Diana-Stone Studio.APRIL 2021

A June 2021 Round Up

Delta Ladies, Diana Stones Songs, glass cage, music, Musings, other, whatever

Personally  it’s been a very draining 6 months.  I have been working solidly on music projects both solo and collaborative but of course nearly al remote ones. Other stuff I had hoped to do has ground to a complete halt now. Also mostly due to lockdown I gave not really been able to get anymore local connections made. Added to that I have had a lot of  problems with long term Musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions which seems  to have been much worse this year plus depression and anxiety. So fighting that tends to impede the creative flow quite a bit. At present I do feel its a real uphill struggle and it’s getting harder.  I also like many wonder if we will actually get a full UK unlocking at the end of July. If we don’t that will be more than a little disappointing as   the present regime does not yet permit the normal mix and mingle type activities (Folk clubs and Open mike and normal pub gigs) to name just a few.  I feel as though my mental facilities are dwindling as well. Currently I am living on a diet of youtube videos and little else to keep me amused in my downtime.  There are some very interesting blogging genre videos.  One that I watch is this guy Hobo Shoestring   https://www.youtube.com/user/TheHoboShoestring and if you like trains and the wide open spaces there is a lot of joy to be had in the videos he posts. he has been riding trains for 30 years and is what you might call a natural philosopher perhaps.Another one I watch is  https://www.youtube.com/c/HubNut/featured which is about ordinary cars with a motoring journalist called Ian Seabrook. He drives and then fixes them eventually and more.  It’s  one of the things helping to keep me sane at present at least In a small way.   There is a lot more I watch but I am not going to list everything here.

This a very spontaneous song that popped into my head  on Friday so I have recorded a quick “demo” version. Its  an acoustic (Folk sort of) song  with fiddle and a bit of tin whistle too. 

        

And in other news, a question. Who put that camera in Matt Hancock’s office I wonder? But the world will keep turning I guess. 

Does any one remember that book “Feel the fear and do it anyway”? I might even have a faded and yellowing  copy somewhere on my shelves. So following its prevailing mantra I did something recently to expand my comfort zone and help reduce my anxiety. I am not saying what it was but rather like the way that some people either like marmite or hate it, to my surprise it was really quite pleasant which I had not expected. Its not something I shall be doing again for a while I suspect but if appropriate when needed I am ready to put my new skill set and hopefully win friends and influence people, I havent got that book though. 

I notice a lot of people are now back out gigging again which is good news. I would love to be out and joining  them and I hope the opportunity comes again.  However the recruiting drive has not been  successful so far despite trying different several different approaches sadly. It’s hard not to get disheartened frankly.  I will keep trying though it’s beginning to feel like an exercise in total futility. It feels almost like I am on some sort of blacklist?  It really  makes me  wonder at times.  Answers on a post card please 🙂   I hope that does not seem too negative as its not intended to be but if I am doing something wrong I would love to know what it is? 

 

 ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks‘

(Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2)

       
 

    

Lyrics That Escape Us

Diana Stones Songs, glass cage, Musings, whatever

Sneaky things words, they tend to escape and evade me. Going back a few years I could always write a reasonable lyric but my minds a blank now it seems.  Sometimes I wake up with an idea and its gone before I have a chance to write it down.  Brain fog or depression? Maybe. 

The world seems quiet and subdued to me but for many its just starting up again. I dont have a routine to step back into unlike many others.
I cant get off the starting line and I have tried all the usual tricks but nothings worked. Even for an old cynic like me that’s been a shock. 
My mind is wandering the halls of memories and replaying all sorts of things. Perhaps its simply due to a lack of novelty or fresh input generally? Conversations we cannot have now with absent friends and what we might have said are in the mix as well. Replaying endlessly. I do hope these feelings go away but for the last 6 months they have remained constant and seemingly immutable. 
Am I selfish to miss my old friends so much? Maybe but I do. A lot.  

So what else have I been doing then? Working on 3 or 4 tunes and practicing a lot too.
Also doing some remote project recording’s.  So not entirely idle in truth. The landscaping opposite moves on at quite a pace now, but I even so I dont think it will be finished before autumn somehow. I feel somehow its like the path outside Frodo’s house in LOTR and when ready may lead to adventures, though what sort I cannot imagine  🙂

Our posh boy PM is making an announcement on Monday June 28th re July unlocking dates. Looking  like it wont be early release though. It will be 18 months now since the first restrictions came into force and with 80% of the adult population having antibodies to covid surely its time to let rip. 

 

  

 

   

Diana Stone Sunny uplands

Bad for the right reasons or good for the wrong ones?

Musings

Sometimes when I consider my life I feel I have often been morally ambiguous.  That’s what happens when there is too much time to think. I don’t think I have done anything that bad but I have broken a few rules.  Though I rather suspect that applies to most of us.
Today’s  been a mixed bag. I was quite happily being a bit creative writing and playing and then a small movement and I was in agony’s again. Very annoying and frustrating and painful.   

Many people have not actually noticed the passing of time. They view the world as being as it was when they left uni or school. They really don’t’ pick up much else in the way of knowledge if they are not academics or involved in civics/politics in the course of their working lives. Perhaps they use fairly partisan news sources and don’t follow theatre and culture generally. So to them the world is perpetually the 60s 70s and 80s and the internet is not really used to gain knowledge much, it’s just for entertainment. had I remained a van driver for my working life, whilst I might still have been deeply involved in music I would have learnt very much of anything else I suspect. I certainly would not have had any strong political views, left or right on the center. My world ran on railway tracks pretty much.   

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Let the music play:

Beginning Ending or Middle

Diana Stones Songs, glass cage, music, Musings

I  am lost and clueless.  And my mind is blank.  We write a script for our lives and at a certain point we reach the last chapter. But what if everything does not stop there. Then what?  Today has been an unintentional rest. I got very stressed yesterday and today I have just stopped. I am not sure why. Perhaps because I dont feel there is much I can do except have a bit of faith that some answers will come to me eventually. Sometimes perhaps to paraphrase “Do or do not there is no try” one should say rather “Do not or try”.  I feel personally I am at the end of things, though rationally it does not make sense.  Its a very uncomfortable feeling and profoundly  disturbing.  Just waiting for the doom to strike out of a clear blue sky.   

 ‘We know what we are, but know not what we may be.’

(Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5)

 

Seems Like Summer

Musings

Blue sky’s , warm and a still day at the time of writing.  The mud pie builders are still digging in what will be the public open space which seems no nearer  to completion than it did 6 months ago. So the digging  dinosaurs move te piles of earth around again. at this rate maybe they will still be at it until 2022.  One pile of earth gets moved to another pile of earth in stately procession like some ancient ritual whos origins and meaning have been lost 100’s of years ago, but are still continued to appease the spirits of earth and air and ensure good harvest of identikit  new build homes perchance?

I  have just sent off a few tracks to compete for some radio airplay opportunities as I havent done so since  Christmas. Its an act of faith really, nothing ever seems to come of doing so but you feel you have to try.