#dontmissit

I'll be performing at Primal Live at Camp and Furnace in Liverpool on Sunday 6th October 2024 in aid of The Whitechapel Centre, the region's leading homeless charity. Help me to support them by buying tickets for the event at https://mistrust.bandcamp.com or making a donation at https://www.justgiving.com/page/mistrust-tb-whitechapel

This is a quick video from the welcome meeting for Primal Live on 14th August 2024. The journey starts here!

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@primallive @whitechapelcentre @otb_onlytherealest @campandfurnace @liverpool_gig @roundthecorner_liv

#liverpool #whitechapelcentre #homeless #campandfurnace #electronica #popmusic #donate

I’ve been walking around with a frown on my face.

Especially when the sun is hiding behind the clouds, when it isn’t bright enough to warrant my eyebrows furrowing so deeply in the middle of my face. 

I’ve realised that I walk around like I’ve got a fucking chip dancing on my shoulder. Like I’ve got something to say. I’m more serious than any of you. I have a sadness you’ll never see. I have fear that you’ll never know. Why do I do this? The more I notice it, the more I notice it in others. 

I think the most sensitive among us tell ourselves stories about who we are, as a kind of buffer between us and the rest of the world. If there’s a soft barrier of fluff, protecting us from all the plastic and all the pollution and idiocy and noise, nothing can get in, right? We’re a naturally resistant bunch; resistant to trying, resistant to the journey, resistant to the work. All because, deep down, trudging past all our past experiences, our sad memories, the crushing feeling of historical failures, of genetic behaviours and inherited pain, at the very core of everything, we’re afraid to fall. 

Neither has it escaped my notice that we also tend to have the most ideas, we really do try the most, we really do work hard to move past that resistance. We just give ourselves a really, really hard time about the work that we do do.

I had a really great conversation with a friend recently. He mentioned his own resistance, and it gave me pause. How much do I resist? What gives me the most anxiety? I tell myself fables about how I don’t need to try, I’m quite content and happy without all that, thanks very much. I like my quiet life (I do, as it happens), but what was all this for if I’m just gonna jack it in because I enjoy my living room?!*

*I did actually think this.

So as our feet dragged around in circles around the colourful streets of Soho, it occurred to me that my fear would literally do anything it took to keep me contained in a similar cycle. Conditioned by it, never moving, never progressing. The people I admire the most are the ones that just do, and yet doing gives me so many willies I’m considering filing a lawsuit against the very sentiment.

#willies

Oddly enough, things that are well within my remit are the very things that I instinctively reject. Push against first, think about second and finally do third...reluctantly, hesitantly. I’m not leaving that part out. The most successful of us would have us believe they over-came their obstacles to achieve their goals, but my bet is that even when they did it, they felt sick about it. Nobody is ever sure of the outcomes of their work when they’re doing it, it’s only when there is a result that we can lament over our past anxieties. But those anxieties never go away; they’re just hovering around the next goal. Accepting that is important, and I know this because I’ve been known to be very smug about my good days, and humbled in my bad. So I have to do the work every day to hardwire the brain to make me happier. 

The path to happiness is a constant, quiet journey. I’m only just coming to realise that. So while I’m trying not to guilt myself about my fear, I’m focusing on doing the things that I’m good at, instead of worrying about getting it wrong. It starts by doing. Doing a shitty job, doing the bare minimal of what someone has asked of you, it’s just trying. Nothing more. Personally, once I’ve climbed that first barrier, I realise that the drop isn’t really that high. When you’re climbing an actual cliff above the ocean, it’s not scary. You can fall back in the water, but it won’t hurt so long as you don’t bash your head off the rocks and drown. What I’m saying is, you just get another foothold and learn where not to step, what not to do this time, but, you know, the journey just isn’t straight forward. Life isn’t a parallel line between where you started and where you finish. The line is traversing and squiggly and sometimes doubles back, checks itself, surges forward, stops for a while. Life is not linear, one point to another. It is constant. Going, doing, moving, moment after moment.

It’s easier to stay in bed. It’s easier not to do. It’s easier not to try. You don’t miss anything.

It’s also way better to get up and see the warm razors of sunlight coming through your curtains and the little dust motes dancing within it. It’s way better to hear the annoying cawing of two magpies chattering at 6am. It’s so much better to go for the run and see the old guy on his too-small moped with a half smoked cigarette hanging from his mouth with a trail of traffic behind him and minding his own sweet business, or the little girl riding what must have been a ridiculously expensive display-of-wealth-furry-horse-on-wheels in a South London park. It’s so much better to have written the song, to have written the book, to have looked someone in the eye and smiled and received one back. It’s so much more fulfilling to have gone to bed knowing you tried. 

Even if it was the bare minimal. Even if you made a mistake; the mistakes just carve out the path ahead so you don’t make them again. And if you do make them again? Doesn’t matter. You didn’t miss anything.

I’ve resisted trying for a long time. Resisted seeing friends, resisted committing to plans, resisted making myself vulnerable with the people I love. Resisted talking back, resisted standing up for myself. Resisted writing, singing, making. Resisted my art. 

So part of the battle is recognising when we’re resisting doing the thing because we’re afraid.

And so fucking what? We’re all afraid. Everyone’s afraid. The vast majority of people in the world don’t know who you are, and even if they happen to, what makes you think they’re not so wrapped up in their own worlds to really care about yours? They’re too terrified about their own. So you might as well just do it, right? Everyone fucks up. Nobodies looking. What makes us so bloody precious?

I need to stop treating myself like a faberge egg and more like the relentless and resilient oak tree that I am. It’ll take some work.

Not doing means I’m not living.

Romance is a bonus book

Yes... I guess I’ve fallen for K Drama at last! >^< Going from the person who would usually find the guys too flashy and fake somehow because that’s the impression I had seeing most of the actors with hair dyed in the most unnatural colours or wearing contact lenses and the girls having undergone countless plastic surgeries... I usually get very picky about films and series in general, if it doesn’t appeal to me from the plot, which might be too shallow or the story too protagonist-cantered, a failure at creating a climax, shallow characters i.e. no proper character development etc...

But for the first time I have to admit that I really, really fell in love with this series. I stumbled across it on Netflix and truth be said I didn’t like the synopsis and the trailer, but I still decided to give it a go and got absorbed into it sooooo quickly *^* I have a deep appreciation and understanding for the plot and I really value the real life situations they tried to include, the hardships of life from an adult’s point of view and not a teenager. The social implications and pressure, the work life in general... it’s a very entertaining show and yet an emotional one, well to me at least. I did end up pouring out tears T.T