shore yearner by katharine eastman
Yes my wonderful public, it's been a while. But I have discovered that there is one thing more boring than making music, and that is not making music. Surely to god I can find something in life that is more """fulfilling""" than making music. Alas, no. In the past month-ish of Kathy-silence I've tried drinking a lot, reading a lot, socialising a lot, not socialising at all, total sobriety (e.g. now), long walks, medium walks, no walks at all, days of watching films back-to-back, days of doing difficult crosswords, days of Youtube, I've tried days of listening to my favourite old pop CDs, I've tried days of listening to 0.0000000000001% of the digital music I've downloaded, I've done some paintings ..... none of it comes close.
Well one thing did - being a charity-shop addict I'd built up a "wardrobe" that was so crammed with stuff that I couldn't separate anything from anything else to see what the hell I had in there. So I literally put aside one whole day to empty the whole thing and go through absolutely everything (except socks) one by one. Got rid of about 90% of it all. Bagged the crap up in a million dustbin bags and filled up the local big charity bin-things.
So that is what I have discovered about life this past month - nothing beats chucking stuff away. And then I go and blow it by doing something stupid like subscribing to the Wire. Yes it's true. I can't believe it either. I thought it was a monthly magazine, but it just shows how quickly life is passing by because a new copy seems to arrive about twice a week. Okay, I've only had three so far. Weirdly, it's reading indigestible articles about e.g. the Noise scene in Bangladesh that has spurred me to get off the sofa and sit up here and make this (in less time than it took me to read the Bangladesh article) and stop beating myself up about having no fans or anything.
I have virtually nothing left to wear - except a million pairs of socks. And I have virtually nothing much in life that I really love doing - and I wouldn't even say that music is one of the things (walking beats it) - but I just find the Wire so funny and inadvertently life-affirming and wonderful - it's the only way I have of knowing what the hell is going on in the music-world and I find it very reassuring to know that I don't understand any of it - it doesn't even worry me that the only things I do understand (e.g. this very simple track) are things that I too don't have time to hear/play.
recorded this morning, photo Southampton Water
