meanderings of my mind. If it’s any consolation, it’s having the opposite affect on me.
Have a nice day!
Our Superpower
I’m sitting with one of my grandsons as he quietly draws a picture in the kitchen. He is very focused and still. The most introverted of my grandchildren.
”What are you drawing Angus?”
He becomes animated. “I’m just doing scores for this guy”. And then a whole explanation of why this guy he has drawn is getting his scores, in a Top Trumps kind of way, involving a whole world of imagination inside of Angus’s head.
The guy has a “knockback” of 99 btw. You’ve got to admit…that’s impressive.
In our imaginations, we are the King or Queen of the whole frikin’ empire. Nobody else controls it. Nobody needs to know what’s going on in there. And nobody can take it away from us.
Imagination is Our Superpower.
This Kind Of Bleugghhhh
I am not a bot.
You should probably be able to tell because my sentences, and indeed the words in the sentences, are so very random. I don’t even know what I’m going to write next.
So don’t panic Mr Mainwaring.
Because what kind of artificial intelligence is ever going to spout This Kind Of Bleugghhhh, without simply using a copy and paste function.
There will be a kind of comfort in that, I think, should The Great AI In The Cloud ever come to rule over us.
When Your Face Doesn’t Fit
It can be tough When Your Face Doesn’t Fit.
You think you’re good looking, characterful, charming and AVAILABLE…but somebody else, with clearly a lot less of everything, apart from the availability, gets chosen ahead of you.
And when it happens regularly, it starts to seem as though there is a pattern developing. Maybe you don’t have the qualities you thought you had after all.
Again, it all comes back to changing the things you can change, and letting everything else be as it is.
Maybe you could have pushed yourself forward more. But maybe you didn’t want to. Maybe you could do something about your face. Or maybe there was nothing that could be intentionally improved.
It’s all, as they say, good. Chill. Don’t judge yourself. Or the ones that get picked.
This is not any kind of defeatist attitude.
It’s the only way to move forward.
(And if you guessed correctly, yes, I’ve been rejected as the model for the front cover of GQ magazine YET AGAIN!)
Emotional Beings
I’ve just had an interesting discussion with one of my sons about the use of music as a tool to influence us emotionally in regard to this, that, or the other. The subject in question happened to be the promotion of vegan-ism in a video highlighting the cruelty of many animal farming practises. My son is a vegan.
Clearly music does impact the emotions. My own take on this, is that I prefer for music not to be used to support subjects that are about challenging and/or contentious subjects. We are Emotional Beings, but I think we need to make every effort to stand aside from those emotions when we enter the realm of “truth seeking”.
That’s what I argued for anyway. But it’s really just a personal preference, born out of my days in the religious world, in which music was often used to move people towards faith and to precipitate certain actions. Beliefs and actions which I now think very differently about.
But if anything highlights how irrational we often are, it is the power that music can have over our emotions and thought processes.
Music has great power. Like anything, it can be abused or misused.
A Journey Worth Taking
I travelled 4 hours yesterday, for the album release gig of a friend in a community centre in Edinburgh. I’ve never done that for any of your bog standard famous musicians. But to be honest, all the gigs I’ve most enjoyed have been by people I know or have a connection with. And all have been in small venues.
Dylan and Knopfler at the SECC really never did it for me.
But Norman Lamont and The Heaven Sent and, his support Rosie Nimmo and band, both rocked it in their own ways last night at The Leith Folk Club. Such a pleasure. Great songs, wonderfully performed, by lovely people.
Definitely, A Journey Worth Taking.
The Last Time
Is this The Last Time?
Who knows?
But it could be. The last time you do that particular thing. See that particular person. Have that particular experience.
Read this particular blog.
That’s not a dark thought. It’s one of gratitude. And enjoyment. And appreciation.
And it’s a reminder to keep on keeping on ceasing the day, the hour, the moment. You might not need reminding, but I do.
Hostess With The Mostess
I’m taking the geetar to a friend’s 50th party tonight. Many happy returns (for tomorrow) to the wonderful Homesong Hostess With The Mostess, Lori Silvan.
I’m not your ideal musician for this sort of thing to be honest. I still don’t know a cover song even though I keep threatening to learn some. But, hey, I can play about a hundred original Feetunes if required (trying to learn all my back catalogue at the moment….I’ll get there eventually) so I’m not going to berate myself too much.
And some of those songs are real party boppers as far as I’m concerned. We will see.
But Lori has been a wonderful encourager of the Homesong idea. And she’s been a wonderful host to many fantastic Homesong evenings in her wee “barn/shed” in Clachan. As many locals and far flung musicians will testify.
And she definitely won’t let the party atmosphere drop, even if there’s nobody to play the Beatles, the Elton, the Taylor, or the Sheeran.
Wishing her the best evening of her life…even if it rains!
And onto the next 50 Lori. Congratulations!
Friendship CD’s
I recently bought a new CD release by a friend and Homesonger, Norman Lamont (and The Heaven Sent). It’s called Turn.
I only tend to buy CD’s from musicians with whom I have some physical connection these days. And I don’t buy them to listen to, coz I don’t have a CD player. (That’s what the WAV files are for, and I only got those today, so I haven’t listened to it properly yet. I know it’s going to be excellent though, from what I’ve heard “leaked” up to now).
I buy these CD’s as a musical symbol of connection. And I plan to make a wall of Friendship CD’s one day, if I get a room that is mine alone. They will be a reminder of all the wonderful times I’ve had, and the friends I have been able to make, simply by writing songs, and meeting and hooking up with other songwriters and music lovers.
That’s been such a wonderful pleasure of the last 20 years of my life in particular.
- If you happen to be in the Edinburgh area next week, Norman and the band are launching the album at the Leith Folk Club in the Heart Of Newhaven, in Newhaven. Supported by another Homesonger friend, Rosie Nimmo. Doors 7.30pm. I’m very much looking forward to it.
Sounds
The clock is ticking.
The rooks are cawing. The breath is escaping and returning with a soft hiss. The hard-drive is humming. Something inside my head, my internal hard-drive, is humming too. I think it’s the blood rushing around, but I’m no expert.
The keyboard is clicking.
This is the music of life. Always sounds present, even in that space we call Silence.
I don’t always listen closely enough.
The songwriter should probably pay a little more attention to Sounds.
Sonder
Sonder - “The realisation that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own - populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness.”
That’s Sonder…not Sondar (otherwise Dan Dare will be on my case!)
I recently came across this word, and it’s wonderful definition. I say recently. It feels familiar. Have I written about it before? I don’t know. But I do know that the realisation it mentions is a fantastic one to have.
I hope that your own particular and unique “vivid and complex” life is going in a good direction. I’m so glad I’m sharing it with you, whether I know you or not.
And I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating many times - what a frickin’ privilege we have!
Let’s go out there and make it the best life possible. Whether we have 60 minutes left, or 60 years.
For Better Or Worse
Me or everyone.
The individual or the team.
My brain or the culture.
It’s clear that the only thing I can really change in all of this, is my part. I am my responsibility. And nothing else changes without personal change happening.
But it’s not enough. I’m a human. Other people matter. The circumstances they exist in matter. It’s all part of a whole. I’m part of a whole. I can see that.
So, if I want to be “better”, and I have a definition of what “better” might look like, I’m going to need to persuade someone else to join me. That’s how culture happens.
And For Better Or Worse, that’s how we operate. That’s how human life progresses. And sometimes regresses. Someone persuades us to change ourselves, and we change. And then we persuade someone else to do the same.
We are all involved in this process, whether we like it or not. But we can choose whether to be pro-actively or passively involved.
No other options, I’m afraid.
The Fewest Words
“I had a wheelbarrow, the wheel fell off”. And repeat.
That’s the song for my main football team, the one I’ve supported since I was a boy. Notts County. My son and I travelled, Friday night down, Saturday night back, on the overnight bus from Glasgow to watch them win promotion on penalties at Wembley. My word it was a hard watch. But a happy ending.
And the song is, in my opinion, the best football chant in the world. It sums it all up, for those of us who follow a football team. Yes there are the high points, like Saturday, but mostly…well, the wheel is falling off. Mostly we don’t reach the top. Only one team wins the league. Or the cup. Everybody else loses.
It is about the taking part.
And the best songs usually say it in The Fewest Words.