musically...

...I'm stalled at the moment. Actually I'm creatively stalled.

Things build up, in the back of my mind. I have it in mind, for example, to get hold of a copy of The FXPansion VST to RTAS Adapter, so that I can use VST plug-ins like Groove Agent in Pro Tools. Then I would no longer have to live with the instability and crappy interface of Cubase SX.

But I haven't got around to doing it yet, so instead of starting work on a track, using Cubase for Groove Agent, I'm just not doing anything. There are a couple of songs I want to record. One, written around 1989, I've changed a couple of the lines, and I want to give it another go.

Then there's the guitar question. I've put my Blue Flower Telecaster up for sale, and if it goes, and if it goes for a good price, I'm planning to buy a Variax. But in the meantime, I'm not doing anything much.

I wrote a new song the other day, when I was messing around with the Tele and the Vox Tonelab, but I don't think I'll ever record it properly. It was too easy, maybe, too well-worn in the chord sequence.

As for the St Guthlac Sur Mer prose, which begins, sort of, here, and fetches up on the beach, like a slightly rancid bit of seaweed, here.

That last bit is a summary, and I've written nothing since November. Obviously, I lost interest when they got back to the UK. So I don't really want them to be in the UK. On the other hand, I also think that I got Lucy and the narrator (has he got a name? I can't remember) together too soon, and I need to go back and start again, and have them meet only when they get to the reuinion. So, Tolkein-like*, I need to start over from the beginning.

And also, I know I get a little confused about names. I don't care too much about character, it's a failing, and I don't even care too much what people are called. Left to my own devices, writing for myself, I'd keep changing the names until I settled on something. So there's one character who starts off being called James and then becomes a Dave.

All names have associations, and it's difficult to be neutral about them, which is what I want to be.

Also also.

I need to go on a scouting trip. There are a couple of places I need to visit. One is Crowland, in South Lincs, which was Guthlac's base, the origin of his legend. And the other is a village on the coast called Fishtoft. I quote:

St Guthlac is portrayed in a window at Fishtoft church. He is holding a whip allegedly given to him by St Bartholomew. Legend has it that as long as he held the whip, Fishtoft would be free of rats and mice.

If you've been following the story, you'd think I'd known this all along. But this falls under the same category as unintentional hilarity. I happened upon Guthlac at random. I'd never heard of him, I don't know Lincolnshire very well, I've never been to Fishtoft.

Even stranger, I didn't find out about Fishtoft from the innernet. I found it in an old Reader's Digest book at my dad's house, Myths and Legends of Great Britain and Northern Ireland or something. Even more amazingly, if you look at this map you'll realise that we're talking about areas lost and reclaimed from the sea, because Fishtoft is on the Wash.

So it all fits perfectly.

But I'm not in the mood for it at the moment.

*According to one of the extra features docus on one of the Lord of the Rings DVDs, Tolkein started to write the novel 3 separate times, from the beginning.