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The sun is finally out; summer must be here, no? Well let’s make the most of it just in case.

Mister Harvey has been applying grease to his elbows and returning to work in the garden, and now finds himself a concrete slab and a course of bricks closer to a nice wee step to the upper level of the patio. Bricklaying is harder than it looks.

In other news, Modern Studies have been finalising artwork for their LP Swell to Great, which will be released in September on Song, by Toad Records. They’ve had a couple of commissions for Earth recordings too – one an instrumental for a tribute to Burt Yanch’s Avocet album – Avocet Revisited (mixed and submitted last month), and a second for a cover album of songs by the same artist. Both should be out in the not too distant future.

He’s also been working on tracks for The Son(s), who recorded three tracks at Pumpkinfield in April – he’ll be noodling about with some string arrangements for these over the next week or two.
Travels with his cello have taken him to Iona, Crinan and Skye Live with King Creosote (including a nail-biting drive across the unexpectedly snowy wastes of Mull), and to Edinburhg’s Wide Days, Shuffledown (Larbert’s answer to Glastonbury) and Aberdeen’s Advocates Library with Best Girl Athlete.

there was also the small matter of a Pumpkinseed performance in the form of an 8-piece string section accompanying A New International at St. Luke’s in Glasgow, playing the lovely string arrangements of Mister Colin Elliot in the company of a member or two of the Up North Session Orchestra.

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Good ideas don’t require proper planning or schedule; nor do they benefit from exhaustingly long meetings and conversations with management. They emerge from experiments, from playing around with things that you care about, things to which you have an emotional attachment. And quite often they need a creative chaotic environment to flourish and grow.

However, the path from an idea to a tangible product is full of failures, and it’s those inevitable, sometimes devastating failures that make you stronger and keep you going, and eventually—if you don’t give in easily—drive you in the right direction, just to finally pave the boardwalk to something that might turn out to be changing and defining your future.

Of course we all should benefit from the knowledge of others—people who trust themselves to actually follow through their weird, unrealistic, and sometimes stubborn, naive ideas. But we should be able to learn and grow from our own mistakes, too. If you are willing to experiment and tackle failures along the way, you have to be able to make your own mistakes. And that means making an effort to beat the odds—no matter how doomed that shiny new idea might initially look.

In fact, usually that initial creative spark sounds just so ridiculous, unreasonable and improbable at first, and often even worse after the first critical review. But sometimes it doesn’t matter. Yes, it just doesn’t matter. Perhaps it’s your time to succeed where others failed, and risk your personal time to gain strength, experience and wisdom that others gained before you. Perhaps you are doomed to fail, but you might build something in the end that will lead you to success in the future as you combine that idea with the inspiration you’ll find in your cellar years from now.

Happiness is a ploy. Just a carrot on a stick.., sometimes. Maybe more than others. Maybe happiness is just far away. Like looking on a map, and finding how long it takes to get there. Wondering how much time you should take off. That’s really how I’d look at it. Like if I drive faster, I could get to the happiness I’ve been looking for all my life sooner.

Maybe just really lonely. Maybe I just want to be alone. Maybe loneliness is the only way to make that happen. Like having two pairs of eyes and just seeing the same thing. Seems like such a late hour. Nothing seems, or feels new anymore. I’d live again, to feel that way once more.

Loneliness for miles. Down every turn. A dusty road to nowhere. In everything that is given. Loneliness seems to make it’s way back into our life’s. Deeper into our hearts. I’ll never know the meaning of it. The why. Exhausted and much too old to chase it’s ever present here and now.

 

It’s hard to stress how thrilled we are with the results of our new magazine! Since the launch, customers, affiliates, and investors continue to go out of their way to send their compliments, and that is great news for all of us.

 

However, the path from an idea to a tangible product is full of failures, and it’s those inevitable, sometimes devastating failures that make you stronger and keep you going, and eventually—if you don’t give in easily—drive you in the right direction, just to finally pave the boardwalk to something that might turn out to be changing and defining your future.

Of course we all should benefit from the knowledge of others—people who trust themselves to actually follow through their weird, unrealistic, and sometimes stubborn, naive ideas. But we should be able to learn and grow from our own mistakes, too. If you are willing to experiment and tackle failures along the way, you have to be able to make your own mistakes. And that means making an effort to beat the odds—no matter how doomed that shiny new idea might initially look.

Original source: Ylli Pylla