At normal volume this will sound like a very normal thing that fits in fairly normally among most other normal ambient stuff. As such it wasn't worth making or uploading and it won't be worth hearing or downloading. But at high volume (yes this is a desperate long-winded way of saying PLAY LOUD) this reveals itself to be very danceable/rhythmic and rather beautiful. Of course I will be the only person on the planet whose life is empty enough to experience such a wonderful feeling, but that's okay.
Yes it has been another end-of-year series of blows, as I bought the new copy of the Wire and wasn't too disappointed to see that I'm not on the front cover, because I was confident that many of my albums would be mentioned in their lists of the best things of 2023. Well I've read every single word of the Jan/Feb2024 issue a dozen times over and I still haven't found the bits where I am mentioned. I can only assume that the particular copy of the Wire that I bought must have been badly glued together and the relevant pages fell out before I got the mag home.
I must admit that I haven't looked at any of the Bandcamp polls/lists/whatever - naturally assuming that I am in there many times over - though I must admit that the exposure isn't doing anything for my stats, which continue to flatline at approx zero, give or take zero. And it must now be about twenty years since anyone bought any of my downloads.
But I remain cheerful in spite of the prejudices against me. I know that as a straight white male I don't really have a chance. I do actually have a female friend who quite seriously uses the phrase "male privilege" as a way to explain why her own life isn't yet totally perfect. She is a landlord and owns several properties and lives a very nice life off of the income that comes in from a dozen or so poor young minimally-waged people who pay her rent - she sits in coffee places telling us how downtrodden she is while the young people who pay her rent scuttle around her and carry coffee and cakes to her.
I sometimes ask her if, while walking down the High Street, she ever stops and lectures any of the many homeless men in doorways about how privileged they are and that if she was a bloke then she too would be as lucky/privileged as they are. She say No she never has and never will, because they are men and they would probably get violent and attack her.
She isn't the only person I know who has gone completely doolally over the past few months. In fact I don't know anyone who hasn't. Yesterday I caught the bus to West Wellow and walked in the rainstorms to Canada (sic) to the Rockingham Arms for lunch with a couple of cousins and their children and a couple of their elders - these cousins are about half a generation younger than me, their children are real children, ie they go to school/whatever, and the elders are about half a generation older than me and are the only ones I can get any sense out of.
They/we seem to be the only ones getting any pleasure out of life. And god knows, that aint much. None of us knows where pleasure lies any more. The adverts no longer sell us a life that any of us wants. Films and TV don't make us want to be the people inside them. Other people can only talk about how depressed they are, how ill they've been, how the bills are overwhelming them, how work isn't any fun anymore - it isn't even work, it is just a prison sentence of being told what stupid things to do by people ten times more idiotic than yourself. People come back from holidays and instead of telling us how wonderful the weather was and what a fab restful fun time they had, they tell us how the sun nearly burnt them up and how ill they got and how the train broke down on the way to the airport and how they got back home with some weird flu which they still haven't shaken off.
I can't think of one fun thing I did over Christmas, or even over 2023. Everything would've been better if it'd just been nothing, if it had just been me lying at home all day on my sofa reading a good book. But I wouldn't've known that if I had indeed just spent the day and year lying around reading books. After lunch yesterday, in spite of the fact that everyone was very nice and I did have a good time, I was glad to be first to get away - I walked from Canada to West Wellow, not far at all, and stood in the rain waiting for the X7 to take me back to town. The rain was heavy. It was one of those stupid bus shelters where if you sit inside it you can't see the bus coming until it is driving right past you, so we had to stand outside - I say we, because I met a nice man called Namish who was also waiting for the bus.
We got chatting, and one of the privileges of being a male is that other men tend to be very friendly and you can talk to them naturally without worrying whether you are abusing your male privilege by admitting that you don't have a home, just a doorway along the high street. And that is what Namish has. I didn't understand what had brought him out to West Wellow, but apparently he was now going back to Southampton to sit in a doorway for a week or two. He told me that he "commutes" between Southampton and east London, chiefly Canning Town, when he's bored of one place he goes to another. I told him of the recentish time when I was last "homeless" (in a just-playing-at-it way) and how it was the happiest time of my recent life. Namish is the only happy-ish-seeming person I've met recently.
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recorded this morning, photo the eastern shore of Southampton Water, Christmas Day
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
The new EP from Scottish songwriter Alec Bowman_Clarke goes deep, setting vulnerable lyrics to gentle melodies & stripped-back arrangements. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 30, 2021
Soft and soothing acoustic compositions from this Italian guitarist with melodies that flutter like leaves on a breeze. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 1, 2021
