The two trains previous to mine had been cancelled and it was absolutely ram packed, shoulder to shoulder. I was on the way home from my ‘proper job’, and I’d been thinking all day about this little passage of music I’d been writing. I was dying to find a few minutes I could get onto my laptop and tinker with this bit of score. On the train, there was a tiny space near the bin and I pushed my way through the crammed carriage to take my ancient, massive laptop out, and balance it on the bin so I could steal that 20mins and do what truly made me happy. That was the moment I knew. I couldn’t live like this anymore. I didn’t know what I was going to do or how, but I knew I couldn’t deny myself a life in music any more. I didn’t have all the answers, but that behaviour made me look at myself, almost shake myself and say, you know what’s important to you. Stop denying yourself.
I had tried really hard to do all the things I had been socially conditioned to do, and I tried really hard to settle down and get a steady job. I wanted to want to do it, I wanted to be responsible, do what was expected of me and progress in my career, but I just hadn’t bargained on how miserable it would make me. Nor how difficult it would be for me to go from day to day carrying that misery around. I was obsessed with music, and I just couldn’t turn it off. I was always waiting to snatch those moments with my laptop on the bin, or scribbling in my songbook for a few blissful, undisturbed moments.
What things do you do that give you that sense of pure joy and fulfilment? Do you manage to find time for them? How do you squeeze them into your day?
When people come to see our live shows they often comment on the pure joy they see between the three of us. Performing original music with my two bandmates, Chris Wood and John Gleadall, is some of the greatest fulfilment I have ever known, and the world I was yearning for that day I balanced my laptop on the bin on the train. We want to share that joy with our audiences, which is why we are very informal with everyone who joins us for a show . We like to chat and joke with you, because we’re all sharing the experience of music together.
We hope we can share that with you sometime.
Have you ever had those moments when you knew that you just had to take a leap? Maybe you didn’t know what to do or how to do it, but you knew you had to do something. What was that for you? If you want to hit reply and tell me, I’d be very interested to know what it was.
Lots of love and take care
Dx
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