25 Nov 2007

Winter

Just had some kind of Full Moon. I can always tell. The past few weeks have been pretty tricky for me. I’ve been bouncing off the walls with respect to my work. From the point of view of any particular Who fan, the result of this period might be seen to be encouraging. I’ve had to face the fact that I very much enjoyed playing with the band on Later, The Jools Holland Show on BBC TV last week. Roger and I both missed Simon, my brother, but we managed OK. A highlight for me was seeing Robert Wyatt and his wife Alfreda. Robert has just released ComicOpera a lovely new album. He serenades a cow on the cover. They used to be neighbours when we all lived by the river near Eel Pie Island in Twickenham. We’ve all wandered now. Then I had lunch with Roger to discuss the next year, and we were both full of ideas. I fought hard, as usual, for my right to write, and Roger was very gallant. He likes to have work lined up ahead, and finds the idea of waiting for me to lay a golden egg interesting as a concept but frustrating in practice.
 
What I’m here to write about is procrastination. You see I have fought so hard to have enough space to write whatever it is I’m going to write, that I haven’t seemed to notice that I’m not really inclined to write at all. That’s not quite correct, I am writing quite a bit, as I said in my last entry. But my ‘novel’ may indeed take three years to complete, and if I’m honest with myself when I sat down to write my autobiography in 1996 I had no idea I’d still be wading through research files eleven years later. So my novel can roll along beside the rock.
 
That’s my decision today. There have been other considerations that have made me fight for an open diary for the year ahead. None of these are of interest to anyone but me and my close ones. For in an attempt to avoid having no time available to write, I have come across a new obstruction: the procrastination of the Inner Writer when given the chance, the ideas, the time and the resources to write.
 
If I can steal a little of an email to Dave Hastilow who used to work at my studios who had asked what I was working on:
 
I feel my Creative Creature is brutally self-serving. The doer of all evil deeds. The wrecker of all financial pension plans. The non-believer in all Higher Powers. If I spend too long – for example – thinking about setting up a studio, which for me is play, like having a train set, CC as I will call him for the purpose of this email, paces the soul like a trapped animal, frustrated and impatient, screaming: stop procrastinating, get the effing studio built and release me! There is no play for CC.
 
So I acquiesce. I put aside all childish things, and sit to write. CC, at this point comes up with some extremely strange ideas. Let’s take a walk. Let’s go shopping for new pencils. I need a new car. Let’s just sit and have a nice rest, it will allow me to think. Etc. CC is relentless, cruel, bullying and in fact quite lazy – certainly not very focussed. Julia Cameron in The Artists Way calls CC the Artist-Child. But then she’s a woman. A Great Woman, but my inner creative is not a child. It’s a teenaged over-eating shopaholic impatient egomaniac that simply happens to have a pencil.
 
In other words trying to be creative often seems like calling one’s own bluff. But if I get in the way of CC he, she or it will arrange for me to be killed or better yet for me to find myself on Beachy Head (from the final scene in the Quadrophenia movie) thinking I should remove myself so the poor fellow can get on with his work, or contemplation of work. Now that is strange. Some manifestation of the ego that can see better than I can that if I die I will not really die. Or hopeful agnostic that I am in my next life I will be born with the same pencil.
 
That’s what was going on with me this week. Suddenly, probably as I was walking my four bigger dogs this Sunday morning, I found myself wondering if I can be bothered to wait for CC to hatch an egg, golden or otherwise. So I am going to speed things up a bit. Rather than do what I usually do which is to wait until the New Year to make decisions and forge ahead blindly, I am going to shut my eyes and forge ahead blindly BEFORE Christmas. Interesting new concept for resolutions I think.
 
I have to respect the fact that CC really is a Killer. He will have to believe he is running the entire show, but retains the option to fall asleep at any moment without prior warning.
 

 
By the way, the webmaster is arranging for comments to operate in this Blog as I’ve allowed in the past. It will be good for me to have my grammar, my memory and my morals corrected on a regular basis by you scholars. It will also be good to be told how handsome I am and how stupid all music critics are who don’t rave about what I do. I could always spot a Blogger in the crowd on the last tour. You were the ones who stood motionless, looking like your thumb-size photos, waiting to be spotted. You were the ones who didn’t quite know what to do when I pointed at you, waved, and asked how you were – quoting your silly Blogger name. CrazyWaxyGurl. PrinceOfRock. Etc. I look forward to being corrected by you again.
 
Then, next year, a NEW GAME. It’s called COMING OUT. Bloggers who hide behind silly names, and find it hard to move in public, will be invited to a gathering at which they must take the stage and answer questions from the floor. Like – who are you, what do you do, where do you live and why are you called CrazyWaxyGirl. The answers will allow you to grow, with new self-esteem and personal awareness. It will be like Rehab. You will never need to Blog again. You will walk proudly into the crowd and drink beer, vomit over your neighbour and open conversations with the people around you who will think you are normal. You will ignore the band you have paid £150 to see play. Normal. It’s the new CrazyWaxy.