Renuisance.

And so here it is. The last day of my thirties.

I’d like to say that I’d given this significant calendarial moment some weighty emotional consideration as I watched it march toward me out of the diary, but the truth is that I’ve spent so much of this year either waiting for files to upload to music websites or waiting for unforeseen problems from solicitors or waiting in queues for telecom call centre operatives that I’ve kind of backed into it with a little surprised yelp. This big yeti of a date.

However I’m supposed to be feeling about it, decade number five does indeed begin tomorrow.

And they’re telling me it’s when my whole life will begin.

This first bit doesn’t count, apparently.

Thank crap for that. Because everything will be different this time, baby, I promise.

—

So how will I be reborn, d’you think? In this whole new life?

Well, it is true that I have already been radically re-cast as a house owner. Like a terrible format change to court a whole new audience. It’s not realistic. The characters just wouldn’t do that.

I mean. Me. Living in a whole bleedin’ house. I’ve been a flatlander all my life and now I get to both go up to bed AND just outside to the garden. Weird. I sometimes have to go up to the bedroom just to look down at the garden before going down and out to it, just to feel normal when taking the bins out. I’ll acclimatise, I’m sure.

It’s true too that, though the Arnewood studio is now gone, with a must-be-admitted moistening of the eyes, the forthcoming weeks will see a less romantic-looking but worryingly proper-looking new studio take shape. Momo 2.0 is on the way, I can say. Though you can bet your life that while it will involve a spot of nice re-badging, there will be little fundamental overhaul of the basic operating system.

And, dare I consider it, I have slightly more work lined up for Momo:tempo in the coming weeks than Momo:typo, as I write. That’s new.

I even have an album coming out officially. November 1st, they say. That too, is conspicuously new. Even if the tunes aren’t. Or the continuing lack of launch gig venue.

But maybe, if some whole new ‘re-birth’ is meant to kick in on Wednesday morning, I need to make it happen. By levering open the little-accessed maintenance panel that adjusts the attitude matrix.

Not that I’m not sure I want to go tinkering with any matrices. This is all very cosy, this Doesn’t Really Count life so far. Wouldn’t be pleased if I woke up in a blinding glare with a black Charlie Brooker leaning over me in a terrible pullover, mumbling that I’ve never used my eyes before and that I’d better get used to hard bunks, strip lights and hand-pumped toilets. And giant metal spiders trying to kill me with lasers.

No, maybe it’s simply time again to go find out some shet.

—

Every now and then – I think it’s happened once before – my personal ignorance reaches such conspicuous levels that I start to notice it. Find myself saying garish faux pas like: “Who’s Justin Beiber?”.

It’s then that I need to Go Find Out Some Shet.

Now, anyone normal and lucky enough to live in the information age would simply flick to Wikipedia and momentarily find some made up facts about the subject in hand, easily sufficient to satiate the vain impulse of ignorance, and so move on. I do this too. But I’m wondering whether it’s time for something more. Something a little more deliberate. A little more studied. Determined. Goal-minded. Something a lot more branded.

A renaissance.

I am thinking it’s time I filled in some more blanks. Found out who this Justin Bieber really is. And Che Guavara. And the president of Belize. Or Belgium, come to that.

I am thinking of going so far as to use the ol’ online mutterings here to post the results. A kind of selectively educative journal. But don’t hold your breath. Not until I’ve found out exactly how long the human respiratory system can let you do that for, anyway.

Of course, the pressure to do this regularly could just be annoying.

Mean time, I need to pull some trousers over these pants and write a piece of music for a commission given to me lastnight – by lunchtime.

Not sure a convincing way to renew my whole life is with another last-minute deadline.

Creating new music for cash. How annoying.

Happy birthday.

—

PS: Some chap from the local paper’s Society magazine is wanting to interview me this week, so perhaps I’ll ask him as a professional journalist and news hound if he can think of any interesting and unexpected ways to start my forties. Given that my life so far apparently needs rebirthing.

I’m not sure this will start the interview in an interesting way. I may have to take some props. And some made-up facts.