I Just Told A Lie

I Just Told A Lie.

It was a white lie, but unnecessary, and I’m writing it down here, to examine the reasons more clearly. Actually, I can already tell you - there were no good reasons.

As you’ll see when you hear the story:

A plumber is here doing some work on my Dad’s soon to be new studio flat. He’s moved in with us (my Dad, not the plumber). The plumber happened to hear me playing and singing to the geetar yesterday, and later came up and said he’d heard this beautiful version of Amazing Grace on youtube, by a heavy metal singer. Said he couldn’t stop listening to it, and that I should. I said I would.

But he couldn’t wait. Later he brought in his phone and played me the link (you can listen above). So, it’s very good, and I said so, and that was that. But he mentioned that I should listen on a proper sound system.

So this morning I came into the kitchen and the plumber appeared, and the first thing he asked me was if I’d listened to the song on my sound system. Truth is I don’t have a “sound system”. I told him that truth.

And then I said “I listened on my headphones, though”.

But I hadn’t! What’s that about?

Well, I was suddenly in a situation where someone had an expectation, and my trigger reaction was not to disappoint them. No harm done perhaps. I’m a bit of a people pleaser. It’s got its upsides.

Never the less, it was, as I mentioned at the beginning, an unnecessary lie. And, to be honest, I’d rather tell the plain old truth in those situations, even at the expense of someone’s short term feelings.

That is the long and short of it. Thanks for listening. You’re a good therapist! Or priest! Or confessor! Or whatever the hell you see yourselves as!


postscript -Good news. I’ve just listened on my headphones. It was future truth. I was lost, but now I’m found!

By Hook Or By Crook

You may or not follow the song links I post in every blog.

Basically, I pick a phrase or word with potential from that days blog, and search for a song that contains them in the title. I try and find songs that I’ve either never heard before, or that are blasts from the past. Or both. And I generally try to pick something I like, at least a little bit. But sometimes a song that challenges me more.

Oh, yes, and occasionally, obviously, I pick my own tunes, being the narcissistic, highly market orientated, own trumpet blowing, man that I am.

I’ve enjoyed listening to (mostly) new songs in this way. If you don’t usually follow the link, why not give it a try.

And if you’ve got a song that you’d like me to promote, then get in touch, and I’ll find a way of fitting the title of that song into my blog. By Hook Or By Crook

Belonging

For a lot of people music is more about being part of a tribe. It’s not just about what music and artists you like. It can be just as much defined by the music you don’t like and the artists who make it. There can be a whole culture build up around these tastes.

This is often true for musicians themselves. Which I’ve never quite understood. Plenty of musician friends I know are in with the hating Cold Play/Adele/Ed Sheeran/A.N.Other crowd because…

Well, why?

Ostensibly it’s about the music… “It’s shite”.

I don’t buy that. I think it’s all about Belonging. Belonging to the group of people who define themselves by similar likes and dislikes.

I’m in a tribe too of course. We all are. Mine is called the “If I like the song, I don’t give a monkeys” tribe.

Come and join us!

Pushing On

I was playing at a regular monthly event last night, called The Gather, in Tarbert, Kintyre. It’s a lovely mishmash of creativity regularly featuring original songs, covers, comedy, poems, and stories. And every time there is a little je ne sais quoi.

Last night we had a small, local bagpipe band playing. I was sitting right next to the lead piper as he played, looking straight at the lead drummer, and got a new insight into the musicality and pure physical commitment involved in this kind of music. And, of course, of the loudness too. It was great.

I did two short sets. After the first one a lady called Jill Aven approached me and asked if it was possible to accompany me on her fiddle during my second set. She needed to retune, as my guitar is tuned a semi-tone lower than the norm, which she happily did.

And then she quite wonderfully added her magic to the occasion. Lots of laughter too. It was great, and without a moments practise, she managed to raise the level of my own music..

Jill is from Glasgow. I’m trying to get her and her family to move to Campeltown. It’s not a lot to ask! But she is keen on playing with me again, so hopefully that will happen.

It’s funny. I had one of those, thankfully rarer, moments earlier in the day, when I was feeling a bit low, and wondered whether I could be even bothered to drive the thirty seven miles up to Tarbert. Fortunately I was committed because I’d promised to take the keyboard of my pal Chris up in the car.

It’s always worth Pushing On, or being pushed sometimes, through all of those little valleys and troughs of life.

Hologram

This kind of technology is amazing. Absolutely amazing. And undoubtedly a part of our near futures. It’s worth watching if you’ve got the time.

Trouble is, Mark Zuckerberg, who’s Hologram comes over as a cool sounding, quite broad minded, wise techno guy, is also the man behind a social media experience that controls, with it’s self serving algorithms, whom we can speak to and who can speak to us, whilst at the same time constantly pushing all the stuff we should be buying or looking at.

He’s turned a format, that was initially brilliant for connecting with people, into a minefield that quite simply mines our data to earn money for the shareholders, with no concern for the quality of our experience while it does so. It’s the massive downside of the advertising model that governs so much of our online experience.

We still haven’t learned to use the technology we already have in an ethical way which really benefits us. At the moment it simply dominates our daily lives, for better or worse, and anything new and shiny looking is turned into a money spinner for big corporations, whose aim is usually to dominate us even more.

So forgive me if I’m a little slow to jump (or allow myself to be pushed) into the brave new world on offer, with a big smile, and a heart full of optimism.

We can’t completely avoid the path we’re heading down as a society, and it would daft to try. But we should fight, as much as we are able, to maintain our choice as individuals and to sometimes stand stubbornly outside the every increasing pursuit towards a technological progress that we have no control over.

The healthy synchronism of our digital and physical lives, spoken enthusiastically about in the video link above, should rightly be treated with a great deal of healthy cynicism.

The Start Of Something

When I sit down at ye old Qwerty Keyboard or with my beautiful Geetar (which I haven’t been able to play for two whole damn weeks! ) I often start writing the first thing that comes into my head.

It often leads somewhere. You’d be surprised.

But sometimes it leads nowhere.

At first, anyway. So I stop what I’m writing and start again.

Which is another way of saying that writing the first thing that comes to mind ALWAYS leads somewhere eventually. At the end of the day, the first thing that comes into our heads will, if we allow it and don’t give up, become The Start Of Something.

Quite Amazing

“I’m old enough to remember”…

…that makes a fella sound…old.

But I am. Old enough. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.

I’m old enough to remember when you sat on a long bus journey and had quite a lot of choices of things to do.

You could look out the window, you could daydream, you could read a book, you could chat with someone, you could eat your sandwiches, you could smoke a cigarette.

You could do all of those things. But what you couldn’t do was write something down, click a button, and send what you had written out to be read, immediately, by the whole of the big wide world. If they happened to be interested.

And, because I'm old enough, that still seems Quite Amazing.

Normal Life

Normal Life.

A very occasional change from that weird, chaotic, unpredictable, funny, sad, beautiful, confusing life that we live the rest of the time.

And Now This

I have a bit of free time.

Free time has been in short supply for the last 10 days. And the nature of this job means that, in addition to the lack of time alone, I have to put aside my own decision making processes, my own autonomy, and simply be the help that somebody else needs, when they need it. It’s hard to explain, but it’s a different dynamic to most other kind of jobs.

But for now I’m free, my own boss, and I must decide what to do.

A different kind of problem.

The truth is though, that I was, I have been, I am, at liberty the whole time. It really is a mentality of seeing the present reality and accepting it for what it is. Being “free”, or seeming to be free, is not the issue.

Rather, it is a case of…

This is my present experience.

And Now This.

30 Minutes

30 Minutes before the deadline.
I’ve written songs in less time.
Should be fine.
And if not
No one will die.

30 minutes before the gig.
I’ll probably live
To tell the tale.
And if not
I’ll probably die.

30 minutes before I send
Myself and you around the bend
Then the beginning of the end
If not
The End.

Hello Again

To summarise:

- Bitten to within an inch of my life by the midges and mosquitos of The Vendee
- Thunder storm, leaky tent and sleepless nights
- A thousand miles of driving
- Perfection and tranquility in the Dordogne
- Power cuts and electric wheelchairs
-Mussels, Frites and White Wine…mmmmm.
- Cold swims first thing in the morning before work.
- Catching up with an old friend who is also my boss for now.
- Missed blogs
- September Sunshine….mainly.

Hello Again.

Helper

I’m camping in France. It’s hot.

I’m working.

A while ago I had a call from an old boss, to see if I could come on holiday with him and his wife. Many people refer to the work I’m doing here as caring. He refers to it as helping.

About thirty years ago I worked for him as a “Helper” for a few years. He taught be everything about the difference between being a carer, and being a helper. Because he didn’t want somebody to look after him. To care for him. He didn’t need somebody who knew what was best for him.

He wanted somebody to help him do the things he needed to do during a day, in order to run his business and live his life.

And I learnt, back then, that despite the fact that he had a masters degree and his own business, it didn’t count for much in many folks eyes when there was somebody pushing his wheel chair. To many people who passed by the lackey, me, was still the one to talk to. It still makes me cross now.

Anyway, it’s nice to catch up with Paul and his wife again. Laughing about the old times - I actually went on honeymoon with them you know (but that’s another story) - and the new times.

We’re camping in France. It’s hot.

And I’m working - trust me I’m working - whatever Ineke and my foster boys think.

The Scape Goat

A scape goat isn’t faultless, just because they’re The Scape Goat.

But it’s one of the cruelest things that groups of people do to an individual, and one of the saddest reflections on human society when it happens.

Nobody deserves, or should need to receive, the blame for everything. Not a goat, nor a son of god, nor a president, nor you or I.

It’s NEVER that simple.

And how insecure and fearful are we demonstrating ourselves to be, whenever we join in that kind of ritualistic destruction, meted onto some poor human soul, because our tribe (whoever they may be) has deemed somebody to deserve the role.

Kindness isn’t weakness. It’s the strength to stand against the nastier tendencies of our own side.

Darker Moments

I hate conflict, but I had what for me was a highly stressful confrontation with someone I care about yesterday. It was intentionally begun by myself, because I felt, rightly or wrongly that it was necessary.

But it didn’t go well at all. And the levels of negative emotional activity in my brain soared for a period afterwards. I was very sad, and feeling very sorry for myself.

This sort of experience would have often lead to me collapsing into a vortex of depression and even despair in the past. But I sit here, the morning after, feeling calm after the storm.

There are few reasons for this I think.

- I’m older. There is a point in life where, simply by virtue of having come through lots of these storms in life, and survived, we recognise the transitory nature of things, even in Darker Moments.

- Afterwards I was able, and this has been helped by my meditation practise over the last year, to supplement that life experience by not identifying myself with the emotions that surfaced. They arise in consciousness, and disappear there too, and by acknowledging that and noticing them as appearances in consciousness, not who I am, they disappeared a lot quicker.

- I simply repeated this every time the emotions resurfaced. And I recognised that this experience too, would, before long, become a distant forgotten memory, like all the other darker events in my life. Again all of this seemed to lessen the impact.

- Finally, I went for a pint of Guinness and a couple of whisky’s in the evening with my wife. There were some nice tunes coming from the speakers. At this point I didn’t even need to talk about what had happened, even though Ineke was also aware of, and connected to the situation. It was, in fact, a nice end to the day.

So. Sorted.

Now I’m trying to work out how I could have approached the catalyst conversation better. Or even if it was necessary at all. As a recent blog that I wrote noted, first do no harm. I should perhaps read my own material sometimes. LOL.

So What

So what!?

I couldn’t work out whether that phrase should have an exclamation mark or a question mark after it. So I put both.

So what.

Maybe that’s it.

So what…

Because what matters to me, or matters to you, might not matter to him or her. Or them.

So What

It’s a kind of liberation.

First Do No Harm

“First Do No Harm”.

Whatever the origin of the phrase, I think it is an important injunction to those of us who try and get involved in the world, outside of our own immediate and personal concerns.

Help is own really help, if it is wanted, and it make the situation better.

That sounds easy and obvious.

But it involves taking our egos out of the equation. If your ego is anything like mine, it can seem bloody difficult. And it seems like this is true for many people, because unwanted, unhelpful help, is available everywhere I look.

There are some simple steps we can take though

Slow down
Relax
Observe
Listen

It isn’t so difficult really. And I don’t think it’s too late for me to learn.

Twenty Minutes

I looked at a picture in a book, that was sitting alone on a table at our local library yesterday. For about Twenty Minutes. I never do that. I’m not very visual, and I’ve never been greatly inspired by art.

The book was called One Hundred Views Of Mount Fiji with drawings produced by Japanese artist Hokusai in his seventies, during the 19th century. The named mountain isn’t alway prominent in the drawings, but it features in all of them.

As well as the drawings, the book also contains analysis about them, and about the motivations of the artist. I’m not qualified to say whether this commentary was right or wrong. But I was fascinated enough to think I ought to allow a little bit of time to look at one of the drawings. So I did.

The picture I concentrated on contains a scene with 3 men carrying out some operation involving ropes and axes in which they would be chopping down the limbs of a tree. Mount Fuji looks on in the background.

I didn’t try and see anything in the drawing. I just looked. But without trying I found myself noticing things. Things that made me think. I also spent a little time reflecting on the artist, and the connection, thanks to the time he took to notice and draw something 150 years ago, between our two worlds.

So those twenty minutes, surprisingly for me, didn’t drag, or feel like wasted effort. It was a kind of meditation.

I may well return to Hokusai’s world.

It’s Hard To Listen

It would change the world if the person, whoever it might be, at the listening end of the conversation…actually listened.

Listening is hard. It’s very difficult to remove our egos and preconceptions out of the conversation. Whatever that conversation might be.

My wife was upset this morning (it takes a lot for that to happen) about a situation that has been going on with various gas companies for years. She’s very persevering, far more than I would be with this kind of thing, and I even get stressed watching from the outside.

It’s a ridiculously simple thing too, but it’s still not sorted, simply because of a lack of listening. And that’s not just in regard to the many people who answer the phone when Ineke rings. It’s even more the lack of listening on the part of those who set up the systems in the first place.

You will have experienced all of this at some point, I’m sure.

I tried to listen to my wife too, when she got upset this morning. And then I thought I’d try and help her look at the situation differently. But in her words “thanks for trying, but it’s not helping”.

It’s Hard To Listen well.

Must Dash

Two people, familiar but not friends, met in the street and began to chat.

”The world’s gone mad” they said.

As one of them spoke about how it was that the world had gone mad, the other one gradually realised that she probably had a different concept of sanity to her conversation partner.

Where to go in the conversation from there?

Find the common ground? Challenge the ideas? Change the subject?

She briefly tried to find the common ground. That seemed like hard work for an idle chat. So she changed the subject.

But it turned out that even the British weather wasn’t safe ground anymore.

”Anyway, I’ve got to get the kids up for school”, she said.

“Must Dash”.

A Metaphor For Life

My apologies if you read this blog via email and didn’t receive it in your inbox for the last few days. I’m not sure how that happened. I’m not at all sure how I got it sorted, but I think it is now.

And, on that ringing note of endorsement, you too can get this blog via email (or occasionally not, perhaps) by hitting the subscribe button above!

And now, my additional apologies for making this particular blog you are reading about this blog you are reading.

I’ll admit that my writing, like me, is a little bit random. You never know quite what you’re going to get, when you’re going to get it, and if you’re actually gonna want what you got when you do get it.

Yay! I’m A Metaphor For Life!