Clever dogs.

A friend has recently brought to my attention a TV show about rescue dogs being taught to fly planes. It has inspired me to dust off this idea which I've had for a while and which I'm convinced will be a smash hit TV series.

The plot goes like this:

There is a crack squad of rescue dogs who can fly planes (and who get up to various good deeds etc.) but who are under constant attack from other 'bad' air-bound dogs trying to shoot them down. After one particularly fearsome and bloody attack, some of the rescue dogs escape in parachutes and land on an island where they start a new society, based on civilised dog values. But then they discover towards the end of season 2 that the island is part of a massive experiment being run by the evil dogs who shot them down in the first place. After a bloody rebellion, one of the good dogs manages to escape from the island, only to discover that the whole concept of the 'civilised' dog world was merely an idea that was planted within the dream of one of the rescue dogs by a dissident scientist dog, who believes that the leader of the evil dog cult has gone insane and needs to be overthrown by the 'chosen one' i.e. one of the original rescue dogs. 
He (the dissident scientist dog) believes this dog to be the 'chosen one' because of a strange formation of bones that he finds buried in his garden (he's a dog - what else would you expect?), so he invents a machine that allows him to plant the idea of a 'civilised' dog world within a dream being had by the 'chosen' dog, hoping that -when he awakes- he will start the movement that will eventually overthrow the evil dog leader.

The box set will have all sorts of extras, like a map of the island, back stories of the major characters, deleted scenes etc. I just need to come up with a good title.

Making an album, part 8: Taking the scenic route

Like many music lovers of my vintage, I've spent the last six weeks or so listening to David Bowie CDs and trawling Youtube for clips, interviews and rarities. There is plenty I could say about how important Bowie was to me, but plenty of other folk have pontificated on that topic and I’m not in the mood to add to it. All I will say -for now- is that Bowie, an inspirational figure in life, has become an even more inspirational figure in death. The fact that he could produce interesting work as his life was ebbing away seems to be entirely in keeping with his status for my generation. If he can do all of the things that he did while knowing what he knew, then perhaps those of us who undertake artistic pursuits purely for pleasure should get our fingers out and get on with writing that book, painting that picture, making that film, or –in my case- recording that album.

A few months ago, having pulled together more than enough material for an album and having pretty much decided which tracks were going to make the final cut, I started to labour a bit over the lyrics for the four final songs. It was not so much a case of writer’s block, more a demonstration of the power of laziness to facilitate an extended pause for reflection. I had most of the instrumentation recorded for these tracks and had even put down some guide vocals, but I just felt that somehow I wasn’t in the right place to write the words or, indeed, finish the album. Needing to take a break from the task I had set myself, I embarked upon what I thought was a little detour. As a way of avoiding (or postponing) finishing off those last few songs, I started to record some instrumental pieces and, before too long, found myself absorbed in the process. This diversion into the instrumental domain extended to my listening habits and I wallowed once more in the beautiful lush soundscapes of artists like Jean-Michel Jarre, Kraftwerk, John Barry and Angelo Badalamenti. The touchstone, as ever, was Bowie’s ‘Low’ which –even 40 years on- still sounds like a work of art.

Compared with writing a song, working on an instrumental can be quite liberating. As I’ve stated previously, the songs on my album are all quite tastefully arranged and have all the building blocks of what a certain kind of music bore might call ‘proper’ song-writing. The instrumental, however, pays no mind to many of the rules that apply to the song and will often rely almost entirely on atmosphere and ambience. One piece, for instance, started with me finding a weird sound on a synthesiser and playing a constant distorted drone in A flat minor. No rhythm was involved and I didn’t move from the chord, because I had no sense that it had to go anywhere; the sheer noise of it just felt good. I added a simple string melody and saved it as ‘Not The Thing’ (just to give it a temporary name), because the feel reminded me of Ennio Morricone’s superb, eerie, minimalist soundtrack for John Carpenter’s classic movie. A couple of months down the line, that piece, based on little more than a crunchy, distorted tone, has turned into something quite powerful and evocative, a really fun piece of music to work on. Over several sessions with producer and engineer extraordinaire Eddie Macarthur, I’ve added various layers, melodies, synth parts and bits of treated electric guitar which, if you asked me to play again, would have me utterly flummoxed. I’d be unable to reproduce any of it, because I had no idea what I was playing and have no intention of ever trying to perform these pieces live. Morphing and squeezing the guitar through a variety of effects, I played by ear, riding the effect –as opposed to playing the part and adding effects later in the mix- and trying to respond instinctively to what the mood of the piece required.  

This is not something I normally do when I’m writing a song. Aware that the vocal is king and that a solid foundation must be in place, I will already have worked out the chords on acoustic guitar or piano. In song-writing mode, I’ll avoid jarring or clunky chord transitions, because I’m always thinking about what the vocal melody is going to be doing and what the lyrics is going to say; I’ll usually want to tell a story or make some observation on the human condition. When I’m recording an instrumental, all I want to do is make something that sounds good; this may seem like a banal observation, but I would regard it as a liberating statement of intent. The instrumental makes no statement other than: I’m here, I exist, I’m making this noise, while a song always has to have something to say, even if it’s just "I love you, baby" or "I’ve got a brand new combine harvester". My album of ‘proper’ songs requires a degree of personal exposition, but these mute atmospheric pieces allowed me to revel in the lack of any requirement to write lyrics. It is, I believe, this absence of ‘self’ that has made the instrumental music so liberating to work on; in that sense, it feels like a purer art form. 

As I developed more and more of these new pieces, unencumbered by any obligation to tell a story or make any particular statement, I soon found that I had accumulated enough material to produce at least another album. So successful and fulfilling has been this detour (although you may disagree if you listen to the tunes) that I now intend to complete an instrumental album at more or less the same time as the album of 'proper' songs. The name for this project is Analogue Hashtag and the working title for the album is ‘An accumulation of detail’. This is because, on several of the pieces, I have started with a relatively simple theme and added layer upon layer, counterpoint upon counterpoint, until the piece has swollen, wandered and (hopefully) soared. By the time five or six minutes have passed, the listener may have lost trace of the original riff, but it will still be there, a modest little motif still somehow carrying the accumulated weight of its melodic cousins.

The track I’m linking to below (Relentless) is fairly typical of the Analogue Hashtag oeuvre. As usual, it started with me playing around at home, doodling on the keyboard. Something about the simplicity of the riff and the insistent rhythm set me off and, thereafter, the piece pretty much wrote itself; all I had to do was keep driving it in the same direction. I know that repetitive pieces aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but nothing is everyone’s cup of tea.

The point of this kind of music is to create a mood and to sit in that mood for a longer period than one might expect from a normal pop song. Working on these tracks has given me license to mess around a lot more with effects and treatments and to indulge a love for warm analogue synth sounds and atmospheric textures. Listen out for the ‘cut-up’ vocals layered across the landscape of this piece, sitting somewhere in the background like a not-so-distant memory. Later in the track, a lead vocal kicks in. The observant listener will notice that I’m not singing any particular words, but rather making sounds that -to me- felt like they would sit comfortably with the mood of the piece.  

A bit, in fact, like Bowie, on side two of ‘Low’.

Well … I can dream, can’t I?

Relentless

Bowie

As I was driving to work this morning, already gloomier than the gloomy sky, there was a point at which a crazy, fleeting thought suddenly became a hope.

That hope, not yet realising that it was quite silly, somehow fed on the crazy, fleeting thought. Enchanted, then intoxicated by each other, these giddy partners, gathering courage and impetus, flicked on a few lights and rang some bells along my neural pathways until -for somewhere between a millisecond and a microsecond- the crazy thought and the silly hope almost convinced me to believe that I was about to wake up. They almost convinced me to believe that I was not yet driving to work, but was about to wake up for the second time, about to wake into an ordinary gloomy day, a day in which I would not hear the news that my radio had already delivered. 

And, in that delirious little space between millisecond and microsecond, everything was OK.

Michel Houellebecq - 'Submission'

Depending on which reviews you read, Michel Houellebecq is either a novelist of ideas and an original thinker, or he’s a blowhard contrarian and polemicist. I know which side of the fence I’m on. 

Splendidly contemptuous of current intellectual and political orthodoxies, his latest novel –Submission- got my vote for the most interesting read of 2015. It explores one of his big themes, namely that the west is in the process of committing suicide. Ostensibly outlining the process through which France will become an Islamic state, Submission argues not only that atheistic humanism is doomed, but that western liberal culture will eventually be viewed by historians as a brief experiment, an interlude between one mighty religious civilization and another.

Set in 2022, the story is told by Francois, a middle-aged professor of literature at the Sorbonne. He is an expert on the work of the 19^th century novelist J. K. Huysmans, whose conversion to Catholicism transformed what had been a dissolute life. Like his hero, Francois is in a state somewhere beyond disillusionment, believing not only that he can’t teach, but that the academic study of literature is pointless anyway. Apolitical and unambitious, he daydreams about which students he might have sex with or what he’ll have for his dinner while watching TV every night.  

In the run-up to the French presidential election, people are worried and tense. There is violence on the streets, but a media black-out is preventing the mainstream outlets from reporting the extent of the troubles. This state of denial extends to polite society; Francois attends a cocktail party and, when people hear gunfire in the distance, they pretend not to notice and make various excuses to leave. Expecting an outbreak of anarchy, Francois flees Paris to spend some time at the monastery where his hero Huysmans had contemplated a return to the Catholic faith.

After a period of violence and instability, the delayed election eventually sees the socialists and the centre-right UMP form a coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood in order to prevent Marine le Pen’s National Front from taking power. The new president is Mohammed Ben Abbes, a moderate and charismatic figure who is as far removed from our notion of radical Islam as it is possible to get. An intelligent and ambitious president, he envisages an expansion of the European Union that will re-focus on the south of the continent, as well as welcoming modern North African states into the fold. He passes a series of laws to support and strengthen the traditional family unit and is content to surrender some government departments to his coalition partners in return for the appointment of Muslims to key positions in education. Ben Abbes understands that, in any battle for cultural supremacy, birth rates and education are crucial. The future -to coin Mark Steyn’s phrase- will belong to those who turn up for it. 

By the time Francois returns to Paris, the new regime at the Sorbonne -supported by Saudi money- has removed females from the staff register and is in the process of enticing the males to convert to Islam with the promise of enormous salaries and enhanced status. For all of the possible arguments about the merits and demerits of conflicting ideologies, the decision Francois makes boils down to the granting of a few perks; the offer of a well-paid job and polygamous status is enough to persuade him to convert and grab his “second chance at a new life”.

Submission does not so much describe the triumph of Islam, as outline the inevitability of the west’s decay and surrender. Houellebecq presents the transformation not as an apocalyptic event, but as an inevitable and gradual movement, one which finds favour among many non-Muslim religionists and social conservatives. There is no high drama involved; in typically Houellebecqian fashion, things just happen because the tide drifts that way.

Some folk claim that he is just another purveyor of the apocalypse-du-jour, but in outlining the reasons why religious belief and socially conservative notions of societal hierarchy will outlast atheistic humanism, Houellebecq has expressed an idea that we ought to take seriously:  namely, that belief in something will generally trump belief in nothing.

It's 'Virtue Signalling' Week!

This is just a quick note remind everyone that Monday 7^th December is the start of 'Virtue Signalling' Week on twitter and facebook. It’s the one week in the year where you can post your thoughts /observations/ complaints about an issue of the day and demonstrate to your friends and acquaintances that you are more sensitive and caring than they are.   

The beauty about Virtue Signalling is that you don’t have to think too much about stuff. Just pick an issue, post your original thought (well … a thought anyway) and link to something you’ve read from a reliable source (well … a source anyway). Extra points are awarded if you bypass the whole ‘reading’ thing and just use a picture to sum up a complicated issue. Don’t worry about the context of the picture or anything like that, because, the more complicated the issue, the easier it is summed up by a picture with a caption.  

During Virtue Signalling Week, nobody will be criticised for having a superficial grasp of complex issues, so the simpler the message, the better. Good luck!

For further information, visit:

www.ohforfucksakestoptalkingshite.com

It's time to ditch that immigration bargepole

Such is the degraded nature of our national discourse on the topic of immigration that I feel obliged to start this piece with a statement, or -in modern parlance- a trigger warning.

I am a free-marketeer. I believe that capitalism, while far from perfect, provides the greatest good for the greatest number. I believe this because all of the available evidence leads me to that conclusion. Further, that belief in the free market comes with a belief in the free movement of people, which means that I am in favour of immigration, including economic migration. 

Questions relating to how, when, why and in what numbers people move from one country to another ought to be considered important enough for reasoned discussion, but it has been clear for some time that ‘polite’ society has considered such questions to be out of bounds. Mainstream political parties won’t talk about it and the default liberal-left position has been: if you question immigration policy, you’re a racist. No wonder then, that rather than try to talk honestly and rationally on the subject, many folk opt to deploy the proverbial ten-foot bargepole to help them steer well clear of it. When you consider the public reaction to the refugee crisis, it’s little wonder that some choose to keep their own counsel. From the haughty tenor of some of the posts on the various social networks, you’d think that anyone not waving a ‘refugees welcome’ banner while organising a street party for the new arrivals was deserving of the kind of opprobrium normally reserved for members of the SS who have been discovered living in exile in South America. At the very least, many people appear to believe that a failure to subscribe to the ‘open our doors and let everyone in’ line is somehow morally dubious. I was intrigued by the number of people posting online statements about their willingness to take refugees into their own homes. I’m not in a position to say whether these statements were genuine, or merely tiresome examples of virtue signalling; I don’t suppose we’ll know for sure until we check back in a couple of months to see how they are all getting on with their Syrian lodgers.

During our national debate (I use that word in the loosest possible sense), we continue to use the emotive term ‘refugee’ when, under European law, someone cannot be classed as a refugee if they have crossed several ‘safe’ borders after having fled their own country. Many of the folk we are being urged to accept with open arms can, by no meaningful legal definition, be described as refugees. Accordingly, one must assume that they are economic migrants. I’ve already stated that I am in favour of economic migration and believe that it has enriched our country, but would add this caveat: nation states should have the right to make informed and rational decisions about how they manage their numbers. And, whether we like it or not, the numbers are important.      

A few weeks ago, when people started circulating an idiotic meme about Britain’s shame in only accepting 216 refugees (which anyone could have debunked after about twenty seconds of research), they inadvertently touched upon that key question. If you are willing to state that 216 was the ‘wrong’ amount of refugees to accept, you have implicitly acknowledged that there must be a ‘right’ number of refugees to accept. Let’s discount for the moment the fact that some folk think we should have an absolute 'open doors' policy, in the same way we’d discount the fact that some folk believe the earth to be flat. I don’t know if the ‘right’ number of refugees is 15,000, 150,000 or 1.5million. I would expect the people we elected to govern the country to have a view based on their knowledge of the likely impact on services, infrastructure, housing, social cohesion and so on. We have to trust them to make that decision because -much as it may surprise some folk to learn- personal conscience doesn’t trump reality. Making a grand pronouncement about our moral obligations might make some people feel good about themselves, but they shouldn’t expect other human beings with other thought processes and experiences, other opinions and observations, to go along with them.   

Just as it’s idiotic to believe that all refugees are potential terrorists, it’s also idiotic to believe that there won’t be terrorists (or terrorist sympathisers) among the hundreds of thousands of folk currently entering Europe. We know there will be, because the jihadists have not only told us, they have demonstrated that they have agents and sympathisers operating in major European cities. These facts may be awkward and inconvenient for some folk to accept, but that’s the thing about facts: they don’t need you or me to feel awkward or inconvenienced about accepting them. They just are.   

As always, our interpretation of events may depend on where we get our news from, but five minutes on the google machine should make it obvious that this is a much more difficult and complicated topic than some folk believe. For every feelgood news item featuring smiling locals welcoming trainloads of refugees with open arms, there are myriad alternative stories about a less welcoming side. These stories, among other things, reveal a growing unease among local populations about the sudden influx of huge numbers of folk (the vast majority of them young single men) from North Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. We might not like to hear about hostility towards these migrants, but it is happening and there are reasons why it is happening.

I work in an educational setting on the outskirts of an average British city. Many of the students I work with come from areas which might be described as disadvantaged. Last week, I had a discussion about the refugee crisis with a group of 12 young people. What struck me was the sheer unanimity on this topic among the group; every one of them expressed views which, if aired on twitter, would probably have PC Plod at the door ready to press ‘hate crime’ charges. I’m expressing it politely when I say that these youngsters did not go along with the view that their country should welcome refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants. And I’m willing to bet that, for each of those kids, there will be a set of parents or carers with the same outlook. I do not believe that this is down to wickedness; these are simply people whose perceptions of this complicated topic are viewed through the filter of their experiences within their own communities. No doubt some of you reading this will already have concluded that such folk will have been brainwashed by the ‘right wing’ press, but that, I think, is an intellectually lazy position, one which wilfully ignores the experiences of those who believe that they have most to lose from immigration; that is, the people against whom many migrants will be competing for low-paid jobs and cheap housing.

I’m fine with immigration, but I’m middle class, middle-aged and comfortably off. I’m not unemployed and I’m not on the social housing waiting list. If I was and I lived in a poor community in which social and cultural tensions already existed, I probably wouldn’t be as keen on it as the average college professor, TV journalist or MP. And I’d probably be even less keen if I lived in a place like Rotherham, where the values of the governing class are so grotesquely skewed that they can suppress information about the systematic brutalisation and rape of 2,000 girls in the name of ‘community cohesion’, but can ban a middle-aged couple from fostering children because they supported a political party that said that it would limit immigration. Not a party that said it would introduce concentration camps or outlaw any particular religion; a party that said it would limit immigration. I can’t explain why those in power acted the way they did without using words like arrogance, stupidity and cognitive dissonance. If you can think of anything more damaging to the notion of community cohesion than a willingness on the part of the authorities to interpret heinous criminal activity through the prism of ethno-religious sensitivity, please let me know; my mind can’t possibly be any more boggled than it already was by those disgraceful events. Rotherham provided the perfect illustration of a political climate in which legitimate concerns are stifled and declared off-topic, a climate in which the Untermensch are excluded from any discussion because they’re deemed to be stupid, racist and volatile. Little wonder then, that many folk, rather than talk about the issues, will reach for that bargepole.

How did we get to this point? Well, here’s a clue:

Andrew Neather, a speech writer and adviser to Tony Blair in the early 2000s, was quoted as saying that Labour’s relaxation of immigration controls were designed to "open up the UK to mass migration", although ministers were reluctant to discuss this move publicly, fearing that it would alienate its "core working class vote". In a phrase which has rightly become notorious, Mr Weather said that Labour ministers wished to change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity".

Who was consulted about this plan? Did it ever appear in any Labour manifesto? And whose noses were actually being rubbed in it? If those ministers were really convinced that their policies were right, shouldn’t they have talked openly about them instead of operating by stealth?

When the Amsterdam treaty of 1999 formally incorporated the Schengen agreement into European law, commentators who pointed out the obvious (i.e. that opening Europe’s doors to potentially millions of poor Africans and Eastern Europeans could have catastrophic consequences) were routinely dismissed; they usually wrote for the wrong newspapers and had the wrong political views. And bit by bit, we got used to the idea of having to creep gingerly across eggshells, because polite society had declared omertà on the topic of immigration, hoping that it would go away.

But sooner or later, reality always puts its marker down. It doesn’t matter what polite society or mainstream political parties think, because if enough people think immigration is the big issue of the day, immigration will become the big issue of the day. And, when mainstream head-in-the-sand parties decide to keep their heads in the sand, the electorate invariably looks for alternatives. 

I sometimes wonder if it occurs to folk who use 'shaming' tactics that they are at least partly responsible for the increasing support enjoyed by so-called extremist parties. Yes, if you have ever dismissed someone as a narrow-minded bigot without listening to their concerns about immigration, I’m afraid you are culpable. It’s true that we have no shortage of narrow-minded bigots, but extremist parties didn’t invent racism; they have grown -and will continue to grow- in response to the mainstream’s unwillingness to listen to views deemed to be morally or intellectually beyond the pale. By now, it should be obvious to everyone that closing debate down by shouting ‘racist’ doesn’t solve anything; in fact, it does quite the opposite, as Europe’s political leaders are discovering. Look up what is happening in Sweden if you want a glimpse of the future.

If we were able to have an honest and rational discussion now, I suspect that a majority of the British population would go along with the following two propositions:

It would be wrong to refuse to accept any refugees.

It would be wrong to have an absolute ‘open doors’ policy towards refugees.

Somewhere in between those two extremes is a position that the majority of us will support, because most people -on some level- appreciate that Society is a compact between those who are living now, those who shaped the world in which we live and those who will follow us. Our liberal culture (and its attendant freedoms) was not won in a lottery; it was fought for over hundreds of years, paid for by the lives of millions. It has survived by creating wealth and prosperity, adapting to change, welcoming and assimilating incomers and entrenching a set of core values within a complex system of cultural, societal and political mores. No single generation, no ephemeral governing group, no cabal of keyboard warriors is empowered to change that. To put it simply: we do not have the right to give the house keys to anyone who fancies turning up. And if we put that to a vote, most people would go along with it. Because, again, most folk know (if few are prepared to say) that while we are obliged to act morally and to help refugees as much as we reasonably can, we do not owe millions of folk from other continents our standard of living.   

If you believe that we do, you should act according to your conscience. You should sell your house and car and donate the proceeds to an appropriate charity. You should take refugees into your home and share your life with them, or go and work for voluntary services overseas. What you shouldn’t do is demand that other people (and future generations) pay for policies that you think are morally upstanding. You are entitled to hold those views, but you have no right to hold other folk to those standards.

It is clear that our continued use of that intellectual bargepole has not had the desired effect. All it has done is build up resentment and open the door to folk who won’t necessarily have entirely benevolent intentions. 

There is, however, still time to adopt a mature and rational approach to the topic.

We should be discussing and debating the issues of culture, demographics, assimilation, impacts on education, housing, health services and social cohesion. Because we live in a civilised country, I believe that the economic, social, cultural and moral case for controlled immigration can be made and won.

But I suspect that some of us aren’t yet ready to have that grown-up discussion.

When the subject comes up, too many shrill voices will still cry ‘racist’ and, fearful of being called the only thing that is worse than being called a paedophile, folk will -publicly at least- reach once again for that bargepole.  

And something that is already quite ugly could get a whole lot uglier.

What's it all about, Sandi?

The singer Sandi Thom’s much-discussed online ‘meltdown’ attested to just how upset she was that her latest single had not been play-listed by any of the big radio stations (i.e. the ones with lots of listeners). She was particularly aggrieved that Radio 2 had ignored it, because she considered it to be catchy and ‘perfect’ for their format. She exclaimed, tearfully, that: “It’s a fucking good song, OK? There is no reason why they need to do this to me!” We must assume from this that it simply did not occur to her that the Radio 2 producers may not have liked her song, thus ensuring that “22 million people won’t get to hear it.”

You may recall that Ms Thom came to fame in 2006 on the back of what was essentially a clever social networking campaign, when reports suggested that 100,000 people were watching shows being streamed live from her ‘bedroom’. The internet is a wonderful thing, the story suggested, because it allowed unknown artists like Sandi to connect with huge numbers of fans and to be discovered in a whole new way. Apart from the fact that the technical specifications required to handle such a massive number of live streams would have been beyond the simple bedroom artist that she purported to be, Ms Thom was also already signed to a record company. The ‘100,000 live streams for an unknown independent artist’ story had, in the immortal words of Damon Runyon, more than a touch of the old phonus balonus about it, but whether we believed it or not, it certainly gave her career a splendid kick-start.

Since her big hit (You may remember it: 'I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair'), her sales have been on a relentless downward curve and, without wishing to be unkind, it is clear that her appeal has become rather more selective.

The online commentary on her confessional has been divided as to whether it represented:

  

a) A blubbering, pathetic illustration of an utterly bewildering sense of entitlement. She’s written a song … so what?

b) A depressingly public display of her fragile mental health. Watch it and you’ll see what I mean; it looks like there could be something more going on than ‘nobody likes my brilliant single’.  

or  

c) A tawdry marketing ploy. How many folk were talking or writing about her single last week? How many folk are talking or writing about it now? After the meltdown and attendant furore, she was invited, among other things, to appear on the Chris Moyles Radio Show (now who could have predicted that?) 

You can judge for yourself as to what her rant really means. My feeling is that options a, b and c are all, to one extent or another, probably close to the truth.

I am, however, going to make a more charitable observation and suggest that Sandi has –intentionally or not- aired a refreshingly candid snapshot of the pathetic little beast that dwells within the heart of every creative person, the needy critter that raises its voice whenever a work of art is released into the world at large.  

It’s an abject, pitiable, whimpering thing that says:

“Look. I’ve made something. It took me a long time and I’ve put a lot into it. Like it, please. Please, please, please … like it.”

Scuttling around in the dark, neglected cellar of creativity, this wretched creature nurses a devastating and little-uttered truth:

Your sense of self-worth is based on how complete strangers react to your creative endeavours. How is that working out for you? 

Sandi's rant