Going down to Cardiff Today

Due to go down to Cardiff today to see Bob Dylan and then the following night on to Bournemouth to see him there as well. These are his only UK dates in what is a medium size European tour which after here is going across to France and Germany for a couple of dates before heading south. I can’t say that the fires of enthusiasm are burning bright at the moment. It seems quite an effort to haul myself down to Cardiff in the car and then join the crowds an hour or so before the show queuing outside the arena. Is this what my life has become in terms of what I have to do to seek enjoyment? It seems sometimes to be a hard way of going about things. Standing for a few hours in a crowded sweaty concert hall surrounded by people a good few of whom are getting progressively more and more drunk is not necessarily the most relaxing activity in the world but there we are… as with all things I have made my bed so I shall have to lie in it. Of course those things are really no the point as they are just things that have to be put up with in order to get to see Bob Dylan perform and in that regard I am still confident it is an event worth making sacrifices for.

There are unlikely to be any surprises as far as the set list goes however, in fact I can almost guarantee it and I will be very lucky if I get to hear even one song that I haven’t heard before. The idea that Bob continually springs shocks and surprises on his audiences by way of the songs he chooses to play is a complete myth. For the most part his Never Ending Tour over the last few years has become unrelentingly predictable. Maybe he just enjoys it too much as it is and knows that he need to not over exert himself. Maybe it is also just a little bit too soon to be seeing him again after the November run of shows at the Brixton Academy out of which I went to three but whatever it is I am not particularly looking forward to these two shows at the moment. But then again maybe I am just concentrating a little bit too much on the negative and have temporarily forgotten what it is that makes get and pay money to see him play live. We shall see, things can change after all and I might return invigorated and more than ready to go on with facing the trials of life.

I was thinking last night about what it is I do and I honestly think that in terms of interests and hobbies I have very little going for me. I always have a book on the go but I can hardly say that I am an expert on anything and can quite easily forget the facts about whatever it is I am supposedly studying. I have a fair collection of CDs but I can happily go for days not listening to music if I saw choose so at times I am hardly a music fanatic. As far as other things go, well I used to meditate on and off for a good few years but if truth be told I haven’t really been able to sit and attune myself for the best part of a year now; it is as if I just begin to feel overwhelmingly tired as soon as I sit down on a cushion and attempt to follow the in and out flow of my breath. So meditation is very much on a back burner and besides if I really analyse what my practice constituted then I have to hold my hands up and admit that I never got to any great degree of calm and concentration when I did it anyway. Apart from those things there is really nothing else that I do apart from being married to my wife and trying my best to be a good husband…something that I no doubt fail at day after day. As far as practical things are concerned like going down the end of the garden and knocking up something really ingeneous with a hammer nails and a few bit of wood you can just forget it as I truly would not have a clue. And then as far as work is concerned, well I have been doing more or less the same job for the last 16 years so it doesn’t really take that to imagine what kind of rut I have got myself into as far as that is concerned, and maybe this is a good enough point to say this can be continued at some other time before things get a bit too dark and ominous.