There Are No Mistakes, Only Happy Accidents
A quiet weekend in. I didn't do a thing I was supposed to do, didn't record or write songs, didn't write my Plan B article about TSM's Marfa Film, didn't even go to Emma's birthday party.
I woke up on Saturday, looked at the wreckage of my room, and just thought "I can't carry on living like this." I've been in this house eight months now and it still looks like I've only just moved in. So I walked down to Unikob (ran into Katie there, who was also feeing creative), bought some new paintbrushes, and set about finishing my mural.
I enjoy painting. It's got the same obsessive zen qualities that sequencing and recording have, except it doesn't come with control-Z. You have to mean every mark, because there's no way of fixing it when it goes wrong. It's terrifying, but also freeing. You make a mistake, and it turns to one of Bob Ross's happy accidents, changing the original image to something that fits around the error. It's a completely different way of working from working with computers.
Painted the details on the house, psychedelic cornrows on purple mountains, giant fluffy clouds, and even a friendly UFO leaving contrails across the sky. And as I finished, I recognised the scene. It's an abstracted version of the view across the pond to the house where I grew up, though the willow fronds have become peacock feathers, and the house has been dragged ass-backwards through the fourth dimension so that my bedroom faces the pond, and been Anglicised, it's still recognisably the house I spent my teens in. Which, I suppose, is only natural, as it's the place I lived the longest (ten years), and considering how long I spend on the far banks of that pond, with my imaginary friends and my imaginary pseudo-historical epics.
I moved the bed back, rearranged the furniture, put up my Indian elephant screen and some pictures, and now it looks like My Bedroom. All that's missing is to cover the ceiling with sheets to make it more tent-like, and hang all my jewellery from a fishnet over my bed.
And then I woke up on Sunday morning with my back in spasms. Stress, dragging myself and gear around London all week, and finally moving furniture - I suppose it was only to be expected. Took ibuprofen and merlot in equal measure, and lay in bed reading John Barrow (how elegantly he debunked the entire Roger Penrose book I'm been struggling through for the past month in a single footnote) and catching my diary up to date.
Did a bit of CBT on the dilemma I've found myself in WRT the band. Worked my way through everything, and came up with four different options - only two of which are really possible. And the more I think on it, the more I realise that the die has been cast, the decision has already been made. I just want to take a week or so to let it sink in before I break the news to the others.
I woke up on Saturday, looked at the wreckage of my room, and just thought "I can't carry on living like this." I've been in this house eight months now and it still looks like I've only just moved in. So I walked down to Unikob (ran into Katie there, who was also feeing creative), bought some new paintbrushes, and set about finishing my mural.
I enjoy painting. It's got the same obsessive zen qualities that sequencing and recording have, except it doesn't come with control-Z. You have to mean every mark, because there's no way of fixing it when it goes wrong. It's terrifying, but also freeing. You make a mistake, and it turns to one of Bob Ross's happy accidents, changing the original image to something that fits around the error. It's a completely different way of working from working with computers.
Painted the details on the house, psychedelic cornrows on purple mountains, giant fluffy clouds, and even a friendly UFO leaving contrails across the sky. And as I finished, I recognised the scene. It's an abstracted version of the view across the pond to the house where I grew up, though the willow fronds have become peacock feathers, and the house has been dragged ass-backwards through the fourth dimension so that my bedroom faces the pond, and been Anglicised, it's still recognisably the house I spent my teens in. Which, I suppose, is only natural, as it's the place I lived the longest (ten years), and considering how long I spend on the far banks of that pond, with my imaginary friends and my imaginary pseudo-historical epics.
I moved the bed back, rearranged the furniture, put up my Indian elephant screen and some pictures, and now it looks like My Bedroom. All that's missing is to cover the ceiling with sheets to make it more tent-like, and hang all my jewellery from a fishnet over my bed.
And then I woke up on Sunday morning with my back in spasms. Stress, dragging myself and gear around London all week, and finally moving furniture - I suppose it was only to be expected. Took ibuprofen and merlot in equal measure, and lay in bed reading John Barrow (how elegantly he debunked the entire Roger Penrose book I'm been struggling through for the past month in a single footnote) and catching my diary up to date.
Did a bit of CBT on the dilemma I've found myself in WRT the band. Worked my way through everything, and came up with four different options - only two of which are really possible. And the more I think on it, the more I realise that the die has been cast, the decision has already been made. I just want to take a week or so to let it sink in before I break the news to the others.
posted by Masonic Boom | 11:34 am
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