I feel really weird at the moment; like something is wrong but I can't put my finger on it. Don't worry about it, this is pretty normal for me; I get this a lot. What I can't work out is whether it's over-sensitivity to something going on behind the scenes, or my own short-sighted inability to see the obvious thing properly.
The wood for the trees.
I still have a little chesty cough. The flu thing I had while Gary Lineker was ripping the bathroom apart the other week is long gone, but this irrepressible symptom remains. It doesn't aid singing and song writing, I can say. Neither does it help with that other thing I used to do, oh you remember... where you sort of shut your eyes at the end of one day... and then wake up at the beginning of another.
Gosh, that'd be nice.
-
My colleague held up an album. It looked like it was made of ancient parchment, which happened to be exactly the same shape as a CD case.
"Not something you see every day," he said tapping at it with his index finger.
"What's that?"
"Wax," he said, "it's a wax seal!"
I looked closely. It was. The folds of the CD case were overlapped together by a penny-sized disc of imprinted, blood-red wax that might as well have come from a museum of ancient signatures.
"My girlfriend's dad's partner's son," he said casually, "is in a band - like a folky metal band where they play medieval folk stories but thrash metal? This is their first album. Thought I'd give it a go."
That's weird, I thought. I'm sure I know a band like that. An old friend of mine in Birmingham plays bass in a band where they dress up in kilts and boots and monks' habits and throw their hair around during guitar solos. They're always trying to talk like they're from the fourteenth century, throwing in thees and thous and forsooths while clutching electric guitars and flagons of ale.
"Your girlfriend's dad's partner's son..." I said, trailing sceptically. Another colleague chipped in, suggesting that the band couldn't have been hoping to sell many discs if they were hand-sealing them all with actual wax.
"Are they any good?" I asked the owner of the disc.
"Yeah they're alright," he said, "not exactly my type of thing, but I'll give it a go."
Now, if it is the same band (and how many medieval soothsaying screamo black metal bands are out there?) then I'm not sure how you give something like that 'a go'. I love music, but this stuff just sounds like a complicated way to blow up a PA system to me. It is very much an acquired taste, listening to someone growling into a microphone while his friends throw themselves about with their instruments. I'm sure they're very good but I remain (happily) uninitiated. I resolved to find out just whether the world is as small as I think it is.
Seeing the wood for the trees is all about focus isn't it? Sometimes you just have to adjust the lens until the thing you're searching for becomes crisp and clear in front of you. I think sometimes too, I know this all too well, but I'm very scared of it. Actually, the more I think about it, that's pretty much exactly my problem today. The thing I require is probably the thing I fear.
And it's probably staring me in the face.
The wood for the trees.
I still have a little chesty cough. The flu thing I had while Gary Lineker was ripping the bathroom apart the other week is long gone, but this irrepressible symptom remains. It doesn't aid singing and song writing, I can say. Neither does it help with that other thing I used to do, oh you remember... where you sort of shut your eyes at the end of one day... and then wake up at the beginning of another.
Gosh, that'd be nice.
-
My colleague held up an album. It looked like it was made of ancient parchment, which happened to be exactly the same shape as a CD case.
"Not something you see every day," he said tapping at it with his index finger.
"What's that?"
"Wax," he said, "it's a wax seal!"
I looked closely. It was. The folds of the CD case were overlapped together by a penny-sized disc of imprinted, blood-red wax that might as well have come from a museum of ancient signatures.
"My girlfriend's dad's partner's son," he said casually, "is in a band - like a folky metal band where they play medieval folk stories but thrash metal? This is their first album. Thought I'd give it a go."
That's weird, I thought. I'm sure I know a band like that. An old friend of mine in Birmingham plays bass in a band where they dress up in kilts and boots and monks' habits and throw their hair around during guitar solos. They're always trying to talk like they're from the fourteenth century, throwing in thees and thous and forsooths while clutching electric guitars and flagons of ale.
"Your girlfriend's dad's partner's son..." I said, trailing sceptically. Another colleague chipped in, suggesting that the band couldn't have been hoping to sell many discs if they were hand-sealing them all with actual wax.
"Are they any good?" I asked the owner of the disc.
"Yeah they're alright," he said, "not exactly my type of thing, but I'll give it a go."
Now, if it is the same band (and how many medieval soothsaying screamo black metal bands are out there?) then I'm not sure how you give something like that 'a go'. I love music, but this stuff just sounds like a complicated way to blow up a PA system to me. It is very much an acquired taste, listening to someone growling into a microphone while his friends throw themselves about with their instruments. I'm sure they're very good but I remain (happily) uninitiated. I resolved to find out just whether the world is as small as I think it is.
Seeing the wood for the trees is all about focus isn't it? Sometimes you just have to adjust the lens until the thing you're searching for becomes crisp and clear in front of you. I think sometimes too, I know this all too well, but I'm very scared of it. Actually, the more I think about it, that's pretty much exactly my problem today. The thing I require is probably the thing I fear.
And it's probably staring me in the face.
No comments:
Post a Comment