2009 – another new year, another innocently looking child with the future in its hands. For me it began rather miserable – the first cold I caught in nearly seven years. I submitted some of my music to Stillstream, a rather large ambient netradio station, and was surprised to learn just the next day that the founder of the radio himself had downloaded the files and and even confirmed it per email, stating he would probably give it a listen within the week. So apparently it’s under evaluation but I don’t expect Stillstrean to accept it, because I reckon the music is too complicated for their clientele. I’m curious about the rejection message, though. Perhaps they do not get back to me at all to avoid troubleful conversations with deadly offended musicians – in my experience it’s the mediocre poseurs who scream the loudest insisting on their right to entitlement.

Let’s switch to the Dutch John Peel and his NTNS netradio show. Last autumn, two Petcord releases were featured in this show:
Frontal Grid by me and Steven’s Drifts 1-4. Now that the old year’s gone, Mark compiled his traditional “best of” compilation for the last quarter of the past year and surprisingly both Steven and me made it on his compilation. Has it made any impact yet? Not really, according to my server logs. But it would be surprising to see many visitors clicking all the links on the pages ;-).

The weather is not less interesting this year. Having had an unusually long lasting cold spell since Christmas, a thick blanket of snow has been added to the mix since yesterday (and it’s still snowing). As the cold spell will last at least for another week, this means I finally, after years of missed opportunities, will be able to shoot a b/w series of winter pictures. The problem with the region I life in is that you either have a cold spell without snow or a snow blanket that hardly survives the next day. Rarely can you have it both ways and this is the reason why there’s not much snow to be seen on my winter pictures.

What else could happen this year?

I don’t know. Unlike previous years, I haven’t got the slightest idea. The child is irritatedly looking at me, expecting me to react in some kind of a way. I opt for passing by, as too often have I announced things that did or could not take place. Annoucements seem the best way to destroy events, because by the time the word is out, they have to happen. They were simply thrown into this world without any choice given. Sometimes they are superceded by unexpected turns in life one cannot foresee:
I could as well be insane a few months. Rather than completing another composition or project, I could be busy with taking my medicine, staring at a white wall and unconsciously drawing circles and loops on a piece of paper. Fuzzy memories of a past life, blurred faces, voices and smells. I might face a sudden death, one second aware of myself playing the piano and another surrounded by darkness and nothingness. Maybe the other second is like watching my body fall over the keyboard and wondering about the force driving me upwards. Nobody knows.