music – Only Mostly Dead

On (Not) Writing and the Frustrations of iTunes to the Professional Procrastinator

The thing about not writing is that sooner or later I get back to thinking that I want to again. I felt so burned by NaNoWriMo that I’d pretty much decided I wasn’t a writer and to stop trying to pretend I could be one. However last night I felt like maybe I wanted to write something, just for me, just because I felt I wanted to.

The thing about me though is I’m a classic procrastinator and I always find a task related to what I’m supposed to be doing to do instead. Oh, it’s not intended to be instead, just before – but somehow it always seems to take all the time available. So I end up re-organising my bookcase/ebook library instead of actually reading, or the usual one for writing is re-organising my writing folders.

This time it was something else, it was music.

I’ve been listening to this a lot:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbFzQ65V-fc]

and it occurred to me that this was the perfect music to write to – calming, pretty and instrumental (lyrics distract me and tend to find their way into what I’m writing). In fact it was as much the fact that this would be perfect to write to as any desire to write per se that made me want to do it.

So I sat down to write. But first I decided I was going to get the album this guy did. I checked and it wasn’t available on Amazon or 7Digital – which was a shame because those are generally easier to use. Instead I had to go to iTunes – which was a frustrating experience. To be fair most of that was not really Apple’s fault.

First in order to run iTunes I needed to boot into Windows and though I have Windows on my main laptop the one with my iTunes account set up is on my netbook. And my netbook is great for certain things, but it’s fiddly to use if you need to do a lot of clicking and it’s worse somehow in Windows. Not really Apple’s fault – except in that they refuse to support Linux.

Second problem was that my credit card details have expired. So I had to go find my wallet and do the necessary.

After that while it was downloading I used the time to… not write, God no, I tried to install an up to date version of Scrivener. Which either means the Windows version under wine (works quite well with a few quirks) or the Linux beta (they’re time-limited and I couldn’t find the download for a version that hadn’t expired).

Finally once the album had downloaded I transferred it from netbook to laptop using… Dropbox. Because I’m stupid and I can I used a method that took ~30mins instead or 3mins using a memory stick.

After I finally had the tracks on my laptop I imported them into Banshee and played whilst I re-read all the stories I’d written for Slingink’s 2011 Story Slam (formerly Eurofiction). Then Melissa rang and that was my evening.

As an aside, the reason I re-read those stories was because I hadn’t looked at them since I wrote them, hadn’t talked about them. The reason for that was that after Nano I was feeling a bit brusied but didn’t want to just give up on Story Slam so I forced myself to finish it but resented the time I spent writing. A couple of them ended up being a bit weird because of that.

Anyway, here’s another track from Acoustic Labs:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJ-FTJhwmuw]

Album available here (warning: iTunes may cause frustration!)

6000 Pages, High Fidelity – Nick Hornby (pages 4680-4932)

Okaaay…. this could be long, and like my review of A World Out of Time, could be as much about me and my life as the book itself.

Could be, but let’s try to rein it in shall we?

I first read High Fidelity when it came out in 1995. I’ve re-read it a couple of times since but probably not for 10 years or so. I decided to re-read it as part of 6000 pages because I wanted both an easy read and an enjoyable one. The film of the book starring John Cusack is also a favourite of mine and I re-watched it after reading the book.

High Fidelity follows Rob Flemming, a 35-year-old music fan, owner of a failing record shop and something of a slacker. The book begins with the ending of his latest long-term relationship and much of the story is about the relationship between music, fandom and well, relationships.

Do I listen to pop music because I’m miserable or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?

The genius of High Fidelity – and it is genius – is that it perfectly captures what it’s like to be a boy in a man’s body, which is certainly my experience of being male. The incessant making of lists, the obsession with sex as the most important part of a relationship (but not really) and just all this inner insecurity.

15 years ago when I first read it I identified with Rob because of all this stuff – even though he was only temporarily out of a relationship and I was more or less permanently so – the theme of being generally rubbish with women fitted. The fact that I still experience this all these years later – well that’s perhaps the bittersweet side of re-reading this book.

It’d be very easy to just give lots of funny, touching or on-the-nose quotes – and in a way that might be appropriate as it’s the kind of thing Rob would do. However to sum up let me just say that I love this book because it’s not only very easy to identify with the characters but Hornby also makes them likeable, despite some not so likeable behaviour on the way. It has warmth and hope and optimism.

10/10 – a great book if you’re a boy.