Sunday 13 April 2014

It's like you've got one of those dentist's mirrors and you're using it to peek around the corner of our lives like a Hollywood spy.

So we've got an interview today. Cool! Not a bad way to spend a Sunday evening.

It makes you wonder how to be, though. How do we turn up? What do you wear to appear in words? Does it change anything? Who do you appear as? Yourself? Maybe. What if even you find yourself somewhat of a doof? What risks do you run in putting up a front? Especially if you question your own judgement on what makes someone not a doof. Using the word 'doof' marks you as something of an ass on its own. So what do you do?

Are you charming? Who knows? Could you pretend to be? Maybe.

Are you disarmingly humble? No.

Do you risk, in projecting an air of confidence, appearing to think that you're more talented than the person on the other end of the dictaphone thinks you are? Where are we then? Does that air result in your convincing people that there's more to you than first appears, that perhaps your work demands an even more positive appraisal? Or do you come off as some arrogant and clueless little thing, convinced of its own superiority but ignorant of how opinions are formed in other peoples heads?

What if you come across as caring too much about how you're taken by others?

What if you come across as alarmingly insecure, or worse, boring?

No, conversations are too big a risk to take. Expression is too big a risk to take. What I think we should do is just sit indoors and never talk to anyone, ever, about anything at all. Like Kate Bush, but without that nagging history of success.

Maybe it doesn't matter. At all. Maybe it's all OK. Maybe there's no such thing as expressing an opinion or attitude that doesn't potentially alienate a large number of the people you're supposed to be trying to get on your side. Maybe if you try and please everyone you just end up going into politics, claiming that The Big Society is part of some grand spiritual mission rather than an attempt to rip out hard fought for governmental support for people who weren't born into a comfortable network of potential. Are there no workhouses? No? Then they should build their own.

So who cares, eh? These questions rise and fall, and the only answer is to go and do and be and not care about it. Have fun, and ignore the sirens and riots that result outside the pub door as a result of what you just said.

I hope you're well, having your Sunday. I keep saying it, but things are coming. We are working, and we are happy with how it's sounding. Artwork, at the mo. That's where we are. The sounds are there. It's coming. And we just might know when, but, as is usual with self-production, we're taking the time to do it right, lest we alienate anyone; lest we fail to appeal to every living thing and come across as people with ideas.

Tim

This unpopular post written with the aid of self-reflexive irony.

Achieve.

All milky and lava-lamp-ish the street-lights reflecting on my big red car bonnet as I curl it round at night all sound and echoing engine...