Starbucks, Coney St, York

Coffee House: Starbucks (Again), Coney Street, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Rise & Shine Muffin

Rise & Shine. The name of today's muffin.

Well we mostly, eventually, do the 'rise' bit. As in get out of bed. But 'shine'? Now that's a significantly trickier trick to accomplish. For most people I'd say we do well when we are able to give the world our 'fair to middlin' performance. Putting aside the physical things that limit what you can do on any given day, the big variable is how well you're feeling spirit-wise.

So how are you feeling? Of course that varies from one moment to the next but usually it is possible to assess it over time periods of a morning/day/week etc. You might feel a bit low in the morning and perk up at night or vice versa. There's usually a variable you can associate with the changes, accurately or not, such as lack of food, exercise, the cold weather, too much gin etc. Having a 'reason' for feeling up or down helps to an extent as long as the mood swing isn't too large.

But what about when there doesn't appear to be any cause? When today is pretty much the same as yesterday but something has changed inside and you feel very low or very up. I'm not talking about a minority of people here by the way. I think I'm talking about all of us.

The trouble with labels is that they (by definition) put people/things into categories and associate common traits. That may be useful if it helps the people themselves and others to identify the beast and learn how to cope, hopefully reduce, the impact of it. But naming something creates a boundary to the categorised things which can mean that the person becomes the label and only the label. Not too surprisingly, many people will therefore avoid being assessed for, even associated with, anything which could be labeled as a mental illness. Self medication is the norm.
 
If you go back far enough, maybe not that far, people would be labeled as mad. Then it became a bit more scientific and discerning and labels such as schizophrenic, manic-depressive came in. In order to tone down the fearsome picture the terms painted in most people's heads, bipolar became more widely used for one of conditions identified. A bit like nut allergies and asthma, more and more people are diagnosed and/or declare themselves bipolar. The impact on their lives and the ones close to them varies day to day and year to year.

The trouble with labeling things that don't show on the outside however is that it can only ever be a fairly imprecise science. I remember talking to a work colleague a number of years back about her ongoing battle with depression and ended up talking about my mood swings, or in that case, the lack of them. As she said "you know, you might just be very sad". I was at that time but that didn't account for being down when I wasn't sad.

I believe we all are effected by mental illness to a greater or lesser extent, throughout our lives, some of us have their lives blighted by it. There may or may not be a cause of it and in either case there may be something you can do to make it go away for a while but ultimately it's part of life. Like death. It's part of the condition of 'being' but we try to avoid thinking about it too much for fear it happens to us.

An answer, maybe the only one really, is to live a life which interacts closely with other souls. And to try and appreciate the benefit that brings.

"I'm lucky to be here with someone I like who maketh my spirits to shine" Warren Zevon

City Screen (The Sequel), Coney St., York

Coffee House: City Screen, Coney Street, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Toffee Cake

Friends. Bit of an odd concept when you think about it. We divide people up that we meet/work with/live with etc into various categories, one being 'a friend'. I don't think we really rationalise the  process itself. We don't go through a pros and cons analysis or keep a tally of the points as this person makes the breakthrough from acquaintance to friend. It's more akin to when you fall in love. All of a sudden this person is a friend. And sometimes the reverse happens and they aren't anymore.

Some friends (usually quite a small number) are people that you've know since childhood/adolescence and there's a strong bond built up over the years through shared experiences, good and bad, along with a shared memory. Whenever I meet up with my 'bezzie mate' Steve (Best Mate being a subset of the classification Friend) we're instantly back to being 17. The same stupid sense of humour kicks in and the time together is spent giggling at things from the past and present.

But the majority are relatively light on shared experiences. You just feel comfortable with the person and decide to open up the door and let them in. Did you see the thing going round on Facebook which described introverts and extroverts? Extroverts need other people to feed off and introverts feed off themselves (I've simplified this definition somewhat) The visual aid showed someone in a hamster ball. So when we become friends either as an introvert and/or with an introvert the hamster ball is opened for a while (Don't know the mechanism with extroverts. Maybe they don't need friends as they can engage with anyone at anytime anyway).

In my case this is a very rare occurrence. I don't actively avoid friendship but don't go out of my way to find it. It doesn't help that my 'resting' face appears pretty miserable. I'm not usually but it can give that impression and presumably puts off people getting too close for fear I'll growl or bite. People with happy faces on the other hand are very attractive (not necessarily in a sexual way).

A bit of a tangent here. We are very visual beings and make all sorts of judgments of each other based on what we see, then on what we hear. No doubt there's a deep routed inbuilt reason for this dating back to when we needed to ensure the survival of our family group/tribe. Now it tends to limit who we interact with. We instinctively mix with other people who look the same - their clothes, hairstyles, even the colour of their skin. We tend to avoid 'ugly' people without knowing what type of people they are in the inside. The process of avoiding them builds up prejudice both ways and perpetuates the clinging to type.


The funny thing with me has been that people who don't know me and just see the outside think that I'm some hippy, free thinking, tree hugging, druggy alcoholic. I may have been some/all of these at various points in my life but not now. It's helpful though, giving that impression, as it keeps away the boring bastards. 'I'd rather stay here with all the madmen than perish with the sad men roaming free'

Starbucks, Coney Street, York

Coffee House: Starbucks, Coney Street, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Carrot Cake

So I go to Starbucks. Doesn't make me a bad person. Perhaps indicates that I'm not fussy when it comes to coffee but. not to be sidetracked (feels like I'm about to start a rendition of Alice's Restaurant) - Luck & Fate.

Lots of songs I could quote for starters "I lived by luck & fate" (Back In Your Arms, Bruce Springsteen) "I can't help it if I'm lucky" (Idiot Wind, Bob Dylan) "Simple Twist of Fate" (Bob again) and one I've rediscovered "That Lucky Old Sun" (hit for Frankie Lane in 1949)

Up in the mornin'
Out on the job
Work like the devil for my pay
But that lucky old sun got nothin' to do
But roll around heaven all day.

That's pretty much how Ann sees her and me. I'm the one lolling around all day while she goes out and earns a crust. I haven't always, lolled around the house all day. I did the whole 9-5 office thing and lots of other jobs where I did manage to break out into a sweat, freeze my fingers off, knacker my back, work like the devil for my pay - drove trucks, picked fruit, was a construction worker, worked in a mine, cleaned operating theatres....

And there were times when I had money and times when I didn't (bizarrely I was probably the most broke/in debt when I earned the most) But I've always favoured the Mr Micawber/W.C. Fields school of economics i.e. 'Something will turn up'

It always has and I truly believe it always will. My wedding speech a few years back was basically describing how blessed I had been/am, how all along the line things have worked out for me. Whenever things looked bleak, things would change and, as if by magic, everything is good again.

I don't believe in a god of any flavour and broadly think that we're all here on our own and it's down to us all to make the best of it and try not to mess it up too much for everyone else. So no hand guiding us and judging us. Just ourselves. I do think though that some people are 'born lucky' Not just that they are born in the right place, though I was, like the vast majority of people in the West born after the second world war. More that life for some reason (or maybe for no reason) plays out well whichever seemingly wrong path I take, bad decision I choose, poor company/hole I fall into etc. It does all work out. For me and for a proportion of other people who are born with the lucky gene

There are a good number of people who don't have this benefit. Again, not a geographical thing necessarily, although if you have been born into squalor in a poor part of the world life is going to be very hard indeed. There are people who just end up having a crap life, bad stuff keeps happening to them whatever they try to do to avoid it. As I have said in another one of these blogs, I do genuinely admire their tenacity as they keep pressing on. But for me it's broadly been all good.

You'd think therefore that I would be a very happy bunny indeed but mostly that's not the case. I'm not unhappy (and have periods of great happiness) but I've always been a half-empty glass kind of guy. I wrote a suicide note a number of years back (as you do) where I said some of the above and talked about not just wanting the glass to be full but overflowing. Thought about having the Peggy Lee song 'Is That All There Is' on my tombstone, except I would rather be cremated. I live my life expecting a lot, and often do get a lot, but it can lead of course to frequent disappointment. The great thing about being totally misguided about possibilities and options however is that sometimes they do work out and you're in a new/brighter place.

I heard on the news recently that there's talk of giving careers advice to kids from 11. How sad is that. If it was up to me no one would be able to choose a career, get married, have kids until they were at least 30. After they'd had a really good go at experiencing the world, doing lots of bad and good things, met more people/drank more alcohol/taken more drugs than they ever thought possible. So they would hopefully have some sort of context for living a long life that is going to be the default now for the majority of us.

I stopped the work thing 4/5 years ago, formed a band just before my 60th. With a bit of luck I'll have 15-20 good years in front of me to make some more bad and good decisions, to experience whatever slings and arrows are thrown at me up to the point when it's time to call it a day. Then it'll be, I imagine, a great relief. I reckon all 'old people' are just the same inside as they always where. They seem different to younger people because they were born and brought up in a different age but they are still the same people as when they were 30. I know I am. But there'll come a time when it all seems rather too hard to keep on keeping on. But until then, tramps like us, baby we were born to run :-)

Dear Lord above, can't you know I'm pining, tears all in my eyes
Send down that cloud with a silver lining, lift me to paradise
Show me that river, take me across
Wash all my troubles away
Like that lucky old sun, give me nothing to do
But roll around heaven all day

Coffee Culture, Goodramgate, York

Coffee House: Coffee Culture, Goodramgate, York

Drink: Filter Coffee

Cake: You name it (High Tea)

So Rock & Roll - a game of two halves I reckon.

I was born the year Hank Williams died, Lucinda Williams was born and Elvis recorded his first music and grew up hearing the sounds of rock and roll and folk music, soul and blues, tamla, RnB, reggae plus a lot of crap which always permeates, sometimes dominates, the airwaves. For as long as I can remember I'd be either listening to and/or singing a song. One of my earliest memories is my brother asking my mother to tell me to stop singing all of the time. I still sing wherever I am, pretty constantly. If I'm not it usually means I'm out of sorts

Music when I was a teenager was absolutely key to my life, I couldn't image at the time a world without it and it was the main subject of conversation as you'd meet people and always there at parties and houses as you'd carefully choose the songs to play to friends, especially ones you'd be hoping to get into bed at some point

It all pretty much went off the boil as I entered my early twenties and I listened less, coinciding with the prog rock nonsense and total infatuation of the masses with the Beatles later work. Then came 1976 and Punk. I felt too old (23 :-) ) but was totally knocked out with it all. I remember being completely bored and watching TOTP and the Jam came on and played In The City. Blew me away. I was on the phone straight away to a friend saying 'did you see Top of The Pops? Wasn't that band the Jam fantastic!!!' Then I found the Clash and the Pistols, the Buzzcocks, Elvis Costello ,,,,,, the list went on and on. It was unbelievable that these people were making such fantastic music and unbelievably exciting to go and see them at places like Eric's in Mathew St (Liverpool)

In 1968 my brother spent the whole of the summer playing Dylan's John Westley Harding album. I bloody hated it, it was so different from the rest of the music that was around. By the end of the summer I was totally (and still am) in love with it. And Bob. Have been totally besotted with the guy ever since, amassing more of his albums, outtakes, live concerts etc than I can ever really listen to (though I do try) Tim (the brother in question. Not the same one as mentioned earlier by the way) had seen Dylan at the Liverpool Odeon in 1966. He was really into it even though there was the booing as everywhere else on the tour. Dylan started off saying "It's great to be here on Mercy's Side" :-)

I was too young/chicken to go to the Isle of Wight festival in 1969 but made up for it when he came over next in '78 and went to see him twice at Earl's Court and at Blackbushe. Utterly brilliant. That tour started the whole of Dylan fandom. the now thousands of fans who follow the never ending tour, collecting all of the live recording, collecting all of the books and mags about him.

So fast forward thirty years.

We're living in a very different world. Though after saying that maybe it isn't that different. Kids are still kids, parents are parents, there's still lots of music around, still lots of crap music permeating the airwaves/tv channels/web. What is different is that the people who were making music then and those listening to it have all grown up. With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Dylan. Neil Young), the bands from twenty years ago and beyond are essentially now their own tribute band doing pretty good live versions of their albums. And charging a lot of money for the privilege of going to see the fact that they are still alive.

I'd spent the intervening years doing the job/marriage/kids thing. Bit overrated I reckon but helps to pass the time (and pay the bills) when life is on hold. Then a few years back I packed in work, met my gal Ann, moved to a city bursting with music, formed a band and went out and started giving this music malarky a go for myself. I haven't listened to any new music in years but now get to hear it from the people themselves playing in the bars and clubs within walking distance. It's utterly magical to go and see the likes of the Lungs, Boss Caine, Chris Helme, David Ward McLean (I could list a dozen more) pick up a guitar and sing a song they've just written and be blown away by its beauty.

I would have been 8 or 9 years old when Bob Dylan first set foot in New York's Greenwich Village. I've always regretted not being older so I could have witnessed it all then. I'm now very glad that I'm still around to witness the magic here that happens most nights in our fair city.  

Me & Mrs Fisher (Revisited), Lord Mayor's Walk, York

Coffee House: Me & Mrs Fisher, Lord Mayor's Walk, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Carrot Cake

We (as in Mulholland) played the Gaslight in Leeds last night (top venue/night) and amongst the songs we did in the set was a self penned one called Summertime. Rather like the bit in Men In Black (2?) where the girl being unhappy causes it to rain, the song tells of how feelings and the weather are all entangled. A sunny days makes you feel good. A grey/damp day makes you feel down. Snow/Rain seems to affect people differently. Generally not a fan of either but do remember walking back from a gig with Ann in the early hours, being literally soaked to the skin and feeling brilliant.

So the weather affects your spirits, and your spirits affect your perception of the weather if not the phenomenon itself. But what is this weather thing? I know (well I sort of understand) that it's all about different air pressures and temperatures and stuff. And this leads to clouds and rain and whatever. But what is it with the seasons? Why is it warmer in the summer (broadly) and colder in the winter? I had thought it was something to do with how far the earth was from the sun as it moved on its elliptical path. But that would make it colder across the planet. Why is it warmer in Australia when in half a turn of the globe we're in exactly the same place in relation to the sun?

There's probably a 'rational' answer but ignoring it for the minute, I reckon a lot of what we take for granted is based on belief rather than fact. Take the universe for example. Science tell us that it's made up of literally billions of stars i.e. millions of millions (possibly, of millions) of stars/suns and we're on this planet circling around just one.

Well assume for a minute that this is accurate then what is beyond the last star. The answer seems to be in this model of science - nothing. Well I for one can't get my head around either the scale of the universe as described or the idea of it existing surrounded by nothing, or even worse that it's infinite. You might as well believe in a god, which many people dismiss as irrational. Seems that to believe in nothingness and/or the infinite is all about belief not 'science'

After saying that, you have to just accept a lot of stuff and move on or you'd go mad. I studied maths at college for a while and struggled when we moved onto infinite series. I would argue with the lecturer  that it didn't make any sense but the branch of logic only worked if you did

I think I'm going to track down the flat earth society and maybe join them. If they exist then they would hopefully live in a world that makes more sense - go too far and you fall off the edge. Seems like a good maxim for living. But like Groucho Marx "I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member" Not big on joining, or clubs, or gangs. Surprising I'm in a band really

Summertime
Not a single cloud in the sky
Though it's winter I don't question why
It's like summertime, you make it summertime
With you and me, it'll always be summertime

City Screen, Coney St., York

Coffee House: City Screen, Coney Street, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: None 

 

Order & Chaos. 

I filled in one of those Facebook apps recently, this one gave you your characteristics based on your forename. Scientific, I know. So the letter N came up as Neat. One of the few that were accurate. I am a neat person (in the tidy sense. In the day 'neat' also meant 'cool' which is very transient concept), increasingly so as the years go by as the, mainly male(?), OCD trait becomes more prominent in me.

I think I've always been pretty tidy, something that has surprised friends/acquaintances over the years as they have associated my periodic unconventional attire/lifestyle with an unkempt/untidy personal environment. If I have ever looked 'scruffy' it was by design rather than accident. I do like things to be in order in my life. For periods of time in any case. I do like change as well so am quite happy to throw everything up in the air for a while before I start to put things back in their correct place

So, I reckon I'm a tidy/neat person. I had assumed for many years that us males were the untidy ones. I'm the youngest of 6 sons which created a lot of untidiness with my mother, the sole female, tasked with trying to maintain a resemblance of order. No criticism of current and past female friends/lovers but I have been, initially, shocked and then disappointed and now resigned to the fact (I think it is a fact but happy to be proved wrong) that women as generally untidy soles. Exhibit 1 being the contents of any handbag. Anyway, as mentioned earlier, the old git syndrome of excessive tidiness helps to balance it all in a feng shui sort of way

Another misapprehension  of acquaintances is that I am a socialist or at least believe in democracy. Certainly seems to be the dominant philosophy amongst musicians. 

The thing I have with democracy is that I don't think I believe in the principal of it and even if I did, we don't have it here or in any other western country. To clarify the last point first - democracy surely means that the views/votes of the majority dictate the actions/policy of the whole. When what we have under our system is that everyone gets to vote for a person who is supposed to represent all of their views and then if that person is elected then they, along with a lot of other people, make up the rules. Hard to see how that is democratic. Obviously it's better than having a group of people making up the rules in isolation i.e. I don't favour a dictatorial system either.

My problem with democracy as a principal is that I don't want the majority of people telling me what I can or can't do. Most of the time there isn't a conflict - I'm not inclined to steal, maim or murder anyone and don't want that happening to others so we're all agreed on that. But what about when the majority come up with a rule that the minority dislike. Maybe to the extent where the minority are actually been negatively affected by the rule. In my lifetime people's sexuality for instance has been judged as good or bad where at one time it was a crime to express yourself as gay to where now two people can get married whoever they are. 

All along there should have been a principal of live and let live rather than a majority view on what everyone should do. 

So Order & Chaos. One of the main reasons for having government of any shape/persuasion must be to ensure that large groups of people can live together reasonably well and cooperate to bring the benefits of size. Be difficult for a small band of people to create road networks, provide access to intellectual resources etc. The problem is size does matter in terms of living together, as the larger the grouping the more potential for conflict/chaos without common/shared rules. I can't see how you can have a large group of people living in a city/country without something resembling a government tasked with creating order. Whether it's voted in or not it'll be a tiny group of people's views determining what the larger group does or doesn't do

All good if everything is working out broadly fine for yourself of course but what about when you're in the minority and things are looking bleak. It would be nice to think that Angela Davis' rally cry to support the 'downtrodden' “If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.” rings true with the majority but I doubt if most people give the world outside their window a lot of thought when it comes down to it.

Not sure what the answer is after saying all of the above. Even for me. It would probably mean living in a cabin in Utah but I love living in cities/21st Century too much. So I'll just keep on keeping on and try to keep out of trouble and avoid being caught out too much by the ongoing restrictions to our daily lives. "To live outside the law you know you must be honest" That's the answer. Always ask the question 'What would Bob do?' :-)

 

  

Fossgate Social, Fossgate. York

Coffee House: Fossgate Social, Fossgate, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Tosca Cake

Time, Life & Stuff - The Theory of Everything. 

'Tis the time of year for the annual handing out of trophies at the BAFTAs, Grammys, Academy Awards etc. (Nice to see that Bob had a long chat at the Musicares Award night btw) A way of marking the passing of time and, especially for the recipients, a moment of heightened awareness of the 'now'

My pet saying (which I mainly quote to myself) is that 'even rocket science isn't rocket science'. Nothing is truly difficult when it comes to solving things, doing stuff which are intellectual rather than physical. Lots of physical stuff is hard of course. Which is why lots of us avoid it by jumping the hoops in school/university to get a job that means we minimise doing manual/hard work

Now answering questions related to the beginning of the universe and the relationship between time and space etc are truly hard to answer I would say and a few of the truly smart people such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkins had or are having a good go at trying to answer the problem. For the rest of us it's just a question of navigating through this world and doing stuff along the way

You do hear people on occasions say things like 'time is precious', 'time flies', 'life's too short' etc but I reckon that our lives, ultimately the only measure of time, are way too long. If you go back far enough, people lived very short lives in terms of years. 30/40/50 maybe. As we've grown in numbers and organisation we've extended most people's lives up to 70/80/90 and the likelihood well beyond that later in the century. 

The danger is that life just stops being worthwhile after we've lived essentially a lifetime (of 50 or so years). We mainly keep moving on through it though because of our inbuilt need to survive, at any costs. I imagine it's almost impossible to commit suicide by drowning in a bucket of water for instance as some automatic response would fight back to save you. You see lots of people living truly miserable lives and it's amazing that they keep carrying on. It's heroic. Especially if they're helping others on the way. 

The other pet saying I have (not mine this time) is 'It's not the despair, it's the hope'. We just can't help being optimistic at some point. And that optimism makes us want to give it a go for a bit longer, because you never know. I'm still buying a Lotto ticket most weeks, because you never know. 

So, we have potentially a very long life to live and it'll be difficult to bail out early. So what's the trick to make it reasonably fulfilling and not feel utterly bored with it all for the last 20/30 years? 

Well, the first thing is to be reasonably healthy of course and not too destituted. Then I think it's about rebooting your time line regularly. As a longtime comic book fan (I fell in love with DC and then Marvel Comics in the early 60s) you get used to the concept of bringing new life into a character by tricks such as a new comic title, new origin, starting all over again with Year 1. It tends to work and brings new readers on board and it all goes on until the next reboot

I  think that's what we do all of the time in our own lives and I reckon the trick to making life feel fresh, interesting, worthwhile is to make sure that we don't leave it too long between reboots

I'm not suggesting that we all do a 'Reggie Perrin' on a regular basis, walk away from our old life and start anew. I have done that on a number of occasions and it is intoxicatingly invigorating but only doable in certain circumstances unless you are happy being seen as a complete selfish bastard. I did this on a regular basis in my early twenties, walking away from things I didn't want to do and more recently did it when I retired. I can't remember ever feeling better than I did when I left the office knowing I'd never need to work another day again

So there are a few big reboots per lifetime when there's a big change of direction but the key probably is to engineer smaller ones to bring a new view of the world and thereby restart the clock. 

With me there's been a few over the last few years - moving to York, getting back into music and, a biggy, meeting and marrying Ann. All smart moves I'd say :-)

Coffee - pretty fair. Cake - little bit disappointing. Aiming for a slightly better review than that of my life when I'm looking back at the end of all this