glacier by katharine eastman
Switching from days and weeks and months of just reading books, now I'm trying to spend the rest of my life just making music and I am remembering what was good about this habit - mainly that it is more active and that I get the housework done - lying on the sofa just reading a book, it doesn't put me in the mood to suddenly get up and do a bit of vacuuming (my favourite type of housework). But making music, it's on and off this chair or on and off the knees by the keys, and I have to go downstairs to get my camera and while I'm down there I may as well bring the dry washing in, and I am getting quite fit - my legs are toned, my arms hardly have any bingo-wingery.
That's not to say I've stopped reading books entirely. I'm currently reading the biography of Patricia Highsmith by Joan Schenkar - I'm about a quarter of the way through. It's one of those annoying books that's not bad enough to just give up and toss aside, but it's not good enough to make me really think I'm filling my days wisely. The good things about it are that it's difficult to write a boring book about Patricia Highsmith, and Joan certainly hasn't done it. Also, Joan's book jumps about in time through all of Pat's ages, so it's not one of those books where your heart sinks at the start because you know the first 100 pages are going to be a load of boring crap about great uncles and family trees going back to Napoleon. I love undisciplined biographies.
The bad things about the book are that Joan too often promises that the next bit will be really exciting and it never is. And also, Joan just loves sub-clauses and brackets and brackets within brackets. Back when I was young and exciting and quite a good writer I had some very basic luddite rules - no sub-clauses, no rewriting, no colons or semi colons and very few commas and certainly no brackets. Oh weren't they great days - manual typewriters and no way to correct a word that you were misspelling and so instead you'd just carry on and it would become a new unexpected unwanted word that suddenly forced you to write a different sentence and almost always a much better sentence.
Damn this modern world where we are all kidded into believing that perfection is finally possible. I preferred the old one, where we all knew it never could be and wasn't worth striving for anyway - how relaxed and happy(ish) we all were. Already it is a forgotten world. Misery is the Modern World's default setting.
Rough guess, thinking of the three big piles of books in my house, I think I've got about 500 books, all things bought in charity shops within the last 3 years - ever since my last total clear-out. I've decided to make it one of my life's works ("bucket lists" - oh gawd) to read all of these books - well, to start reading them, give every one a chance. I reckon that I'll give up quite early-on with about half-plus of them. I am a slow reader. I think I might time it okay. I don't need to buy any more books or get any more music in any way at all. I don't need to leave my house ever again. I do need to find the courage to give up with this Pat Highsmith book though - it's just not quite the thing. I want books and people and music that make me want to change my life.
Yesterday I finished reading Matthew Walker's "Why We Sleep" - it was/is a book that belonged to a friend and so I read it quickly as an aside so I could return it pronto. I never give advice about what people "should" read - but I do think that you should at least meet someone who has read this book, because they will go on and on and on and on about how totally important sleep is - not just VERY important - but soooooo important that if you're not getting enough sleep then you are doing worse things to your body than alkies and druggies and mountaineers etc etc are doing.
I'm so grateful to my friend, and to Matthew. Among the million things I learnt in the book was why life seemed so full of potential when you are in your late teens and early twenties. When I was at that age it seemed like every book I read and every new album I bought and even some of the people I met were all like a thrilling cool splash into a freezing new lifeful pool where you'd swim ashore and be in a better world than before. And Matthew says it is because people at that young age are full of REM dreamy sleep - a higher proportion of every night than we can ever recapture. So it wasn't just good luck that all my favourite novels were read between the ages of 17 and 25 - it was because my perception was different.
I now devote about 16 hours every day to giving my body an opportunity to sleep. It feels like one of the best decisions I've made. You might say that I am wasting away these precious final few years just lying about waiting for sleep. But really, I have absolutely nothing better to do - making music like this, perhaps, reading barely-good-enough books like Joan's perhaps, going on very long walks every other day perhaps - they are the four pillars of my life.
recorded this morning, photo my garden this morning
