becoming a drummer. day 1.

I packed my rucksack, had a big arsed brekky, exported the rest of the instrumentals and headed off out into the sun.

I walked through town with a bounce in my step. I was feeling good. I had a focus now. Getting back from france last week I hit a rocky bottom immediately. The food and the sun and the good living had come to an end. The morning after landing I found myself in tesco, surrounded by nutrition free lumps of corpse wrapped in plastic. And pesticide laced identical looking vegetables; Gone were the wonky misshapen, beautiful fruits that nature seemed to squeeze out with pleasure. I could no longer pluck them from the vine, still warm from the sun as they squelched their organic goodness directly into my blood stream.

Now, I could unwrap an avocado from Kenya, which had  been force fed chemicals and forced to grow in a factory then shrink wrapped,. stuck on a truck, then a plane. Then a truck, then a warehouse, then another truck and now I was stood in front of it feeling sorry for the poor bastard. There was no goodness left init. They may as well print one out on a 3d printer. And it had probably been injected with something to make it last. When I was picking veg from the potage in france if I didn’t eat it immediatley then with in two days or so it had gone soggy and disgusting. But tesco’s finest veg was probably plucked weeks ago and it still looked unripe. suspicious.

I walked around the strip lighted cube of shrink-wrapped death.
I left. I hid under my duvet for 2 days. The grey poured through my window. The view a derelict building covered in pigeon shit. The smell Subway Meatballs pumping out of a silver chimney. to the left outside of my window a glass panel was still boarded up and the smell of death hung in the air. my neighbour had fallen through it to her death a year ago. I read some Marcus Aurelius. No amount of Stoicism could fend off this paradise hangover.

I ignored all texts and calls.

Is this my reality? Is this the reality I have chosen for myself. A shithole housing association flat. Is this where I want to be as I approach 40? Alone, unloved and unloving, in my pit.

I looked around., half the room was piled full of crap. I didn’t want any of it, but yet couldn’t throw any of it.  The other half of my room contained my studio which I had just set up. 2 large yamaha speakers a consellation prize for 9 years of hard work in my previous band, before we lost a bandmate and it all crumbled to nothing. And the brain of the studio was a mac mini, a computer that used to belong to a friend who died of alcohol related problems. All my leads were crammed into a box which i inherited from my mate’s dead dad’s workshop. A vinyl record of my old defunct band hung on the wall shot to pieces with a gun. sicknote: the johnny no-cash remix. Behind where my exflat mate’s head board used to be there was a wide mass of fading grey / black drips all down to the skirting board. One wall featured a big orangey brown stain about face height that also spread out and dripped downward to about knee height. The place stunk. Lots of holes and cracking plasterboard and big stains and shit on the smelly carpet.

Why am I such a messy cunt.

Surrounded by death and grey.

Luckily I had no time for much musings. I had a deadline. A live gig in 10 days for a project I had never taken live. We had created a collection of songs last winter in the bigger room, when I was set up in there. We released it as an album and a few people got off on it. Not that many. Then we got a booking last month. I flew back from France. And if it wasn’t for the gig I don’t think I would have.

So I snapped out of the gloom over the course of 6 icecreams and a huge dose of Montaigne.

I cleaned the room bit by bit over a day or 3. I met a few friends in cafes and drank tea and talked shit.

Then today I headed down to the crypt: a local rehearsal space for the community. I was presented with a present from my band mate and good mate, Pestis. My first set of drum sticks. Buzzing my tits off. I set up the Crypt’s drum kit. in completely the wrong way. discarding the kick and bringing a tom, snare, crash and the bottom of a hi hat all to about waist height. I stood there surrounded by my new friends. Fuck playing the mouse. Lets GO…..

But,.Could I play?

Dj Slipped Disc Jocky clicked the tunes into motion. Pestis grabbed his 50s style ribbon mic and started to strut his stuff. Flakey adorned her silver waist jewels and began to rotate her hips.

And I smashed the holy fuck out of the drum kit, completely out of time, all over the fucking place, with not a single fucking care in the world.

I will never play a mouse on stage again as long as I live. And i may never fill a pot with compost again….
Who knows whats next…

But for now………………………….

Let the clusterfuck commence.