Idea Factory

On Dreaming & Doing & Delusions & Getting Sidetracked

I was diagnosed with what was then called ‘hyperactivity’ as a kid, and the name seemed to fit me well. I was quite happily insomniac, always busy playing multiple games, tripping over my own feet and reading massive tomes from a young age. I had happy delusions that I was a ‘natural’ ballet dancer, based on the fact that my mum had a job dressing ballet dancers at the theatre and brought home a huge bag of ‘toe shoes’ that were only slightly soiled by a tiny bit of ballet dancer blood. They got new shoes every couple of nights! Anyway I became quite adept at walking around on tippy toes (en pointe!) and I had a leotard and a little red 1950s illustrated book of ballet steps which I studied obsessively and ‘taught myself’ all the positions and the names of the steps and twirled around a lot in my bedroom while envisaging the look of incredulity on Margot Fonteyn’s face when she popped over for some unknown reason and saw me, the self taught child genius, busting all the ballet moves like a secret prima ballerina. She would invite me to join the ballet company at 10 years old like Anna Pavlova did and star in Swan Lake and I’d do that for a while before moving onto singing in a band or being a secretary or a librarian or a nurse or a teacher or a movie star. The world seemed full of infinite possibilities. Apparently I did a few actual ballet lessons, which I can’t really remember, and the teacher, who was a family friend, told my mum there wasn’t much point in bringing me back because I was just not getting it. I asked her a couple of years ago what I was like as ballet student, and she just laughed and said there wasn’t much hope for me cos I was uncoordinated and couldn’t work out my left from my right. This fact remains.

I have the kind of brain that tells me I can do things when I probably/possibly shouldn’t. A blessing and a curse. There is a boxing match of ideas going on inside my mind at all times that still often wakes me in the middle of the night and I try to make the practical choice and do the thing that makes the most sense in terms of building on whatever I’ve already had a modicum of success with but I get sidetracked and over excited and I can’t help myself from exploring something else. I’ve been obsessed by wanting to paint recently, but kept stopping myself from doing it because it seemed like a waste of valuable time when I should be working on something that might actually make a living.

Then my daughter told me that ‘outsider art’ was a thing online and people collect it and pay for it. So then I got really excited cos I thought I could paint and potentially sell my little paintings on the side, even though my artworks are kinda weird and wonky and what people politely call ‘folk art’, and the idea that they were more than a waste of time, and could maybe occasionally bring in a few bucks that I could put towards real food or bills or making a new record (which is what I really want to do more than anything) was so inspiring, I started working on about ten paintings at once. And making an Etsy store which is stupidly time consuming and fiddly and they require photographs from all angles and mock ups of art in rooms and all that stuff ends up taking hours and so I’m listening to podcasts while I’m doing it, and I try to listen to stuff that teaches me things or inspires me and I’ve been looking into self publishing a collection of essays and so I listen to a self publishing podcast interview with a ghostwriter. It’s such a cool word; GHOSTWRITER. Anyway she makes it sound pretty great and like easy(ish) money and all you have to do is study the genres and then you can get a sidehustle going on churning out sexy romances by the bucket load and they get published as though they are written by Lady Primrose Firewater and your name isn’t sullied but your bank account gets stuff in it.

Popular Book Genres Looking For Ghostwriters

So then I’m trying to research sexy romances and ‘enemies to lovers’ sub genres while I’m painting and working on finishing a song for the new album in the back part of my mind that just churns away relentlessly like a cement mixer and while all this is going on I’m thinking about another project that I’ve been developing and really need to get stuck into editing and I should also be pitching more freelance articles and should probably start work on another book and finish that script I’m writing and book some more gigs and suddenly I feel a bit like I can’t breathe and I’m being crushed under the weight of my own ideas but I love them all equally and they are all do-able if I can just find the time to work a bit on each and I fantasise about having a mansion with stations set up for each project so I could just flit about working on things without all the time wasting bother of setting up and packing up and cleaning up…. anyway, where was I?

Excerpt from John Waters in Interview Magazine

I was born on ‘The Day of Dogged Persistence’. Remember that huge big birthday book that used to be everywhere? My girlfriends and I would always check it out excitedly and while they would have things like ‘The Day Of Great Lovers & Stars & Rainbows’, every time I checked, I was still ‘The Day of Dogged Persistence’. It really stung. It was not a glamorous future I was headed towards. Well, cut to many years later and it seems it was right. I decided that if I can’t avoid it or hide it or ignore it I must embrace it, so here I am embracing that fact of my dogged persistence. I just wrote an essay for Talkhouse reflecting on 20 years of living in album cycles. Following ideas and trying to make them into something real seems to be my calling in life. Dreaming and doing.

Those born on the 19th of March have the dogged persistence needed to achieve their ends and know how to use their charm and allure to help them. These highly directed people are both dreamers and doers. They are able to translate their imaginative ideas into reality. Though assertive, March 19 people may not be the most self-aware individuals, and indeed a strong unreality factor may be at work here.
… those born on this day may be attempting at times to change external reality to conform to their inner picture of it…
Those born on the 19th of March possess very pure and childlike qualities. But though they are expansive types who sometimes give the impression that they are in another world, they are in fact forceful and business-like. Thus they are a bit paradoxical in nature, and can appear to others as being alternately dreamy and fiery.
Some people who are born on the 19th of March are  explorers who break new ground and go where no one has dared to go before, but more often they are pragmatic individuals who proceed methodically… Due to a lack of objectivity, however, they can well be headed off track or in the wrong direction.
It is indeed important that people born on this day chart their course with care, because once they are convinced they are on target they will want to follow through to the end. They are also extremely diligent and capable of operating on a personal level with little need for fanfare, reward or acclaim. They will doggedly pursue their goals, even though it may mean endless repetition of tasks. They never seem to tire of their own activities, perhaps at times even going at things too slowly.
(Source: the secret language of birthdays)

Anyway if you’d like to check out my evolving gallery of outsider/folk art here it is.

‘Leonard Leaning’

Next weekend I’m going to get stuck into a conversation with writer Mark Mordue (Boy On Fire) at a writer’s festival on the South Coast (‘I Am Not Making This Up’ True Storytelling Festival - more info here) about music and ideas and cultural histories and obsessions and inspirations and telling true(ish) stories. Mark kindly wrote the foreword to my book and has published it here on his Substack ‘The Slider’. I love this opening paragraph:

I must have met Loene Carmen somewhere in the late 1980s. But that’s only a guess. Time had a way of sliding back-and-forth in those days. Until you lost your sense of it altogether. To be young and artistically inclined meant having a whole decade to wander in before you even began to think about what might happen to the rest of your life. Inevitably, people got lost along the way. Others are still out there, chasing the green light they can see just ahead of them. For an artist, for a hell of a lot of us, it can be a hard to pinpoint the line you are walking between magic and loss till most of the walking is done. Maybe you never get to know the answer? Others have to find you later. And you have to die with your boots on.

LOST IN MUSIC

There’s also this interesting Substack called

Subtle Maneuvers

by Mason Currey about ‘wriggling through a creative life’ that celebrates all the strange ways artists work and get sidetracked and it sometimes makes me feel less alone.

Apparently there’s a lot of weirdos around.

As they say in Austin Texas, stay weird. x