Category Archives: Elephant Shelf

Waiting and Waiting

Delta Ladies, Delta Ladies, Diana Stones Songs, Elephant Shelf, glass cage, history, music, Musings, other

Don’t you hate waiting, at the dentist or for the cable guy or the automobile association.

On a recent rehearsal with Jon Bickley with we played our next gig set 3 times in a row. A bit of a workout, but we also videoed it too. Next week we will do the same thing again. Its for a gig in Amersham in a month or so. I don’t play many gigs these days and I also play with several bands, duos and also solo. These days every gig is often completely different. As time has gone on my personal position in terms of security and finance has become more stable whereas other people i know are now now not so assured and comfortable as they were.
I am still very anxious which is triggered I believe mostly by personal issues, but almost any new activity it seems can set it off. Good bad or different or indifferent. Even if it’s something I am really looking forward to. Crazy.

So today is a waiting day. Ho Hum. Blogg on then. I have a new tune, but not all words for it yet.
And very little inspiration either. I have drawn a mental blank.
Feelings though do wash over me at times, a little out of control and they rattle my cage.

Currently I am playing with the vocal processor on a track. Its quite an interesting sound as I am singing quite jazzy lines and the effect is both pleasing but also very weird harmonically. I will put on a “straight” vocal line too and maybe use a bit of both in the mix. I have no idea if this track will work as its got very weird. Its definitely a marmite song. But sometimes you just have to let loose and get off the leash. Its brewing up for something though.

This is a tune of Vicky Martins which was finished after her death.

This a lyric that I am using in a new song that’s currently in the process of being recorded.
It will be either too weird or very good 😂

Lost to others in all but dreams

Today is the day you thought you were waiting for.

All worries and sin is cleansed and swept away, but you don’t feel any better.
You just sit reading that letter, is it better to have loved and lost at all.
One day you will get the call, then you will stumble and you will fall. And wonder how this ever came to be. One moment on the bank then you slip into the stream and times current pulls your head under and you are lost to others in all but dreams.

I wish that you had held your hand out and i could have grabbed it very tight. I would have held onto you and pulled with all my might. My grip though would be as tight as days have passed and strength has withered on the vine. And then you slip out of my grasp.

Today is the day that you will never know, that you never knew. But we that still see you are all left behind.

D.Stone

A partial lyric.

Some of the graphic humour of Vicky Martin

Time Out And Re-Grouping

Delta Ladies, Diana Stones Songs, Elephant Shelf, glass cage, music, Musings, other

It’s one of those weeks when things are a little bit sideways and out of kilter. My routine day to day is much the same as ever. music practice recording and all that. At the time of writing it is the 5th anniversary of Vicky Martins death and that seems to have gone in a flash. A lot has happened and it seems we are all moving on, like it or not and for many of us it is likely to be the last chapter, with some perhaps warenting an epilogue. Time gallops past at an increasing rate now from my perspective. How to use the time wisely? And how much of this precious resource do we have anyway?

What happened to me and when did I get so boring. Don’t answer that 🙂 Perhaps I always was just basking in the reflected lights of others achievements at times. I have nostalgia syndrome and everything is dragging me back to thinking of the past. Mix that up with a little guilt as well just for good measure to add seasoning and a little spice.

An instrumental Track from 1997. Entirely created on a Korg W1fd workstation. And recorded to analogue tape.

Early days of D

Me in 1959 I think. When did my nose get so big and other questions spring to mind I must admit. Life was indeed simpler then. Play, cuddle mum eat food play sleep and repeat.
Maybe not not so different from life now thinking about it. Play (make music), cuddle partner, eat, play and repeat. Drink wine and beer. That’s a plus. So being a pensioner is perhaps like being a kid again in many ways. And being stupid and having the odd tantrum too. Being taller is useful too of course.

Diana Stone in a bar with a piano

Me much, much later.

So Hot My Brain is Fried

Delta Ladies, Diana Stones Songs, Elephant Shelf, glass cage, history, music, Musings, other, Piano, pictures, whatever

Too hot to do anything and to hot to think as well. Hopefully the weather is supposed to break on Monday, but its really hard going as there is no way to keep the flats internal temp below 30C. We just can’t lower it whatever we do.    We have tried every trick in the book pretty much. Hi ho alas and also lack a day. 
Just stringing a few words together seems a herculean effort at present. I have resorted to keeping a small spray bottle in the fridge and misting myself with it to keep cool. It is actually remarkably effective in the short term. I did look into various cooling devices but they are not that practical due to the design of the apartment.
So the day to day is difficult right now. 

Here is a new song. It’s just Piano and Vocal on this one for a change, keeping it simple.

Let’s get back to proper English summers where you went on holiday in a caravan in Bognor Regis and the rain p***** down all night and it was so loud you couldn’t sleep. Or I could just move to Wales I suppose. In winter when it snowed just after we moved here in 2018  we had to have the heating off as there was a leak, it was 19C. Each year in winter we seem to need much less heating. But how the hell you cool it I don’t know. Not that I am obsessed you know, but please make it stop.

The war in Ukraine is rumbling on and it’s scary.  Really scary. I do wonder if I might not live to to draw my pension next year. Are we that close to a 3rd world war?
It feels like we might be. All of the certainties we had seem to be blowing away in the wind. So we wait and we worry.  Does Putin want to fulfil the words of the book?

“When the Lamb broke the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature saying, “Come.” I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and he who sat on it had the name Death; and Hades was following with him. Authority was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence and by the wild beasts of the earth.”

Makes you wonder what a person of  faith feels at a time like this? 

I think I need a drink, laters people and try and do no harm.