He’s always been there, ever since I can remember. Chipping in with helpful comments, just when they’re most needed.
What kind of a beginning to a blog post is that?
Shush.
For a long time I called him Internal Judging Voice. He’s irritating, has nothing useful to say, and I wish he’d go away. So now I call him Donald.
Hey!
Fuck off, Donald.
That feels quite good, actually.
It was Donald who told me, when I was trying to make a living as a percussionist, that I wasn’t working hard enough, I wasn’t good enough, and what kind of an instrument is percussion anyway? Not a proper instrument, like the violin. No coincidence that my father played the violin as well as you could ever want anyone to play the violin.
It was Donald who told me, when I made the switch from percussion to conducting, that I wasn’t going to make it, taking as the basis for his bullying the core assumption that all conductors need to aim for the Music Directorship of the Berlin Philharmonic, and that those who don’t achieve that lofty goal are, by definition, failures. It took several years for me to wrestle him to the ground and make him realise that while the view from the top of Everest is indeed spectacular, the Cotswolds also have much to offer.
It was Donald who sat on my shoulder every time I committed words to screen, telling me not to bother because it was shit and I didn’t have the talent or the patience to finish anything, let alone anything that people in their right minds would want to read.
It’s Donald who collates GIFS of the most embarrassing moments of my life, ready to project them into my head at a moment’s notice. That time in 1975/1994/2001 when I said that appallingly embarrassing/mean-spirited/insensitive thing to my best friend/mother/Pope? Loaded up and ready to screen at a visual cortex near me, any time I start feeling halfway good about myself.
If all this makes it seem like I’m ruled by Donald, that he’s a constant presence, then perhaps I’m overstating the case. He’s as good as inaudible most of the time, tiny of voice, a sliver of white noise deep in the background, allowing more constructive internal dialogues to predominate.
But give him an opportunity and he’ll crowbar his way back in.
Sometimes, just sometimes, Donald has a point.
Just gonna sit there all day watching Frasier, huh?
Yup.
Housework to be done, scores to learn, chapters to edit, and you’re watching Frasier.
I’m honing my craft. Look, I’m making notes on Martin’s role as the Everyman in the classic template of the situation comedy.
And your situation comedy, the one that you’re writing, how’s that coming along?
Fuck off, Donald.
He popped up again this week, briefly, to warn me against taking the day off to go on a long walk with my two brothers-in-law. I dismissed him with the nonchalance of a man flicking dandruff off his collar. I’ve got good at that, learning to recognise the difference between Good Donald and Awful Donald – walking a long section of the Capital Ring, in good company and sunshine, is a waste of nobody’s time.
We walked from Balham station, through streets of Victorian and Edwardian houses, their value inflated beyond all reason, one-time villages joined by the inexorable spread of suburbia.
We walked through Wandsworth, crossing the River Wandle, one of south London’s more visible ‘hidden rivers’, at Earlsfield. There we leaned over the bridge and hoped to see a heron perched on the concrete by the river’s edge, but had to make do with the chirp of a house sparrow from the roof opposite.
We walked through Wimbledon Park, briefly heckled by a carrion crow foraging on the municipal tennis courts.
We stopped for tea at the Wimbledon Windmill Tearooms. A goldcrest sang its ludicrously high (7 kHz or so, 2.5 kHz higher than the highest note of the piccolo – you’re welcome), piping song from the depths of a conifer. Donald popped up to remind me that at some point in the future the outer reaches of my hearing range will deteriorate to such an extent that I won’t be able to hear the goldcrest’s song any more. Peak Donald – I paid him no mind.
We communed with nature – two redwings foraging on the ground, a dozen starlings whistling and chirping from the top of a London plane, blackthorn coming tentatively into blossom – each little hit breathing life into the soul.
We came to that moment in Richmond Park, the crest of a hill, where you stand and look down on Richmond and the world beyond, and because you’ve walked ten miles you stop a second and give a satisfied sigh and think yes this is good.
Jackdaws flew in front of us, their calls spreading through the flock like snooker balls at the break. A ring-necked parakeet perched above, all green plumage, red eye and piercing squawks.
‘Humans! Three of ‘em! Chattin’ some proper shit, by the sound of it.’
We were, it is true, chattin’ some awful shit, a discursive conversation full of ideas and tangents and nonsense. Just the thing to keep you going for twelve cold miles.
And then we reached the end and I took my leave and went home, weary but aglow with the satisfaction brought on by physical exercise in the great outdoors.
Mail on the table. Bills, catalogues, magazines. The Bookseller. Organ of the book trade, complete with 16’ diapason.
And there it was, looking up at me from the ‘New Titles – May: Non-fiction, Natural History and Pets’ section. A cover design that is now as familiar to me as my fingernails.
My own book.
It’s such a small thing. No more than a listing, really, one of hundreds each week. But it’s there, and for some reason, even though I’ve pitched, funded, written, submitted, edited this book, even though I’ve always known it was going to be as real as the rotting banana in the fruit bowl by my elbow, and even though I know I’m being vain and proud and egotistical, I take a moment (ok, maybe ten minutes), to sit and think about the nature of achievement, because if it’s in The Bookseller then it really is a thing that is definitely going to happen.
I issue a final message to Donald.
Stand down, pal. You’re relieved.
Of course, he’ll pop up soon enough to remind me of that time I went up to an old friend in the street and gave them a bear hug from behind, only to discover that it was a bewildered and unsympathetic stranger. Of course he will. That’s his job. It’s what he does.
But for now, Donald can do one.
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This is genius. From this day forward my inner critic shall also be known as ‘The Donald’.
Really enjoying your blog. I have a vivid memory from lots of years ago (which I do not, for a nanosecond, expect you to recall), of a performance of Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel with the Elysian Singers, in which you were playing percussion and I was the soprano soloist. I remember pitching a note from your temple blocks, this being slightly more reliable than pulling it out of thin air.
Thank you! You won’t believe this, but I DO remember that concert, mostly because it remains the only time I’ve ever played any Feldman. Matthew Greenall played a piano piece, I remember. It must be twenty years ago, I should think. Thanks for reading and hello again!