Every Moment Disappears - the quiet struggle to create in a world that seems mad
Thirty years ago I decided to start making music. It’s a hobby. A joy. I admit no great skill and demand no audience.
The learning curve, as in all such creative pursuits, is and continues to be monolithic, but this forms the journey. It's integral - the successes, the failures, almosts, connections, and decisions.
Starting on this road taught me to be patient about developing skill and taste. It caused me to realise that I could also take time to develop other joys - photography, painting, drawing. The results, in all cases, are less important than the road to get there.
Learning how to fail well is the most important skill of all. Being able to see the value in failure is crucial to moving forward. If we allow failure to consume us, or view what we do only as products that are failures or successes rather than incredibly nuanced expressions of our human agency and state of mind, we become paralysed, unable to step forward.
In a world that prioritises the finished product, speed, efficiency, influence, and monetisation over patience, time, nuance, and deep learning, we stand to lose an intimate connection to ourselves through our creative expressions. Lots of things don't need to be optimised or made more efficient. And some things are best when they're messy and take a long time.
Only now, thirty years later, am I making some music that sounds like the music I wanted to make when I started. I continue to move forward as slowly as I'm able.
Every Moment Disappears is an album dedicated to my late father. I decided to change my music name again, a continual bugbear, so everything is slowly getting an update.
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