Lost with our thoughts.

I went to five classical concerts last year and what hit me was the thoughts in my head. There was nothing to stop me thinking. My brain just started racing and I was worrying if I’d have an outbreak of tourettes. The feeling was profound. And what I couldn’t understand was what was going on when I was listening to music, when this was something I do all of the time.

Not being a musican I’ll take it from what I’ve heard is that the musican is playing the gaps between the notes as much as the notes. And in those gaps, when there were no other distactions around my brain went in to overdrive to make something up. There’s something similar when you stare in to a mirror in a dimly lit room. Your brain doesn’t have the stimulus to work with and you see yourself slowly disappear. Except, those are two contradictory examples. What I’m getting at is that your brain is just your brain. It’s not you. It’s just your brain and it’s doing it’s best.

What’s going on with this photo? There’s hardly any wood pigeon in there. This is rubbish. It was taken from near the start of a 12 minute video I took today, so I know. But that doesn’t matter. I’ll just make something up in my head. The empty space is visual, so it doesn’t bother me. Gaps of silence on the other hand are a different matter altogether – for me anyway. Most of the time I don’t mind, but with extra stimulus of classical or demanding music, the brain starts working and needs something to do.

Before I wrote this, I was going to switch the radio on and listent to football pundits talk about a game that was going to happen, had happened, or was happening. All of this would be background noise to stop me thinking about anything. Then I realised what I would be listening to and decided that I’ve had too much pandemic, not just for today, but for a lifetime. No good was going to come from it and nothing I’d hear would be of any use to me.

With so much sports coverage in this country, there is a huge gap in people’s lives. This sound like a small thing, but it really isn’t. If all you do is consume and you can’t create, you’re going to have big problems in the next few months. Been there, done that, got the blog!