Breaking news! Or not

I hate that feeling of knowing something that other people don't, just as much as I hate not knowing something that they do. Exclusivity isn't a state I'm comfortable with at all and neither is superiority, but this afternoon I had a run in with such a situation and it was everything I could do to not come across as an overbearing know-it-all. I mean, I have always been the kind of person to question everything and while this is good in some contexts, it means that I'm predisposed to picking things apart worse than a crow at a carcass. Unfortunately this aspect of my personality is something that university has only compounded.

Anyway, I digress - the incident I'm blogging about happened over MSN, when a good friend of mine literally sprang online in an excited frenzy to tell me that Bowie was releasing a new album. The conversation went something like this;

"Oh my god, Nat - you'll never believe this. I've just finished watching an interview with David Bowie on the TV and apparently he's releasing a new album this year! It was with techno music though, it sounded really different..."

So like, I hate to be a cynic but I was having difficulty in believing this considering the man's kind of stuffed the music business for the last six or seven years save for that DVD release he did recently of his last tour or something along those lines. Plus, when she mentioned techno my first thoughts were 'but he's already done that' - I mean, why would he do another album in the same style (it's Bowie...) and why would he do an album in a style that people didn't really like?

"Are you sure this is a recent album? It sounds kinda like Earthling..."
"No I swear, he was going to release it this year, he said"
"Oh right. What's the album called?"
"I can't remember the name of it - but I remember what the album cover looked like; it was him in a union jack outfit, backed by english countryside."

And uh, I don't know about you, but; http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/david-bowie/album-earthling.jpg this kind of sums up my mental image. So me being me, I showed her that and we came to the conclusion she must have been watching some pre-recorded old interview on sky tv, which she was.

Shame, there was a millisecond where I was really excited.

Guitar

So, I think it was about three weeks ago on a Tuesday night that I got the sudden, overwhelming urge to play my guitar. For the past I don't know when, probably two years, my guitar has sat largely untouched either in a corner of my room, or, recently, at my dad's house. I still have no idea what made me suddenly want to play it so badly; when I came to university I'd brought it with me, but I had little or no urge to even get it out of the case to tune it. But something on that Tuesday night nagged and nagged until I couldn't bear it any longer and fired off an email to dad asking if he could bring it round. Joyously, I got a hold of it that evening and almost immediately afterwards, tuned it (wow, how sad to hear the state it'd gotten into) and played it for about three hours solid until the ends of my fingers were numb.

Now, last year at number 13 I did try to kick myself into picking it up again by purchasing and fitting a new set of strings, so the ones that are on it are 'new' and never really got played in. I feel I should get my money's worth by wearing them at least a little before I swap them for the shiny new set I bought the other week but

1.) Having been left for so long, they'll be crummy anyway. So that's £10 down the drain :]
2.) Looking at my guitar, I've done a really bad job of restringing it. Playing a G chord sets the strings buzzing like nobodies business.

So it's probably better to just restring it anyway. At least I know that the new strings will get played in properly this time. Also, in absence of any new classical music I've been (gasp) using a plectrum. I grew my nails like a good girl ready for some good finger picking but the other day I picked up some plectrums along with my strings and idk, I really like using one. It's hard though, I never was able to play using a plectrum and to some extent I used to frown on people who did. But I'm getting there. I'm a little worried that my normal technique will go down the pan so I should probably play using both styles so that I grow rather than go backwards, if that makes any sense.

Where are all of these hours going? One thing I hated about myself when I played the guitar for the ensemble and in concerts, was how arrogant it made me. I'll admit it - I knew that I wasn't the best out there and I did honestly think I was on the same level as the other players in the group, but at the same time I was always keen to point out what was wrong with the performance yada yada. I hated how critical I was. Thus, I think it's safe to say that for now I'm just going to shut myself in my room and play by myself without any focus or agenda, so that nobody has to be subjected to me. I can't say how long my housemates are going to endure the same chords over and over though - nobody at university ever knew me as 'a guitarist' even though they knew I played, they never knew that I played.

New look, new leaf

Alright, so I've been neglecting this blog horribly, attempted to start again with LJ, never posted a single entry into it. So I'll come back here and start documenting my life again. TBH, there's too much to write down all in one post and I need a pee but let's just summarise by saying I'm single, I'm bored and jaded with my university course, I'm not sure if I'm mentally stable but on the plus side I've never been happier and freer, and I picked up my guitar for the first time in two years a few weeks ago and play for about four hours on average every night. My house mates must be so sick of hearing me mash out the same old chords, but I guess they never knew I loved the guitar so much :)

In the words of one of my favourite characters, Otis;

Tschüß and all that
xxx