The Little Bowl

I like this quote from another blog writing musician:

“What does it mean to be famous? One definition might be to be known and respected the places you go. That said…one way to achieve fame is to simply limit (or be content with) the number of places you go”.

The big fish in The Little Bowl gets a bad rap. Maybe because we focus on the idea of someone acting as though they are a big deal and being too scared to find out how little a deal they really are, by moving to a bigger bowl.

But the quote above, suggests it doesn’t have to be that way. It can simply be a conscious decision, on the part of any of us who create, to enjoy what we have. To be content with being known and respected in the places we are known and respected.

For most of us that will always be within a little bowl.

We can enjoy the kind of fame we do have, not live forever hoping for the kind of fame we probably never will.

(And we don’t have to be a big fish about it!)

Well Done Me

I’ve just released my 136th song. It’s not a special anniversary or anything. But I’m proud of the achievement.

There was no aim in my mind. No target I wanted to achieve. At one point in time I simply started recording and releasing a song every month. And here I am, 136 months later, still doing it.

There is lots of other credit to be given in this story. Particularly to my partner in crime on the recording side of things.

But in this moment I simply want to credit myself with starting a creative project….and carrying on with it.

That is all. Well Done Me.

The Brick Buddha

I was moving bricks yesterday. Two at a time. One in each hand. 75 steps to the new pile. 75 back to collect two more from the old. I did this for a couple of hours until the transfer was complete. I had my reasons. The main one being that my good wife had asked me to.

To be honest it was very enjoyable. In not doing too much at once (I started off carrying more) and going at a steady, un-rushed pace, It became a kind of relaxing meditation.

On this occasion, at least, I wasn’t focussed on the moment when the bricks would FINALLY have been moved. My word! That makes things far more exhausting in my experience. Especially the stage, near the end, when they have NEARLY been moved. That last stage is usually the worst don’t you think? It seems to last forever.

But this time….this time…. I was THERE with those bricks for the duration.

You can call me The Brick Buddha if you like.

Insufficient

Guilt and shame are sales tactics.

They are tactics that are used by unscrupulous double glazing marketeers and religious fundamentalists. And occasionally even by people we love and trust. Including ourselves.

If we can be made to feel Insufficient, they (or we) are a good part of the way to making the sale.

For some of us, and for a variety of reasons, it is hard to avoid being made to, at the very least, feel bad about ourselves, even if we aren’t persuaded to buy the product. And this kind of bad feeling can spiral into also sorts of negative emotions, none of them healthy.
In reality the tactics of guilt tripping and shaming are completely immoral.

There will be many good reasons for doing, or not doing the things we do. We should choose those reasons, and completely ignore the rest.

Right now, who we are is sufficient.

Doing That Thing

Giving and taking criticism is a very hard thing to learn. The attempt always, is to give it and take it as constructively as possible. But it’s not easy.

In regard to receiving it, we do our best and try to encourage it and take whatever is heading in our direction, and then feed it into our future actions and directions. Or sometimes, if it is of the destructive kind, simply ignore it. But that kind is a lot less common than we perhaps like to think. There is always something we can get from almost any kind of criticism.

However, there is an important action we can take on our part, however any of that goes.

We simply do it again. That thing we did.

Regardless of how much or little we consciously take from the various forms of feedback we receive, the simple act of

-Writing another song.
-Running another race.
-Standing on another stage.
-Hosting another event.

Whatever it might be, putting our heart into carrying on doing that thing, will make us consistently better at Doing That Thing.

I’m sure I’m preaching to the converted though…

Enter A Post Title

When I sit down and write this blog I am greeted by the command - “Enter A Post Title”.

Very rarely do I obey this command. It’s just not the way I rumble. With a blog or a song, in general. There are obviously exceptions. But to me it’s like asking an 18 year old boy/man to put a title on the story of their future life before they’ve actually lived it.

Let’s find out, hey? It seems more interesting that way.

Anyway, this life story is over. And, you’ll be pleased to know I’ve decided on the post title. This one seems self evident.

A Gentle Acceptance

Here in Campbeltown there is very much the sense that Autumn is beginning to creep its way in the door, and give Summer a little nudge in the opposite direction.

I generally find it to be a pleasing, restful time of year. Which surprises me for two reasons.

Firstly, it’s round about now that, back in the last century (that phrase makes me giggle), I would have been beginning the first days of a long year at school. And school was never usually something I looked forward to. At least after the primary school years.

And, of course, it is also the time when the nights slowly begin to creep in, here in the northern half of the northern hemisphere. There are going to be less sunlight hours, and it is going to get colder and darker.

So the cause of this pervading peacefulness is hard to put my finger on. And of course the usual moods swings can still come into play. I’m still capable of getting on edge about something.

Never the less, as the summer ends, the overall sense remains -

- A Gentle Acceptance of life as at is.

Free Will

There was a point in my life when I stopped believing in the particular sort of God and the particular sort of religion that went with that God. And I became agnostic toward the idea of a “God” in general. It was a completely transformative experience in my life, simply because up until that point everything for me had revolved around those beliefs and the outlooks that emerged from them.

It took a while (a few years, and in one sense it is still happening) to regain a sense of equilibrium and to build a new way of looking at life and my experience of it. Because pretty much everything had changed for me.

The key thing about my new world view is that it is fluid. It changes with the emergence of new information and evidence and experience. And that has been liberating to be honest.

But although fluid, that new world view had some core foundations. Possibly the main one being the notion of free will. The fact that we are free to respond, and actively do, in how we think and act. It is, in fact, a belief that is hotly debated in the world of philosophy. But most people believe we have it, one way or another, and that it is fundamental to our morality and ethics as human beings.

I’m not going to discuss any of that in detail. Suffice to say that I have had another transformative world view experience.

I no longer believe in the notion of Free Will.

And that change has come about through the simple realisation, after close observation, that I have not the slightest clue, not the merest inkling, what thought I am going to think next. There is no Me controlling it. It just happens. I suspect if you examine your own thought processes, you may well discover the same thing.

I’m definitely not trying to persuade or prove anything here though. However, whether true or not, there are clearly lots of potential implications for this bombshell of a change in my thinking.

In the meantime, although in one sense all at sea in my mental ship without that former anchor, just I was when God went and died in my heid, I am convinced that those implications do not need to be nihilistic, nor fatalistic, nor inconsistent with a motivation to live a better life and work towards a better world.

Quite the opposite in fact. I was told that without God there was no reason to do good. To bother with anything. And that is patently not true. I’m quite certain it’s not true in this case either.

But for now, there is a whole new way of looking at the world which I am needing to work out. I’m finding it quite fascinating and exciting actually.

Sorry to batter you with this personal revelation on a Tuesday morning, though.

Learning That Dance

We try to establish routines and practises which brings a sense of control and serenity to our lives.

In the meantime our conscious minds, our thoughts, and the streams of information that enter our perception from the outside world, are a maelstrom of complete unpredictability.

We try to change our lives for the better. But to avoid unnecessary suffering we need to completely accept what actually IS right now.

Life, a good life, is a dance between these two juxtaposed poles of order within chaos.

When we get it right, our steps, like a couple of dancers on Strictly, are constantly moving, but always in the moment.

Learning That Dance is a lifetimes work.

It is life.

Auto-Pilot Songwriting

I’ve just written a Christmas song. In August. It was part of a challenge among some songwriting friends. With this particular song I didn’t feel it at all. And not just because of the lack of snow, and red-nosed reindeer.

Ideally I like to start a song with some kind of urge, whatever that may be, to communicate something. Some emotion or thought that I want to get out of me, and into a lyric and a melody. But often, and understandably, when writing a song as a set task, that kind of feeling doesn’t materialise to act as a guiding rudder.

In these instances the songwriting process is an attempt to write something that touches the feelings and emotions of others, as though from a distant memory. There is a kind of Auto-Pilot Songwriting switch that needs to be turned on.

Writing this way is not nearly as enjoyable for me, to be honest. In fact I nearly gave up on this song at one point, because of that lack of feeling. But it’s finished now.

And you know, though I haven’t played it to anybody yet (it’s August! I’m not a supermarket!) it won’t matter in the slightest how little I felt whilst writing it - the important point is that they feel something when they hear it.

I know from experience that my emotional attachment to a song isn’t generally a factor in whether or not that happens.

Trigger’s Old Pa

Trigger the donkey was being visited by his old Pa. Trigger’s Pa was a donkey too. They resembled each other in that way. Though not many others.

His pa did most of the usual things that donkeys do. His own version of them anyway. Except for one irritating habit.

When Trigger’s Pa ate a thistle, he ate everything but the thistley part of the thistle. And then he’d leave the thistley part lying around.

He’d always done that.

And when Trigger, inevitably and painfully, stepped on one of those thistley thistle bits, that his Old Pa had left lying around, it reminded him of ALL the times that this had happened on previous occasions.

Trigger would then become triggered by Thistle Vision. And he could ONLY think about EVERY OTHER TIME he’d trod on Old Pa’s THUCKING THISTLEs! The SELFISH ASS!

But Trigger’s Old Pa didn’t have long for this world, and he wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

”It’s probably time to get over it”, Trigger thought to himself.

Something Is About To Happen!

I just had some liquid nitrogen treatment on my solar ketosis. Yep.

“This is going to sting”, she said. And then it didn’t sting that much at all. I’m not sure whether I was happy or disappointed.

But does it work the same with entertainment?

”Here for your dubious pleasure tonight, Mr David Fee, is about to perform. He’s pretty mediocre, to be honest”.

Would people be pleasantly surprised when (and if) I exceeded expectations? Or would they be secretly hoping for the worst? Probably not the way to get the very best out of that Mr Fee fella, though. But I don’t like hype either.

Anyway, some kind of introduction is usually helpful at these times.

But when the needle is about to be plunged in, or the entertainment is about to begin, we could do a lot worse than:

”Something Is About To Happen!”

Thank you and Good Night.

Better Do It Soon

Urgent: Needing to be attended to immediately, or very soon.

It’s not the last step. When the car is heading towards us without sign of braking we don’t have time to think ”it is urgent that I remove myself from this incoming disaster”. We just act and jump out the way. Hopefully on time. It’s our primitive response to very imminent danger.

But there are various degrees of urgency and they often come with some kind of warning. There is time to act, we are told, or circumstances suggest, and we Better Do It Soon.

There might be a few of these kind of warnings. But at some point, later down the line, “do it soon” turns into, “do it now”.

And if we are unprepared…if we’ve ignored all the Soon warnings…then when the Now moment comes…we tend to panic. We tend to respond in the primitive fashion - we jump - with no further opportunity to think it through. And sometimes it’s simply too late.

Thinking it through ahead of time is hard, I find. But there is no out of control car on my immediate horizon. Just the potential for one or two. So I’d rather put the hard thinking in, and where necessary the hard action, now.

It’s like the proverb -

The Early Bird Avoids The Psychotic Kamikaze Worm.

Seeds Of Kindness

I listened to a short podcast yesterday titled “A Golden Age For Arseholes”.

The even shorter version, in my words: our current versions of social media facilitate the promotion of nasty behaviour, and lead to those without scruples or empathy rising to the top.

It was quite a depressing listen to be honest. And its broadcaster, whom I respect greatly, and who doesn’t rant without reason, concluded that if things continued in this fashion, then truth itself would gradually become irrelevant.

In the face of this kind of scenario - and climate change is another - where there is a seemingly irreconcilable gap between an incoming tsunami and our ability to do anything about it, it is easy to despair. Or simply to stop caring.

And of course, you know, that is what the arseholes want.

For our part, we don’t need to give them the satisfaction.

And more importantly, in my helpless opinion, we should keep planting Seeds Of Kindness.

But with more urgency.

Always Somebody

The midges were out on my morning walk. I decided to avoid scratching which, as everybody knows, is not always the easiest task.

So I tried to reframe the situation, in a manner suggested by the Stoic philosophy, which contains a lot of very useful wisdom.

I brought to mind a terrible illness I’ve heard of, I can’t remember the name, where people are constantly losing their skin, and are in constant pain, to a lesser or great degree. I can’t possibly begin to imagine really, but as a result…

…my infuriating itches turned into:

- funny little tickles
- something that would pass by quickly
- a reminder of the wonder of being alive
- a sign of my luck and privilege

And here’s the easily ignored cliche. There is Always Somebody worse off than us. Somebody who would find our situation to be a pure delight or, at the very least, an improvement on their present situation.

Always.

The Man Glued His Hands To The Road

The Man Glued His Hands To The Road.

He did it because he believes the world is getting hotter, and more dangerous to live in, and that humans are responsible. That we need to be reminded.

He was clearly very committed and serious about that. And we couldn’t help but pay attention. But he pissed off loads of people.

The people who were pissed off were very numerous, and they said things like
- “his actions are going to make people want to damage the planet out of spite”.
- “he is messing up ordinary peoples daily lives just to be woke”

That first one seems like a massive, and some what stupid, over reaction. The second one is at least partially true. On the other hand Glue Man would probably argue that, if things don’t change, climate change will mess up people’s lives on a scale that makes his actions look like what they are - a man glueing his hand to the road.

I don’t know what I think about all of this.

On the one hand I’m with the glue fella, in the sense of, even if ALL of the scientists are wrong, it is clearly better that we live in a cleaner, less polluted world. And if they are right, we have got a lot worse things to worry about, than the convenience of our daily commutes.

On the other hand, he pissed a lot of people off, so maybe his actions are counter-productive.

I believe in doing things that work. It’s not always clear what does work though. But I do think, that if you believe something and you care you’ve got to at least try. I admire that in anybody, even if I disagree with them entirely.

But also, and this is really very important, it’s sensible sometimes to reflect and reassess the situation. Is it working?

It’s not always easy to know though.

Happy Days

A lovely time had yesterday at the Harbour Day in the village hall at Carradale. It was one of those events where things were happening round and about as the music played.

But I had dancers up at the front, and a great response. And I really enjoyed singing and looking over it all happening at the same time.

And there was a dog show afterwards, which made my mate and fellow performer Chris Annetts very happy.

Also I met a lovely lassie who can use the apples we’ve got in the garden, and turn them into apple cider! I tried some of the cider she’s made previously (smuggled into the event…shhhh!) and it was VERY good.

So, a result all round.

Happy Days.

That’s Weather For You

I’m playing Carradale Harbour Day this afternoon. The harbour is getting moved into the Village Hall. It will be a complicated operation I’m sure. But That’s Weather For You.

I played my first ever gig in Carradale at The Cruban bar about 26 years ago, in my early thirties.

I was a late starter, it’s true. Now I’m just about warming up into the race, and I’m looking forward to this gig.

Glad I put Swimming In The Rain on the set list….

Looking Into A Hole

Four workmen Looking Into A Hole.

Is that the same as Four songwriters standing around trying to decide which specific adjective, or chord change, should be used in the song?

Or is it something else entirely?

It’s a mystery that may never be answered.

In Other News
I mentioned that I had started writing a Homesong book. I am looking for willing victims volunteers to help me with a bit of feedback. Get in touch at contact@homesong.co.uk.

Thanks.

The Pass Not The Peak

I’ve been watching a video of a man walking a long distance path in Colorado, USA. That path covers great distances in mountainous areas, and has probably been around for a long time.

The thing I noticed was that the path invariably goes through the mountains by crossing over The Pass Not The Peak.

A pass is the American term for the dip, the low point, between two mountains. It makes complete sense that a path created by travellers over the years takes the simplest, and easiest route possible. When you’re walking or riding in order to get from A to B, as part of your day to day existence, why make things even more difficult for yourself?

Here in Scotland, munro bagging has become a thing. Which basically means attempting to climb to the top of the 282 mountains in this country which rise above 3,000 feet, or roughly 1000 metres.

And there is a sense of wonder and awe to be gained from standing at the top of the world, and looking down on everything. I slept at the top of a munro a couple of years back, and it was all that and more.

We need those moments in life, and it is good to set time aside to head for those peaks. But in day to day life, to achieve the tasks and dreams we have set ourselves, it is undoubtedly wiser to take the simplest and most straightforward path possible.

It can be a tough enough journey, without trying to climb every possible summit on the way. And the memory of the mountains we do climb, will always stay with us on the long trail.