I have to say that I feel as if I am being lured back in by all the content being shared by the Antipodean fans. I haven’t watched much footage. I am still – for the most part – trying to keep myself away from it all. It’s not helping that Mister has been quite a focal point of conversation with some friends of late. All the gig footage and photos steadily appearing on my FB feed , as well as him taking centre stage in my conversations and recent dreams all means that, for me, there is just no escaping him. The lure remains ever strong, in spite of myself.
To counter that, Saturday night’s gig at Barrowland Ballroom is still bringing a huge buzz to my wee heart. So as much as SM and Jim’s antics Downunder are circling around in my head, the buzz of Saturday night and the incredible talent of Hamish Hawk is there swirling around too.
As a result, I am allowing myself to get very easily distracted from the things I should be focussing on. Namely, uni studies and writing SM:SBS (aka; Simple Minds: Song by Song). The current block of study at uni is concentrating on poetry and I am finding it a real stretch. I knew that it was going to be my least favourite aspect of this A215 module and it is proving to be so. Not completely. There have been some surprisingly rewarding elements to it but equally there are elements to it that have compounded all the things that leave me so indifferent to poetry. Next week is a ‘writing week’ – a week that won’t involve any coursework study but is a chance for us students to collate what we’ve been working on so far and start writing for our next assignment due on 11 April. Before that (ie: this week) there is coursework on revising poetry. Oh, give me strength! I just want this block of study over with! As a result I am allowing myself to become very easily distracted and have been procrastinating all week (uni study weeks start on a Saturday) and not done any study.
You can tell how distracted I am because I am here writing out this blog post instead of doing the things I SHOULD be doing!
Photos like this don’t help the situation! Lol.
I have a monthly planner calendar that sits on my desk beside my PC screen so it is constantly visible to me while I sit here typing away. All my important diary appointments are written on it. This Saturday I have an online uni tutorial. Next Thursday night is Caezar at the CCA. The following Tuesday (27 Feb) is when I have to start calling to see if I am required for jury service. If I turn the page over to March – the 4th is marked in red ink as 180 DAYS TIL SMSBS DEADLINE. That’s the crunch time for me to really get my butt moving on the writing of the book. I am praying that if I am required to do any jury service that it is all over by that point as well.
In the meantime my brain wants to think about anything else but poetry! Below is a piece I wrote during a freewrite when doing my Morning Pages at the end of January. I do ‘Morning Pages’ which involves freewriting – usually from a prompt. I use a 365 Creative Writing prompts website to pick a few prompts each morning and give myself a 10 or 15 minute freewrite on the prompt. This one involved using the line of a famous poem as the first line of your own. Unconsciously, it became a sonnet – of sorts. We weren’t taught about sonnets until after I had written this. The original poem was from Keats, titled ‘Ode to Melancholy.’ It was the final line of the poem. I looked up on the wall in front of me and saw it – my photos of Jim – “her cloudy trophies hung.”
There is still so much I create that centres around him. He really is my muse.
And be among her cloudy trophies hung,
A dark-hair’d boy of twenty one and one,
A pock-marked prince of the Celts,
Who makes the heart of the dowdy old mistress melt.
He is a poet of ambiguity,
Of travels and wondrous mysteries,
Of angels and hearts and fascination,
Some would suggest he possesses ideas
Above his station – not she.
He is the greatest mercurial gift,
A mind that drifts and shares,
Images of a world in transient consistency,
A lover of life and for her a
Life’s love.
Anyway, this post hasn’t really come to produce something that I wanted it to, other than to highlight just how much I find James Kerr an inescapable constant in my mind. But, perhaps, if he spurs on and fuels my creativity, why should I continue to rally against that? I just hope he can spur on the creativity of the thing I actually need him for – and will give me the fuel I need to write this book! That I can put myself back to the start of things. Rekindle that spark of how exciting it was and how joyous it was discovering all that ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ of the Simple Minds back catalogue in 2014. Around the time of the book’s deadline, it will be 10 years since I have been a SM ‘diehard’ fan. The closing chapter, perhaps? Full circle? Time will tell.