Am I blogging again?

I think I might be

Somewhere, maybe two weeks ago, early in this season of high pitch (Spring), I took a walk to the local shops for a book to read. I had fifteen books on my to-read shelf (it probably takes me eighteen months to read fifteen books) and three of them were by women (and two of those were gifts I received). I don't know, I had this thought that it was time to read more books by women and see how the other half lives. I figure I picked a good one too ('Hot Milk' by Deborah Levy). From there I moved on to reading some Substack posts by women. I wanted to dig into Substack a bit anyway, my Notes and Recommendations back then all music-related.

So I did all that and then, yeah, Faith's Tune Tag and 'Revolver' and singing at home and feeling high. Then writing. Then more reading and more singing and then more writing. Not much making music (zero of that), which is ok with me for a while. This is kind of how I live, moving quite fluidly from one project or idea to another, but I'm keeping it in mind, this focus on female writers.

Substack's been good. There is a nice community in terms of the music scene on the platform. It's become more of a complex website/app to manage (I've got my head round it now). My excellent phone (a Pixel 2) might be getting quite old now so this mightn't apply to everyone but Substack is better on my Windows desktop than in the app. There's more to explore. The Notes algorithm and me have had a good phase of getting to know each other. It would be nice if Caroline moved over here from Wordpress (I think she'd love it).

back from a good charity shop with a friend. my table on 3rd of April, 2024

But blogging again? Gosh, it's quite hard work. I'm thankful I'm not getting paid for subscriptions and seeking to vastly multiply my subscriber numbers. Its interesting to see or imagine I see (and I'm certainly not calling anybody out about this) how at a very high level of Substack readership, writers might want to avoid saying things that might reduce their audience significantly. I think I see it a little bit. It's just an interesting aspect of the Gig economy that reflects the wider economy.

I've got a section at the top of this site now called Deep Drifts. This was very simple to set up and will be much less confusing than creating a whole new publication (plus I'll get bored with writing it). This section is subtitled 'the music of my life' and it's going to be focused on albums (I like the word 'records' but vinyl hasn't been much involved really - other than a short phase in the late nineties when I was in paid employment) that have meant a lot to me over the years. The first post was really fun to write and should come soon.

I'm just rabbiting on now. Still, this will do. No-one wants a ten minute diatribe. I should publish on DistroKid that 'celestial clocks' project I was working on in Live. I'm not a fan of it but, this time, just for the sake of continuity it's going out.

More 'how to make music' posts will arrive at some point. Really, Katie's insights into creative songwriting on Tinier Desk were excellent. Have a listen and don't get disheartened by her talent. We all have a voice. Yay, I'm blogging again! Laters...