As I get older, I experience both anxiety around the idea of losing the things that have been reliable sources of comfort in the past, or the things I've constructed and allowed to define me, and a lemming-like desire to ditch everything and lose it all. When people had their houses flooded and lost all their personal memorabilia, I was a bit envious. And yet I can't throw all that crap out. I've thrown a lot of it out, but if you lost it in a flood you'd have to go, oh well, and accept it.
Responsibility, eh.

First post of 2010

Well, I'm on another train, by mid feb, it'll have been 2 months since I got to spend more than 5 nights at a time in one place (and that's at the outside.) Managed to cram death (of a good friend), disease (shit/puke bug, no new year's diet for me!) and despair (related to the other two and also to the lack of sunlight, abject lack of cash, exhaustion from big drives and much travelling, and not seeing enough of my peeps. It reminds you it really doesn't take much for some of the key props of mental health to be removed and everything else starts lurching around.
I am also feeling pressured about needing to write a couple of cracking songs to complete the album.
On the upside, the pressure is my own invention, I have learnt some great new tunes, and the out of all the confusion have made some new friends. C'mon-we're nearly through with January! Better days will dawn again.

idea

Just got to get this down so I don't forget...reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, which speaks of the 10 000 hr rule (to get good at stuff) what about chronicling one's own 10 000 hr journey? the changes in physical appearance as you get older, other life events, what the consequences are...

kitchen sink haiku

Do I get double
room to myself or do I
listen to you snore :)

last year erotic
verse of yearning I sent you
some yearning still there

we are between the
real and the ideal image
of a dream lover

See life different
Maybe there is consensus
If heart can open

chips fall, pull you down
So you see the world sideways
It is not like that

I must be perverse
Angered when I am confused
Don't understand rules

If I can't accept
One day I must go away
Nagging is no fun

Not that day today
hope it doesn't come too soon
Or on a cold night

Would love to show you
All the treasures of your heart
Who knows, who knows, who...?

Seems haiku come quick
Dishes are waiting for me
The lyrical is.

winter

My heart is heavy...two of my dearest friends have suffered a very bitter and ill-deserved blow, the last in a series, and it makes me sad such sorrow should rain down upon them again. They told me their news and it made me cry in the car on the way to the gig I was due to play. I'm just waiting for the Chelsea and Kensington borough driving-in-the-bus lane fine.

The gig itself was in a grim venue, claggy watery grey-green light dribbling across a depressing basement. It's funny how great the spectrum of experience is-externally there is little difference between the gig I did last week at biddle's and the one this week. Both were unpaid, reasonably casual affairs. But at biddle's the curator of the evening really cared about what he was doing, and I had a great time, saw some other nice music, generally felt the effort in turning up and craft in the songs was acknowledged. This week at the other venue which will remain nameless, there was such an atmosphere of not caring. No-one was there apart from the bands until about 2 mins before our set, when thankfully some friends poured in. I am reading zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance at the moment and greatly enjoying this concept of 'quality'-which he associates with giving a shit about what you're doing-not exactly the same as saying it's the thought that counts, but nonetheless giving an appropriate weight to the force and effect of intention. There was quality aplenty at biddles, and none save that which we brought at the other. It does actually make me really cross-there isn't any alternative to playing free gigs in London if you want to get your stuff out there, but there is a huge difference in playing a gig where the promoter acknowledges the effort expended and one in which they somehow suggest you're lucky to have this brilliant opportunity to showcase your material and as well as playing for free you bring people, do this, do that, not play other shows for x amount of time...

I am also experiencing considerable frustration in my relationship and the difficulty of knowing of at what point does one draw the line when the potential in a situation remains frustratingly latent, despite (or maybe even because) of your repeated efforts to draw it out. Ekhart Tolle (The Power of Now-fascinating book) is not the first person to point out the necessity to be accepting...but how do you combine generous acceptance of another person with a healthy self-respect of what the minimum return should be on the energy and attention you lavish on another person? When do you decide that you will never reap more than scraps and crumbs from it, on which you cannot thrive, even if you thought you glimpsed all kinds of fruitful pastures? At the moment it feels like I am being beckoned with one hand and pushed away with the other, which is confusing & frustrating. I experience him as needing a lot of validation, but resenting my attention and my request that I should be entitled to expect anything from him. I feel like the energy I put out disappears into some kind of black hole and I don't know if there's any point. But I love him as I have until now loved no-one else, and if there's a way it could be progressed to the benefit/respect of both, I'd take it.

loneliness is catching

Fascinating commentary on radio 4 today about research which suggests loneliness is catching-moving through clusters of friends-so if a friend of a friend of a friend of yours is lonely, it can move through to you. The commentator, a Harvard doctor, said it was obvious to him to view emotions as collective rather than individual. I find this very interesting-as it is a way of approaching the idea of people being connected to each other. The last bit of human culture has been about the rise of the individual, and arguably consumer culture with its woes has been one consequence of this. Different spheres of experience and knowledge are all coming up with new understandings of connectedness-from the increasing knowledge we have on the immense delicate feedback systems in natural ecoystems to an increased awareness of how we impact on everything and everyone around us, and how that can be optimally managed. It's quite a comforting thing to know-if you know you affect the cosmos around you in whatever cumulative incremental if intangible way, you are less likely to feel like an invisible speck of meaningless solipsism.

I remember after the July bombings in London in 2005, walking home across Hyde Park, feeling the whole city in shock. And in Jan 09, when there were big snows, the few people padding down the carpeted street acknowledged each other in solidarity. But aside from unusual circumstances, we aren't normally very conscious of any sense of collectivity. I feel most instinctively it would be good if the zeitgeist generally moved towards a trend where it was more normal to think like that, and the more we come to understand about such currently esoteric matters, the more enlightened we will be.

useless psychic skills

On Saturday night I had a terrifying dream my father had a wound which ran down his entire shin and culminated in a huge abcess above his left knee. It was deep and red and he hadn't done anything about it and I was horrified. He happened to ring that morning and was delighted that I had been worrying about him.

I then spoke to my mother, who lives in a different country to him. I related my dream. She told me that he did have a (small) abcess on his leg which he hadn't sorted out. I am very freaked out. Why can't I have dreams that tell me useful stuff, like which promoters are likely to bother reading my emails, which venues are worth playing and how to get an agent? Not stuff about the potentially failing health of my father who lives in a different country, and who like most of us has stuff he hasn't and maybe will never sort out.

Last night, however, I had a dream that I owned a rather racy big quad bike, which turned into a small motor boat when you turned it upside down.