I’m a Pisces:  I’m creative but I’m 2 fish swimming in opposite directions, it is hard to make decisions. Looking back I’ve been a jack-of-all trades … TV, art, theatre, writing, photography..  but my passion was always music.  Music (in my head) has kept me awake at night since I was a kid. I dabbled in bands in my teens but I have put music off. I put it below practical things like studying, earning and family.

The Day of My Dad’s Funeral. Felixstowe.

When my dad died of cancer 5yrs ago, my priorities changed, music shot to the top of my list, the floodgates opened.

Making the debut EP “Breakables” in 2016 was gruelling. There are thousands of tiny decisions involved… one extra verse?  Should the guitar play D or A? Is the bass too low?  Some of the choices are made by experience, but most rely on gut instinct alone. That’s why its like tearing your guts out.

Any artist is a glorified decision-maker. At the end of the process, your invisible decisions, your abstract thoughts,  your emotions, have  built a network,  the skeleton of an actual thing, like a song, or a sculpture. I see it in my mind’s eye as a pattern like a  mandala, but in a 3D geometric form.  The process is draining, but it’s like you’ve made a baby out of thin-air, and if people enjoy your creation , well that’s the best I reward in life to me, and the biggest high. That’s really why we procrastinate, we like to leave the “icing on the cake” until last.

Now that the EP “Breakables” is complete,  I am procrastinating about how to release the music to a wider audience than the initial core Pledgers who coaxed me through the recording process. Videos, radios, interviews, gigs, I could pursue all of that, or none…. and meanwhile bubbling away in the background are a bunch of NEW songs rushing in to fill the vacuum. I have opened a can of worms.

Sometimes there are dark days when its easier to do nothing, than to do something. You’ve beaten yourself up from all the decisions and you look down at the world and every decision seems petty anyway. Which of course it is. Whoever you vote for, whatever you do, its a blip on a blip of a blip, on a tiny blue dot. That’s a crippling feeling.

Even this small task of making a website has been fraught with procrastination. I literally asked so many people for advice on where to host it etc, I got 100 different answers, and even now I am delaying publishing it because there is a shade of lime green in the free template that I don’t like. Perfectionist? Yes. I want you to get the best impression of me.

Feeling at home with fish, Brighton Sea World

And here’s a thought – perhaps its those conflicting fish that MAKE good art happen…   As artists we question things, its never-ending. Why are we here? WTF am I doing here? What if i went that way, what if I swum the opposite way…

I’m always going to be experimenting, working with new styles, new instruments  and new people.  If anyone wants to put me, or my music in a box, its not going to happen because originality has to be fluid and evolving. Originality is my holy grail. Its time to embrace the “chameleon” way, it never did any harm for David Bowie.