So it seems that the idiotic government is about to impose a national lockdown. It seems like all of their measures are too late and too weak, and these have frustratingly continued to be so over the whole year. Perhaps the New Zealand or Chinese model of 'full lockdowns' to reduce the virus to near-zero could be, in the long term, foolish, if a vaccine proves to be impossible - they are merely delaying the effects that the other countries are now experiencing - and perhaps, at the start of the outbreak, a fear of the impossibility of an effective vaccine might have been genuine - although even then, any action to delay the spread of Covid would have been beneficial simply because it would have given valuable time to learn about the virus and to prepare health systems.
Yet it now seems almost certain that a vaccine is possible, and of course, a vaccine is considerably safer and more effective and preventing Covid-19 than actually catching the virus. The government should have, from the start, followed strict quarantine rules, which, as an island nation and with weeks of advance warning from continental Europe, would have easily been possible, one of the easiest of all western nations - in line with New Zealand, Iceland, Ireland and other single island states. Yet, they failed and continue to fail to take the correct actions. The situation is frustrating, and most people seem to take their own action in lieu of the vaccuum of competance or direction by the government.
Anyway, life goes on as it can.
My solution to my artistic problem is to keep working at the music until I'm happy with it. I will set aside the Joey Deacon song for now, and perhaps rerecord it as a folk song one day. The song made me think that the word 'spastic' in English became a pejorative taboo word largely because of the fun children made of Joey's appearance on Blue Peter. The effect should have been predicted, and, perhaps like childhood games was innocent in itself, yet, became embarrasing, then taboo, sad, negative, and ultimately insulting. I thought perhaps, almost in a dutiful way, that my song could do something to restore the shunned word and shine a light of beauty on the whole experience in the way that art can.
I've re-worked The Invisible Man, adding a new solo guitar section and will keep working on this; I'm much happier with it now. I have re-written the words to a song, 'I, Sisyphus', too, which has a stioc and defiant mood, similar to I Care. Both of these perhaps reflect current times and my current mood more than The Invisible Man, which is about being forgotten, ignored, lost; but I think I could pull them together artistically, and both have some relevance to current times.
Let us roll our rock. The summit of the hill is in sight again today.
