I type this particular blog post while thinking of Jane Austen writing while holed up in her garret room! Who else misses the good old days when a lock in just meant a late night at the pub? This cornoavirus curfew is certainly the biggest disruption to everyday life that I've ever experienced, but I guess those who have been through the Second World War have experienced much worse. Now we know that working from home is actually an option for large numbers of people I wonder if it will begin to become the norm generally. Less travelling (particularly flying) is what the planet desperately needs, and just as coronavirus fears seemed like a storm in a teacup in January but very real now, climate change fears that seem over-dramatic now could be lifestyle changing for everyone's children and grandchildren. And nobody is even talking about what the world will be like a few generations later.
Anyway, the time off work has given me a chance for a bit of creativity and I recently released a book called 'Codename: Narcissus' on Amazon which can also be downloaded on iBooks, etc. I've had a go at writing a novel this time and the premise of the book is that different people view life in different ways. The central character cannot understand why his selfish outlook is considered undesirable, believing life to be a Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' situation. How many times have we heard that excuse for selfishness - remember the bankers? As you might expect there's a bit of surrealism in there but hopefully you'll find the story entertaining.
Apart from writing I've been keeping myself occupied with music. If you'll excuse a little bit of cheeky humour I've thought up a 'lockdown top ten.'
Ghost town – The Specials
Living on my own – Freddie Mercury
Isolation – John Lennon
It's the end of the world as we know it – R.E.M.
I want to break free – Queen
Strange days – The Doors
Climbing up the walls – Radiohead
Doom and gloom – Rolling Stones
Where have all the good times gone – The Kinks
My Corona – The Knack (sorry, bad pun!)
These are strictly 'tongue in cheek' and of course as we all know that we just have to stay in to save lives, but humour is how we get through things, isn't it? If you fancy trying out some 'easy listening,' there are now three albums worth of acoustic songs penned by myself and my mother on YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc. You can check them out for free by searching for 'Adam Colton and Teresa Colton.' I don't normally plug external sites but I highly recommend the Distrokid site to any unsigned musicians wanting to get their music out there.
I must admit, I still like to buy good old fashioned CDs and upload them to my iPod. I'm probably being a bit of a Luddite, but I do prefer to have something physical to show for my money. On the one one hand this could be viewed as wasting resources, but buying second hand is just using an item that has already been made, and I wonder what the comparative electricity usage is for playing an album from a CD or iPod with streaming it each time. Well, we've lots of time to ponder such ethical questions now!
Even the idea of listening to albums is perhaps a little dated now as many people just stream individual songs. It is interesting how the term 'album' came about by the way. Although the term had been used for sets of classical music before, it was when technology progressed to 78 rpm records that the name really stuck. You could only get about three minutes of music on each side of the disc (hence the standard length for popular songs), so when it came to releasing Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite in 1909, the discs were put in a book of paper sleeves resembling a photograph album, thus the term took off from there.
