Episode One: Take a look around - What do you know?

...but I still say "yes" to aspirations to become a better person.
Welcome to my secular soiree... Please, do pull up a theist... I mean, a chair... 

So, here we go…

I'm pleased to hear that quite a few people recently have been reading my work. Or attempting too. You see, there's a problem. This chap keeps butting in and having the final say in everything I attempt to discuss. He's usually sat cross-legged, and it seems to be all about him, frankly… Whilst his wacky ideas may be of interest to some of you, to others it's just not what you are into. And that's totally cool with me. It's not the label by which you live your life, but by the actions, right? Ultimately, reading about this Buddha chap, Gotama or Gary or whatever his name was.. well.. it just isn't for everyone. Bizarrely, it's taken me nearly three years to realise this. Good work, Jay.

Hence we find ourselves at a juncture, a point of departure as we sail into uncharted and uncertain seas… I've been asked by quite a few people recently if tales of my turbulent spiritual endeavours are all I want to publish. Would I ever consider writing about something else? "Er… Sure, why not?" I always mumble, but my chin dips reflexively in self-doubt. You see, with Buddhism, it's something I know a lot about. More than your average person at any rate. I am fascinated, enthralled and captivated by it. On a very deep level, I have an unexplainable emotional response to this Buddhism malarkey, and for me, it works. It's saved my ass on many an occasion, and possibly my life too. No joke. I was in a bad place 4 years ago…

Music had died for me. Understandably, it was a very difficult time. I've played since I was five or six years old, and it felt like I was losing a childhood friend to a protracted terminal illness, drawn out and excruciating to behold. In many ways, it was. My earliest memories  are of playing music. In the beginning, my parents were generous enough to pay for the hire of my first cornet, as well as subsequent tuition. I was hooked. My elder brother played trumpet around me a lot as a kid. Either that, or my selective memory only retains the highlights, which usually involved brass and on one lively and memorable New Years Eve, a banjo! I can still recall the first time I saw him play, 25 years ago… The magical mystery of music and it's conveyance rapidly became my all, my everything. Fast forward through my subsequent years in school orchestras, to my conversion to the dark, malevolent and possibly teenager-ruining influences of Rock & Roll…

1992 - I had been playing music for four or  five years by now.

I followed music like a beacon of hope as we slipped from one millennia into the next. From now otherworldly-distant college memories, it guided me through a failed university attempt and out the other side, stoned and still dreaming of Glory in my early 20's. I knew it was now or never. It turned out to be never. In spite of years of dedication to my craft, literally countless gigs and all the encouragement and support from friends and family, it ended with my tenure in The So & So's in 2011. I had played in many different bands on many different levels, some now more well known than others, but none of them had the breaks, the drive or in some cases, even the tunes to cut the mustard for me. Occasionally, I found a worthwhile project, but managed to scupper my chances by playing in five other groups and spread myself to thin. When I wasn't having alcohol-fueld mental breakdowns, I leapfrogged from project to project, and got further than I thought, but all things come to an end, and for a variety of reason which are now unimportant, I amicably but with a broken heart bowed out of The Music Industry.

2004 - playing in a Manchester metal band called Censa Faya. I look like an extra from Wayne's World...

Things had changed. I had changed. The music scene had changed several times: grunge yielded to Britpop, Cobain to Cocker. From Jarvis and Jamirequai we found ourselves at Jedward. In my short but colourful life we've gone from Motorhead to Miley Cyrus, and she wasn't even a twitch in ol' Billy-Ray's quivering scrotum when I started! Everything had changed since I first dreamt a dream. The industry I'd so desperately wanted to be a part of no longer existed. It too had seen the cumulative changes of twenty years since I'd first tooted my first uncertain notes of joy. Cd's had come and gone! That's mental... That's a loooong time to see yourself as one thing, in my case, as an aspiring professional musician... Even now, the nostalgia brings a sigh to my heart… So many years… But everything changes. It has to. We live in a world which depends upon change to develop and grow; for technology to advance, things must arise and pass away. It's a fact, but I didn't understand this at the time, and I totally over-defined myself as "a musician", to a point where the transition was an unspeakably painful one… My email address still testifies to this reluctance to let go, and though I'm still "Jay", I am noticeably less "Bass-Man" these days.

10 very quick years later...

Skip forward a few more lively and colourful years, and here we are. A blog in which the B-Word is banned. And the point of my first entry? To see if I can connect with others and share reflections in a more every-day kind of  way. Some big questions will be asked, I'm sure, but I also want to see if I can keep my posts restricted to a few paragraphs, hopefully offering a bit of what I call 'mental floss' just to keep our collective cogs turning. Perhaps there will be few questions for yourself, dear reader, to ponder over in between sporadic bursts of violence towards less considerate motorists, ogling the new temp in accounts or whatever we all do in our less productive moments. At the very least I hope to prove to myself, if to no one else, that I am not scared of wandering into murky and less familiar territory. 

However, I owed an explanation for this column. Please don't think that I have completed my challenge. All I have done is contextualised it, as well as writing a very average and oft-heard biography... "Failed musician… Substance abuse… Oh! What a surprise - he's discovered religion!" I'm hardly the first nor will I be the last to wander this predictable route. However, I was once advised that if you get stuck, you should always write about what you know. I suppose I know myself, or at least have a vague idea, and maybe I will discover more here than in my other posts. 

Here I hope to see the poetic aphorisms and pithy sayings of infinitely wiser people refracted through me and reflected onto you, hopefully forming some interesting new kaleidoscopic patterns of truth in both our minds. Life is an endless, boundless, infinitely complex ocean of inter-woven events, actions and consequences, call and response... Who knows what could happen tomorrow if we remain open to the possibility of something good entering our lives? Often I find myself so goal-oriented I forget to come up for air. I am starting to notice the benefits of stoping, pausing, and trying to smell the roses, coffee or the shit on my own doorstep - whichever is the most prevailing scent of the day. Try it! Take a good whiff - awareness is revolutionary.

So reflection of the day: If you are feeling lost, as I said, take a look around. Ask yourself the "who's, whats, wheres, whens and whys' of the situation, and try and bring yourself back to your present moment, to what you know. As of this moment, who are you? What are you doing? Why? Context is everything. Space and time define the mind. Slip out of the noose of your habitual anxieties of the past or the future, back into the unrestricted 'nowness' of the present moment, as the Tibetan writer Sogyal Rinpoche once put it. Bring yourself back to what you know, because if you can't be honest with yourself today, then your tomorrow will be a lie too. 

And that's something I think we can all agree on.