george town by katharine eastman
[ LATER = having now actually played a bit of this piece I realise that it is a waste of time playing it at any kind of "normal" volume - it only works when played at the sort of high-high-high volume where your speakers are straining to cope with the bass and distorting it a little - don't worry, the noise won't upset the neighbours, even at this high volume it's all in the bass and the only danger is that your home falls down ]
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it's true of course that one of the many handicaps my music suffers from, apart from no one liking it, is that my own life is so tiny and unexciting compared to all the proper musicians. Oh yes I walk fifty miles in a day or get asked to jump on a yacht like in the photo (actually, the one in the photo) and float about in the Channel and I've made enemies of everyone who blanks me and leaves me in peace - but at heart my Life happens in my head and in books and tinkering about in Audacity and slowly getting rid of all my possessions again.
The following is one of the tiny tiny tiny things that gives me so much pleasure and which you won't hear Eno lecturing about - I haven't bought/used a bin-liner in years and years and years. When my mum died 3 years ago I inherited all her bags and bags of Waitrose bin-liners, but even by then I was never using any, so I gave them all to an old girlfriend. Bin-liners are such a waste of money - you really don't need them. Admittedly I hardly ever have anything to throw away. Apart form breakfast (usually three boiled eggs) I never cook at home - almost never eat anything.
I don't buy much that's new - I just get stuff from charity shops, and that's stuff that has mainly already been unwrapped by the previous owner. But of course even in this low-consumptionist lifestyle I get stuff that needs throwing away. Most of it is "dry" and unmessy and can just pile up by the front door, waiting for me to nip out and plop it into my external council dustbin. Other stuff can gather in boxes and envelopes that you inevitably gather along the way.
I have four composters out in the back garden. I am addicted to pistachio nuts and their shells go out in those things, along with eggshells and stuff like that. Once you get into the swing of it it's very easy and I get enormous pleasure from the discipline it imposes - I like an ordered structured life, and habits like this help create those things. Once in a while I will get something that I need to get shot of fairly quickly. E.g I sometimes cook/eat liver and it's good to get those bloody plastic trays out the house pronto. Yes I wash them. But even so. So it's good that I live in a city with a municipal public bin only yards away.
I realise that this stuff is not what you want to hear from from your favourite world-famous musicians - you'd rather be getting updates on my upcoming world tour and the jaw-dropping names of all the people who've worked alongside me for the last three years making this album - I suppose I should be uploading photos of me in Thailand and Mauritius and then telling you all the good things I am doing to save the planet and be cool and, well, I don't want to be a cunt, and I sometimes fail, but when I see some posh boasty twat with all the "right" right-on opinions telling me what to think I remember that s/he probably buys plastic bin-liners and is fucking up the planet way more than I am.
recorded this morning, photo Southampton last week
