These are funny things. The spotlight turns on you. At a young age, the frisson of excitement is almost too much, anticipation and then release. Seeming to take for ever to arrive. As an adult there is more nervousness, whether the presents you have bought your partner are really any good. Will they like them. What made you choose that? Lack of money. Pressure. Having to fulfil expectations both as a giver and a receiver. It’s a day you have to enjoy yourself. Too much pressure. Which is why you should spread it out, have a birthday week. Enjoy the chance of a lie in. Alter your patterns. The Covid 19 pandemic changed birthdays, a screen full of friends, acting, playing games, memories. Almost more connection, although virtual. Rafts of in person events cancelled. Meetings on doorsteps, sneaking off to the park, borrowing a dog for a secret rendezvous. Under control, police states surfacing almost instantly, the collective behaviour altered irreparably. Eat out to help out. Now we can’t afford to eat out or are bored of it, living in a small town going to the same places, eating average food at expensive prices. In doorways, lumps of human flesh are concealed, wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets, possessions stuffed around them, trying to stay warm, trying to be human. Birthdays, like every other day should be about trying to help, to recognise the plight of fellow humans. Stop and talk. Be there. Be present.
I don’t really want to celebrate but I feel obliged. OK I can enjoy it but having a deep winter birthday I try and add some sunshine to my spheres, to meet with friends and get the year moving; light is returning. The flood of deep winter deaths relenting. Hawaiian parties, Latin music, sparkle, light, glitter. There are never any expectations. Spring and summer birthdays have it lucky, or get disappointed due to the weather, or people being away. At least in the winter everyone is generally around, and desperate for something to alter their states of mind. One friend has his birthday at the end of May, often falling on a bank holiday, a time when people are away, doing their own thing. This creates a sense of isolation, a lack of connection as couples, families have their own agendas which cater for their inner circle, the unit, not especially interested in friends at that point. Birthdays can highlight the lack of children, tensions in family, a poignant moment. My dad died on my birthday. Thanks papa. Some sort of perfect symmetry, 23.1.23.
I love the winter break, a chance to stop, get ill, listen to podcasts and read. A chance to reflect on your top 20 books, albums, events, moments of the year almost past. Former conservative MP Rory Stewart is increasingly fascinating, a life spent trying to gather all information, to walk and connect with as many people as possible. His latest podcast, The long history of Ignorance, resonates in so many ways, especially episode 3 where he talks about ignorance behind creativity, the pure space where innovative work comes from which was the core theory behind my book Blank Canvas.
Why do we create stuff? Is there some inbuilt need to innovate, solidify your place in the world by manifesting? How creative practice connects to the brain is fascinating, the need to redevelop something fresh and original. Every day I have an innate need to do something creative, engage with the playful and free part of my brain. It doesn’t have to be for a long time, just at some point my inner self finds peace finds its tranquil home through scratching the creative itch.
I sometimes forge the time to create pieces of music, hours spent slaving over a hot computer based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), perfecting sections on my computer, listening over and over to the same section, distorting reality, a sample of a Buddhist chant or the gentle lapping of the sea. Although I don’t really have the attention span for attention to detail. I love developing the structure, creating the whole outline, building up parts but then you need to go back and alter elements of instruments, hi hat positioning, the velocity of the odd kick drum, automation across your strings pads, hone the reverb until it sounds glassily transparent, build echoes onto certain moments so that that they last just the right amount of time, don’t mask or clash but aid the flow. I love creating melodies, interlocking parts that flow off each other. Rhythm less so. I like a pulse, a beat, but I keep missing all those intricacies that make up a great drum track. Creating the music is one thing, but then what happens? In previous eras you could go to your local studio, record some live parts over the basic structure, mix, master and create an artefact. Get friends to help in creating cover images, get your vinyl from the Czech pressing plant. Burn straight to 1/4-inch tape then Digital Audio Tape (DAT). Avidly, we created packs and sent them off to our favourite DJ’s and record shops. If it was any good then it got played. Not necessarily in large amounts but there was some traction, a point to the creative process, validation and the thrill of your sounds heading off into the ether. Nowadays I am increasingly thinking about the pointlessness of sending music out into the world. It is a saturated market, flooded by accessibility. The point of releasing music is generally about the self, satisfying a personal need to let the world have your piece of art, more flotsam to spin around digital highways, polluting, blocking up the cloud. The conundrum that the top 100 albums feature regular favourites such as the Beatles, Stones, Neil Sedaka and Nana Mouskouri, charity shops the new record stores. Spotify has endless music. Everyone can get their music on the platform; the gatekeepers have been sidelined at this point. Emancipation for good and bad. Although you now need connected humans, DJ’s, label managers, to make an impact. To get plays, streams, downloads you need a record company or influencer to catch onto your track, to like it in a way that connects with their other material. Music promotion companies such as Label Radar or Groover provide this service, enticing you to pitch your music to an endless supply of record companies. It does work. Some of my tracks get taken up and then you are onto stage 2. Promoting your track. Friends and family will sometimes listen but reaching beyond is so difficult, battling the tide of artists who have also released music that day. Estimates range between 60 to 100k releases per day. Every day. Still, you turn on 6 Music and Marvin Gaye is thoughtfully crooning along. Wonderwall is still building. The Smile continue to sound like Radiohead, but without the iconic songs. The Gatekeepers have shut the door and thrown away the key for infinity and beyond. Wham! and Last Christmas the two top documentaries. Nostalgia, nostalgia. So, should you keep making music I hear you cry? Maybe there should be an amnesty, no more music until we have filtered out all which is blocking, a year of silence to contemplate, think where creativity is taking us all. A year for everyone to prepare, restart culture. To try new instruments that have never been part of your world, the true blank space of creativity. Innovation through ignorance. Musicking is personal, moving your head from thoughts of Top of the Pops and stardom to a process, going through something cathartic. You need to make the music for yourself, to get what is inside out. The pure self. Anyway, I still check my Spotify streams, have extreme pleasure when it says that someone is listening to my latest track Rise up by Inochi. In-Oh-Chee. Japanese for life energy, I think. Check it out on all streaming platforms. So maybe that is the point, personal satisfaction that someone somewhere gets it, gets you. Listens to you. Reads your words. Takes time to connect their life with yours. Or maybe it’s just a release, an internal burden which needs to be set free. Our lives are time stamped by the creativity of others, remembering different eras, innovative sounds or combinations of the audio and visual, stopping us in our tracks, providing new directions and thought processes. Picking a random book from the shelf of a library stack that alters your thinking, the ideas of others taking centre stage and manipulating your life in a certain direction. We need creativity to keep us sane, provide a reason for being. It is one of the most important elements so should be embraced fully, hugged to death, translating thoughts from your mind into actions. I am interested in bringing culture and creativity to rural locations, having moved from the city during the Covid pandemic, Stewart Lee’s sketch where he has friends who move to the countryside, to live an idyllic life but the reality is extreme boredom. They enquire to friends, please come and visit; bring coke. He has only a horse to talk to now. The buzz of the city replaced by peace and calm only works if you can have a balance. A vibrant life where the beauty and purity of nature and culture intersect. An internal smile. My research is based on exploring the infrastructure and innovative ideas you can collate which forms a rural scene or scenius, finding the people and locations, stories and place. A collective will to develop culture, a blank canvas on which anything can be drawn. No competition. If you create it they will come, bringing thoughts from everyone’s head into realisation. Collective intelligence and ignorance brought beautifully together.
It used to be a time I dreaded, long nights stretching, engulfing days but as I get older there seems to be greater romance in those cold winter days. Jumpers, snuggling, battling through rain. The dark emphasising the light, neon glowing. Xmas. Glowing lights. Mulled wine. Waiting for change. Looking forward rather than at the present. I am determined to luxuriate in the wrapping up of winter, to stroke the deep woollen knit, put my feet up towards the roaring fire, gentle puff on a pipe, reading TheHound of the Baskervilles. I love the low searing light of winter. In summer it is expansive and flat, but those cold wet dark months are crossed with laser like strips of sun, striking from far to near, providing depth and excitement. Waking up in the dark and gradually arising with the light unlike summer months where it is instant, turning a light on, no sun to full sun. You can leave your garden to just exist rather than spending hours fighting off excessive growth, hacking at weeds, willing the grass to stay short. Winter is romantic. You two or three of more against the world. Summer is full on, everyone out there, festival, party, active, blinded by the flat light, wide angle, no place to hide as the sun engulfs. Splashing on suncream to protect against a deteriorating ozone layer, a thin film with holes puncturing through. No aircon. Instead, dark dramatic atmospheric winter world, wrapped in blankets, fire on, lights twinkling, a season of thought and anticipation. Wrapping up the year. The worst thing about winter is the thought of its arrival. Increasingly my summer months are ruined as summer solstice disappears in the rear-view mirror veering towards it’s winter equivalent, the days getting inexorably shorter. The long lead up to dark wet cold depressing months when I should just be enjoying summer days and nights drifting along. Never ending days to be replaced by never starting moments. Some of our friends have the right idea, lucky sods. Enough money to luxuriate in English summers and then plan their winter escapes to South America, Asia, Australia, Africa, maintaining the light of life, following the sun, keeping winter at bay. Up in space there is no issue with the seasons. If you’re looking down on earth they fly past, daily, providing a dazzling display of summer, autumn, spring. But surely embrace the winter. There is a stark beauty, a low light which plays enormous shadows, providing greater depth and interest onto vistas. Wrap up warm and get outside, look at the views, seep in the world. Neon Lights twinkling in the gloom, providing a vibrancy and electricity. Colour and interest. Beautiful cold thin morning sunrises where metallic light purples and thin warm oranges litter a pastel sky. Look to the now but also ahead. Winter can be cold and lonely but there is also the promise of something better ahead, the winter solstice a marker, the most hopeful day of the year when gradually more light and interest arrives daily, the football season coming through its phoney war into games which actually means something, there is jeopardy. The long slog of league games developing into a tussle for the top, to move up or down a level, settle on a new normal. Cup games in muddy fields, ball stuck in treacherous puddles as wind rattles around the stands blowing you sideways. Fearful of the journey from changing room to pitch, vaseline caked over freezing limbs. The winter is also a time to luxuriate, to cuddle up with some of the great authors of our time, let ideas and knowledge seep into your brain. Relearn. Recharge. Rethink. Settle into new and old concepts, philosophy, AI, culture, stories of war and peace, light and shade, action and adventure, beautiful prose or edge of the seat excitement. Winter seems to be the longest season, to go on inexorably, dark following dark, where illness can lead to death. But it is also the most romantic, when friends and families come together, to talk and argue, to annoy and rejoice. The last time in that house. Setting markers, remembering departed family and friends through stories, games and laughter. The rest of the year you can be apart but the winter forces families together, to eat too much, watch too much, slobber on the sofa until the hope and joy of new year arrives. A fresh start. A new beginning. The chance to reset and go again.
On 1st December 2016 I took the train from Bristol Temple Meads to London Paddington. It was one of those beautiful rare clear cold sunny vibrant winter days, one where the trains ran on time, everyone had a seat and enough room to spread out. I was very excited. At 11.47 precisely I was transported to the ornate iron and glass door of a mews house in Ladbrook Grove. Just about to knock on the pane I see a figure furtively rustling around the colourful and bright studio space. Picking up objects, transferring them, bustling around with what seemed like an ever enlarging grin on his face. A medium set bald guy with a kind of beard. Ah Brian, there you are. I was transfixed. I wanted to keep just watching. I did for about 11 minutes before I walked away a few stops and came back to the door to knock. Brian was welcoming and lovely, making me a large cup of his wizards tea.
During our session, artist musician Brian Eno demonstrated Chaos Theory with his 2 handed pendulum, where simple motion on the first one creates infinite non repeated movements on the second. So, a little nudge one way can send all kinds of confusion across the next, thereby subordinating populations. Collective consciousness came through in punk, hip hop, techno, jungle etc.. through commonalities of fashion, style, music, art, taste, lifestyle, place, rhythm, dance. There are instigators, those key people who lead the collective in a certain direction. We are all swayed in some way, which can be a positive in cultural scenes but have global destroying effects in political spheres.
Brian Eno hanging out with the German electronic musicians of Kluster, provided the time and space for creative exploration by dropping out and living in their Kommune for a while. London squats were the beating heart of the emerging punk scene, and within Western Europe.
Our connections to our lands, our ancestors, spaces and places, kneeling in the soil, digging the garden, the new rock and roll as Cosey Fanni Tutti and Kim Wilde continue to show. I’m sure Brian Eno potters around hot tomato plants, winding them carefully up their strings, reaching to the sky. Little glowing red orbs gradually appearing. The Farmers Boys and Girls in their Norfolk greenhouses. Sets of allotments are the socio-cultural space for the new creatives, or the old creatives who need to be in touch with their land, the city dweller who yearns for the countryside, everyone effected by global cost of living crises, where pulling up your evening meal from the ground can offset ever rising food prices.
Roxy Music keyboard knob twiddler Brian Eno learnt about the power of humour through his art school adventures with tutor Roy Ascott. His first lessons at art school included devising personality tests, where students had to enact the opposite traits they normally displayed. For chatterbox Eno, he had to remain silent for the sessions and let other people lead projects. When becoming a record producer, Eno introduced concepts relating to getting artists out of their normal comfort zone so that they would maximise their self in performances and composition ideas, without the usual routines or trappings. The Oblique Strategy cards he created with artist Peter Schmidt contains humorous, tasks such as play with your non dominant hand, do something boring or emphasise the flaws, whilst also suggesting role play ideas to bands including pretending to be an alien funk band from the year 2055.
Brian and I had a good chat. He showed me 2 floor standing safes, saturated with notebooks, relaying pictures and concepts from years of doodling and thinking. A time bandit. Brian got on his fold up bike and scooted off for a meeting with George Monbiot. See you again Brian.
Why can’t I just sit at home and exist. What drives me to make some sort of mark on the world, create a lasting legacy, be constantly active, a diary full for months in advance, no time just to sit around and think. It always seems to be the way, agreeing to things without really first engaging the brain. A desire to do stuff, to be helpful, to explore ideas and put on events. Why can’t I just say no or keep my powder dry. Surely it would be easier just to sit on the side-lines, let other people run events but maybe that’s my nature of being an artist. One of the organisers. I’m not even sure it is one of my strengths. Well actually wooing is, so getting people to do stuff, to work with people, help, facilitate, be the natural number two. Peter Taylor to your Brian Clough. There is nowhere to go after over promising. You have put an idea into some else’s head and to stand and deliver. Or else try and back down gracefully without losing face or reputation. Keeping your mouth shut, thinking about things before promising. Review the logistics, the costs, the possible scenarios that could unfold in your head. It’s generally better to under promise, set expectations at a base level so you can gradually work up, surprise people, start to reveal the full extent of what you hope to achieve. Or don’t even say anything, keep your powder dry, have thoughts running around in your head that can stay there, under control, a multitude of concepts swirling within the brains matter. Is it a need to be liked, an area of conversation or just a desire to collaborate, support projects. By saying something it means you really have to deliver, it puts the concept out in the open. Surely this can be a good thing though as it counters inertia. Provides the possibility of creating something great, making a change, a mark on the world that delivers happiness to yourself and others once you have battled through the stress of putting the event on. If you don’t go out there and put your head on the line then you are not a competitor. You are someone happy on the side-lines, which is fine. Some people need to be the creators, innovators, those who push things forward and support a change in the world. Over promising is their reality. Realising dreams. Is there any point in any of this though. I mean we all shift off this mortal coil. Famous people are dying all over the place. Geoff Capes, iconic strongman of early TV. Seemed like a lovely bloke. He will be remembered. DJ’s Janice Long and John Peel, an anarchic Top of the Pops double act, laughing, joking, no longer here. A young guy from pop reality stars One Direction, plummets to his death from an Argentine balcony. Going in one direction, down. Quite youthful world cycling megalith Sir Chris Hoy, terminal cancer. All that healthy exercise and being superfit leading to inevitable doom. Maybe he should have just sat around smoking fags. Same result. You see people heading off for their daily jog or skulking around corners with rollies dangling from their mouth. Which one are you, what path do you choose. Lady Di. Princess of the people, changing the world, battered in a Parisian underpass alongside son of rapist, Dodi Al Fayed. He should have been the one in the car. Justice. If there was equity and fairness in the world then all those out exercising, eating healthily, being kind to the planet, one or no car families, care workers, doctors and nurses, nutritionists, musicians, actors, authors, recyclers, councillors, counsellors, cancellers, administrators, supporters, non-hierarchical activists, and famous shot putters should have the longest lives. We should know how long there is. Surely that’s fair. Otherwise, really what is the point. To be remembered? To leave a mark? To have in some way helped to make the world a better place through selfless behaviour? It is within your own heart and soul that this probably needs to occur, by doing stuff, creating events, putting your neck on the line, trying to improve other people’s lives, being proactive and making a difference is probably worthwhile. You might not get a medal but there should be peace of mind, inner comfort, a warm glow emanating from you, understanding that you have maximised your time on earth, nothing has been left undone or unsaid, like riding through the final 10 minutes of a spin class, pushing until the end, warn out but satisfied that nothing else could have been done.
Time disappears as you move around, nothing really going on except for the exercise of travelling. Sat on a train that traverses the country, from bottom to top and back again. You aren’t really doing anything except for being stationary whilst an element of transport moves you around. It can be possible to read or catch up on work. Stare out of the window marvelling at the grey skies shrouding any kind of view, which veers from countryside to outskirts of towns, ugly regions designed cheaply and ineffectively. Blue covered seats, thick and padded, still retaining the stench of fag smoke, from a previous era. Compartments where you peered in, slid back the door and met you new companions. Time to watch the world streak by. To watch and engage with people too. On the train you get occasional moments of excitement as you pull into cities you have never visited, places resonating with history and stature. Glimpses caught of dramatic buildings, bridges over rivers, people waiting on the platform, eager to find a forward-facing seat, building up adrenalin as they prepare for the scramble onboard. Sometimes you might be keen to talk, a new neighbour arriving with their own history to tell. Other times the needs of work or your own for solitude mean that you will other passengers to take alternative seats, squashing together like equally smelly sardines in a tin. Driving takes your mind into an alternative state. One of concentration but extreme familiarity, manoeuvring a vehicle through windy roads and wide-open motorways. Talking to your partner, listening to the latest news, sport or music, whiling away the hours as you move from one place to another. Time lost. Although it is an opportunity for Zen like behaviour, turn everything off and let the mind wander and focus. Ideas or concepts floating around and seeping into the brain. A time to think, connect the rushing lines, plan the future whilst remembering the past. You should be able to reclaim those hours spent travelling. Static but in motion. Complete a claim form to send off to the ministry. I would love to be cycling rather than driving, being active, fit, healthy and alive. Still able to pontificate but out on the path, moving from city centre, urban sprawl, the sound of the suburbs, the air gradually lightening and freshening. You can breathe more deeply now. In through the nose, out of the mouth. Travelling with a purpose rather than just existing to get somewhere else. It does get you to where you need to be, meeting with family and friends, attending a conference, going on holiday. So much time spent travelling whilst on holiday. Moving from place to place. Just stay still and enjoy the moments. Have days where you exist in your locale. The covid pandemic provided this life, a time where you weren’t allowed to travel. You had to exist in your own space, which would be a nightmare except for the privileged who had the room to feel comfortable. Finishing a journey after driving for hours can feel mesmeric, as though time didn’t move. Time apparently lost but possibly invaluable. Exhaustion gradually taking over. Arriving home but without true knowledge of the journey that got you there. I should stop flying. The planet really needs us all to do this if we are serious about attempting to reverse climate change. But we aren’t. Not until it is slap bang in front of our face, peeling away, melting, burning, flooding, collapsing. Driving an electric car whilst it would be better just to stay in your own locale. A boring world where we don’t move around but the world survives, cools down, quietens itself and lets nature come back to life. Back to reality.
Some people in your life make decisions that confuse or worry you. Their power. What can you do to counteract or deal with the power they exert, controlling your career, life path, manipulating your mind so that things which would seem outrageous or wrong in ever day living are passed, swept under the carpet, justified. Making decisions then putting you on the spot, you’re the one who has to explain what is going on, why money has been given to certain people. The PPE scandal where millions has been laundered, the truth wrapped in a veil. Who do you go to, who do you tell? Our world is dotted with conflict, sometimes all out war but often just a mass of elements that niggle, behaviour that hurts, disrespect. The gym teacher who asks the class for advice rather than understanding the wishes of the minority. Bullying, sneaking up to you, suggesting that you leave, that your work is underwhelming, snide comments. Words with extreme power. Passing by, leaving their mark but untroubling the perpetrator. People just getting away with it in multiple instances. Boris Johnson promoting his memoir, still insisting he did nothing wrong, those Brexit benefits. Saville, Weinstein, Al Fayed; sexual abuse, appearing out of the past as voice by voice the truth emerges when the abuser dies or locked away. People who can now talk the truth, power emerging through each ascending voice. Countries bombing neighbours indiscriminately, justifying actions through the weight of history, previous persecution, a life of being tortured, picked upon, maimed. The school bully never receiving justice, working away untouchable, poking here and there, making epee lunges. Fencing. Darting in and making a few incursions before retreating and waiting for blind eyes to be turned. Their own traumas affecting actions, digging deep into psyche, the past continually impacting on the present, a reset required.
Through life you have varied perspectives, middle age suddenly provides a balanced review, looking backwards as much as forwards, remembering events. The mind still clear and lucid but reflective. What a lot has happened across the years, how lucky I have been. That should be remembered and equate to happiness. A life well lived. Sit back and rejoice. No need to constantly chase forwards although that is your natural inclination. News of death always comes as a jolt to life, stopping you in your tracks and reminding of the annoying fact that this doesn’t go on forever. It stops. Seasons may change, you remember key events and reflect, you dream and love, but at some point everything comes to a juddering halt. Our own lifespan, predetermined or forced through actions. Probably best to make the most of it, every minute, stop worrying about the individual annoyances and reflect on the whole. I’m currently moved by the outpouring of love shown between contestants on Celebrity Masterchef, where food and pressure seems to have brought the absolute best nature out of people. They all seem so lovely and loved up. Enjoying the best experiences of their life. It is my new mantra, be the best you who would be on Masterchef, even though my cooking would fall apart, I want to wrap up the energy and be the best human I possibly can. Lets cook.
I used to have a teacher at secondary school called Mrs De’ath. I never saw her as the harbinger of doom but just another adult with a slightly French sounding name. The innocence of youth gradually slipping to the realisation that death is all around us, shadowing our every move. On the news in our personal lives. Gunmen running amok in schools. The first part of life is generally great where you just have the odd moment of death in your life. Pet cat, extremely old grandparents, distant acquaintance at school. As you age then it gradually becomes increasingly central to your life. Mortality is up front and central. Cancer crawling around inside people, pulling rugs from lives. Kids left stranded, fending with the parent who is left. Grief rippled through their conscious and subconscious. Refugees fleeing death and risking almost certain catastrophe through cramming onto overly small boats, wobbling across the channel. Iconic and less known musicians die. They don’t go on for ever which seemed to be the case when you were growing up, Everyone was immortal. Friends phone with news of close family members. The cancer has come back, just a few weeks to live. It is something we all carry with us but reality bites hard, takes us away from moments of extreme joy dancing in fields or watching the sun gradually set over a blue, green, orange, yellow sky. Walking or cycling to work, any moment could be a slip where you fall off the pavement or the back wheel slips and death comes roaring into view. You could just stay at home, frozen in stasis, safe from harm although that meteorite heading for earth could come screaming down and finish it all for everyone. Climate change, the death of the planet is ingrown for children of today. Welcome to your world, which we have managed to f+ck. Streams of traffic stuck bumper to bumper in city after city. The world distracting itself by suggesting that they are tackling global warming. Mass queues in airports as passengers fight for connecting flights, oblivious to their part in the planet’s downfall. Pollution, poisoning millions of people daily. Invisible fumes that activate cancer cells. The old days of smoking in shops, bars, homes gone as the most direct health risk is tackled whilst leaving a whole host of others gapingly open. Food. What’s on your plate, a rainbow of colours mimicking the setting sun? Or is it just overcast and grey. Beige. The colour of death. Youth still have technicolour lives, tik tok inspired over bright gaudy flashy sickly multitude of colours whereas the ageing sit in light brown piss stinking armchairs waiting for the chance to exit. Losing their mind as friends and family gather around, a ritual as we see off one more member of our tribe.
The end of summer bank holiday bookends from late May, a time of freshness and hope to one of remembering, thoughts, placing in time. Arranging big groups of people to get together from all corners of the globe, friends of friends. Your tribe expanding. Connecting to your partners world. Expanding the love. The end of summer August bank holiday has a moving melancholic feel, the end of something. Long days, endless sunshine, warmth, freedom, outside. The first slight chill in the air which catches you, brings up thoughts of future days huddled beside a pitch in multiple layers, a woolly hat pulled over your ears. The smell of cheap burgers and chips as the new football season roars into view. I love those months of silence, away from the constant bombardment of people kicking something round, an old bladder. In the old days it was a solid mass, sturdy boots against immovable object now replaced by soft leather slippers and a beachball. Everything is lighter nowadays which is much better when you are trying to head the thing. Picking blackberries, the garden starting to wilt and weeds grow slightly slower, the lawn has one or two cuts left in it. I often go on holiday in September because it’s cheaper and foreign climbs still retain their warmth without the crowds. There is a melancholic glow to things though, a sadness which feels healthy to indulge. Campsites gradually battering down, a wet dew meeting you as feet exit the tent. A freshness. The sky takes on a pastel consistency, peach, soft yellows. Gentle light overtaking the harshness. This bank holiday, iconic Bristol band Massive Attack played what could possibly be their last ever gig, outside on the downs, rain squalling around the band like usual. The force of staccato synth lines, bass rumblings, ethereal vocals reaching up into the atmosphere, pulling clouds together, hugging the ground. A mass of people worshipping and thinking, political slogans and messaging, vital images. This is more than a concert but a moment in time, remembering the need for action, climate, war, famine raging across the world as we party. The sound of Massive will linger in that space for ever, the Bristol air always containing familiar refrains. The sound of the place amplified. Looking around, seeing old and new friends, familiar faces from the city village in all directions come to be part of the last rights, a collective moment no one will forget. History being made while the current world is centre stage. Groups of people clinging close to each other, providing solace for times ahead. The sounds of the band drift on as the world keeps turning.
