The Scottish Enlightenment
Treatments/Tactics
30.Aug.08
Music is a treatment for a problem, but never solves it. Band rehearsal, wednesday last week, had been looking forward to it so much, and Taxidermy of Love grew some juicy fruits and at the end of the night it was looking lovely. Thats what i wanted. Hit the spot. But i go to bed head buzzing and wanting to tell lover how great it is and show her all the colours we painted in. She’s sleeping and quite right too, she needs it. So forget, pillow meet cheek, lid meet lid, sheep bleet gid, and get in line, nine, ten…
3:30am gatecrashes a dream, and i have screaming toothache. CoCodamol, come to daddy. And Taxidermy of Love is fizzing in the glass as my drugs effervesce. Remarkable how quick painkillers work sometimes. 600mg Ibuprofen did nothing though. Why’s that? Only a matter of time till i need to take more, so lets sleep in this gorgeous pain free state. And then come wednesday next Ill take more and maybe we’ll get St Germain spruced up and ready for the summer…
Four weeks, maybe five weeks before Wednesday, we had parted ways for summer holidays etc. And towards the end of that hiatus I was getting twitched, getting grouchy, walking in circles mutter “who was I? I was someone, who was I?”. Music is a treatment for a problem, see. Here I am, saturday morning, wee Freya is sleeping. Ill wake her in 20 mins. But Last.fm is whirring through Neutral Milk Hotels similar artists and keeping me going. Drip feed music. The problem is needing to make something, and if not make something, then imbibe something carefully made, that i would like to have made. I thing the problem maybe is spirit and fesh. Two halves make a hole, and music covers the hole, completing the membrane.
The problem is need. Need is always a problem. Supply is the treatment. Or asceticism. But if the need is a lovely need, and the supply is a beautiful supply, then the ascetic is a sad one.
Also, the problem is two long bus journeys each day, to Glasgow for work, and the big dude with the spikey hair who plays the same playlist on his iPod every time, loud too, so we can all share the horror of a string quartet playing Smells Like Teen Spirit, or a hardcore Ska/Pogo version of Hotel California. Oh my. So music solves that. But also, on the journey home, too many things to do, to little done, feeling useless and gross, wishing many things, anxiety and crud swilling around, music is balm. The Innocence Mission have been servicing these moments well recently. Low too. Quiet and beautiful, and important.
Done.
