To summarize the insummarizable...

Perspective is a curious thing. I saw social media posts with people attempting to neatly summarise their 2022’s, like every year, into succinct insta friendly soundbites. It got me thinking about the highly edited and curated world we now live in. I’m certain many of us had a challenging year, and I'm certain many of you, like myself, don't even know where to start within such a limited expression. That's how I feel these platforms we chose to use are - limited. Provided with the possibility of boundless communication instead of expanding, social consciousness is going the other way, and here we are with shorter and shorter concentration spans by the year. It does make sense. As animals evolved to only function in smaller groups, from hunter gatherers to birthing industry and tech which is now itself evolving beyond the speed of nature, our brains are not designed to be in 24/7 contact with everyone in the entire world. Of course information has to be condensed and curtailed to have even a hope of being seen. That is why playing the numbers game on these platforms, streaming, likes, virtual hugs and love, is exponentially losing meaning as the figures get higher.

Back to perspective, you can view the inability to express in the moment as truly being in the moment, which to me is an ultimate goal. Or more realistically, you are so caught up in the thick of it that you can hardly breathe. I have realised it has been the latter. I have barely written, played guitar, or created as my brain has been in survival mode. Only now have I finally found some actual stillness to begin processing. As futile as it may be I'll try to summarise 2022 - It began beautifully, seeing in the new year at my favourite festival in Australia, being nominated for a music award, then heading off visiting the UK to see family and play a few special little gigs. It was an expedition to see where we wanted to make our forever home, which is a loaded concept for me and Dawny as we have family in the UK, Canada and Australia. Having both lived in Australia for a long time we were exploring the options of where we want to settle. From the UK we headed to Canada where we stayed for 5 months, believing for the majority of the time that we were going to stay permanently. Circumstances suddenly changed and we decided we wanted to remain in Australia so we headed on back.. We were there for 7 weeks, in which time we found our new home. 4 days before moving in I had the news that my Dad had a major heart attack. We subsequently spent the 4 days moving out and in, practically chucking our belongings into the new house and jumping back on a plane. So we ended the year back in the UK for the second time, being there with my family. There's so much more to the story but to conclude for now, fortunately my Dad is now recovering well after surgery and we are back in Australia in our new home, which is such a relief. I feel we can finally let out a sigh of relief we have been holding in since the start of the year!

So, my observation here is that these platforms we dedicate so much time and love into seem flawed when it comes to being able to fully express oneself. Also they are subject to change at any given moment by the owners (Elon Musk, Twitter, recent instagram feed algorithm changes), a tweak to an algorithm can mean that suddenly your livelihood can be affected. It feels too unstable to me so I feel like stepping back. I feel like I'd rather less numbers, but more genuine connections I can nurture and have complete control of how and what I share. So if you’ve read this far and you're still here, I feel like you are the one who probably understands where I'm coming from. I want to experience the full length and breadth of the art, I personally love fully immersing so i’d like to offer the same. Therefore I'd like to invite you to join me here on this blog, where I will be focussing my creative energy. I am so excited for the coming year, I have so much in me that I want to get out in my music, and so much new music I will be sharing. I'm Sat here writing this in my new studio, and i’m dreaming up so many ideas i’d love to discuss with you all!

Here’s to 2023!

Here are some video I managed to film amidst it all over in UK and Canada -