East of Ely: 1: Why? Why Not?

'Maybe the West's approach is right. After all, if you've got a massive fight in, say, a pub car park, the best way of solving it is clearly by standing back and randomly lobbing in fireworks. You can't get rid of an ideology by destroying its leaders. You'd think if there's anything Christian countries should know it’s that. Europe has rejected the death penalty on moral high grounds, and yet we relax this view when it comes to a group who want to be martyred. You can’t bomb ideas. If your kid shits on the carpet you can’t stop them by bombing the person who invented shit - though it would tidy up ITV's Saturday night schedule.'

Frankie Boyle 

Although he usually strikes me as smug and spiteful, this isn’t a bad effort by Frankie.

We are all desperately trying to nutshell fog aren't we? The world's in turmoil and struggling to understand how it got there. I tried by looking up the origins of 'hell in a hand cart'. Apparently in the 19th century, the phrase was associated with the American gold rush of the 1840s, where men were lowered by hand in baskets down mining shafts to set explosives which could have deadly consequences. Avarice eh? The greed and need for material wealth or gain. Or land. Acquisition, regardless of the dangers of action, reaction or the horrors of their consequence. The Middle East is in calamitously unsolvable crisis. As resentment begets resentment, horror begets horror. Intransigent 'Leaders' are either stubbornly obdurate or ruthlessly rudderless: all seemingly virtueless. Forget foreign affairs; domestic politics have become less about the pursuit of noble ideals and more about the lobbing of fireworks at other folks' ideology; our worldview more informed by disbelief than belief. With the inevitability of an election looming I’m struggling with my choices. 

Should I vote for a grey man or a buffoon? 

I know that I will choose not to choose. 

I'll choose to look to myself. 

"To thine own self be true' was my dad‘s mantra. 

I concur, but decide that I need to be more active in the belief.

I’ve spent the last 35 years in the service of others. My music had become a sideshow, a sideline; something that I choose to commit to in my other, better life. A fool's folly then. I determine to look to myself and to take that part of myself more seriously. Is that self-indulgence or self-preservation? Surely the essence of creativity is self-indulgence? If I can't burn my own torch and make myself the drum banging hero of my own story then, what's the point in the reaching?  Self-regard is unattractive in others I know but, what else can I do? If I want to invest in myself authentically I can only look inwards. With that avowed intent, perhaps my songs will better resonate with others: not just other kindred crusty geezers, but hopefully with anyone unsure of themselves. Sometimes loneliness is steeped in the belief that we are somehow uniquely isolated: that the nature of things does not apply to us. Or only to us. We are like pitiful polar bears, floating alone on melting lumps of ice, hoping that the thermodynamics of fusion won’t apply to us. Does that make us hopeful or hopeless? 

So here I am, again, lighting fires on the Suffolk coast: my annual, self-imposed retreat. But to what end? Solitude has its benefits. You arrive and... unpack. Unburdening is healthy, but isolation can lead to a re-burdening. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. You don’t have to be Einstein to see the truth in that. And only a fool would deny doing it. 

And that’s me: I’ve just thrown another soggy log on the fire, hoping that this one will burn. 

But at least I'm trying. In retiring from daily duty I have recognised the need for a change of state: the need to reset, to dry my kindling and light a new fire. I have detached myself from distraction so that I can authentically connect. My first step was to step away from work to limit my choices and thus focus my intent. At my age, why wouldn’t I do that? At my age how could I not? 

My little piece of brash ice will melt in time, but hopefully there is time enough.

Pre-order 'East of Ely' here.