I'm beginning my 'other job' which will run for the next 6 months. I can't tell you what dread this fills me with. It will either be the best of times or the worst of times. I've never started a season feeling like this.
This position is one of the things that has given me the most and stripped me of the most confidence in my life. I'm great at it, but all it will take is a handful of nay-sayers and I'll be toast.
I'm tired and I'm not up for any kind of fight. I'm going to put everything into it, hope and pray for the best.
If you are inclined, pray for me too. I'll need it.
Over the last few years I've had writer's block. There are good reasons for this: 1. I'm not that interesting. 2. I don't really have much to say. 3. I'm crazily busy. All of these things make jack a dull boy.
Recently I've been playing and recording guitar in my car. This is thanks mostly to the lovely Cardwell family lending me a small guitar that goes everywhere with me. The second contributing factor is time. When I'm waiting on my beloved, and others, I've got sparadic unpredictable pockets of free time which need to be put to good use. The last part of the puzzle is my iPhone and an app called FourTrack.
FourTrack is, as the name suggests, a four track recorder. You can lay down a recording in the first track, then listen back while recording a second track, then a third, then a fourth. Once your four track masterpiece is captured you can alter the levels of each track, change the pan left or right and even mix the four tracks down to two tracks, giving you room for two more tracks to be recorded.
Armed with guitar, time and technology I can jam away, find something I like then record a few layers to see if the tune is worth developing. All this aside, there is no substitute for actual creative ability, which I'm finding comes hard these days. I'm starting off with some pretty unremarkable results, but hope that in time, and with the required amount of practice I might start creating things to be proud of.
As I go I'm going to start posting recordings on here as a mechanism to measure progress.
Currently listening to: After the Storm Mumford and Sons
Congratulations to the Hanna family this morning; For unto you is born, this day, in the city of George Best International a son, who is (Max)imillion Fredrick Hanna!
Took Cosmin and Sorina to see the bonfires last night. Don't think they were too excited until they saw th size of the soon to be burnt offerings!
This morning Jo and I went round to Cosmon and Sorina's for breakfast, then on to church.
It is Cosmin's birthday so knowing his love for movies we got him a collection of Hitchcock classics. Not sure he was thrilled due a bad experience of 'the birds' as a kid!
Sorina seemed chuffed, maybe we should swap and get Cosmin something for Sorina's birthday
The rest of today has been spent at the house we are to move into. Philip did some electrical work, jo filled in some cracks and I started to take out the kitchen. I have broken up the sink unit and packed it up in the shed.
Lets face it, facebook is the new blogging. I'M kinda sad about that. I think we got more out of blogs.
I'm going to do my best to keep this going as a diary. I need to write down things that are longer than a tweet or a status update sometimes.
Tonight I'm heading with Jo to Lavery's for Shiny's leaving do. I'm listening to Bob Harris on radio 2. I've started to download his shows. They are played on saturday nights, 11pm to 2am. They are the best 3 hours of radio anywhere.
Jo and I are doing up a house near Randalstown. Uncle al is renting it to us. If we like it we might buy it.
I see all sorts of images and scenes in music. My imagination is really fantastic. I see things that I've never seen, feel things that i may never have felt and recall things that were long forgotten.
I was having trouble sleeping tonight so I decided to prune my iTunes list a little.
There are all sorts of things that I've incorporated into my collection over the years that I've never heard. Sometimes I come across songs that were filed incorrectly, or have the wrong file name, so the song I'm expecting is replaced by something random.
I found a song by Tasmin Archer called 'Sleeping Satellite'. I have several issues with this discovery. 1. I've never knowingly been a Tasmin Archer fan. 2. I quite liked the song, even though its early to mid 90's nonsense.
I got flashes, the most fantastic memory flashes as a result:
....driving in Trevor Jordan's car to Armagh or Portadown to see some girl he was chasing at the time (this song was paying on a tape in the car, and this memory is real - i think).......
....the disco i went to when I was briefly a sea cadet in Carrickfergus. It was a rubbish disco, and there were no girls allowed, so it was basically lots of guys looking at each other awkwardly and not dancing. I was a naive young Christian and thought that being at a disco was a bit of a sin and so I felt pretty dangerous.....
.... I can see rooms of people in ill fitting wolly jumpers (we all had them in the mid 90's especially me, dermo and elia), there is the smell of inscence and scented candles (i was into both at the time)......
..... a memory from a warm summer evening in Portrush. The sun was going down while i'm walking down the seaside path beside Barry's arcade. The sky is a deep blue, cloudless. I'm looking at a girl I liked. There is a light breeze and that warm stuffy summer evening smell mixed with diesil from the arcade rides and sea salt. The lights of the amusements seem really oversaturated. Butterflies in my stomach. (neither the girl or the day exist. The memory however, is clear as a bell).....
Based on how inventive my mind is now, i can't wait to see what happens when I go senile!
Below, for your listening pleasure, is Tasmin Archer!
It is hard to not feel hopeful for Americans today. Ok, I don't live there, it is none of my business and I know I'm just jumping on the bandwagon, but anything at this time of economic darkness that can give folks a little light can't be bad right?
I wonder if President Obama will live up to the hype. I wonder if his popularity will last longer than one week, maybe two. I wonder if we'll not all be living in caves in a few years. I wonder who the next president will be and what will be thier ethnicity / gender / sexuality?
Today seems like a step forward, its been like a Disney movie up to this point. Here's hoping the hero turns around the situation, gets the girl (oh, wait he's married, scratch that) and saves the day.
God Bless America. (you'll probably need all the blessings you can get.)
.... its time for me to start feeling sleepy all the time and overdose on downbeat Iron and Wine songs :)
I love the feeling of winter on the horizon, when it hits this time of year i get an unexplained magical feeling in the pit of my stomach with early nights and autumn skies.
Halloween sparklers, My birthday, Christmas, the potential for snow. These things are the fuel for my Autumn / Winter glee.
