'Poltergeist'

Hanging Around As An Unhappy Ghost

Once you die... we have these kinds of fantasies about what happens to us after we die. Or dumber still, what we would do with supernatural powers after our demise. It's the kind of train of thought that leaves the platform without a train driver or even logical tracks upon which to drive such trains. Such thoughts are the basis of many a religion and mental unwell-ness.

That said, you can understand the fantasy. You die; but your will transcends the demise of the corporeal, in the most Nietzsche-an way; and you exact vengeance by flinging stuff around the room.
Yeah. That'd be really intense... not.

All the same I wrote song about being a poltergeist who leaves home one day and drifts off wandering like on a cloud, aimless and without the object of one's revenge. I also obtained an Electro-Harmonix Mel-9 pedal which allowed me to trigger a bunch of Mellotron sounds using my guitar, so there are touches of that wonderful device in this one.



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'This Is Your Afterlife Now'

Edited to Add...

Hey, this is the 2500th post of this blog. How amazing is that? Not really? Okay then.
Just thought I'd mention it while I had it in my mind.
if you're one that's read a whole bunch of those entries, many, many many thanks to you for your support!

Humourless At Gaza

When your friends are dying, you're in no mood to write jolly songs of jest and jokes. Not even to cheer them up. You see them put a brave face on it and it lulls you into a false sense of security about being-ness and existence. It's a crock. Death comes as surely as Benjamin Franklin's adage about taxes. If you think I was in a heavy funk about things and writing a bunch of downer songs here, you'd be right. Except on some level, I was trying to get out of writing about my problems with life and death, I was just simply coming up with fictions about fictional characters and their deaths. In some ways, that's how sublimation works.

The character in this song has committed suicide and is freshly dead, but experiences their consciousness drifting off as they hang. It's like the definition of morbid, but there you go.
I did enjoy banging on the keyboard like it was a piano. It's the small things in life that keep you hooked in to the good bits.



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'The Patient'

The Sick Body Politic

I don''t know when it started, but our body politic stopped being normal this decade. If anything, it became unhinged, the more the evidence mounted in favour of Global Warming and Climate Change. The claims of those in denial got to be more strident, more crazy, and largely in denial of things like facts.

I'm sure the people who vote for these idiots, who do not believe in anthropogenic climate change are doing it out of a desperate sense of denial. Tony Abbott becoming the Prime Minster of Australia pretty much destroyed my faith in politics. The United States electing Donald Trump essentially stopped me blogging here because... come on, what would be the point? You're talking about clinically insane people with strongly held stupid beliefs in the highest office of government.

The only conclusion I can draw from it is that the mental illness that makes people deny things and work up a passion is rather widespread. There's a lot of mentally ill people in positions of power, pulling the levers of government, that represents a lot of mentally ill people in the electorate. There is no reason to the absence of reason, by its very definition. You can't talk to the crazy about their being crazy.

When you're sick, you don't really have a normal sense of your self. When you are running a fever, you have thoughts about your illness that are genuinely wild. You think about death and dying and other crazy, bleak things as you suffer. None of it makes any sense when you finally regain yourself and recover from the fever. It would be much worse if you were beset by mental illness and couldn't face scientific facts.

This song is basically about one of those kinds of irrational trains of thought.



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'Funeral and Birth'

You're Born, You Live, You Die

Sorry to be a downer this early in the year. It starts funny sometimes, but that's not the plan.

Here's a song about the cycle of life. The weekend my friend's father passed away also saw the birth of my nephew. It had me thinking about the coincidence and the possible meaning that could be drawn from it. No, I'm not talking reincarnation -  besides which, I think my nephew was born before my friend's father passed away. All the same, people come and go and life really is like some kind of revolving door. Maybe it is like one giant Hotel California.

Last year was bit tougher than the cycle of life and birth, I lost a couple of friends to cancer, and there's really not much you can do about it when it happens, but to mourn. I feel I spent pretty much most of the year last year putting it together in my head as to how to go forward in life without these people. You make do emotionally and you make changes practically, and you learn to live with it pragmatically.





Oh, by the way, I can embed a Spotify playlist apparently, so here it is:

'Just As You Like It'

It's A New Year!

It always comes around, so after a while you wonder if it's worth the celebrations, but I was buried neck deep in it this year. One thing that does happen as you get older is you get a better sense of humour about it.

Anyway, I hope you all had a good one. I've been dragged away again in a way I never expected, but I'm back again, posting up these links.

There will be a new Art Neuro album coming out on 30th January 2019. Yes, that kept me very busy as well. It's all the old songs from the dark ages. I won't divulge just how old, but ... they're old. The recordings themselves are new, and the songs themselves have had a polish, and yet, they are the original songs from a long time ago.

Stay tuned!

In the mean time, here's a song about the ambivalence some people feel about love. The truth is, every moment is precious so if you feel love, you should just go express it. The rest of it is social niceties and manners and customs - and really, those things are not as as important as the love you feel.



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