My Gandhian Experiments With Truth

Anyone interested in whether adult humans can be trained as easily as Pavlov's salivating dog need only have witnessed my alarm and mild embarrassment on the train home today. Why? For on ipod shuffle up came "Audrey's Dance" from the Twin Peaks Soundtrack. The music played every time the none-to-subtly named Audrey Horne made her way on to the screen.

Ahem. As you were. Next stop Croxton.

A Good Reason Not To Cut Your Finger

In a desperate and despairing moment (caused by the realisation that cutting the tip of my left index finger whilst chopping mint for a delighftful mint sauce meant that rehearsal, for one week at least, was now cancelled) I turned to the ipad and its natty version of the Garageband application.

I was certain that my song writing, though hitherto limited to expression through my lightening fretwork and a solid amount of distortion and reverb to cover even the deepest of blushes and a decent paucity of practice, would be able to transition easily to the synth world.

As the document above displays, this is not the case. What an abomination. What a travesty. What an injustice.What an exercise in pusillanimity!

Please heal yourself finger of mine...quickly.

The video is what it obviously is, i.e. me using the computer camera to create enough footage (which shows a patient and good humoured me, happy to indulge myself, and a jolly wife sorting out some quilt-making in the background) to cover the song, getting bored after half the length and repeating it. Ingenious. Certainly more inspired than the setting of the song.

A quick annoyance about Garageband. Once you tell its "smart" instruments what major or minor key you are in, you can only play diatonic chords. Now for a songwriter who depends on mixing up minor and major chords for a bit of harmonic variety (or a key change FFS) this is quite limiting and only adds to the vapidity at work here.

Opening A Short Story

As he walked into her office she looked up from her paperwork.
  "you don't look well"
  "Ummm...I have a broken heart" he said
She returned to the business at hand and cracked open the syringe.
  "well this should hurt less than that"
Having extracted the liquid from the vile, she was now busy removing air bubbles. It was clear from the grim precision of her activities that this was nearing the one hundredth (if not the three hundredth) time she had done this today. And quite possibly this was the millionth time she was expecting to hear someone tell her that they didn't like needles.
  Even so, she broke from the routine of preparation and looked towards him.
  "What happened?"
  "Sorry?" he said breaking momentarily from self-absorption.
  "Why is your heart broken?"
  He brightened at the realisation that he had made his way through her professional routine and dragged her into his misery. Or at least into an interest in his misery.
Realising that his eyebrows had risen with his rising mood, he quickly collected himself and lowered his chin in compensation.