Don't look down.

Due to the nature of the universe there will be no strike today. There will be no more clemency for your foibles. Tomorrow will be something to regret, not to look forward to and a promise will remain just that: promise without realisation. You have passed reason. Unseen forces rule your life and if you have problems accepting *that* then my current suggestion is look to the law. The law of coincidences. It will exist if you believe in it enough. There is hope, hope in patience and patience through time. So I hope you have the time, because it is coming. Not just cataclysmically, not intruding on your meal at six with carbombs and crashes and mudslides and the death of children. No, not yet. It comes creeping in as fast as it dares, chipping away at your complacency and leaving you with a gnawing hint of dread, with disease in the farms and epidemics round the corner. With changes in the weather, with flood and wind and rain. But don't worry. Don't worry at all. You have the means to wash it all from your mind, the drug is in your hand, in the shops, in your breakfast cereal, on the couch with Anne and Nick, in banner adds and for sale at Amazon. It walks you to the shops and blazes from the sides of buses, takes you on holidays to Greece and opens Tapas bars for you to take loved ones too, so you can forget together. If it won't go, if you're getting sleepless and careworn, if you stop subscribing, well that's ok too. Because it's covered. We don't want you to do anything! Just come to our rock concert, watch on TV, drop a few coins in the tin, get a badge, get a bracelet, buy the t-shirt, buy the life. Recycle that life and turn the TV off standby, but keep the holiday and the car because hey, being free is important. Get high but don't look down guys, don't let anyone *bring* you down guys, those fuckers will kill you. Change the world? Sure you can! Support me and I'll change it *for you*! Keep living that life, keep consuming. You're a shark, you're a killer. If you stop moving, you're dead. It might look like I'm sneering at you, that's just a cold. I have it all worked out. Trust me. No, don't ask why. You won't like the answer.

Autumn comes with such surprising speed.

I love days like this.

I went down to the beach in town today and the whole bay was a seething mass of chaos and white foam. Massive waves driven in off the Pentland firth by a strong south easterly were just smashing into the shore with such force I could feel the rumble coming up through the bones in my legs.

The wind was thick with salt spray and disgruntled gulls who, having been ousted from their favourite spot on the wave-line had nothing better to do that mill around above the sea-wall like bored teenagers, squawking, squabbling and occasionally swooping down to pick at rubbish.

Some hardy people were being blown up and down the shore, but most sensible people stayed camped out in their cars. Summer tends to breed a kind of complacency in people about the weather and the forces of nature that Autumn comes to smash away, so a brisk wind and drop of a few degrees is christened "wild" weather by a couple of people in the bank. In just a few short weeks, as the world turns and the days darken, a day like this will be "warm and windy" and by April will be a sign that Summer is back on the way.

It's the wildness in the sky and sea that I love so much, the free power of it all as the world tumbles around itself. It is a time of change, a turbulent passage from one season to the next where everything is shuffled ready for the next hand, there is a charged excitement just in one short walk that reminds you how good it is to be alive, how beautiful every breath you take, every wind-blown leaf in the sky can be.

The air is sweet and fresh and clear, and full of thousands, no, millions of different noises, from high pitched rushing through trees to the gut-deep thrum as it forces itself past buildings, the clang and chime of the rigging on boast tapping against masts or the creak from the frames of old houses. the clank of a gate carelessly left ajar or the fading in and out of everyday noises as they are blown around in the storm.

The world is in chaos, every wave utterly different as it foams and crumbles up the shore but part of a larger pattern of advancing lines that are speeding towards the land. Leaves and rubbish are sucked in to spinning dances performed illicitly in the lees of walls, dragging any small debris in to the madly whirling tune while tress become shivering, rocking giants, moshing to their own exclusive beat, all slightly out of time with each other.

There is so much detail we miss just because we don't listen, or look.

So if it's windy and wild where you are now, I really recommend you wrap up warm and go for a walk.

If you're like me, you wont regret it.

The sound of the sound of music

Music is very important to me.

No, revise that, music is utterly important to me. It is my drug of choice, my addiction. I need it constantly running in the background or the world feels empty and colourless. When I'm not near a source of music then I hear it in my head, hum it under my breath, sing to myself without even realising I'm doing it. Often people comment that I seem very happy when they hear this (normally at work when they couldn't be further from the truth) and I find it odd that the important factor is that I am singing, not what I am singing.

You know what is so amazingly cool about music? It's everywhere. In the measure of someone talking, the rhythm as you walk down the road, the whispering of the trees, the hissing of the surf on shingle, the chirping and buzzing of insects on a still summers day. It lives inside us, coiled round the best parts of us and the worst, helping us hope and dream and laugh and cry and rage and hurt and hate, flows in between the cracks of these emotions and opens them up so we can understand ourselves in a deeper way.

Personally it has been a pool of hope in a dry, bitter land. A place to plunge into and wash clean of all the uncertainty and let out the emotions I have bottled up to protect myself. I've hidden between the bars of Fleetwood Mac when I've felt low, used Peter Gabriel to cry when I've needed to and couldn't, used Beethoven’s wings when I couldn't fly myself, got revved up for a night out on Smashing Pumpkins and sang Agadoo to get people to go away. I've found a release for pain in Saint Saens, a deep unfillable sorrow, laced with joy of all things in Faure. I've cherished the madness of the Bonzo dogs and stolen lines from Eels to make people laugh.

It's what draws me to poetry too (my musical track record is abysmal), that constant exploration of ourselves, the wit and interplay of emotion and intellect. The way you can capture complex, almost inexpressible notions in a short phrase (or melody).

And it keeps giving, a relationship that doesn't get sour or old or bitter, a lover that doesn't get bored when your jokes get old and bits start to sag. It is reliable, steady and deep, and there is always more than you heard, more to discover. One thing more than all the rest- it can be nothing but honest, it is what it is.

I try to keep up with all the incidental stuff, the names of the people, the songs the albums, but it's a bit superfluous in my opinion- the music is what matters. The rest is fan-boy geekdom. It's like all those people who like football but only seem to talk about the players and the managers and the stats- surely if you like the stupid game it would be the actual act of playing you'd really be interested in?

I'm overly impressed by musicians too, probably due to my total lack of musical talent. I imagine what it must be like to be able to play some pieces of music and I would love to learn but my commitment always gets stymied by a fear of failure and I am quickly demoralised when I realise I'm not the next Hendrix or Coltrane. I married a very talented musician and her brother is also incredibly, annoyingly, good, and I secretly love when they practice within earshot but they don't know I'm listening. It seems less forced and more flowing, even with mistakes, maybe because of them there are moments that would shatter your heart with joy.


It's such a glorious, stupendous gift. Such an amazing thing. And I'm totally addicted.