TIDE

It’s a nice room, full of sun-bleached photos of children now grown and memorabilia of other lives. It is comfortable and light. Runners and dog walkers throng the path across the road. Families and bicycles roll silently past the window. Glimpses of the dunes, ocean beyond. Big block, lots of gum trees. The boy and I play yard cricket some days.

The big gum across the road had a resident koala for a few days. People stopping and pointing up at its furry bottom, wedged in a fork. A lucky few saw it move. Once, as the boy and I stared upwards, it lifted its head; languid, stoned on eucalyptus. Saw an echidna, too. Curled up asleep at the border between scrub and beach. A young woman in Doc Martins, all in black at summer noon, pointed it out as she called back her dog. I was going to write a story about that because she was pretty and stuck out on the white sand like an emo princess in snow. I didn’t, of course.

Creativity expands into space, that’s the idea. A notion clung to, like flotsam on the sea. Or hidden behind, as a bulwark against lack of discipline. And now there is space. Wandering about in it, I seem to have bumped into myself. A paunchy koala stuck in a tree. How much of the low mood is the legacy of the past year? How much the miserable portents? How much the entropy of middle age? Standing on a low sandbar in the narrow estuary, I watch the creek outflow meet the incoming tide. It is turning, small wavelets just strong enough to hold the freshwater current, creating a momentary standing wave. For a second, all is in stasis but all moves; water, salt, sand, strands of seaweed in a stationary dance. Incoming and outgoing in dynamic embrace. Maybe that’s what middle age is. Exploring the moment when the glass is both half-full and half empty; being scared to drink in case the balance is upset, but knowing that it will evaporate anyway.

“I CAME THROUGH AND I SHALL RETURN”

Sometimes inspiration flags, sometimes life gets in the way of writing. Blogs go into a state of suspended animation. 

Here are a dozen opening lines to be avoided when returning after a hiatus.

I’ve been away.

No-one noticed.

Did you miss me?

Nup.

It’s been ages since I’ve sat down at the keyboard.

And…?

Such a very busy time…

Naturally no-one else in the entire blogging world is busy.

So much has happened, I don’t know where to start.

Come back when you’ve worked it out.

Thank you to all my loyal readers who’ve waited patiently.

You hope.

I promised to post regularly and I haven’t.

Self-abasement is charming.

I feel terrible about not posting these last six weeks/months/decades.

Ditto grovelling.

I’m so grateful for the support of my readers.

Such authenticity. Anyway, they’re not yours.

I’ve missed you all.

But mostly I’ve missed having my ego stroked.

Most sincere apologies for the silence.

Enough breast-beating, already. Who’s actually upset?

It is so good to be back!

Translation: I’m shit-scared no-one will even remember my blog.

*

Above all, only publish when you actually have something worthwhile to offer.

Now, what was I going to write about…

*

Title quote: Doug MacArthur, Adelaide, South Australia, 1942.

IN SEARCH OF SPACE

Space. The initial frontier.

Have you sometimes lost sight of your writing? There were times during the past three months when I simply forgot the existence of Lonely Keyboards. Yet as I sit here now I clearly recall the joy of beginning this second blog-that’s-not-always-about-music, and the thrill of engaging with a new audience. As it turned out the audience was not always new; some friends travelled across from Vinyl Connection, revealing different aspects of themselves from the world of music blogging. Often what was shared was more visible, more vulnerable, more human. I cherished those moments. It’s one thing to high-five when someone’s taste in music confirms your own good judgement, but it is quite another to breath deeply into another’s confusion, or struggles with creativity, or experience of grief and loss. 

Not that there has been an absence of writing: the weekly (sometimes twice-weekly) posts at Vinyl Connection keep me tapping away and spinning records most days. My fondness for connected series—currently the birth of progressive music—means I regularly feel impelled by a sense of completion to push out another missive. Sometimes that internal pressure squeezes the enjoyment a little, but I do it anyway. It has become a habit. And habits take up space.

A new writing gig began recently. Paid work. Writing album reviews for an on-line retailer. Someone said, ‘Bruce, that’s your dream job!’. Maybe it is; still too early to tell. But one thing is certain, adding another track of music writing onto the weekly playlist of activities has led to an increase in output. And a corresponding decrease in space.

Little time for reflection, then. 

Reflection. The the space where creativity swirls and ideas puff into existence.

What brought this into focus was happening across a newspaper column by a writer I knew, years ago. I enjoyed the piece (which was about celebrating the moment) and looked her up on social media. In no time an electronic connection snapped ‘on’, we’d exchanged email addresses and I had located her blog. Wondered whether she would find my blog. What’s that about? Establishing credentials? Sending a selfie? Found myself reflecting that Vinyl Connection is mostly straight music writing these days. The river of memoir-music stories may not have run dry, but it has slowed to a trickle. I kind of shrugged to myself. ‘It is what it is’. Then I remembered Lonely Keyboards, recalled the intoxicating (but scary) high after Goodbye Piper was picked up; the steady, inevitable decline of interest as I steadfastly avoided most return-follows, the settling in with a small but engaged readership who seemed interested in the inner experiences of writing and life… 

We reveal different personas in different settings. Both blogs are ‘me’, and neither.

Sometimes if you put yourself into a certain context, that will close a circuit inside you. Lenny Kaye once said, ‘Pick up a guitar and see who you become’. Maybe writers could say, ‘Start a blog and see who you are’. Who you are today, at least. Conduct an assay of your inner mineral deposits via qwerty. Test the quality of the interior air with a canary keyboard. Could be methane, could be gold.

But first you have to make the space, and be in the moment. Maybe even turn off the music for a bit, and listen.

 

MORE FANDOM THAN EKPHRASIS

I’ve just completed a long, wandering, engrossing journey with a man I’ve never met. Might never meet.

At the end and during, he writes about creativity, suicide, nature, work, self-absorption and music. Every post there was something I wanted to riff off; grab the baton and run (or at least trot) a few metres on my own, see if it took me somewhere else, somewhere different to where I am with my own writing.

The cage of music. That’s what it’s become. It’s a huge enclosure, none of your two-paces then reverse, bars in your face, shit on the floor penitentiary. No, this is a massive wildlife zone where you can ramble and explore and never quite know what is coming next. Like the Hunger Games dome, but with less teen deathporn and more prog rock.

But still, I have been feeling constrained; there are only so many memoir stories directly relating to albums. Without the personal, Vinyl Connection is just another music blog, jostling for space with a thousand others, frowning as it tries to find a unique voice. A voice about others’ work, others’ creativity. A bottom feeder. The music is made, recorded, it sells, gets played, gets shelved. Hundreds of albums a year, thousands of songs. It’s overwhelming. We carve out niches of expertise; passion becomes a castle. It’s impossible to keep up, so put your head down. Explore the contiguous unknown, buttress enjoyment with opinion, plug gaps with arcane knowledge. Collect.

One of my music pals, Michael PH, loves much of the same progressive music I do.

I remember Michael as a diffident young man in his early twenties, burrowing through my crates at a long distant record fair. I kind of recognised him from previous fairs, maybe he’d bought some of the records I stupidly sold when I bought the CDs. The gif I remember relates to an amazing album by Dave Greenslade and Patrick Woodroffe. The package is amazing, not the music. The music sucks.  Taste the disappointment, if you wish.

I was selling a spare copy (the old record collector ‘upgrade’ idea) and because it is kind of rare, punters kept taking it out of the protective plastic cover to look at the pictures. The pictures are amazing, I shouldn’t have judged them. Most would only have heard about the book/record, never seen it. But I did blame them, got grumpier and grumpier with the tyre kickers, the tight-fisted voyeurs. When young Michael repeated the same moves, I said testily, look, this isn’t a library. He looked taken aback. I want to buy it, he said. And did.

Michael didn’t deserve my grumpiness. Not his fault that I couldn’t spot the difference between genuine dedication to the music and idle curiosity. That was maybe twenty years ago. Michael has gone on to be one of the Progarchives website’s most significant contributors. The student has long surpassed the master in knowledge and appreciation of the music. Still, he occasionally messages me, like last Sunday, to ask what I know about an obscure New Age electronic artist from Germany. (Nothing, but that’s OK). And he added the recent Tangerine Dream record to Progarchives just so I could post my review. Not sure I deserve the respect he offers me. He has grown up, I’ve grown older.

Success—no matter what the field of endeavour, performing or reviewing—is a kind of power. And power separates us, when there is too great a differential.

Quite a few years ago I went to see Steve Winwood perform in Melbourne at the tennis centre. Good seats about half-way back, with two mates both slightly older than I. They wanted “Dear Mr Fantasy”, I wanted “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”.

About half-way through some audience members left their seats to move to the front of the stage. As the heat didn’t immediately attack them with stun grenades and night sticks, I deemed it safe to get closer to this long-time idol. Excused myself, apologetically, I have to do this, do you see? Went down and wriggled forwards to within a few metres of the singer, him up above, me below. Close enough to see the sweat, close enough to feel the chasm that separates performer from fan. Always and forever.

Wrote that in response to a William Pearse piece, The ‘kill your idols’ concept. I’ve become a big fan of Bill. The way he works little philosophical quandaries into his tales, his deft use of circularity, his honesty about his own flaws. And his output. You could say his recent journey has charged my batteries. Michael tells me it’s called a bromance. Hm. Could we call it inspiration?