Progress & Disaster

Had a strong upsurge in creative form this weekend. My hermit like existence last week has paid dividends musically speaking. I was enjoying the experience of just sitting down with an electric guitar again and playing, playing, playing. The gates have opened, and on Sunday I nearly completed my mini-opera about my characters Simple Silas & The Chevron Action Flasher.

In the space of four or five hours I wrote and recorded 5 new songs! Some of them just short ones that fit into the mini-opera and another one that I recorded as I wrote it in the space of five minutes using some lyrics that I'd written the week before. This song though, is rather downbeat. Good chords. Done on a whim. I reckon that at some-point in the future it will get recycled for something else that I do.

I recorded these tracks very simply with just one microphone, overdubbing some lead guitar on a few tracks. There is a nice little instrumental that I've worked into it too, really different from anything that I normally write (I haven't written an instrumental since I did the Overture for my musical play).

So, creatively speaking...I am flying high. Once I've polished off this opera I think that it will become a staple in my live sets...it could be great for the band. I'm playing to my strengths with it in the sense that I like to create characters, and then throw into them autobiographical stuff and bits from other people and the world that interests me.

On the disaster front...I fear that my house is heading for meltdown at the moment. There are a lot of egos flying around at the moment (including, though rather more defensively and quietly my own), and until things can be resolved (as they only ever can through balanced, mediated and fair discussion) I will enjoy my solitude, write music, seek out old friends from my phone book, and enjoy the strange trajectory that my social life is taking at the moment.

Speaking of which, I met up yesterday with my old buddy Ryan, and his lovely girlfriend Layla at the Caernarvon Castle in Camden. There was a SUPERB hard rock band on (I wouldn't have gone if I knew). Those guys were great. A veteran covers band thumping out HEAVY METAL THUNDER to the masses. The bassist had...A BUZZARD! The beautiful one-piece graphite guitar designed and played by the legendary John Entwistle of The Who. Spotting this beautiful piece of rock n roll war machinary I chatted with the bassist between songs and suggested that he should honour the much missed 'Ox'. The man did a stellar job! Though, it would have been amazing if he'd been using John's "Star Wars" type effects too.

Once again then, here I am in the middle of wonderful creative burst (for which I am truly thankful to the Almighty for because it literally keeps me alive), but at the same time with a shaky looking future in terms of where I live and who I'm around. All shall be well though. I am well equipped to handle whatever comes along I think now. Better than ever before. I feel surprisingly calm about it all, on the grand-scale of things it doesn't register (in fact, does anything that I experience register on that?)

Another amazingly bright day in England again. The sky is clear. Ray-ban weather in November. Never a bad thing.

Hope that your happy, honest and strong wherever you are.

Tom.