jawfulite awfulite by Simon Aulman

recorded over the past few days, photo/art by me today

..........................................

I'm frightened of sending out messages - years ago I noticed that the more I bothered people with proof that I hadn't died yet the more likely they were to ignore me or run away or move house or unfollow me or say something horrible and hope I'd be upset even though I'm the sort of weirdo who is actually more embarrassed when people say nice things about me and it doesn't happen very often, less and less as I get milder and less annoying, oddly.

If I was going to send a message I'd admit that I shall again try to make more physical product - there's not much point me making albums that are download-only, because no one downloads them (not even me, usually) or even listens to them (same thing). They all sound much the same and making them isn't much of a challenge. Making music even as unpopular as mine is so easy that whatever point there was in doing it, it's lost on me, and judging by how boring and miserable almost all musicians always are, lost on them too.

I like it to be lost on me because I am hunter-turned-gamekeeper - after decades spent screaming at musos to stop being so boring I am now the one being screamed at, by me. And I now realise that because every muso immediately starts off doing the best and only thing they can ever do, they never evolve or even can evolve. Everything gets worse.

But making an album cover - I have no idea - sometimes they're good, sometimes they're awful, I haven't found a direction yet, I'm sure I've not done my best yet, if I could I would just do album covers and not bother with the music at all. Musos on Bandcamp know that we sometimes get tips pointing out that most/all/beyond of the average muso's revenue on BC comes c/o physical product. My prices aren't making me rich. Every album is like the Blue Monday 12". Getting famous would be nice, but I am too old and too white and too male and too straight and not quite dull enough to get on the front page of Pitchfork or the Wire or Radio 6 or tiktok or Lana Del Ray's new album - and I am a huge LDR fan, no bullshit.

So I am going to flood the market with physical product for however many more gaga-free years I'm going to be given and I'm not doing it in the hope that they'll all sell, I'd actually quite like to have a bit of a backlog under the bed, unsold stuff that'll be found by my heirloomeries. An obvious way to do that would be to make a hundred copies of each album. Or even ten. But my kitchen table (and kitchen) is tiny and I don't have room to make a hundred of anything. Six is about the max of any one thing I can do at any one time But if I do six of a new thing every couple of days then that will overwhelm any possible demand and I will build up a backlog of the unsellable that way.

I know that I shouldn't care what people think and on the whole I am pretty good at it. Anyone who has done as many people-encountering jobs as I have, for as many years as I have, will know that most people - pretty much all of us - are pretty clueless, pretty stupid, don't have the first idea what the hell we are doing and we are distracted into thinking that it's not about knowing what life's about, it's just about pretending you know what life's about - and the idea of struggling to appeal to lots and lots of those people is crazy.

I don't have a clue what it's all about and my musical career proves that I am stupid and useless and I can only fall back on the cliche about how "if you can't get what you want, then want what you've got". That is - a life of mixing with people who are largely boring, a life whose only high points are going to the cinema alone, coming out of gigs and thinking Thank Fuck That's Over, of getting high on Montezuma 100% dark chocolate, of battling to keep my weight down and consequently having people think I've got an eating disorder, because in this society you do need to have an eating disorder if you're going to avoid being fat, it's not possible otherwise, you need to be an obsessive, and that is my only nearly-talent. Of struggling not to get drunk all the time. Making music is not a good way to keep sober, but I'm thinking that doing lots of stuff with carboard and glue sticks and paint is.