Some videos

I haven’t been much in the mood for blogging lately, or writing or for being creative at all really. The family shit that has been going on (which has actually led to some progress, which was a pleasant surprise), coupled with the work shit that has been going on at the same time, have meant that motivating myself to do anything at all has been hard. I have a history of depression, or more accurately tendencies towards depression, and though I mostly manage to keep it in check, when everything seemingly conspires against me, I sometimes feel overwhelmed and see myself slipping back into the old mindset - the first phase of which is usually lethargy (well, after the mood swings). As long as I’m aware of it I can usually force myself to keep moving, keep busy, to stop me slipping into the rut of not being bothered or motivated to move or do anything much at all. But sometimes it gets too much and I just settle for going through the motions and basically vegitating, and once that starts it’s hard to get out of the cycle. It’s like being in a pit that just about shallow enough to climb out of, with interesting things all round the edges, but you’re sat in a really comfy chair in really heavy wet clothes and as much as you want to go do interesting things, it’s just too much effort. Once in this pit, anything is a chore, be it getting up to make food, performing some random task you’ve agreed to do to help someone out, or even just moving at all. People think of depression as feeing down, or sad, and while there’s certainly an element of that – I have felt fucking miserable lately – I always (thanks to David Baddiel’s brilliant description in whatever love means) think of the literal meaning of depression, as in to press something down – to depress a switch. That’s what it feels like, having an actual physical weight on you.

So this week I booked some days of work and went to Newmarket to do a gig with an old friend and colleague, who I used to regularly play guitar with until he moved down south. We generally meet up every year or so, either up here or down there, and whenever we do we try and squeeze in a gig somewhere. We have a short set of mostly covers, that we just like playing and which need little rehearsing, so we can usually just pick up where we left off. Having spent a couple of hours on Wednesday night going through the existing songs, Thursday was then spent expanding the set – working out new arrangements and deciding what we could and couldn’t pull off. Thursday night was the gig, and in spite of there being a small crowd and some sound issues (I have lost my pickup for my acoustic guitar so had to play into a mic – I am never doing that again), the set went down well and we had a good night. The videos from the gig didn’t come out particularly well though, because of the noise of the pub and unbalanced sound due to my immense crapness at remembering to find one of the most fundamental parts of our required equipment. So that evening, full of JD, we decided to get up the following morning and bash through the set one more time, and video it for posterity. Thus with fingertips so battered and painful from playing far harder and longer than either of us usually does, we sat down and went through the set one last time.

The quality still isn’t brilliant as it was recorded on a camera phone, and the two of us were tired, slightly hungover, lethargic and in no small amount of finger pain, but excuses aside, it’s nice to have a record of what we did. And the act of creating, of bouncing ideas off each other and of spending quality time with a good friend - doing what we both love - has definitely recharged my batteries a bit, and although I’m already dreading going back to work tomorrow, the weight that has been depressing me over the last few weeks feels a little lighter for the knowledge of having achieved something, and of having enjoyed it. So, here are a couple of videos. I’ve uploaded the whole lot to youtube, and you can watch them in order as a playlist here, but don’t expect great things, and don’t feel obliged to sit through them all. That said, if you like these two, then I certainly wouldn’t object to a few more hits on youtube, if you want to check out the rest. And before anyone points it out, I’m aware that the fact we are wearing almost identical clothes (this was unplanned), kind of makes it look like I am doing a set with my future self. I assure you this is not the case. Had I managed to achieve time travel I wouldn't be posting low-grade films on youtube and future self wouldn’t be playing guitar with me, he would be telling me the outcomes of upcoming popular sports events. Thanks for listening, and apologies for whining.