The Hendrix Perspective

Here's the deal.
This week has been a Disappearing disaster. Sorry to spoil the headline of tomorrow for you, but there it is. Even halfway through the week, after a couple of bread-heavy days and a lack of what, for the sake of any remaining delicate sensibilities in any of my readers, I'll call bathroom productivity, I'd put on three pounds in not one, but a series of unofficial weigh-ins. And that was before a kind of radically unscheduled mini-break which saw me eat quite a large Mexican meal yesterday, including a dessert. I haven't been anywhere near the Nazis since I've been home, because frankly I'm a little scared they're going to tell me something I already half-know. That's a crisis I'll confront tomorrow. For now I feel blobbish and self-defeating.

But the other half of the deal is far more positive. I've been listening to a lot of good music lately.
Yeah, I know, bit of a non-sequitur, but stick with me.

Most of you know I'm deaf in one ear. I still miss the function of that poor little bugger every single day. But when you hear a lot of good music - when you play the opening of Hendrix's Foxey Lady straight into your brain, or the opening of Clapton's Layla, or the opening of Guns 'N' Roses' Sweet Child O'Mine. When you hear Stevie Wonder sing Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours, or Blondie's One Way Or Another, or Marvin Gaye singing practically any damn thing whatsoever, or BB King, or Ella, or Billie, or Otis - or whatever music lifts your mood and makes you sure the world is worth waking up in one more day - a special thing happens when you have only one working ear. At least it does to me. There's every potential, when faced with a world history of great music and only one working ear to go "Fuck fuck fuck, I have only one working ear, and that spoils the music for me, dammit!" But if you've got the sense you were born with, I think you say "How cool! I can still hear all this kickass, life-affirming stuff through one ear."

I know, I know - it's an annoyingly chipper, Boy Scouty kind of attitude, and there'll be plenty of  world-hating whinging along in just a little while, probably, but for now, I'm applying the one-eared Hendrix Perspective to practically everything. Can't do what I want right now? So what, I'll likely be alive a year from now, let's work towards the goal. Not a massively successful world-conquering writer yet? Need to finish something, dude, get the hell on with it, or no-one can tell you how cool you are. Going to have a dispiriting weigh-in tomorrow? Yeah, I know, but there's next week to knuckle down with the walking and the biking and the discipline to apply.

So tomorrow will bring what it'll bring, but for now, the Hendrix Perspective is keeping me from beating my man-breast and disappearing into a cyclone of self-loathing and self-recrimination. Now - to the bike!