TECHNOLOGY

Making music using the new technology is like sculpting. You start with something rough and chip away at it with infinite small moves until something emerges. The equipment used is itself a tool or more precisely an instrument in every sense. Combine with some kind of vision or imagination, talent even, and in the recorded work you have very much an art medium like any other.

TALENT

Talent in the arts is a lesser part of the equation these days. Not because there’s not enough of it around, but probably because there’s actually too much. So much that it’s no big deal. Another talented person - so what? Other factors have to play a bigger role. In music, for example, image is more important than ever. So is the degree of emotion the work can engender. These are put above skill, technique and natural ability. I suppose this is okay. It’s the post-modern context again.

FUSIONS

Men and women appear to have such contrasting agendas. It’s made worse by particular individuals conforming to extreme gender traits - such as a female whose singular orientation is toward motherhood and nurturing, or a male whose life revolves around football and the pub. I prefer when each contains something of the other - men exploring and acting out of female aspects, women inhabiting the traditionally masculine world. This kind of fusion or crossing over I like in other areas too such as music where I am increasingly turned off my ethnic styles in favour of mixing it up. I think that all the great movements in art have been about taking established elements and arranging them in a new formulation. This is ultimately in me a preference for synthesis - putting things together rather than taking them apart.

PREVENTATIVE

When you take preventative action often you don’t know whether your action has been successful. In other words, the undesired event may not have happened anyway. eg: is it the healthy diet and regular exercising that’s keeping you healthy? Is it the alarm system that’s keeping intruders away? This is yet another given aspect of the human experience. You’d have to live the circumstances several times over and make comparisons to be sure whether your action was having an effect. Making positive moves in the hope of deterring some other event, is, like many things, often a matter of faith.

INITIATING

When initiating something, a lot of extra energy or force is required. It is as if to escape the inertia of nothing happening power needs to be excessive like a rocket launch. This is probably one reason why most people don’t do new or innovative things. Too much effort is required. An aggressive quality in a person is sometimes necessary in order to initiate or make a breakthrough. Thrust would be a better word. Whatever it is I seem to be lacking in it these days. I don’t have that quality needed to fight the inertia. Maybe I never did and was just lucky before.

EXTRAORDINARY

Whichever way you look at the world it does feel like there is something extraordinary or miraculous at the heart of it. If you believe that its existence is a result of a series of random events then it is a kind of random quite extraordinary in its nature, rather like throwing a bunch of building materials into the air and it comes down a house. Alternatively, that there is something planned or intelligent behind the whole enterprise takes us back to notions of a creator. Incredible whichever way.

HOLLOWAY

Richard Holloway used to be Bishop of Edinburgh. I like his writing. In his recent book he remarks on how theological or legal validations usually follow social change. They rarely precede it. I think this is something quite daring for a man of the cloth to concede. Of course Holloway is no stranger to contentious statements. I also find useful his categories of political positioning. They are from left to right: RADICAL, LIBERAL, CONSERVATIVE, FUNDAMENTALIST.

EXTREMES

A journalist once described my music in a review as beautiful and powerful. It would be hard to imagine a greater compliment. I bump along the bottom for long periods with no confidence whatsoever. During these times that someone could praise my work in that way seems almost like a mistake, that they must have been listening to the wrong record. Then the bipolar aspect kicks in. I can lie flat in the gutter and from nowhere rise to towering heights when for a short while I believe myself to be truly great again. I wish the lows didn't last so long. They seem so much more convincing.

ANTICIPATION

I have a problem constantly anticipating. Anticipation is always there in a nervous kind of way. I’m forever projecting forward for good or for bad, usually bad these days. This is probably due to a pervasive feeling of discomfort with the present which might just be part of how I’m made. Meditation makes for a more comfortable present and so maybe reduces anticipation a bit. Events then seem different although for other more complex reasons they might actually be different.

POST-MODERNISM

Says that the media is the message. It no longer just reflects the world but creates it by giving value to things by its mere choosing. It becomes the arbiter and creator of tastes.