saint peter by katharine eastman

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I feel this one (stately keys) is a step backwards - and sure, the history books won't worry about this day-to-day stuff the way we all do - none of this whose-turn-is-it-to-do-the-washing-up stuff is visible from even the nearest galaxy
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Every sober morning I quickly mooch around Bandcamp catching up on the approx ten-thousand musos I follow and skimming their new albums and deciding which ones to download even though I've so far not had a chance to listen to any album made in the last twenty years but one day all the music-production will stop and we'll all have a chance to catch up with all the backlog - and when I wonder which music to download the main thing is "what's it FOR?" - which probably seems a very cold clinical silly unmusical way to decide such things, but it isn't - I have music for playing loudly when I'm driving (my favourite pop music), I have music for playing loudly at home when I'm drunk (weird noisy nice rock), I have music for playing when I'm very drunk indeed and just feel this peculiar need to test myself because there is absolutely nothing else I can do (hard austere modern chamber music), there is music for when I'm sober and it's 5am and I am eating the only meal of the day (safe classical music), there is music for when I'm reading (classical, ambient, soft rock) .... blah blah blah - so I like other people's music to have a purpose.

And I'm still not sure what purpose my own music serves - not even to me, let alone to anyone else. I never listen to it. Not properly. Sure, I hear snatches of it while I'm making it. The only purpose I've found for it - and it's a serious one and a very good one - is to play it during the night, it's good for sending me to sleep, and for keeping me asleep. As you get older you will appreciate that this is not nothing - this is important and valuable.

One of the ten thousand people I follow is a guy called something like Music For Sleep - and you can see (hear) what he means, listening to his music - but actually it is generally too good to be used in that way - it is in fact a young good-sleeper's idea of what music-for-sleep should be - you know, ambient and quiet and gentle and smooth, almost like an ElizabethVeldon-ic hum. And actually I think those would be wasted during sleep.

Ideally, music for sleep should be music that, sure, doesn't jolt you awake with sudden bangs etc, but it should also be lulling and a bit boring - and that is what this album is - it's not the sound of someone reading a good bedtime story, it's the sound of someone reading a bad dull bedtime story - but if the purpose of a bedtime story is to send you to sleep, then the bad dull one that sends you sleep is actually a good bedtime story.
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(recorded this afternoon, photo Ringwood this morning)
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