‘Hey let’s all head web-wise to Rats on the Run, it’s a bastion of in-depth reviews’, said a wonderfully loyal and select group of musos now dismayed at this pivot in direction. Don’t worry, I‘ll get back, I promise. This is just a real-time shift in focus that hopefully leads us right back there.  

Music is the love and the passion that drives me so intensely it hurts and gives meaning. I’ll never make enough music to be happy with my output, never hear enough new artists to call myself ‘on the ball’, never support people enough to think that I’ve helped. It kicks me that I’ve not been productive. So many artists that I’ve not done right by.

It’s how I know that a kilter’s off balance. Like the Metal Gear Solid game I keep going back to (Peace Walker HD is an ultimate comfort zone and the artwork of Ashley Wood is incredible), I’ve gone back to old favourites and comforts. Albums of my teens (I’m now 36) repeat and soundtrack my safezone, I’m afraid to touch anything new. Albums, singles, cinematic projects, they sit in my inbox that I now pay extra storage for in the faith that I’ll get to them sometime. ‘The Swamp’s unfair pressure – you bet! But what of all the things I’ve forgotten?

While the swamp settles in and the mud’s warm and easy, I forget, shit, I’ve actually DONE stuff. I kick myself for ignoring the joy that I’ve found creating and making and producing. The Swamp makes me feel guilty, tells me I’m bragging, and tells me no one would give a rats anyhows.

– This post could have been deleted and ended right here –

‘The songs are worthless. I cant play. I don’t know chords. I’ll never share them. Other people will always do better. There’s no point going back to them and why bother. Not a single new song’s worth a damn.”

But they are worth a damn. Maybe? For SURE! And with the right mind I could celebrate something…

Some tracks might be as sonically pleasing as razor wire all drizzled in unswallowable mush, but they took me away someplace other. When I was making, I was having a blast. The chimp on my back must have slid off or lost weight because I was busy wrapped up in creating, lighter while distracted and happy. At that time, for that time at least, the distraction was the bliss that I needed.  

Is this something we can all keep in mind? Something to remember and apply? Be it pen on paper, charcoal on toilet roll, biro in a notepad, carving a loveheart in bare plaster walls with a spoon and a rusty spanner (landlord permitting), arranging macaroni into a pasta-pic of Bo-Jo, finding some way to commit how we feel or distract brings a shift in our and attention. As one colour and feeling of mood starts to fade, the door just might open to others. It could just be the briefest reprieve but why not lean into it now and then?

And who cares if it never goes on show? Who cares if no one ever reads or sees it? The tree falls in the woods and no one else hears, but dammit we chose the tree and the chainsaw! 

So let me know your creative distractions, and try not to think all those mean things that nearly ended this post half way through.