Du vingt.

Content.

An interesting word to see written down; how do you imagine I’m saying it?

As a noun its meaning can, in one very specific context, be strangely at odds with the same word pronounced as an absolute adjective – for when it comes to internet marketing, content may be king but it’s also a killer for feeling content. Internet marketing is never content with the amount of content you feed it – it’s voracious.

Are you in any way at all still with me?

My convoluted point is simply that Momo’s marketing is basically starting to pile up an implied world of things I need to apparently start putting my back into creating. It’s daunting. And every current independent music artist feels it. There’s so much opportunity out there. But it is, as ever, opportunity to do, like, WAY more hard work.

I have most recently responded to this imperative in the only way I instinctively know how: By doing the opposite of that and clearing off – vacating the grid for a couple of weeks and creating very little content at all.

I have, in fact, been con-tent. Or avec tente, if you will – for we have been enjoying a few smooth roads, bon-marché campsites, and plus-swank hotel rooms of France.

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The lovely first lady of Momo and I have been celebrating something special. But the ubiquity of modern news is such that we could not escape some awareness of events that were at the opposite pole of human experience to ours in that moment. Shocking, heartbreaking stories of tragedy. ..How are any of us to respond to such things? Ever. But especially when you are in mid-toast of something brilliant.

Perhaps, I think, with judicial use of sober reflection and mental compartmentalising.

If there is ever a time to give thanks it is the moment you are aware of just how good and how precious your current moment is. For wolves will steal it at any opportunity – even in apparently safe places. In the foothills of the Alps, or the island woods of Norway, or an expensive London flat.

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We have been celebrating an anniversary. Ours. Twenty frankly gobsmackingly gone-fast years since our wedding day, on an August Saturday in 1991 in Sussex. Everything I do by Bryan Adams seemed to last as long that summer. And many of the friendships already so well underway then and showing support on the day, are still amazingly on-going today and supportive today.

I suppose a marriage is like any other business; you have to create the very best content you can for it. And guard it jealously. We reinforce the brand idea of our marriage all the time in countless goofy ways. Brands are, after all, built on behaviours. But we’ve mainly been very lucky. And the best thing I know to do in the face of another day of good luck is to be grateful. And to try to show it.

After twenty years of successfully convincing a frankly remarkable woman to keep living with me and being incredible nice to me, here at the little dawn of a new chapter of new opportunities for us both, I have felt okay about stealing a few moments together – to toast our current and past happinesses, to remember but keep at a sensible distance our sadnesses, and to feel, for at least a short while, something to be cherished indeed.

Content.

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