Tunes 2

A short addendum

It occurred to me, having posted ‘Tunes’ last week that I’d missed something out; a bit of evidence to help arrive at the ‘Yes…Both’ conclusion. Ummm…..Let me work this through.

In the course of my ramble I mentioned that brooding, deeper, darker and more introverted music seemed to speak to me more than the lighter, upbeat, ‘fluffier’ end of things. And it does. In fact, when I’m in the Deep Dark Pit™ this music is of huge solace to me, chiming perfectly with my mood and making me feel that somebody else out there, at some time, went through something similar or had an empathy with others going through their own dark episodes. Listening to this music I can, after a bit (and sometimes quite a lot) of a wallow, feel a great sense of relief as some of the more troubling feelings are purged by this emotional connection to the music and lyrics.

So, in a complete turnaround, listening to sad, miserable music can be of great benefit. Both the cause and the cure? Maybe. Listening to it when I feel vulnerable is probably not the best idea as it could open up the pit in front of me. If I’m in the pit it can help me scramble out, or at least comfort me whilst I’m in there.  

Like everything in life, it’s probably ok in moderation, just not gorged on in huge great lumps at one time.

Listening to myself and my emotions is something I’m learning to do constantly to monitor where I am in relation to The Deep Dark Pit™. I can’t ignore them, which is probably what I have done in the past and then, unguarded and unprepared, I’ve been swallowed up by the dark once again.

Dour stuff this isn’t it?

Tunes

No. Not the ‘decond-class-dicket-to-Dottingham-please’, menthol impregnated, fruit flavoured boiled sweets. Musical (and maybe not so musical) tunes.

A question. Do I listen to sad, miserable music because I have a tendency towards sadness, depression and miserableness, or does listening to sad, miserable music make me sad, depressed and miserable? Is music the cause or the symptom? I asked this on Facebook the other day and got some interesting replies.

The reason why I ask? Well in the last year or so I have been listening to a very different music to usual and at the moment I seem to be ticking the ‘not depressed’ box quite a bit and the Deep Dark Pit™ is somewhere over that way, over there, near the horizon. Now I know it can’t be purely down to the music but surely it’s having some effect? Isn’t it? I’ll come back to that one soon as there are several other factors that I know are influencing where I am.

One is my new found status as a whistling Rock God® which isn’t doing me any harm whatsoever. My current enthusiasm for Morris Dancing, with all its concomitant socialising (alright!….drinking…….but not just drinking…..honest) and increased exercise benefits are….err, beneficial. Work is steady, not onerous, albeit a bit quiet. The year of psychotherapy has also done me good. I’ve mentioned previously that it ran for just one year (and one year only) but that year has done me more good than anticipated. That huge lurking monster; that whirl of emotion, fear, insecurity and vulnerability deep inside is, if not tamed, at least under some control. My (almost) daily bike ride and the rather sunshiney spring (hurrah and huzzah!) are all making for a rather grand time. A full diary stops the brooding as well, I can tell you. Dance outs, not just mid-week but weekends as well, music sessions and the usual social life make for a busy time.

And so to the music.

After I discovered a certain Mr. John Peel and music other than David Cassidy, The Nolans and Terry Jacks I immersed myself in rock, from great, riff driven stuff to the more complicated and twiddly stuff known as prog. My preference seemed to be for the brooding, deeper, darker and more introverted stuff. It just seemed to speak to me more than the lighter, upbeat, ‘fluffier’ end of things. It appeared to have more to say and I connected with it but was that because I was partial to more intelligent lyrics or because I was wired up to be a misanthrope? And one could hardly say that the lyrics of Yes were intelligent. In fact many of them were completely unintelligible.

Now, I’m tall and blond. The rest of my immediate family are shorter, darker, stockier. I always felt a little ‘apart’; a not quite total connection and that’s something that I can relate to, and has spilled over into, everything I have ever done, whether it was work, school, clubs, hobbies or relationships. So maybe I was hard wired from the beginning to feel music that had an otherness, a dark separateness, an element of loneliness, to the more commercial end of the market and it’s songs of love, belonging and gay abandon. Maybe listening to moody music has had an effect on the way I look at things. At the very least I think it has exacerbated what was already there.

For the last year or so I have been playing and listening to a much lighter form of music. Folk, basically. From 16^th Century Playford tunes right up to modern experimental bands like Lau, it’s around me a lot of the time, either at sessions, out at morris dances or via Spotify where I discover more. That doesn’t mean to say I’ve stopped listening to Pink Floyd, ELP, Joy Division, Nick Drake, Mahler and Shostakovich etc; I just don’t listen to it as much. My new position as a whistling Rock God® where I strut my stuff  (and there’s an image to conjour with) down at the pub with friends (or at least with very tolerant aquaintances) over a couple or so pints of Real Ale® has dragged me away from the Deep Dark Pit™. So playing with others is probably at least as, if not more important than, what music is actually played.

And those answers on Facebook?

Richard said ‘I have a tendency towards depression but mainly listen to uplifting music...I reckon it's down to taste’.

Quite possibly true, it certainly is for Richard but maybe my taste was in-built from the beginning, however subconsciously (Meh! psycho-babble…..but possibly true anyway.).

Pam said ‘The answer is... both.’

Also quite possibly true. My taste is for brooding stuff but maybe constant exposure has exacerbated the depth of and longevity of my stay in the Deep Dark Pit™. Certainly my lack of exposure to Doom Rock© and increased exposure to Folk has coincided with a distancing of myself from Major Grump™ (aka Marvin) and his Pit. I do admit that other circumstances have had a big hand in this too (see above).

Cris quoted Morrissey ‘I wear black on the outside, 'Cause black is how I feel on the inside’ (Unloveable, from the album Louder Than Bombs).

I know how he (that’s Morrissey, not Cris) feels but thankfully I feel less so recently.

And in conclusion………I think for my case Pam got it about right. The answer is -

‘Yes….Both’.

Dive 2

Or

What happened.

I met Claire a month before dad died. They never got to meet. I think they would have liked each other.

Claire had learnt to dive when she lived in Dubai with her previous boyfriend Seamus (pronounced Shay-mus by us but pronounced by the Arabs as Sea-mouse). She did it to fill the time. She’d had a job and been sacked and getting another in Dubai wasn’t easy. She didn’t realise what a rufty-tufty (well…moderately dangerous) sport it was. She probably never would have done it if she had.

Anyway, I joined my local diving club with the intention of diving with Claire. Friday night at 7.30 we would meet up for club meetings and lectures. The meetings were held in the civic hall, the lectures in the executive conference suite (a freezing cold shed out the back). At 9pm we would shuffle off to the pool; old, cold, and full of plasters (oh! And hair. Lots of hair). This was the salubrious surroundings of St. Mary’s swimming pool, belonging to that esteemed girls boarding school and, believe it or not, the inspiration for St. Trinian’s. That’ll give you an idea of the standard of the facilities.

At 10pm, having successfully not drowned whilst deliberately filling our masks with water (only to then clear them by blowing out through the nose and filling said mask with snot)  and throwing away our DVs (demand valves – the bit you actually breathe through) we’d tootle off to the pub.

After several months of this we were ready for our first open water dive. It was then that I discovered that Claire wasn’t too keen on diving in British waters. Too cold, too dark, too little viz (dive slang for ‘visibility’) i.e. you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face half the time, and the other half you wouldn’t want to anyway. Nothing to see in British waters.

But I was committed (or should have been – What was I doing??) at least financially. I’d spent a not inconsiderable sum on a semi dry suit (posher than a wet suit, not as posh as a dry suit), mask, fins, BCD (buoyancy control device ie a special jacket that acts like the swim bladder in a fish), regulator (for air) and tanks (err….for air), blobs (technical term for SMB – Surface Marker Buoy - diving has a whole wonderful language all of its own).

My first open water dive was at The Ferryboat Inn (Yeah! I know. A pub) in Weymouth. It’s where the lagoon behind Chesil Beach meets the sea. There’s a bridge now. There’s no ferry anymore. But the pub’s still there. It’s very sheltered (the water, not the pub). I remember seeing lots of weed, a sandy bottom and a pipe fish (a relative of the seahorse) before crawling exhausted out of the water with way too much weight on my belt and being hardly able to stand the kit weighed that much. Diving is quite a good way to build muscle. There’s a lot of heavy lifting involved. Oh! And it’s far from glamorous. In real life no one ever got out of the sea looking like Sean Connery or Ursula Andress. There’s just too much snot involved (See part one and don’t ask anymore. Oh! Alright. Diving squeezes your body. This includes the sinuses. Need I go on). And then there’s the sea sickness. I’d heard the phrase ‘looking a little green about the gills’ but never actually seen anyone actually looking actually green before I actually went diving. Not pleasant.

Thus began my diving career. I’d bugger off to Skomer in West Wales, or the Farne Islands in Northumberland, or Cornwall, or Weymouth or anywhere on the South Coast west of Portland (the ground is rockier so there’s less silt so the viz is better). Claire would stay at home and decorate. After the first year she got fed up of this and decided to tag along. I’d get in the RIB (a boat with a sodding gurt engine on the back) and go diving for the day, leaving Claire to wave goodbye from the quayside (how romantic). Actually what she was doing was working herself up to trying British diving by watching me go off for the day and then come back with tales of what I’d seen and done. This would make her jealous and want to have a go. It worked too.

We were in the Farnes. Claire still hadn’t been in the water although we had dived together on holidays to Dubai and The Maldives. She borrowed some kit and one morning came out with us on the boat. After the rest of us had dived Claire was going to jump in and try it out for a few minutes. The first thing she saw when she got in the water was the speciality of the Farnes. A grey seal; lithe and graceful in the water. And rather friendly as well. They come up to you and nibble your fins, play with your blob as it shoots to the surface and on the whole hang around wondering what these noisy, ungainly creatures are that have invaded their space. It’s magic. Claire was hooked.

After that we dived all over the place, either for long (and not so long) weekends around the south and even for week long holidays to Scotland, the Canary Islands and the Red Sea. It was quite handy living in the middle of the country miles from the sea. It meant you could go anywhere relatively easily. The nearest bit of coast was about an hour away. The furthest (for a weekend) 3 or 4 hours away. The downside is that you can’t dive every day like those clubs on the coast, but they tend to dive the same stuff all the time. We had a great variety to choose from.

For the first few years I loved every minute of it, but as ever, things change and the ‘been there, done that’ attitude starts. The second dive of the day became increasingly boring. After an adventurous dive in the morning, often quite deep and on a wreck, the afternoon’s dive was usually a reef dive. The ‘reef’ usually consisted of a few seaweed covered boulders strewn across the seabed. I became blasé about it all and tired of seeing the same few boulders with the same bits of seaweed stuck to them every afternoon. Sad really, when you consider how magical it is under the water.

And then the effort to get that good morning dive became rather onerous too. To save money and ensure we could do more dives Claire and I would camp. Now I enjoy camping and I enjoy diving but camping and diving? It’s just too much like hard work. Getting all the kit together (both diving and camping kit was err….substantial) took a day. After a long drive we would have to erect the tent and set up home, which was fine. It was just that, after a day of diving, you would return to a cold tent cold and tired and then have to wander over to the shower block to get clean and warm before preparing dinner. B&Bs are, generally, warm, cosy places. Not so a tent. It took another day to sort everything out when we got home.

And so what had been a joyful experience became a tiresome one. That and another visit to the Deep Dark Pit® stopped my diving. The pressure of water at depth and anti-depressants don’t mix. Apparently they can do weird things to you so I had to stop. Also I got worked up by the other personalities and the politics within the club and just as with other pastimes, a pattern set in and the joy disappeared.

Circumstances have now moved on. Jobs have changed and we can no longer afford to go diving. Mind you I’m still on the old anti-barking tablets so I couldn’t dive even if I wanted to. However, I do miss diving now and again.

Whistle 2

I’ve just spotted a repeating pattern. Finally. After 47 years I may have learned something. Woo (and indeed) Hoo. I said in my first whistle blog (and I quote)

‘I play the whistle obsessively (just ask the poor unfortunate neighbours). I will continue to do so for as long as the urge continues. Unlike photography (another story for another time [and still to come]) I don’t want to try and make money from doing it. That way lies madness, financial ruin and turning something rather pleasurable and a joy in to a chore and a drudge.’

I’ve just worked out that there’s another way of turning something that is a complete joy in to a chore and a drudge. And what’s more I’ve done it in the past both work and hobby-wise. It’s by getting too involved, too obsessive and too perfectionist about it. I’ll explain. I’ll use my current obsession as an example.

So I start whistlin’. I have no expectations about it. I’m new and no one else has any expectations either. Everyone has to learn, so, although I’m a bit crap (or even a lot crap) at the start that’s fine. There’s lots of time and lots of learning to be done. Improvements happen and everybody is happy At least I am. The neighbours probably haven’t noticed much difference at this point. Everything is still fun. Mistakes are easily laughed away. I’m new at this. I don’t expect to be particularly good. As long as improvements happen then I’m happy. But there comes a time where I’ve reached a position where I think I’m the Rock God™ of the whistle. It’s at this point that things begin to go wrong………and I have just realised that I have recently reached that point. I’ve seen the signs.

Firstly, I’m now getting annoyed with myself when I make a mistake. Why? I dunno!! Actually I do. I’m a perfectionist. I’ve only been at this just over a year yet I now believe that I should play every tune I know perfectly every time. Every change from one tune to another in a set should be perfectly executed. I am, after all, the Rock God™ of whistling. So I put myself (as a perfectionist) under pressure to perform perfectly at which point I tense up. This has the tendency to make the fingers a little less than fluid in their movements. I also stop concentrating. I don’t need to concentrate now ‘cos I’m f*&£ing brilliant me. Result? Bad playing and annoyance at myself.

Have I said before that I’m really good at beating myself up? I’m sure I have. I beat myself towards the edge of the Deep Dark Pit® and, being a perfectionist, I quite often finish the job properly by hurling myself in to it.

Secondly, I now expect that everyone else expects me to be perfect. Because I have very high expectations of myself I automatically believe that everyone else has the same high expectations of me, so when I cock up a tune I feel I’ve let not just myself down but everybody else as well. Result? Annoyance at myself and another good shoeing towards the Deep Dark Pit® for good luck.

Thirdly, because I now lead a few tunes I feel a responsibility within the session for keeping things going rather than just letting it happen. The session won’t grind to a halt if I don’t play a tune for a while. Sadly I don’t think that way and I put myself under pressure to perform. Result? Bad playing, annoyance at myself and another few inches moved towards (whisper it) ‘you know where’.

Fourthly, politics begins to rear its ugly head. Now I hate this sort of thing but I’m allowing myself to drag myself in to some of this at the moment and inch ever closer to… you know…..that over there. Big. Black. Sort of hole shaped. This has a lot to do with the various playing styles of the various individuals in the session which, on occasion, causes an undercurrent of friction amongst various players. I can feel myself being sucked in. I will not let this happen as it’s destroying my enjoyment. It also involves me thinking I’m better than others. I think I’m superior. It’s wrong. I have to stop it now. It’s unbecoming and I apologise to those to whom it is aimed. Hopefully they don’t realise. If they do then I’m sorry. I will change

Fifthly, I just take things too damn seriously and personally. Two recent incidents should have been laughed off. In one recent incident a hornpipe was played too fast. When asked if I had ever played in a dance band I said ‘no’ and was told that nobody could ever have danced it that fast. Now instead of just laughing and shrugging my shoulders and getting on with the next tune I blamed the guitarist for driving the tune too quickly. Dave, I’m sorry and I will apologise in person the next time I see you. It was uncalled for. I was leading the tune. It was my fault.

And so the joy fades away.

So what do I do? Lighten up in the first instance. Just let things flow. Things flowed long before I started playing, they will when I stop playing so why get uptight about it? I need to laugh again. I need to stop being so serious. It’s only a tune and I’m doing this for fun. Nobody cares if it goes a bit wrong except me because I’m a perfectionist. I need to learn to ‘let it go’ (I believe that’s the phrase). I’m going to have to learn how to relax and just let things happen again and step away from the Deep Dark Pit®.

I know that these feelings have been exacerbated recently. The last three weeks have been non-stop with Morris dancing, drinking ale and sessions. I’m doing too much and I’m getting tired and crotchety. The alcohol is affecting me mentally. I think a day or two of not practicing the whistle won’t hurt either. Just a little break, just for now and recharge the old batteries.

Oh! And I never got on with that melodeon. After a couple of weeks I gave it back. The neighbours and the cat were much relieved.