rainy upgrade by katharine eastman
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slow stately keys reverberating in gentle echo-like fashion - nothing you haven't heard before - this is one I like a lot - but with two mixed emotions - firstly I feel guilty that it is just me treading water, doing what I do - but secondly it is something that works, that gives me pleasure - again I am torn in two with the desire to do something weird and amazing and it never works out like that, so maybe it is better to just stick to what I know - though never sure if that is an epitaph worth living let alone dying for
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Today is Music In The City and I won't try to be hilarious in wondering why I wasn't invited to play - a million Southampton musicians are playing today in a thousand different venues and I am not one of them - well I wasn't asked, and more to the point I am not a proper musician - genuinely I am confident that every single person playing today in the rain can actually play their instruments and sing and do music properly - whereas I simply cannot.
The world has fallen into its right place and is as it should be. Me too. This morning I walked out shopping - first to Waterstones in West Quay to buy maps of very necessary areas, then on to John Lewis - their Little Waitrose. Yes I have a Waitrose Card. At weekends I buy my supply of Montezumas 100% dark chocolate there - my only breakfast food - and often my only food of the day. By spending more than £10 I also get a free newspaper. On Saturdays it's The Times. On Sundays it's the Observer. And currently Montezumas is down from £2-50 to £1-99. Life's okay.
This morning, on a whim, I then shot up to Floor 4, to the electrical dept. This laptop where I do my music, it's about 10 years old and I can tell from the various smells and noises and heats that it is on its last legs. I am very grateful to it for lasting so long. It is very slow. E.g. it takes about 3 minutes to reverb a piece of music. Compression takes twice as long. As someone who doesn't sample music between the start of making it and the end, that all adds up to a long area of suspense.
I'm a luddite and of course am obliged to hate everything about the modern world and modern technology. But of course I love some bits of it. I love digital radios. And for a while I loved bluetooth speakers - as a result this house is full of them - and then I got tired of their being so temperamental - so I now prefer wired speakers. But no matter. I've always still quite enjoyed browsing round the John Lewis electrical dept. Normally, when I'm wanting a bit of help, no one comes up to me.
But today, when I really wanted to be left alone, a lovely man (Nick) approached me and we started talking - I told him that I'd probably need another laptop fairly soon as my current one is threatening to die any day now. He told me lots of stuff. I was riveted. In a different way, I think he was too. Somehow things turned from Microsoft to Apple and in the end he nearly sold me an Apple laptop. Of course I told him I'd need to go away and think about it. And I am.
I've never used Apple. It's too cool/hipster for me. The thought of going out with a woman who has an Apple watch ... ha ha ... god - the thought of even going out with a woman with any kind of watch ..... no wonder I am so far adrift from the world. Never mind. I still have a bit of grasp on the modern world. I don't like how unhappy it seems to make so many people, and I hope I always resist that. But today after John Lewis I went on to Oxfam Books, where people were unusually friendly and then to the Art House Cafe, where they were friendly too, and I came home with the hope that I might fit in at last.
Maybe not today. And I certainly won't be buying an Apple laptop anytime soon. But even to put such crazy-stupid ideas down on paper - or dear old Microsoft's version of paper - is to live on a strange and wonderful trajectory that I might enjoy and am enjoying.
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(recorded lunchtime today, photo West Park, Southampton, this morning)
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