this is the sound of me taking two minutes out of my day to slow-down three tracks from my previous album and create something(s) which I like. The stats show that no one else likes this stuff, recent graph lines on the Bandcamp stat chart have needed a visit to Australia to discover them. Me - I've loved my recent stuff - and musicians of a more normal disposition would be discouraged by such failure. I am fairly normal, but fortunately I am not any kind of musician - so I am not discouraged at all - in fact I am very heartened by this ongoing failure - I have met people, I have seen the things they like, met the people they like, heard the things they like, done the things they like doing, and I've liked very few of them - to be normal and left-alone like this is my only achievement and it is sufficient
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it's one of those no-fomo Sundays, I have tickets for the 11-30 concert at Wigmore Hall this morning but obviously I am not going - the weather would've meant a dreary trudge around London and there's bus replacement shitery between here and Eastleigh and I just wasn't in the mood - so I just decided not to go - a day at home ! oh almost-happiness ! and whenever I do anything I always end up wondering why I'm doing it, particularly if it involves meeting other people.
So a day alone, aware of the rain outside, but the music will play and I will read. Overnight on LBC there was a discussion about something that the guy from Ryan Air (?) was saying about holidays - ie that he hated them. I don't hate holidays, and it's not like I've never seen the point of them. It's just that I've never really lived the sort of life where holidays are a thing. I've only ever had one proper holiday in my life - that jaunt up to Newcastle last year to stuff myself on the buffet breakfast and buffet evening meal in that Leonardo hotel in the middle of town (yes, toon, I know, ha ha ) and see Hadrian's Wall and wander boredly round Hexham and never-been-so-bored-in-my-whole-fucking-life round Durham till I got so fed up I walked down that big river to Sunderland or Middlesborough or whatever other place they've got up there.
I've mainly been put off holidays by just how how boring people are when they talk about their own holidays. I actually get the only startled/interested reaction in the room when I admit that I've never been abroad. Someone once asked me if I am American. Yes that's right, I am American and now I am living in Britain and I've never been abroad. On my NE holiday we did drive past Sycamore Gap only days after the tree was cut down. I found that after my holiday that little anecdote wasn't interesting enough for people, and so I started telling newbies that we drove past while the tree was actually falling down.
"That's Sycamore Gap," said the coach driver as we were driving along the road - about half a mile from the actual gap is about as close as you get - "you'll've seen it on a million greetings cards and in Robin Hood" - and then we cried and roared and screamed as the thing fell over and we witnessed History In The Making - Britain's own 9/11. People usually believe me.
It's weird when shit happens. Immediately afterwards, everyone you meet was just at that very spot either on the day before it happened, or else they'd got a ticket for the actual moment it happened, but then they missed a connecting train and they missed it and their life was saved. By not going to Wigmore Hall this morning even though I have a ticket (BB1 if you want to nip on over, great if you love a Britten string quartet) and even though I doubt that London will be blown up in my unexpected absence, I might have missed some stumble as I cross Wigmore Street and I break my neck and can't make music any more and the sudden cutting-short of my fame and success would be a huge blow to all of the music world - but no ! - hark ! - Simon has made another album and there are still a million more to do.
she says this is the last album she'll make like this before she goes off and makes stuff with Lana Del Rey - so just for this moment we have Kathy to ourselves - (yes I love Lana's music too) Simon Aulman
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