A dream last night:
So me and The Missus were eating out – it might have been a restaurant, it was a dream and so hard to be specific. During the meal, I get up to use the bathroom and on the way back, I notice a fellow diner polishing bullets with his napkin. After the meal, we are outside and I discover a large hold-all containing more bullets and guns – it belongs to the guy inside. I use a mobile to call the police, but as the armed response team arrives, our gunman makes his break for it. He shoots his way out and I am left to dodge bullets alone. The police are outgunned and ineffective and so the gunman escapes the narrow London street. I follow him to a bathroom supplies shop, where he makes his base.
I want to get inside, but can’t go through the front door because he will kill me. It is now dark, but the light from the shop illuminates every in front of it, making it an ideal hide-out for the gunman. I go around the back of the premises and look for a door. I am in luck – in the darkness is an unlocked door. I quietly open it and descend into the gloom.
Immediately, I can hear the splashing sound of a large volume of water and the empty acoustic reverb of liquid on tile. As I walk down the stairs into the darkness, the sound of women’s voices become clearer and more apparent. I turn the corner and there is a large swimming pool. In it, are three young women swimming. They do not notice me as I hide in the shadows and walk past them. One of them sees me and asks me into the pool, but I decline saying that I have no swimming trunks with me. They giggle at me and their laughter continues as I find another staircase leading out of the swimming pool area.
I ascend and as I head upwards, I can see light. At the top of the stairs, I am stopped in my tracks by Peter Sellers in full Dr Strangelove regalia, except he isn’t moving. His head is slumpt forward and he appears lifeless. All of a sudden, he sparks to live reciting lines from the movie and waving his arm around in a sub-Nazi salute. I talk to “Dr Strangelove” but he doesn’t respond. He appears to be some kind of automaton. As I work my way past this obstacle, I see Peter Sellars again as Inspector Clouseau. He asks me if I have a licence for my minkey. Again, he is an automaton. I see Christopher Reeve as Superman and many other Hollywood stars. They pace around the well decorated apartment, reciting their lines, then moving on. Their performance repeating ad infinitum.
Suddenly, I come across an old man. He is the creator of these beings and explains that he loves movies and that they are his only companions. He is very lonely and has spent his life building up his bathroom fittings business – the shop space below us, containing the gunman. I tell him my predicament and he takes me to one side.
“Take this,” he says, handing me a very small fruit knife, “You will need to be armed.”
I look at the knife and even though I know my quarry has many guns, I know that this is all I will need to defend myself. I thank The Creator and he leads me down another set of stairs to the shop floor. The area is huge and well lit – almost too well lit as the light hurts my eyes. There are bathroom sets and shower units and the way each section is laid out is like a maze. It is a small rat run between the various bathroom suites and there is nowhere to hide. It is like a labyrinth and I fear that I will soon become the hunted.
In the distance, I can hear the gunman. He is firing out into the night – shooting at the police who are stationed outside the premises. Suddenly, all hell breaks loose and the police storm the bathroom shop. I duck down as bullets fly from all directions. I worry that I am going to be mistaken for the gunman and that I am going to get shot. I keep down low and scurry through the network of pathways, listening out for the taunts of the gunman and using them to locate his position.
I turn a corner and there he is crouching down, reloading his weapon. I take the fruit knife in my hand and slide it into him, into his back, in the general kidney area. He turns around in shock, drops he weapon and falls to his knees.
“You can’t do that!” he exclaims in complete surprise.
“But I just have,” I reply.
With that the focus of the dream changes and my foe has already been taken away. The Missus return and the shop is suddenly filled with familiar faces, people that I have known, many of them existing work colleagues of The Missus. There are also celebrities in the throng as well as faces that I am not too certain of. I can hear the clink of glasses and smell alcohol. I feel thirsty. This appears to be a party and everyone wants to talk to me about my vanquishing of the gunman.
That was as much as I can remember of the dream. Good one, ain’t it? I like it when they are cinematic.
So what’s been happening lately? Not much, been sitting in the garden in the sun, just chilling and discovering the delights of vodka and soft drinks. Lime cordial is my mixer of the moment. Tasty. Don’t worry, I have been working too – very slowly. Not felt like doing any recording at the moment – not inspired.
Not inspired at all.
Category: Diary
On TV the other day, I saw an advert for the BBC’s New Talent strand and this time around they are looking for budding musicians to write soundtracks for their nature programmes. Of course, I don’t stand a chance with this because I lack the musical talent, but I popped along to the website to see what the deal was. The BBC gives you a short piece of video to download with the idea that you write specifically for it. As I wasn’t taking this seriously, I looked for a suitable piece in my back catalogue that would fit and entered anyway. Nothing will come of this…but here’s the video and my music to accompany it. Of course, the video is copyright of the BBC and I am probably breaking the law showing you this, but heck, let them take me away. The whole point of this is to see how a random piece of music can fit a piece of video footage. I think this track works as the cymbal splashes seemed to match the birds diving into the sea:
Direct download: CLICK HERE
Meanwhile, my Internet is still iffy. Despite numerous calls and exasperation at their incompetence and the fact that the engineers can’t seem to do anything, I am stuck on getting by with 121kbps – remember folks, it’s mean to be around 4500kbps. Now I am no speed willy waving type, but since this ferrago, I’ve got into the habit of checking my download speed to an almost obsessive level. The Missus thinks this whole incident is having a nasty effect on me. No – it’s just if and when BT Bombay phone me up, I need to know the exact crappy download speed for them when they ask.
At the weekend, we took advantage of the good weather to sit around the pub, get slightly toasted in all senses of the word and generally chill. This is only the second time we’ve done that this year – due to the poor weather so far. Later in the day, I spoke to my mother about something that had been troubling me. “You’ve got to forget it,” she said. And so, when the trouble seems complicated and all consuming and eating away at you, the simplest advice is the most obvious. Sometimes you just have to let go.
I am my father’s son and there’s nothing I can do about it. I cannot deny this or rewrite history. I have to be comfortable with who I am and embrace those parts of me I don’t necessarily like. If I can embrace those parts of me, I can understand them and work on them. I have to like myself and that’s the toughest part. I have to learn to ignore the past and continue on my own way. They owe me as much as I owe them: nothing. My father had his chance back in 1993 and he threw me away for the second time. I realise now that should have been the end of it. After a night’s sleep, I am over it once and for all. If my mother can be over it, then so can I. I feel a lot better and 2006 has been an interesting year for making changes and putting things right.
So while eating a late breakfast, the phone rang and it turned out it was the BT engineer who wanted to check my faulty broadband connection earlier than expected. Of course, the house was a mess (as the Missus was away and me and Alex The Wonderdog had been having lots of male time on the sofa surrounded by empty pizza boxes – joke) and the engineer would be over in ten minutes. So again, my meal was spoilt. The cereal dumped, the tea down the sink, I set to work trying to move the bookshelf away from where the main phone line comes into the house.
So the engineer tests things. Phones colleagues. Looks clueless. Apparently, my line can accept speeds of up to 6.5 Mb – but I am getting 230kbps. To put this in lay terms, I should be getting 6500kbps but I am getting 230kbps download speed. He takes a look at my self-installed extension line and reckons this could be the problem. I am told to keep my router connected to the main (which I have been doing since Monday) and everything will be fine.
So after an hour of faffing about, the engineer leaves and my connection is still 230kbps. I am not sure if anything is fixed or not. I am perplexed. Confused, somewhat. Is it fixed or not? Well, the engineer confessed that the new Broadband MAX! system is confusing to them and that they are in the dark. My connection is still at a crawl and if I don’t get any improvement in the next week, I shall consider going somewhere else for my broadband. During the whole experience, Alex The Wonderdog was shut in the kitchen and proceeded to bark and howl for the full duration of the engineer’s visit. Now I am feeling a bit exhausted and have a headache. I feel knackered but I haven’t done anything. I always get stressed when strangers come into the house and generally don’t like the experience. I guess the adrenalin rush and the sonic attack from Alex has worn me out.
Now the rest of the day will be dedicated to cleaning Chez Lock for The Missus impending return from Frankfurt sometime this evening.
And so the woeful tale of my poor Internet connection enters the endgame. Today, after I sent a rather aggressive email to BT Broadband Support, I got a call from another friendly Indian call centre chap. Now I know their job is to just take the calls at a fraction of the price that a local competing call centre might do, but the whole language barrier thing is a real drag. I say “My speed is 121kbps” he says back to me “Your speed is 155kbps”. And so on. It gets annoying and I got annoyed with him, before apologising for my abruptness. Of course, one of the reasons why I was so grumpy is that I had just cooked myself lunch and had just taken the first mouthful when BT Bombay called. When I returned to my lunch, it was cold. C’est la vie…shouldn’t have complained in the first place, should you?
Anyway, I later got a call from Paul, the BT engineer located somewhere in a bunker in England, I presume. He tells me that my connection is running slow and that according to their logs, it has been like this for a week. I tell him my setup, he goes away and does another line check, and then calls me back 10 minutes later. There is something wrong and they can’t figure out what the problem is so an engineer will be dispatched for tomorrow.
Despite the slow speed, I can still surf and you can adequately negotiate most corners of the World Wide Web on a 95kbps connection. The only fly in the ointment is when you try and access any kind of multimedia content – they you realise that you don’t have the broadband muscle you once had.
Today, I visited Friendsreunited and looked upt the profile of my half-sister again to see how she was getting along. Some pictures had been added to her profile and there was one picture that upset me greatly – it was the graduation picture and it reminded me just how feeble and weak I am. You see, after doing the degree, I never had the strength to attend my own graduation – something I still regret. What a complete and utter fool I am.
And so this afternoon, when the rain showers had stopped and the sun had come out, I went back into the garden to investigate the fallen birdbox from this morning. Immediately, I was aware of a very bad smell and it was obvious that something was not right. I gently prised the roof off the box and inside was a perfectly crafted nest. In the nest, were four or five dead chicks. Despite the smell, they were still in good condition and hadn’t completely decomposed. So I reckon they’d been alive a good few days previously.
My heart sunk. What was exciting and fun to watch turned into a tragedy and now I am feeling miserable. But that’s nature and life, I suppose. There are no happy endings. I put the bird box in a black bin liner and tied it up tight. Already the smell was attracting the flies.
Here’s a picture of the nest and the dead chicks:
I wonder if the parents had been scared off by the cats? But if the chicks had already hatched, surely they wouldn’t abandon them? Perhaps both parents had met their end while foraging for morsels for their offspring? We’ll never know, I guess. And there I was hoping that I would see a family of Blue Tits flying around the garden. Fate is merciless…
I forgot to mention about the plucky little Blue Tits who had been nesting in our bird box, the one that had remained uninhabited for five years. Well, the birds had literally flown the coup and abandoned their nest. Not sure what happened, but I think the local cats might have had something to do with this. I think they flew a week ago as I had not seen any bird activity in a while. Well today, when I let Alex the Wonderdog out the garden for his morning constitutional, I noticed that the bird box was on the floor. On the floor! Someone or more appropriately, something, had knocked it off the side of the shed. Again, this bird box had been secured to the shed wall for five years without ever being knocked down or dislodged by a strong gust of wind. Methinks those pesky cats (or even foxes) might have something to do with this. Oh well, I plan to buy a new bird box and locate it high up on the side of the house because I thought it was really great watching those birds flying in and out of the box. Simple pleasures, eh?
Today, The Missus left early for her flight to Frankfurt, leaving me alone and miserable on this wet and woeful Bank Holiday Monday. She’s away for a while and I am going to have to my best to cheer myself up. So I am ploughing myself into music making in an attempt to stave of the blues.
The plan for the next big thing from me is to do another 4-CD boxset. I know it is pretentious and grandiose but there is a good reason behind this. CDBABY, the site I use to get my music “out there”, charges about ÂŁ45 per CD to get it on their books and on all the electronic retailers. My logic is why pay that for one CD when I can get 4 CDs worth of material out in one pop? Clever miserly Darren…
So I am doing a 4-CD set. The first CD is done – it’s called “A Pocketful of Stars” and has 15 or so instrumental tracks spanning an hour. The next CD doesn’t have a name yet, but is the unofficial follow-up to “Textures” and is about 80% complete (I think). The third CD is going to be a CD of vocal songs by me – so I am going through my archives and re-recording old songs and doing some new stuff to accommodate this. These recent “songs” I’ve been playing are for that and I have about 20 minutes of material ready to roll. Not sure how much more is needed, we’ll see how it goes. The final CD will probably be an album of ambient soundscapery stuff – all performed live. I am really digging the “Slow Music” CD and it is proving very inspirational. Not that I intend to copy this – but I’d like to attempt something live and long and spacey. Not sure if I can pull it off though.
Anyway, here’s another rough mix from that third CD – it’s called “I Don’t Know How to Stop” and is basically about addictive personalities or personal addictions or whatever:
Direct download: CLICK HERE
It features Darren in full “Rock Vocal” mode and although I only recorded the vox about 15 minutes ago, I might try and redo them later in the day when my tubes have opened properly. Mind you, I wanted the voice to get more frantic as it went along (in desperation) and I think this take captures that.
THIS FOLLOWING BIT IS REDUNDANT BUT KEPT FOR HISTORIC REFERENCE
On a related note 7 Digital, an online music vendor, has opened up a new site for desperate wannabe musicians like me to flog their tunes. I’ve got a couple of juicy tit-bits up for sale if you are interested. You can find out more by visited: http://www.indiestore.com/lock
For a couple of quid, you can download high quality copies of:
1) Textures [CONDENSED] – a quite superb reduced version of my Textures crammed into 28 minutes of loveliness with all the bad bits cut out
2) Soundscapes 99-03 – an entire CDs worth of noodling on the guitar from me adopting the soundscape model. All of it recording live and spliced toghether, it is a great summation of my ambient experiments (more about that tomorrow)
3) 2006 EP – this an edit from the second CD of that box-set I was talking about earlier. You might have already heard bits of this, but now you can download an listen to the first 15 minutes of that CD. It’s all good stuff and for a pound, you can’t go wrong.
Well that’s my sales spiel out of the way. I doubt anyone will buy any tracks because I give so much of this crap away for free. 🙂
Sorry, the title of this entry has nothing to do with my recent acquisition of the CD of the same name but the pitiful state of my broadband connection and my attempt to upload/download my latest demos. At the moment, I have a connection of 0.123Mb, which is equivalent to slower than a narrowband modem. I should be getting 5500Mb, but my service crapped out on Thursday and this is all the speed I can muster. I spent the last 30 minutes on the phone to a friendly Indian Call Centre chap who couldn’t believe how slow my connection was – it was so slow that when he tried to run a slow line test, the result never came back! He said that there was a fault with my connection (no…really?) and that I should be hearing from the fault department in 2-3 days. Who wants to bet a fiver that I will be calling that self-same Indian call centre in 4 days time, bemoaning the fact that the fault department were at fault for not investigating my fault and it’s not my fault, well it is my fault, but I want it fixed. 🙂
So yesterday I re-recorded another musical gem from my past. This time the song is “That Is The Way It Is” and it is a kind of Marxist protest song of sorts. Again, I recorded the orignal version back in 1999, but it wasn’t that good. But now I have the technology and can come up with better sounding rubbish songs. Again, I’ll let you hear the old version and then the new one. The new one, however, retains the same guitar solo from the 1999, though I sprinkled some patented Lock Audio Fairy DustTM over it to make it sound even more spangly.
Direct download: CLICK HERE
And here is that new version, so pin back yer lugholes, me hearties!
Direct download: CLICK HERE
And here are those all-important lyrics, so you can sing along at home – don’t forget to wave your arms around in an appropriate fashion:
That Is The Way It Is
Why should we tolerate the things we hate?
Why don’t make the rules, not take the rules?
What is this anxiety in our society?
Why do the ones with none all want some?
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Don’t bother changing things
It’s all too late
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Just get in line and take your fate
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Why do we toe the line to just fit in?
Why do we judge a man by his skin?
Why do we value those who have the most?
Why do we take the bait every day?
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Don’t bother changing things
It’s all too late
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Just get in line and take your fate
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Why do we stand in line and pretend we’re fine?
Why do we face the pain with a smile?
Why do we idolise the selfish swine?
Because we are used to it all the time
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Don’t bother changing things
It’s all too late
Cos that’s the way it is
The way it is
Just get in line and take your fate
In a dream the another night, I remember walking in Jersey with Alex. We wandered along shaded grassy woodland paths and onto the beach. For once, Alex the Wonderdog was walking like a proper dog should, without me dragging him along, and he was off the lead and enjoying himself. He responded when I called him and was generally acting in an exemplary fashion. I was very happy walking along the shoreline with my dog. Unfortunately, it was all a dream.
*** Back story, you see, Alex the Wonderdog might be a great housedog and good at barking at visitors and holding the fort, but he doesn’t like going for a walk. If you ever are taking in the delights of leafy Loughton and you see a lumpy looking fellow, huffing and puffing and dragging a large, white West Highland White behind him, that’s me walking Alex. Seriously…