parking by katharine eastman

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To sum up - another minimal piano piece - but with this one I feel it's either not minimal enough, or it might be too minimal. Just when you (I) think it's being bravely and beautifully minimal/relentless it goes and changes mood. I'm quite unimaginative and I like things to fit neatly into distinct little boxes, and I don't know which box to put this one in. But you might like this music - I wouldn't say it's totally without hope - but it's the least-enthusiastically-uploaded album I've done so far.
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I don't think I've ever felt less enthusiastic about one of my own uploaded pieces of music as/than I do about this one. It's minimal piano - but to me it's not minimal enough to lose yourself inside it, and it's too minimal to ever give the feeling that a better bit might be along in a minute.

Oh well. As we all say about every second of all of our lives, it is what it is. The fact that I've uploaded it must surely mean that somewhere inside me I think it's quite good - or good enough. But I'm not sure even that is true. I think I've uploaded it for all of the wrong reasons.

This piece took quite a long time (by my standards) to make - possibly even longer to make than it takes to listen to - which is unusual for me. And the fact that I put so much "work" into it has probably made me reluctant to just delete it in the end and leave me feeling that half an evening was just wasted.

I knew I was digging myself deeper into that grey dull musical hole and I knew that the only beautiful way out is to find the few seconds of near-beauty among the hours of drear (there almost always is some moment like that, even among the very worst stretches of music) and carefully remove it and put it on repeat for an hour. But instead I just tinkered with the whole monster, trying to tame it, trying to sweeten it.

I got too close to it, I can't comprehend whether this elephant is a length of rope or a tough rough carpet or a huge leaf or a giant long plonker - probably the latter. Another reason I'm uploading this music and not deleting it is because you might like it - even though we probably have similar taste in music, it won't be identical, and as I have said before I am always amazed and amused to see which of my albums are "popular" and un-"popular".

The albums I like least are often well-heard and occasionally downloaded, whereas so often my favourites are undownloaded and the "plays" page shows lines of red (translation: a visitor came and played one of your pieces of music but after about three micro-seconds hit the STOP button and left the site vowing never to return).

Finally, another bad reason why I'm uploading this piece of music is that my own feelings about a piece can and do change once it is uploaded. Occasionally, once an album is up and running, I might dip into it and realise that I'd been absurdly optimistic and rose-tinted-hearing-aid about the piece. But occasionally I find that the glare (dim) of publicity leaves me feeling that the album is better than I thought it was.

Finally(x2), I was very tired and frustrated yesterday evening. I'd had one of those days. A while back my car broke down and was towed to a garage in Cadnam. They had it for two weeks and were obviously having a Laurel & Hardy-type experience with it - ending up with part of the garage roof falling on top of it and seriously denting it. So they said they'd pay for me to get the roof undented. And early yesterday morning I took the car to a body-repair-shop, also in Cadnam, and left it there. The plan was for me to walk back home from Cadnam - walking across the Forest to Hythe, and then catching the ferry to town.

I walked thru Bartley (see photo) and across some woods to Ashurst, and thru the camp site and across the Forest to Ipley and then thru the Noads and across the Marchwood bypass. In Age Concern in Dibden Purlieu they had (probably still have) a fab big music keyboard for virtually no money. But there was no way I was going to carry it to Hythe and across on the ferry etc etc. And anyway this little room is already full with just two keyboards and a gtr and computer and microphone.

So I had fish(cake) and chips at the ditto-shop and walked to the charity shops at Fairview Parade right opposite the hospital where I was born, and then walked down to Hythe and did their lovely little Oxfam Books, and then I called in at the ferry ticket office to ask when the next ferry was due. The nice man said "End of the month". Apparently they've stopped the ferries because of lack of demand - he said that I was only the second person to ask about the ferries in three weeks. I had no idea.

So it was the Number 9 bus back to town. Back home I just lay on the sofa and fell asleep. Waking in the evening I felt that the day hadn't been the fun adventure I'd wanted, but just a wasted day. So I made this track. And perhaps that's another of the (bad) reasons why I was and am reluctant to just delete it - it would mean that whole day really was just one big nothing. In spite of being lazy, I do like every single day in my life to contain Something - whether a happy memory or a huge laugh or just a little piece of music.

And also - at last - I am having trouble with uploads. When it rains the internetty junction box thingy over by the nearby little Sainsburys gets wet inside and apparently one of my connections goes a bit doolally and every hour or so it disconnects. Or something.

And I need 2 hours of pure uninterrupted internet to upload one of my bits of music. And I've been trying non-stop since last night - yes, all thru the night - I'm not a great sleeper. I've been trying and so-far failing to upload this music, and the more Fate tries to thwart me the more determined I get. This is why I'm writing this huge long thing now - just keeping the connection alive till finally I know that I will succeed and this album will get published.

So really, the reasons this piece of music unwisely exists on Bandcamp are many, and none of them really have anything to do with the actual music.
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(recorded yesterday, photo Bartley yesterday)
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