Shortcuts

Shortcuts often seem alluring in their promise to get us somewhere we want to be faster than we thought possible, but most of the time they don’t really work, and anyway, sometimes we use them to get to a place that we don’t really want to be.

I’m in the garden painting the third coat on the table and chairs and trying to listen to the early evening birdsong but the sweet sound is being drowned out by the singer in a covers band strangling a Stereophonics song in the park over a mile away.

I can see the attraction of playing tunes people know because it tends to provide a shortcut to popularity of sorts.

When I was in bands we never played any covers, refusing to “sell out” and determined to peddle our own original material.

It did not propel us to the stardom I thought I wanted but did lead us to gigs where we played to three or four people, two of whom might have been playing the fruit machine, and on one notable occasion, we were paid to stop playing after being erroneously booked into a working men’s club that probably expected some Buddy Holly and a bit of Hank Snow.

Even when we won a national “Battle Of The Bands” contest in the mid-80s it wasn’t a shortcut to the fame I hadn’t yet realised I would have been woefully unsuited to.

I wouldn’t be painting the garden furniture if I hadn’t tried to shortcut the job the last time.

Preparing the surfaces is so tedious so I imagined that a cursory flourish with the sandpaper would do but the paint was flaking before that autumn was even properly into its stride.

In the years since I have learned more about myself and found a new level of empathy with my more compulsive and impatient side, so I take my time and try to soothe the pangs of frustration as they arise like a doting father caring for his misunderstood son.

I use the meditative strokes of the brush not to wonder how quickly I can get to the end but to reflect on where I have come from and what I’ve learned on the way.

My mind turns to a dream I’ve been having recently where authors of books I enjoy have been explaining their creative process whether I have wanted them to or not which becomes very irritating very quickly.

I guess my dream is to do with my own determination to improve my writing and all the attempts I made to take shortcuts until I realised that they neither worked nor helped me get anywhere I really wanted to be.

In an early exchange with an editor, I tell her,

“I’m an aspiring writer,” and “I’ve been writing every day for the past twelve years and publishing a post every week for ten of those.”

She writes back,

“Saying you are an aspiring writer and that you have been writing every day for more than a decade is a hilarious juxtaposition.”

It turns out I just wasn’t the writer I thought I wanted to be, but when we discussed it I could see that probably I am and that most of my attempted shortcuts were pointless anyway.

As I finish the last chair I ponder on the possibility of a fourth coat.

A blackbird sings with such gusto and purpose that it’s almost possible to ignore Robbie Williams’ “Angels” being murdered somewhere across town.