"Hello, is this Columbia Records?, Yes, I'd like to talk to the person who chooses the glue for the stickers that are stuck on the front of the CD's please."

It's been three years since Growing Flowers by Candlelight was released. I don't remember exactly what I was thinking while making it; I remember some pretty magical feelings around it. I'm still figuring out how songs are written. Do you ever try to look straight at a star and it disappears? Sometimes I get scared and I put it all, what I do and how to do it and what I've done and why, under scrutiny and it turns to shit. You have to look just to the side of it to see it. Following is as close as I can get. Sometimes I wonder if art is a therapy in forgiving yourself for not quite managing what you'd like. Maybe it's just like that for me. I like to walk around with half formed ramblings on headphones and sing like a crazy man in the night (oh don't we all love to think we're a bit crazy), now that's got to be a chorus, right? Everyone talks about how they wanted to fit in in high school. Oh how I wanted to be a misfit (that's got to be the second line in the chorus, right?).

Anyway, this isn't what I wanted to say, I suppose I wanted to say thank you. Tearing the plastic from a Leonard Cohen CD (one of those incredibly cheap compilations with a mind bogglingly huge number of great songs on), I got to the sticky foil seal that runs along the top edge of the case. Peeling it off leaves that terrible claggy glue, that no matter how much you rub, or clean, it never quite comes off; bit's of hair and fluff will collect there. I'm sure I could use alcohol, or meths or fire or blood or something, but the point is: the stuff is too sticky. I got to thinking about how futile and absurd, (and maybe for these reasons worthwhile and funny?) it would be to try and find out who sources the glue for these stickers, and have a word with them, explain that the glue needn't be so fucking sticky and permanent, use the stuff that they use on the sticky yellow notes! These people obviously aren't buying CD's, and they don't care. it bothers me that you never get to talk to the people who make your things, or disappoint you, or cause the tube to be delayed, or break your pottery in the post. Nothing is personal, and no one is responsible. How much better would you feel if next time you're sitting in an airport lounge and your plane is delayed for hours, someone arrived and said, 'hello everyone, I'm Chris, I'm really sorry, this is my fault, this part of the plane is buggered and I don't know how to fix it, and I've lost the manual, so I've called John, he knows how to fix it, he's on his way, the traffic's bad, but he should be here in an hour.'

Anyway, this isn't what I wanted to say, I wanted to say thank you, because all this got me thinking about my own little record making industry. And all you who've bought things from my site, have made what's happening possible and how wonderful it is not to have a record deal, that individuals write to me, and I send things to them. How small and personal it can be, and when people complain, they complain to me, and usually I can say 'well yes, I chose that glue, and yes, the stickers fall off a bit, but I figure it would be better than having bits of dust and flies work their way into the art work.' It's me and a lovely lady who helps me, selling music that I make with friends directly to you. I'm very, very lucky. Thank you all for your support.

The latest drunk mum album starts with panting and whooping and the noise of me and jos conjuring dizzy excitement. and then out of the noise of time in an artery comes a clowns' birthday party. sheep eating magic mushrooms and having a telepathic argument. one sheep is telling the other about the abattoir and the other sheep is saying 'you don’t scare me'. piss off. and then a pop song from outer space. a senile tambourine. Everything goes white grey, white, grey. and two train tracks sing an imaginary harmony. the power lines that shoot alongside you like laser beams when you're travelling on the train at 100 miles an hour, staring out the window, and they dip and weave and zip for you, like dolphins swimming alongside your boat. then for a few bars are as perfectly still in their moving as a well centred pot turning on the wheel. they plunge into the ground. Cells yearning. Swifts catching insects. Trees aware of us and our lives, blip. blip. blip. the life span of a human passing in what to them seems like days. We are their midges. We are their mice. The sound of fingernails growing, a microscopic microphone gathers and steals it, simmers it down and amplifies it a 1000 times, it tries to escape quickly back into the deep and is caught in a distortion box. like a fat slippery fish in an angler's hands. a radio remembering its first words, or finally escaping all stations and finding its own voice. Running over a frog with a lawnmowERRRRR. and having renewed faith in vegetarianism. Envy extracted from a heart like a tapeworm being wound round a pencil. a cow's nightmare. the ambition of an acorn. The noise of coca cola on children's teeth. well. well, a calendar asking when will tomorrow get here? a genetically engineered new emotion. monkey love experiments. the place that we find at about 24 minutes. god bless drunk mum. is noise unordered music? are drunk mum the greatest band in the world ever?, ever ever?, I heard someone say that art is paying attention. Yesterday a bus on a wet road passed me, I almost said out loud, 'oh, that sounded lovely'. It went ccccccaashhhhhhhhh. sssss. sssssss. sssssss. Like as above, so below at the end goes bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
 zz. shh.

This time last night I was lying in the woods, in the rain, in layers of warm clothes, staring at the opening of a badger's den. Thinking that it might mask our own noise, we were thankful for the sound of rain. I don't know if it wasn't enough, but badgers never arrived. we'd heard from a reliable source that wild animals are blind to light shone through a red filter at night. Maybe an eerie red light glaring from through the trees could seem discouraging. it was a good excuse to go sit in the forest in the dead of night and be reminded what the world sounds like really, underneath our audio litter. I'm still a bit travel sick from the bus ride home. sick four hours there and four hours back. like a right of passage to and from the underworld. My friends' little hut on the west coast. It's one of my favourite places. Like a tree house on the ground. no electricity. or running water. just a log fire and a gas cooker, and a water pump for pumping water that collects in a barrel from the roof. and a view like the most fantastic flying dream. Tree tops and water, land far enough on the other side to change through Scottish weather like songs shift on the radio. log baskets that must be filled. there are primal things of lifting and chopping and burning normally stolen from us under illusions of short cuts and conveniences. Dials or push buttons. but I do love my laptop. and digital camera. and pizza sometimes and coffee. and stuff. yes I love the stuff too. what do we do? sit in the mud and say I have rid myself of worldly desire. want for nothing, wait for enlightenment? there is a lot I can do without. and there's something about cutting up wood and putting it on a fire. to warm water. to cook. that stuff. we planted oak trees that will be growing 300 years after I'm dead. When it's so hard to be sure of anything, it's comforting to think 'planting trees is a good idea'. and to spend a weekend tending those you planted last year is a good idea too. it's dawning on me too that this record that I've started making, like the spindly oak trees in plastic tubes, is really another seedling from the hut on the west coast, and what a lovely place for a record to be born.

http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h5...
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h5...