Gratitude/sticker glue department of Columbia Records

"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.

There's no place like home.

we are their midges, we are their mice.

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 bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. shh.   

my bedroom smells of bonfires.

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.

do birds still use bird feeders in the summer?

I miss my life. and I don't know where it is. I am full of organic potato and stilton. my blessed little man boobs are coming on a treat. contentment threatens from the end of every finger. but old joys and new hopes loom like bindweed in the soil, stubborn and determined. it's in the spring, like now, when the sun takes ages to go down, it darkens less and less. I wonder what was it that I wanted? what was it that I thought was on the way?, should I still be looking for that?, the shadow shape a dream leaves in your head. I lay in the same position in my bed, still because if you move to catch it, you lose it quicker still. I don't know. maybe I should put some more butter on my potato and have a bottle of wine. I miss my life. where did it go. and what is this? funny fake film between me and it. search engine. someone said that hope is the feathered thing that perches in your soul. It's as easy to frighten as the birds that flirt with the feeder I've hung outside my window. do birds stop coming to feeders in the summer?, is it just a winter trick?. I've noticed them waking me in the morning less and less. and god knows I need as many things as I can get to wake me in the morning.

fear is a fat.

we've stopped talking again haven't we. like a tired marriage or the end of a sleep over. i can have an awkward silence even on my own. there are reasons for this, Pete says we are crafted by how we predict our audience is. your audience is the lady in the post office who despite your leather jacket finds you a very polite young man. your mates, who you know love you, your drunk girlfriend, or the neighbours who want you to shut up, they are the fuel of your muse. and a diary is an odd thing. with an odd audience.a diary is a book written by me, about me, read only by me. how self indulgent is that! partly i've not been blogging as i've been writing a diary lots. a blog is almost as cringey, here my audience is an imagined one, peppered with a few friends and acquaintances who i know might read this- note to you who do, please don't mention it when we talk, i think it's easier to write if i imagine this is only read by people i've never met who live in places i've never been.- so it's an audience that might never exist, i read a lovely quote that this makes me think of "identification with the role impoverishes while contact with the inner life- the unconscious enriches." partly it says things to me about second guessing what people are going to think of you. about your compass being the impression you think they might have, rather than being inwardly led. individuation. there are things i have to do in order to feel more alive. writing songs. it's like washing, or yoga. art, even bad art, inane sketches in notebooks, boring blogs and songs with no melody, they all help keep your soul clean. (anyone living in london wanting to feel more alive might like to try this simple recipe: put takk by sigur ros on your i pod nice and loud. while not thinking in words walk round the Tate modern, all the people in there might not know it, but they are part of the art. you are the only audience.) i'm booked to play in Aberdeen at a little festival called feugh fest, and i'm already straining not to imagine my audience too much. i'm scared. i'm used to playing quiet bars and cafes, with an acoustic guitar and a lovely girl called poppy who plays violin. i'm not jump up and down throw yourself off the stage into the crowd ainslie from fame academy any more. i don't know what this ones going to be like. another part of me knows i'll love it. and this fear is part of it, jos says the the original meaning of 'prove' something is an ironmongers term for when iron is heated and beaten so all the fat and unneeded waste come out of the thing. in some ways i think of gigs a bit like this. fear is a fat that is worked out through them.

happy songs or happy people.

in the middle of the night, following one of my and an ex girlfriend's idlewild flavoured arguments, i stormed out the house. i walked and walked, i didn't know it at the time, but i ended up in stockbridge, in inverleith park, beside a big lake. there were about twenty swans sleeping on the lake, i'd never seen swans sleeping before (if you dont know, they curl their necks round onto their backs and under their wings) they looked like huge white tear drops floating on the surface of the water. i sat there for ages, until the sun came up, until the swans reached their heads back up, like flowers opening to the sun time-lapse style. i didn't want to go home, i went to my friend kat's house and slept in her spare room, at that time i still had fame academy money, so i was wasting it on a big flat on broughton street with huge high ceilings ,wooden floors and a piano that i couldn't play, i was used to space, so i remember being amazed at how small the room was, sleeping in a single bed, in a room only just big enough to contain it. i stayed for three years. and now i have leave on saturday, there's been a plague of endings lately. looking round i realise i've come to love my tiny room. i've been happy here at times. i've taken to sticking things on the wall, i've a bad habit of being places, and not really being there, my bags are always packed, but i'm working on that, i think i'll always remember this room as the first place i almost lived in. i wanted to put up a little photo tribute, before i take it all down.

my door.,welcome.


this is my mother and father, and my father's hair, before i was born.






this is the pile of books beside my bed that i have started, got half way through and still intend on going back and finishing.




at christmas time, me, lucie and leah started a band, we didn't make any music, lasted for only one day, how indie cool is that!


one free hand made mug to the first person who can name the brilliant man, floating in space, just outside pluto's orbit.






me and pete.






bjork's nose is one of god's great masterpeices.




this is an original vincent davis you know!


i love yoga so much, i think this is the position i'm really striving for.






i keep a dream diary beside my bed, i'm utterly fascinated by dreams, this particular night seems to have a cruelty to animals theme running through it.




of all the good that came from the last record, this is one of my favourites, a kind man called laurence (from the hi-lo season) sent me this painting.




when i first moved in these branches were just peeking round the edge of the outer wall, i never cut them back, i liked the fairytale idea of being sewn into my bedroom by tangled ivy., alas. it wasn't enough to hold me in there.
*(please note the pig in the right hand corner, he used to be the 8th member of james)

Britneys puss Britneys puss.

i'm tired of this silence and i want to talk now. the nice thing about having flat mates is they form a middle ground between going out, being with people and being sociable and going to bed. neither of which i really want tonight, i'm in the mood for flat mate company. hence my disappointment in getting home and finding both of them in bed. i live with two girls and we seem to have grown into a fairly harmonious family. i'm rarely here, and i'm sure this doesn't completely excuse the lack of cleaning i do, but it helps a bit. as i say, we're close, but not close enough that if i was to knock on one of their doors now and say 'please get up and drink tea with me', they wouldn't tell me to piss off. one of them has had a bath tonight ,so the flat smells of girls. this is also a nice thing about living with girls. girls smell nice. smelling the flat after one of them has had a bath is about as sexy as things get for me at the moment ,outside of my imagination. and a long distance longing. i can be such a boy. sometimes, i have a bath after one of them, and there's still a bit of the oil coating the tub, and it gets caught up in my bath. and i'm grateful for it. any spare change?, and spare bath oil? i used to make garlic bread, and i'd mix the butter and garlic in a bowl and my flat mate at the time would complain about her corn flakes tasting of garlic in the morning. we have a game going here at them moment, it's a game that goes on, entwined, alongside our lives, it's called 'Britney's puss', we have this picture of Britney spears face that one of us cut out of a magazine, one of the tragic ones of her spotty and girning and grappling with a dog or a child and a starbucks cup. you have to stick it somewhere in the communal living area, in the fridge, on the ceiling, inside one of the tear open doors of the advent calender, thats the fun, it can be somewhere really obvious where someone is bound to find it, or some where a bit more remote, so it can sit for weeks until, often in mid conversation one of us will glance it, then we all get to run around cheering and dancing 'Britney's puss! Britney's puss!.'. idle childish fun. how i'm going to miss this flat and these fine smelling flat mates.

the jen cow YEAH!

my passport has managed to escape. , last night we were jettisoning some unwanted weight and threw it into a bin wrapped up inside an old map. this morning ,while raking about among mouldy ice cream wrappers and cigarette ends looking for the thing, i realised how much happier i am when things go a bit wrong. something tangible to tolerate. it's all good though, poland is friendly and suitably old and odd, i'm enjoying learning words by translating them into funny english phrases, for instance the word for hello is to order jennifer to eat some cheese - jen do brie. so, anyway, i'll be staying for a bit longer than i planned, you could almost say i've gone on holiday by mistake. to say bye in my anglopolish you say (in your best borat accent) "love eat zen yeah!"
love eat zen yeah, ainslie. x

was melody invented?

i did my crazy dance class tonight. theres a place where the good feelings happen. yes, i know. it's one of those new age spaces with people wailing and throwing their arms and getting in touch with god and god knows what else. i understand your cynicism's. but let me tell you. it's wonderful. it's the not thinking and moving that does it. getting away from my mind. an escape. you can do it with a night on the piss, or with drugs, its all a kind of meditation, trying to escape the front part thinking with a dictionary and a calculator stuck together. it's the getting underneath it. to the part that dances, where you feel something is beautifull before your mind spoils it ,a little, by saying 'that's beautiful' ,the part that knows how to throw a pot. it won't understand or explain funny, but it's where the laughter comes from. it's where melody is born. melody. now there's a thing to wonder at. , the science of it is simple.
make air vibrate.
at different frequency's.
in a certain order,
and it will affect you (it will affect you in the place underneath the dictionary and the calculator, where laughter lands and kissing was invented)

ambition and other illnesses.

If april really is the cruelest month, and lately, i've believed it is, the reason is,
because it reminds us how beautiful and fleeting youth is.
i can smell being 30. it's close.
it can drive you crazy. like losing your hair.
vanity. ambition. idols and other mental defects can collect.
we can get new age spiritual. talk of buddha and the power of now. eternal return, reincarnation.
or take comfort in thinking that science has no explanation for something as every day as gravity.
or why the hair on your neck stands on end by the touch of great music or poetry or films, or sometimes when you really enjoy a piss.
i watched the news tonight and thought about joining the army.
i might.
yesterday i almost ran away to new york for two weeks.
because i thought my life was dull and hopeless and uninspiring.
this is another madness.
i've spotted it.
caught it.
i have heroes you see, i just pick people, i'm like a fourteen year old girl, gazing at the poster of a pop star.
poor sufjan stevens has been my latest fixation. somewhere in the depths of my mind the're is a very clear scene, taken from his life, and i can feel how it feels to be in it. and it's wonderful. he's with a beautiful girl. who's wearing a dress with flowers on it, they're having a picnic, nothing that was too difficult prepare, no one went to marks and spencer and got stressed in the morning packing an elaborate hamper or anything, more just, rustic, chunky brown organic bread, chunks by hand torn off the loaf, the girl he is giggling with baked it. they've got apples and a big hunk of cheese. the little tour bus is pulled up beside a little lake, just in from the road, and they dont have to be in paris til the following night for the next gig. songs come from nowhere and laughter. abundant. they read each other poems, bright sun. soft focus. it looks like a gap advert. but it's real. it's better and it's good. through and through. there's still a tiny edge of sadness under it, just a trace, we are human afterall. but just enough to give it weight. make it stick. you'd miss it under the warmth, like chocolate in a curry.
it's like heaven in there.
and the books say.
"if you can dream it you can create it."
"with the power of your mind you can make it so."
"your life is your life. dont let it be clubbed into dank submission."
"the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."
and so you start to dream.
this is ok. but it's easy to get side tracked. living on the outskirts of the idea "there is a better future" lives the idea "the present is shit"
,they're not too far from each other. ,it used to take me days to trek across, but now i know the way , and the moods that can take you, i can jump back and forth in a matter of moments now.
but i'm coming to think,
this place i imagine sufjan living in. (joanna newsom also lives here, as does a guy i met at a meditation class,)
this place is a feeling.
and it's a feeling you can never have when you are consumed by desire to get there.
when ambition is eating your gratitude.
gratitude.
tonight i am grateful, this will lead to hope, to ambition, to discontent, to doubt, to despondency, to empathy, to understanding, to contentment, then on to joy, and back round to gratitude,
have a nice trip.
today was a wonderful day, i swam and had lunch with a friend and made pots then went to find a cemetery for pets.
it has tiny little graves with photos of deceased cats and dogs on, gold engravings that say,
"wee scampie, you'll always be one of the family,"
or "night night oor wee pup, rex"
sadness is so comfortable. it's like a dog and slippers.
there's a whole world.
pet cemetery's.
chip shops.
animation.
clowns shoes with those googily eyes stuck on.
working in a pottery on the west coast.
going to university to study astronomy.
spring.
running for fourteen miles
surfing.
joining the army.
it's all just other feelings.
the sufjan world is all around me.
i don't notice it because it feels different than it does in my imagination.
it comes in moments bulldozed by moods.
i had a conversation with my gran at Christmas, she says the youth are all full of antidepressants because we have it too good, too easy, there is nothing terrible to unite us, they had the war and rations and poverty, they were there for each other she said, no one had anything and it brought the good will in everyone out. i dont know, i can see what she means, but i wouldn't like to try persuade Gandhi to her way of thinking.

e=mc2

there's a girl i know, she said she used to have sex with her boyfriend, while secretly wearing ear plugs, she says the sensory deprivation was a thrill, sometimes her boyfriend would catch her and she'd get in trouble, i dont know if this added anything to it. i also don't know why the boyfriend was bothered, another girl i know says she went to the cinema once with her boyfriend and during the film they shared a packet of revels. somehow, by some ticklish chance, she got all the hard centred revels, and he got all the soft centred ones. she never told him that she thought it was the best night they ever spent together ,.i'm not sure exactly how these two stories are related, the ear plug sex and the revels, i mean, but they've been in my head for a while, and have kind of got tangled up together, if anyone can help me work them into some kind of equation, i think it might help simplify the world for me,

so you go and you stand on your own.....

the end of February means the beginning of the human mating season and this year it's affecting me badly. i'm having a relationship with a gap poster. ,walking along princes street with a friend on sunday i found myself without thinking stopping and saying, "ah, look , here she is", ,the little blond one with the pig tails and big lips, arm's folded, making up a pose that says "i'm very disappointed in you" and little strumpety brat like expression., "i love this girl", i told my friend. as we stood and looked, i felt for a moment like i should introduce them. i am a duckling freshly hatched and hungry for imprinting. i'm not used to being single you see, without going into too much detail, i've never been on my own for so long. and it's good for me, it's ok, but it gets to you sometimes, it can drive you a little crazy. and girls dont seem to like single guys so much, it's like guys who are in, or have just come out of relationships have some kind of reference, maybe we exude a disinterest, a type of pheromone, just now i think i must be starting to stink of singleness. i did a strange thing on saturday. a symptom of all this. i think it's the creepiest thing i've ever done. , . em. i.

. , i know this girl, we've not really had anything together, but i texted her, she told me she was going to be in a club, in town, and to come meet her, i got in a taxi and went , and when i got there, she was even cuter than i remember. and she was dancing and laughing with these two guys and they were all so pretty and fun looking. they looked like an alcopop advert. ,i didn't feel orange flavour, or strawberry flavour. i felt like i tasted of tea. i felt like my clothes were too small for me. i was the most funless guy in the world. and i wanted to leave. i'd have just said something dull and stupid. and all the dancing and laughing in the whole club would stop. and the needle would screech the music to a stop. and everyone would roll their eyes. , so i just left.

, which would have been fine, if i'd just left it there, but , i thought it would be a good idea to text her, and tell her that i'd come to the club and looked at her and left. , oh dear god. imagine. we finished off with me saying 'you must think i'm a real weirdo', no reply. of course no reply. i've deleted her number. i think i've done enough to ward her off. the strange thing is though. i dont think i really want her, i dont want a relationship. i like dotting around on my own. turning my phone off and disappearing for days. or falling asleep in peoples houses. being alone is wonderful and strange and lonely. and i dont want random sex. then what do i want?. what do i want?, maybe just to kiss and say, isn't it all so sad and confusing, but aren't you thankful for it, isn't this a gift?, i want a moment with someone that feels real and has nothing attached to it. maybe. or maybe something else. i dont know what to want.

today is a beautiful day and i ate hot cross buns and drank tea,

i have seven little plants in my bedroom. sometimes, when it's nice i like to 'let them out', i put them on the windowsill and drench them in water, i like to think of their leaves getting covered in the water, like wild plants get when it rains, it's unnatural and sad for plants to get water always poured straight into their pots and never all over them. ,today they all got the windowsill treatment. , i left them there and went to the shop for the buns, when i got back, one of them had jumped. gone, took his little pot with him, ended it all, i imagined how all the other little plants must have tried to talk him round as he tottered on the edge of the ledge. blaming myself for all the times i'd forgotten to water him, i walked round the row of houses and into the downstairs garden, where i found the little sad plant had landed in a perfectly positioned bath of water. what are the chances?, now, i'm not sure whether to treat it like a failed suicide attempt ,or a brave plant grabbing life and having the greatest adventure a plant can have. ,he's back in there now, i being consoled, or boasting about his adventure. ,but either way ,i'm sure the onset of the mating season had some pull. maybe i want a window. and a bath.

the beginning of january is a strange time.

this low winter sun does strange things to a boy/man. days dont really begin or end properly, thoughts wont join up. days like stoned students crawling out of bed at lunch time and fading out in a haze shortly after. i never want to stop sharing a bed with my friends. ,it's one of the reasons against getting married. it's funny and you need all the joys you can get at this time of year. i still cant watch eternal sunshine. i'm in tears before he even gets on the train. ,but i'm in love with the smiths again. it's like yoga. it hurts a little to get back into it. are ducks affected by the weather?, do animals have moods. sometimes cats like to be left alone to work things out for themselves. i was watching people at a bus stop. i hid behind a lamp post and pretended i was a wildlife photographer. picturing people. their little heads dotting around looking for a bus like a group of deer looking out for a lion. there is this kind of empathy ,i get it best when i am starved of sleep. i tried to feel it for those at the bus stop. some times when heading for this beautifull dream it gets so foggy you can't see and you just have to keep walking till you come out the other side. like some times when i'm singing a voice barges in on me and says. shut up you dick. but you just keep singing and it goes away. i'm rehearsing tonight. thank you for my wonderful band.

rub a little bit of poo in your own eye.

in 2007,
live like there is no tomorrow
love like you have never been hurt
tell someone you love them every day
kiss slowly
forgive quickly
walk in the rain
laugh uncontrollably.
don't follow the crowd.
smile.
practice wellness.
nurture joy.
send this email to three people you love.
rub a little bit of poo in your own eye and send a picture of any
effects it might have to me ,at my myspace or email
(ainsliesite@gmail.com) and i will stick it up on the site for
everyone to see just how spontaneous and joyful you are, we can marvel
at how willing you are to avoid convention and swim upstream. a little
bit of poo in your eye like tattoo of individuality. a poo tattoo.
yeah. yeah baby!. laughing uncontrollably, forgiving yourself ,singing
with joy in your heart, poo in your eye, and your hands in a
waterfall. butterflies will flutter around you and you will marvel at
them thinking, yes. yes. pleasures and love in life are like
butterflies, i can only watch them flutter by, to try to hold them is
to have them die. .. ok, ok. i'm sorry. ,ish. firstly ,to anyone who
sent me an 'inspirational' new year text. ,you are a friend and i love
you, but. something has been bothering me and i have to try and work
out why.

., .and when i say things ,i'm talking about a collection of things,
i'm talking about, the texts you get at new year, the emails you get
randomly, and i'm thinking a little bit about self help books, both
the 'you can change your life' ones, and the ones with a 'new age
spirituality' kind of slant. and also, and this is maybe the most
annoying of all. adverts. adverts who hijack these kind of
philosophy's. you know the ones.

slow fade in from black, with a womans soft voice over saying some
kind of balls like "to desire, is to watch" , the opening shot is a
close up on swans flying, in slow motion, their graceful power and
control as they begin to skim the surface of the water coming down to
land echoed beautifully in the strong arms of a handsome father,
kneeling down and gathering up a child ,cradling her safely from harm,
a child in bright red wellington boots crying in the rain.(voice over
woman saying "to adore is to hold") , -as the child wraps her arms
around her fathers neck we see she is clinging to a little tattered
teddy bear, with red wellies matching her own. , bring in the music. (
strings, moving, something with a cello in, that sounds like massive
attack, but isn't. quite.), ,then we cut to two old people waltzing.
or throwing food at eachother in the sun shine, laughing
uncontrollably (voice over woman says "to love is to cherish forever")

and then like a punchline from another joke.
and the timing has to be right here.
so right when the hairs on the back of your neck are standing up and
your nipples are hard...............
BUY THIS THING.
££££,... buy it. you need it. if you want your life to have this kind
of art and beauty, buy this fucking thing, ££, and this thing can be
anything from a phone to a car to a chocolate just tagged on the end
there.

and i think this is the root of what bothers me. i want my life to be
these things. i want love and uncontrollable laughter. abandonment and
truth. joy. i believe in all these things. like a new religion. i
want art and beauty and swans in slow motion. these ideas in the e
mails and adverts are dear to me. and its like they're being stolen
,and prostituted, to sell me things that i don't need. and in fact the
pursuit of these things will only take me further from that which i
truly desire.
now, i'm not saying there's some great conspiracy or any thing. but
it's just easy to get confused and forget. there's so much shit to
distract you. and it's the same with self help books and the
reasurance i'm sold through the e mails and texts, its a cover up,
people read them to make themselves feel better, like a promise, like
saying "i'll stop smoking tomorrow" but it's the act that matters, not
the reading or sending, or forwarding, "i'll just send this email
about dancing and living life to the full and crying in the rain, then
i'm going to have a fag and watch eastenders". i know not everyone is
like this. but you can talk the energy out of a thing. the comfort of
a resolution.

i met a girl this year who said she was in the middle of writing a
film, she only mentioned it because coincidentally, she'd put a
character in it who's a scottish boy wearing red converse, i asked her
what it was about and she said ,that she didn't want to talk about it
until it was finished. i liked that. i dont know if she ever finished
her film, but i like the idea she didn't waste any energy she had for
it, talking about what it was going to be.
.


.em

well' . . happy new year!!!. ,

i was serious about the poo in the eye thing, please send pictures. x

sorry about the ending of this one.

bit weak, i know.

new years resolution no. 2, get better at ending diary pages.

you hold the, right.. over the left, then loop it round ,the back?, or ,, between. , them, its a no, no, hold the. em, ???

i tried to knit a scarf tonight. ,or the knitted knots that would become one. ,but i can't remember how the hell to do it, ,i think i've the first bit right, but as i bring the second stick in i cant remember how they work together. and i would call some one, but i think the mechanics of knitting is not something easily described over the phone. i am full of vegetables, and i have scotlands wonderful cold to thank for the cocooned warmth of my flat, flat mates out for the evening, crosslegged thick jogging bottoms and a jumper with a hood. i'm like a gangster, who's into crafts. ,it can be terribly difficult, at times, being a gangster, with a basket on ones bike. a night of no more chocolate, no more wine. make everything quiet and warm and kind. knitting seemed to fit. i was sure too, that if i just started, i'd remember the next bit as i went along. like car lights don't light the whole journey, you get there bit by bit. but my memory is all flickering and accident black spots. jos and i went to knitting night in the pub a few weeks ago and learned how to do it. but now it is gone. . . i've said it enough. i know. can anyone explain it to me?, maybe make a little video?. this would be greatly appreciated. thankyou. x

those plastic teeth aren't fooling anyone.

i get depressed. don't we all, and scotland, scotland, with your horizontal ice rain. fuck you, you heard me. and somehow telling you over the Internet feels like it connects more than shouting it from princes street towards the castle. ,early, with rain seeping into the top of my shoes, the memory of the californian sea still salty in my memory. but now far enough away for the cold to take hold. fuck you scotland. we all get depressed. and lighter now i am, sometimes it comes like a drunk mother with nicotine yellow fingers. like the full stop of the future. and i like to imagine in these times i'm like bukowski, or kerouac. which obviously, is bullshit. but juxtaposed to the vegetables and yoga, three glasses of red wine and a gut full of hopelessness can be deluding. now i have vowed to spread only good karma through these blogs, blogs. i hate that word. through these public diaries. so let this be an exception. ,because. i'm not thinking clearly tonight. this is just a wheelspin in the shit. like a glimpse at one of gordon ramsay's outbursts. because underneath a part of me can never forget there is hope and suffering everywhere and i'm not the centre of anything. it's an important thing to remember. leaving the antiquary, in full swing of a rare beat writer solo red wine adventure. stumbling up to the bar, eyes scanning the room in the vague hope i might avoid just one night alone. full of it. "barman", i declare, standing upright with pisshead dignity. "barma...., ", ......and realising, the barman is a guy that was in the year below you at high school. i'm not sure why this short circuited my adventure so suddenly. but it did. it reminded me of an episode in primary school: , . remember when you used to have photograph day and you had to go to the gym hall and have your hair brushed and grin at a guy with a camera and a white umbrella, taking your picture, then you had to stand on a bench with the rest of your year, (littlest ones of the year sat cross legged at the front, with the teacher in the middle), well, i had this idea one year to wear a pair of those fake vampire teeth, i was only six at the time, and this is besides the point , the point is later on in the day, i became a little carried away with the vampire transformation, and ended up hiding in a cubicle ,in the toilets, wailing to my friend outside to "run, save your self, i'm changing!! , i'm changing!!", i didn't realise, that he was so scared he'd gone to get mrs hastie, our teacher, so when i came screeching out ,dribbling and wailing, in the moment ,myself, convinced i had actually become a 'creature of the night', and coming face to face with mrs hastie, needless to say, i felt like a proper tit. and not at all like a vampire. ,so i made a little chat with chris from the year below me and watched vh1's christmas hits, realising that 'babe' by take that is thirteen years old. and damn it , i just dont like wine enough, charles would take one look at me and say "son, toddle off home, write a blog, drink some hot chocolate and get a good nights sleep, the world will be better in the morning, come back in twenty years when your soul might be bruised enough to understand what jack and i have been talking about,".

honestly mum, someone stole my shoes.

my legs hurt from four hours worth of unsuccessful magic mushroom hunting. when is the season to be strange again? can snow burn? if i think about my own thoughts too quickly can i create a 'mind feedback'? and ,frighteningly, blow one of my fuses or speakers?, am i wet?, are you normal?,... and i'm back in the room. having the internet at home now means i can type in the night. when drunk or sleepy. and not paying by the hour in Internet cafes will mean i can stare at the screen between sentences. or words. as usual my weekend is lopsided. thursday night spilled into friday morning sleeplessly and i teased out the joy of a night i didn't want to let go of by eating carrot cake and drinking coffee in the sofa by the window of a cafe on george street at eight a.m, watching the queue of suited people filling up the cafe rolling their eyes at the two minutes it takes to make hazelnut latte. and i'm wondering, am i the first person in edinburgh to have eaten a slice of carrot cake today?, has any one ever had sex in the toilets here? and i just love feeling like there's a different time zone in my veins and i'm all out of place and trying not to smile too much. and now it's saturday night and i have come home early. fuck knows why, it was nice in the bar with my friends, there is little here but sardines and the second half of annie hall. again. i am a contrary brat. i like to be drunk on monday mornings and sober on saturday nights, it's pathetic. i know. the effort of trying to be different. the heart of cool. revolting. i was not always like this. i dont know when it started. when i was a kid my mother made me wear a pair of leather school shoes with pointed toes ,i hated them. they were an embarrassment, all the other kids had trainers, i remember trying to explain to my mum that the shoes were too 'posh'. she wouldn't listen, so one day on my way home from school i took them off and threw them into the river. i told my mum they had been stolen. she spanked my arse.

a diary entry about yoga.

maybe six months ago i had hold of this calm and clarity, i felt like i'd figured out a secret, and i couldn't explain it , but i knew it so clearly and it could be called upon and relied upon, the sort of knowledge we are taught can be had through therapy or meditation or voyages of a spiritual kind to India , and i really enjoyed it, it was like a piece of magic thread i could weave through everything in my life. through the good and bad relationships and even food, missing the bus, a stubbed toe or good fortune i could knit together in some kind of meaningful wordless harmony. i didn't mind being woken up in the morning. i even left my phone on and took calls from my mother at any time day or night. everything was the same thing , i thought of myself as lock in lost. i remember talking to my mother with great conviction about how we've all been mislead by words and how really we think in the code underneath them, they are little costumes or crooked little arrows, never quite able to point the right way. i would dream about meeting a beautiful girl at a club, (not any club you could conceive of existing really, but a fantasy one ,where people wear masks and are all naked and full of exotic drugs ,that are breathed in through the air, a natural, sexual, euphoric ,hallucinogenic, something god like and innocent, i dont know quite where we get it, maybe, evolved air, left, trapped for hundreds and millions of years in a huge bubble under the sea. anyway, i'm getting too carried away with the drugs, the point is the girl, and meeting her and dancing and knowing each other without talking. she's mute you see, but it doesn't seem to matter. without words communication isn't harder for us, it's made simple somehow, we are unable to trick eachother, or lose the thread of our feelings. i didnt tell my mum all this, about the girl and the drugs and the bubble under the sea. ..just about the escape of words , maybe this comes from . i think i know where it comes from, thinking about it now, i remember the first time i wanted a girl, i think i was about twelve and i went on holiday to spain with my dad and there was a Spanish girl there and i knew she couldn't understand me and i wouldn't understand her, i still remember this idea that if i could just get her to know i liked her , and if i knew she liked me then we could be together, just walk and swim and smile and point at things and be together. ,this has nothing to do with anything really, i can't even remember what i sat down to write, , oh yes, something about six months ago having a feeling of a knowing that i have now forgotten., but it feels like the time to say what i was going to has passed. hmmm. i've not written a diary entry here for a while. and this is a freeing feeling. ,i even feel a little closer to that unquantifiable secret i thought i'd lost. i suppose you never really leave anything behind and , you dont get to keep the things you find. even all the museums are going to crumble eventually and , you have to keep going round again for things you think you already have. i'm rambling today. i think i was going to write a blog about yoga. ah well.

finger puppet day

and i'm trying to remember this day, this day among all the others, because they have a habit of blending together, and i dont like that, i wish my memory was better. ,but there's a way it's all remembered outside me. i'm trying to be sure of that while i'm writing my name over and over and putting albums into envelopes and writing numbers., (the numbers are not bad). and i'm letting it go one envelope at a time at the post office, where the lady behind the counter knows my face and it's a joy holding everyone up huffing and puffing and looking at their watches and angrily at me, stood, in queue with bagfuls of envelopes, one for luke in cardiff. for helen in cramlington and emma in middlesex. and the directness is a pleasure. all these names and addresses. i can send these people chocolate. i could go deliver them myself. next album will have a £75 postage and packing bill and i'll bring them round myself, in a big sack. like father christmas. and it is what it is and it's over and just beginning. and i'm thinking of it being played all over the world, in little stereos and big ones and cd players in cars by old and young people , i've been sending them to america and norway and south africa all over the world. like i've made a hole in an aviary. and i cant take it back , i cant re do the vocal in the second chorus in dust. and i dont want to. x

...

sometimes the sun works against me and although it s warrm and like your mother used to say you should be out side i just want to hide in the shadows or curl up in bed, i've so much i should be happy for today and im getting the feeling to run away. you could call me ungratefull. i'm not ,good things but theres a little knot of something and it wont go away. and it's when you feel you shouldn't be feeling things that you sometimes feel them most. i'm still playing with the boundaries of how much i can let out here. but fuck it. no one has to read what they dont want to. and this is just how it is today, everything feels like a compitition that i'm losing , i am a spelling mistake and what a sad view of life this is. the only reason i put up this blog is so i can take comfort in it's passing.

ten fingers and ten toes.

darlings. our records have arrived. this morning a lovely smelly man came in a big truck, all matter of fact and practical and totally unaware i wanted to hug him, i tried to engage him in conversation about how much the package he was delivering meant to me, he wanted to talk about my difficult address and how busy the roads were. once he left i opened up the boxes and i sat in a little puddle of the strangest feelings and rolled around with them and looked at them and felt. i don't know. but they're beautiful. and i'm so happy. ,the first 1000 sold from the site will be numbered and signed, (if you would like), i look forward to seeing those of you who are coming on sat, ainslie. x

My very own site...

i've never had my own web site, and i feel allot of things putting this, by first diary entry on it, it's a funny thing to look around these pages, little 2d ainslieworld. if i had to draw a pie chart, it would look like this:

other things too, but in the name of simplicity and decency ,this appropriates it.

i'm not sure where to start, on thing i've learned is it's ok to begin with a mistake. you can wait forever for the perfect opening line, and the longer you wait ,the more perfect it has to be, resulting in one agonising pregnant pause. , i could probably have a stab at a line graph to illustrate this:

i suppose this has played a part in why i havent released any music in so long. i imagined expectation. which is nonsense really. at the end of the day, as much as it feels like it matters, it's only music. and the art you make can't mean as much to anyone else as it does to you. but i dont want to get into all that now. , i could probably have a stab at drawing a little animal to illustrate this:

so. welcome to the site. it's a pleasure to be on my way. and thanks for being with me. life seems to be a sequence of small triumphs just now. i started dreaming them up just over a year ago. planting seeds. thats what dreams are. the album, the band, the gig's. this site. it's amazing how things are coming together. and i'm still dreaming. ok , i'm in danger of becoming shmaltsy, the cynical scot in me kick's in and i'm dragged back from hollywood hills. ,back to welcoming you to these pages. please come in, make yourself at home, look around , i intend spending allot of time here, iv'e a great deal of stuff i want to share. if you want to write back i'll still be reachable on the my space site, but this will be home. so , welcome , i want to thank heather and tobias for putting so much into getting this on here. ... , actually, i could probably do a little piece of expressive gay 80's dance to express how grateful i am.:

friends. glad you could make it. talk to you very soon. ainslie. x