The Next Big Thing

Further to my update the other day, I’m spending a lot of time ruminating over the fact that I have maybe 20 years left. Give or take. I see the sands of time disappearing and although I don’t want to waste time at all, it feels like that is exactly what I’m doing right now. Still, motivation is not a commodity that’s in plentiful supply right now.

As I may have mentioned back yonder, the EIFF is on. Pulling itself up by the bootstraps after a couple of years in the wilderness. I’m scheduled to see “Sailor Suit and Machine Gun”. I even lifted my Cineworld embargo to take in “God Bless America” last night. Might go to the Filmhouse “Best of the Fest” screening tomorrow too. I hope the festival can recuperate to retain former glories.

Whilst in Auld Reekie last Saturday, I watched Kevin McDermott play a solo acoustic set to a scatttering of people in the square outside the Sheraton Hotel. I was never really a fan but as a progenitor of the Derek Amitri school of Scots Pop, he has his moments. I was thinking to myself, why isn’t this better attended but I’m not sure if anyone knew it was on. Couldn’t help thinking that if it had been in George Square in Glasgow it would have been an entirely different affair. How do you connect a prospective audience with something they might like if they just don’t care. Sure, the interweb can create a flash mob. It can lead the proverbial horse to the trough but it can’t make the blighter neck it.

A woman in the sparse crowd played and danced with her kids during the set clearly familiar with all the songs. Maybe she was related but I don’t think so. I prefer to think it was someone who this ultimately intimate setting meant something to. That’s the closest I’ve come to a romantic notion about the thankless world of the singer songwriter in a week. Last time was watching Eric and Amy do their world-class thing to a similarly less than rammed scenario. The week before out in Moss, it was different. The locals came in out in force to experience the phenomenon that exists on their doorstep. The entry price was just pennies more than the cost of a pint for chrissakes.

Over the past weeks, there’s been a bunch of stuff I never got around to posting. Not so sure I would have posted the earliest known photo of Lux and Ivy. After all it’s been doing the rounds for a while and as historically hysterical as some might find it, it’s sort of intrusive and I’m a little hyper-aware of that. I did make a note about Bert Weedon but it got buried in amongst a ton of other scribbles. So obviously, everyone in the UK knows he died but maybe readers overseas don’t. Or even don’t know his significance.

No idea if I'll ever catch up at this point or will ever find the time to try. Ideally I would disappear of the face of the earth to see out the rest of my tenure on earth doing something worthwhile with people that I like to hang with. Sometimes, I think it could happen and then I wake up.