weir by sonja berlin-jones

By my standards this is a fairly pretty-pretty piece of music, so you will be amazed to hear that it was made out of anger - or at least being a bit miffed. Yesterday my bossy brother and I had lunch and he said he was worried about my finances - what do I do for money ? - how do I live ? - did I win the lottery or premium bonds a while back and not tell him ? He knows that I don't work and he knows that I've never had a job that pays much money, and all the the times when I married for money I ended up discovering that it was me who was paying the money.

I assured him that I was/am as poor as he thinks I am. So do I just live off thin air ? I had to admit that that's pretty much it. I don't have expensive taste, and I spend my days doing the two cheapest lifestyle thingies imaginable: making music and drinking. Making music doesn't cost any money - not a penny .... all right, a few pee a day to keep the computer screen lit up. And drinking is cheap because when you drink, drinking is all you do, you don't do anything else (except make music), you don't eat or go on holiday or go anywhere or socialise or buy crap in shops or on Amazon .... nothing at all - you just stare at a wall and drink.

It's really really cheap. No travel expenses, no new clothes ... anything that anyone pays to do, you don't do it. This morning my brother sent me an email and he said it was nice to see me (well of course it was) and that he'd sent me some money direct to my bank account. I had a look. He had - ten quid. He says he's got some banky arrangement set up and that I will receive ten pound from him every day until one of us dies.

I know I'm being irrational, but I was/am actually a bit (lot) insulted by this new arrangement. Patronising ... condescending .... being smugly "charitable" ... I'm not sure what he's doing and what's going on here and quite why I'm getting all stroppy about it. For the moment I am just going to sit and stew and mull it over and decide on a plan. I do have a sister - and I emailed her today and told her what our brother has done - and she admitted to me that he's been sending her a thousand pounds a month for years and years. This has made me feel even worse. Ignorance and abject poverty are the two most noble states, I think, and now I've lost them - and it's like a huge horrible giant sudden lurch closer to death or at least to the end of joy.

recorded today, photo weir/waterfall on the Avon, Charlton-All-Saints a few weeks ago

nothing is distorted, nothing is wrong