Day 34

Thursday March 25

Oh dear. Sarah’s on the unpredictable path again. She comes into our room today, pretty much unannounced – fair enough; that’s how it goes in this communal, walking round the apartment, into each others’ rooms naked, food sharing thing we have going now. But it’s far from a friendly visit. Out of nowhere she says she doesn’t want to work with us anymore. The reason? We read her some of our lyrics yesterday and she’s latched onto one line, totally misunderstood it and put her own interpretation on it. She’s saying that it was our subconscious way of telling her we didn’t want to work with her so she’s deciding now that we won’t. Er, what?

The offending line is. ‘With others it’s not the same.’ This is a line comparing our relationship with the way we, or most people, are with other people; external stimuli are usually required to hang out – TV, drinking, music, video/boardgames, sport, whatever. We’re saying in that song, and it’s quite clear, that for me and Maja to hang out with each other, we often require absolutely no external stimuli or diversions. Remember that first five days? The two of us and the ceiling. No TV, music, reading or alcohol. Nothing. There’s no-one either of us has ever spent time with that way. With others it’s not the same. Most people need activities to do when they hang out. Even the best of friends. We often don’t. With others it’s not the same. Without even talking to us about this, Sarah has decided it means that we work well when it’s just the two of us, but when others become involved it’s not the same. Meaning, in her world, we think that when she’s involved it’s not the same. Who would deliver a message like that in such a subliminal way and expect it to be understood? This is totally twisting words we’ve actually written down and read to her. This is not the last time she will get angry with us for something we may or may not have been thinking. The difference is that this time we’re able to persuade her that she’s got it all wrong. She eventually leaves the room having been convinced of that, saying she loves working with us and hopes it continues and continues. Well, that’s what she’s saying now. But working with us? We’ve done one 20 minute rehearsal and had every other rehearsal since then cancelled. But at least we’ve averted a bad atmosphere. For now.

Maja:

An artist comes over to leave some art supplies and Mark says hello. I spend the time singing. Afterwards, we talk a bit more to Sarah, who has been talking to a female friend of hers who is currently living in Scotland. This friend wants to live in London and Sarah says she’s offered her a room here so she will probably move in with us. So now, from being offered our own apartment, it’s gone to Dee has moved in – although we’ve yet to fully see evidence of that – to someone else might be moving in. At this rate, even if Sarah ever does go away saying it’s ‘our’ place, at any given time we feel there could be a knock on the door and it could be someone we don’t know saying they live here now.

We feel a little unsettled about all this, but are still resolved to make the most of the opportunity. We go back to our room and decide to practice some easy singing. This is where Mark puts on some music, plays along to it on the bass and I sing along to what’s playing. First we go for a couple of Jack Johnsson songs, then we try Laleh which Mark totally doesn’t get, then we go for RHCP. I’m used to singing RHCP, so when I do that, I can finally get some power in my voice and it feels more like it used to. We’re trying to make out some parts of Californication and feeling pretty good about it when Sarah comes into our room, saying she wants to film this great vibe we have going. But all we’re doing is singing along to famous songs. This really isn’t something we want recorded and put out there. This is also totally destroying the flow we’d got into. But OK. Mark decides to go for what she wants and says A1 – we’ve developed a few shorthand codes for playing together. A1 is a particular type of simple groove that I play and then he solos over it. So I have to grab my bass, tune up and find a groove. It doesn’t go well and it completely breaks our flow. I end up just playing A. Mark tries to solo over it, but his concentration after having his own momentum broken as well isn’t quite having it. We both feel pressured and frustrated over the situation and we have to tell Sarah it just isn’t happening and to please not use whatever she’s just recorded. She says, ‘No problem. Deleted.’ Great. Then we try to get back to what we were doing before she barged in, but with the frustration in the air, it just isn’t happening. We look at each other with a sigh and just know. So we stop, take a shower, and go on a walk just to refresh our minds. It’s lovely outside, but with the frustration in the air, it just doesn’t feel nice. All we can think is that we had finally started doing something and it felt good, and then that feeling just got stolen from us. And put onto virtual videotape. That, along with everything having changed from what we were originally told when we first moved in, has really taken the shine off the whole thing. Exactly where is this all going?