Go slow

Yesterday was all about work. I sat in my favourite cafe on the seafront and hammered my way through the vocal piano score of the last song in Em. It felt like quite an achievement when I reached the end, although I have to keep reminding myself that an entire number remains unwritten! I shall take the day off today and get myself stuck into it on Monday. Hopefully I'll have a decent framework for the piece by the end of the day. It feels daunting. I don't really have much of a sense of what the piece needs to be. I worry that it might bring on a writers' block. That it might somehow become the straw that breaks this particular camel's back. I could really do with some help from someone at the moment because there's a whole sea of work which needs to be done formatting scores and things. It's funny: in theatre there are often all sorts of assistants knocking about. I don't think I've ever worked on a show without an assistant director or an assistant stage manager. I have never been offered an assistant composer. Perhaps it's because I've always been a one-man band. I do my own orchestrations where many other composers immediately expect their MDs or an independently paid orchestrator to take care of that side of things. There's usually a separate book writer and lyricist as well who can focus on rewrites in their specialist areas. On this show it's just me. Fortunately I've always been very lucky with MDs in the past who have been willing to muck in when things get a bit hairy...

It's been so nice to be by the sea. It's been dry and sunny every day, but with a strong sea breeze. Walking along the seafront this morning was a bracing experience to say the least. The kite surfer who was impressively leaping and twisting high above the yellow waves had exactly the right idea. 

Brighton Station has one of those "play me" public pianos. They're often in spaces like train stations and there's usually either some snotty kid bashing the shite out of it, or a wannabe hipster Harry sitting at it, playing some form of bad jazz on an endless loop. You know the one? He learned a piece by ear when he was fifteen and he plays it every time he gets near a piano because it impresses the ladies? That's the fella. Any way. No such luck in Brighton Station. The "play me" piano, which has "play me" written in giant letters all over it, has its lid very firmly padlocked shut. It's actually a "don't play me" piano. One assumes it just became that little bit too much for the people who have to work in the station. An inescapable noise.

Arriving back in London was unnecessarily stressful. Victoria Station on a bank holiday Sunday was filled with tourists in "go slow" mode. I just wanted to scream at them to make a blinkin' decision. I get that the London transport network is intimidatingly confusing, but stopping dead at ticket barriers to fish for a ticket at the bottom of one's handbag is unacceptable wherever you are in the world. I'm fairly used to London emptying out on Bank Holidays, but maybe that's in residential areas. The residents head out of the city, and the tourists arrive in droves to see Buckingham Palace. I shudder.

Liberal antisemitism

I must admit, the recent report about antisemitism within the Liberal Democrat party made my blood run cold. As many reading this blog will know, antisemitism is one of the things which makes me almost apoplectic with rage. I don't understand it on any level. I don't understand how anyone could feel threatened or wary of a group who don't even proselytise. And yet I hear casual antisemitism all the time, almost exclusively in relation to Palestine. Israel and Israelis, it seems, can do nothing right, and Jewish people around the world somehow have to take responsibility for what's going on over there. Obviously this is in no way a view that I share, but it's one which has become incredibly entrenched in certain arenas.

It was no surprise therefore to learn that the Lib Dem antisemitism row was born out of the subject of Israel. Former Bradford East MP, David Ward, apparently wrote in a blog that he was "saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians." Unacceptable. Clearly. He also, we're told, suggested that he would fire rockets into Israel himself if he lived on the Gaza Strip. Nice. Tim Farron moved quickly and sacked him, effectively ruining his chances of standing as a Liberal Democrat in the seat which he lost in 2015 and may well have won in this snap election.

So here's my worry. I'm not altogether sure that we get anywhere with these knee-jerk sackings. In my view they almost always back fire in some way. I, of all people, know that we are all capable of writing stuff which can be interpreted as offensive or bigoted, particularly when taken out of context. I'm pretty sure that David Ward is largely a good man, who would see himself very clearly as anti-Israel rather than antisemitic, and my worry is actually that if we go in heavy-handedly, we run the risk of turning figures like Ward into martyrs, shot down and silenced by the Liberal elite for citing arguments that many secretly agree with. People don't know what they're allowed to say any more because we're all in such a rush to be mortally offended - usually on someone else's behalf. My friend Tara wrote on Facebook today that she'd been criticised for describing the weather as "bikini-wearing weather." She was so non-plussed that she took to social media to find out what could possibly have been offensive about her remark.

Obviously, there's a big gulf between this, and the dreadful comments that David Ward made, but even they are nothing I haven't heard expressed a million times at dinner parties in Islington. The worrying thing is that these views exist at all and I think a large amount of education needs to be done to show people that using the Jewish holocaust to make a point about the behaviour of Israeli leaders is utterly and profoundly unacceptable, however angry you feel about the situation over there.

Yes, of course you could argue that by blanket sacking everyone who makes these sorts of statements you're educating people to stop doing it, but I've always believed in second chances and never believed that you can punish a view out of someone. Besides, surely, it's far more satisfying find someone who says "my views on this subject have changed. I was wrong. I made mistakes and I want others to learn from my mistakes." For this reason I'm often somewhat heartened when I see people I grew up with on Facebook, who brutalised me at school for being gay, proudly flying rainbow flags on their Facebook feeds after events like the Orlando shooting. People can change. That's the joy of people.

The problem these days is that we don't ALLOW politicians to change their views. Changing one's mind is seen as a sign of weakness rather than as an indication of seeing the light, because we're all somehow expected to be enlightened from birth. Yes, it may, of course, be true that Ward's views are entrenched, and that instead of learning from the incident, he'd puff himself up and become desperately arrogant and unrepentant on the subject as the ghastly Ken Livingstone so recently did. That, genuinely, is the time when you have to say goodbye.

I don't know if I'm being idealistic, over simplistic or over forgiving in my old age. Ward might simply be a tit who's had plenty of warnings, but in this media age, as we get used to the new order, people write all sorts of things that come into their heads which have the habit of following them around like a bad smell. And I think that's a shame.

I spent the day yesterday in Hove, writing. I went to my favourite little seafront cafe in the morning and then a Starbucks next to Palmeira Square in the afternoon, finishing up at about 5pm, thrilled to have completed yet another song.

I met up with Hilary and Mez in the evening who'd come across from Lewes. We walked down to the seafront and then to the end of the pier where we spent ages playing shove ha'penny, in an attempt to win ourselves a little key ring which, somewhat bizarrely, was attached to the plastic figure of a goat standing on a guitar. The goat was riding on the two pence pieces very close to the edge and we became obsessed with the notion of getting it out. We won! The little plastic-made-in-China key ring was ours.

Mezza wanted to go on a ride at the end of the pier and opted for some awful thing which went round in circles and then upside down. As the Polish bloke strapped me into the seat, my life flashed before me. What a terrible way to die, I thought: Thrown into the English Channel and unable to escape from the metal casing of the ride. The moment the ride kicked off I knew I was going to hate it. It was raining and we were the only two customers, so I worried it was going to last forever, as once happened to me on a waltzer in an empty fair. My keys, of course, fell out of my pocket whilst I was hanging upside down. Fortunately they dropped onto the metal floor of the ride, rather than, for example, the sea. The ride made me feel sick for the next two hours.

We ate at Bill's. Macaroni cheese. I refuse to call it Mac n cheese. That's too American. The girls ate halloumi burgers. I felt a little envious.

Ingrid Bergman eyes

The cheapest ticket I could find down to Brighton today was in First Class. I genuinely don't know how I managed to swing that one! I'm also somewhat bemused, however, as to why the experience I had was defined as "first class." First class in a Southern Rail train seems to involve sitting on a fairly uncomfortable chair, which is only different to the chairs in normal class by dint of its having a little doily where you might rest your head if you didn't think said doily was a Mecca for grease and hair lice. There was one other person in the little boxed-off, fish bowl style first class carriage. She appeared to have copper woven into her scarf. I decided that she was somewhat more accustomed to the high life than me! When the train pulled into the station, I learned that her sort don't rush to get up. They stand up when they choose and expect the other passengers merely to part like the Red Sea. Or was it the Dead Sea? Which sea parted? I've swum in the Dead Sea. I read Regeneration by Pat Barker whilst floating like a buoy.

I'm in Brighton to focus on writing and nothing else for a few days. There's something about the sea air which makes me feel quite inspired. Sitting in the cafes down here certainly beats writing in cafes in North London. Im sure I don't get any more work done, but I feel more refreshed. I got in a right pickle upon arriving here because EE's 4G network exploded just as I really needed to be sending a load of emails. I tried to tether my phone to my laptop and couldn't tell if it was my fault, or if there was bad reception in the cafe I was in. I finally got back to Fiona's and its glorious wifi, phoned EE and realised they were struggling with their networks.

I worked at Fiona's sitting room table all afternoon until about 8pm, when I decided it would be pathetic to be by the sea without actually being by the sea, so I took myself out along the hazy sea front. I think it must have rained. The pavements were entirely dry but there were large spots of rain on the cars. The sea was pitch black. Like a Northamptonshire gothic's velvet hooded dress. I think Dylan Thomas might have called it bible black. It was lovely to be out and about breathing in the chilly air.

Just before bed, I entered a YouTube cul-de-sac and watched a video of ABBA being inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. It took until 2010 for them to be so appropriately honoured, which is somewhat shameful, but Benny and Frida made delightful speeches. Frida, I think is possibly the most beautiful and graceful woman on the planet, but it was Benny's speech which made me really think. He spoke for a while about the various influences on the ABBA sound which were all born out of the fact that Swedish radio in the 50s played a weird smorgasbord of Italian opera, crazy Swedish folk music, German Oom Pah Pah, and, very occasionally, a rock n roll song from America. Benny believes that the ABBA sound was furthermore hugely influenced by the Swedes tendency to be melancholic. It's something, he says, you can see in Ingrid Bergman's eyes. Many people who only know ABBA in a surface way will find that hard to believe, but actually melancholy is peppered throughout pretty much every ABBA song. It's in the writing. It's in the vocal delivery. And I actually feel very strongly that it's the single thing which raises ABBA songs out of the realm of great pop and into the zone of mini-masterpieces.

The Life

I'm currently working on the song Delusion from Em. It's always quite an intense experience when I put pen to paper on this particular song. The lyrics are incredibly personal to me, largely because I think the one thing that writers and artists are probably all united in is their fear of being thought of as deluded. In the song, the delusion refers to matters of the heart coupled with the idea that people from certain backgrounds don't ever really get to have ideas above their station. The great tragedy in my industry is that it's not a meritocracy, largely because everyone has a different concept of what good art actually is. As a result, it's so often only the most tenacious, the most confident, the prettiest, the wealthiest or the luckiest who get to have their voices heard by the mainstream. The rest of us are like beggars, competing viscously for the scraps of funding which get thrown our way. That's how it sometimes feels, in any case.

The weather today has been hysterical. I got royally attacked by hailstones as I ran, like a little girl under a water sprinkler, down Southwood Lane.

I travelled down to Southwark this evening to watch The Life at Southwark Playhouse. The evening was marred a little by seeing a bloke tearing into a woman on the street afterwards in a scene which was hugely reminiscent of the show, which is about New York hookers and their highly-violent pimps. Of course, the instinct is to go over to the woman and ask if she's okay. She seemed more passive than frightened, and I couldn't tell if this was perhaps even more worrying. We crossed the street to try to give her a sense of solidarity, but, obviously, the most dangerous person to be when a volatile man is on the rampage is actually another man. Sure enough, as we walked passed him, he caught my eye, and aggressively started shouting "what are you staring at?" before starting to kick something which made a terrible racket and scared the shite out of me. It's all very well having the instinct to be a Good Samaritan but it can actually make a situation a whole heap worse.

The Life was, however, remarkable. I think there are a few issues with the piece itself, which is one of the last shows Cy Coleman wrote. It's a very daring script. Very dark, edgy, and quite bleak in places. It actually feels very fresh. I was somewhat shocked to realise it was written when the composer was well into his 60s. My only major issue with the piece is that it has a somewhat mawkish American-style "you'll always be my friend" type number at the end which seems at absolute loggerheads to the darkness of the rest of the show. This sort of thing always seems to happen on Broadway. It's almost as though there's a feeling that a writer needs to apologise for daring to be dark. But this in itself has a jarring "but then we all woke up" quality, which I always find disappointing.

I don't want to focus on the one tiny negative, however, because it's an amazing show, and this was an amazing production with brilliant choreography and an exquisite band. The music rattles along in a world which inhabits smokey jazz, boogaloo and elements of funk. There were moments when I heard myself audibly congratulating the sax players, and saying things like "nice" at some of the guitarist's riffs. I don't know who arranged the music for that particular ensemble, but it was deftly done. I also don't know who the MD was, but she did a very very fine job. I only know it was a woman because I was watching her appreciatively in the monitors.

The cast were outstanding. I was very pleased to learn that the casting director was my old mate, Anne Vosser, whom I met the interval. We worked together for the best part of a year and a half on Taboo, and became thick as thieves during the process. I haven't seen her in the flesh for at least ten years and it took me a split second to recognise her. I'd love to work with her again. Some of the laughs we had in those auditions were close to legendary.

The stand out performer tonight (in a very very strong cast) was almost certainly Sharon D Clarke. Fans of our wedding will remember that she sang Love Conquers All just after we'd tied the knot. She is a remarkable performer. I very nearly gave her a standing ovation after her big number in Act One. Her voice is remarkable. She truly knows her craft. There isn't an inch of her vocal folds which she doesn't know to control. She makes brave and bold choices. She really is one of the best.

Why I won't reclaim the word "queer"

A baby was crying profusely in the cafe this morning. I felt very sorry for the mother, I really did, but there comes a moment when you have to cut your losses and take the child out of the confined space where he's profoundly irritating people who are trying to relax. Everyone was attempting to be really polite and understanding. Mummy was flustered, saying things like "now what's got into you all of a sudden?" like her baby had never pulled a stunt like this before. Other mothers looked over with patronising smiles. The staff, desperate not to lose custom, were cooing at the baby, largely out of deep embarrassment, but a workman standing in the queue behind was eventually the one that dared to say what we were all thinking, "maybe he needs some fresh air?" Message received and understood. The noise of the baby being whisked out of the cafe döpplered like a passing ambulance!

I rushed into town at lunch to see Rose Bruford School's graduation showcase, my fourth showcase in as many weeks. I was largely there to see their cohort of actor musicians, one of whom, the fabulously-named Tilly Mae Millbrook, sang I Make The Shells from Brass. She did an absolutely wonderful job. I was pleased to see that the young people did all of their own arrangements of the songs, and I felt my piece had been particularly sensitively handled by a young lad called Euan Wilson.

There's some sort of exhibition going on at Tate Britain at the moment which purports to be a celebration of "queer art," a term I absolutely hate. I get why the organisers have opted to use the word: It's really cool and edgy and quite shocking. It's the equivalent of Channel 4 peppering their show titles with swear words and provocative language. Some curator or artist will have argued that "queer art" is a movement and an acceptable term these days. They'll say they're simply reclaiming a word which was used against my generation as a horrible slur. I hate the word. In my opinion, it's right up there with "faggot" and "yid" andcertainly doesn't need to be "reclaimed" for a retrospective of the works of great artists like Hockney and Bacon. To make matters worse, the collection of paintings is there to celebrate the de-criminalisation of homosexuality fifty years ago, and I'm fairly sure that the artists featured wouldn't particularly want a controversial and highly negative word like queer to be used either to describe their work or as part of a celebration of something very positive. Perhaps I'm wrong.

The word queer struck fear into the heart of children growing up gay in the 80s. The word, for me, triggers self-loathing, and is wrapped up in a hopeless fear of HIV and the sense of helplessness we all felt when confronted by homophobia. It reminds me that I always thought being queer-bashed was an inevitability. Something I would have to experience if I "chose" to be gay.

I have noticed that gay women are more forthcoming when it comes to "reclaiming" the term queer, and I suspect this is because the word was historically not as often used so viciously against them. I felt very uncomfortable when I heard a woman talking about queer art on Radio 4 in relation to this exhibition. I'm not sure you can decide to reclaim a word unless you have had that word spat in your face.

Nathan has a slightly different view to me and believes the meaning of the word has shifted since the 80s. The word, to him, no longer refers exclusively to gay men, and has a much more global context for anybody who does not identify as heterosexual. There are, he says, many people who proudly, nay fiercely, assert their right to identify as queer, and feel that the term best describes who they are. It should, perhaps, also be remembered that the word was used extensively by gay people in the 1970s.

That aside, I'm not sure any self-respecting artist would actually want, or even allow, their sexuality to define their art. I am a composer who happens to be gay. Sometimes the characters I create are gay. Sometimes I'll even consider writing a piece which wears it gayness like a badge of honour, but I am not a queer artist. Or even a gay artist. I'm simply an artist.

When I wrote the London Requiem back in 2012, the work became the subject of ten films which explored the composition's various themes. I talked openly about my sexuality in the films, and admitted that it's definitely a factor which spurs me on to write. Without children, my one hope of a legacy on this planet is my work. I was mentored through the experience by a senior director of classical music at the BBC, who said, in his summing up meeting with me, that the films I'd made were "too gay." When asked to qualify, he said that the "gayness" might put my target audience off. I was too shocked at the time to question this somewhat bizarre statement. I wonder if Bacon's paintings will be described as "too gay" as a result of being featured in this exhibition?

I'm not offended. In order to be offended offence has to be meant. The organisers of this exhibition plainly didn't mean to cause offence. They were simply, in my view, careless. Some people might want to reclaim this word. Others, like me, still find it incredibly distasteful and don't like to see it plastered all over the tube. Perhaps, a little more research could have been done before hitting the button marked "trendy."

Cold cabaret

I plough on through Em, chiselling away at Act Two, periodically returning to a number from Act One, just to double check that everything still sounds okay whilst sprinkling yet another little layer of detail into the scores. Nathan gave me a set of notes at lunchtime, so it's very much been a day of fine tuning. I worked from home. It was the new writers' cabaret this evening, and I'd foolishly decided to sing a song myself, so knew I'd need to have a little warble in the kitchen periodically. I get so nervous about the idea of performing. I'm incredibly, almost painfully shy. I appreciate that I mask it pretty well, but in social situations I always feel very self-conscious, utterly inept and highly clumsy. I'm sure there's a recognised term for it. Social anxiety syndrome or something. There's a term for everything these days. Everyone, it seems, needs to be able to claim to be some special form of vulnerable or picked-on. It's the disease of the 2000s and it leads to heaps of excuses and, more upsettingly, people feeling the need to be utterly outraged all the time.

The cabaret went fairly well tonight. There were very few people in the crowd whom I recognised, and there wasn't a great deal of warmth coming off anyone. They were polite and listened with interest, but there wasn't any of the normal whooping or friendly banter. I was hoping that some of my friends like Michelle would be there. She'd have known what a big deal it was for me to be getting up and singing, and would have given me a bit of crucial moral support. I think I sang okay, despite being crashingly nervous, the backing track taking forever to come on, and not being able to get my mic to a height that I could sing into. As I walked off stage, I tripped on a cable.

I have more of a sense now that the song is a good one. It feels atmospheric. It feels right.

I've nothing else to say, really!

The thing about alcohol

There's so little to write about yesteday, largely because I opted not to set my alarm and managed to sleep until mid day. It was a late one the night before. I came home after the quiz and instantly felt the need to get on with some more writing. I still feel there's a massive hill to climb, and can't afford to take my foot off the accelerator for more than half a day at a time. I'm presently about eleven songs out of seventeen down, but have to keep telling myself that there's still a somewhat enormous song to compose from scratch. I am still hoping to have finished all of my piano vocal scores by the end of the month but I can feel myself tiring, and am wondering if I'm tending to get to a certain point before thinking "it'll do for now." I hope not.

My neighbours in the basement of the house a few doors up the road were being incredibly noisy last night. They were having some kind of party, and alcohol was plainly been consumed in large quantities because they were making the aggressive and intrusive noises which only young, drunk, people are capable of making. The women were screeching like fish wives at the tops of their lungs. The men were goading, their subconsciouses yelling to anyone who might have been passing: "listen to me, world... I'm drunk, and I'm feeling a bit edgy and angry as a result, and I want someone to try and judge me, or tell me to shut up, so that I can get aggressive with them and take this anger out on someone." I hate alcohol. It's the cause of so many problems in the world. People have such unhealthy relationships with it. They can get so upset at the concept of drinking alone, and then really belligerent when others don't want to drink at the same pace. There's this weird belief that people can't have fun without alcohol, or somehow that the non drinker, in the company of drinkers, is either judging them, or not having as much fun as everyone else, so therefore wrecking the ambience of a night. And, of course, if you're a non-drinker, the idea that you might just not like the taste, or hate the feeling of a hangover, is miles down the list of the reasons why people assume you're not drinking. Normally, you garner one of those condescending looks which assumes you've a drinking problem. Or someone will tell you repeatedly that you don't know what you're missing. You'll be having a lovely chat with them, and then they'll hit the point of no return, their eyes will narrow, and they'll turn from being utterly delightful into some sort of raving lunatic, who delights in saying the most astoundingly rude things. There was a girl at our university who would drink herself to this point and then turn into a monster. "It's just how she gets when she's drunk" people would say, "she's not really like that." Thing is, if that's how she gets when she lets her guard down, that's EXACTLY what she's like. In vino veritas.

I totally understand people who drink for the taste, although I think the world of wine can get a bit up its own arse with talk of chocolatey hints and "can you taste the strawberry?" I personally think sommeliers could find more appropriate ways of describing the taste of wine, like "cloying", "bitter", "nasty", or "so filled with tannin that it strips the moisture from your mouth." I quite like it when my friends get excited about real ales, and find the names of these locally brewed beers incredibly appealing. I often wish I could appreciate the taste of beer but, for me, it's like someone's smeared Marmite on a piece of brown bread, added water and then shoved the residue liquid into a Sodastream.

So there we have it...

I told you I had nothing to write about.