Down to earth

Published on Fri 14 Jan 2011

I'm sat in my favourite (i.e. the only) bar in Heathrow Terminal 3, being subjected to Keane, drinking a fairly nice glass of wine and waiting for the gate to open to my flight. It's been a frustrating couple of weeks since Christmas - I think having some time off has reminded me that life is a lot more fun when I don't use up most of my energy thinking about work, and returning to that situation has been a bit depressing. I know I shouldn't complain - life is good and I have a fairly varied and challenging job that essentially allows me to do whatever I like. It just wasn't what I thought I'd end up doing. We live in strange times for art I think. I wonder if historically people made art/wrote music mainly for money, for recognition or for the love of it. Music's a funny one, because the recognition of a performance is so integral to the thing.

It's probably even more true of stand up comedy. I finally got around to starting Stewart Lee's book about (eventually) making a success of that, and it's just as good as everyone says it is. The journey here flew by. I was actually a little disappointed when I arrived and had to stop reading. He's a very clever man, and it's very interesting to see the amount of technique that goes into what he does, from how he's coralling the audience at any given moment to which words are just amusing. I also admire his attitude that you shouldn't worry too much about what other people think, because most people are idiots. Is it still arrogance if you are actually better than everyone else?

I've been thinking about music a lot more in the last month or so. Possibly because I've pretty much completed the 6 main songs for the little CD I've been procrastinating about for, Christ, about 18 months now. Just waiting for a David Greeves special and a load of editing on the silly secret track and then it'll be done. It's, as you'll know if you were reading a year ago when I first wrote about it, 3 (well, 4) new(er) songs and 3 songs that I thought about putting on Scars but didn't. The old ones were on EPs years ago, but I wanted them to be recorded to a better standard than that. I'm weirdly loyal to songs. I'm very much looking forward to starting on the next thing. I think I'm finally over how crazy making Scars drove me, and I've realised that nobody but me cares about whether everything is perfect. Or at all really.

I've finally managed to write something without complaining about customer service issues. Or have I? I got a letter from HMRC reminding me to pay my taxes but not saying how much I owe, what with what's been paid on account, and the (not insignificant) amount that's been overpaid in the past because they are incapable of telling you how much you owe at any given point. Surely someone must know? I can't be that hard to work out. I think maybe they are in league with Santander. Still no progress on that front by the way. There comes a point where the amount of time you've spent on something is no longer worth what you get out of it. A third revenue stream! Not only the helpline charges, and the interest they steal by not giving you your savings back, but the savings themselves when you realise that life is too short to spend this much time queueing in Santander. I wonder how the citizens of Santander feel about being associated with such an awful organisation? Maybe they should be told.