Stheart

(Well I think I went mad, isn’t that so sad

What a shame you lost a dad that you never had.

Oh Mums taken the car, she can’t have gone far)

I had no intention of writing another post, but I feel as if I have to get an elephant out of the room and off my chest…

The main reason I started writing these blogs was because I was inspired by a select few fellow TEFL Heaven Koh Chang 2014 trainees.

I think nearly everyone on my course has written at least one blog post. Those three weeks were truly some of the greatest of my life and life immediately after was tough. All connection to small connection. Just. Like. That. I think we all used them originally as a way of keeping in touch with each other.

I never really wrote too many posts on what I was doing, I started writing from the caverns of my heart without ever really noticing. I’ve never planned the layout of these blog posts, I just type away as things enter my brain from the ether of my consciousness, all following the same narrative, all having the same buildings in the same cities, cities linked by the great highways.

I’ve never ever, ever been someone who would talk about emotions or how I was feeling in any capacity, but these blog posts were the catalyst for change.

Now you could argue that I personify disconnection via a wi-fi connection, typing like I’m bigger than my body and thats fine, you can say I’m such a cliche, but I don’t really see the difference in it anyway because, hey kids – we’re all the same, what a shame!

Writing about how I was feeling, wearing my heart on my sleeve became second nature via these posts.
Now, I’m not where I want to be, but I’m not where I used to be, and that’s alright.

I began writing about self-reflection, reflection in general, muses, opinions that were swimming through the eternally playing stereo that is my mind.

It occurred to me that maybe the reason I became so ‘productive’ on the blog front was that for twenty-plus-years I had shared my name with a stranger, unrecognisable. Twenty-plus-years of thoughts that I had never released, occupying space, in every atom of my body and infinity.

I didn’t just have an elephant in the room, I had elephants in every room of an insane asylum and gradually one by one the beasts began to run the show.

I started to find that speaking openly became easier and easier, specifically to my best friends but in general also.

I now find it amazing how strong the power of human communication is, specifically speaking – you say words aloud, you hear yourself say them and by doing that swimming against the current becomes a little less tiring.

Self-reflection and self-improvement have become integral to me and I think it should be integral full-stop.

Glass half-full, glass half-empty – be thankful for the first half, its gone (whatever happened), be grateful for the second half, its still to come.

Now, I wake up every morning happy that my wooden heart is still beating and with the mindset that I want to be a better person than I was yesterday by being the best person I can be today and if I can make just one soul smile then hell, that’s a bonus. That’s a bonus.

“There is no learning and personal development without reflection.”

I can pinpoint the exact moment I knew that I had to improve myself, it was after one particular comment my mum made to me, one oh so dark and rainy night when the Darkness On The Edge of Town encroached just a little more.

You see, I grew up in a household where love between my parents was an apparition – hollow, empty.
It wasn’t all bad, don’t get me wrong, I have some wonderful memories but they are so incredibly difficult to remember after walking through so many dead cities.

My father’s father left him, and his mother when he was very young. My father never had a loving mother, or family, and for that, I am sorry in more ways that anyone could ever understand. These must be the foundations on what the haunted cities were built on.

My Mum on the other hand, had everything you could ask for in a family. She was one of four daughters and never went without love or compassion – loving parents come grandparents and now great-grandparents who are still together and as affectionate as ever, after decades under the influence of true love. For that I am so grateful, in more ways than anyone could ever understand.

My mum was my father’s first ever relationship. They married and because of that you’re reading the ramblings of a pseudo-mad-man.

“We’re all born to broken people on their most honest day of livin’ and
Since that first breath we’ll need grace that we’re never given
Well I’ve been haunted by standard red devils and white ghosts
It’s not only when these eyes are closed.”

– from the song ‘Wooden Heart’, by Listener.

My father would do petty, spiteful and fucking nasty things, one of which was to make it as difficult as he could for my Mum see her family before I was born and after.  It must have been jealously, jealously for something he never had.
It got to the stage where after arriving at family gatherings in my early and mid-teens my Mum would have to make up excuses about the absence of my father, by the end he had completely disconnected himself from them and pushed both my mum and me away.

I started to become aware that not everything was as rosy as it seemed around the age of twelve, I think. I’d start to notice the arguments, the lack of talking for days, that felt like years.

I can remember on many occasions, far too many occasions, shit… so many fucking occasions – going out to play football with all my friends and constantly wishing for the reconciliation by the time I’d walk through my front door after joy rides on the sun, where for just a few Moments my friends were my Painkillers.

My friends back then were Towers, bigger than the world, that have now become Monuments in the mist. I was the youngest out of everyone, quite considerably too, but they always looked out for me.

I wish I could still talk with you all under the summer skies where all my troubles became shadowed by the nights sitting on an old bench down by the ruined church, looking out to sea, being too cold, being old enough to know but too young to care,  gazing upon an open road to nowhere but everywhere. That bench is still where every drive I ever go in my head ends.

Can we go out tonight, joy rides on the moon?

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
– from the film, ‘Stand By Me’.

I knew my parents would always split up, but it doesn’t prepare you for when it happens.

It was a few months before my GCSE exams when it actually happened. It was a numbing pain when I found out. I didn’t really know what to think or do, so I carried on like I usually did, just keeping it inside, rotting away.

The years after the separation I can now look back on and say were some of the worst of my life. Misery, uncertainty, poisoned memories and toxic thoughts,  bottled up and placed on cobwebbed shelves caked in dust.

My father did fucking awful things to my Mum, which I still regret, hell, I regret not being able to do anything about them… I always will.

One of which changed the course of our lives, it was taking all the money he and my mum had saved, basically leaving her penniless with a kid that was sailing on a vast ocean without a north star to navigate from.

She did alright, hell, she did alright.

Looking back now as I’m writing this, it was the best thing he has ever done for me.

She bought a house aided by the money she had from the sale of our home, which my father only had his half and no more. That brought me closer to my friends who at the time were just my friends in school and not out of it as I lived around thirty minutes away, rarely travelling to see them from the village I lived in, the village where I had my childhood friends.
By this time my childhood friends were moving away for one reason or another as they were much older than me.

Relationships, jobs, family problems.

We never had days or nights like we did when I was twelve years old ever again and Jesus, that hurts, they were some of the best times.

I miss you all, not being able to find any trace of one of my childhood friends fucking kills me and not a week goes by when I don’t think of him. Being told another story about a childhood friend’s failed suicide attempt and the aftermath still affects me profoundly to this day.
I think it’s always worse finding out things like that when you’re not around said person and haven’t seen or even spoken to them for a while rather than still being in regular contact with them.
The whole ‘life’s too short’ monologue plays on an autocue in your mind, that feeling of being able to not really do anything. I still think about you all and what we had.

Ugh.

But, in every negative a positive will appear and by moving out of my childhood home in a little village where my childhood friends were, to the main town in my county where my school-friends and school were. My school friends would become my best friends. I kept in touch with my childhood friends for a while after I moved and saw them on a few occasions, but it couldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t be the same.

But, I believe in the universe.

One night in our new house, I remember talking to my mum about what my father was like earlier on in their relationship, when I was a baby, I questioned why she didn’t walk away sooner.

She told me she stayed with him for my sake. I still struggle with that – the the suffering she had to endure, stemmed from me.

As I got older I started to develop many of the bad habits my father had. I would be short and ratty with my mum and I can’t even tell you why.

I didn’t have a positive male role model to look up to, ask questions to or even really quite simply to talk to, maybe that was it?

‘You’re just like your father’.

The moment.

I can still remember the horror I felt when those words echoed around the caverns of my absent Brain.

I decided there and then that I would change. Many years and many books later here I am.

I’m not where I want to be but I’m not where I used to be and for that I am grateful.

There’s always a positive to come out of a negative and there is aways a lesson to be learnt, no matter how the teacher presents the material.

The power of talking, releasing words, typing words, whatever medium chosen is colossal.

People can tut at blogs all they want, to them, I say – show a little faith, there’s magic in these nights and have a round on me, friend, I’ve been there before, a few times.

Speaking for myself, these blogs have changed who I am. I wouldn’t have dreamt of being so open a few years back.

Just talk with people, say hello, ask them how they are and genuiely care because positive human interaction is unlike anything else, anything else.
It’s no coincidence that a form of professional help for your troubles is a psychologist, to whom, you talk.

Who knows what road your next conversation with someone, with anyone,  may take you…just have it.

I have learnt more in the time spent in Thailand than I had in all my years before. The one learn that I regard as the highest is being able to now talk more openly to people about whatever it may be. Whether I am helping them, or they are helping me, I’m sure everyone can agree we’re all in this together and we’re helping each other.

I wish I knew back then what I know now. But thats all part of the journey, isn’t it?

What city was ever built in a day, even if it was haunted?

A leopard can never change it’s spots, well thats alright because we’re human.

Anyone can change if they truly want it and if they truly believe it.
If one door shuts, it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, move on, for a hundred more will open and if you believe, because, We All Need A Reason To Believe that you can knock loud enough, one might just open.

I owe thanks to my father, for showing me how to never treat another human and making me determined to not become the man he was.

I owe thanks to everyone I’ve met in The Cities I’ve built, most people more than some and some people more than most, from my heart to yours, thank you.

I owe everything to my mum.

Make Monuments for everything you love.

Do something and let it consume you.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Now.

So remember, this is our time.

From the thunderstorms of Koh Chang, 2014 / To the infinity of the universe, XXXX

The End.

The Stheart

the things we think we’re missing

‘if you lost everything in a moment, would you notice?’

Patience / Patients.

Bear with me, I’m trying to write this but I have seven other tabs open that I’m flicking through, and here lies the problem – a microcosm for the modern technologically savvy world we live in.

I’ve tried to become more patient with everything, not become distracted by things that will attempt to steer off course, keep on driving down the road and more importantly keeping my centre.

Keeping centred was something I have learned about recently. Life and people will throw tests at your just to see how strong your confidence, will and composure are and to see if you stay true.

For example, a date I was on – I was asked a question on something, granted I’m not one to hold back on my opinion so I offered it. The girl then offered a conflicting opinion and also suggested that I should change my opinion because it differed from hers. She never saw that RKO coming…

Like life gives you, it was a test to see if I would change my mind and buckle. A test to see if I was strong enough to keep true. Girls like doing this and a billion other tests to see if you are strong willed enough and if you are centred.

Balance and Composure | keep centred.

There are so many distractions these days mainly electronic devices which now Occupy: Minds.

Have a look a Facebook for five minutes, move onto to Twitter for five minutes, flick through pictures of dogs, inspiration quotes written over pictures of mountains in the background and of course various unimpressive meals then back to Facebook. And repeat.
There are distractions on the distraction. We’re all guilty of it.

#LookUp

Whatever happened to all the things we used to do. Eating food without putting pictures of it on Social media.
Walking down the street and actually smiling and saying hello rather than nearly walking into everything because of being transfixed by Joe Bloggs’ check in on Facebook. Oh, Common Life, it has us.

Thailand is the worst place I’ve encountered for it. Looking around on the BTS and 95% have their head down staring into pixels on a screen on several inches, its a great shame it really is.

Sidenote: I personally do not understand the allure of Snapchat? …’Jesus, does anyone?’

Social media is great, but so is the world and there needs to be a Balance… & Composure. Tinder has broken the stigma that online dating was for everyone that wasn’t yourself and everyone that is ‘normal’. Everyone is on it, right? Tinder offers so much choice that people become bored with people, set up dates, start talking to someone else, don’t go on the first date arranged, arrange a date with person 2, start talking with someone else. And repeat.
Even if a date is arranged, there would be small talk for a bit. Then the pixels start storming the castle. Sharing what they’re drinking, where their drinking it and how they’re feeling – feeling amused :/.

There is so much choice that nothing is being done.

A gig too, I’ve been at gigs where people will record for ten minutes or more at a time. Take pictures and videos for sure, but to watch the gig through you’re device, nah.

It suprises me too that children as young as ten have smart phones – who a ten year old needs to text or call I don’t know. When I was ten all I needed was a sick that looked like a gun and I could kill up to a million aliens in an afternoon. A MILLION!

Its not enough that these devices are taking over our lives but they are also beginning to take over our lives.

Its great to share the odd picture or too granted, but every single thing you ever do? Keep it real.

If you have Facebook Messenger, yeah delete it.

Ever wondered how things you talk about in texts etc or search for appear as ads on Facebook.com?

It can:

– Change the state of network connectivity

-Call phone numbers without your intervention. This may result in unexpected charges or calls. Malicious apps may cost you money by making calls without your confirmation

-Send SMS messages. This may result in unexpected charges. Malicious apps may cost you money by sending messages without your confirmation

-Record audio with microphone. This permission allows the app to record audio at any time without your confirmation

-Take pictures and video with the camera. This permission allows the app to use the camera at any time without your confirmation

-Read your phone’s call log, including data about incoming and outgoing calls. This permission allows apps to save your call log data, and malicious apps may share call log data without your knowledge

-Read data about your contacts stored on your phone, including the frequency with which you’ve called, emailed, or communicated in other ways with specific individuals

-Access the phone features of the device. This permission allows the app to determine the phone number and device IDs, whether a call is active, and the remote number connected by a call

The bottom line is, we have millions of humans in the palm of our hands on our devices but we are all very much alone. Nobody dances anymore and nobody seems to acknowledge of appreciate something unless its on their screen – Introducing: The Rot Under The Sun.
We’ll double tap a great picture on Instagram and stare at it for a few seconds whilst missing out on our own moment that is right in front of our eyes.

Like work and life, needing a balance between them, our virtual lives and what is actually under the sun needs a balance too.

Our personal legend our soul – whatever you want to call it has been suppressed these days. You don’t hear too much of follow your heart etc. as everyone is too concerned with the rat race, well, ‘if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat’.

Patience is key. Life is one big rat race but guess what, its a race with no winners. We’re all gonna die. Would you care much about the race if you suddenly developed a brain tumour, would you say on your deathbed ‘I’d wished I worked harder and didn’t slow down and live in the present’.

The past has gone and the future isn’t here…yet. So live in the present have patience cause I’m sure everything will end up all right. ‘to Be Yourself is all that you can do’.

I’m not a doctor, a chemist, a philosopher or an expert in anything but this is my opinion and I’m keeping centred – swipe right on reality and keep calm.

everything will be all right / the things we think we’re missing

kintsugi

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer resin dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. As a philosophy it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object making it more beautiful, rather than something to disguise and ignore.

It is often a relief to be wrong.

Time spent regretting is time spend wasted – ‘I wished I’d have done TEFLheaven sooner, what took me so long?’
I have thought this on countless occasions since Koh Chang.

Dismantle. Repair.

I now realise that I did TEFL heaven exactly when I needed to do it, when it was intended. If I hadn’t enrolled on the Koh Chang September 2014 course then I would not currently be under the influence of giants – not even knowing the existence of, or feeling the vibes of the friendship radiated by the human beings there with me… thats how I know it was meant to be.
The great wonder of hindsight looks at you from a distance, smiles and nods, knowingly.

I have held the belief ‘everything happens for a reason’ for a while. That bloody reason, hidden in plain sight occasionally, then occasionally you must venture, searching for Something In The Night engulfed by the Darkness On the Edge of Town walking down Streets of Fire in the heart of the Badlands attempting to find The Promised Land.

Preaching to the choir, possibly (hopefully)? Alas, there is a song to be sung!
Bad things are going to happen in life. You will enter that tunnel, as dark as it is long. And that faint light you can see from a distance at the end? It is not a freight train coming your way. The certainty of life has the certainty or bad things tagging along and it is too easy to slip into the mindset that you are the quarry. But, theres almost always a lesson to be learned. Always.
It is the interpretation of that lesson that is key. A lesson is always taught by the ‘teacher’, sometimes in a very bad way, other times in a very good way that is easy to learn, however the topic is the same and the students are the always the intended audience. Trying to learn something from something is the Reason to Believe. That way, a negative has been switched to a positive and quite frankly thats a conversion I quite like.

‘There is no self-discovery in a safe life.’

I was the patron saint of lost causes, I couldn’t relax as my hair was far too long and the white whale kept eluding me. The only thing I could hear was the beating of my own heart. Gazing back now I realise that these things that at the time were an avalanche, were simply lessons and they made me who I am right now. For example, my parents’ years of trivial squabbling, more often than not at no fault of my mum, resulted in their (inevitable) divorce showed me the man to not become, not getting a job promotion showed me to the life of a company man was not the life for me. My ‘attitude’ was my saviour.

The sun will set at the end of the day and health and happiness should be the only combination equalling an uninterrupted sleep.

‘Find what you love and let it kill you’

Charles Bukowski. Soldier. Poet. Dancer.

Bukowski was a modest man, an anti-hero if you will, he spent most of his life broke and drunk. He was an accepting, self admitting alcoholic and even snickered at ‘amateur drunks’. He hated the 9-5, professed nothing that he was not and had little if no faith in his fellow humans. But the man was a genius. Now, in my tiny mind the quality of his that resonated most was his view on the big bad wolf that is life. He grasped pretty quickly in his years and understood that life should not be determined by some script. It shouldn’t be defined by the people around you, the people you work for, what people are telling you and what people are wanting you to do.

It was after having a tactical tea break (one of the great breaks) in the middle of reading one of the man’s works that the thought ‘I’ts not gonna happen’ was splashing over every atom of my mind. As I’ve mentioned before, I was searching for a reason, a determined path. I was on a road filled with potholes, a corrosive 9-5 grind where scoring a goal was impossible as the goalposts were constantly moving – a constant set of ‘achievements’ set by someone else for the benefit of someone / something else, that as soon as it was done, sure as hell another, just as trivial would pop up and demand your complete and utter attention and compliance.

Now, Springsteen, Morrissey, Cash and Orbison had all written albums by their mid twenties. Why the hell hadn’t I?! I’m not including Elvis here ’cause quite frankly he was simply overrated – he didn’t even write his own songs.
Quite literally ‘a little less conversation, a little more action’ was needed on his behalf…

One rainy day I was soaked through from head to toe with nothing but the clothes on my back to show. There I was, standing in the middle of an infinite library that held every book on everything one could know….. so much choice. But I could never stray away from this one book. It was eloquently bound in a language that I couldn’t understand, but I kept trying to decipher it. Again and again and again I examined it to see if I something new miraculously appeared. ‘Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’
The next day there were a few more shadows scattered across the wasteland as the sun was a little bit higher in the afternoon sky than usual. With an almighty effort, I opened those huge, creaky iron doors and walked into the library as dry as a bone. The book was nowhere to be seen. In its usual place was a strange looking book. It was filled with hundreds and thousands of the most amazing and vivid pictures imaginable. There was no foreign language to not understand, just these pictures to appreciate. Its safe to say I learned to read that day and if you close your eyes and listen close… you can hear that chapter close.

Rather than plot your route on the road ahead, searching high and low for a destination you think you need to head to, that the chances are you’ll never find. Throw the map out of the window and take any route you want whilst the engine is warm.
Put your favourite songs on, coasting strong, lean back in your chair, get comfortable and embrace the sights of the drive along. Navigation was hard, at times there was nothing but the rhythm of the driving rain, other times there was a dense unimaginable fog. But it all cleared –  revealing a brilliant sun on the horizon…you can’t miss it (it’s everywhere).

Age is but a number and time is but a man made concept.

The decision/s had been made! Rather than work to a predetermined script placed in my hands, drafted up by the shadows, I needed to get a hold of the script, give it one final look and hand it to a member of the supporting cast as the sole responsibility for casting the lead role was reclaimed.

I don’t have a plan because a plan nearly always doesn’t go to plan. For this architect anyway. I could and possibly should argue that a plan can fail because in order for something to happen something previously must happen and so on and so forth and not having a plan cannot fail, failing to prepare is preparing to fail? Not all of the time I could and should argue.
I don’t intend to plan again, and its so wonderful. What will I be doing in five years? My heart may not be beating so I’ll enjoy My Time, smile and when the reaper comes knocking I can invite him in for tea and say ‘mai pen rai’.

You don’t need much to know you have enough.

‘It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.’

Enjoy rather than feel content and have fleeting happiness, its life, live it in constant happiness and have fun.

I have also learned to be infinitely grateful. Grateful for the opportunity of life and grateful currently for this so wonderful opportunity of living abroad.
Very little or no stress, none of the (now) trivial things that unfortunately determine existences. No overhearing the sort of people who look at everything and everyone with only a sense of what is due to them, talk in ‘newspeak’ longing to be overly untalented just like the people they watch on various Shores (this is unfortunately ‘reality’) themselves literally living a scripted life (Oh, for the tide to wash them away), setting the world to rights whilst they wait in a queue to collect their £6 coffee. The first world in last place.

Believing in yourself begins by believing in yourself, irresistible – odds were defied by simply being, born. A billion stars and here we are. I believe.

‘It what we fear that happens to us.’

Filling in the cracks on a wall that has a priceless masterpiece hanging on it, or that priceless masterpiece…? Choice? Illumination says not.

Swim up from the depths, soar away during highs and embrace the amazing wonder.

I could pontificate until the sun goes down, literally, but I recommend Tom Petty songs and infinite self-belief, always.

Per aspera ad astra.

It has never been more perfect being alive. Never.

See you in the next life, if the sun rises.

everything will be all right / kintsugi

a response to ‘Ixora’ by Copeland.

Moments…

Brief encounters in time that we all experience, the vast majority with no lasting footprint on our minds or lives that are over within the blink of an eye.
Sometimes they’re physical and sometimes they exist purely in the caverns of your mind. Most of the time however, you are unable to coherently put into words just what has happened and just how you feel.

The first time I properly got into Bruce Springsteen for example. I listened to nothing but The Boss’ tracks for around three weeks, nothing else graced the canals of my ears. When I wasn’t listening to Bruce, I was thinking about listening to Bruce, searching for and dissecting lyrics as the connection between myself and his music grew.

The strangest thing happened when I listened to bands music that was a main staple in my musical diet after this. I didn’t know if I liked it anymore, to this day I have no idea how to explain that sensation.
‘This isn’t as good as Springsteen, and this isn’t Springsteen so why listen to it?!’ I pondered.
Bruce Springsteen made me reevaluate everything, and for a brief moment during most weeks, he still does.

July 23rd 2013, Millennium Stadium, Cardiff – the greatest night of my life. Bruce was around an hour late coming onto stage, most crowds would get angry and start to become infuriated. Not us, friends. We were increasingly pumped, the excitement of the imminent arrival of the worlds greatest live performer was unexplainable and was growing, chants started and beer flowed.
Then, the lights were shut out and Dusty Springfield’s cover of ‘Can I Get a Witness’ was introduced through the airwaves.
It was happening, a god was coming and his congregation were ready.
Minds were temporarily lost, and then temporarily found when one by one, the members of The E Street Band climbed the steps to the stage.
Minds were temporarily lost (I Know mine was) once again when with his great presence, unassuming demeanour and guitar in hand, Bruce Springsteen announced himself to Cardiff.
I was literally awestruck for around a minute, I had never experienced anything like it before, and I have never experienced anything like it since.
I’m not a religious man, but it was the closest thing to a religious moment I will ever experience.

The brief moment when you first wake up in the morning and have no grasp on reality, where there is a umbrella temporarily over you protecting you from the rain, then the day, with a huge gust of wind announces itself and blows away the umbrella.

When you’re completely awake but your mind wanders of for a few seconds, you were someplace else but you don’t know where you were or why you were there.

The moment when you’re falling asleep and you drift into that place, half awake, half asleep where the infinite space is full, where the silence is deafening and where the darkness is clear.

They are the anomalies, powerful, unexplainable and they are brief.

From time to time, vehicles arrive that allow you to experience a moment for just that little bit longer. Take alcohol for example, I feel no shame when I say that it is truly wonderful. That place it takes you to. You arrive there, where everything is gonna be all right even know that you’re just borrowing happiness from the next day because you’ve drank far too much and hot damn you’re gonna suffer tomorrow.

I’ve had it multiple times in Thailand, mainly on Koh Chang where the vehicle (no it wasn’t in the pick up truck back from Ting Tongs) was the people I was sharing the moment with – emotional and special. You know whilst you’re there in the company of giants that come a day, a month, fifty years from that moment, you can look back, smile and feel the emotional warmth rise just like I did in ’14.
Where the sudden surge comes from, and when it chooses to arrive are concepts hard to understand and portray, but there is something around you that is the enabler.

One of my latest moments, was when I listened to ‘Ixora’ by Copeland. Ixora is beautiful.

I didn’t know too much about Copeland, I knew that they had broken up six years prior and this was their first album since suddenly reuniting earlier on in the year, the announcement came on April fools…

I downloaded the album, not really knowing what to expect..

After listening to the first three songs I was blown away, I remember thinking at the time ‘this is something special’. And boy, was I right – the rest of the album was on equal footing with greatness.

I’ve listened to Copeland’s other offerings and this album countless more times since and Ixora is indeed special.
There are few ‘perfect’ albums, albums where rather than skip one or two tracks, every one means something and has lasting value and power.
Brand New’s ‘Deja Entendu’, Springsteen’s ‘Darkness on The Edge of Town’, New Found Glory’s ‘Sticks and Stones’ and Valencia’s ‘We All Need a Reason To Believe’ are some of mine.

I can now add Ixora to this prestigious list. Ixora, to me is my mind being unravelled and then played out in musical form.
Ixora’s songs, like the mind are simple and complex at the same time. Aaron Marsh’s vocal range and the music is quite simply breathtaking. With subtle and colossal instrumentation constantly fluctuating, combined with powerful lyrics that are current and relatable and just for that brief moment enable the physical manifestation of things in your mind’s eye.

You’ll listen to a song one day, you’ll think about something one day. However the next time you listen to that song or muse over that thing, they can reborn with a greater significance than before.

Copeland extend, and that is something special.

Once again, taken to the place where the space is full, where the silence is deafening and where the darkness is clear, the place where we all go to but are at an odds to explain its whereabouts.

Not many bands or people do something because of a passion to do something. A lot of music is just put out there to chase the yankee dollar with no real consideration for what is being constructed, no emotion put into the lyrics or real craft of creativity put into the music.

No catchy chorus, no point…

Very rarely nowadays is there any real attachment from either the artist or the fans to a latest musical offering, next week there will be a new flavour of the week with last week’s forgotten. Rather than create something beautiful and connected that will transcend to something far greater than just instruments and words, and something deeper than just a listening experience like a carefully crafted album, the focus will only be on sales of singles often with a new one released far too frequently.

So many moments come and go, forgotten within a flash, so when one comes along, sustained for that little bit longer and makes you feel, have a moment.

‘A billion stars and here we are’.

don’t blink

The first, tiring, energetic, draining, wonderful, enlightening and thought provoking week of teaching is done, and I know it’s for me.

For the first time in probably my whole working life I am doing a job I actually want to do and enjoy doing. Personally this is something completely new to me.
I can (within reason) do pretty much what I want and have a level of fun that is firmly in the upper echelons. Also, my job is more important to other people than it is to me, as I actually have to teach children English that could ulitmately improve their life prospects, and thats pretty darn good I reckon.

See, I’ve always done jobs just to get by, just to get some money, because I needed a job and another billion other insignificant reasons.
I’ve never really wanted to do the jobs, I’ve never really wanted to be ‘an ambassador’ for a company and I have and will never say something is what it isn’t.

For these reasons I have had found myself seeing differently, and ‘having a conversation’ with a large number of my past managers.
The amount of times I’ve been told I have a ‘bad attitude’ by someone in a ‘senior’ position to myself is extremely high – I don’t have a bad attitude, I have a different attitude, its literally that simple.

I’m not a company man, I’m the kind of guy that just wants to do a job without having to love it – is that so much of a big ask, I don’t think so.

‘That’s when I first learned that it wasn’t enough to just do your job, you had to have an interest in it, even a passion for it.’ – Charles Bukowski.

(If anybody is reading this and thinks this is ‘having a dig’ – it really isn’t its just my side of the story that wasn’t told and therefore misunderstood.)

So there I was, having a particularly boring day in one of my old jobs in the heart of Cardiff, I was excited though as my friend who was doing TEFL in Korea had returned back to the UK was gonna meet me after work, it would be the first time I would have seen him in around a year.

‘Man he must have some cool stories, I bet he’s had a blast… I wish I could do that.’

Wait, what? I can do that, of course I can do that. I can do anything I damn well choose, why did it take me so long to realise this?

Well, I don’t think theres enough on ‘breaking free’ so to speak there is however all to much of:

‘go to school, get good grades, good to uni, get a good degree, get a good job, get a mortgage, earn loads of money, meet a partner, have a child, save money for you child, pay for your child’s early life, retire, die’ – and the last one, regret.

Now I’m not saying theres anything wrong with the cycle above, but, its not for me.

I was only reading something earlier, I’m not sure if its true or not but I wouldn’t argue against it, that revealed the top 5 regrets of people that are on their deathbed.

What do you think they are?

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

link below.

(http://earthweareone.com/nurse-reveals-the-top-5-regrets-people-make-on-their-deathbed/)

I’m sensing a pattern here….

It took me far too long to realise that I was the master of my own destiny and that not everything had to mean something or lead to something else.
‘Oh you’ve got your redundancy money, you can put that towards a deposit for a house.’ I don’t want a damn house.

I was once a company man for sure.
I was told to do something and I would do it without a moral compass or without even thinking. This is totally and completely wrong.
If you don’t like it speak up, take the (your) power back.

A good friend’s motto is ‘Just be.’ (she always writes a pretty darn good blog too, go and read it – www.emiliesoleil.tumblr.com).
Why can’t we? Why does everything have to be a plan, always leading onto on infinite path of ‘victories’.

I think it’s this constant unreachable that has turned the vast majority of society into an unrecognisable monster.

‘Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king and he king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything.’

Check-mate, Bruce you’ve hit the nail on its head and then some. What a brute.

‘I’ve developed a theory that there’s an inverse relationship between money and imagination. That if you’ve got lots of imagination then you don’t really need much money, and if you’ve got lots of money then you won’t bother with much imagination.’ – Alan Moore.

Money is great, in fact it’s bloody great, but it’s not everything, chill out.

Happiness Is.

‘Ah I’ve got it reasonably ok, I’m quite happy here.
I mean I could go and do something completely immense, but what would people think if I packed my job in and went somewhere?!
What if I didn’t like it and had to admit defeat? What would happen to my possessions? It’s dangerous overseas…’

Why do these things really matter? I mean, really matter?

I say take a chance (so do Abba actually) and go and try something new. Get out of your comfort zone, you might just like it.

Take the Scottish referendum for example.
It was swinging back and forth right up until the vote.
Yes! No! Yes!
What a fantasic opportunity for Scotland it could have been but instead they were literally scared into voting no by the UK Goverment.
I read something the other day that The majority of Scotland would now vote yes, weeks after voting no.

I think that’s a great metaphor for life, vote Yes, and don’t be on your deathbed after voting no, thinking and realising you made the wrong choice.
I’ve been in Thailand six weeks already, it has flown by. It’s gone frightenly fast, and that has just echoed how important life is. Take a look up and appreciate the sky sometime rather than look at your phone screen, appreciate the cacophony of the city and wear a smile.

Life is too short to not appreciate – don’t blink, you might just miss it.

Enjoy.

‘Pfff, you think you’re so much better writing this nonsense.’

Nope, nobody is better than anybody.
We’re all human, we’re all born and we’re all gonna sure as hell die. We’re just a bunch of carbon and chemicals, and isn’t it great.

Everything will be all right / don’t blink.