Author: thekev

When I was off booze for Lent, I did weight training at least twice a week. By the end, I was deadlifting almost double my weight. Even after all this exercise I didn’t actually get any lighter (damned Easter eggs).

This fitness will be put to a significant test when I complete the Four Peaks Challenge, for a very good cause. Things that may not be for a good cause, but are nonetheless important to me, include:

Activities

Business is good but could get better. I have made what will hopefully be the first of many video recordings of one of my Chinese lessons. It is for Intermediate reading, and on the subject of myths and legends:

I’m also delighted to announce that I am now set to be published in Litro, a first-rate literary magazine. My first article will be a review of the novel ‘Solo Dance’ by Li Kotomi, and will appear within the next few months. 

Output

Of The Kev songs I’ve written since the launch night last November, this new one (demo here) is probably my favourite. I look forward to recording it in studio:

This month’s miscellaneous cover was ‘Baila Me’ by The Gipsy Kings:

The song is in the Spanish dialect of Gitane, a traveller language that is a mixture of Spanish, French and Catalan. I’ve always wanted to be conversant in Spanish, and every day of this month I have been studying it hard on Duolingo, a website I should have started using years ago.

Wider World

Toward the end of the month, UK Deputy Opposition Leader Angela Rayner was subjected to sexism in The Daily Mail, the nation’s most popular newspaper, accused of crossing and uncrossing her legs to distract male adversaries. The following week, a Member of Parliament for the ruling Conservative Party was reported to be under investigation for watching pornography while parliament was in session. News of misbehaving politicians doesn’t interest me much. Relations between the sexes does.

One of my song lyrics contains the theory that pornography could go the same way as slavery, and our distant descendants may think us monsters for normalising it. I don’t really believe that, but I read a lot by ‘sex-negative’ feminists. In an interview, self-described ‘reactionary feminist’ Mary Harrington has argued that “a measure of sexual repression is necessary in order not to become completely desensitized to erotic stimuli.”

I recently revisited Herman Hesse’s debut novel Peter Camenzind. Having gone to an all-boys’ school and having no sisters, I could very much relate to the early passage: ‘I have always honoured the female sex as a strange and mysterious race superior to the male by virtue of its inherent beauty and singleness of being’.

If I had been alive three-hundred years ago, I may not have owned slaves, or traded slaves, but I would presumably have been in some way complicit in the trade. And I view modern social problems like systemic sexism in a similar manner. A minuscule percentage of people are serious offenders, but everybody is on the spectrum when it comes to being part of the problem.

I have read a lot of feminists who are ideologically opposed to the sex industry, including Julie Bindel, Jo Bartosch, and newly published Mia Döring. I have also read a lot by those on the opposite side of the debate, including Maggie McNeill, Laura Agustin, Camille Paglia and Brooke Magnanti.

Ultimately, I agree with a quote from another novel I recently re-read, Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Notebooks of Don Rigoberto: ‘Ideologies (like feminism) create levelling forms of oppression that are generally worse than the despotisms against which they rebelled’. That is, trying to crack down on something just because it is morally dubious is a slippery and unappealing slope.

Well, to quote a character in Alan Bennet’s play ‘The History Boys’: ‘History? It’s just one ****ing thing after another’. When I was a kid, anyone who was old enough to have fought in a world war was already of pensionable age. And I was only seven when the Soviet Union – seemingly the last great opponent of liberal democracy and Western hegemony – collapsed.

It was tempting to buy into the popular misreading of Francis Fukuyama and believe that history was over. But now it is very much back, and unlike our forebears in the first half of the twentieth century, we cannot just go and fight for our chosen cause, since weapons of war have developed to the point that using them is unthinkable.

Activities

One pupil has moved from four to eight lessons a week, so business is good. To boost public awareness, I am still holding twice-monthly free lessons via The Mandarin Club. I also did my first freelance work for a gaming company that translates instructions from Chinese. On the downside, I missed out on several freelance gigs that I really wanted and turned down several others that weren’t quite right.

Since writing is a personal passion project, I am generally reluctant to take it on as a paid job. It will be some time before I have much to show for it, but I have some essays, books reviews, and comedy sketches that I have finished writing and should make an appearance this year.

While applying for a tutoring gig, I came across a quote that I once listed as among my all-time favourites. It is by the Paraguayan guitarist Agustin Barrios Mangore: “One cannot be a guitarist without bathing in the fountain of culture”.

Though seemingly elitist, it is true that one cannot get the inspiration to create without standing on the shoulders of giants. Having been off booze for Lent this entire month, I have read on average over a novel a week. The absorption of great literature will hopefully manifest itself in weird and wonderful ways.  

Output

This month’s miscellaneous cover is ‘Angel’ by Jimi Hendrix, a song said to be inspired by a dream vision of his mother, who died when he was a teenager:

The next The Kev album is coming along nicely. I think I have an appropriate song for near the beginning

and the end

There is a line in ‘Empty Your Mind’ part 1 about helping people forget their ‘grey little lives’. But now the unglamorous lives of ordinary people are being affected by global affairs in ways that are impossible to ignore.

Wider World

At the start of this year, the UK, like much of the rich world, was already destined to face a cost-of-living crisis. Now the war in Ukraine is set to wreak havoc on energy prices. This reminds me of an extract from David Lodge’s 1988 novel ‘Nice Work’ which observes how a housewife switching on a kettle is blissfully unaware of many things:

the building and maintenance of the power station that produced the electricity, the mining of coal or pumping of oil to fuel the generators, the laying of miles of cable to carry the current to her house, the digging and smelting and milling of ore or bauxite into sheets of steel or aluminium, the cutting and pressing and welding of the metal into the kettle’s shell, spout and handle, the assembling of these parts with scores of other components – coils, screws, nuts, bolts, washers, rivets, wires, springs, rubber insulation, plastic trimmings; then the packaging of the kettle, the advertising of the kettle, the marketing of the kettle to wholesale and retail outlets, the transportation of the kettle to warehouses and shops, the calculation of its price, and the distribution of its added value between all the myriad people and agencies concerned in its production.

You can read the whole extract here.

As of this week (April 1st), utility bills here are set to skyrocket, as caused by global phenomena. Unlike a century ago, history has decided to put the pandemic ahead of the major war in Europe. Although those times are no longer within living memory, from what we know about humans and history, the world somehow muddles through and learns as little as possible.

I always wondered what it would be like to live through major historical moments. Now I know. It sucks.

Still, we can’t stop living our little lives. Speaking of which, a new song I wrote covers the issue of modern warfare. Here are some things I’ve been up to this month.

Output

I was very pleased to finish my latest Chinese song this month 《某个地方的某个人》， which is roughly my third from last ever piece of Chinese-language song-writing.   It would have been nice to have become more famous and got more media attention over these more than ten years of creating Chinese lyrics, but not being prominent on the radar of the Chinese government has its advantages.

I didn’t bother adding subtitles this time because it is pretty much a translation of my English song ‘Someone Somewhere’.

I also finished two new English songs, ‘Glorious Times’ and ‘Bucket List’ and a new classical guitar video.

Activities

Attempts at getting more non-fiction published this year have been at a stuttering start. I have written an article about Tom Lehrer titled ‘The Twentieth Century’s Most Unassuming Literary Genius’. In March I will rewrite it and try to find another home for it.

Tutoring is still going well but I’m always trying to expand my business. This month, I held two free sample Mandarin lessons and in March will hold one for beginners and another for intermediate readers.

I have also started a new series of covers in which, unlike before, I use a proper mic set-up. The first in the series is ‘Where Angels Play’ by The Stone Roses.

Wider World

One of the most talked about books of the past decade was ‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’, a door-stopper in which psychologist Steven Pinker argues that we are living through a ‘long peace’ and violence has progressively decreased over the course of history. Most of his arguments could also have been made in 1913, before the collective suicide of Europe.

Times change but of course human nature never does. A megalomaniac in charge of a powerful country has started a war for territorial expansion over a historical claim.  This has again been enabled by the West’s complacency.

Somehow Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy or Brazil, has tentacles all around the world. In the UK, the ruling Conservative Party has accepted £2.3 million in Russian donations since the current prime minister took office.

I don’t judge people for getting involved with unscrupulous players. I had my dealings with China (a country that is highly likely to start a war of aggression against Taiwan at some point in the 2020s), but the way so many people have allowed themselves to accept dirty money reminds me of a quote from former Literature professor John Carey: “The face of evil is neither fearsome nor formidable. The face of evil is weak, self-serving, and a bit pathetic. Not so unlike our own.”

Having completed Dry January, I got a lot done this month both creatively and professionally. This year I am also going to give up drinking for Lent and Sober October, and maybe in 2023 it will be OYNB (one year no beer).

Activities

To boost business, I have started offering free online Mandarin lessons at least once a month. At the moment, one of the lessons is for absolute beginners and another is in intermediate reading.

I am also hosting various events related to both language and music. Six months’ worth of China Book Clubs have already been scheduled. The next is ‘Little Gods’ by Meng Jin.

Output

When it comes to future albums or gigs, a song is either a show-stopper or not worth including. This month I finished two English songs – one about a lover with a heroic flaw and a mock pop anthem – but will probably rework them later as they are both in the demo stage.

I have also finished a new classical guitar video:

Wider World

The world is watching nervously at the prospect of Russia invading Ukraine. That is, the democratic world. China is less afraid. Although not technically allies, Russia and China have increased military cooperation in recent years. A war in Europe could empower China to take Taiwan while the West is distracted, as the nationalistic blogger Huashan Qiong Jian has said.

Alexander Gabuev, a China expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center think-tank, has said: “If war happens, it will be a huge distraction for the US. For China, that would be an opportunity of the same magnitude as 2014.”

As the recent Peng Shuai episode has shown, the Chinese Communist Party is as autocratic, thuggish, and opaque as it ever was. There are a million things wrong with the West, but when I compare the two, I am reminded of a quote from Clive James, ‘Democracy is even more important for what it prevents than for what it provides.’

For me, and many others, 2021 is ending as it started, under house arrest. I have just tested positive for COVID for the first time. I’m 37 and fully caught up with vaccines so should be fine but will take things slowly in the coming days. December has been another busy month.

Activities

To increase and diversify business, I have joined a new tutoring platform, Music Tutors. It is a sleek and highly reputable organization that I can’t wait to start teaching over.

This month’s main piece of writing is an essay about why I am abandoning a major writing project, for the time being. It contains a bit of literary commentary and mostly memoir. It was cathartic to write.

Output

If I write half as many songs in 2022 as I did in 2021, then it will have been a good year. The final song I wrote this year is another long, experimental one. It is titled ‘Music to Make Love to’

Wider World

This month’s China Book Club was Philip Pan’s ‘Out of Mao’s Shadow’, which was published in 2008. It begins by pointing out that at the time of writing, China was going through the freest and most prosperous period in its long history. But the book covers the battle for the soul of the People’s Republic and the various characters involved:

On one side is the venal party-state, an entrenched elite fighting to preserve the country’s authoritarian political system and its privileged place within it. On the other is a ragtag collection of lawyers, journalists, entrepreneurs, artists, hustlers, and dreamers striving to build a more tolerant, open, and democratic China.

The year after the book was published, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter were all blocked in China. Now the entire non-Chinese internet is effectively closed. This month, the behaviour of the authoritarian government has reached new lows.

Police arrested six members of Stand, an independent news organisation, which has also been closed down. This took place in Hong Kong, where the world’s most trusted news outlets had been stationing themselves for many decades, due to the relative lack of corruption or despotism.

Then there is of course the bizarre case of tennis player Peng Shuai, who accused former member of China’s highest ruling council Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault. Her re-emergence has somehow managed to be even more disturbing than her initial appearance.

This all supports the conclusion reached in ‘Out of Mao’s Shadow’, that the government of one of the world’s two superpowers is both to be reckoned with and ‘irredeemably corrupt’.

Year-End Roundup

This year has been creatively excellent, professionally passable, and romantically mediocre. Business as usual really.

The first few months of the year, when restrictions were at their tightest, I lived in a rental while trying to push a purchase through. At that time, I:

• Wrote several songs that ended up on the latest The Kev album, including ‘Someone Somewhere’, ‘The Great British Indie Song’, and ‘Cancel Me’.
• With businesses being closed, options for romantic gestures were thin on the ground, so I wrote what I think are my two best non-offensive love songs, ‘Far Away’ and ‘Open Gates’.
• Finally got a mortgage.

Overall, I have:

• Built and consolidated several professional relationships and made some money along the way.
• Published my first short story collection, ‘The Naked Wedding’, which was the product of years of agonizing toil. Here is a Q&A about the book.
• Recorded in a studio with an actual producer, plus drummer and bass player for the first time. The result is by some distance the best production quality any of my songs have ever had.
• Recorded many new Spanish guitar videos, including renditions of ‘The Flower Duet’ and ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’
• The year was bookended by gigs that I consider highlights of my creative life. One was in February, an online showcase of my Chinese-language songwriting

• The other was in November, the long-delayed triple album launch