Days and days

Somehow I felt today like all the days were melding into one another. I'm not sure why that was, but it seemed ages since I'd last done something useful or interesting. Not that I haven't been, I've done lots of useful planning things, but I saw everything as it was in time. The calendar of events that make up my life panned out before me and I saw that there were many thing I thought I should have done. It's interesting to note that these things were to do with friends and not with any 'professional' engagements. I wish I'd spent more time idling with the people that have meant something to me in the past, and kept up acquaintances with those interesting people that I don't see anymore.

Aside from that I've been hard at work promoting the upcoming concert, making sure people know where and when it is, putting posters up around sunny Glasgow and giving out flyers as and when I can. As it seems there might be press attending I think we'll have to step up our quality of playing and get those rehearsals well attended. I really am just hoping the concert is a success. I also feel that I have moved on considerably since writing the piece for the concert. While writing it was a steep learning curve, and I changed my whole way of working, I've decided to build on the many things I've learnt and progress into the area I've been meaning to all along - live electronics. It's a scary process and I'm not sure how I'm going to go about writing the pieces as it becomes difficult to imagine the sounds you're creating without any feasible way of creating them without the performer. I suppose it'll just have to be MIDI and perseverance with Max for the time being.

I guess I've lost that desire to go home, again. I did want to for a long time this month but I've got so many things going on that I've managed to change my mind, without realising it. I just really want to get everything together and make sure I get into the New York university. If I don't get in this year I don't know what I'm going to do with the summer of my life. Maybe I'll lose faith in the composition scene altogether and move somewhere I don't have to think about all these highfalutin ideas. Maybe.

Sunday Morning

I'm not sure what I want to write about today. Perhaps it would be good to reflect on the week. This is the first time I've really had to sit down and think about what's happened, and as it happens I'm still in bed with my green blanket round me listening to the sounds of my flatmates going about their business. There's something quite comforting about knowing that people will get on and do everything they need to do without your interaction. It makes me feel humble when I think how many people there are in the world that are unaware of my existence, and will pass their whole lives without coming even close to anything I interact with on a daily basis. What is the purpose of my life then if I know so few people, and it is a struggle even to have an effect on their lives? It must surely be then to pursue my own interests and discover my own needs and fulfil them. That seems altogether selfish, but the alternative is to be either ignorant of your true desires or vainly pursue this unattainable dream state of influence.

This week has been pleasantly busy. It seems I have not been in my flat much, which suits me fine. I have been entertaining myself with the pub and the good company of friends, and whiling away some hours with general chit-chat. It's been a tiring week though with full time work and trying to organise the ensemble to come to this rehearsal. It turns out that we didn't rehearse my piece on Saturday, although we've scheduled it for later down the line. Unfortunately some players could not attend the rehearsal which led to confusion over what would be suitable to play. It's looking like we'll only have full complement to rehearse on the day of the concert, which scares me a little, but I have every confidence in them.

Talking of exciting things, this is quite geeky but this week I'm going to buy Max/MSP. I'm looking forward to creating something really good with it for live performance. Finally perhaps I can really make some interesting sounds that I can reproduce on stage. Maybe I'll just post some up here if I can get it working properly.

I read 'The Outsider' this week, by Albert Camus. It made me realise that really a lot of the time I need to be more honest about my feelings, and rather than settling with what other people expect I should just say exactly what I feel. Sometimes that's the hardest thing, when you know what a person is hoping they'll hear. I think the problem is that feelings aren't black and white, and often I feel strongly about something, but hardly ever can I say that I feel truly disappointed or happy about something. There are so many shades inbetween that are more relevant.

Anything you say may be taken in evidence...

An amusing answerphone message today reminded me that we are constantly analysing and recording ourselves. There is a certain obsession that we have with being able to recall things accurately. Think about computers, for instance - the second thing they are built for, apart from to perform complex calculations, is to store information. Why are we followed around by security cameras every day _as well as_ security guards? The simple answer
is that we regard the camera as more reliable than the human in charge of it. We only trust our own judgement. What if the security guard was a compulsive liar? What if he was a homicidal maniac masquerading as a normal person? When can we trust our own personal psychological judgements? This paranoia seems to pervade society, and certainly has an affect on my
personal life. When can we actually /trust/ someone to do what they say? I just carry on answering the door until one day the gas man stabs me in the chest in an involuntary spasm of psychotic behaviour. I certainly can't predict these things and I shouldn't be expected to. My problem with this over-indulgent voyeurism is that it encourages more violence, more hysteria.
Rather than protecting the people, it reminds them that there need necessarily be more criminals present in the world, and out of that need springs the required class of people. Think of the prime example in question: in America the people have guns, so instead of protecting them, them becoming more safe, everyone becomes a threat to them. The protection becomes not the prime, initial cause, but the aggravating factor.

I think now would be the time to say that I saw, on my way to buy some lunch, a girl on a bicycle crying. Mascara was streaming down her face and she was sobbing. It only lasted a second or so, but I heard her before I saw her. There is something very plaintive about that situation, something pathetic. Crying is something people usually do in private, but she had decided that she didn't care if anyone was watching. Anway I'm not crying today, I'm rejoicing because lots of things are happening. I've discovered I'm happiest when I'm busy and scheduled in to do lots of things. Let's just try and keep it that way.

Moka pots will be my downfall

How is it that someone can change their taste so much? I used to hate coffee, especially black, but now I love espresso. I suppose it's only since I went to Italy and experienced what real coffee should taste like. Short, black and thick, preferably with sugar. Drunk very hot, and with plenty of conversational people around.

Today is a good day. Even though the weather was seemingly even more abysmal than usual, it didn't seem to bother me because I've made some progress. We have players for our ensemble - instruments I thought only existed in dreams have come out of the rafters proclaiming their undying love for contemporary music, and even more miraculously are able to come along for rehearsals. This unforeseen surprise has brought me joy and cheered me up. This means my piece now has at least the required number of players to perform it, and has some chance of sounding good. I'll leave that up to the performers.

I received in the post this morning a woolen jumper. It often surprises me when I receive these gifts from my family, especially when they have such good taste in clothes. I am especially happy with this one because it's the first wooly jumper I've ever had with a hood. No prizes for guessing the colour: a uniform blackness, making a change from the other black woolen jumpers I have. Although as an afterthought this one has been trimmed with some white thread, making a more appealing outline than you would expect from such an addition.

As my plans for the rest of this year go, I'm waiting to hear from a certain Manhattan institute, although it also looks like they're waiting to hear from me. I'm anxious to persuade them that they would require me on their course to disrupt their stable composing community with insurrective talk and encouragement of constructive cynicism, in the Scottish style. Why is it that some things always get in the way of this? Such as simple things like transcripts, certificates and other things which I can't control. The problem is that I am basing on the Dutch institute which simply asked me to send some scores along, and then they'd ask me along for interview if they liked them. Straightforward, to the point, and exactly what composition should be about. In contrast the American system is to have every piece of paperwork in order that they never have to talk to you, and that they know more about your academic rigour than you do. My problem with that is not their persistence, but rather that they don't seem to be interested in what I'm going to do, or what I show potential for, but rather what I have already done. I consider every work I have done so far to be inferior to what my ideal is, and that I simply haven't found the right way to express what I want to do. How I can possibly say this in a personal statement or curriculum vitae I don't know, but they expect me to, and I've jumped through the hoop. All I can do now is to wait for them to reject me. All I'd like to say is that I need to be there in order to complete the next stage. I have worked out that what I am doing now is not what I'd like to be doing, and the problem is not the people or even the opportunities, but rather everything else - the place, the weather, and what makes me happy: my surroundings.

Having said that, I wish to inform you that I am not going to let anything stand in my way. I intend to get what I want. The world is my oyster today, and I'm going to let it stay that way.

Administration and Music

It's Thursday and all is well. Or not. Today I seem to have forgotten the purpose of life, or at least what I'm doing. Tell me again, tell me a thousand times that this blog is an outlet for my personal problems and gripes, but it is.

In one of the many periods today where I was able to contemplate the meaning of life, I chose to decide what to do in the immediate future, but my brain was so fried after not being able to sleep and then being put to mundane tasks immediately that I wasn't able to think straight. Perhaps that's a good thing? Maybe I needed a day off worrying about what do do with my music after last night's protracted discussion on the state of music in Scotland with a couple of dear friends. I had one problem with what they were saying, although I do see their point. They put forward that the music in Scotland isn't good enough, and that they wanted it to be better. This is fair enough, I believe that the music here is not of a high enough standard, and that people are not aware of _how_ to make it better (excusing myself). They do not possess the skills to be able to _know_ that their music isn't good enough, so we come back to square one: education. Their proposal was not to solve the problem, but to offer something which posed more questions, and stimulated debate and the realisation that the music is not good enough. Excessive ideology and debate without practically applying concepts is not productive, and can only lead to more complaints because people are not /doing/ anything, but surely we have to have some sort of model that we wish to apply ourselves, even if we don't wish to force it on others? What I'm saying is that we need personal goals that we achieve ourselves rather than an all inclusive master plan that we force on others: what we force on others is the desire to better themselves. My problem with their approach was that by putting on a concert we are not educating people. Simply listening to music is not going to force people to want to do it better themselves. Constructive debate, and a platform to discuss it on will force people to think more. This should then be combined with the concert and left open for people to see and enter into at their own will.

Through all of this I tried to decide what my purpose in life is. Am I wanting to educate people, simply present what I have to offer, or haven't I found what I want to do yet? I think it would be a little presumptious to think that I could possibly offer any knowledge to anyone else when I don't really know what I'm doing myself, so it must be that I haven't decided what I want to offer yet. The eternal dilemma of the artist is that they will never really know what it is they want to offer, that their best work will always be behind them and that people will never appreciate them until it is too late and they have offered everything they have. My solution is to stick to my guns, keep doing what I want to do and ignore any comments that are not either constructive or helpful.

Back to pasta for dinner tonight, but today I'm looking forward to it. Mini parcels with stuff in and pesto. So many things have changed recently that I don't know whether I'm coming or going, or even what I feel about it. Sometime soon, in fact now, I have to make some very big decisions and rectify all the things I'm not happy with. Money, Music and Surroundings. Luckily the second is almost finished, but the others make take a little more practical planning. I'll let you know what I come up with.

The darkness

I think it's become necessary for me to gripe about the weather in each entry, so I think today I'll complain that I returned home from work in the dark. Despite the fact that having a job is great, and enjoying the time I spend there, I would rather it didn't take up all the hours of daylight. The darkness outside is complete, and the gentle patter of the rain on the ground can be soothing or distressing.

Today was a productive day. I have completed tasks I intended to do today and feel almost relaxed. I bought spices for the kitchen which were required: fine ground black pepper, salt, paprika and cinnamon. I believe these should be the basis for any kitchen, and are useful in many dishes. Since winter started my diet seems to have reduced to the bare minimum required to live - simple carbohydrates and some protein. Don't blame me if I die from not having taken in any vitamins or eaten any green vegetables. It's just my local Sainsbury seems to have less veg than the cupboards in our kitchen, and it's a hassle to go and find another shop which sells whichever ones take my fancy at the time, which is usually so late at night that the rest are shut anyway. Just to give you an example, they have baking potatoes and new potatoes, but never any basic white potatoes. They never have swede, parsnip or any salad which isn't washed, chopped and put into bags with irritating little sachets of dressing (costing £1.99). Although you can't guarantee they'll have frozen chips or bagels in Oriental Foods, they do have a great selection of veg and two aisles of spices at stunningly cheap prices. So it's a quandary. Do I go to Sainsbury and get my occidental necessities (merchandised cereals and drinks) or do I forfeit my creature comforts and go to Oriental Foods? The solution is to do both, which is not always practical but can be done on separate days.

The weekend was a busy one. Looking back it doesn't seem like I actually did that much, but I felt better afterwards and it's definitely the start of something exciting. I think having approximately half the composers in Glasgow (between 18 and 35) in one room was productive, and although it does happen on a reasonably regular basis, not so many rich ideas are had. The rehearsal went extremely well despite a panic attack beforehand from a co-organiser that put me in a state of worry before the gig. As it was, more people turned up than we expected and brought their own equipment which was a pleasant surprise. I have a feeling this gig is going to be more successful than the previous effort, and given we have the prior experience of organising a concert within this establishment it can only *fingers crossed* go better than last time. The trouble is there's always something else to organise... another player to find or a space to book or flyers to distribute or someone to talk to. Aside from that we also have to get people to come to the gig. It's a full time sport and I'm already working a full time job and trying to do other projects.

I want to be at home less today. The structure of having a job and rehearsals to go to seems to make things worthwhile, or at least numbs the pain and constricts the paranoia. Prevaililng paranoia seems to be a stain on my life, to disturb and upset me when I least need it. But more on that to come.

Money

I really didn't feel like getting up today. I looked at my curtains and tried to imagine the shaft of blinding sunlight that would invigorate me and make me feel ready for the day. I opened them to discover blanket grey sky once again, and once again wondered why I was here as I sat eating my cereal and watched the light struggle to creep through the kitchen window. The problem is that I do know why I'm here. I have _things_ happening here in the near future which are _important_ and _necessary_ for me. I just can't justify the painful time of waiting for them to happen, doing almost nothing productive or meaningful while the time ebbs away, simply living, and feeding the cycle of existence.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy that the things are happening, and if I didn't have those I'd be some dark place I can't even imagine. I just don't know if I can handle this 'live to work, work to live' ethic which rears its head again. I seem to have been doing it for so long now, years in fact, that the dim dream of someone paying me to do what I want to do has faded a little. That's what I still aspire to though, and my changing ambitions have provided a view of different areas of interest. What is a job anyway? I've treated it so far as a way to make money, and where has it got me? It's certainly provided a need to find a job that has a balance of income and personal justification. So far I've only had that in snippets, and it's never lasted for long enough. Suffice to say that working in a shop definitely didn't fill the second criteria, and gave me hardly enough of the first to justify not having the second. Things are changing though, and I'm beginning to understand what people mean by the over-used phrase 'job satisfaction'. Someone once criticised me for studying what he called my 'hobby', and I suddenly realised that meant in conventional society one's income necessarily went hand in hand with dissatisfaction.

Well, today I'm off to spend money on enjoying lunch, and tomorrow it's back to resenting having to work to earn money. Or should it be the other way around? Either way I need money if I'm going to go anywhere at any stage in the future.

Emotions

Has anyone noticed these things called emotions?

Recently they seem to be affecting me more than ever. They invade my personal space, disrupt what should be a perfectly normal task, cause me to make rash decisions and generally upset things. I think the problem is that I never remember them being a problem before. Call me hard-hearted, but my feelings about things don't seem to feature highly in my memory of situations, events and people. I remember things 'just happening', and I simply got on with my daily life without moping in the mornings or fretting about what I _feel_ about something. Perhaps it has something to do with my irritating habit of thinking about things too much. I ponder over situations far longer than is necessary, often without reaching a conclusion. I may dither in the local Sainsbury looking at the cereal selection wondering whether I /feel/ like weetabix or whether some more sugary and well merchandised brand might suit me better.

All this doesn't stop me from hiding them from people, though. Why should I tell people what my favourite jam is, or that I'm obsessed with the quality of tea I receive (which I am, incidentally)? In a society where there were a record number of stabbings in London at the New Year celebrations (35 to be precise), it makes me think that there is no place for people to cry over films or to coo over their neighbour's baby. Should we pull in the boundaries of our emotion? If people are capable of hatred of another human being, so much so that they decide they should not exist any longer, that should surely subtract from the amount of love. Sadness should surely increase through such an act. On the other hand, it could make us cling even more dearly to our creature comforts, pulling the things we love even closer toward us. As more things become acceptable in society that were once taboo, does that mean we care less about what we see, or that we simply are itching to see the next generation of boundaries flounted? Is it a constantly changing process or will we always be shocked by the scenes in Irreversible (www.imdb.com/title/tt0290673)?

It seems like I've raised more questions today than I intended to, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I was simply affected by the weather here. The sun raises at 9am and sets just after 3pm, and that does things to my emotional state that are not favourable. When I wake late and discover that the sun is as bright as it will get, and the sky is a blanket grey colour that joins seamlessly with the hard concrete pavement, forever unchanging each day, I think about my plans for the future. The need to move somewhere where I feel invigorated to be alive and awake. I enjoy being outside and stretching my legs, but when a place does its darndest to suffocate that with crushing blows of rain and bleakness, it takes away a thing I have nearly forgotten: ambition, spirit, a desire to do _something_. Why should I arise from a warm bed to a cold and dark, forbidding city when my body is telling me to hibernate?

Sombre tones today, and apologies for that. However I'm off to cook pasta alla carbonara, and make some much needed updates on a nearby website.

Being cynical helps... honestly

First blog post ever. Only time will tell as to whether this is a good idea or not.

Today is the first day of a new year, and many hopefully many things should come of it. New music, new words, new experiences, new countries and new jobs. Well what makes me think this year is going to be different from the last few and change the way things are for me and the people around me? I've changed my attitude. More Cynicism and More Ambition will go hand in hand to produce something truly new. Maybe I shouldn't pin so much hope on America and what's going to happen in the next few months, and concentrate less on what people think of me and my work, and concentrate on finding things that make me happy in the meantime. Call me a hedonist, but I really think the only thing that should be important is finding interesting things to do and enjoying them. Stuff around me in the months preceding christmas seems to have taken on a bitter tang in my mouth, so much so that it impaired my daily life and made me want to go and curl up in a ball and pull my soft green blanket over me. However I have found that ignoring these elements completely and /living/ in complete ignorance is better for me. I think it's better to know that these things go on around me but that they Don't Affect Me.

Having received a shiny new black iPod Nano for christmas from my beloved brother I have proceeded to fill it up with the most enjoyable music I could muster. Lightning Bolt and Ruins are some welcome discoveries along with Andriessen and my old favourites Squarepusher etc.

I finished 'Catch 22' over the holiday also, and it proved to be a moving experience, rather long winded but worth the wait at the end. Hardly the Laugh Out Loud experience that I was expecting, and rather less well written than I expected. I was quite surprised because the comments were that it was a book of the century, worthy to stand among the classics. What are your thoughts? I'm prepared to dispute this because the quotes suggested I would be ambivalent about it, but I feel rather apathetic.

Anyway I must get back and finish the parts for 'short story' before I go back to temping on Friday. Joy of joys, the world of administration and photocopying awaits me at the offices in Glasgow University. At least it means I'll be able to eat this month. I must muster the strength the visit the cinema this week, even if I don't have a clue what's out and good at the moment.