Free(lance) at last

There is a difficulty of delicacy and balance. Those who live by the sword. I have been writing words. Not the happy slap blurting of the words in this place but planned and purposed words strung together in a recipe to make my daily bread. It taxes me. It's not like the magic of fishes and loaves.

It is a stupid bravery; standing still with your insides typed out and palms up waiting for the nod and the miracle digital handshake but I would not do anything else.

My other discovery is that of wordless noise and the vision of myself as an aging rocker. Unconscious harmonic movement of limbs, sometimes. To steal a line from Spencer I "drum like I'm falling down stairs", but that works just fine for me. Sarah, the magnificent drummer from Whores, has given me ample drunken instruction on the art of drumming to allow me for one moment to forget everything I ever thought of.

I felt like a moving beast with multiple pulsing hearts. Each thrash of a semi-coordinated limb marking out time territorially, pushing back everything except wordless sound. Moment to moment I fell in and out with the guitar. I moved from general creator of cacophony to originator of rhythm then seamlessly out back into the world of general noise. I lay down my sticks for a moment and grinned at Grizelda who looked ever so slightly shocked to find herself in a velvet draped, fully equipped and smoke hazed rehearsal space. She grinned and said 'keep going you're doing it', I collected my sticks, found a hole in the guitar sound and slipped back into that wordless place. Five minutes later I shook the sweat from my hair, raised my gaze above the ride cymbal and found that my limbs were moving of their own accord. Phil the guitarist looked across at me, nodded and mouthed the word 'yes'.

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