To be perfectly honest, the fact that I’ve not written in so long kinda disgusts me, making endless excuses for myself of not having the time, or inspiration or creativity.. When really I’m just lazy.
A few topics have come up since pre-christmas blogging. I’ll start by talking about drugs.
Drugs in my life seem to have always taken on a sorta funny role; I’ve never used them, always been around people who used them, befriended many users- yet I’ve a strong dislike for them. Perhaps it’s a naive attitude to some people’s opinion, having not used them and declaring a dislike, but I hold strongly the point that I’ve received plenty of exposure to drugs throughout my life and can therefore make a valid, if someone extra-personal opinion.
At college, last Friday (30/1/09), we had a local police officer called Simon Something-or-other to give us “The Drugs Talk”. I’ve already had exactly the same guy give me exactly the same talk last year.. which gave me some leniency to overhear my colleagues’ inquisitive brouhaha whilst remaining semi-polite… I guess.
For starters, half the people I shared the room with wouldn’t listen to the man purely because he was an officer- apparently the “smell of bacon is too distracting”. I know it’s cool to fuck authority- especially if you’re a musician- but it still annoys me that people are narrow minded enough to not even have a care in the world about the pretty valuable information coming out of his mouth. The same 50% seemed to come out of the lecture with the assumption that he had told us all not to take drugs, even though he specifically mentioned at least twice that he was purposefully saying not that, because generations of people were brought up being told “no” and did it anyway.
(ty to Drugrehab.net)
And I’m sure most of them ended up fine.
I think, though, my main reason for opposing drugs is my failure to see why they’re needed. Why should someone look to enhance any experience in life with the use of some unnatural stimulant that can completely ruin your life? Nothing is wrong with your own mind. We’re all capable of enjoying life to the fullest with just our self, the people around us and the beautiful natural world that we have lying before us, spread eagled on a bed. You’re all too scared to make love to it.
Sorry for the crazy weird metaphor. Ha.
I guess it kinda makes me sad. I’ve seen people I love and admire go way downhill due to drugs, become bored of people I once considered good friends… and it hurts. Yet not everyone can see the world through my rose-tinted ocular.
Enough of such an abstruse, divided topic: I’m happy.
Life is swell at the moment, friends are good, time seems to be well spent, I’m learning, I’m laughing, I’m singing, I’m smiling. My perception of the world is slowly changing, and a more appreciative, aware and challenging me is currently emerging.
This is partly due to my latent readings on Buddhism and Agnostic-Buddhism (see Stephen Batchelor). Which I will go into in another blog shortly, when I’ve read more and formed a more solid opinion.
As a nibble into my conscience for you, reader, I must tell you that meditation is an amazing thing to practice, regardless of any religious views or mental drawbacks!
No one seems to be feeling it this year. I’m not, that’s for sure. Something about this Christmas that seems somewhat different from all of the other 17 Christmasses I’ve experienced, I can’t quite place it though.
DISCLAIMER:
I might as well say early on that I know there are some people out there, the die hard Xmas fans, who replace their iPod library with a seasonal setlist (you know who you are). But they seem to be a rarer species this December, and my pondering purpose is to find out why.
Some of us will have noticed in the news that this year, due to economic crises and such people are cutting down on buying such extravagant decorations: huge trees, elaborate wreaths, oodles of luxury tinsel and a yuletide Times Square alighting on their eaves etc. But we’re not such a philistinistic society as to let the amount of money spent reflect our elusive Christmas spirit… are we? A fun way of finding out is using the Christmas Spirit Quiz from my favourite paper, the Guardian. Happy Days. Here’s what my result was:
“Christmas is still fun, but you feel a little bit sad that it has lost its childhood magic. Nevertheless you try, try and try again. Most likely to watch repeats of Slade performing Merry Xmas Everybody on Top of the Pops in 1973.“
I think I just grew up.
But the lack of spirit can’t be payable to everyone growing up at the same time, because surely an approximately steady number of people grow up annually, henceforth there should be no less jollity than in previous years. Unless it’s a personal thing, and I cease to be aware of other people’s happiness, unless it’s blindingly obvious, whilst I sit cold and lonely in my dark room, finding my only festive fun in sadistically grinning at “The Worst Christmas Tree in Britain“.
1) HILARIOUS article, such melodrama- see “Awful Thing” and “It is an insult to Peterlee”
2) Really is a CRAP tree.
I told you.
I planned to, in true GCSE fashion, analyze both sides of things, find a good example of some real Christmas spirit shining through this year. But seriously, guys. NOTHING. I swear I’ve not seen or heard of a single altruistic Christmas deed or doing this Christmas. Personally, me and Dom have been busking for the Rotary Club, got a couple of slots left, and so far, it’s frozen our fingers, and broken most of Dom’s strings, but we kept on ploughing through our hour long slots at the side of a bustling Christmas high street, aside an ex-guitarist Santa and his sleigh. But it didn’t manage to make me feel festive.
I’ll alert you of any perks of my Christmas experience as and when/if they come. Because I hope they do, it’d no doubt cast a pleasant glow upon my already pretty happy life. Until then: enjoy your Christmas holidays and festivities, think forward and don’t worry, it’ll be the January sales soon, then it’s all over.
Okay… So perhaps a retaliation is slightly overstated
But go check out Luke Denning’s Blog, another link in the side bar, too… if, for some reason, this one is inadequate!
So my good friend Luke replied to the blog I posted t’other day, he didn’t have quite the same feelings on the subject as me, but in doing so, he hatched a pretty fun idea, which you may or may not have guessed from the title of this blog- just an elaborate open discussion between us.. we’ll see how it goes.
To conclude Luke’s overall opinion of the matter, I’ll open with his close- a Stephen Fry quote, with a bit of Luke tagged on the end.
““Money is to Everything, as an Aeroplane is to Australia. The Aeroplane isn’t Australia, but it remains the only practical way we know of reaching it.” So if success brings me money, so it does happiness.“
And this is a fair point, I suppose… but I’m reckoning it’s pretty much dependent on your priorities in your life.. and we come back to the factors of happiness. We actually started talking about this the other day in College- I made a spider diagram.. I make so many spider diagrams. Ha.
Due to lack of forward momentum taking me to my bag, I’ll try and recall what I put down from memory.
Love. Community. Family. Leisure. My memory’s not serving me well.
But I’ll start on the things I can remember:
Love
So this is my favourite… Not necessarily having to be in love with someone, but just caring about someone in an honest and really pure way. It’s so GREAT! But of course it helps to have it reciprocated, I don’t know anyone who’s completely unloved, but I bet they wouldn’t be happy. Perhaps one of the main reasons we love people is the hope that it’ll come back at us, so we get that attention we all want so much. There will be people that think that’s a selfish thing to think, but altruism must be pretty near to impossible as humans. Digression. Love helps you connect with other people, gives you something to live for and something to live with other than yourself.. An extra bit of help for happiness throughout life from people around you.. It’s like having barriers over the gutters when you go bowling… kinda.
Community
This is interesting, I think, but pretty straightforward. I guess this is based similarly around love.. but maybe the biblical sense of love where everyone loves eachother, not the love or passion one has for say.. their pets :) We feel good and happy when we feel like we’re making someone else feel good, which is why a community, wherever or whatever that may be, gives you a chance to do that. But the uses of a community aren’t limited to everyone doing good deeds for everyone else; it gives us a chance to exercise other parts of us, such as debating with someone (if that’s your cup) or chatting about a common interest. Interaction with the people we inhabit the planet with. I made friends with a Japanese exchange student today, he came to my school last year, and now he’s gone to Uni in Bath, where I live, and invited me out to meet him some time soon to chat, so he can practice speaking. 1) That’s so much fun! 2) He’ll be feeling better about living here and practicing his English. 3) I’m doing something good for someone and pushing my comfort zone (I don’t act as a foreign language aide very often). So community is cool.
Family
On a more nuclear level, we have a little community in our families. But this is way more intricate- and delicate. I think I’d like to start by bringing to attention the fact that obviously not everyone has a family, and I can’t even begin to comprehend how hard that must be. I know someone whose parents have both died, and only living relatives in the country won’t talk to him. He’s had a hell of a life- but- through love, and community and leisure, he’s happy. And that makes me happy. :) Family bring to you a unique bond, obviously there are varying degrees of the strength of this bond, but I still see it as very much a unique, almost jugular-bond.. It has the power to make us feel our most safe and care-free, an example of Christmas Day, whilst the season is upon us, spending time with family in such a merry time, you do forget about a lot of bad things on a you-level-scale (ie the things that would otherwise be getting you down, like work and love and life etc). On the other hand, we have the breaking of that bond, when someone like a parent or other figure of trust breaks that trust. People who this has happened to I know are left massively insecure, defecite of any form of self esteem or sense of trusting anyone else. And that makes me sad. I hope your family is okay. Remember, siblings are generally a safe bet, they walk a very similar path to you.
Leisure
Make sure you have time to persue something other than hard work. Make sure there’s a passion in your life that is just easy going. If you like to write, regardless of how WELL you write, then write! If you like music, try writing a song, or taking time out of the day to just listen to music- not just absent mindedly letting your iTunes play whilst you check emails and read blogs ;) It’ll make you happy, to relax and try to NOT think for once… If you’re like me, not thinking is really really hard. And if you think about doing it, it won’t work, so just try to plan a time in the day where you’re gonna do it.. Not that I do.. I relax too much all day to plan when to relax. Silly ol’ me.
I should really get off to bed soon, meant to have done college assignments. But no. I’m up till past midnight blogging things that at most, 20 people will read :P
But please try to stay happy, and remember that love is important, remeber that you are important, remember that other people in your life are important too.
I just thought I’d blog to talk about happiness- a favourite topic of mine!
Recently I’ve become a lot more happy, through a variety of factors that aren’t really important for the purpose of this blog, but that’s not to say they’re not important normally, they’re the best!
But it got me thinking about when I started secondary school; we were asked by our headteacher to raise our hand if we wanted to be successful.. .Naturally everyone put their hand up and thought it was great, apart from one joker, of course. Since that thought’s come back to me I’ve been thinking about the link between success and happiness, and I didn’t really feel like I was told about this during my time at school- telling me that I needed all these nice hefty qualifications in excess to be successful to do A levels and to go to Uni and be successful, but why would I want that if it’s not gonna make me happy?
They made it seem that hard work and unhappiness due to stress at our age is worth the success it could lead to in later life, but then success isn’t guaranteed happiness- look at freakin’ celebrities (on a whole and stereotype, what an insecure bunch of fuck ups). Happiness should be important throughout life, not just when you’re an adult reaping the benefits of success.. or the opposite.
My point here isn’t that you shouldn’t stress out as a teenager and not put any effort into anything, I’ve made that mistake for you, but to remember that your happiness is so much more important than your success, and happiness is factorized into loads of elements- success of which is ONE, but not all. Ergo, you can’t be completely happy by utilizing one factor, and it’s more than likely, the more happy you are the higher you’ll perform in whatever you wanna be successful in.
My happiness is incredibly important to me, and I guess I put that, hand in hand with love, at the forefront of my life.
Hope this has perhaps made you think about your happiness and what it means to you. I genuinely hope your day is a good one :)
Something she’s doing that I think is pretty cool at the moment, is taking a picture of herself every week of the year.. But it’s not one of those static ones that so many people do, she’s put some thought into them all, which is great, so check that out and read what she has to say about her photos!
She’s got a lot more on there, which is all of the same highest quality varying from intricate nature shoots to wow-factor live band photography!
So go over, leave her a comment and let her know what you think, a talented photographer if ever I saw one.
Second on the agenda, tonight:
GOLD CITY SOUNDS
A project organised by my good friend J Carter, mentioned a couple of blogs back. He’s compiling an album of unsigned acts from the UK, to be promoted nationwide, and he’s good at this stuff, so definitely an opportunity worth jumping at if you’ve got some recordings!
So, I had a nice drive this morning, apparently I’m getting really good at steering.. Which is good I guess :D
Then nearly drove all the way to Bristol to visit my sister!
Upon visiting my sister, which was LUSH, one of my nephews (Larry White, pictured) had his first steps, it was so cute! He’s so happy and little! And has really soft cheeks! :)
My nephew had his first steps!
My other nephew, Alf, got some pictures taken in my coat, and looks really sweet, contact me if you’d like to see!
Second on the agenda, J Carter w/ Joe Reed FREE Live EP!
So a while ago I helped my very good friend Josh Carter write and record a few of his songs, finally got them uploaded on the net, download them in the link provided RIGHT NOW:
I was musing with Dominic, about our band, “Coco Camaraderie“
The happiest, friendliest band I know!
And for, not the first time, I’ve properly thought about it.. What I want out of music.
Call me like, boring or unambitious or whatever. But I want people to listen to our music and feel good about themselves, I want them to see that Dom and I are friends, feel good whilst listening to our awesome tunes, and want to be friends with us, want to be happy and want to go out and make friends with more people!
We wanna connect!
Too many people nowadays just think they’re worthless. Judge themselves based on their relationship status or even their friggin’ friend count on Myspace. Yeah, popularity and relationships probably show some sort of worth to a life, but I can’t see why some people believe that’s all there is. We all are worthy people, we’re capable of loving, making other people feel good, smiling, enjoying ourselves. We don’t need all these external stimuli like drugs and drink and boyfriends and girlfriends and the best stuff. Real worth, in my opinion, comes from how you affect other things, not how other things affect you; whether you wanna be kind to the planet, kind to the old guy on the street, giving and sharing your strengths.
I think i just digressed.
Point is: helping people and making friends, is what makes me happy, what shows me I have worth. The fact I have a strength in music means I can use that as an added weapon to my friend-making/helping arsenal… Which is good… I guess!
So I think that hopefully, the message will gradually spread, friend by friend, accompanied by song and smile, and we’ll all one day be sharing the camaraderie that Dom and I share; The Coco Camaraderie!
We’ve gotta myspace that I’ll link up to the side bar as well… Admittedly it’s in real bad condition right now, that’s my fault, gonna pimp it this weekend probably, any help appreciated (I am a bit of a nerd, but I’m not so much of a nerd that it doesn’t hurt my head after a couple of hours)… But listen to the recordings and construct or compliment or just say “Hi”, spread some lovin’ on your day :)
So yesterday I almost crashed!
That was crazy, was driving to work, then came to this real sharp bend on a main road, (luckily no other cars at the time) I stopped accelerating but it didn’t cross my mind to at least brake a little, so I just turned right as hard as I could… Ended up totally spinning out of control.
This can only be fully explained with the use of a quick drawing on paint!
A Handy Diagram to Show My Spin onto Oncoming Traffic
And that was fun.
I got back and drove to work.
My good friend Ieuan also suggested to me a good idea, to talk about people.
My first post, if you’ve read it, states briefly how I find people interesting, his deduction was quite simple
“Joey, if you love people so much, like you say, and can’t think of what to write about; write about the people you love so much and find oh-so interesting“
“Why not?”, says I!
I’ll start by talking to you about this Ieuan guy!
Admittedly, I don’t know him terribly personally, but we get along just great. I’d say the first time we properly hung out together was on a trip to Newquay. One of the things that almost forced us to be friends, was the fact that neither of us got drunk or, for that matter, drink anything alcoholic ever. I’m fairly confident we had the best time, as everyone else got really drunk on the beach and we just laughed and laughed and laughed. We also dug some really big holes on the beach one day, and tunnelled through!
I met Ieuan through Dom, one of my best friends, who I met through Laura, my ex-girlfriend of a year. And I’m glad we met! He’s really tall, and likes American Football, and we share a childish- almost niche- sense of humour and I love him!
Thing number two, is that GYM CLASS HEROES AND BLACK EYED PEAS ARE REALLY GOOD.
BEP are easily the best hip hop group, make me so happy and have such clever musicianship behind the scenes.
GCH are also amazing, reputation of them I was slightly put off… The whole… I’m an emo kid and love “fallout boy” and “the academy is” and “gym class heroes” are cool because its cool to have a broad music taste so you look like a cool person. Basically, a lot of people started liking them just for image purposes. But I saw them live once, at Earls Court, London, before they were cool. Listening to them really makes me want to play bass in a hip hop group, it’s so simple and lush sounding! I’m a bassist, for those of you that didn’t know, nice to meet you!
Thought I’d just tell you about my day… nothing special, but it was nice!
Had college, after a really nice shower and hearing OBAMA WON :D
Whilst at college I didn’t really do much other than play guitar and jam with the majority of the Music And Performing Arts guys… becoming a regular occurrence on Wednesdays now!
The first lesson, which was blended learning [don't ask] was, for Lizzie and I, replaced! We went and recorded Try by Macy Gray with some M-Tech people, they were doing experiments with different mic’s it was a laugh! Then it was lunch time and I bought 3 pastries for the price of 2 at Sainsbury’s!
We had tutor for half an hour, and we all talked about how great Obama is, and why he’s President and ‘Black History Month’ which it apparently is. We got quizzed on black history, I got like.. Zero.. but it was all like “Oh who was the first black woman to get an oscar for her performance in x?… Who was the first black man to win a medal for Britain in the Olympics?”.. I wouldn’t have got them right even if it was about my own heritage… It was kinda annoying I didn’t know any answers though… I hate not knowing stuff.
Then we had another hour’s jam. I love college :D
Then it was composing and arranging, which was crazy. I wrote this really weird tune using orchestral instruments, i really like it!
Then it was the end of the day and we went to the Bell, by we I mean Sam, Dan, Esme, Zoe, Ewan and Caspar! But, Sam and Dan had previously gone off to smoke one of their ’special’ roll-ups. They were in a strangely good mood. Jessie was gonna come too, but she felt quite sad, bless her :)
I met Dom and Lizzie afterwards, we were gonna go see some fireworks!
We had a pleasant walk, once i remembered to pick my phone up from the table at the Egg! D:
Fireworks, as arranged by my mum’s boyfriend and his friend, was… original. But I couldn’t have asked for a better pair to share burnt [vegetarian] sausages and shitty fireworks and sparklers and bonfires with!
We just hugged the whole time ^_^
Then the biggest rocket set on fire for about 20 minutes (as Dom strangely predicted) but then Dom had to go, so we walked him to the gate, and, as me and Lizzie walked back, it went off.. I then recieved a text from him saying “Awwwhh MAAAAAN!”
Me and the Mother took Lizzie home and then came home and had a nice cup of tea :)
Now I’m writing this blog! Driving lesson tomorrow, will be fun, hopefully I’ll progress a bit more, last time felt a bit slow…
Send some regards to my lovely friend Fabian in hospital and Jess for feeling upset =[
