I love writing. And although I have neglected this blog for sometime, I have a job whose principal role is recording and interpreting what people are saying, and I regularly write a personal journal which has removed the pressure of posting things when I do not necessarily feel I need to.

I have also managed to write a PhD thesis in my time (and looking back enjoyed the writing more than the research), and have had several things published over the years in academic and non-academic publications. 

Yet if you look at my school record it is mediocre at best, with my two ‘A’ levels resembling the name of a well known mobile network (EE). I was not badly behaved at school, but everything went above my head. I loved the ebb and flow of history, but did not really recall it in a manner that gained me marks… I was fascinated by physics, but did not really organise what I learned into anything coherent… I am still intrigued by geography, but fell out of the top sets early and (in those days) was no longer able to take the ‘O’ level… I have always loved music, but did not want to hear about crochets and dead composers, and the only quavers I was interested in were cheesy ones.

I left school and went to work in a bank for several years (which I enjoyed for the most part) but felt that there was some sort of creative itch that I needed to scratch.

When I was 22 I had two big back operations to stop one of my vertebrae from getting pushed out of my spine. A six month absence from work gave me an awful lot of thinking time… I knew then that my future did not lie in the management of other people’s money but in something more creative (the bank did not allow that kind of creativity).

A year later, fully recovered, I took an opportunity to spend four weeks in Southern India. It was a seminal moment… I was completely besotted by the sights and sounds of the festivals that I witnessed and the complete otherness of the culture… I had to know more and within 18 months was enrolled on a Religious Studies course at Lampeter in the middle of nowhere in Wales.

I was nervous because my school record suggested that I would not be adept at this academic malarkey… but I wanted to know more… I had no plan and expected to scrape through with a bare pass.

Yet I hit the ground running and quickly achieved the sort of velocity that enabled me to fly… I was exceptionally lucky to have a set of teachers who, for the most part, encouraged my creativity and let me go off piste (an essay on the religious aspects of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a particularly favourite).

But how did this happen… how did I just soar… where did I get the tools to enable this?

This I something that I have never really thought about until today when I came across an old review of one of my favourite albums, ‘The Correct Use of Soap’ by Magazine, by Dave McCullough in Sounds magazine (1980).

It struck me that by reading this publication avidly every week in my formative years I gained not only a good knowledge of the music scene, but a literary sense than had made its mark on me every bit as much as the ink that ended up on my hands (something that I always found very satisfying). 

Looking back now the writing was often earnest (sometimes maybe a little too much so), but it was also loose and unusual… I am sure that there were all sorts of egos at play behind the scenes, but I am happy to have been the recipient of that… because I think that I engaged with that sort of creativity and absorbed it… I got the idea that I did not have to completely obey the rules… but still had to write something that was cogent and worth writing. 

I got a first in Religious Studies at Lampeter (the first to do so by all accounts) and went on to do an MA which narrowed my perceptions if anything… somehow the rules began to tighten around me again… I did ok though, and went off to do a PhD at Leeds.

The first term was not how I wanted it to be… I floundered around because my original idea of doing quantitative research into British Buddhism was failing to get me in anyway excited about further studying a set of ideas which were so profound and conceptually other. 

That completely changed with probably the most important hour of my intellectual life. Encouraged by my fellow PhD students, I attended a lecture by Zygmunt Bauman on his understanding of social theory… I remember little of the actual lecture now but it took me on a journey into some amazing places as I opened my mind to the likes of Durkheim, Foucault, Giddens, Baudelaire and (my favourite) Baudrillard… and looking at them in the contexts of Eastern religions.

It was an amazing time, facilitated by a supervisor who encouraged me to think out of the box. I am not sure whether my work ever contributed to the totality of human knowledge but it did reflect who I am in the way that it is a messy melange of theories and ideas which make sense to me… and clearly made just enough sense to my external examiners.

It included niche areas of social theory and sociology, a selective look at postmodernism, ideas around liminality, Protestant Buddhism in Sri Lanka, a comparative study of the self in Buddhism and cyberspace (including some fun diversions into William Gibson, Star Trek and Sonic Youth) and many other meanderings… the conclusion was tricky.

However, while this opened some doors I never really took to life as a University lecturer… the areas where I had an interest outside of the study of religion seemed fraught with oneupmanship and competitiveness… and the idea of the ivory tower was crumbling into the commodification of ideas… the freedom that I wanted just was not there and I spent a (happy) decade in higher education administration which had its own forms of creativity.

I was lucky enough to leave that all behind for some years as a stay at home Dad, and found my meter writing about music on this blog. It was an incredible time as I got to know musicians and label owners from across the world… and a group of people who I still meet up with at gigs and festivals… 

In writing my own blog I loved the freedom that academic writing did not provide… to play around with ideas and present them according to my own style… basically:listen to the music and write what I feel… one take and check for typos (I never found them all).

The music itself was niche and I (and still do) gravitated towards bands who never stood still creatively and are never afraid to improvise… I also like music that explores liminality and chaos… but I also like a good tune… for me eclecticism rules… and those are the only rules. 

At the same time I trained as a psychological coach and learned a lot about what makes me tick… it enabled me to access my feelings and put them into my writing… it was hugely rewarding and very cathartic… and I am proud of what is still there and still accessed by a good many people every month.

But I am also restless and no longer get the same feeling about music writing that I used to and, going back to a job which, in itself, requires me to write, is enough for me at the moment.

 I am now able to listen to music again without feeling the need to write about it which has led me into some deep dives of established artists, most notably Miles Davis and Neil Young… and continuing to find amazing bands both new and established

While never being a rebel, I latterly realise that the mainstream was not really for me… I have never wanted a career, and work has always been a means to an end… the freedom to explore other things is a great privilege, and hopefully one that I will never take for granted.

So as I sit here on the way back from a music festival which has delivered all I could have hoped for over the two days, reading that old article from Sounds magazine unlocked a lot for me… as anyone who has been stoic enough to get to the end of this will realise… so thanks to everyone that I have met on the way that has helped me on this journey… which hopefully has many new ideas and insights to come.