29 January - Music

This week is best left to the footnotes of history. I wish I could drag and drop days to the trash can icon, so that I never have to think about them again. Apart from, that is, having been to two excellent gigs the last few nights. Martha Wainwright and Gruff Rhys.

It sounds naff but I am a huge fan of both. I hate the word fan as a description of your admiration to someone or thing. It feels something flippant, or childish. It seems often synonymously used with the music industry, and I scold myself for using it here in lazy writing.

Martha was brilliant. She always is, in a way that almost diminishes how good she is. It seems so effortless and expected. Her brother Rufus is the same. And music is one of the few things feeding me successfully - it keeps me nourished, it makes me feel like my heart is finally beating. Live music especially.  

I find it odd sometimes listening to Martha and Rufus' music now. Their incredible music carried me through a particularly dark time a few years ago. An ambulance constructed of heartfelt crotchets and bridges. 

Listening to those songs now scoops me up in a large open topped fender and sends me flying back to that time. Its a tiny bit uncomfortable and yet also very comforting. It's like bumping into your ex. Hashtag awkward-but-kinda-nice. 

The worst part for me I guess, was the reminder that in someways, I have come full circle again. I've moved on so much and yet have somehow managed to end up back at the start line. 

And that is, singularly, the most heaviest weight to carry. If you had told me this during that time, that after all this that was the outcome, I'm not sure I would have been strong enough to have resisted the sirens of death drive.

9th January

I saw La La Land last night which is a film that broke my brain. Aside from jokes about it being a film about teletubbies, I'd probably enjoy it more when not already feeling in a strange flux of no man land life when it comes to failed aspirations.

Tested holding the new iPhone 7+ in one hand today in work; it was like what I can only imagine trying to contain a rhinoceros in your palm. And I have giant hands (they often get mistaken for those huge foam hands audience members in gladiators used to brandish). Maybe the size is not a bad thing- it will encourage me and others to stop using their phones so much whilst out and about.

 I often worry I do this and don't take enough notice of the world around me; getting too engrossed in bombarding my (poor suffering) friends with text messages about how I've seen a su pollard 45. Maybe it's worth remortgaging a kidney to get an iPhone 7+.

I then mashed my laptop keyboard to enter a long string of random 38636363937262839483 sianz numbers (testing data inputs- there was actually a genuine reason) only to somehow inadvertently activate Spotify - next thing I knew, an obscure Japanese version of Video killed the radio star starting playing from my computer like the hard drive was possessed by a cheesey japanese pop ghost. If I was to be haunted by anything, aside from bouncer the dog, I think the random kitsch obscure cover version spectre would be my choice.