Chantin’ And Dancin’
Chantin’ And Dancin’…
I like doing both. But….
- Don’t let me try the former after I’ve had a drink or two. Things get messy. Songs get forgotten.
- Don’t try to stop me doing the latter after I’ve had a few somethings. It can’t be done.
I’m not saying anything here really, other than providing you with a little information that may or may not be helpful should you happen to find yourself in my company at a licensed establishment.
*This is a wide ranging blog covering all sorts of perplexing angles on my life and life in general. Thank you for your interest!
Uncle Che!
“Uncle Che! Uncle Che! Uncle Che!” chanted the lassies with complete and utter conviction, as Uncle Che sang his tunes at The Commercial on Sunday night.
I don’t think any Pope in Rome has been the subject of such adoration and belief. It was a thing of beauty.
It’s nice when there is someone who has our backs. Though in the world of “fandom” we don’t get to pick and choose the people who will be rooting for us.
But we do get to choose who we cheer for.
We should let them know.
”Uncle Che! Uncle Che! Uncle Che!”
Little Ripples
The Morning After.
Sometimes it can feel like a loss. Sometimes it can feel like a cloudy memory. Sometimes it can hurt. Sometimes it can feel like an opportunity missed. Sometimes it can be a hangover.
On this occasion, after a wonderful weekend of music at the Kintyre Songwriter’s Festival, for me it simply feels like a new beginning.
My word…we didn’t even have the ubiquitous all-nighter celebration, which has often been an event in itself. Just some late night tea and cheese on toast for me and my pal Chris. Rock ‘n Roll, baby!
After The Covid Years it has sometimes felt like everything has changed for the worse. This weekend has been a reminder of the beauty of the simple things in life. And that we, as Stephen Johnson reminded me last night, can be part of setting off the Little Ripples that make the world a better place.
Great music. Friendship. Drunken dancing. Stimulating conversation. Tired satisfaction. Tears of reflection. Tearing down walls of division. Bringing people together. Young and old.
It was all such a refreshing blast of lung-fillingly beautiful air.
Thank you KSF!
Spread Their Wings
The Kintyre Songwriter’s Festival is off and running. I’m playing tonight so was able to enjoy last nights acts without a care. They were all wonderful. But a particular privilege was seeing a young fella called Ruairidh Wallace hit it out the park with his stunningly angelic voice, wonderful “noodling”, and some really sophisticated songwriting.
One of the reasons why I got such a kick out of his performance was a connection to Homesong. He first performed live in our living room four years ago, with a young band of friends called The Endorphins. I sat with him for much of last nights festival, and he spoke with gratitude about how much confidence that experience gave him.
I was chuffed, as you can imagine. Like the KSF, Homesong is about just that kind of thing. Giving a relaxed environment for performing songwriters to Spread Their Wings and fly.
Ruairidh is flying and Homesong can take a little bit of reflected glory for that.
The Same Boat
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that certain categories of people are different than everybody else. That’s why we often feel awkward or embarrassed or shy around famous musicians, or actors, or any kind of “celebrity”.
To which it is always useful to remember this truism - they have to take a shit too. Think about it. But not in too much detail.
It’s a truism because it’s true.
We’re all in The Same Boat. And a human doesn’t stop being a human when they get a million subscribers on Youtube.
Even if some might think they do.
A Kind Of Victory
Irreconcilable differences.
These probably don’t exist. Given enough time and patience and….well those two mainly… we can find reconciliation. It would be nice to think so anyway.
But in real life we don’t always have enough time. Or patience.
Sometimes we find ourselves spending time together, even living together, with another person, with whom we simply can’t reconcile our own outlook on life. It seems impossible.
And that is where the shit really hits the fan. On a personal level for sure. But also in our communities, in our wider culture, and in our nations. Between all of us.
Between all of us is a divide.
And sometimes that divide is like kryptonite.
So, if we don’t let our anger or frustration dominate the situation…
We walk away. We agree to disagree. We don’t talk about it. We spend some time apart.
These are all some of more “acceptable” solutions to the problem. And they all still feel like a compromise really.
But sometimes that’s all we’ve got. Sometimes that’s enough to stop an imperfect situation getting worse.
It’s A Kind Of Victory.
Always A Better Solution
The two herons squawked loudly at each other as they flew from their nests in the tall conifer trees to the nearby shoreline.
It was a petty argument over a minor clause in “The Infringement of Space and Territory” act. Whatever that meant. Nobody understood the finer details of Heronry Legislation. But anyway, they were kicking up a fuss.
In the grand scheme of things though, it was yet another few moments of wasted time.
Because it didn’t really matter whether you were a heron, a human, or a hermit crab. Life was too short to be spent fighting and bickering.
There was Always A Better Solution.
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.