In the name of the Father

My turbulent relationship with blogging continues yet I’ve done so much recently. April was a really busy month and also marked the end of the first year without my Dad.

What a year it’s been since he moved on:

* I’ve been to Germany twice, Italy, France, Belgium, USA and Canada
* Followed Newcastle United around the country watching about 10 games this season, 3 of which were at St James’s Park
* Seen a Grand Prix live at Hockenheimring
* Completed a 26.3 mile walking marathon overnight in Manchester and a 10 mile hike across Hadrians Wall in memory of my Dad
* Driven a steam train, dined in a Pullman coach and travelled on a light railway
* Taken over as carer for my Grandad
* Almost completed an Estate as executor
* Been to the Opera
* Shot a rifle
* Driven at 130 mph (ssshhhh, in Germany)
* Seen Niagra Falls, Ground Zero, Empire State, Cape Cod
* Watched Baseball live
* Seen Ben Folds, Kate Walsh, Emily Baker, Jamiroquai, London Symphony Orchestra, John Mayer
* Gotten to know my sister
* Eaten in Michelin Star restaurants and The Pudding Club
* Bought some new stuff
* Inherited some old stuff
* Spent some wonderful times with amazing friends and colleagues
* Watched several important people in my life get married
* Grown up a lot and come to peace with many many things
* Celebrated and mourned
* Been thankful every day for those closest to me that I love
* Forgotten at least 50% of what I actually have done in the last year……

There are so many things I’ve done, thought, felt and experienced that I can’t remember to put in this but I can safely say that April 2010-April 2011 was a landmark year and brought into perspective much of the last 33 years of life in a way I could never have predicted.

I realise now, writing a diary would have been useful. I could have captured so much of the year to look back on now and see the progress made. However, in a strange way, I’m glad that I didn’t. I’m glad that the people who were part of the year, experienced it first hand and shared the time with me doing the variety of different things that made it go so quickly but at the same time made it a year worth living through, will remember it in their own way and later remind me of things that have passed.

In a few weeks time, I will play for Newcastle United at St James’s Park with my brother in a charity match. My Dad would have been so proud. Following that, I will travel to America to see the final Space Shuttle launch from Cape Kennedy. Again, he’d have loved it.

But above all the things this year has provided, it has been the overwhelming sense of relief that the suffering, antagonism, sadness, trial and tribulation of the last years of my Dad’s life never eclipsed the best of him and that I’ve found the best of him in me and continue to work hard to relieve myself of the experiences that eclipsed those things and made it hard to live with the reality of what I’d grown up through.

It’s taken me a year to write a set of lyrics inspired by all this that I feel adequately match my expectations. I’ve done it previously when I lost my Grandmother and also wrote for some to encapsulate my feelings around my brother John who I lost very young.

The lyrics below tie up a loose end and I think reflect the least number of words necessary to express my sentiment as I close off the year in my mind and start to look forwards.

I found a simple truth throughout all of this: the mysteries in life are worth pursuing, both within you and without you.

Father

There is a moment
Where you know that you’re lost.
When life just engulfs you,
Your memories embossed.

And through recollection,
It’s time to move on.
A time for reflection,
For those who have gone.

I wish I had listened,
To all that you’d said,
Now I’m left with what feels like
A hole in the head.

And there are a million things
I wish we’d done,
But God I’m so grateful that
You were the father to this son.

There is a moment.
You know things have past,
You know that the love you have,
Was built to last.

And through recollection,
The pain drifts away,
A true reconnection,
With happier days.

I wish I had listened,
To all that you’d said,
Now I’m left with what feels like,
A hole in the head.

And there are a million things
I wish we had done,
But God I’m so grateful that
You were the father to this son.

Until the next time I blog, I’ll do my best to fill the space in between with something worth writing home about.

Do Smarties Have The Answer

One of my colleagues bought me packet of Smarties today. Immediately I was reminded of an article I wrote for my old student magazine, 5XH. So, I thought I’d post it here to recapture some of the old Smarties nostalgia. Enjoy my article…..’Do Smarties Have The Answer’ – originally published in 1999.

——-

It has been a long-standing tradition that kids eat sweets – and lots of them.

In fact, kids love sweets so much that parents see them as the primary way of pest control, bartering with the child as to how ‘good’ they have to be if they want them. Being a spherically challenged young lad, one of my favourite past times was eating – something I’ve held less commitment too since realising that trouser size was becoming an issue and that planets had started revolving around my gravitational pull. But oh…. for a pack of Smarties I would have done almost anything.

Those little coloured blobs of choc that melted over everything, that left me amazed at the number of pretty colours melted chocolate sweets and youthful hands could make – and allowed me to war paint my younger brother on and off for several carefree years. However, looking back, one thing has bugged me through childhood, adolescence and finally in adulthood – do orange Smarties taste different from the rest?

I have been fighting verbal battles with more people than I care to mention as to whether there is a difference at all. My opinion has always been that there are 9 colours and how ridiculous a concept that only one colour should represent a flavour. ‘It’s purely psychological association’ I would say. ‘The orange ones must provoke some kind of stimulated association between the colour and how the brain thinks it should taste’. ‘Bollocks’ would often be the returning comment. ‘If that’s the case, why don’t the red ones taste of strawberry or tomatoes – you’re full of crap Blair’. Well to be honest, I noticed that the majority of arguments against my case came from my female associates and I was regularly backed by male friends. Was there a connection? Why did a string of Helyn Rose Bar taste tests prove inconclusive?

And why did I really care enough to worry about it? My concern was purely because I wanted to know if I had been brought up in a clouded and sheltered existence, if the orange ones did taste different – why did my parents neglect to give them special attention? Why didn’t they play games and go ‘oooh, its an orange one – who wants the orange one’? My upbringing would be marred by such a basic revelation. I needed the truth.

So, after 21 years of eating Smarties – I went straight to those in the know and contacted Rowntree/Nestle to find out the facts and put my theories that ‘this flavour issue is all bullshit’ to the test. Sat in my office in the Students’ Union, I punched in the number and waited – fumbling a packet in my hands to see whether the ‘e’ numbers gave any clues. A customer service assistant answered. ‘Good morning, Nestle Customer Services – how an I help?’ . ‘Hello there’ said I, ‘could you put me in touch with a PR rep for Smarties?’. ‘Certainly, hold the line’ replied a Yorkshire sounding young maiden. I was transferred.

‘Smarties, Jeff speaking’. ‘Hello Jeff’ I mused, ‘my name’s Andy Blair and I’m calling from Guildford in Surrey. I wonder if you could answer a simple question for me. Do orange Smarties taste different from normal Smarties?.’ ‘ Well Mr Blair, that’s an easy one…………’

The line went dead. The moment that could affect my view on a small piece of my life was paused. A campus wide power cut, knocked out all the phone lines and left me as close to the truth as the evil guy from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to the Holy Grail. After several hours of waiting, eating lunch, cursing the pre-millennium bug etc.. the phones returned to life and I pursued the matter further. After getting back in contact with the relevant department, I asked the same question to the lady on the end of the line. ‘Well Mr Blair (for the second time), that’s an easy one…….. Yes, the orange ones do taste of orange chocolate.’ My heart sank. My self esteem ruined. My childhood memories now unforgiving for their lack of knowledge.

‘Never – how long have they been like that. I don’t ever remember the taste difference as a kid’. There was a short story to be told and like Augustus Gloop in the Wonka factory, I listened with wonder…. ‘Smarties were introduced in 1937 and are widely accepted as being the most popular sweet in the entire children’s market. Although they are principally a children’s line, it is one of the major confectionery brands and has an extremely strong brand heritage. As well as being guzzled by millions of wanting children all year round, Smarties is one of the biggest selling boxed Easter Eggs and has special Christmas presentations in giant tubes, novelties, over wrapped cartons (like my granddad used to bring down) and in little box selection packs. As I’m sure you’re aware Mr Blair, Smarties are eaten by children, so a large proportion of the buying is done by parents and grandparents who regard them as attractive, well packaged sweets and remember them with nostalgia from their own childhood.

Indeed the size of the brand would suggest that the older generation are clearly prone to more than just remembering Smarties. We also enjoy running promotions, such as White Smarties, Cool Dudes and Greenies.’ At this point I stopped the woman at the end of the phone. ‘So do people often call to ask this question?’ I asked. ‘Not really’ she replied, ‘but over 16,000 Smarties are eaten every minute – about 280 per second in the UK. I don’t think many people really stop to think about it’. ‘Oh they do – believe me’ I replied.

The story continued – this woman knew her stuff. ‘A few more facts for you then Mr Blair – Did you know that if the Smarties eaten in one year were laid end to end it would equal almost 102,000 km and if they were put in tubes and these put end to end it would equal almost 29,000km’? By this time I wanted to knock her down with a functional and smug question that I hoped would restore my confidence. ‘ So why are there letters on the inside of the lid – answer that.’ She did. ‘The letters printed on the tops are to increase the enjoyment that can be derived from Smarties and many children of all ages collect the

lids to spell their names etc.’ She was quite right. I did that.

Damn.

It was now war. I had lost a personal battle and this woman seemed to think she knew it all. Bring it on I thought – I’ll find a question you just don’t know the answer too. ‘Ok, why blue Smarties – it was all just a marketing ploy wasn’t it’. ‘Well’, she confidently uttered, ‘Blue Smarties were originally made in West Germany and were only available in France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium and Holland. Research amongst consumers when Smarties were introduced in these countries indicated that Blue Smarties would be well liked, whereas they were not very popular for the other markets. We are continually reviewing the selection available in the UK and in the past we found that most people here preferred the original eight colour assortment which had been the same since 1937!’

I held my head in my hands. She went on and all I could do was listen – ‘In the 1980’s, research showed that a change might be welcomed and the blue Smarties were made available for a limited period in 1988 to celebrate our 50th birthday. This proved so popular that in 1989, they were introduced in the standard assortment, replacing the light brown Smartie.’ I cried. I cried the tears of a man that had seen the mystery behind his childhood edibles washed away. ‘Well, lets face it’ I said, ‘why bother introducing just a single orange flavour – its ridiculous’. ‘Well Mr Blair…..’ she muttered. I knew what was coming. I held the phone close to my ear, pen in hand and braced myself for another insult to my intelligence. ‘Nestle Rowntree have been marketing Smarties since before the Second World War – originally under the Rowntree name. Prior to 1958 the dark brown sweet had a plain chocolate centre (due to a shortage of milk after the war) and the light brown one was coffee flavoured.’ I almost puked through my nose. ‘Ok – if you are so damn knowledgeable give me a method of extraction for chromatography of colour in Smarties.’ This question had been a plant, organised by a student who had already given me a well groomed argument for the colouring process used in sweet production.

I had scored. The last laugh was mine. My amazing one off display of scientific babble had stunned the young lady into submission. ‘Well Mr Blair……’I broke down. Only read the next bit if you’re a scientist – skip to next paragraph if not… ‘Because of the chemicals involved I would firstly advise you to use eye and hand protection. In order to produce satisfactory results we recommend the minimum number of sweets to be 7 for the pale shades and 4 for the darker shades. The surface colouring is washed off the sweets in 10-25 mls of hot water in a 100ml beaker and the decolourised centres discarded. Boil approximately 1 metre of white wool for 5 minutes in 15 ammonia solution, rinse in cold water and then immerse in the dye extract. Acidify with dilute acetic acid and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove the wool and rise in cold water. Re-extract the dye from the wool by soaking in 10-15 mls 1% Ammonia solution for 5 minutes. Remove the wool and evaporate the dye solution to dryness on a water bath. Add 2 drops of water to dissolve the extracted dyes and spot the solution on a chromatographic paper strip. We recommend that the ascending chromatographic technique be used and for the solvent use a mixture Ethyl Acetate (40 parts), 2- propanol (30 parts) and water (25 parts).This method was established for use on synthetic colours and may not work satisfactorily for riboflavin and cochineal.’

I am a mere uneducated weakling with no hope of securing a victory in this conversation. She had the knowledge – I only had my upbringing to back up what I knew of sugar-coated chocolates. Maybe it was because I eat mouthfuls at a time rather that individual Smarties that I never tasted the orange – who knows. ‘Is there anything I can help you with Mr Blair?’. ‘Um, yeah – tell the government to allow the building of the new Wembley without athletics provision so we can host the World Cup’. ‘Well Mr Blair, did you know that it would take one thousand two hundred and seventy billion, eight hundred and forty six million, six hundred and forty eight thousand, five hundred and sixty Smarties to fill the currently Wembley?’

Suddenly I remembered the advert and chuckled to myself in the face of defeat. It hadn’t just been a clever slogan – Smarties do indeed have all the answers.

Psyching Up

I decided towards the end of last year that 2011 had to include some fundamental new moves in my game – pretty much all for my own benefit.

Firstly, I decided that I had to set myself the challenge of getting fitter and stronger physically and mentally in order to enjoy life more and get the most out of still being reasonably young. On the 1st Jan I started the obligatory new years resolution of losing weight, but this time, adding a little more spice by signing up for a 10 mile hike along Hadrian’s Wall in Northumbria, the Great North Run in Sept for the mental health charity Mind and then was able to take an opportunity to prepare to play at St James’s Park, home of my football team Newcastle United on 25th May. The diet has gone well so far. I’ve lost a stone in the first month and a half and I’m now on to the second stone – again, hopefully by the end of April.

This is a revelation for me – I’m lighter now than I’ve been for 3 years and with it has come a generally good sense of wellbeing with a few minor bumps along the way. Much of the motivation for this came from reading a passage in a book called The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt in which he discusses the relationship between the neurones in the gut and those in the brain. It fostered in me a deep sense that my body and mind were true collaborators for the first time – until now, preferring to think of mind and body as being distinctly different and denying that my body was a reflection of my mind and vice versa. Retraining the elephant ‘one peanut at a time’ has slowly shown benefits in so many ways but this slightly ridiculous ‘penny drop’ moment has influenced my way of being as greatly as anything else I’ve yet experienced. And this leads on to the second decision….

Having spent 3 years having psychotherapy to rewire myself into a more rounded individual [insert fat bloke jokes to suit], the long-standing intrigue I’ve had since I was in my teens around psychology and the things that make people tick are now ripe for the picking. Now is the time to take on some academic study in psychology to build on my social science qualification from a few years ago. Having hoped to start in the Autumn of 2010, circumstances didn’t stack up favourably and I decided to enrol on the MSc Psychology course for May 2011 with the Open University.

This decision isn’t purely on a whim. In fact, having studied with the OU before and also having undertaking psychotherapy for such a prolonged period of time, I can also see the huge benefits to my career in having a better understanding and qualification in psychology to aid my marketing, public relations and management activities professionally. How people work and why they are they way they are is the bedrock of my interests in life and I think that at some point in my latter career I should like to practice in psychotherapy in order to help others to find their sense of inner vision and contemplate the options they have available in shaping a new world view free from the complexities of inherited thought and feeling.

And finally, committing to myself to grow my enjoyment in working to match the satisfaction I get elsewhere seems like the only sensible option not yet taken since reflecting on my life so openly. I’ve always thrived on holding responsibility, especially when I get to try to benefit others with the gifts I’ve been given in life. 2011 does genuinely seem more hopeful and changes are already afoot professionally that seem to be part of a return to form for me.

‘Life goes on, within you, without you’ as George Harrison once told us. 2010 was a year to grieve the loss of my father, travel far away to regain perspective in US and Canada and revitalise my sense of independence in thought, enjoyment and ambition. Now, with a little less weight under my belt, less fog in my mind and regaining my abilities to shape things professionally to a high standard, it feels like all these things I have committed to, at great personal cost and anxiety, are finally baring fruit. The third decade of my life feels like it’s just winding up for something and I hope I recognise what it is when it arrives……

Into the light of a dark black night…..

And so, the end is nigh and another year closes. Goodbye 2010.

The last ten years have had some unbelievable highs and some undeniable lows and yet as the final evening of 2010 passes I can’t help but feel that I’ve grown and changed in ways I couldn’t possibly have imagined.

In these ten years or so my world has opened up from having never been beyond the four corners of England to travelling as far away as China, USA, Canada and most of Europe. My eyes set their sights on a life motivated by things that went before. I achieved it on the surface; the car, the house, the family, the money and yet I felt so empty and alone that I had to turn back round and go back to my youth and undertake the same level of spiritual and psychological growth on the inside as the travels on plane, train and automobile in the real world.

It’s been a period of change and change for the better through experiencing the worst.

In 2000, I was hopeful – as we all were – of great things to come, a new millennium of innovation and discovery, hopes for ourselves, our friends and our families. September 11th 2001 was probably the defining moment for us all, shaping the decade in society and scarring our minds with the sobering vision of how fragile and ruthless humanity can be all in one moment. I had only just left University at the turn of the decade and was starting my first job in 2000 and since then went from the very beginnings as a professional in my field to the very top of the profession in my sector in less than 8 years, on a head of steam trying to prove some about myself. And now, in 2010 I look back fondly at those days spent teaching myself new skills, talking and thinking, innovating and working with fantastic colleagues and pushing myself in a way that was probably unhealthy in many ways but fruitful in so many senses.

I built a family of my own and got married, bought a house, started living ‘the dream’ and held on to almost everyone I’d met in some shape or form as friends or family. I didn’t know back then that only half of me was in play.

But there were losses along the way; my Grandmother in 2004 (the first person to die in my close family since my baby brother) and then in 2010 both my great Aunt and my father Roger.

Throughout this time, the influence of my father played a massive role in changing me – our relationship being one of turbulence, disappointments, compounding tragedies and misrepresentations …..but always love. My journey took me as far away from him as I could get both physically and psychologically in order to truly discover who he was and what he was all about. It was in this decade that I became my father’s son rather than fighting against it and in that change, I found myself and started to put right my misinterpretation of the world, skewed by the lenses of inheritance to create more of my own world view.

My faith in life returns stronger and brighter every day and in many ways I feel like a rite of passage was at the core of what living through this decade was all about.

As I leave 2010, I am blessed with some amazing people in my life – profound love for those directly around me whose life force flows in and around me in ways I have only just been able to grow into. Love is no longer about ownership or ‘rights’ to feel things – nor is it about what you should or shouldn’t get for free just because society tells you so. Love at the close of 2010 is realising that only the people you bring with you in life, who know your story, who are part of the pages in your book are worth the time, energy and effort once afforded to earning money, buying things and owning ‘stuff’. Love isn’t earned, it’s gifted and you can’t choose whether you feel it or not, it’s either there or it’s not but it truly is the strongest compass for where next to tread.

In saying goodbye to 2000-2010, I close a chapter on my life with my Dad and to a version of myself once plagued by uncertainty and anxiety. My Dad gave me my greatest gifts; a passion for thinking, a passion for wanting to help people grow; a passion for music and the arts and most importantly, as I’ve said before, he gave me the story of his life from which I can forever draw inspiration and guidance.

It was said at my Dad’s funeral that he was ‘on to the mystery’ in life. I’d already begun to right myself before he died and as 2011 rises I intend to take up where he left off. My hope for the new year and the years beyond is that I reform my physical capacity, am stronger and more energetic, I love harder and more deeply those I am connected to and that I find a way to harness the gifts I inherited from those I lost in the decade just gone to bring about rise to new lives and friendships through which I can pass those gifts on.

This time last year, I had an overwhelming feeling I was to lose something. This year I don’t fear loss or anticipate gain – I’m just glad to be alive and in the lives of those I hold dear.

I’ll leave you with a recording my brother, sister and I made to be played as the curtain fell on his life with us at his funeral.

‘Blackbird’ – The Blairs (MP3)

‘Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life you were only waiting for this moment to arrive.’

A happy new year to all my family and friends. Lets make it a good one.

Xmas 3.0

With only 5 days to go until Christmas, it’s clear that this year there is next to nothing that people really want or need in the shops. After years of new technological innovations, gadgets and gizmos – it seems the world is somewhat light on originality right now.

Many retailers only stay in business because of the success of a good trading period over Christmas and therefore, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to most to hear people talking about the inevitable consequences of the coldest December on record having an impact on trading figures. No doubt we’re in for interesting winter sales period and potentially more big brands going under in the first or second quarter of 2011.

In this time of fractured families, over-connection, under-privacy and general high standards of living – what is left for us to look forward to as a society? What does the festive season really bring us other than headaches about having to put up with long disinterested relatives or mashups of Jamie Oliver’s culinary expertise, without the hint of patience required to ignore mother-in-law’s set methodology for doing things?

It seems a long time since the religiosity of Christmas was the real key to the festive period in public consciousness. The Beeb manage to slip a few traditional references into their schedule, a sprinkling of Jesus here and a waft of ‘services’ there but that’s almost it. The Christmas scheduling starts weeks before Christmas itself and as early as second week in November, the graphical idents change to have a seasonal flavour centring around snow, Santa and fabulous oversizes trees. The over complication of a simple set of stories handed down over generations, both that of Jesus and the supplementary Old St Nic, have left us having to try to find new ways of milking this over-baked time of year. If Jesus was Xmas 1.0 and Santa – the Coca-Cola infused St Nicholas as 2.0 – surely we’re on the edge of culturally void Christmas v3.0 now firmly establishing itself. And what might this look like for our children and children’s children?

In my lifetime I’ve experience both ends of the festive season – 10 years of singing in a church choir as a boy brought me as close to the story of the nativity as most can get – including one year actually performing for the BBC in a barn on the top of a hill with real donkey in the hay. On the flip side I’ve spent periods where I’ve done nothing but begrudgingly sit and play bored games (note, this is the correct spelling as far as I’m concerned) and trough through as much ‘bird’ as possible (with trimmings) – eager to move on to the rapid opening of items with a 1 in 5 likelihood of still being present in my collection of valuable belongings in 12 months time. The rest, likely to end up at the charity shop.

I’ve gone from quality to quantity, back to quality and quantity and now I arrive at 2010 aged 33, dumbfounded by having run out of things to buy people, sentiments to share that sound genuine when people have heard them all before and having lost my father.

But to me, the spirit of Christmas isn’t in the gifts, the food or the waxing and waning levels of self loathing and dissatisfaction with board games. It’s in what my father saw. Christmas is a time for music.

Some of the most wonderful pieces of music, both popular and classic have been written to capture the essence and magic surrounding the stories of Christmas. Tails of great journeys, of hope, of newness and birth, of wonder and truth – togetherness and joy. The music that plays against a backdrop of a cold winters night in the reverberant churches, concert halls and cathedrals of these isles carry in the wind and warm the hearts of all but the very staunchly anti-festive types. The ‘bah-humbugs’ of this world struggle not to be penetrated by the music of the season and to me, the greatest childhood memories are to be found in the innocence of the lone boy singing Once In Royal David’s City or the folk songs found most recently in the social commentaries retold on Sting’s ‘If On A Winters Night’ album from around the country.

But for all the music that has come and gone, Xmas 3.0 brings – with it’s non-Santa, non-Jesus commercial rhetoric – the biggest threat to the furthering of this great tradition of wonderful music in the form of the X factor and the overplaying of the Christmas number one, which invariably has no connection with the period at all – it’s just a song, written by someone other than the artist performing it – geared for sales purposes and not with the slightest attempt to add to an impressive collection of Christmas ‘greatest hits’ in the winter air.

Maybe, however, this is no different a form a social commentary than the traditional carols or folk songs told at their time. Is it that Xmas 3.0 is actually about the sterilisation of culture such that seasons have no impact on musical popularity in the same ways that you can buy ripe tomatoes and peppers out of season thanks to international food trading markets and your local Tesco. Has Simon Cowell simply shown us that our 24/7, reality obsessed society treats its festive seasons in the UK with as much whitewash as everything else around us? Bland Britain is never more acutely in sight than during the modern festive period. Every High Street, every radio station, every shop is selling us everything and nothing. Nothing carries meaning any more and the Christmas no.1 isn’t even vaguely related to Xmas, it’s just a peak trading week for sales.

So as a active contributor to this new social commentary, to the acceptance of Xmas 3.0 by being a ‘consumer’ – what will my children be singing instead of Jive Bunny or Slade on the assumption that the increasing secularisation will mean that John Taverner’s ‘The Lamb’ will be a long forgotten part of seasonal music history by they time they get here. The honest answer is I don’t know. Something of substance people, please.

I guess it’s still true to say that every Christmas, we seem to follow the progress of a ‘rising star’ in this new pop culture we’ve manufactured for ourselves on the back of judgement by two wise men and a pretty Geordie. I for one still prefer the music that was born to retell the story of a rising star that appeared in the sky and made it’s way to a little town called Bethlehem, bringing with it three wise men baring gifts for an infant.

If on a winter’s night……

DVD’s & Tissues

It was a Saturday like every other weekend,
The sound of music floating slowly through the heath end,
He sleeps in late to forget the night before.

And though the tour bus doesn’t leave until the morning,
He’ll play a show to the crowd and they’ll adore him,
He’s getting up to get down.

And though he’s played it a thousand times,
And always shines to those who come to see,
A little bit inside has died a thousands time before.

It isn’t easy,
It used to be easy.

But the Showman, the Showman has his issues,
Prozac, DVD’s and tissues,
It not much but it’s a living, living on a knife-edge.
But the Showman, the Showman has his issues,
Prozac, DVD’s and tissues,
It isn’t easy.

It’s the silence amongst a 1,000 people,
He can feel his breathing become feeble,
He lets the crowd sing the lines they’d come to hear,

And as he leaves the stage, he’s almost finished
The line of people don’t see his soul diminish,
He’s getting down just to shoot up.

And though he’s done it a thousand times,
It always shines to those who come to see,
A little bit inside has died a thousands time before.

It isn’t easy,
It used to be easy.

But the Showman, the Showman has his issues,
Prozac, DVD’s and tissues,
It not much but it’s a living, living on a knife-edge.
But the Showman, the Showman has his issues,
Prozac, DVD’s and tissues,
It isn’t easy any more.

___________________________

Scratch recording of the song is here

___________________________

This song was commissioned by Simon Heeley thanks to his suggestion for something for me to do this afternoon…

A quiet life shared elsewhere…

Last night at The Tabernacle in London, Kate Walsh played her final gig of 2010. I was in the audience and without any warning, Kate looked at me and dedicated her performance of ‘Your Song’ to me in front of a few hundred people. I didn’t know how to react in other way than stick my tongue out and look remarkably sheepish [ I have no sense of class, charm or ‘play it cool Trigg, play it cool’ in my body ...]

A few days back I blogged about the song writing process. Last night, after I got home I finally got round to reading the sleeve notes for ‘Peppermint Radio’. All this time, I’ve made an assumption that quietly somewhere else in the world, Kate had used the process of writing songs in the same way I have – to express part of herself that couldn’t / wouldn’t come out in any other form than song. The paragraph below mirrors exactly the point I’ve reached in my life after 33 years. She clearly got there earlier than I.

Sleeve Notes to Peppermint Radio:

‘I used to say I’d never record a covers album, thinking I would always have masses of material up my sleeve, endless heartache to pour my creativity into and would be able to wallow in my song writing for many years to come. But, things haven’t quite worked out that way. Happily for me, because as time goes on and life seems to get simpler and less emotionally challenging, I am finding that years of honing my craft as a writer of ‘songs for the lonely heart’ have left my well a little dry, now that I am more content with who I am and the world around me. In the past, my song writing was always my form of self-therapy. Whenever things got tough (and they frequently were as I had such a knack for blowing things out of proportion), I could turn to my song writing, needing it to express all the feelings and emotions I had inside of me, and loving the whole wallowing process of pouring my heart out, safe in the feeling that ‘nobody understood me’. Life is very different now, and through a process of different revelations I have had about my life over the last couple of years, and now that I am much happier within my self, I am finding I have to re-learn how to write songs again. I always maintained it was much harder to write a happy song so now I am faced with the new challenge of song writing for the love of it, as opposed to song writing for therapy.’

I could have written every line.

After catching up with Kate after the gig to say thank you, we exchanged a glance that said ‘It’s ok, I get you now’. It’s so hard to admire someone who makes a living from public performance without stepping desperately close to the ‘creepy’ territory and people assuming you’re weird for wanting to engage properly with the person, not just the performance. I walked away last night and into today feeling that she wouldn’t have drawn attention to another soul in public unless she felt it was a nod to something she felt happy to do.

I can safely say – after 33 years of life – the joy of coming to know Kate Walsh (without actually knowing a damn thing about her actual life) is to empathise with how she became the Kate on stage. Quietly, somewhere else, someone was feeling the same things and taking her environmental situation, growing up with music all around her like I did, to express the things she’s could see, feel but package in a way that made total sense to her.

When Kate goes back and plays those tunes, I know she’s transported in time to a version of herself now obsolete. Today, I realise that I need to take the bait and reincarnate my capacity to write and not do it through feelings of being loved less than I hoped to be and now write for the love of life itself whilst still being for me.

‘Yoda: Told you I did. Reckless is he. Now, matters are worse. Obi-Wan:         That boy is our last hope. Yoda:         No…….There is another…….’

Ghost In The Machine

The last few nights in a row I’ve had a visitation.

One of the strange things about your past is so much of it is still present under the bonnet. As I’ve mentioned before, my Dad died on 10th April. Since that date, I’ve had quite a few dreams where he has appeared in some form or another either to directly talk to me or involved in some way or another or situation. It’s a strange phenomenon.

The first 33 years of my life have been spent wrestling with things, ghosts in the machine if you will. Last winter, I went to Scotland and wrote and recorded this track with that sentiment in mind. Would be interested to hear what people think of it.

http://www.andyblair.co.uk/mp3/Ghost%20In%20The%20Machine%20(MR%20Mix).mp3

Meditations on a song…

One of the purest forms of pleasure I’ve been able to indulge myself in over my lifetime has been song writing.

As I’ve gotten older, the innocence and jollity of creating something from nothing has waxed and waned, sometimes producing a piece to be proud of – sometimes producing half a set of lyrics, a dodgy melody and ultimately something destined for the bin. In the quest to express myself (to myself), I’ve learnt over time that there’s definitely a state of mind that precedes writing a song that is the only way to tap into the core of things and let the inside out.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been encouraged by a few individuals to try meditation. Up until this point in life, I’d never properly considered the art, how difficult it might be, nor how hard it is to shut the world around you out and connect to your subconscious and find you core. It dawned on me whilst watching one of my heroins, Kate Walsh, perform on Wednesday night, that the wistful skill of combining everyday words with melody, accompaniment and narrative is something that I’ve never had to ‘think’ about. It just came naturally. The closest I’ve come to a total meditative state have been those occasions when connected to a piano, combining my soul with the ebony and ivory (or in my case right now, plastic and electricity as I have a Yamaha S90 ES stage piano) and letting the contents run free.

The song writing process is a mystery to me. Yes, yes – I can write songs on demand, you can give me a topic and I’ll bash out a six chord, couplet ridden 3 verses and a chorus on pretty much any topic you like – but the real stuff, the ‘my story’ incarnate will not be commanded. It has a mind of it’s own. Literally.

Generally speaking, it starts with a feeling somewhere in the body – a compelling urge to go and find an instrument. Normally it comes before or after an emotional event and almost always has no sense of what it’s going to create – only that it will be consistent in style to its last outing and not drift too far away from its medium (my musical ability on said instrument).

And then, like the very best things in life, it’s a simple process. My head somehow tunes into my hands and the two start to tell each other the keyframes of some archetypal story about life yet told in an effervescent fashion as if fuelled by some deep connection to a primal collective consciousness. The lives of people I’ve never met yet somehow seem to know spring to mind. Sounds that resemble words begin to come through my mouth forming random plosives and hums that sounds like phrases and sentences. The call and response of hands, lips, breathes and vibrations in the throat simmer and pop and then from nonsense comes the first coherence. A line is born. Tangled up all together with its melodic twin – destined to be inseparable from birth.

And from that line, that rise and fall, that place I know not where – comes a statement of place, purpose, presence in a situation. Maybe a feeling. Possibly a person. A snapshot moment that opens a window into another place to be captured, described, pulled out of time and packaged in as an observation and in song. Within 20 minutes, the lyric, form and melody are complete – the truest expressions never take longer [and should it go over this boundary you can feel the creep of conscious desire to complete it pushing in and disturbing moment].

Something came from nothing, yet nothing must have been something all along.

If I could find a way to connect to the source in other parts of my life – I really do wonder what could come of it. For now, I’m glad that the most intimate moments I have with myself don’t involve sexual stimulation, chemical ecstasy, gastronomic pleasure or any of the carnal sins. It truly is the greatest feeling to discover that what you find on the inside of your self is as rich, full and real to you as everything you can see, touch, smell and taste in the good life.

If I could take only one item with me, it would be my lyric book. The stories from life. The stuff I made. The space I filled. The truest parts of me that even I can’t see.

Sometimes I really to feel I could live on a song….

Projecting forward

As time goes on I find strange things going on in my mind. It’s been three years now since I started self reflecting on what I have/had become and how I went about my business in life. During that time I have questioned just about every preconception I had about the world and, more importantly, myself.

Having worked through so much thick sludge in order to find the purer stuff – I’m now in an interesting position. Having worked out that so many of my motivations in life have been built around bad information, I’ve been very much made aware of how I project onto situations, objects and people.

What do I mean by projection? In Freudian psychology, Psychological projection or projection bias is a psychological defense mechanism where a person unconsciously denies their own attributes, thoughts, and emotions, which are then ascribed to the outside world, such as to the weather, or to other people. Thus, it involves imagining or projecting that others have those feelings.

Projection reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the unwanted unconscious impulses or desires without letting the conscious mind recognize them. An example of this behaviour might be blaming another for self failure. The mind may avoid the discomfort of consciously admitting personal faults by keeping those feelings unconscious, and redirect their libidinal satisfaction by attaching, or “projecting,” those same faults onto another. The same can be said of relationships. That which is unknown to the self if projected unconsciously onto the partner as a set of expectations. When the partner fails to meet those expectations – trouble ensues.

By I’m now struggling with a slightly different problem; how do I project forward again? Having become very aware of the defense mechanisms that I’ve used to cope with my life to date (and hoping that I’ve got 50 years of it left to go yet) how do you go about positively projecting what you want in life in order to have a new yellow brick road to follow. Yes I want to love and be loved. Yes, I want that person to be my soul mate.

Yes, I want kids. Yes, I want a new job (but I don’t know what I want to do). Yes, I want to move house but I don’t know where to or what the house should be like. Yes, I want to travel and achieve things but I don’t know where or why. I seem to be routed to the spot in my mind somewhere – failing in an attempt to genuinely dream of my hopes for the future.

Where does one go from here? The advice I’ve been given is that I need to ‘find my core’, possibly using meditation to find and align everything and see if I can tap in to a higher sense of consciousness to find out what I really want for myself. More than happy to try that. The sad thing is, I used to be such a dreamer, a poet, a songwriter, a projector. I used to breathe life into things in a way that, looking back, seems so naive but also so true.

When you realise everything thing you think about yourself is probably false – how do you reincarnate yourself on better grounding. Until I can find a way to really think about what I want for the rest of my life, how can I expect anyone I know or love to join me on that journey.

I need to find a way to project the essence of me into the future and look for the life I want to live. I’ve stopped living the life I’ve left behind but feel like I’ve got off one train heading in the wrong direction and am Sat on the platform with a big crumpled timetable trying to work out where to go and what time its likely to arrive, despite the inevitable delays.