Currently this month the muse seems to have left me I fear. I am doing far too much staring into space. But we must keep boldly going of course.

Funny sort of a day so far. Worked on some music and got the AI to write me some more lyrics for a tune. I fed it a line and said this line must be included The results are actually not bad at all. I have lost a bit of spirit right now. My umph is depleted. I also had to remove a flush ceiling light, as you have to replace the unit as the bulb is not separate. I ordered a new one. It involves a bit of pulling and tugging to get the old one out though. I was in mortal terror of bringing the plasterboard down around me. However I persevered. And today I fitted a new one which involved a bit of unexpected wiring too. I could have done without that really.

So here are and stuff is going pear shaped. I got triggered by something that happened yesterday and I can’t seem to calm down at all. So in an effort to shift my mood I am writing self indulgent dribble as a distraction. I hope it’s going to work eventually. Its cold and wet and it has been snowing too.

I need to get a grip. Its strange when one has the time and facilities to be creative, often the urge just goes away. Maybe it’s just good old end of winter malaise?

I am not the most practical of people.

Band rehearsals carry on apace and seem to be going fairly well over all.
I have also got a new release on Amazon and Spotify, Apple music and the usual suspects on the 20/03/23 called “What’s the weather”.
This is the title track:

So often it seems we feel we have finally got on top of things and are moving forward again in life generally but we get blown off course. Sometimes the headwind is just to strong but sometimes we need to try and push on. Often though the best course is not at all clear to us. As I come to the part of my life where there are inevitably more endings than beginnings finding out what’s worth pursuing is becoming a little more difficult. after a few positive months I feel a little despondent having run into a few roadblocks. Also I have found recent setbacks much more difficult to deal with too. A now sadly departed friends notion was to basically lean back and chill. I understood perfectly well why they took that course of action but I hope I am not quite at that point yet. My back and related problems are flaring up at present and I may need to be a little less ambitious with my live performances in terms of numbers than I had hoped to achieve. It is difficult at times like this to strike a balance between activity and rest as too much of either makes things worse, but its hard to judge how much is too much though. I do my morning exercises regularly though and would be worse off without them

My partner is a little older than me but considers me as young. There is actually only 4 years between us though. At present I feel wrecked. Often standard painkillers don’t help much. I am concerned that if I take stronger meds I may not then be able to function without them. There is no doubt in my mind that having covid may well have caused me to age a little quicker.

I recently got my pension and so don’t now need to make money from gigs anymore. That should have been a relief but other problems have taken the problem of financial ones it seems. I guess its a loss of faith in a better day to come? Maybe spring will sort it out….

Well back to the music then. Mind how you go.

Indeed why would you not to be fair. We are nearly at the end of February. Musical projects role along in the usual way. Boldly going forward because we can’t find reverse. I am now officially a pensioner by my own governments definition. I shall now buy a union jack teapot and mutter darkly about the loss of empire and say how lovely that nice young mr Farage (or is it Farago)is and how he is going to stop all that. Or possibly not? Sometimes I get so far out and so fast I pass myself coming back the other way.

Friends. I have left people behind. Usually it has to be said because from my perspective, they have been bigoted and often far right. But not many. A problem with having struggled with the balance of power with my mental eleves for many, many years has made friendships more difficult to sustain. Sometimes people change or we change too much for them to accommodate and our personal venn diagrams are disrupted. Other people sometimes have to leave you behind and there are always words left unsaid, and often far too many or words that you would rather were not said at all.

Here is a slightly further out tune from my library newly minted at the time of writing this. It’s sort of Jazz ish/Rock. No fiddle on this one.

I am getting out and playing a bit more at present with a very diverse bunch of musicians. It’s nice to be up and doing again after a break of around 2 years plus. I really hope this can continue. I do feel very tired though a lot of the time. Maybe the seasons changing will give me a booster.

I have a fairly diverse selection of musical hats that I wear these days. The above being from my folk side. It looks almost composed like a painting, but it’s just a slightly enhanced still from a video clip. It iss sort of anarchy (in the original sense of the word), a song or tune starts and people join in if they can or of they can’t they just tap the table gently. I busked on the Irish “tunes” that I didn’t know, the reals and stuff by playing under the other fiddle line which seemed to work. But you can pick the tunes up once you hear them often enough. So it trains your ear a bit. My folk playing is much more European than Irish though… the youngsters know the names of the tunes in Gaelic so no chance of looking them up on google. They start by saying lets do ” Narly och gargoch” or something that sounds vaguely like that and you think what the fuck is that tune but you recognise it so you do your best.

I am a bit worried about being this tired. The thing is I am fairly relaxed now a lot of the time. I don’t have adrenaline pumping all the time which is good but maybe I have just worn myself out a bit with worrying and worrying about stuff in the last year or so? I think that my be part of it. The flat is comfortable but with the heat up enough to get rid of the aches and pains it really makes me sleepy at the best of times. Its February though of course. I think this is stil a bit of a post viral covid hangover potentially. Of course I could just be mad.

I looked at some old video from our French trips. Its stuff I haven’t put on the web. the performances are good, but what I notice is that in them, in some frames when I am playing violin, my back is so curved over it looks like I am never going to be able to get it straight again. The good news is that now (pains notwithstanding) am nowhere near as hunched as I used to be. I may use some of it and employ some video effects and editing to minimise the worse parts. put still shots in and stuff. It did give me a bit of the shivers though. I also looked at the gig diarys from 2012 onwards. Many weeks were 3 gigs and some were 4. or more Incredibly busy. Even 2018 was much, much busier than I thought it was. I hope i can get my sea legs back again.

Evening all, mind how you go.