November 2024

What I have been up to

This month I finally held this year’s only headline The Kev gig. It was at The Thirsty Scholar in Manchester. Positives from the night included that the support acts were all good, my new material all got genuine belly laughs, and I didn’t make any mistakes with chords or lyrics.

The main negative was that turnout was so tiny (marketing is hard and expensive), that there was nothing to add to this list of all-time on-stage moments. Footage will be released over the coming weeks and month.

As I type, pop star Kate Nash has just announced that she has joined OnlyFans, selling pictures of her own buttocks to fund her next tour. This may be dystopian, but it shows that the things that make life worth living (making music, writing poetry) tend not to pay. The things that sustain life are often pretty mindless.

And anyway, the news that has emerged in the past week about author Cormac McCarthy shows that having millions of admirers around the world is a perishable thing. And rightly so.

Activities

I did two podcast interviews. One is already up on YouTube:

One of the many problems with becoming a bit famous online is, it is so rarely for the reason that you want. This online Chinese lesson was something I made on a rather throwaway basis, but without any marketing or promotion, it has accrued over 1000 views and five comments from complete strangers, which is extraordinary, considering how low the channel’s SEO ranking must be.

Output

My guitar YouTube channel is still going strong, This month’s videos included re-recordings of ‘Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini’ and ‘Linden Lea’.

My The Kev YouTube channel is thriving too, although the numbers are unspectacular:  

I also recorded this joke (not an original), because I have only ever experienced it written rather than spoken:

Wider World

Donald Trump became the first U.S president since Grover Cleveland to win two non-consecutive terms. And whereas his 2016 victory can be described as a fluke – he lost the popular vote and Hilary Clinton made major tactical errors – this time he swept all seven battle-ground states and won the popular vote.

He may be the most amoral person to be president since Andrew Jackson almost two centuries ago. However, what incumbent president Joe Biden has done in the past week is probably more irresponsible than anything Trump did during his four-year term. He has allowed Ukraine to strike Russia with long-range missiles. This could very well escalate the war to entirely new levels.

I am reminded of a 1935 poem by Robinson Jeffers, ‘Rearmament’. Its final five lines are this:

I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future…I should do foolishly. The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.