Day 21 (but actually Day 162) – Musically conflicted

Yesterday evening, my son asked me how many blog posts I had written on here. I had a quick look at my back end (careful now) and was able to give him an exact figure.

It’s 5236.

[audience gasps]

[see?]

Of those 5236 posts, 5230 have been published and are available for your reading “pleasure”.
Two more are sitting in drafts: one for legal reasons and one because it’s a test for a new app/plugin which I might try sometime in the future.

And then there are three posts which I have marked as private because I changed my viewpoint(s) on the contentious issues therein. Yes, I could simply delete them, but sometimes it’s worth (privately) revisiting and reviewing how you felt about something in 2009 and how you’ve matured and educated yourself in the intervening period.

Beagle-eyed readers will have done some rudimentary calculations and worked out that we’re still one short.

This can like to be that post.

I wrote it on April 16th – 21 days into our lockdown here in SA. But I never published it. If you go back to look at what I did publish on Day 21, you’ll see this:

I have no idea why this rather ordinary piece of writing and this rather ordinary photo managed to usurp my original planned effort. But it did.

As described above, there are a few good reasons for why the posts that you can’t see are where they are.

This one… not so much.

And so, for no other reason than to tidy up my drafts folder, here’s what I wrote about in my post for Day 21 of the lockdown. Just look at the first couple of lines.

Nothing has changed, has it?

Anyway, please enjoy it.
But watch out if you’re a fan of bagpipes. They don’t come out of this well.

______________________

 

Everyone’s fighting about hydroxychloroquine, face masks, Trump and lockdown.
Online is not a pleasant place to be. Except here, of course.

Or is it?
Because I’m about to share some really good music that’s arguably been ruined by the worst instrument in the world.

But has it actually been ruined?
The jury’s still out, because the song is really, really good and the worst instrument in the world has at least been through a bit of a production process and isn’t (quite) the usual horrific squawking sound like a seagull being sexually violated that bagpipes (yeah, I said it!) usually are.

As you can see, this is Conor Oberst back in his old guise as Bright Eyes, and this is just a beautiful story of a guy giving in – against his better judgement – to his ex-lover. It’s not clear if the ex-lover brings the surprise bagpipes, but that would make his (already likely flawed) judgement call even worse.

If the bagpipes bit was done on a synth, I’d be much, much happier. Completely at peace with continually listening to this and adding it to my Spotify playlists. Because otherwise, it’s lovely.

As it is, I’m having to limit the number of repeats in order not to drive myself up the flippin’ wall each time the Middle 8 comes around.