Elevator Music

Elevator Music - music that elevates my heart and soul, and boy have I been in need of a lift since the shock to my system of leaving the EU..

I seem to be making the transition to digital music this year. With my wish-list increasing dramatically over the last couple of years the price of CDs against the download price has been brought into focus. Space is also a consideration.

I’ve been methodically recording my CD collection onto a HDD to use in the car and have filled in a few holes in the collection digitally where a complete album would not have been of interest. Any recommendations tend to get a good Spotify listen before I add them to the wish-list. There will undoubtedly be groups I will always buy everything released on whatever format they are available but with a resurgence in vinyl I have lately been buying the album on that format and getting a download code to add to my HDD. Must get a second HDD to back up the first though!

There may be a fault in my logic here. I would love to continue to support the artists I adore and am happy therefore to always buy my music but I do wonder how much they get of the price I pay, does it differ by format? Buying directly from the band / artist is similarly preferable for me because of that. 

Having catalogued my collection, which I drastically reduced about three years ago, mainly through selling on CD singles, I will have another cull once I have everything on the HDD and backed up. Curiously, I am in two minds about the limited edition CDs I have, the odd shaped cover and the like; are they likely to get me a better price or should I keep them for their uniqueness? Again, with certain artists the question answers itself but if I can fund the wish-list in its entirety that would be very exciting.

Anyway, with the first half of 2016 slipping away here’s my list of the most exhilarating finds this year (in some sort of order):

Breathless - Three Times and Waving

Blonde Redhead - Misery Is A Butterfly 

Poliça - United Crushers

And Also The Trees - Born Into The Waves 

Son Lux - Bones

London Grammar - If You Wait

Desaparecidos - Payola 

Son Lux - Lanterns

Kirk Brandon - Anthology

Killing Joke - What’s This For..? 

Son Lux - Strange Forms E.P. 

Daughter - Not To Disappear

Cuba - Leap of Faith

Kera - 1 by 1

Paul Haig - The Warp of Pure Fun

Metronomy - Love Letters

Lovisa Samuelsson - Main Magma Chamber

Me and Haruki

So. Am supposed to have proffered some more writing this week for the writing group, Just One Sentence. But have not written anything for months, God, when was the last time I wrote anything? One word would be good, never mind a whole sentence.

It’s this planning thing, structuring it all out, inciting incidents, premises, scene goals; they’re all doing my head in. I print out all the help-sheets in the world and I can follow the logic of the theory and maybe I even believe it all. And then Thursdays come around and I teach it on to new creative writing learners. 

My old career was packed full of processes, practices and pragmatism. And yet, yet, they don’t help me one iota. They completely stymie my ‘creative flow’, as if that concept is something I might have been blessed with. Those aide memoirs for me need to come after the first draft, once I’ve written the story through. I can then analyse every chapter, scene, word until those Appenzeller bovines trip down the hillside, I can hear their clunking bells as I tap tap away.

I need to just sit down somewhere else and hide away and write. Maybe some days at mum’s would be good, although choosing the piccies to support this piece has enflamed my desire to go and write in the north east of Switzerland once more. I know what I have written so far so I need to get on and fill any obvious gaps and start to write more of it out. It’s going to be a long novel this one as I have four characters’ stories to write through.

Each Thursday I tend to have one slide of writing quotes. Last week I read Murakami’s Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage so I chose some quotes from the man. There it sat, my style of writing, When I start to write I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

Time to get cracking.

Shelves

The house is looking quite spruced after our extensive decorating of the last nine months. As I sit writing Mrs Hora and Jose are painting the kitchen, this will mean the whole of our downstairs has been done up, hurrah! That the stairs, landing and stairs to up, up have also been done is a bonus.

Yesterday I managed to put up a shelf in the hall, above the new hanging area, and today have added one to the stairwell up, up. There are hardbacks in the hall now, Susan Hill, Norman Colins, Jojo Moyes and Samantha Harvey predominantly. Today's shelf is stacked full of poetry, Keats, Coleridge, Owen, Sassoon, Yeats, Thomas, Mew, Cope, Redmond and plenty more. Above the poetry I've hung my signed aatt poster from their first acoustic gig on a Parisian rooftop, happy days!

2016 has begun pretty well for me. I was finally sent on Hounslow's 'Weigh 2 Lose' programme on the 4th Jan. Each week me and approximately fifteen others (only one other male) are given an hour's information on diet followed by an exercise class. Despite my coordination problems the latter is ok. I've managed to lose over one and a half stones so far although this week I seem to be stuck. The course is half way through and I feel confident that over a twelve week period I will get into much better eating habits. It's all about portion size, it's ridiculous how little we actually need to function. I still struggle in the evenings, dinner has been hard to reduce and not help myself to more delicious fare that I've spent some time putting together. Reducing alcohol has undoubtedly helped although I do miss the sensation of losing my mind.

The other side of the equation is exercise and being so incredibly huge has rather knocked my confidence about going swimming. Having lost most of my inhibitions with the gaining of age that wandering around in public area with my gut hanging out has remained a blocker. Another two stones lost and I'll be back in the water methinks. Another couple after that and badminton might become possible again. By that time Basti may be too good for me, tell will tell. In the meantime my fitbit keeps tabs on my steps and the target of 10,000 steps a day is starting to be exceeded with more regularity, I am consciously choosing to walk places I would never have done until recently.

50

Fifty years old.

For the first time since I was about twelve I celebrated a birthday with parties of a sort. On the Saturday prior I invited seven local friends and their families to join me and remarkably all said yes... there was me with a whole line up of substitutes and none got the call. Now, clearly, if I didn't invite you and you're fairly local then you were eighth on my list, promise.

Anyway, since my sister moved back to the UK we've travelled over numerous times to see her in South Wimbledon / Raynes Park, and driven past Fish! Kingston every time. I love fish, and having looked at the website it was a no-brainer.. top quality fish and chips plus other fishy dishes, mmm. As it was the food was exceptional, even better than I had dreamed! And the company, wow, wonderful, a lovely collection of people that I would spend the rest of my days with, thank you for coming out!

The following Saturday it was back to Suffolk to celebrate with my mum, Cheryl's mum and sister plus two. Tilly's, Halesworth is a 1920's themed tea shop. They recently started serving Friday and Saturday dinners and these were just as incredible. Brilliant grub and it looks like we'll be returning for mum's 80th in the new year: result!

As part of the celebrations I did some drawing:

I also tried to find 50 things I love but went slightly over..

Board Games	Books	Film	Food & Drink	Miscellaneous	Music	Music (cont.)	Places
Agricola	The Archbishop’s Children	Woody Allen	Beef Brisket	Apple Mac	4AD	Stephen Jones	Alte Lohnhalle
Andean Abyss	S T Coleridge	Luc Besson	Bread	Arsenal	‘A User’s Guide’	Jay Jay Johanson	Berlin
Boggle	Norman Collins	The Big Blue	Cauliflower	Badminton	Barry Adamson	‘Love My Way’	Bracken
Bruges	Dictionaries	The Billion Dollar Hotel	Champagne	Kevin Beattie	And Also The Trees	Billy MacKenzie	Bushey Park
Carcassonne	The End of the Affair	Blue Velvet	Cheddar	Blessings Roses	‘As Requested’ / ‘Mean Streak’	‘Making Plans For Nigel’	Dresden
The Castles of Mad King Ludwig	Richard Ford	Caos Calmo	Cheesecake	Blossom	Belasco	’Malicious Love’	Firenze
Codenames	Frederick Forsyth	Frank Capra	Chick Peas	Cricket	The Beloved	‘Mesopotamia’	Forests
Stefan Feld	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	Double Indemnity	Chocolate	Driving	Bjork	Mew	Fuchsias
Glass Road	Jean Genet	L’Enfer	Crumble	Gerbils	Broken Family Band	Morrissey	Hills
Le Havre	Graham Greene	Foreign Land	Epoises	Hedgehogs	The Cure	Conor Oberst	Lakes
Hawaii	Samantha Harvey	The Hairdresser’s Husband	Fish & Chips	David Hockney	‘Damaged Goods’	The Passage	Le Havre
Hive	Susan Hill	Alfred Hitchcock	Gruyere	Ikea	’Dear Heart’	John Peel	London
Kiesling & Kramer	Babs Horton	Jim Jarmusch	Jacket Potatoes	Ipswich Town	‘East St O’Neill’	Placebo	Lugano
Lewis & Clark	In The Springtime of the Year	Kitchen Stories	Kleftiko	Just One Sentence	David Eugene Edwards	‘Postcard’	Normandie
Memoir 44	John Keats	Fritz Lang	Lemon Sole	Charles Rennie MacIntosh	Dead Kennedys	Silversun Pickups	Otranto
Ora & Labora	The Last Letter From Your Lover	Leaving	Malbec	Margaret Merrell Roses	Annie Eve	‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’	Portman Road
Railways of the World	Henning Mankel	My Life As A Dog	Panna Cotta	Claude Monet	Gene	‘The Song From Under The Floorboards’	Soldeu
Rialto	Moscow 2042	Paris	Pasta	August Rodin	Vic Godard	Spearmint	Stockholm
Uwe Rosenberg	Jojo Moyes	Manuel Poirier	Rice	Scottish Terriers	‘Headache (for Michelle)’	David Sylvian	Streams
Splendor	Haruki Murakami	Jean Renoir	Rosemary	Alfred Sisley	'Heaven Sent’	Tracey Thorn	Suffolk
Ticket to Ride	Ivan Turgenev	Russian Ark	Rib Eye Steak	Snow	Kristen Hersh	Tricky	Tarn Hows
Tinner’s Trail	Mario Vargas Llosa	Trop Belle Pour Toi	Salice Salentino	Swatch	‘I Don’t Even Know If I Should Call You Baby’	The Unthanks	Trees
Tzolk’in, the Mayan Calendar	William Shakespeare	Western	Scallops	Swimming	Idlewild	The Villagers	Worlingham
Twilight Struggle	The Wilderness	Young and Innocent	Whisky	Frans Thijssen	The Incredible Shrinking Dickies	M Ward	Zurich