Busy with a piano

Mad but friendly, dark and liquorice microphone tells us in strange microphone language that  we're all too busy with the seasonal nonsense to make any sense and then somehow send silly material out all over the place in blog form. We're also busy with a clever piano bit.

Dunfermline Daily Photo

Here's the Moon Kid's custom art installation and  modified bench located on a public path a few yards from Dunfermline's own Carnegie Hall. This bench is available for use by the general public 24/7 most days, weather and advance bookings permitting. Suggested uses include: having a wee rest, sitting doon fur a fag, swigging Buckie, a five minute meditation interlude, dog pee venue, snogging a bird, a spiritual retreat (temporary), sorting out that troublesome shoplifting spoil, reading yesterday's Daily Record, adjusting yer kegs, spying on folks in cars, taking time out from sk8boarding,  or just sipping a quiet can of fine Polish lager and scoffing a Greggs steakbake. The choice dear reader, is all yours.

Looking Forward

It's official, I'm looking forward to Christmas this year (is that a new thing?). Perhaps it's age, battered hormones, sense of entitlement, dutiful weather, unread horoscopes and unseen alien interventions in my life all finally coming together to celebrate both the great meaningless and the mighty but tiny meaningful. The best of everything and worst of very little, materialism, greed and relative safety, a new way of seeing just punching me in the face. We're not so badly off in this badly run country, that probably makes no sense but it's true. So forget those media darlings, talking heads and political twats that have annoyed the hell out of you all year. Most of them are just fuzzy images full of ignorant wind and discoloured fermented urine. So dig the pants out of Christmas despite them. Simmer in the unfair heat and the oven like warmth, some strong red or amber drink, ridiculous food and noisy bairns and ignored new toys, all scattered around in some chaotic storm of warped religious nonsense with the promise of scattered anti social snow. Nothing matters apart from driving out any Winter demons that by now badly need driven out and then enjoy the slow process of delicious blame, delight and extended recovery. All I really need to do now to experience the most from this bizarre and selfishly internalised festival is to get my car's exhaust fixed, record an album, do a little shopping, go to work a few times, tidy up, iron shirts, wrap up things, drive north, drive south, spend money, have a few good ideas, find a tree, make things up on the spot...etc. And don't forget out there, above the skies and for as far as Brian Cox can clearly observe, it's only a big fat hologram of a thing that we're seeing. Something about that thought gives me an appetite for life.

So another storm passes over

Songs that I've woken up to by mostly singing to myself in a comforting way (or possibly are being sung by weird and sinister  celestial choirs stuck in a loop playing inside my head) this week:

Hue & Cry - Violently (no idea where that came from, truly awful).
Steely Dan - Deacon Blue. Turns up from time to time.
Frankie goes to Hollywood - Power of Love. Heard it on the radio.
The Smiths - Charming Man. Not a surprise.
Neil Young - There's a World. Hadn't even thought of this one for years.
Theme from Sir Prancalot - ?
Random and forgotten Christmas Carols. Putting it down to the time of year. It's better than having tinnitus I suppose.

This is never as bad as it looks.

Somewhere in Central Scotland.

I strayed out past Grangemouth the other day and in the moody grey morning caught these odd, giant so-called Kelpie Heads roaring with no voice at the uncaring motorway traffic. Sometimes everything looks like art and sometimes there is just no art to be found  in anything. Scotland's struggle to understand continues...

Beginning to look...

... a lot like a good time to form up a comprehensive to do list that I can sign up for. Of course it's a bit too early for the pre-Christmas panic, that's next weekend but I can hear it's still, small god-like voice whispering and nagging, hoping to get it's own way and break me down into a quivering shopping hungry mass. Amazon, eBay and Black Friday were not all they were cracked up to be, just lists of dumb gifts from the Generation Game conveyor belt brought up to date, digested and digitised. All the consumer mantrap things I said I would avoid this year, based on last year now surround me. Most of that rude learning I've so quickly forgotten. The simple solution is of course to take an afternoon off work and just go mad, the trouble is that the opportunity to grasp that precious, obvious  and fragile moment is fading in a kind of comedy slow motion way, all vague and grainy and unfunny. So it's beginning to look a lot like panic.

Just a feeling

In the great and over arching cosmic wondering of it all it can sometimes feel like you're not really making any progress at all - sometimes plus and extra (ditto) ordinary sometimes and sometimes heavy plus. That of course is quite untrue, just a feeling you get. Ignore it if you can.

Bannockburn B&B

Not the actual mural.

In order to avoid any risky drunk driving or excessive taxi charges we stayed out on Saturday in an SQ B&B, about 30 miles from the Bannockburn triumph that the SNP are so keen for us to recall. There we found that our over familiar hosts  had decided to deck out the dining room as a shrine to 1314 and the famous battle. A huge mural of the event had been painted on the wall by an art student (Primary 6 level at least) some years before, the rest of the room was festooned with tartan, flags, swords and various Braveheart motifs. It was an embarrassing and uncomfortable venue for breakfast there amongst the badly drawn bloody and severed limbs, snorting horses and brave but anatomically challenged archers and foot soldiers. Any guest from South of Berwick upon Tweed would no doubt feel a little threatened by the clumsy and bloody scenes and might wonder exactly what had been boiled into the haggis and tattie scone ensemble being served up. Next time it's back to a safe but bland chain;  Best Western, Dakota etc. etc.

Daily Dream Kitchen Photo

The elegant if understated swoosh of the wood and granite doubled up experience is clear to see. Ignore if you will the potential porous natures of the materials and the possibility of unplanned staining and the colour scheme (oh yes), for this is high art and high technology married into some awesome design consequence. While we're at it we can't wait to tell you about the unique blown glass shatterproof splash back experience.

Hydrophobia

The cloaked and secret menace of the H20, ready salted, seaweed and sewage cocktail that at any given moment may engulf and indulge itself upon us and over us. We live in quiet, stoical fear borne from bitter experience but confident that come the day that the great and vengeful flood arises our super dog "Lassie" will waken us from our stubborn sleep with a gentle lick on the cheek (?) in good time before the Hellish torrent washes upon us all and destroys everything in it's merciless and dirty path. (At that point we head for the hills etc. led by that oh so smart yapping dog). The plan has a few flaws in it but we're working on them.

Low tide high tide

Calm and normal last Sunday.

Big storms come and go, that's just weather types for you. Today the weather and the tides combined and we saw a freaky high tide come and thankfully go. Forceful and unrepentant, like Biblical revenge. No one and no nearby property was engulfed, phew! Living by the shoreline you tend to notice these things and become increasingly wary. Staying dry is also useful. So said the Forth wise man.

Raw Materials

When I first saw these trees all lonely and entwined together earlier today, I had some really smart thoughts going on in my head. Mental pictures, concepts and all sorts of good cosmic stuff that made perfect sense to me at the time. Sadly I have now forgotten them completely, like they were just dumb birds stopping off on some random roof somewhere, but the trees are still in the same place so I  guess that's all OK. Typical.

Excuse for a film

Tate Modern: Summery summary detail.

Maybe I just want to watch the waves, or make a film that's just an excuse for something, or wear sunglasses like Jesus would or send everybody an acoustic Christmas card - in digital format.  Keep warm with winter soup and find ingenious ways to maintain the freshness of bread and the heat of salty whisky from romantic sounding islands decked in summer's best green. All pyscho-babble and turnups, grinning selfies and the Discovery Channel set on pause, that's entertainment.

Recording makes you sweat. You need an idea, you need ideas. Then they get built up and the timing has to work and the balance and the mix and the faith. The faith in your idea or at least the faith that says your idea may somehow come to something having followed due process, pain and endless accidental twiddling. During this time you pick up and put down musical instruments a lot and check the tuning and trip up on cables and forget quite how those various unfamiliar devices might do things. But it works, it all works eventually.

The rest is history

The books that I started to read in the Summer I shall finish in the Winter.

The guitars that I started building in 2013 I'll complete in 2014.

The music that I started to record in December I'll sort out...soon.

The soup that I made today is made today.

The phone that I switched off five minutes ago is back on now.

The laundry that I started is underway.

The TV show that I recorded is still somewhere on the Sky Box.

The journey that I began in 1955 is still going on.

The doodle that I scribbled is lost, someplace.

The idea I had in August is kind of forming up.

The photo that I took a few minutes ago is at the top.

The cat that I fed has run off outside to play.

The dessert I didn't eat is in the fridge...waiting.

The other cat that I annoyed is asleep.

The new T Shirt I received is on my back.

The uploads I attempted to upload are stuck.

The Christmas shopping is progressing, in a virtual sense.

The rest is history.

A huge and incredible bag of PB M&Ms.

The Puzzles of Caravaggio

Caravaggio's woman illustrates the strange arcs, cycles, angles and influences that govern our everyday moods, actions, outputs and creativity to a young disciple. We are all travellers on some vast cosmic highway but none of us can see the route or the destination, we don't even know quite where we came from. As a result there are quite a few collisions and there is much confusion, general uncertainty, friction, discomfort and unhappiness; and that's how it is but when it's good it's fantastic, deal with it. Look deep within the glass - the answer sits in there.

Cereal and Fruit

It could be mistaken for a vat of porridge, pale muesli, the surface of Mars or the Gobi Desert in detail - none of that thought, it's the detailed surface of  a skip loaded with rock solid concrete. A problem for somebody - the guy who owns the skip mainly.

Apricots, plums, tomatos, lemons, limes and an orange reflected in a friendly toaster. I probably wont eat any of these. I am stuck fast in an apple and banana routine from which I cannot escape. These pleasures will surely pass me by.

Well Read

I trudged through "Scotland's Future" or maybe waded or possibly crawled, I'm not sure. It'll never be up there with Scotland's favourite literary works however, that according to the 8000 who voted for it is Trainspotting and it is the best thing written in fifty years - no mention of the Oor Wullie Annuals or the Scottish League Review 84/85.  Most people just see the chase sequence and hear Iggy and the Stooges I reckon - we Scots are easily led. So Scotland's Future is a summary of the 650 page turner that most voters will fail miserably to read, I'm not sure many will ever read the 45 pages in the summery. I really wanted it to be good, to be a clarion call for the cause (even if it seems daft) but all we get is a wish list, a set of voters bribes and nothing that couldn't form the average Euro party's manifesto anywhere. So we're promised (and these are repeated many times) changes over bedroom tax, childcare, an efficient tax system (?), reduced energy bills and no nukes in our wind farmed waters. This mantra is repeated on every third page just in case you miss it. There's no economic detail, proper numbers or an actual strategic plan. How it'll all be paid for and quite why the SNP assumes that the EEC, NATO and Westminster will happily agree to our demands is unclear, perhaps we'll kidnap the Queen or something, I may have missed that bit. It's a route map but without a route or map. If you need another view check out this, good old Robert McNeil seldom misses.

Quite Scary

This is quite scary.

So is this.

Yes I did print out a copy, I'm a serious person underneath it all. I am going to read this and try my best to understand it. For that to work however I will have to lose the vivid and persistent mental image of a fat and smug little Hobbit called Alex Salmond trying to launch a big document that tells how Hobbiton and the Shire should pull up the drawbridge on the old Brandywine River and remain quite independent from all those strange men, elves, dwarfs, orcs and wizards across the borders who so spoil the peaceful place that the Shire should really be. Those low and ugly foreigners with their fancy ideas, banks, golf courses, wars and messing about; it's more than any well mannered and peace loving Hobbit can take. 

The rest of Middle Earth had better listen and take themselves off on a great flying feck because Alex and all the other  Hobbits (he says) just want to live well from the income of their legacy fossil fuels buried deep in the seabed whilst trying hard (but without the use of any wizards, just oil company's money) to generate other forms of alternative  and odd energy from the mystical powers of wind and waves and the great denizens of the deep. We'll use this to make heaps of black puddings to sell to the Chinese, there will be curried chicken for the locals  and surplus whisky and wooly jumpers we can flog to the Indians and Canada. That's about it apart from the genetically engineered tartan bagpipes and the Dundee video games - and there will be no fecking shipbuilding.

Alex is now smoking his clay pipe on this wooden rocking chair, smiling and pondering quite what socialism might mean and if any of his fellow Hobbits are infected with this terrible disease, if so they'll pay. They will be punished one day, their bus passes, student fees and community charge assistance will get sorted out and abolished. Quietly he puffs and puffs and allows his saltire blue Tory smoke to blow serenely out of his arse to the accompaniment of his own cackling voice. Somewhere in the distance a piano accordion is playing an old lament via BBC Radio Scotland. "You've never had it, whatever it was," says the announcer.

Lifestyle Choices

How does this work out then? Nigella has allegedly been off her face on daily cocaine workouts for ten years and squandered a shed load of cash bribing her assistants to keep it all quiet. During this period she's married and left a hard nosed multi-millionaire, become a world famous household name as a guru for fine if somewhat self indulgent cookery and rich foods, chain smoked fags and drunk a whole lot of full bodied red wine...and she's 54 or so and still looks...Hmm.

If ever it happens I'll consider eating my virtual hat: When science fiction writers and futurologists try tell you tales of doom and gloom all about that awful day when evil robots will completely take over the world and subjugate mankind to some terrible technological revenge just point out this nice little image to them.

For those abroad, some home thoughts

The bare trees of winter. 

The last two leaves about to hit the lawn,  in some way to start again.

Cat in her natural habitat. 

Confused cat considers some territorial spraying into the void (or at least the well). 

Here comes a rather feeble and ineffective November sun, peely-wally you might say.