More notes from real life

Some years ago a very good friend of mine who was something of a community instigator / activist pulled me over for a dish of pasta and a long cool drink.

Here are some of our notes kind of rounded up for ease.

We wonder what keeps community thinkers going?

Is it the endless active conversations and dreams or the small amount of work that we seem able to afford to do?

We are primarily jamming drummers we are expert non-expert.

We have diverse interests and tastes in art and music and food all of our ideas always point us towards the direction of our shared community.

Music is the most expensive art.

Not because we need a Strad or a Strat. We don’t, in fact a bucket with a string attached will do.

Music uses what we call time.

If we are going to ask people to spend time, we need the wiring to work.

That is why music is the highest price because, music lives for all of our finite time.

All-together now. Money can’t buy me? Naff-all? Management? Love? Pleasure? Peace of mind?

Nope, wrong money can buy all of those things. It can’t buy our time and music is always about spending time.

We loves community music, we have spent decades playing drums for so many people who were nearly famous that we nearly became famous ourselves.

A realisation struck. We can't afford any more strings for the bucket.

Football was never too far away from our exchanges here is a quote.

"The Socialism I believe in is not really politics. It is a way of living. It is humanity. I believe the only way to live and to be truly successful is by collective effort, with everyone working for each other, everyone helping each other and everyone having a share of the rewards at the end of the day. That might be asking a lot, but its the way I see football and the way I see life."

Bill Shankly OBE (1913 - 1981)

Every time we reach the point where it feels like we are just getting started the funding stream seems to say thanks boys, that was brilliant have two-bob, that project is finished now so, naff off.

We might give you a call when we have some more two-bobs for you to apply for. We have ticked enough boxes for our next round of salaries for this year.

Are we bothered? Not in the least, we are used to it. Does it hurt? Course it naffin’ does. Does it spoil music? ' course, it doesn’t. Does it control music? ' course not.

What effect do stop start stop start music projects have?

On a local community level, stop start creative projects make life very difficult for local musicians.

They make local musicians feel like they have to disappear into thin air again, stop eating again, stop meeting again with friends, stop paying the rent again and for some pretty much stop making music until somebod come along with two-bob and allow music to eat in their ward.

Worse still. Stop start art suports an utterly false impression about our human need to live creatively enjoying life with neighbours and friends that play with music and nonsense for freedom and fun and the good health it brings.

The system as it is uses isolation and mental illness for profit.

Children are brought up with the idea that music making and playing only happen in certain times of the year where people gather together for special events. Play is serious business. If people don’t get to play they go mad and worse.

We are experienced “workshop facilitators” (30+ years). We run drumming workshops for local families/children/interested folk.

We already have a small collective of musicians who try to meet regularly. When we are on form after a few regular sessions we can cut a groove up good enough to dance to.

Our music is accessible for any level of playing ability and people can join in with us. We teach the right mindset for joining in. We don’t teach music. You only need to be taught music if you want to be in somebody’s band or orchestra.

With jamming you just learn to join in. Anybody can bang a drum for starters. The skill in music is about playing together and understanding that music is a completely normal thing for human beings to do.

Our lead artist has broad community art experience in the public and private fields. We have a community interest company fully incorporated since before lockdowns.

We can pass a CIC on to any interested prospects for free if we can get it up and running properly.

We are only looking inside establishment who might like to help in this field but who is unable or unused to working with fully self-employed genuine local artists. We only want to develop our cic into a full-on local community art and music collective along the lines of the above, Bill Shankly, kind of dream.

We will do our book keeping on the foyer wall for all to see all income and out gone.

If you dare to do you might want to hold on to your hat!

Another LinkedIn World Wide Local share to the grist.