Sabbatical 8

First things first - I recorded a new EP this week. You can hear it above - it’s pay what you want so download it for free or send me a few quid for the pleasure…whatever you want. Hear how it all came about below…

***

Having had a week off to enjoy half-term, I realised how nice it was to not have the pressure of a deadline hanging over me. I do enjoy documenting my time away from full-time work, but I also want to actually enjoy that remaining time away without filling it all with unnecessary projects that make it as chore-like and busy as I was when I was at work and defeat the entire point of a sabbatical. I have therefore been wondering all week how wise it is to continue with this project, given that it consumes an awful lot of time and my website analytics don’t seem to suggest anyone is actually reading them? If it is just for me and there is no external audience out there - why do I need to write it down? I already know what I have done, and instead of doing more of it, I am sat here writing this about the past! At the same time though, I have always enjoyed self-documenting. When I go on holiday, I always bring a journal with me and record what we do and where we go. I’m not sure why. I’ve just always done it. Frequently I don’t even read them back. They just sit on my shelves gathering dust. But when I do choose to re-read one, it’s always nice to know they were there. The same with my regular journal, which I sporadically keep too. Seldom do I ever look in it again after writing in it, but on the rare occasion that I do it is lovely to have that snapshot into another time. I suspect that years from now, back in full-time work and wishing I had more time off again to pursue other things, I shall look back on these posts with similar interest. Who was I ‘back then’ and what was I thinking? Was I even thinking?, as the late, great Norm MacDonald would say.

Really though it is not about the reading back, it’s about the writing in the first place. Getting it out and organising my thoughts. Having had seven weeks of freedom already, I have been able to not only account for that time and see how I spent it, but also to convince myself at the end of each week that I had done something worth doing with my last seven days. I remember one summer holiday years ago my wife had worried that we hadn’t made the most of our time away from work because we hadn’t booked an actual holiday anywhere. I wrote down a list of everything we had done over the six week break and it was impressively substantial. We had done so much, but had forgotten a lot of it because a large amount of what we had done was merely the mundane but necessary stuff we didn’t get a chance to do much of during term-time. Seeing it listed in stark black and white though, it was undeniable and we felt accomplished. In a way these posts are doing that. Did I really spend seven weeks - and then seven more - sat in a room in my house reading books and typing into a computer? Well, yes - and also no. There is a richness to the days that thinking about them and writing about them draws out.

Of course, that richness can also be illusory. I can write up, perhaps, a better account of reality than how it really happened? Did I ‘sit and read a book’ idyllically, as the sentence suggests, or did I sit with a book, frequently looking at my phone instead and fretting on Twitter and news sites while being bothered by doorbells, post, grocery delivery, a call from a friend, and a cat wanting feeding? Do I condense the heartbreaking monotony of every day’s new Sisyphean batch of washing up and laundry into a breezy ‘I did some chores’ while stretching out and distorting the mundane task of trudging through turgid academic texts for some glimpse of relevance as ‘making great progress on THE BIG RESEARCH AND WRITING PROJECT’? Words can mask and words can distort.

When I was a teenager I remember reading through some old diaries from just weeks before and being horrified by the misrepresentation of my own thoughts and feelings that I saw. Written in the heat of the moment I might show rage that had ultimately fizzled out, apathy towards issues which, later, grew in interest, or bitterness that, with perspective, faded into acceptance. Everything I had written had been true in the moment but only in that moment. What I thought had been introspective perspective was actually just a fledgling first take. A stepping stone on the path to the actual truth but not the truth itself. I ended up throwing the journals away in disgust. Might I one day look back on what is here on this blog with similar horror and embarrassment? (And, yes, I regret throwing those diaries away - another knee-jerk first reaction which wasn’t indicative of my final thoughts).

All I know is that I appear to be writing a new Sabbatical today, despite all these misgivings, so we’ll see if there’s another seven in me or if this just becomes a final twitch before dying.

Our week away was blissful, choosing to actually spend the bulk of half-term renting a converted barn in the middle of the Derbyshire countryside so we could both chill and do nothing in the lovely surroundings and also go to some of our favourite autumnal places like Chatsworth, Bakewell and the Monsal Trail.

We ate much cake, took many long walks, and, yes, read a lot, watched some movies (Young Frankenstein and Vertigo), and ate more cake (Bakewell pudding and custard, when in Bakewell, is mandatory). I slept more in one week than I had done in the previous seven. Before the trip away, we watched Aston Villa Women continue their October drought, losing to Everton twice in one week (one attended live, the other witnessed by proxy via Twitter) and had my old colleague and his wife round for a lovely dinner to catch up. After, we enjoyed a final weekend without work before going back into the working week with sincere good intentions.

The thing is though, the week began with Halloween - and, like the comic says, I genuinely do treat it like a national holiday. Growing up obsessed with all things horror, there is a reason I have a jack-o-lantern and candy corn tattooed on my arm (to be fair - that reason is that they remind me of my late mother and my American heritage. Mom died during autumn and her memorial took place around Halloween. The first fun thing we did following her death was carve pumpkins with her friends a few days later. When we were kids, mom would always bring back candy corn from the States because they didn't sell it here and it wouldn't be Halloween without it. The tattoo also has crosses for eyes to represent my straightedge lifestyle and alternative addiction to pumpkin spice lattes instead of alcohol. But I digress…). Halloween was always a day to indulge in the spooky side, and I have developed a tradition over the years not only of watching creepy movies on Halloween night (this year it was The Black Phone and the less impressive My Best Friend’s Exorcism - although the book of that by Grady Hendrix is well worth reading) but of spending the day reading short stories from horror books.

This was this year’s pile. Only The Premonitions Bureau and Things Have Gotten Worse Since Last We Spoke are new additions. The rest I have been reading a story or two a year from for years now (often re-reading, as the book is one I’ve had since childhood). I read the stories in whatever order they are printed in. It means I have no choice in the matter of what I get given, and get to enjoy all sorts of strange stories based on where I left off the year before. This year I got M. R James’ Casting the Runes, Stephen King’s The Moving Finger, Clive Barker’s The Yattering and Jack, and H. P Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark, among others. They were all good, but not especially scary. Like the movie - The Black Phone - I loved it, but it didn’t keep me awake all night after. Sometimes I think I love Halloween too much because I really do seek to get myself genuinely terrified by bedtime and, if successful, I miss out on a good night’s sleep. This year, able to sleep well, I found myself somewhat annoyed at the fact rather than happy. Like I’d rather be up jumping at every creak and groan in the house than dreaming peacefully away. It can’t be healthy to seek out terror in that way? And speaking of unhealthy, foul wet weather really kept the trick-or-treaters away, leaving us with masses of uneaten candy which we seemingly feel obliged to consume despite our waistlines not thanking us after a week of Derbyshire cake eating. I enjoyed my Halloween but think I have hopes for it as a day that are a little too high, as demonstrated by the 7+ hour playlist I made for listening to:

With a day off to observe Halloween on Monday, my hopes were to start November with a new leash on productivity with my work as soon as Tuesday began. It started with promise. By lunchtime on Tuesday I had added a thousand more words to THE BIG RESEARCH AND WRITING PROJECT and have a clear idea of where I’m going next with it. But after lunch I decided it might be fun to try and record a song. You know - while I have the time. I realised Friday this week was ‘Bandcamp Friday’ and that it might be nice to try and use that as a deadline to spur me on to record the handful of new songs that have been kicking around in my head for the last few months.

Boy was that a rabbit hole!

By Tuesday evening I had recorded and mixed ‘Sick of All the Hustle’, the title track for what I hoped to be a three song EP. It’s the genesis of all the songs I’d been working on of late - the idea that I was sick of life being such a daily constant struggle. I had started noticing how many people we valorised for their struggles - coming from nothing and making a success of themselves - and I realised how wrong-headed that was. That we should see such stories as indicative of a universal tragedy rather than treat such people as heroes: no-one should have to hustle their way up from the streets in a society that is actually working.

I was really happy with the recording, so that meant Wednesday was lost to trying to record the other two songs. What I failed to take account of, however, was that one of these songs - ‘Too’ - is over six minutes long, has a lot of vocals, and, like all of the songs I record, I had no idea yet of any guitar parts to go with my bass and would have to programme some quite complicated drums for it. Oh - and I have a rotten cold, giving me only the smallest window in which my voice was good enough to sing. ‘Too’ is sort of the soundtrack to this entire sabbatical. I wrote it about both my dissatisfaction with my old job, my dissatisfaction with academia, and about all the insecurities I have as a person about my abilities or personality - I’m always too this or too that. It’s a pretty dark song and my most strictly ‘rock’ (instead of ‘punk rock’). By Wednesday evening I had completed ‘Too’, and recorded all the music for track three, ‘Condemned to Repeat’ but hadn’t been able to manage the vocals. It wasn’t just the cold screwing up my voice - my computer was now overheating after being used all day to record, and the memory was getting clogged with all the previous tracks. As I’m recording it all solo, on a laptop, with limited resources and skills, there was little I could do when my overheated computer started sending me back the playback of my vocal recording slightly out of time with the backing track, making it impossible to sing the very fast and complicated lyrics anywhere near in time.

So that meant Thursday morning if I wanted to complete it for a Friday release. Having gone this far I didn’t want to throw in the towel. We didn’t come this far just to come this far, as Mike ‘The Situation’ Sorrentino would say. ‘I’ll just try and get it done quick’ was my mantra, and that meant that by about 10.30am it was done. The vocals were still patchy in terms of being in sync - there are a few ugly and imperfect moments - but I was mostly happy with it and happy enough to decide it was done. At the end of the day, I’m doing it all myself with no funding or talent, so sometimes vocals are going to be patchy in places - deal. But that was most of the morning. And then there was all the admin for the release to deal with - cover art, actually uploading things and getting them ready to be released on Friday…

In other words, there went most of my Thursday too. And what you guys don’t know is that today, Friday, when this is published to the world, I am busy actually teaching somewhere. Just a double lesson about anarchism - but still, a morning where I also will not be able to get on with any work. So, you know: Gang aft agley - the best laid plans of mice and men, etc. etc…

But the thing of it is - this has been a fantastic week. I’ve loved falling down my rabbit hole in my nutty room and making some music for the first time all year. I’ve loved spending a day doing nothing but reading horror stories. I’ve loved the time I did manage to spend working on THE BIG RESEARCH AND WRITING PROJECT, and I’ve loved preparing to teach a little too. I’ve even loved writing this.

Ultimately, that’s what this sabbatical is all about: following the muse and enjoying the freedom to go where it takes me, without necessarily there having to be a rhyme or reason. We’re in the final stretch now, so I don’t want to look back if I ever do choose to re-read these blogs and ask myself why I wasted all that free time not making music and reading books I actually enjoy?

To make me feel like it was all worth it though, it would really help if you gave the EP a listen, maybe even bought it. The band camp page is HERE or there’s the embed at the top of the page.

And feel free to post any comments or thoughts about the recording below. The last song, although it hasn’t got the best recorded vocals timing-wise, has some great lyrics born of my frustration at having people not fully understand what I was trying to say with some of my songs. Pure fury and anger.

I may be sick of all the hustle, but as this week has proven, I am far from immune from it.