my pain and sadness is more sad and painful than yours*

 

my pain and sadness is more sad and painful than yours*

*exceptions apply

How are you all doing? Well, I hope, and better, in some cases.

If you don't mind - like with much of my/our music - I'll dive right in. 

For the last four months I've been living with sciatica, and by that I don't mean that Julia's moved out to be replaced by a mysterious new friend that goes halvesies on Sky Sports and occasionally leaves the front door open when coming home pissed. No no no - if only! (Hey, Sky Sports is expensive). Sciatica it turns out, is an even more aggressive housemate than an Australian - it removes everything from your life and it does it in a series of sharp tearing sensations and/or bouts of unending soreness so fantastically vivd that I fantasise every day about cutting my leg off. I haven't slept in any real sense for three months now, can't play with my precious, incredible daughter-child-thing for longer than a minute and have been told (and this is the least sad bit, i'm sure you'll agree) that I can probably never run again, which is a shame because running is probably my favourite thing to do which doesn't involve standing on stage and shouting at people, albeit people who have consented to be shouted at, which is the only real way that relationship works. 

Still, enough of my gassing on - there's been enough of that on twitter recently because it turns out that a cocktail of drugs - and normally 2 ibuprofen is my idea of a crazy night in - is good for the confessional instincts, particularly codeine which should be renamed 'truth serum with added constipation and dizzy spells' (see, I did it again, shut the fuck up man). Yes, my point - and there was a point, there usually is - is that music, that seemingly random collection of notes and words that probably brought most of you here via the stupid/silly/occasionally coherent songs that I've put my name to over the years is magic, is motherfucking magic, and has, in the last few months, saved my life. 

Dramatic much? Sure (and, yes, writing 'dramatic much' made my skin crawl, you know me too well). Most days I'm up at 2am, cramped, wincing, in pain, and I limp down to my desk and start to make music (quietly, at that time, listening mostly, considering the sleeping wife and child just a room point five away). It doesn't always work of course - most songs, most acts of creation, are by definition (jargon alert) shite, wanky facsimiles of ideas that have come before or, more often than not, just bad, cliched, leaden, pissy, shitty, boring and other words which could easily be applied to the oeuvre of the Smashing Pumpkins (*1). The key is to keep working, to keep at it, and - cliche alert - to make hay while the sun, as it sometimes does, shines upon your bounteous fields of fuck-jars.

I won't extend that metaphor. It would shame us all.

Some file names (I work on Logic Pro) can really give you a flavour of some of the non-wonders contained therein - 'Fugazi_awful_14' and 'haveawordwithyourselffuckinghell' being particular favourites I return to from time to time, just to establish where the low is, but in general the last few months (until the last week, when the pain has been particularly piquant(*3) have been the most fun and prolific of my life.(*4)

And y'know what? When those songs are coming - even the shit ones, especially the shit ones - the pain goes away, it fucks off, it leaves me alone, and I'm left with my old body and my old mind and then I remember that it's not exclusively my old body, that it's not exclusively my old mind, and that'll have them back and one day I'll be able to play with my daughter again, to sit (it's been seven weeks without sitting now) and to find my way back to one of those stages I mentioned earlier, if they still fucking exist after this up-tempo shit-show of nightmare disease and administrative incompetence, to shout once again at consenting adults in small to medium size rooms and argue about riders and bend the fuck over without feeling as if I was being stabbed in the ankle by a million heated pins ...

Music is magic. It has healing qualities. Whether nuts (other bits are available) deep in your own thing, or listening to Devo in the park, or Mazzy Star in the Dark, or Morrissey ... *cough* ... or the saxophonist (and I generally DO NOT saxophone(*5) who hangs about next to the all-weather pitches round here and improvises over what seems to be a series of extreme brain malfunctions, music is magic, is witchcraft, is a portal to a world of memory and possibility and, and ...

I really should fuck off. I've got more songs to write.

falco

ps. obviously, this is written in the middle (pretty sure it is the middle too) of a global pandemic and I understand that some people are going through even worse times, and I feel sorry (a) for them and (b) for the thought it even needs to be said, since constant good faith caveatting is exhausting. little rant there for the soul, for the peanut gallery. *clears throat* hey, what's the deal with airline food? etc.

pps. working on lots of the written-written things too, as this particularly incredible sentence would indicate. no rush though, and if it's just the music you're about for then fair fucking play to you indeed, love you anyway.

I really do hope you are all keeping well.

notes -

(*1) guys, this is just a bit(*2)

(*2) it's not

(*3) not really the correct word, but I've to wanted to use it for weeks and here we are

(*4) for the interested, 73 songs - 48 of them distinctly, by my standards at least, un-shitty, 14 or 15 of them the best I've ever put my name to, for mclusky, future of the left and my solo-not-solo thing 'christian fitness'

(*5) this can be a verb, I reckon. hey, it can be a fucking elephant if it wants.