Cardboard chips

Yesterday was a bit of a wash-out. It turns out that I needed another morning to mope and generally feel a bit sorry for myself before spending the entire afternoon and evening resubmitting my application to the Arts Council. I've tried to up the number of times I use words like "edgy" and "innovative" and answered "prefer not to say" when asked about my gender. Desperate. It all felt so futile, as though I were pouring my passion and well-considered words into a giant vacuum. It was nothing but pride which made me check and double check the meaning of every sentence, but, I guess, as they say with all lotteries, you've got to be in it to win it.

The day was genuinely not worth anything more than that. I went down the road to buy some chips for my tea from the fancy place on the corner opposite the Murugan Temple, and was horrified when the woman poured oven chips into her "healthy low GI vegetable oil." By the time I'd carried them back to the house and boiled some peas, they'd become sticks of cardboard. I crumbled some feta over the top in an attempt to give the illusion of a classy meal, but in reality I'd merely recreated one of Fiona's famous experimental gluten-free brick cakes! I had to eat the chips with a glass of water in my right hand. Five chips in, they started backing up and I got chronic hiccups. Twenty chips and I was done!

I went up to the loft late in the evening and did some work on my Nene composition. This month is all about Nene. It's nice to enter a sonic world where I can explore subtle dissonance and elements of minimalism and folk music. The slight panic I have about Nene is that, because a river by its nature is linear, and I'm writing a work which represents my experience of walking along it, I'm not altogether sure how I'm going to inject much-needed form and structure into the piece. I may have to embrace the episodic nature of what I've written so far and allow the leitmotif to become my best friend.