fingertrouble

Hi long time...there are reasons....

John my partner died back in mid August...we were together 27 years. He was ill for a long time but brushed it off as ageing or a cold. Nope, was something more serious, but annoyingly treatable but he wouldn't go to the doctor. He was 77.

(WHAT is it about this fucking age group about this 'soldiering on/hate medicine' shit? Friends are facing this with their parents too. At least my Dad — who got diagnosed with cancer 6 weeks after John died, yes more fun times!, we had a leak at the flat as well a week after — is like 'gimme ALL THE MEDS' and is fighting it, unlike John).

My world is still totally destroyed and utterly pointless, 9 weeks later. 

Dating again is a very distant and probably never possibility, as I am thrust into being single for the first time in a generation, but if I do, I am so NOT dating older men anymore. Sex/friendship yes, relationships, hell no. Can't handle this again...it's around my age or younger from now on.

We talked about it 20 years ago and I said I was fine with it, John wanted to stop the relationship after his best friend and father died because he was worried about how I would handle the grief of losing him. He was right, I wasn't fine with it at all. I have never experienced grief properly. So my first time is the big one...yay me?

So a big challenge has been getting inspired again about the podcast...I knew it would happen if I just did a time-out, and I think I worked out what the problem was.

In October 2020 I split the podcast into two, as a response to new mashup people who had NO idea about the old guard. In a huff about the lack of knowledge I did special mashup podcasts, kind of back to where I started, alternating with non-mashup podcasts. 

I quickly found that people were waiting for me to 'go back to mashups' but that the audience was very fickle — people would support the podcasts they were featured on, and then never be seen for dust for the rest.

I got quite depressed about the whole thing, because it was obvious that it was tumbleweed for the other podcasts, and bursty — but not really a long term audience — for the others. So I stopped doing them in January — that podcast as sitting on my hard drive for 2 WEEKS before I edited it, that's how excited I was to get it out. Never happened before. Warning Klaxon!

So finally there are some songs and things I want to play, including mashups. I am now intending to reunify the two parts of the podcast...

I think one of the things that will take a long time after this whole pandemic is to regain my trust in people. It broke severely during lockdown and is not repaired.

As someone who is at risk and in the vulnerable category for COVID, the whole 'freedom' debate to not have a vaccination or not wear a mask or protect others is basically saying 'I don't care if you live or die, I'm gonna do what I want, and screw you'. It's blatant as if they said 'go away and die' to my face. Major lack of respect to me and it is incredibly rude. You bet I take it personally.

Their freedom is my demise, yet weirdly they get all upset and play victim when I don't respect their decision that their 'freedom' - such major life-changing actions like wearing a mask indoors in public spaces or a vaccination, such onerous tasks *eyeroll* - basically stops mine (and might stop my life, let alone freedom!), and makes me have to shield and avoid people like that cos they are most likely carriers. 

They cry about free speech and 'MAH FREEDUMB' but what about MY freedom to not get COVID-19 and be seriously ill or worse? Apparently that's not worth shit. Apparently they think it's some Darwinism in action, and cull the herd and screw science or caring.

You might have noticed the change in my LJ headline — it's a Charles Bukowski quote from 'The Genius of the Crowd" — I used a version read by him in a recent mashup, about being an artist in an age of indifference. 

It's as much a message to myself, but the lyrics of Jimmy Eat World's The Middle are far better and far more poignant than they ever deserve to be....mixed with Etherwood, so drum and bass.

Not Wanting Solitude
Not Understanding Solitude
They Will Attempt To Destroy
Anything
That Differs
From Their Own

Not Being Able
To Create Art
They Will Not
Understand Art

They Will Consider Their Failure
As Creators
Only As A Failure
Of The World

Not Being Able To Love Fully
They Will Believe Your Love
Incomplete

And Then They Will Hate
You

And Their Hatred Will Be Perfect
Like A Shining Diamond
Like A Knife
Like A Mountain
Like A Tiger
Like Hemlock

Their Finest
Art

And also a few more mashups from the same challenge — inspired by the bandlist of the frankly odd 'When We Were Young' festival later this year in Las Vegas.

One a rather sad slow mashup, mixing Wolf Alice's Lipstick On The Glass with Slowdive's Falling Ashes and a more upbeat new wave one that I think fiftypoundnote  might like — Linda Linda's vs The Go Go's — GOh Beat! — Oh! vs We Got The Beat.

This one goes out to Jeb fiftypoundnote and anyone here who missed clubbing or bars or festivals or any social culture. I heard this song listening to a friend's podcast (the Lloydbrary, very much recommended) that I had delayed listening to since the start of the year....very good podcast and I admit I got very tearful at this song.

Why? I dunno, I have been clubbing a few times since it opened up last August but it's not the same. As I said on the blog post, I have a lot of trauma re: the pandemic that is just sitting there, and I need to try and process that somehow. Is it mild PTSD? I lost a lot during the pandemic, friends, a peer group, my business, my freedom, and sometimes almost my sanity, and it's proper that it bubbles up sometimes. It would be strange if it didn't.

And there was a feeling that during the pandemic from some that this was frivolous, that the desire to connect on the dancefloor and socially was some minor thing, that it's just a bunch of drunk people and who cares? That hurt, cos my community is on the dancefloor, my church the club, my religion is disco and that's far from silly, I am deadly serious on that, even when joking about it. My spiritual outlet is music, and dancing is part of that, it's people who forgot where the rituals and smells and bells came from that are the problem.

Also quite often these people were cishet white ppl who didn't get how minorities need these spaces, ones they take for granted. I felt real grief about losing these spaces during the lockdown.

Here is the longer (and better) mix with fan footage which makes it more poignant somehow:

This is a sort of cross-post from Radio Clash but not really, since I am writing more personally and indepth here. Podcasting and the like is about sharing but there is a limit — I go much deeper here and I like the fact that it's only a few people. I feel rather exposed sometimes over at the podcast/blog and choose my words very careful especially about certain subjects. 

I've become a little bolder in some (John when he pisses me off) but less in others. I don't need the concern trolls if I mention the S-word...my situation is a little like Joe Tracini, Joe Pasquale's son, although he feels the need to put those things out there to stop him doing anything, in my world it's less direct and thankfully less active and less mentally collapsible. I also don't have BPD, but I recognise some similarities, it does dovetail with depression.

I am really glad he is fighting that taboo, I was so angry when Hamish died how many people just blanked me...(and he had schizophrenia, which isn't an 'excuse' but a reason, but I still got tumbleweed talking about his suicide) but as well as no reaction, overreacting people make it worse and make us just suffer in silence. 

It's weird they think they are helping, but they really aren't.

It's just a thought that's there always, and has been for nearly a decade — and was whispers before that back to my teens — and I'm still here. The problem being if you mention it — and I have to a few close people they freak the fuck out (weirdly an ex? friend had a bigger problem with it and he actually has had several actual attempts? WTF?) and don't get that thoughts do not equal planning, and it's an idle thought that gets rejected, so nothing I think as serious. It's just my depression chatting shit.

It still pops up though, like an unwanted notification from time to time, a bit like that scene from American Werewolf In London. Comical, really.

But the reason I don't go vastly public with any of this is that exact overreaction which means even though I talk about mental health online I cannot talk about this without the dreaded panicky 'You must go take some drugs and get therapy' line, which is basically saying to me 'I can't cope with this subject so here is a dragged and dropped solution to make myself feel better'. It's not actually listening to me.

Sadly it's like 3+ years to even see anyone even with our apparently 'better' health system, and I really don't want to spend that time in the interim making the drug companies rich. I will if it gets bad, but it'd have to get very bad to subject myself to that kind of treatment. Do they even know how SSRIs work yet? It does seem like using a sledgehammer on a peanut.

I currently control it through my art/creative outlets and through sleeping, riding those ups and downs like an expert surfer, looking for the tides in the distance, feeling the wind, recognising the signs before it gets bad. It's exhausting sometimes but I am sceptical of the main 'solutions' — it seems the best thing for me is to make peace with it, and bargain with your brain rather than smack it over the head with drugs or talking therapies. I have had some bad experiences with doctors and how they handle my anxiety and stress, re: my old job, so this isn't some idle concern.

But that's just how I handle it — and others it works for them. That's why it's so complex, because there isn't just one way — and weirdly all the talking therapies stop working after a while, 10-15 years — which without going all woo suggests to me that there is kind of a social brain or human mycellular brain network that adapts? It is very strange why those 70's and 80's techniques don't work anymore, and the clock is ticking on NLP and CBT* the like.

You see I already shared something I've never shared online, hinted at maybe, and publicly too! Yet anybody flagging this will result in this getting denied and I will just make the blog private again btw. Trust works both ways.

Part of my wariness of re-engaging here was the fact if I did so, it must be like before, but before there were some who abused that and trod on it. Vulnerability online in 2022 is harder, because of the drive-by nature of some comments (you should see some of the shit I get via Twitter and on the Radio Clash blog — and Reddit, completely green ink, but thankfully they make themselves known and then you can block them for a quieter life, and it does get quieter cos it seems to be a few trolls).

But that was an earlier version of that — the Alpha Geeks and Bear Mafia who spoke as one, like some Bear Borg and played power games and never saw nuance in others. A bear in a china shop. Don't be that bear.

 
*what Cock and Ball Torture? Computer Based Training? Tee hee.

Always never need any hinting to play some 90's rave at you — which was basically like Raven Maize and The Source a mashup in all but name. Talking Heads remains slyly tinkling in the background in the released version, and the guitar riff and other bits were re-recorded, but the original had bits from the Pink Floyd (the titular sample which was lost in the released version), The Osmonds — Crazy Horses riff, Afrika Bambaataa and many more...

Must play this original version if I can track it down and I haven't before on the podcast.

But the title has a double meaning and talking of the podcast that's part of the problem, a general feeling that I am shouting into the void. All artists and creatives get this, but it's bad atm. 

What doesn't help is that I got lectured at last year by an longterm figure in the mashup community as a 'gatekeeper' and that I should 'spread the love to other artists' — I already do, most of Radio Clash is bigging up other people's work — that's the point. I promote music I love, from mashups to originals. The thing was they want to spread the love to what THEY think we should do, the commercial side, the side that isn't engaged with our small community. I see no point in that, if you're already fucking with major labels then you don't need my help (but you will get screwed over, it's a fool's game). 

Indeed, where are we, as Bowie once put it. 

The answer is, I don't know. 

Not being dramatic, but as someone who next month is probably going to have my official status as self-employed pulled by the DWP (our benefits agency that helped me go onto the enterprise scheme I am on that started just before the pandemic) — or indeed forced to 'look for work' that I don't know is there when I'd rather do my art work...that uncertainty is almost a taste at this point. 

It's fine, with the pandemic and everything I have decided not to freak out and have been saving like crazy over the last few years, storing art materials, and accepting that me and the DWP will have to part ways at some point. 

Not being an artist and going back to the hell that was three years on the dole is not an option (after my mother's inheritance ran out, I was forced to move from my old flat in with John and sign on; it's soul destroying and social genocide basically, they try and make you ill or make you angry so they can sanction you. It's very Orwellian). 

I've tried the other things, trying to get jobs in ALDI and Waitrose and in my former industry — some close calls, but it was all for naught and just made me quite ill with stress and depression. I, Daniel Blake is pretty much a documentary — one of the bad things is you can NEVER show weakness. If you do they seize on it. It's brutal.

Looking through my old friends list the lyrics of The Reflex remix of the Talk Talk song that's playing sum it up:

Funny how I blind myself, I never knew
If I was sometimes played upon, afraid to lose

I've asked myself, how much do you
Commit yourself?
It's my life, don't you forget
Caught in the crowd, it never ends

I've been monitoring LJ and popping back, a bit like an abandoned garden or house I kept an eye on the place — and suddenly there's lights on in the house and new plants in the garden.

Usually I'd give a fairly default 'welcome back!' post and then lapse back into watcher mode, wandering around the weeds and decay like I'm in the Omega Man. 

Not this time...going to document how stuff like this appears to me given what's happened to me in the last decade, especially the last 2 years. And a sort of update along the way....

Thing is this makes me feel very bittersweet — to have nostalgia for something you have to feel like you belong and have warm fuzzy memories, and I'm not sure I do anymore. I'm not throwing shade at those specifically here, I mean anywhere. Podcasting, mashups, my art peers — those social contracts which were flimsy before were completely nuked by the pandemic. It stole a lot from me — including my best friend, and other groups I was involved with became weird and catty like high school.