summeroutlier by Simon Aulman
On paper this is what I like. But I don't like it that much. The beats should've either been more forward/relentless, or not there at all. And here am I - trying to agonise like a proper musician. Everyone tells me that on my deathbed I shall regret the decades I wasted on something I'm apparently not very good at (making music), instead of spending my lifetime on the thing I am good at (painting). But I never really enjoy the creations of people who stick to what they're good at - I sleep thru Ridley Scott's films, I give up on page 5 with Ian McEwan's novels, I hate Patti Smith - etc etc - and last night I have never never never never been so bored at a gig, or anywhere - the Unthanks were the worst band I have ever seen - the blandest things done in the blandest ways, with more chatter than music. Proper musicians. A lesson to me - thank fuck for the improper ones - the ones who really aren't musicians at all.
There was a point, after about 9 songs, when I thought there wasn't going to be an interval and that I was very ostentatiously going to have to walk out (I was in the front row). But an interval did come, and I did go - and on the walk home I peed pee I'd not realised I'd had in me, and let out cubic yards of wind that I'd not realised I'd been holding in - you know the relief of walking away from events and lovers where these things are kept in too long.
This morning I visited my mum's flat. She died recently. We seriously fell out at the end of last year and I'd not visited her since - so this was my first visit to her flat this year. The Amazon parcels had obviously kept on coming throughout her time in hospital. I was delighted at not wanting anything anywhere. For old time's sake I had a bar of chocolate from her fridge, a ball of elastic bands cos I am running out, a 6-pack of small fizzy waters for my travels, and two rather lovely paint brushes. And that's it - her life: what it amounts to to me. Then I went to Salisbury yet again and sat and ate a Tesco salad sitting next to a man a generation older than me who spends every summer outside, wandering around. His rucksack was fuller than mine would be. In summer I'd have nearly nothing.
Recorded today. Photo near Salisbury today.
