Tag: music

The Mountaintop Party

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Well Thessaloniki was fun. I met up with my mate, met his family and reconnected which makes the trip worth it alone. It was touch and go for a bit as someone at his work tested positive for this virus but he was tested that same day I arrived and came back negative. It still seems bizarre to not be able to see people without worrying about this illness. We can add that to the long list of things Covid has affected. As well as that, as yesterdays post made clear, I went partying on Saturday night with two people from the hostel.

It was a small party at the top of a hill somewhere outside of Thessaloniki. We were so high that we could see the clouds below us in the morning. We got there in a taxi by following a guy we met in a bar. These types of parties are notoriously difficult to find and I felt a little sorry for the driver as he wasn’t expecting a trip on dirt roads up a mountain. He was also not keen on leaving us randomly in the middle of nowhere up there at two o’clock at night. We danced and had fun, and everything that is involved in such events. In the morning as the sun rose I saw the scene around me and the most remarkable set of people. It was like everyone who couldn’t normally be free had turned up and danced away in the dark. There was no one set type of person and probably about two hundred people so it was small. I’ve avoided too much detail but I spent as much time fascinatingly people watching once the sky was lit up as I did dancing and running around. These were not your average colourful trance festival people but it seemed more like the hardcore inner circle.

As the light came, the water ran out. With our dry mouths we attempted to get down the mountain before it got too hot. One of my new friends needed considerable convincing we were real but eventually we persuaded her to come with us and down the mountain. If we had waited much longer and without any liquid in that heat we would have missed all the potential lifts down and suffered under the Greek sun. Genuinely it felt quite serious at one point but we found someone who got us back. An accident on the small roads back made us follow a farmer over the most random series of dirt track back roads but eventually we reached Thessaloniki and our beds. It was intense and utterly memorable. I had fancied a party like that for a while especially after such a long time in lockdown and any real excitement. If you’re going to do it then do it properly it would seem.

Miley Cyrus

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Of all people, I was drawn to Miley Cyrus as a guest on Joe Rogan’s podcast this morning. He releases a few a week and usually I only listen to them if either I know the person or they sound interesting enough to give a chance to. Miley Cyrus would not traditionally catch my eye as someone I would want to devote two hours of my time to but then sometimes we need to step out of our norms to create new ones. You’re immediately struck with how distinct and surprising her voice is. She sounds gravely. Apparently it has really come into it’s own like this in the last year and I’m sure she said having surgery on her throat affected it. She admits too that having smoked a lot and sung a lot it has also played a part.

I wasn’t sure what to expect although I doubted I would listen to more than twenty minutes. In the end I found myself almost captivated by someone who has clearly grown into quite a likeable person despite how she has been represented in the media for years. Joe Rogan is quite good at this though and it wouldn’t be the first guest he has had on that has managed to improve their public image from it. There are also some who, in my eyes at least, have walked away with no credibility at all, so it can’t just be Rogan and to think otherwise must do a disservice to Cyrus.

She comes from a world apart from ninety-nine percent of the worlds population. The daughter of the country singer Billy Ray Cyrus and the goddaughter of the almost mythical Dolly Parton, she was thrust into the spotlight herself at about twelve years old when she became the star of Disney’s Hannah Montana. She talks of struggling to connect with people and of the affects of growing up in and only knowing such a life. This is where Rogan can expose his own distance from the average listener though and it’s not the first time I’ve felt like I’m listening to two aliens discussing a disconnected unknown world. He has an ability to reach both his listener and his guest but there are moments in which he doesn’t feel like one of us despite attempting to portray himself as such. He is just being honest though and that too is part of his appeal.

The plan for this piece had been to discuss our understanding of freedom and how it is at it’s base entirely in our mind. Some thoughts came to me while listening to this podcasts and mentioning Cyrus was supposed to be my leading into it. Evidently I got a little caught up in what appears to be some kind of new found fandom. I still won’t listen to her music but I will view her in a different light. Miley Cyrus, in my blog. Life truly is all about the unexpected.

Permanent Seasonal Work

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It’s got to that point in life where I’m thinking of entering the cryptocurrency world. I’ve been given a hot tip and have been attempting for the last twelve hours to act on it. It turns out that buying cryptocurrency is not straight forward. I like things to be straight forward. It’s a complicated world too. Unless people are heavily into it people rarely know much or understand much about what it even is. I just like the idea that once bitcoin cost pennies and now they’re about nine thousand dollars each. Someone out there got stinking rich and is now swanning around having a lovely time. I would like that to be me.

It’s luck really. Unless you know the people who are creating these things and what their next step is, which is illegal of course and also no guarantee of success, then the likelihood is you’ll not make much or you’ll lose it all. They’re like penny shares and if the reward is high then surely the risk is even higher. Some may make a fortune but luck plays probably the biggest part of all. But then luck plays a huge part in all success in a way. Of course the adage that you make your own luck is accurate in many ways that doesn’t mean you’re ever fully in control, or potentially in control at all, of events.

I refer to success in making money in one particular way but this could relate to lots of things. Sports and music would be such examples. That isn’t to say the sports stars and musicians haven’t put in a ridiculous and almost obsessive amount of hard work and sacrifice because they will have but to deny the existence of luck and various events going their way fortuitously in undeniable.

I need some luck then. Am I a lucky person? I’m certainly not an unlucky person, I think I can cede that. Which means I must be lucky. Is there a middle ground? Well nothing is ever black and white so I’ll claim some variety of the middle ground once more. I do love the middle ground. There’s nothing quite like being indecisive. I think I wrote a piece on it months ago, something about the virtue of sitting on the fence. My memory tells me it was a good one. This may be less so but it is better than what I was originally going to write which was; “Tonight I am tired. I have been defeated”. Definitely an improvement. I try not to winge too much about not sleeping enough and working too much but I really need to stop averaging five hours a night. I’m used to doing seasonal work where you destroy yourself for six to eight weeks and then travel. This feels like it’s been going on since lockdown. The travel part really can’t come soon enough.

That’ll do for tonight. I thank you for your patience and your interest if you’ve made it this far. I’m off to bed.

The Traditional New Scrabbler

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Well I’m supposed to be writing this but I’ve gone and got myself distracted by a game on an app. I try to resist playing games on the phone or computer because I know how addictive they can be when I enjoy them. I assume they’re designed in that way to do exactly that and that just makes me even more wary. I’m a little bit of a traditionalist when it comes to these things too. I like my board games to be a physical things you can play with you hands and I’ve never really got into the computer game versions of them that much. It’s a little like a physical book and a Kindle. I appreciate the practicalities but give me the pleasure of an actual book any day. These games then are the same. Today though in response to the offer of a game I downloaded the Scrabble app.

I’ve not played the actual game that often in my life; a few unsuccessful and self-conscious times as a kid was about it before I played a few games with a housemate of mine in Athens. He was a passionate fan and we would smoke and drink through these epic battles. Scrabble as it should be played. I’ve probably played only a couple of times since then but it would always be a game that I would suggest if there was the option. I was a little bit cautious then on playing it like this, and like a Kindle, it’ll never compare to an actual book but unlike a Kindle I might actually give it a shot. So I’ve been enjoying it is the point.

Computers have managed to replace and recreate so many things. Smart phones are simply incredible; phone, camera, music, internet, an app for anything and so on. Technology though hasn’t been able to replace everything yet, not the board game, nor the book and I’m sure there are countless more. Perhaps it’s just my age though. Mobile phones started to become a thing when I was about sixteen years old, like an old man I can still remember a time before. Maybe this lack of appreciation for something technology has managed to ‘upgrade’ could be this emotional attachment. Maybe it’s just that there’s something much more to physically experiencing something than technology can ever create. Let’s hope something manages to survive with the evolution of this new normal and this old man can rest easy.

The Minirig 3

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A few days ago I mentioned how some people seem to need constant music in the background and that while I enjoy music I have never had that necessity in life. I was always the person quite content with silence, it was even necessary when I needed to concentrate. Depending on your grasp of English you may have just noticed that last sentence was in the past tense. About four years ago, maybe three, I forget and life seems to blur a little as one ages, I was spending winter working a pretty gruelling job on a Christmas tree farm. I used to tell people I sold Christmas trees and they used to think it sounded thoroughly lovely which merely confirmed to me they had never spent thirty-five straight days standing around in the rain carrying trees for ten hours in the middle of the winter. But I digress. It was maybe the third year of doing it when one of my fellow masochists told me about a small portable speaker called the Minirig. They loved their drum and bass, were a regular festival goer, with knowledge, and this speaker was apparently the best you could get. Small, rechargeable, bluetooth which could connect enough together to be good enough for an actual gig. Fair enough I thought. I put it on my ‘to desire and maybe but probably not buy one day’. Well I only went and bloody bought it.

It’s an interesting purchase because I was trying to work out how I could justify it, like I said I don’t listen to music constantly and well my laptop and mobile are surprisingly loud. My justification was that it would come in handy for future travel. How much I misjudged the power of this speaker. Firstly it’s worth saying how beautiful it is, sleek black, stylish cylindrical, ideal size for my hand, aesthetically it just oozes quality. And then I started playing some songs and the moment it began I was just amazed, it was almost jaw dropping. The sound quality is just outstanding. I can not stress how good the sound quality is. Genuinely I can’t stop listening to music because the sound is just perfect. This is how music is supposed to sound. It has all sorts of technical specifications which mean nothing to me and I’m not going to bother sharing them here. Just believe me when I say it makes me smile when I look at it and realise that sound my ears can hear is coming from that little speaker. If anyone ever asks me about speakers I will only ever have one answer. There is no second option. I never thought an inanimate object could bring me such pleasure.

An Unknown Transition Into The Unknown

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I’m not someone who feels the need to play music all the time. I enjoy silence. I enjoy podcasts. I enjoy music. But a balance between them is vital, as is my mood on their regularity. I have been listening to some music for the last half hour while I was online and avoiding writing this. When I see people listening to music and being able to study, read or write, basically concentrate, I have often wished this was something I was capable of. The words coming on this page would be inspired by the sounds around me but I can’t focus and not even one word follows.

I was listening to some dub and desiring a party or a festival. These last few years have been an interesting transition in life. Everyone goes though different chapters in their lives, even if they marry at 18, never divorce, never leave their home town and keep the same job, there will still be chapters within this. Mine have been slightly more adventurous and I can recognise periods when I wanted nothing but travel and others when I felt a need to rest for example. It took about five years from my first desires for rest to get to were I am now but life is all so extreme that I’m still longing for adventure equally alongside some kind of ‘normal’ existence. ‘Normal’ is a strange and inexplicable concept, which is why I won’t even try explaining what I mean by it and I know my version of it will still be a long way from the man with many chapters in the same town above. But fuck, right now having listened to a little music and recollected a few memories, there is a part of me that wants to put down the ‘normal’ so much and pick up the alternate once more.

I have also come to appreciate this life though recently and value the people living it far more than I ever did at the height of being a prick in my more adventurous moments. I’ve come to realise there is as much value in this existence as one lived with daily excitement and variety, it’s different value but it’s still value regardless, as it too is exciting and varied regardless. That doesn’t stop me wanting to drop it all and jump on a boat heading somewhere wild and exotic though but I doubt that will ever leave me. Equally this current existence is an extreme in the other direction as I know the ideal will be somewhere in the middle. I only meant to come here for a few months to help a mate out and it’s been nearly six months. He’s taking great pleasure in reminding me a few more months and I’ll have broken my longest job record. With this pizza takeaway now being a thing and coronavirus being an even bigger thing it seems I may still be sitting in this same seat in four months trying to understand what the drink in my hand represents.

Is this now life? Well it’s the current version and I’m starting to learn enough from it that interesting things happen when we roll with whatever comes up. In a way that’s a freedom more real than any enforced search for a liberty that ultimately becomes constrictive. There are always things out of our control which make us jump between paths, enduring the grey transitional space between, but once we’re actually on it; life never really seems all that bad. Quite often the opposite. It has become clear to me recently that we’re owed nothing, their is no destiny, that desires will never happen if we wait for them to and ideas of fairness miss the harsh unknown nature of life. It is an irrational and absurd world. Nothing bad has happened but seemingly I’ve managed to understand the knowledge I previously had and it all seems to make a little more sense. This is why discipline is necessary. Why being able to focus the energy to achieve the goal is the only way we can really get things done. Why I’m curious, excited and unsure about what comes next. It’s a little unknown. But then everything always has been.

Our Unique Perceptions

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How accurately do we imagine ourselves to how other people imagine we are? That is of course an impossible question to answer as it is not only unique to the one person being imagined but is unique again to each person doing the imagining. People either think unreasonably highly of themselves or unnecessarily lowly of themselves and everything in between; as a result of a lifetimes worth of experiences justifiably or unjustifiably leading to that conclusion. We all know examples of extremes both ways in our friendship or acquaintance groups and these are well worn examples of perception and self-delusion. What we don’t always think about though is whether we view that person accurately or whether what we think is actually part of another delusion.

There was a time when I used to believe that there was nothing unique left in the world. I shared this information with a rather creative friend who made music along with a variety of other interesting and inspired works of art and bodies of thought. He was a character, potentially a genius but certainly someone who viewed the world in a way uncommon to most. I have avoided using the word unique there because it would be too easy but he was horrified at my suggestion that it didn’t exist. I can’t really remember my argument anymore for why nothing was unique but I think it came from an idea that everything came from something; music for example was inspired by other music and never existed independently from anything else. These are not necessarily my thoughts anymore and I would likely agree with him now as no one piece of art will ever be exactly like another. Some may be inspired by others to varying degrees but there will always be something put into it by the creator, even not obvious at first, which came solely from the person making it, their unintentional signature move it could be said.

It is with this that we view others too. You may believe it is obvious that your friend thinks very highly of themselves but others view that person with eyes inspired by a completely unique set of experiences and past conditioning. We get easily frustrated when people don’t think like us when we believe what we think to be obvious. The way we view people is unique just as how your friends view you is unique. You may have an idea of your character but if you have a group of five friends, to them there are five different versions of you running around doing things in five different ways. Nobody views you as you view yourself, it is impossible yet we get so hung up on what people think of us. Just imagine how horrified we would be if we really knew how people thought; each and every version. Perception is a remarkable thing.

When Business Misses The Point

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Another example of people missing the point was raised in the Sunday newspapers today. Interestingly like young people who dream of having an interesting creative arts and sports filled career, this one also involves those in education; the University of Sunderland, which like most universities now operates within the corporate world, has decided to drop it’s humanities courses and rely solely on ‘career focused’ courses. One can assume therefore that they are under the assumption that there can be no career possibilities for those studying sociology, history or politics yet I’m quite sure there continue to be a raft of political positions opening up on a regular basis. Evidently though it seems those who actually want to get into politics are better off studying business or law and never the actual field they plan on moving into. Perhaps as a former politic student myself it would be worth pointing out that all politics courses do is educate you on the vast corruption and immoral behaviour required. Not exactly something to aspire to.

The point though with this move is that people continue to overlook the arts. How many of those involved in business will patronisingly belittle the arts and then wonder why they cannot find any decent artist to run the visual side of their advertising campaigns. Do people not realise that were it not for writers and poets the language they speak would be simplified to uninspiring simplicity, they would never be able to manipulate people into buying or believing new things. How about all those middle-aged balding Chief Executives squeezing into their old band t-shirts and seeing some overly priced tour of their favourite now-geriatric band from their youth. Just imagine if Roger Waters or Robert Plant had decided they should focus on a more sensible career and not become rock stars.

People forget about how much in their life is down to creativity. Everything around us whether it is art, music or ideas has such an affect not always upon our bank balance but certainly on how we enjoy and sense the world around us. Sociology, philosophy and politics create the societies we live in; the arts and music make them comfortable. Even the architects who design those beautiful buildings we’re all so fond of advertising to the tourists who spend money visiting our cities and monuments. It’s endless and just folly to overlook these vital glues that hold everything together. Maybe economics and business studies are the pragmatic drivers although thats a debatable concept, without some inspiration though even they would lack the creativity they require to push themselves forward. Like creates like after all, but in this case the first like seems to be born in an ever shrinking and ever under appreciated part of society. One which at this rate will disappear into the forgotten reams of the new grey, permanent growth of our future dystopian world.

Different Shades Of Grey

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It is interesting what methods people use to work or be creative. I remember I used to know someone who when studying preferred to be in busy noisy areas as it allowed her to concentrate; so the cafe section of the library over the quiet floor. I’ve often known people to play music while they study as it seems to help them focus and there are numerous studies backing this up. I have tried with classical music, which is usually the style of choice in these research, and found that of all types of sounds I could listen to it is probably the one that helps the most. It has something to do with the affect it has on your brain or something like that, the internet could probably inform me accurately but I am lazy to check. Certain music though I can’t study or write with and that is when I can hear words because I find them distracting as I follow along. In reality though I’m a silence man. I wonder what it is that leads one person to favour one way over another. I can only imagine it has something to do with upbringing and the environment you grew up studying in. My inability to study and use any possible excuse to be distracted probably led me to my silent necessities and I imagine someone who grew up in a noisy domestic environment but still studied around this probably searches this out.

That is the setting though but what about using certain things to assist us. I’ve met many a sophisticated wanker who loves the affect a glass of red wine has alongside a good book or while scribbling down words. He takes a sip out of his cup of red wine before continuing. Certainly though too much alcohol only hinders this process but I remember reading something a few years back that suggested the best combination was to have an alcoholic drink to relax the mind subsequently allowing it to be more creative and then a cup of coffee to give it the energy and focus required to implement the creativity. It’s not impossible to see some validity in this. I sometimes enjoy a little smoke and then attempt to write down some thoughts, but I could never study this way as the mind is all over the place. Equally if I am attempting to write something that I don’t want to be illegible nonsense despite appearing to be wisdom at the time then I really couldn’t smoke. I could though play the guitar as I just like to mess around on that and do it for the pleasure in the moment not with the intention of attempting to create anything for anyone else. I don’t though feel the desire to pick it up when sober so definitely smoking helps this.

It’s just interesting because everybody is so different and requires such different surroundings to achieve the same end result. We are also so varied in the way differing things affect us and how we manage to respond to them in regards alternate versions of output. Maybe I should have a smoke one day and try writing something on here, that could be an interesting addition, it may also be pretty obvious but also magically creative. It is just fascinating to see how different everyone is and depressing to see how we try and force everyone into boxes or group them all into either black or white. Education has a lot to do with this and it’s always very interesting to meet people who have been through alternative types of schooling because they have such different ways of resolving issues that arise. Time has many answers, hopefully we someday stumble upon the one which allows us to discover whichever shade of grey we are in between.