listen up north!

Frost and Fire

  It’s amazing how a little wine in front of a real fire and a few Christmas lights can aid relaxation and open the mind for a spot of creativeness.  I’m not the sort of person that ever switches off and so in the festive season I decide to take a break from the admin and management side of setting up my spoken word website and pick up my supernatural thriller ‘Looking for Dolly’.  Over the past few days I  have managed to redraft 3 episodes  and as I am now writing audiodrama for the web it’s going to be in several short episodes rather than one long play.  Stencil Helen contacted me recently with a view to putting on an evening of entertainment including my drama and recording it in front of a live audience which sounds like a great opportunity.

I was starting to feel like a Christmas pudding so on Boxing Day I took a walk with the  family around my village in Northumberland.  It hadn’t snowed for days but freezing temperatures meant that hardly anywhere had defrosted resulting in magical landscapes and the first truly white Christmas that either of my Teens could remember.

‘The Trees are Singing My Music’

As I write this I am taking refuge from the Christmas hype and enjoying an Elgar moment.  Listening to Elgar’s ‘Top 25’ – a CD insert from ‘The Friendly Guide to Elgar’ surrounded by my Edward Elgar mouse mat and my Edward Elgar coaster complete with matching Edward Elgar china mug, I am fondly reminded of a seminal afternoon early November, when travelling North on our return from Devon, we came upon a sign and followed it until we came that place of pilgrimage known as The Elgar Birthplace and Visitor Centre near Worcester. For me it was the fulfilment of a lifetime’s ambition.  For Teen 2, despite opting for GCSE music, it was something to be endured.  During the AV introduction, she was rounded on severely when the bass line of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers leaked out from her earphones defiling the spine tingling kettle drum rolls of Nimrod and The Enigma Variations.

In the Visitor Centre, I leisurely poured over every word and every artefact in every display cabinet – much to Teen 2’s annoyance.  But I had waited a long time for this moment and it wasn’t going to be rushed.  Tempers started to fray but I held out as Teen 2 continually baited me over how long I was taking over this ‘boring stuff’.  Wonderhubby to the rescue as he tactfully completed a whistle-stop tour and adjourned to the pub next door to placate our teenager with pop and crisps and for himself to partake in a little refreshment of course.

I made my way out of the visitor centre and through a delightful cottage garden to the modest red brick dwelling that was his birthplace.  It was time for sensory overload as I soaked in the room where he was born and the desk where he sat and the manuscripts he wrote.  I began to get a sense of the man, not just as musical genius but as a real human being.  I also started to realise certain parallels to a writer and, in a humble way, to my own life.  Of course I do not dare to suggest that I am in the same creative league, but it was reassuring to find that the Great Man’s talent was not recognised until into his 40s and not before many struggles and disappointments and having to do things in life that he really didn’t want to do. (I wonder if that included cash flow forecasts?) 

Even Elgar said that he had to be ‘bullied’ into work and after needing 3 apples, a Twix and half a dozen games of Spider Solitaire before settling down to this blog post I can quite relate to that. As for his ‘inventing’ of music, Elgar claimed that it came from ‘anywhere and everywhere’ – walking, golfing, cycling  or in the evening - then he sat up until any hour to get it down.  It was during his study in the morning that he worked on the revising and orchestration but his inspiration did not come from within the confine of four walls.  However, that's not that an excuse for me to vacate the laptop especially when it’s taken so long to settle here.  Listening to such pieces as ‘Chanson de Matin’  I imagine that I can hear the rolling Malvern Hills and the English country lanes as Elgar heard them trundling along on his penny farthing donned in tweed plus fours and bowler hat.  Hear it as it was in that bygone, rose-tinted, innocent age - pre-boy racer and pre-performance exhausts. 

‘..the trees are singing my music or have I sung theirs?’ Of this I am very glad to be reminded every time I sip from my Edward Elgar china mug.

Uphill Struggle

Suddenly I’m tired of all the bright and clever people - all promises and opportunities and housed  in purpose built glass fronted offices doing wonderful exciting projects with abstract titles that make no sense whatsoever to a 70s grammar school girl.

Approaching Christmas I’ve lost my sparkle and feel more like this morning’s grey winter day - tired before it’s even begun.  I suppose recovering from my 4th operation in quick succession hasn’t helped.  Everything seems hard work mentally as well as physically.

Perhaps I’m not the only one who reaches a time when whatever you’re trying to achieve starts to look a bit wobbly.  That's where I am with my spoken word website - between a rock and a hard place.  Five out of six months into my DigitalCity Fellowship and I don’t seem yet to have covered much ground; it isn’t as if I haven’t been work, work, working, although some days it feels as if I just reshuffle endless bits of paper and send e-mails that never get answered .  Sometimes it seems that there’s so many strands to the idea that it’s hard to keep hold of them all.  My study is in a huge mess again and Wonderhubby is in the midst of putting up 2 more Scandavian storage solutions. 

I’ve been telling people for so long now that my website is ‘under development’ that it’s become embarrassing.  In reality, it feels just as far away as ever. Having recently spent a long time putting its specifications together, I suppose that’s helped me think about what I want.  However, there seems to be a difference of opinion between those advising me on the best way forward which has slowed things up considerably.  But I’m going to be generous and say that those people must have my best interest at heart and hope that this delay will mean a firmer foundation.

Now I'm seriously beginning to wonder whether my spoken word website ‘has legs’.  What do I charge for anything?  I still haven’t been able to determine how much productions cost to make or work out cash flow forecasts or how to do profit and loss accounts.   It always seems so logical in the several workshops I’ve been to but when I get home and try it myself all the figures and tables and spreadsheet sums start to dance around the make my head spin. 

One thing I've learnt is that you need to be careful what you tell others. I thought it was a good idea to blog, create interest and awareness of my impending new website. I recently contacted the director of music website to see if he would share his experience with me, not thinking that there would be a conflict of interest.  After arranging a meeting, he e-mailed me the next day to say that his company had also decided to set up a spoken word website and did I still want to meet? Coincidence?  Similarly a friend told me about a website designer that I had previously spoken to at a networking event was also now setting up a similar website to mine.  Never mind, if I can eventually muster up enough energy I’ll just have to make sure that listenupnorth.com is the best and brightest star. 

I must also remember that since starting my spoke word website idea, I have come across so many supportive and generous people: family, friends, other writers, actors, tutors and mentors.  I also need to keep returning to the creative process, remind myself why I’m doing this when the light’s burning a bit low.  The one good thing I’ve started to do during recuperation is to write again, something vital to me which had been pushed out by all the admin and business side of things.  I’ve picked up the supernatural thriller audiodrama that I abandoned a while ago and I’m also gauging interest from potential actors.  So if you’ll excuse me I just need to go and get down to my real business and plot out that steamy scene between my heroine and the local vicar.