or

The Normalites (in real life)

or (to quote the local news)
“I knew to expect the unexpected but beyond that I didn’t know what to expect”

or (to borrow from the Dalai Lama)
“and in the end all that matters is
how did you live
how did you love
how many tunes did you make
in the studio”

A week in Cornwall, in the proverbial studio, acting like a cartoon character, writing songs with Steve Miller.

Writing songs is a bit like fishing. You make a big effort to get somewhere that you think is a good place for fish. Then you stop and hang around and nothing happens for ages and you forget that you’re actually there to catch fish, then all of a sudden the line twitches and a big beauty is pulled up on deck. Then you zone out again.
Our fine haul from this eco-friendly line-fish into the ocean of ideas is a whopping four prize gurnard, aka songs. At the moment, for the record, they are called:
Dream Baby
That hippy reggae one
So Long
and A Minor House,
though all information is subject to change without notice.

We’re working in an old school way, laying down tracks, using the computer like a tape machine, getting as many hooks and licks and lines down as we can; giving Steve plenty to work with when I jump back on the train for the smoke.

The pictures are all landscapes and signs, hopefully indicative of a state of mind, an open space in which to create, hopefully something special, hopefully.

There are no pictures of the studio because the studio is about sound and it doesn’t look as exciting as it feels to be in there, making. There’s just a computer and a mixer and some keyboards and some guitars and drums and all the usual. But of course it’s what comes out of the machines and devices and mouths that’s important. And you can’t take pictures of an idea or a melody any more than you can play a song on the strings of a hillside.

But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t intense beauty and wonder in both, so the pictures go some way to, in abstract, convey the wonderful, simple pleasure of making music with a good friend.

The music will follow in due course, in one form or another, and hopefully it will please you as much as my trip and these pictures and the taking of them and the sharing of them has pleased me.

“There is no wealth but life. Life including all its powers of love, of joy and of admiration.” (Ruskin)