An unusual week. Between the betweens. Not fully stopped, not fully started, not fully anything.

It was my first week of of full-on unemployment. This wasn’t quite the five-day sea of solo serenity I’d imagined back in November, because – of course – lots of people were still off school/work and so the house was really busy at the start of the week.

I hid away and spent a lot of Tuesday on my blogpost about everything-non-DIT that happened in 2022. It’s more about SXSW, MTP and music than anything hugely work-related, but with the looming demise of twitter it felt important to retell the story in one place.

On Wednesday, Vicky was back at work, and so that was my first day of true decompression. I found it incredibly hard to settle to, but was really determined not to just fill the day with random tasks to hide from the mental noise. I had to somehow be still, and try to become bored. This was hugely, HUGELY uncomfortable after so long being in ‘always on’ mode. But I got a lot of meditation done, and well over an hour of piano practice – probably more. In fact, I’ve managed more than an hour most days – but I’ve found I can emerge from those long sessions and back into reality feeling like I’ve not had any time to myself, because I’m in such a flow state that I don’t notice how long I’ve been playing.

I also started my self-assessment and got a really nasty shock about how much I owed HMRC, so Jolly Well Done to my umbrella company’s tax algorithms.

I got near the end of the day and was regretting not having recorded anything much, nor heading out to get daylight/fresh air. After all that time passing without much positive to show for it (and a huge negative) I was feeling pretty miserable, but again decided to ‘just be’ in the boredom and frustration. Oddly I then found myself just feeling instruments. Getting used to their tangibility. That they were for playing, not thinking about. I don’t know quite why, but that seemed to be what was needed.

From there I started doing some tiny bits of tinkering, and then tried to test the vocal recording setup for a technical project I’ve got looming with my friend Victor, and before I knew it there were some little loops going. And then I binned that and did something else – which became a sort of short proto-sea-shanty. I suspect everything with my vocals on ends up being a bit folky, whether I like it or not.

And then I just practiced singing Divine Comedy songs, trying to make sure I was actually hitting all the right notes as per the manuscript, rather than my memory. And this slightly bleak hour somehow became several hours of quite interesting play. Nothing really to show for it other than the time passing, but that’s probably enough?

I then hurried out to the Jazz Café in Camden to see Art of Noise with an old friend:

The gig was just lovely – there was a proper sense of playfulness going on, watching remixes being created live in front of us. I got quite tearful during Backbeat/Beatback – even though there was no Anne Dudley playing that beautiful piano part.

This turned into something of a late night, putting the world to rights. We clearly both needed it. And hey, I didn’t have work in the morning.

Although, sadly, I did have to try and deal with Loki, who needed to go to the vets for an injury on his leg. He wasn’t keen. And I was still pretty hungover.

He came home later that day, complete with bandaged leg, cone of shame and very disoriented because of the general anaesthetic. We only found out that he would need to be kept indoors once I’d picked him up, so this meant that I had to immediately do a mercy dash to pick up a litter tray/litter before the shops closed. And before toilet-based disaster happened in one of the kids’ rooms. I was getting a lot of stressed text messages about that.

So I’m now £500 lighter. But he’s doing well. And I managed to drown my sorrows over a very fine curry in Buckhurst Hill thanks to the generosity of an old friend.

The piano tuner came round and worked absolute magic on the tone and action of our little baby grand – I don’t know why I didn’t ask him to do it sooner. Probably because I wasn’t playing it enough, or skilled enough, to notice all those little idiosyncracies.

I’ve been learning ‘Doctor Gradus ad Parnassum’ from Childrens Corner, alongside many of my other longstanding Debussy projects, and I’ve been reading Stephen Walsh’s biography to ‘Painter in Sound’ to understand a bit more about the man. Suffice to say he seems to be a bit of an arse – but a lot of that feels like it’s potentially down to class and poverty. He came from incredibly humble beginnings, and I wonder if he was just trying to keep up with those around him – so had a slightly grey approach to promises and relationships. He’s quoted as saying “why is everyone allowed to divorce apart from me?” which sounds like another indicator he was used to being looked down upon by those around him. Anyway, here’s Pascal Rogé playing the current piece much better and faster than I can. And I’m enjoying the book – a pleasant change from tracts about Product Management!

I spent a lot of yesterday picking through folders of documentation associated with some of the things I might do next. It was quite draining trying to assemble these vast programmes in my head, and definitely not “taking a break from work”, but I suspect I’m getting close to making my choice. I think it’s going to be a really good move for me, but I’m going to sleep on it over the weekend.

Next week brings breakfast with Rico, the very first PM I ever worked with back at ITV – followed by dropping off the DIT laptop/phone. There’s Punchdrunk’s ‘The Burnt City’ immersive thing about the Trojan wars. Then Thursday is (finally) my leaving drinks. I am incredibly touched by how many people are making the effort to come along to these – from Turkey, Belfast, Cardiff, Eastbourne etc. Thank you in advance, everyone.

Right, back to the music gear…