Last month, indeed summer itself, seems an eternity ago.
We don't have an autumn yet, just grey after grey day, but this is a night to try to feel different from Beth Orton.
"I wish I never saw the sunshine,
An' if I never saw the sunshine bay,
Then maybe I wouldn't mind the rain."
That's on 'Central Reservation', one of the album's loveliest sad songs, but it says the opposite too, does it not?
I've been moved by my near neighbour Lee's tales. She's got a bad touch of the blues. She's straight but discreet about it, with one entry simply called 'unhappy', but there's also 'rapido' (Odessa Street) this week:
"So I think I might be living in some parallel dimension. Certainly, this can't be France we're dealing with here," she begins, but then: "Sometimes France is fucking unbelievable."
Check out her woes, when one way to put your own blues in perspective can be somebody else's. Lee writes well about it just like her bright days, she doesn't hide behind her clouds. She's also right about this side of France too.
Reducing people, including the French themselves, to near breaking point with the most maddening and implacable demands on paper (in the name of a fearful logic) remains a bureaucratic speciality.
I've got mail to write and quite a lot to take in and answer, including yet more feedback to what's going on here and a slight backlog of unexpected letters about things written in what feels like a different era. They will get answers, be sure of that, and not at excrutiating length.
The main, forthcoming change to announce here concerns the blogroll parts of the log, while finally I defer to the crazy few who take the line best expressed by someone who put it in a flattering but blunt way, informing me that to confine myself to music is like putting up a wall.
On reflection: well, yes, I have, that I've known for a while.
A deal then?
Some want lots more women singers and a handful of those have also surprised me by being kind enough to let me know, one way or another, they've seen what I'm doing and appreciate the interest and my approach.
That's great, it really is.
I've at least two more entries on the go and one won't be ready for a while: it's a big topic, the people committed to a radical overhaul of the music industry like Brazil's splendid Arts Minister Gilberto Gil (English part of his Portuguese site).
"I'm a minister and a musician but I'm a hacker at heart": Gil's declaration last January at the World Social Forum made waves. that's part of the story (for now, get Wired at Creative Commons), but just one aspect of the sharing process.
To others, who've said "We miss you," I suppose I don't miss me much, but these musicians are such food for my soul that if my enthusiasm, high esteem for them and a preference for research and review, rather than a routine critical approach, are contagious without inflicting tough musical terms on anyone, then it's best the women keep the front page.
Barriers, however, don't interest me, particularly walls.
I'm rethinking compartments, that's different.
What you've read in the past often didn't separate out work from play and affairs of the heart from those of the world as wisely as it might have done; nowadays, the moment I leave the office every night, if I can it's indispensable to put the day's news and doings behind me as well.
That's pretty hard, but of that Night of Unknowing, as now I think of the one evening that led to a summer so very different from the very carefree one sought, some have described it as a "breakdown"! Others do insist on calling it a profound "religious" experience. Whatever.
Maybe it was a breakdown, in a way, though to express it like that is to miss out on what I've got from it since and still am. It was undoubtedly a breaking point, with ways of being I don't want any more, while I've become more sparing even with humour where that's a façade.
Generosity too, such as I've thought of it in the past, needs to be dosed. Though I can no longer judge others by previous standards, seeking harmony and being in tune with them means being more discriminating and, frankly, attentive to vibes, it's that simple. When people turn me off, I no longer bother with them or fight them! If instead, I can avoid them I do.
However, I don't want to shut down my powerful emotional response and empathy with people going through tough times, whether they're close friends or those I edit stories about at the Factory: as the journalist who has to regulate his shock-horror intake far more closely.
If my colleagues can bear such a change, so can I, it's decent of them to take such an enlightened and understanding approach.
Let's say also, however, without details, that in the first half and more of this year, I found out for sure who my real friends were, along with acquaintances I'd like to keep. These include a handful of people on the blogroll who have become occasional correspondents.
Lee is one of them as well as somebody who lives quite close. Others -- regardless of the flair shown in their writing, their human qualities, their wit and their interests -- they'll just have to go! It won't be easy.
But the front page is so cluttered that it needs a clean-up as thorough as the one my flat got in July and that took a week! I don't want to live in a museum. Nor do I want this site to be an archive gallery of interests no longer among my priorities. I now use a Mac, just for instance, but am rarely a mechanic any more.
The Wikipedia and a few other reference points are so good the rest have become redundant.
I've radically cut down on "virtual time" and a cyber-life because the time's really come to devote more of my own time to real people close at hand, making an exception only for a few others I like very much.
The plan at work, to avoid a further overdose of inhumanity, is to take total breaks at regular intervals, say a week long, while telling people what I've learned from the Night of Unknowing has also been a warning that they shouldn't be as foolish as I was and push both myself and almost everybody else far too hard.
It so happens I found this out the hard way!
My first such week off is that of September 26 to October 2. Going back to the Factory was tougher than expected, though I can't say I regret a summer that was scarcely a break: there was just far too much to take in and still there is, but people usually say my feet seem to be on the ground even if my heart remains very full of dreams.
A manageable to-do list includes more changes here to reflect what's going on in my life. People who vanish from the blogroll shouldn't be offended. Many will, but all have lives of their own outside any museum of mine. Some of the headings will change too.
Gosh, if I were to list all the small, independent record company sites and other places I've been exploring, one long roll would be replaced by another, so I've got to think about all that as well.
As for the personal stuff some people still want, well then. Thanks very much for the interest, a few mails have been extremely touching. But when I do this, it'll be here, always here, in the orchard, for people like you, who've embarrassed me so much with some comments I'm sorely tempted to return the favour and list your wretched names.
Let's make a start. How much more stupid can you be than to admit that soon enough you have a birthday coming up with a rather annoying zero on the end?
Well, I do.
This means I can afford no more mistakes.
Now let's also confess that half the stuff I've logged about sex and other subjects of consuming public interest was utter rubbish. I should be more open and direct about my real feelings, tell people what I honestly want, as well as being a much better listener.
So far so good?
I should even take note of the very sensible advice about women I've received from people of both sexes down the deca -- I mean years. Instead of telling you to follow your heart and go with your intuitions, which you'll find are right though they may not make sense at the time, I should always do this myself.
Clear enough?
Now this presents me with a woman problem, doesn't it, on admitting where most of my sadness really comes from after making lots of mistakes?
I've frequently been reminded, often enough by women about whom I did make mistakes, that the world's population is extremely large, and if I were to stop talking, writing and practising variations on "casual" since I've already decided it's a bad idea to take a woman for what she isn't, I could make a discovery.
Now that would be a find I'd like to make one day without rushing it or her as has been my habit.
It could yet happen.
However, I remain stuck with high standards, which are very different from high expectations. Expecting anything of anybody is clearly unwise and wrong, but you have to know what you'd like, if it's already there and comes your way, otherwise you might miss the chance.
Does that make sense?
11:03:27 PM 
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