It’s about time I wrote something.
I pressed return twice to start this paragraph and thought about quitting on it… do I really want to write this stuff? Yes, I’ll keep going this time.
I last wrote in late November. Shortly after that, my mum got progressively more ill from the cancer she had, and died in January. I can say with all honestly that it destroyed me – there was nothing left by April.
There are patterns that follow grief of that depth. There are big things; the questioning of what life really is, the anger at the injustice of losing someone so close to me and so fucking amazing to the sheer awfulness of cancer. Then there is something much more pervasive – the emotional tug of small things; the quiet agony of phone calls that can’t be made, realising I can’t send her that cute picture of my daughter laughing in the sun, the knowledge that I will never get to play her any more music that I make. It feels like snagging your coat on a door handle each and every time. You can’t prepare for it, and you recover quickly, but at the moment it comes, it is a shock. I am finding some peace in it all, but very, very slowly, and I know it will be a long time – maybe a lifetime – before I truly get over it.
That cold UK spring was a bastard, only serving to exacerbate the general malaise. There were days I just couldn’t do anything. But for the most part, music was my salvation. I just decided to create something every day, be it a few lines of lyrics or a whole track. I would just make sure that by the time I left the studio (or sometimes the café) I would have something that wasn’t there that morning. New collaborations were the source of some real excitement, co-writing and co-producing with some very talented people. I have decided, however, to keep a lid on those things until it’s time. I hear mum’s voice in my ear telling me not to dilute the energy, to stay focused and get it done.
Boris’s album that I co-produced went to number one in Russia (downloads only, though, I think) which was cool.
I have also finally managed to get my records up on Spotify. Here’s Stars and Satellites, the chilled-out hypnotic loop that closes my second album Sayonara Deadweight. Leo Abrahams, my friend and collaborator, provides a fabulous guitar texture. Alan Van Kleef, now making amazing drums as VK Drums, played percussion, and Joanne Shaw sang some beautiful backing vocals. I played the other stuff.