Madlib

This morning I was up at 7am and I immediately began to write. 700 words by 8.30am when my eldest daughter poked her head around the door. When I do this I always say I must do this every day – an early start is the key to a day of productivity. It was a stunning morning – already 22 degrees and the sky was that Mediterranean blue that is to deep you can almost slice it. It seems we now have two weeks of this. Two weeks of writing and swimming to look forward to. I am sorry to gloat about this – particularly because UK readers are ‘swimming’ for other reasons. France for 8 months of the year is not a place I care for at all. But for 4 glorious months in the summer it becomes another country.

I am 22,000 words into my next book. 13,000 to go and the usual worries about non-completion, writing garbage etc. And the worries were justified when my first batch of copy was pulled apart by publisher and editor – justifiably so. A critical sharpening up of my mental faculties took place over the weekend and I hope I am now writing my best book yet. A thin dividing line between dross and excellence.

Anyway – to continue my musical theme of the last blog. Musically one thing always leads to another with me when I make a new discovery. Looking up more about J Dilla I discovered the name Madlib (and what a great name to). So I downloaded his album ‘Expressions’ with hip-hop vocalist Dudley Perkins. Pure class – particularly the middle 3 or 4 tracks. I didn’t know music like this existed. I have always known that hip-hop extends into the world of highly intelligent music (such as Spearhead/Michael Franti) but I didn’t really know where it lived. So, I imagine (and hope) there will be more recommendations to come.

J Dilla

I suppose one of the things about being forty is that you give up trying to be cutting edge – if I ever was. So new things hit you about a year after they were new things. Bouncing a few emails with my good friend Carlos (erstwhile flatmate of the Chemical Brothers at University) he must have remembered that I loved DJ Shadow’s album ‘Endtroducing’ album from 1996. I felt cutting edge then – I must have been one of the first to own it and recommended it to about fifty people all of whom loved it too.

Anyway in classic ‘if you like this then you’ll love this’ mode he suggested a listen to J Dilla’s ‘Donuts’ album released last year 3 days after his death from a rare blood disorder. I ploughed through 30 second bites of each track on itunes (each track lasts around 1 minute 30) and then downloaded it. The man knows his soul. Buy it now.

I suppose one of the other things about being forty is that you learn to look after things that you have paid for. What I mean by that is that you paid outright for rather than on credit card, loan etc. So recently I bought a swimming pool which I am now cherishing like my first born. Hell I am even making people wash their feet before they get in it. 5000 euros. It is the luxury item of my life and I shake at the thought of the money I spent on it. But 3 swims a day and the almost instant lightening of my usually angst ridden state suggest that a 5000 euro investment equates to five extra years of life.

Particularly useful when trying to write books in post 30 degree southern French heat.

Album of the day is ‘Donuts’.

Swimming

I have recorded few really good days over the last six months - for the most part there haven’t been many of them. Stuck in airports, endless delayed flights, lack of sleep and the demands of clients have made the last couple of months at least less than thrilling. And I guess, as I look at my volume of blogs, the declining number perhaps indicates a lack of recent stimulation . I haven’t been able to think of anything I wanted to say.

But today has been good. I started with a couple of thousand words of the new book (’Brilliant Idea’), and followed it with some insightful research. All the productivity meant I felt less than guilty about heading down to our local lake this afternoon for an extended swim with my seven year old daughter. Nothing is as tedious I suppose as reading about other people’s children, particularly if you have none yourself. But this afternoon was blissful. The perfect temperature – around 35 degrees – deep blue sky, clean water and a rare opportunity to have some time with Lily. Younger daughter was at the crèche. We swam to the opposite side of the lake (Le Barrage at Vailhan in The Herault), then around an Island in the middle of the lake and then we went in for a final swim out to the middle of the lake. There is nothing like the hot sun on your face when immersed in cold water. You feel all the toxins escaping from your body by the second.

And those lovely words a father loves to hear – ‘this is really good daddy, just you and me’, that tells you that she will treasure the rare but lovely 3 hours we had.

A curious thing happened this morning. On the spur of the moment I bought a series of Mozart piano concertos (21-25) played by Ashkenazy at HMV Oxford Street last week and listened to them all this morning while I worked. I have posted little about music recently but today I recommend them as an aid to creative writing. I like some classical music (although I cannot stand the tweeness and ham acting in opera) but I surprised myself with the pleasure I got from these. I balanced it with Roni Size’s ‘New Forms’ on the drive back from the swimming!