Tuesday 25 May 2010

Stick to your guns...


The last 2 weeks have been INSANE.

The day I finally decided to speak to someone professionally about what I can only assume has been a life long depression I always thought I would grow out of, I received a call offering me my dream job. I was about to give up hope on EVERYTHING.

The very day my entire life savings ran dry, I received my first wages from my new job. It felt like something somewhere was meant to be happening. I haven't felt like that in such a long time. I know there'll be plenty more dark days ahead at some point but hopefully I'll read this back and remember that there was a time when I felt like I had been SAVED.

I also received a pretty strange request to play bass in a T4 presenters punk band while being financially renumerated £200 a day. YES, A FUCKING DAY. I was shocked and intrigued at how these dark media forces knew about me and was also pretty proud of myself for saying a big, fat, resolute NO.

HOWEVER...

Me being me and with the old cogs turning at 120 bpm a minute, I am now questioning whether I would have said no if this offer had come by 2 weeks ago when I was at my wits end both financially and mentally. Would I have been so low that an offer of a TV stint and a lot of money would have seemed like the right thing to do? It pains me to say it, but I honestly don't know. I would like to think that I would have turned it down but I felt so lost that maybe I would've thought it was my saving grace. Anyway, I suppose it's all rather hypothetical and going back to what I started saying, it felt like that universe was dancing and that my new job at The George Tavern was meant to be for me and not some shitty telly band career.

THANK GOD.

Thank God that I literally did not have to sell my soul to get funds to allow me to continue to be an artist through every means a true artist should not have to take. That would have been something I could never have lived with.

In an interview with Loud & Quiet today in which we were asked about the London music scene, I didn't sound off about pretentious east London bands but the fact that the severe lack of financial support and encouragement for musicians is crushing to any band wanting to take music seriously. My Scandinavian and French musician friends live very comfortably as musicians and the way we live like dogs scavaging scraps is so pitiful. I should not be made to feel like 'dole scum' purely because I choose to dedicate my life to creating something pure which may seem 'unconventional' to the conventional 9-5 masses.

Anyway, this was meant to be a positive post and now it's turned into some sort of a rant!

The future is bright, uncertain, cold, hot and suspicious of change.

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