November 19, 2014

'E' for Elizabeth


There is a message filtering through a lot at the moment – BE YOURSELF.

Be yourself; stay true to yourself, and just do small things to help that flow out and life will be better. Be yourself and you'll be able to keep going strong through road blocks, relationships, triumph or challenge. Be yourself, and you will make it.

I heard it on Iggy Pop's Peel lecture, read it in Dave Tomlinson's book about how not to do religion, mused on it while watching Grayson Perry's series 'Who Are You' about identity, and I'm hearing it in conversation with friends, and I start to feel overwhelmed with this exhortation because why is it that it needs pointing out?

It's hard, isn't it. With the freedom created by technology the emphasis on individuality and unique personality seems to be more sharp than ever. The world seems noisier and noisier, but to keep being you, you need quiet and space. It's important to find time to think, and be still, and see what bubbles up to the surface.

I've been travelling around on trains this week, and with a new notebook, found myself drawing a simple picture on the left page, and writing about thoughts it represented on the right. Anything that came to mind really. It's been interesting to see what emerged about life past and present. Keeping it to a single page at a time is very manageable. No tomes here, but enough to get me appreciating what's true and constant.

It's alright for us artists and makers, who pick up sticks and carve shapes in the sand (or a glorified version of) every day. Our business is birth to expression, exploring ways of seeing and being, and so sometimes without realising it, we become very good at being ourselves. We know overtly what external things resonate or what jar with that inner life. My true admiration is for people who don't need to do all that soul searching and still stand tall with a strong sense of their own identity, unafraid to walk it out.

Everyone wants to belong, and everyone can find a sense of belonging in echoing the looks and behaviours and sounds of each other. But being truly ourselves is about bringing out the parts of you that are not like anyone else, and in confidence that no one else gets to decide which parts are allowed and which parts are not. The variety makes life richer, and much more interesting, even if it seems messy at times. (And it will seem messy.)

Be yourself; stay true to yourself, and just do small things to help that flow out. Go with positive motivation, like a little butterfly flapping its wings, oblivious to the possible amplified effects elsewhere, simply driven by the need to live and move honestly here and now and make connections good and real in the world*.

"Be yourself; everyone else is taken," the saying goes.


{Today's Soundtrack: New Build – Sunlight - Edit}

* Thanks Dave Tomlinson for your butterfly-style encouragements, which helped prompt my thoughts.

November 06, 2014

What's Your New Song?



Just lately, I've been pining for old-school blogging. I've hardly posted here in the last couple of years, and that feels like a massive shame.

So, I'm going to try and begin again. It's not for any other reason than the proper, old, original reason blogs began – as places to keep track of our days and the journeys through them. That's all. And I, for one, would like that back.

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You know, that picture up there, about old ways and new doors? Isn't it great? (Not my shot, by the way.) But let me tell you a secret – on the other side of the door, amidst everything being completely unfamiliar and new, you have to work at finding some new, and really deep anchor points or risk being swept adrift. 

I live in a new house. It is so unbelievably different to the gentle, crocheted and designed-by-candlelight world I've been living in on my own for so long, and yet it is a world I very much want to be in. It's proving an awful lot harder than I ever imagined, but what I'm trying to learn is how to find anchor points when everything looks and feels so alien.

There must be a way to shift from one side of a door to the other, without going completely insane, surely!!

Well, there's an old piano in this house, and after something like 25 years since last serious efforts I decided to play some chords on that piano. I found some sheet music with different, flowing Cole Porter chords on, and played those chords, and they sounded beautiful. Braver, I found a song book, and now some more beautiful Joni Mitchell chords are chiming in over my bluesy singing as I learn to play again. 

'Blue' is the song, and it talks about songs being like tattoos:

"songs are like tattoos - 
You know I've been to sea before.
Crown and anchor me,
Or let me sail away...

You've got to keep thinking
You can make it through these waves."

To sea, alright – yet words and music are rich, soulful and deep. Perhaps deep enough to become anchors? I hope so. 

I'll keep playing, and singing, and try to stop going mad (honestly, my poor partner - he's such a love) and hopefully get better at being the other side of the door. 

It's nice to be back at the Lightbox, although maybe let's hold the tattoo for another time. I hope this space can come to life again and be a place of really great anchor points, charting an adventurous journey – just the way it was always intended. 


{Today's Soundtrack: Joni Mitchell - Blue}

September 28, 2014

I'm a Loser Baby



Somehow, this weekend has turned into the bizarrest series of happenings. 

On a Sunday night, conventionally the moment we should all be tucked up with Horlicks and a little addictive drama on the BBC, especially when life does that tricky thing of presenting rather a lot all at once and you just need to quiet, here I am with an unruly group of parents-in-a-band listening to them hurl I'M A LOSER BABY into the walls of a family room with more volume than the neighbours probably appreciate. 

Thing is, yelling this with a lovely slide guitar woozing us along is incredibly cathartic just now.

The sun has shone today. We've made new friends and done nice things together. Winter-flowering pansies are in the tubs. I've emerged from the shadow of a big black dog who's been coming in and out of sleep for a couple of weeks. Wonderful old step-grandpa died today, and then later some people I'm just getting to know who don't know anything about me muck about with microphones and amps, we all called out Beck's lyric, and that picture on the wall behind Craig seems to sum it all up. 

Delightful losers. Whether good or bad things happen, or a confusing combination of the two, some songs sum up the wonderful incompetence and disbelief a lot of us feel as we trip through lots of life. 

Happy early autumn Sunday night folks. 


{Today's Soundtrack: Beck - Loser


April 09, 2014