Kevin McGeary

The final preparations have been made, and in June, I will finally record my new English album. Also, with businesses finally reopening, I should finally get the chance to debut some of my new material for a live audience. My tutoring has also involved some in-person lessons for the first time in well over a year. Here are some other things I’ve done in May.

Output

Since I don’t live in China anymore and am not a member of the society, writing new Chinese songs in proving a challenge. I nonetheless finished this one, whose lyrics I scribbled in a notepad during a meeting in 2014.

Near the start of the month, I also wrote an English love song:

Activities

I have completed another redraft of my novel, working title ‘Fallen Souls’. It is much improved, but a lot needs to be done with the character of the antagonist and co-narrator. This month I read ‘The Wasp Factory’ by Iain Banks, which will really help construct the character’s childhood and backstory. I have also just started revisiting ‘G’ by John Berger, in which the protagonist, like my antagonist, is the illegitimate child of a successful man.

‘The Naked Wedding’ and other stories has had more reviews. A date will be set in June for its first featuring in a mainstream publication.

I have also written some reviews, including one of the second book to be published by Manchester’s own Orton Publishing. For the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, I have read a new translation of ‘Stories of the Sahara’ by San Mao and my review will appear in June.

Wider World

New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has announced that she is in therapy. This has met with predictable scorn from her many political opponents.

Her announcement is both brave and timely. Mental health is getting more talked about in the mainstream, but still not enough. Even in the world’s most advanced societies, there is still considerable taboo around it.

The ‘self-help’ industry is a massive one, and so much unhelpful ‘advice’ is flying around. Much of this falls under the category of toxic positivity. As Carl Jung said, we shouldn’t flee from negative emotions, but experience our suffering to the fullest. Now is not a time to repress painful feelings.

Post-Covid life has ostensibly begun here in England. I have been able to finally schedule my album launch for November 30^th this year, but I will hold the same event in different venues on several occasions.

Activities

I continue to run the Mandarin Club in Manchester and have published another review with the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing.

On Wednesday May 5^th,  I will give an online introduction to Chinese characters. This comes at a time when my tutoring business has been dwindling. English tutoring is going fine, but I am down to just two pupils for Mandarin, and no regular pupils for the guitar or creative writing. I am setting about rectifying this.

Since lockdowns may be ending, I have finished for now with the weekly miscellaneous covers, with one recent highlight being ‘Unchained Melody’.

Output

I have finished writing my next English album, working title ‘Problematic Is My Middle Name’. New songs include an attempt at a modern pop song

And a mournful one about so-called ‘cancel culture’.

Wider World

There’s a lot I don’t understand about the universe. I had long assumed that for anybody to have a glittering career, or rise to the top of an organisation, they must be brilliant. However, the past year has shown that so many people who run the world are deeply mediocre.

Former UK Prime Minister David Cameron has become embroiled in a scandal. His memoir is said to lack ‘a single arresting thought or amusing anecdote’. Former director of public prosecutions and current leader of the Labour Party Kier Starmer has also shown himself to be – like a lot of the most outwardly impressive people – somewhat disappointing.

The same review of the David Cameron memoir makes this observation of much of the ruling class:

Behind presentation there is no substance: just more presentation, so that public relations is the queen of the sciences and opinion polls must be consulted as Roman soothsayers consulted chicken entrails.”

So many people are schooled to mistake status-consciousness with ambition, affectation with sophistication, and accolade with competence. For this reason, so much of my recent work is studiedly anti-pride, grandeur, and self-esteem.

With a world-leading vaccination program, people here in the UK can almost taste life after lockdown, but the pandemic is still far from over. I am as yet unable to schedule a book launch, or an album launch but am working to make sure those nights are as good as possible.

Output

In March I completed a new satirical English song

A non-satirical English song

And a new Chinese song.

I have also kept year-long habits like the Mandarin Club and the weekly covers.

Activities

As well as tutoring regularly – guiding two pupils to exams – I have been writing a lot, including some professional copywriting. There are now two Amazon reviews of my book, and my strategy for getting reviews in newspapers and magazines should pay off later this year.

Wider World

With vaccines being rolled out all over the world, there is much cause for optimism. This illness that has killed over two-and-a-half million people worldwide has created another challenge for those of us lucky enough to survive – to not die inside.

For me, being better off than I was a year ago, through sheer luck, it is difficult not to have some form of survivor’s guilt. Some days ‘Fitter Happier’ by Radiohead captures my mood:

This month, two of the biggest moments of my creative life happened within a few days of each other. On February 6^th, I held a Zoom concert to showcase my Chinese-language song-writing. Also, my first book was released.

Output

‘The Naked Wedding’, my first short story collection, is now available as an e-book and in print. I have started soliciting reviews but have heard nothing back yet. Reviews are a hard sell; they take a lot of time and tend to pay zilch. I still hope and expect that some will have materialised by the end of the year.

Also, this month I held a Zoom concert that was a risky mixing of professional life and personal passion project.

Hopefully, this will inspire new Chinese songs, an artform on which I have been quite unproductive recently. The English songs however seem to keep flowing out. This was an attempt at a romantic salsa song written for Valentine’s weekend.

Activities

The Mandarin Club continues to thrive. As well as the Zoom concert, this month there were two literary events with well-known Chinese authors, and the February edition of the China Book Club was ‘Factory Girls’ by Leslie Chang. In March it will be the post-reform & opening masterpiece ‘Life’ by Lu Yao.

Another regular Zoom event I host is the Castle Music Group, a music, poetry and comedy group open to everyone. The March events will be on the afternoon of the 14^th and the evenings of the 20^th and 31^st. This helps to fuel my weekly recordings of miscellaneous covers.

In February these have included ‘The Best’ by Tina Turner, ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack’ by Radiohead, ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ by Bon Jovi, and ‘Radio Ga Ga’ by Queen.

Wider World

As relieving as it is to be rid of President Trump, the honeymoon is already over with Biden. In late February he launched military air strikes in Syria, continuing a decades-long trend of American military intervention in the region.

Trump’s obnoxiousness was often a distraction from the genuine intractability of the problems facing the world. Here in the UK, there is genuine optimism that life will return to something resembling pre-coronavirus normalcy by the end of 2021. Still, the social and economic fallout has yet to be understood.

With the Conservative Party, whose disastrous governance has led the UK to a world-leading death toll and the worst recession in three centuries, leading in the polls, I am reminded of this poem by Erich Fried.

What Happens

It has happened

and it goes on happening

and will happen again

if nothing happens to stop it.

The innocent know nothing

because they are too innocent

and the guilty know nothing

because they are too guilty.

The poor don’t take notice

because they’re too poor

and the rich don’t take notice

because they’re too rich.

The stupid shrug their shoulders

because they’re too stupid

and the clever shrug their shoulders

because they’re too clever.

The young don’t care

because they’re too young

and the old don’t care

because they’re too old.

That’s why nothing happens

to stop it

and that is why it has happened

and goes on happening and will happen again.