Easy
Latest Lager Time episode is up - it’s called On Eating That Marshmallow and it’s about delying gratification.
As per the others, it starts with a quote from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, this time it’s Book 8. I’m going to do 4 and then we’re done with this series, mate
You can subscribe to both the podcast and blog on Substack, which is where I host it, or you can hear it as audio on Spotify and Apple.
A few thoughts on signalling, with a poem at the end, called Weak Walking Shoes, originally uploaded on my Substack page, Lager Time, where you can listen to it as an audio piece
One of the many reasons I enjoy writing, to borrow a cliché, is that it allows me to hold up a mirror to my own behaviour and by extension, others too, hopefully. When I think about this, there is one image that often flashes up in my mind, over and over again, reminding me of that particular reason.
It’s probably a compound of many memories, spent working in Waitrose as a teenager (and any other customer service type job I had, there was a few!) and witnessing some customer going ape-shit, at me, or some other hapless part-timer on the checkouts, over the condition of something relatively minor, like a tin of soup and inevitably demanding something in return for the pain of it; the attention of the senior management, a reduction in price etc. I call it the mirror moment.
Back then, I always used to think, that if you could pause-time in that moment, unfreeze that customer, like a drama improv-exercise and hand that angry customer, one of those little rectangular mirrors we used to use in school, l to measure light-angles or whatever, they could look at themselves in that moment, take a moment and hopefully think ‘yea, maybe I’m being a bit of prick here.’
There are many more of these memories, people having overly-loud telephone barneys in pub lic, hyper-devout church attendees, out-singing everyone else and of course, the over-whelming vast array of behaviour-questioning memories that scrutinise my own actions, hence the poem in this post but for some reason, it’s always that Waitrose one I return too; I don’t know why but I don’t suppose it matters all that much, it does the required job and encourages me to question to my own motivations.
I guess where all this is leading too, is that in each of these examples, my amateur psychological guess, is that each person is signalling something, which may not exactly correlate with what they’re presenting, almost like they’re misleading us, the public, the audience, the viewers etc and it makes me uncomfortable. I don’t like it, it’s dis-honest. Maybe honesty is in itself, a signalling thing but I still don’t like it.
In an age of social-media, this goes on a lot and yep, I’ve most certainly done it myself. I can’t turn on the telly, without some huge mutli-national corporate entity encouraging me to take up whatever moral-crusade they’re promoting, or more simply, some poet who just so happened to pen a poem on the day of some huge tragedy and immediately stuck it up on line and encouraged everyone to share it. I don’t like it.
Mirror moment, why are we doing this? And if we really knew why we were doing this, would we still be doing this? Mirror moment, why am I doing this? See below
Back then I didn’t know many people into people into
outdoor pursuits, certainly not outside Ikon-Diva
Crawley’s premier late-night go-to in 01
gone 2am with a curb-side-view, scuffles on the
pavement, arguments in the kebab que
couple of times I put on a pair of clumpy walking
shoes, zipped up the ugly- fleece and attempted to
scale the moral high ground, preaching to my mates
below that fighting was an immature thing to do
Now I’m at an age, where, keep it down, yea but
I might actually enjoying walking and I might-possibly-
have considered purchasing a pair of ugly-arse walking
shoes, because they’re water-proof and comfy and …
listen, that kid my mates mate slapped that time, probably deserved it
mouthed off unprovoked, squared up, probably shirtless
and when push came to shove, I was probably deserting
knowing deep down, I lacked the right gear for that sort of pursuit
wrong sort of shoes
so I ascended hilly peaks and preached my views
convinced I was on higher ground like a
champagne-socialist one windfall
away from a super yacht cruise
WINDOW DRESSING
Yesterday, Friday 5th February, 2021, was a busy day at Cree HQ. I released a self-produced new single with a B-side, with artwork that I made myself and stuck the thing up on Bandcamp. I released the first video in a little series I’m doing which includes material from the new show. I lit, filmed, edited, and uploaded it myself. Sounds, alright, yea?
REALITY
The songs aren’t mixed very well (you can hear my breathing too much on the first track.) Apart from putting links up on my social media platforms, I’ve done zero PR for it (I don’t really know where to start with that.) The artwork, I made myself on GIMP- it’s very, very simple. There’s a fault line that I don’t know how to get rid of on the main image. With the video, I’ve got way too much light on my face and the sound isn’t great, nor is the delivery in the performance. Basically, it’s all pretty shoddy. Whilst there are certainly a few improvements that I know I can make, it largely shows the extent of my limited skillset, when it comes to putting out my own content.
Exhibit A: My wife said ‘I don’t get it?’ - well, good art gets people talking.
Now, apart from writing the words used in both the music and video, I probably wouldn’t have bothered doing any of the above, not so long ago, due to knowing that I’m not very good at doing those things; also known as, being shit.
There’s been many examples, over the extent of my 37.6 years on this planet, where I’ve given up far too easily. The reasons for this vary but the one that most frequently caused me to stop doing whatever was it was I was trying to do, was being shit at whatever that thing was. It’s shit being shit. I’m sure we all know that.
SIDENOTE
I need to stress here (out of insecurity? Ego? Pride? I don’t know?) that it’s not the case for everything. The fact that I’m sitting here, writing this blog post, follows a trajectory (which I’ve talked about, a lot) from MCing and rapping, in my late teens, to all this other writing stuff now. I was shit at MCing, for a long time and have the tapes to prove it (confidence also plays part in this but I’m not using that as a full excuse, I was shit, mate) but I stuck with it and low and behold, here I am - with a website and a few shows and other cool things under my belt. Well done me for not giving up.
SHIT EXAMPLES
I’ve been shit at a lot of things. I essentially wrote a show about being shit at school (amongst other things), which turned into this new show (which I’m currently writing) which is about (amongst other things) being shit at the jobs I was doing.
Some of the things I wasn’t able to give up, like school for instance, to the extent that I had to be there, by law but most of my efforts, in the last few years of it were reduced to doing the absolute bare minimum, which is probably worse than giving up. With most of the jobs, I needed to earn a living and didn’t want to be sacked, so I still turned up but again, minimal effort in a lot of cases (though, not all.)
There were somethings, I at least for a period, tried hard with, like Maths and French but just couldn’t my head around them, so I gave up. Cleaning was another, I was normally knackered after a shift, hoovering, scrubbing and wiping but I was still shit at it.
However, so many other things, from that Basketball team I trained with for a brief period, to applying for numerous jobs and opportunities, where I just think, I’m shit at this, so what’s the point in continuing? and resign myself to misery and give up.
This attitude has definitely flowed into my work as a creative person. First and foremost, I see myself as a lyrics man, I deal with words and I perform those words. However, there’s many things I’ve attempted, within the world of being an artist, like funding applications and making your own artwork, producing my own music, that I’ve been shit at and just given up, or not even bothered to attempt it, once I’d established I was shit at it.
So where’s that got me? Not that far, that’s for sure. Most of the things that I have done, which went well, which required skills like: funding, artwork, producing, mixing, engineering, filming, editing - were done by people who knew what they were doing, making me a very fortunate young man; because they probably wouldn’t have happened if it was just me in charge
Of the things that I’m proud of, most of them involved me getting off my arse and making something happen, whilst transcending or ignoring that negative-mindset, that whatever it was, it was going to be shit.
POSITIVE SHIT
I wrote a blog a while back, about the Just A Name mixtape, that I made in 2007. That project came out of a frustration, that I wasn’t able to record and put out my own music, all I had was an ever increasing pile of lyrics, with no music to rap them over. So with the help of my brother Will and my mate, Mit, I learnt just enough on Logic, saved up a bit of dough, bought some basic kit and done the damn thing myself (apart from the mixdown, hold tight Keeper.) Even going to open mics to read my poems, I’d say I was shit at that but I kept it up and got reasonably competent at it.
Whilst I’m pleased with the things that I have achieved, there’s been a whole load of stuff that I haven’t, far too much, in fact, because I made an excuse for myself and gave up. It’s bollox.
Circa 2007, some early Cree. A perm marker was used and then scanned, by a printer/scanner that did’nt realy print or scan.
YOU CAN DO IT, ALL YOU NEED IS…
I’m not trying to sound like one of those self-help guru’s here but that attitude has held me back and I feel stupid for doing so. I think it also masks, on my part, a laziness, risk aversion and a fear of what other people will think. The times where I haven’t been lazy or risk-averse, have led to good things, mostly. So more of that, yea.
In an ideal word, I’d have proper people doing the artwork, the PR, the filming, the funding and I’d just concentrate on my bit, writing and performing but I don’t, none of that is financially viable right now. What I do have, is some good people willing to help me, access to WIFI, a bit of equipment and an account with Udemy and You Tube, so I’m able to at least get some of these little projects finished, to whatever standard and get them out there. The best bit is, I’m slowly improving at the things I mentioned at the start (I can now do a lot more than this time last year) and I get those little dopamine hits, whenever I learn how to do something new, which is a good feeling, even if what I’ve just done is a bit shit; like the artwork on my new track.
So long as I accept the starting point of being shit, at writing funding applications, mixing music, filming, editing, making artwork but acknowledge that I’ll probably improve, if I keep doing it, then I’m onto a winner, mate.
So what I think all this means is, that the real shit thing here in all of this, is doing nothing at all and giving up. It’s shit, being shit but even shitter if you don’t do shit, when you want to get shit done. ‘Eff that, I’ve already wasted to much time, I’ve got work to do.
Peas and taters
Paul