I’ve known that I am a father-to-be since the end of 2006, but there’s nothing like seeing your unborn child in front of you courtesy of an ultrasound scan. Now you might think that you’ve felt every emotion going: love, hate, fear, joy, laughter, tears, abject misery, grief, mourning, euphoria, but nothing prepares you for that moment. Just when you think all the doors in your brain have been opened, something as wonderful as that ultrasound scan opens up that final door.
And so I sat there, having a much better view than The Missus, who had to lie down on the couch and not move and I saw the sound waves cut invisibly through the tissue and fat to rebound off this living being inside my wife. The sonic reflection doesn’t paint the most perfect of pictures, but if you have half an imagination and have seen enough nature/health programmes on the TV, you have a pretty good idea of what you are seeing.
I could see the body, the arched spine, the skull, limbs (1-2-3-4) and a pulse that signified that this was life. The foetus moved and twitched slightly and in my imagination I was sure that I saw it playing air guitar. (And I hate referring to the foetus as an it – it is a he or she, depending on my mood). So here he was. This was the great masterplan reaching its next stage. This was the moment I was put on this earth for. And it makes you feel very, very humble. All the crap and nonsense you’ve done gets reduced to its component parts: crap and nonsense. All the time you’ve wasted on selfish folly, all the pointless words and music, all the money spent and beer consumed and good times had are swept away by this tiny little life.
Yes, I admit that I had to stifle a tear, but I let my eyes get moist on the journey home in the car, where I protested that I had got some dust in my eyes to The Missus. She laughed and cooed at me. During the scan, the sonographer seemed a little concerned because the baby didn’t seem to want to move. She pushed and prodded and poked with her jelly-lubricated probe. Eventually, she got the measurements she wanted after The Missus was forced to lie on her side.
“This baby is being lazy and stubborn today,” said the sonographer.
That’s when I knew that baby-to-be was a chip off the old block. 🙂
Now I can’t claim to see the future, but I have a fair idea of what comes next. However, one can’t be too proud or too knowing for you never know what cards fate might deal you. I live in hope and optimism and lose sleep at night praying that everything will be OK. We’ve still got a long way to go down this particular road, but at least we have a map and compass and support from family and well-wishers to propel us forward.
Exciting, isn’t it?
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And so I must travel up-stream, like the Scottish salmon, to leap my last leap and make way for the next generation:
Imagine I’m Denis Norden and I’m introducing one of those hilarious blooper reels from “It’ll Be Alright on the Night” – now jump forward to the YouTube generation and me doing my best to capture one of my noodly improvisations for said YouTube. This clip seems to be working OK but keep your eyes on the screen for the final seconds where an ear-splitting dose of feedback comes through my headphones but it unheard on the track, leaving me exasperated and mouthing “What the fuck?” like a great gibbering idiot.
Enjoy!
One of things about putting video clips onto sites such as YouTube is that you get feedback from the viewers. 99.9% of that feedback has been favourable and I enjoy it greatly. However, there’s two types of comment that I really can’t stand: the first are those who want to know the exact setup you are using including all your settings (like I am going to tell you – do you think I am stoopid or sumfink?) and those who ask: “How much did that all cost?”
That kind of bugs me because it infers that I acted like some John Paul Getty type character and spent huge amounts of money at the flourish of a pen on a cheque book in one go. Yes, I’ve spent quite a bit of cash on my gear over the years, but it has literally take me years to get the setup I want. I am not a millionaire, in fact I am the opposite. Whenever an instrument or piece of gear catches my fancy, I have to decide what other gear I need to sell in order to finance my expenditure – or at least partly finance it. It has been a long, gradual process.
Even when I was earning more money than sense, I never went crazy with my spare cash on gear. It was more about buying equipment that I knew I would use. I also have a rule – if you don’t use it, lose it. So anything that I’ve bought doesn’t get used, gets sold on pretty quickly to recoup any cash. It is a very sound strategy. <--- Oooh look, an unintentional pun. Also, why is the cost of equipment so important to people? I don't get it. Nowadays, you can buy FX pedals and what-not for a fraction of the price you would pay when I first started recording music. Now you can buy a perfectly decent multi-fx unit for £60, which fifteen years ago would have cost you £399. The same goes for recording gear. I remember how much my first 4-track cost me back in 1992 and it still brings water to my eyes. And of course, gear does not equal talent. If you are any good, you don't need much gear to prove it. I have to surround myself with racks of equipment with forever blinking LED lights in order to cover up my musical ineptitude. You see the problem is that there are people like me who actually buy equipment and do things with it and then there are those who think about buying the gear, talk about recording music and do nothing other than practice how to do runs like their favourite guitarist and nothing else. Ack - I hate guitarists! :-) Mind you, writers are the same and it reminds me of the joke about two writers talking at a party: Writer 1: So got anything on the boil? Writer 2: Yes, a story about a dystopian future where man is controlled by a hive mentality. You? Writer 1: Interesting. Mine is about the trade in illegal diamonds. Writer 2: So how much have you written? Wrtier 1: Nothing... Writer 2: Me neither... You'll only get that if you've ever talked to a writer... I found a very interesting blog by Wreckless Eric who wrote an entry that kind of echoed how I am feeling about the Internet at the moment:
The Golden Age Of The Internet
I sometimes wonder if anyone still reads this stuff. In the late nineties, the golden age of the internet, I was amazed to find that people did – I was amused by the outrage and offence I could perpetrate just by tapping the keys in a corner of my kitchen. I wrote, quite unselfconsciously, about the everyday stuff that was going on in my life, and about anything special that happened, like a gig or a recording session or something. I slowly became aware that I had an audience, and perhaps there was a point where I started to play to that, and lost a certain naive silliness. But that was back in the days when the internet was special – weird and magical, back in the days before every coal merchant, plumbing supply company and aspiring pop group had its own website.
Now I think it’s back to square one. I can think of possibly five people who take the time to read any of this. The internet is full of words and pictures, and interesting tracks and bad demos, and cocks going into arses, books and taps and kitchen fittings and directions from here to Timbuktu. Why, I even looked at that google map thing and zoomed in on the back garden of my house. I wasn’t in the garden myself but I swear you could see evidence that I lived there at the time the photo was taken – my neighbour once said my back garden looked like Beirut. The back garden in the photo looked like Beirut. Or possibly not – I’ve no idea what Beirut looks like, I’m just taking my old neighbours word for it. But anyway, the zoomed-in garden looked just like it had when he said it.
After that startlingly mundane use of this utterly cosmic technology I went on another nosy-parker-plays-at-big-brother site and found out exactly how much I paid for the house – not that I actually bought the house myself, the mortgage company did that, and made me acutely aware of it round about the 22nd of each month. I don’t know how I managed – but if you’ve been using your time and browser to their best advantage I expect you know that already.
Three birthday cards, my lowest ever outing. Depressing, ain’t it? Even more depressing that the highlight of my day and my only birthday present was me buying a book in Borders about buying a small business. I have officially gotten “old”. The shame, the shame. No CDs, no musical instruments, no electronics, no computer games – at my own request, of course. All the interest I could muster was in a frigging book. But then what do you buy a man who has everything? Nothing…
Then cake…
Happy birthday to me!
But because you’ve all forgotten to send me cards or presents, I’m giving you a present in an attempt to make you feel bad. Yes, it is even more incredibly dull instrumental music. This time it is “A Pocketful of Stars” – the first disc from “God Pays Debts Without Money…” If you like it, buy one of my CDs or something.
CLICK HERE FOR MUSIC