I've felt rather gloomy all day. One or two issues with old friends have been playing heavy on my mind, and I woke up to find a letter from the Arts Council informing me that my application for funding for help with the recording of the requiem had been rejected. I think we only have ourselves to blame; we didn't make it clear quite how reliant we were on the grant for the live performance aspect of our Space project, so whereas we've been lucky enough to have been awarded Arts Council funding to make ten wonderful films about the requiem and even been given extra funding to stream its premier live on the web, we don't yet have the cash to pay performers, which should have been our biggest priority. As ever in this country there are a shocking lack of organisations and individuals who help to fund performers. There are plenty who will help to build theatres and beautiful concert halls, but when the Arts Council can't help, who pays for the actors and the musicians who perform within?
So, I go back to the drawing board in search of the £6,000 which is now all that separates us from making this wonderful project. It seems such an unbelievably small amount, but then, when I start to imagine what £6,000 would mean to me on a personal level, it feels like there’s an enormous mountain to climb.
It was my old friend Ted's birthday today, and a group of his mates went ten pin bowling. It reminded me so much of my teenage years when kids from the music school would often go to the bowling alley next to Toys R Us near the Northampton gas works. Going there always felt like a really grown-up thing to do. The lanes must have been near the Carlsberg factory, as I always associate the experience with the smell of hops.
It was overcast today, and everything’s felt rather shrouded in nostalgia; very much like the end of an era. I felt this particularly strongly at the bowling alley. Perhaps the feelings were triggered by those memories from Northampton in the early 90s. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t seen some of the people there for some years, but at one stage, it almost felt like I was watching a montage sequence in a film, acutely aware of the passing of time, and that the important choices we’d all been forced to make in our lives were beginning to show on our faces. I felt a little distant, very separate; like I was standing in another world with a big smile on my face, waving at the others whilst mouthing the words "see you when we come back round again!" And oddly that felt rather comforting, because though we can’t stop the world from turning, the little notches on the little cogs we’re standing on will always realign eventually. If someone touches your life once, they’ll touch it again. What we can never predict is when.
So, I go back to the drawing board in search of the £6,000 which is now all that separates us from making this wonderful project. It seems such an unbelievably small amount, but then, when I start to imagine what £6,000 would mean to me on a personal level, it feels like there’s an enormous mountain to climb.
It was my old friend Ted's birthday today, and a group of his mates went ten pin bowling. It reminded me so much of my teenage years when kids from the music school would often go to the bowling alley next to Toys R Us near the Northampton gas works. Going there always felt like a really grown-up thing to do. The lanes must have been near the Carlsberg factory, as I always associate the experience with the smell of hops.
It was overcast today, and everything’s felt rather shrouded in nostalgia; very much like the end of an era. I felt this particularly strongly at the bowling alley. Perhaps the feelings were triggered by those memories from Northampton in the early 90s. Perhaps it was because I hadn’t seen some of the people there for some years, but at one stage, it almost felt like I was watching a montage sequence in a film, acutely aware of the passing of time, and that the important choices we’d all been forced to make in our lives were beginning to show on our faces. I felt a little distant, very separate; like I was standing in another world with a big smile on my face, waving at the others whilst mouthing the words "see you when we come back round again!" And oddly that felt rather comforting, because though we can’t stop the world from turning, the little notches on the little cogs we’re standing on will always realign eventually. If someone touches your life once, they’ll touch it again. What we can never predict is when.
Pepys was a grumpy old sod on this date 350 years ago. Pretty much everything was annoying him; various people at Westminster Hall, various politicians and religious figures, bits of gossip the fact that he’d drunk too much alcohol, no doubt his wife... I’m sure he was pretty pleased to put the day to bed!!
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