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.
Easy
So I’ve put together a little freestyle promo video, for the upcoming Toast In The Machine EP, Toy Cars 64. It’s a 64 bar-stream of consciousness-type-verse. I like to write these from time to time.
I’m at a point now (and it’s taken a long time to get here!) where I can produce and record my own music, and then a do a bit of simple filming. It’s all quite basic, but if I was able to channel all the frustration I’ve felt, over the years, where I’ve had tons of ideas and lyrics, but not been able to do anything with, I’d probably see us through this current energy crises.
Anyway, I can do it now, so no more excuses and I can only get better with it. If you like it, do me a favour and follow me on the below links, if you use those platforms, it all helps
SPOTIFY FOLLOW - https://open.spotify.com/artist/77Io4...
APPLE FOLLOW - https://music.apple.com/us/artist/pau...
AMAZON MUSIC - https://www.amazon.co.uk/music/player...
BANDCAMP - https://paulcree.bandcamp.com/
read all about the EP here https://paulcree.co.uk/blog
Greetings
Here’s the latest episode, a little story about getting-mugged on the way to school
Enjoy
Easy
Here’s the second part of the 405 story, bit late on the upload on here, enjoy
One two
Greetings. Bonjour. What’s happening?
Thought I’d pen a little update for the site about some goings-on – adding it to the consistently-inconsistent blogs and general updates that already exist on here.
So what have I been doing with myself?
Since late October last year, I’ve been regularly writing and recording a podcast / blog using Substack which I call Lager Time (some of which you can see below) I’ve been doing it every week (give or take the odd week off) and tend to share a piece of writing that I’m working and sometimes music, as well as having a general update on what I’ve been doing.
The reason it’s called Lager Time, is because it’s where I like to let off a bit of steam; which for me, I often associate with drinking lager. When I lived in Morden for a few years, with my mate, Dean. I’d often put on a Children’s TV voice and pronounce ‘it’s lager time’ to my mate Dean, whenever I went down to Ganley’s; the big Irish pub in the high street. I used to love going there, sinking a few jars with my brother Nat and chewing the fat.
I’m still figuring out what I’m doing work-wise, post pandemic and where, if at all, I fit in to everything. Even before the pandemic, I had this duel feeling of being a bit lost in the two worlds which I tend to operate; subsidized theatre and spoken word and figured I should try and carve out my own path. Figuring out what and how, is what I’ve been doing since and Lager Time is one aspect of that.
I’m enjoying doing it and gradually getting better at the production aspect of it. I’ve still not quite figured out the best shape of it but I’m excited, as it presents other opportunities. It’s a little platform that I’m slowly building and I’ve got a few ideas for it going forward. Like live-streams, live-events and guests.
You can subscribe directly on Substack, and have an email sent to you every week or you can subscribe to the audio, and have it on both APPLE podcasts and SPOTIFY.
Last week I recorded a live-set, which included a bunch of new poems, stories, a couple of songs and a bit of chat. I’m aiming to do a few more of this over the next couple of months as well as doing a video live-stream.
The big vision, is to be as fully self-sufficient as I can be. Ie – I can produce as much of my own content as I want. Audio, video, graphics, books , music and these are all things I’ve slowly been learning how to do. Earning some dough would be nice too
TOAST IN THE MACHINE
Speaking of music, I’m on the verge of releasing a new self-produced EP called Toast In The Machine. It’s five tracks (two of which I’ve already out put: Whichever Way It’s Blowing and Now, What Do You Wonna Say?) but I’ve remixed those and hopefully made them sound better.
I’ve been dabbling with music production for about fifteen years but never taken it that seriously. This is the first time I’ve attempted to mix and master my own music and mate, it’s hard! Though I’m treating everything with this project as a learning curve and I have zero expectations, I’m thinking maybe I should give it over to a proper producer / engineer as at the moment, it’s not quite sounding but I hope to have it all finished by next month.
RISE
Someone who is a proper producer, is my good pal Conrad Murray. This week he put out this track, RISE (OUTSIDE) which was one of the first track we wrote for High Rise eState of Mind but never ended up using. Have a blast and you can hear me singing on the chorus with Lakeisha Lynch Stevens aka Kiki.
MAKE YOUR OWN BED AND HOPE FOR THE BEST
I spent probably the first six months of this year re-writing this show, it’s now ready to go into production (I think) but I now have to go through the rigmarole of getting Arts Council funding to make that happen, so watch this space… have a look at some of the stuff I’ve done in the past with it…
WORKSHOPS
Aside from all that, I’ve been leading projects in theatre, music and spoken word with Dream Arts, City Academy, Wildcard Theatre, National Literacy Trust with future projects coming with Green Shoes and Mountview. I’ve also helped a couple of mates out with writing wedding speeches, If anyone is interested in any of the above, don’t hesitate to get in touch
So that’s it for now
Thanks, as ever, for the support
Paul
This piece was originally publsihed on my Substack audio / blog - Lager Time, where you can hear it as audio. You can also subsribe there and have as an email and podcast
A young man of nineteen is rummaging
through his wallet, looking for his gym
pass. In amongst the receipts, chewing
gum wrappers and train tickets, he
finds a date-expired, unused rubber;
curry flavour. He’d bought it from a
vending machine on his sixteenth
Birthday. He holds it, he can feel it’s gone
dry and crusty. He’s still wearing too much
Lynx and the hair-gel is still slooping off
his head in wet-weather, V-Plates are
still very much intact, along with his
optimism. Never give up he thinks
Originally published on my Substack blog: Lager Time, where you can hear it as audio, if you like, give us a subscribe, it all helps
This peice was written in Dallas, over Christmas 2021, whilst in isolation with COVID
Plans for the indecisive
Plans for the unconfident
Plans for the ill-prepared
Plans for the avoiders of conflict
Plans for the effeminate
Plans for the masculine
Plans for the identity clingers
Plans for the identity seekers
Plans for the identity shredders
Plans for the bored
Plans for the un-motivated
Plans for the negative, cynical and depressed
Plans for the self-aware bad-habbiters
Plans for the spouse disappointers
Plans for the family embarrasses
Plans for the compliment shirkers
Plans for the compliment seekers
Plans for the distant whisperers of hope
Plans for long-term excitement
Plans for vitality and wealth
Plans for God, divinity
Plans for organisation
Plans to get well soon
Plans to unclip the seatbelt and press the ejector button
Plans to convert passive to electric
Maybe that’s a good place to start
Greetings
Happy new year and all that
How was yours? Mine wass sick, I was in America, Dallas, but I was sick, with COVID but it was still sick.
So yea I got the dreaded Virus whilst my wife and I were travvelling around America. It’s odd, in the back of my mind, for the last few months, I’ve felt this fear that at some point, the virus would catch up with me. And it did. It weren’t that bad.
Luckily for me, I got it whilst staying at my sister-in-law’s house in Dallas and was able to stay there for the duration of the isolation. Hate to think what would’ve happened had I been stuck in a hotel (and how much that would’ve cost?!) no one else in the house got it either, which was a relief, I felt quite guilty for a while, that I’d ruined Christmas, like the Grinch, or 2020 Boris. Weather was alright too, I sat outside for a fair amount of it, by the swimming pool. Yep, the swimming pool. Texas has space. I can feel any sympathy you may have for me rapidly diminishing as I write this. Didn’t lose my taste buds either. Ate some banging food and was well looked after. Sympathy gone.
Anyway, all of that aside, I was quite fatigued and spent a lot of my time in the spare room, one of three spaces I could sit in and a friend of my wife’s, Clay, asked me why I wasn’t making any music and filming a little timelapse. So I made some music and filmed a little timelapse. Made the beat on Imaschine, wrote some bars, set my phone up in the corner of the room, with this fish eye Lenz I got, and BOOM I made this. All on the blower. It beat mindlessly scrolling through You Tube. Took a bunch of time-lapse videos whilst out there, might try a few more of these type videos, it was fun.
So I’ve set up a blog on Substack, I’ll still be duel-posting on here but you can get the audio in there, here’s the link https://paulcree.substack.com/publish/post/42346169
Hello.
Perhaps it would be good if I introduced this new venture into Substack.
I’m Paul, I’ve been writing and performing for a fair-few years now, mainly in London, occasionally outside of it. I enjoy what I do.
Before I did any of this, I was a rapper who wrote lyrics (and still does). Long story short, I never intended to do any of this, this being poems, stories, theatre, blogs etc (not consciously anyway) I fell in to live-poetry and also fringe-theatre, both of them due to chance-meetings with people. I never formally studied anything and everything I’ve learned; I’ve picked up along the way. Consequently, I’ve developed an ad-hoc way of writing and performing and just generally living life.
My path into this probably isn’t all that unique, I’ve met plenty of people who’ve found themselves doing this, without having ever set out to do it.
If I’m being honest, I’ve probably used the whole ‘not being educated’ thing as a bit of crutch and also as something to almost brag about. The crutch bit being, when I have to write funding-forms and haven’t yet mastered that funding-type-language that evades so many of us and can be a pain in the arse trying to write. The brag bit being, probably a cover-up for my own insecurities about not knowing enough about the artforms I operate in and the way I go about doing what I do. Am I doing it ‘right’? is someone gonna dig me out for it? Prime example, I’m worried that I should’ve put a semi-colon in that last sentence somewhere.
So why am I doing this?
Presently, I’m just talking / writing to myself, because no-one is subscribed, obviously but I think I’m still figuring out why I’m doing this. As self-absorbed as that sounds and probably is, it’s kinda fun trying to work-it-out. As it stands, my thinking, as muddled as ever and awash with various negative traits, is something along the lines of : This blog can be
1: A place to put up some of my poems / stories and thoughts etc
2: This is perhaps a way I can connect with more people?
3: It can also help improve my writing
4: It can help me grow some confidence in voicing my opinions
Perhaps.
1: I’ve rarely ever submitted any poems or stories to the seemingly endless list of magazines and blogs that publish that sort of thing. Just thinking about it, gives me a classic-case of brain-overload and then shut-down. I wouldn’t know where to start. I also don’t tend to engage with that world either, so why should anyone bother publishing my stuff? Though I did, to be fair, recently attend the launch for a Zine called It Was All A Zine but only because my mate Gary Hartley aka Gary From Leeds, was doing a rare performance. I bought the zine, I read the Zine, I quite liked it.
2:. I have a website, occasionally I do little things like this but I wonder to what avail? Substack got me excited, well, curious at least because it seems to be a centralised platform for writers, so maybe you can reach more people? Tags and keywords. Maybe I’m just a capitalist, desperate to sell his wares to as many people as possible, if seems like a market-place of sorts. A market place of thoughts? You can have that, mate. Who knows, maybe I’m just pissing in the wind, I’m late to the party as ever, but I’ll post anyway and see where it goes.
3. I recently did a short course, a Level 2 in Counselling Skills. I don’t have any qualifications above Level 2, Level 2, here in the UK, is the equivalent of wearing armbands when you’re learning to swim. Regardless, I enjoyed it but I found it challenging. I had to do a lot of writing which I found quite difficult. I realised I have a lot short-comings, which when writing my poems and stories, I can get away with, as I’ve made those short-comings part of what I do but formally, it’s no good, mate. So I dug-out a Key Stage 2 (primary level) spelling and grammar book that my mum gave me, years ago and have to decided to try and learn all the stuff I didn’t learn at school
4. I’m conflicted on this one. Social-media can be a toxic place for opinions. From politics to football it can be pretty nasty, so I tend to swerve getting involved in debates online, the road of least resistance, most likely. I also, as a policy, don’t really post anything that isn’t related to what I do but I’m often tempted... I read a fair amount, about politics and football and all sorts stuff really, I often don’t agree with the way the wind prevails but I’m scared if I voice an opinion, the wrong opinion, I’ll get shot down, quick, I’ve seen it happen. I also worry I won’t be able to defend my position, as I lack the knowledge skills do so, I’ll panic and flap and then give in. I’ve been made to look an idiot many times, when talking with people in person, it petrifies me. So perhaps this blog can be a way of me putting out some of those opinions, most of which are just floating around my head, causing a nuisance and are probably unformed and not thought though, writing them down, may help with this and it’s (so far) not quite as scary as Twitter.
So that’s it, mate. Substack, Me. Probably should’ve mentioned I’ve got a life-long of habit of being half-arsed about things, this could easily slip into that well-polished routine of mine. However, I think with a bit of planning, maybe I can be a bit more disciplined with it.
If you have read this (or listened) and you’ve got this far, thanks. Now, let’s see where this goes.
Paul Cree, October 2021