Analogue Vision

i’m probably one of millions of people who’ve decided to start blogging as some kind of new years resolution. i thought about it this morning as i was awoken with a strange, vivid dream where i was playing a very specific bass line over and over again and couldn’t get back to sleep. what’s weird is that i could remember, note for note, what i’d been playing in the dream. i got up and wrote it down on a piece of paper.  i’m gonna ableton it up later and see if it’s as catchy as it seemed at the time.

anyhow, i couldn’t get back to sleep – a combination of a slight cold and over-indulgence in the excellent food served by remek and litka at last night’s do, and got to wondering about resolutions. i never normally make them – other than occasionally shying away from alcohol for the duration of january.

i realized the problem with these annual promises to self is their by and large negative nature: don’t do this, avoid that, steer clear of the other. so i decided to set myself up with a series  positive things i would put my mind to in this year. 10 seemed to be a good round number, so i worked out ten things i definitely wanted to do.

obviously the first of these is this blog – inspired by my uncle ian, who has kept a diary every day for 50 years (i’m sure he’ll correct that number if he ever reads this), and who, over boxing day dinner, asked me what had happened to the blog i was keeping a while back. i didn’t have a  satisfactory answer.  travelling around europe five years ago, i’d blogged the highlights, but got out of the habit as i felt that not enough interesting things were happening to me after i settled in krakow.

here are the other 9:

1. download as much illegal and copyrighted music, films and tv as possible. sample it, cut it up, use it, abuse it.

2. produce at least one outstanding piece of music per month. from inception to mastering.

3. update dad’s website every week.

4. explore the tatra mountains.

5. cook tasty food at least three times a week.

6. make positive contact with more people more often.

7. learn to play the saxophone.

8. start, plan and complete the max for live project i’ve been thinking about over christmas, and in fact for much longer than that.

9. make the big decisions.

this last is being left specifically vague, although i know exactly what decisions i’m talking about. when there’s progress on this i’ll say something more; i just don’t want to pre-empt anything. the rest are at least vaguely self-explanatory, but i’ll try to explain each one over the coming weeks when i have nothing else to talk about.

the hope is that, as each of the other projects progresses, i’ll be giving myself something to write about here.

one last thing: i’m not going to publicise this for a while, although it will be on the net for anyone to read. when i feel i’ve got my style sorted i’ll start sending updates via twitter, facebook, and the rest.