Raven

Today’s Sunday Song is Raven, by Jewel.

Cheer Up

I play word and number puzzles. I exercise for goodness sake.

In other words, I cause problems for myself….intentionally! For fun. Or at least with good reason.

So maybe when a problem surfaces … one that I didn’t cause, and didn’t ask for … I should Cheer Up and pretend it did all happen intentionally.

After all, there is still that magical potential for solving something that previously was unsolved. What a dopamine rush that can be.

Hey Jean

Hey Jean,

What is going on inside your head? We really could never guess.
It would be wonderful to hear you speak. To hear you put those twinkle eyed thoughts into words. To see your sense of humour and stubborness and persistance being expressed in language we can understand.

But, in many ways, perhaps that was unnecessary. It all came out anyway. You’re a life force and your body, and gestures, and face, express all of that so beautifully.

I haven’t seen you for a while. I hope you’re OK. I will visit. Maybe not many more opportunities left. That’s what happens when contact is lost. I’m sorry about that.

For now, keep twinkling. Keep dancing.

It’s nice to have a song to bring you to mind.

A Cord Of Three Strands

Two is strong. But not always enough.

Three can make things stronger. A Cord Of Three Strands is not quickly broken.

We could take that principle to infinity I suppose. But we’re not infinite beings. We live in a material world, where small changes can make a big difference.

There is certainly strength when one becomes two.

But there is far greater strength, greater depth, greater resilience when we add one more. It’s a good principle to be aware of I think. (And I don’t think it means that constantly adding “one more” will indefinitely make things better).

ps. I’m going camping with the Grandweans this weekend, so hopefully our tent cords hold fast.

Dancing At The Disco

There is, allegedly, a place for everything.

And everything, in turn, has its place.

Learning at school. Driving on the road. Dancing At The Disco etc.

Thankfully, we don’t limit ourselves like that. In fact, the more we try things in places (and ways, and at times) when they are not usually attempted, the more flexible and creative and spontaneous we become.

Yes, I will learn on the loo! I will dance in the doldrums!

I will …

….um, driving on the road. Let’s keep that one.

All The Freaks

Time to embrace our freakishness.

I mean all those freakish things like a belief in justice, and compassion, and kindness, and love for our neighbour, and for simply honesty. And a desire to be courageous when it matters.

These standards are possibly in the process of becoming the new weird.

Except that they remain things to aspire to as human beings. And they always will do.

In the meantime, this one’s to All The Freaks.


ps. I just listened to a couple of American freaks and I was once again inspired to be a better me.

I Don’t Like You

I have to be honest. There are a few people to whom I could quite easily say …

… ”I Don’t Like You”. To put it mildly.

Two of them feature in this video I made.

I would generally want to send love and peace out to almost everybody, if I could. But some individuals have travelled so far out of the orbit of “Likeability” that they’ve managed to fly far beyond Mars, to some yet undiscovered solar system. An unusual solar system, in that it is completely free of any light source.

A solar system without a sun.

This universe we live in is not always the universe we would ideally desire. We have to somehow make peace with both it and it’s inhabitants, if we want to thrive.

But sometimes it’s hard.

Die With A Smile

Today’s Sunday Song, Die With A Smile, from two modern performers Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga who do have that old fashioned X-factor. Great song, which I hadn’t heard before, coz I’m out of it, by two great performers.

Having said that Lady Gaga wins the award for worst ever use of a cigarette as a prop. Lol. Other than that, it’s a great watch.

The Phone’s Ringing

The Phone’s Ringing.

That used to be the only thing that a phone could do. Now it can do pretty much everything.

Peeps are worried about Ai, World Wars, Global Warming, Stray Meteorites, Alien Invasions, Online Trolls, Big Brother, Musk, Trump, and other bad smells and potentially lethal occurrences.

Wait till our Smart Phone evolve legs! Or get integrated with Drones! Or start being put in baby’s wee gift basket of things that the NHS thinks are necessary for a healthy baby.

That’s when we should really press the panic button.

In the meantime it’s good to remember who the boss is.

It’s ME!

It’s definitely not my Mini Ringer/Beeper/”Smart” Notification Box.

Radium

I went through a period of trying to write commercial songs. Fix Me Up, and Cover Me, featured a few blogs earlier, were two of them.

Radium is another. It was a rewrite of an earlier tune I’d written, called Breathe. Funnily, there’s a friend I have who isn’t mad on any of my music, except for that earlier rendition of the song, which he adored. And now, sadly for him, that version is lost in the mists of time.

Anyway, I want to say that, although I’m very happy with the song writing craftsmanship of those earlier uncommercial “commercial” songs I wrote, they never felt like my songs.

There is no moral lesson to this. I completely understand when people pursue that writing route. And it’s a real achievement to get to a point where you make real money (i.e. profit) from the craft of songwriting. But it isn’t a route I want to go down anymore. I want to write songs that express my own vision and personality, not ones that try to meet other criteria.

Mostly, for better or worse, I’ve done that.

However, I do think, ironically, that in this day and age, with the advent of Ai, and a kind of predicability to most commercial “pop” music, we might be on to something. “Doing your own thang!”, though it be weird and quirky, as long as it is GOOD, could be what people start to want.

In fact that’s always been the case. Back in the day Punk became popular, largely because it kicked against the popular music of the time. It brought a fresh vitality and energy to things.

Music will always reinvent itself, even if some of the foundations remain unchanging and unchanged. I would argue it’s always better to avoid trying to copy someone else, however great they me be. We can’t help being influenced, but we don’t need to try to mimic.

So I pursue this path regardless of outcomes that could be called “success” in many peoples eyes. At the very least, it’s fun and interesting.

Bone Dry

At some point I started to realise that everything is not how it seems.
Maybe you’ve had the same experience, maybe not. For me at least, no drugs were involved.

And that realisation has become, over time, both liberating and discombobulating. The end conclusion of which has been that the only thing I can be absolutely sure of is that of my conscious experience. Even if that’s a delusion, it’s a real delusion. One that I’m actually having.

”I’m deluded, therefore I am”. You could say.

And you might well not argue with that. But I would also understand if it all sounds like bunkum to you. Maybe when I talk like this, you’d like to get off the bus. Or just hope I return to my senses.

But in reality, despite this philosophical meandering, I continue to live, day to day, as though my experience is real. It’s necessary. Ironically, I feel more locked into reality than I ever was before.

Bone Dry was probably intuitively saying something along these lines when I wrote it, on a walk down from Beinn Ghuilean, a few years. It wasn’t a thought through song at all. It just kind of happened.

It’s all kinda happening.

Are you still there?

Fix Me Up

I remember writing the beginnings of Fix Me Up while driving down a busy M6 around Manchester, then trying to record the idea into my phone. A little bit dangerous. Lucky that I didn’t end up needing to be fixed up myself at A&E, to be honest.

Body and mind are constantly being damaged, and repaired, throughout our lifetimes. But we’re a weird kind of creature. One that does things that we know will damage us. We cause ourselves to need repairing.

I was brought up with the idea that all of that started in a garden, with Adam and Eve intentionally going against God’s will. And thus humankind as a whole became cursed with this thing that some call “sin”. Something we needed “saving” from.

It’s an explanation of a kind. But it doesn’t do it for me, and hasn’t for a long while.

Rather, to me, and counter intuitively, our self damaging behaviour looks like an outcome of our more recently evolved intelligence finding itself unwittingly in conflict with some of its own more ancient evolved algorithms.

As an example, our more ancient brain evolved to need to find food. We gathered and hunted, because food was out there, and we needed it in order to live. As a result our bodies were very active and expected to be very active. And we ate less.

Then, with our more further evolved intelligence, we invented agriculture and domestication. And so we were able to keep our food sources a lot closer to hand. So much easier. And using minimum possible effort was something else our ancient brains were evolved for. So win-win, right?

Much further down the line we found ways to need fewer and fewer people to produce our food. On top of that we invented refrigeration. And suddenly I (lucky ultra modern human) can pop into the kitchen and eat as MUCH as like, with barely any effort.

A lot of the time I have done that. Because my ancient brain had also evolved to take advantage of food (eat it!) whenever it became available. You just never knew when the next chance to feed would come along. So it’s understandable that we take advantage of our luck.

And yet all of our modern illnesses have been born out of these advancements. Diabetes, heart attacks, cancer and fragile limbs in old age, being some of the big ones. Almost non-existent according to anthropologists before the agricultural age. We’re living longer (vaccines and other modern medicine helping in this regard) but we’re suffering far more as we grow older. And largely unnecessarily.

And it’s not just our diets and fitness. So many more of our self damaging behaviours can be seen through this lens of “intelligence leading to solutions, leading to more problems to solve”.

Maybe we will find further solutions to all of those self harming ones. Or maybe, as for many millions of extinct animals from the past, our evolutionary history is leading down the cul-de-sac of our own destruction. Who knows?

But hey, we’re very innovative, we humans. I’m optimistic. Our scientific fixers might even find solutions that don’t require any extra effort on our part. You never know.

In the meantime though, our brains are capable of getting a bit more tuned in to the ancient part of our smart grey matter, and adapting our behaviour to match our bodily needs.

It might a bit of work, but we can do that.


ps - No magical theological explanations are needed. They never are. And the actual explanations, when we slowly find them through observation and learning, tend to be far more interesting, helpful and awe inspiring.

Grapevine, Free Wine

I can’t remember how, why, or when I wrote Grapevine, Free Wine.

It’s odd listening to it now. Almost like it had nothing to do with me. Some songs are like that.

Clearly it’s a tale of someone with a drink problem. I’ve had an up and down ride myself with alcohol over the years. Never an alcoholic but still with times when it was definitely a problem. So that was probably the background to this breakup song. (It’s not autobiographical in that respect).

At the moment I’m not drinking at all when I’m at home. Saving it for times when I’m away. I have often had it at the back of my mind to stop altogether. But I’d prefer not to. And so far I’ve managed to keep off the wagon on a fairly regular basis. Go me!

This sounds like a man writing a personal and private diary, doesn’t it?

Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself, taking a peek into my deepest confessions, like you are. Honestly! ;-)

Cover Me

We’d protect each other, wouldn’t we? If I could do something to stop you suffering, I would. And I think you’d do the same for me. If I said “Cover Me” you would. If you could.

Life’s not as simple as that of course. But why shouldn’t we send out those good wish vibes to those we know. And even to those we don’t know.

Maybe just doing that can make a difference. Who knows? We don’t know very much really, when it comes down to it.

I’m sending some good vibes your way now. Some of your faces I know. Others not. But you’re getting them anyway. Why not send me some back.

The whole world can be cynical and vindictive if it must. Doesn’t mean we have to follow suit.

Red

Sunday Song is Red by Jesse Welles.

It ain’t all pop, hiphop and retro-on-repeat out there in the modern music scene.

Some of those younger folks are trying to say something. Who’d have thunk it. Almost like Simon Cowell hasn’t won the war quite yet.

Cleaning Out The Shed

There is SO much junk in there!

I thought it’d just be a few minutes of my time.

But it turns out that Cleaning Out The Shed is a lifetimes work. No time for anything else really, once you start.

It does make you wonder whether there is actually any “cleaning out” to do at all. Perhaps it’s not necessary. Perhaps it never was.

Perhaps The Shed and its contents are the whole point of it all.

Perhaps it sorts itself out. In its own time.

Now that would be a relief.

Is that what they call “acceptance”?

Life Is Difficult

Everything is easy for a robot. Just follow the programming man! No thinking means no suffering.

Life Is Difficult for a human though. We can’t stop thinking. And those thoughts are at the root of all our pain.

But here’s a thing. If you know what you’re going to think next, you’re a god. And a better man than me. And if we don’t know what we’re going to think next, then perhaps it’s time to stop treating those unpredictable thoughts as though they matter. Matter in the sense that they change anything. In the sense that we should hang the way we feel, and who we are, upon every last one that emerges.

That also is difficult, of course. Because who am I if not my thoughts? And if I want to BE someone, surely I need to keep whirring those thoughts around, allow them to fester, play them on repeat, and treat them with very great seriousness. Otherwise I might disappear.

Who wants to disappear?

On the other hand, maybe the payoff might be worth it.

Crossing The Wild Lands

One person’s “wild lands” are always another’s home turf.

Someone, some creature, some living thing is always at home in the places and situations where we feel all at sea.

It’s worth remembering that when we are Crossing The Wild Lands.

It’s possible that we can learn to be at home here, too.

Sometimes I Cry

The song Sometimes I Cry is a reference point for me.

A flag placed firmly in a valley through which I travelled for too long.

It’s a reminder that nothing lasts. But particularly in this case, the Badlands don’t last.

And I know that those sought of sentiments can seem meaningless when a person is in the trough of despair. But I hope that anyone who is in that place will realise, on hearing this song, that somebody knows how they feel.

That knowledge, if nothing else, should give hope. Because you can’t write this kind of song when you’re smack bang in the middle of the trough. You can’t write it unless you’ve been there, and come through.

Which means that it’s possible to come through.

Tartan And Lace

Tartan And Lace were my metaphor for courage and grace, represented in a woman. And in this song, the woman represented the best of the land where I live. Scotland.

But neither a man or a woman or a nation are the rightful bearers of goodness. Courage and grace are just regular qualities, available to all of us. Demonstrated, naturally, by people we admire.

It’s possible to be brave and graceless. Also graceful and cowardly.

But, in truth, courage and grace complete each other.

And they already exist within us, waiting to be released. Like all the best qualities, we don’t have to will them into being. We just stop getting in their way.