BLOG 2012

I've already tweeted and posted on Facebook that the 80-year young artist Laffanki who painted Silent Valley (the inspiration behind the song) got in touch with me earlier this week. It was a very pleasant surprise to be told how this artist appreciated that one of his works had been liked and had inspired someone else's creativity. I didn't want the fact to be lost in Twitter/Facebookland and felt it should also be documented in these pages too.

In his message, Laffanki told me how he still paints and sculpts and also works part-time in an art gallery in one of the most beautiful parts of the English countryside, up in the Lake District town of Hawkshead, Cumbria. His website www.laffanki.co.uk is well worth a visit and I'm impressed that he maintains the website himself. It's very tempting to make the trip up there to just say hello and meet him; maybe even get my fifteen-year old print of Silent Valley signed.

Silent Valley took me a long time to write. For many years I tried but just didn't get anywhere and yet I had a sense that there was something to be written. And then, all of a sudden the pieces came together and became something which feels greater than what I ever thought I was capable of. If I have a talent for any of this I think it's having this sense that there is "something to be written" and hanging on in there; sometimes I even have this idea that I'm not creating anything at all but discovering something that already exists, a bit like an archeologist. The accompanying music is straight forward and is missing a middle-eight which I was either too lazy to divine or felt wasn't needed. I'm flattered that having seen me play it quite a few times now Luke Paulo has expressed an interest in accompanying me and rerecording the song. That'd be cool.

It's hard to put my finger on it and maybe I'm just looking for meaning in something that isn't anymore than what it is but Laffanki making the effort to get in touch feels significant somehow. Almost like completing a circle. Others have said the same too. It's a weird feeling. But a good one too, particularly in relation to what I think is a special song.