So long, and thanks for all the fish

The time to leave wales has finally come, I should really be doing some packing but I never liked packing, least of all when I end up with a huge pile of "essentials" that I can't carry to the train station, and have to whittle it down to two bags-worth to have any chance of storing it in the luggage rack.

Now isn't the time for reminiscing, I haven't left yet! But regardless I still think back to the first time I crossed the severn bridge as a fresher, with a laptop, some clothes, bass and amp, and a pile of kitchen utensils thrown together courtesy of my older sister and grandparents. I was excited to arrive at university, in the Wales that I spent many childhood summers canoeing and sailing and fishing, a great big world to explore and new freedom to enjoy.

God has been good to me all these years, guiding me through the myriad of life choices, ensuring I ended up in a good place with good people whatever I did, and I trust that this new chapter that has started will continue that trend, and shape me for the better.

If music be the food of love...

Ever since I first listened to a CD compilation of my mum's called Hits of the 80's I have been intrigued and captivated by music in all its various forms.

Some music makes you want to do this

The list of genres for which I have no love is usually only one or two words long, depending upon the current crop of artists that dwell within it. Some past residents have included Rap and Hip-hop. Most of my choices are based upon whether they exhibit any traits of a Normal and Caring human being or if it's all about Guns, Bitches and Bling.
One genre that has always stayed firm in the list of must-listen genres has been Indie Rock. Not the out-of-tune screamy girl punk indie, but the vague whistful thoughtfulness of acoustic guitar and piano-based rock that causes you to lean back in your chair and have a quiet think to appreciate what you have. (or that may just be me)
One band that kick started this was Coldplay with their album Parachutes. Now,  now, hear me out. This album appeared before I really knew what indie or alternative rock was, I was still having a history lesson off ELO about glam rock and the role of the synthesiser, but in later years, about the time Coldplay released their second album, I started to get curious about this well-spoken group that my friends had all discovered.

While the second, more rocky album was the first one I heard, the quiet simplicity of the first album became one of the albums that formed the soundtrack of my last year or so of school. That was the time when I discovered the freedom that choice and age brought, when I had my first taste of independence: when I paid for nought but snacks and the odd train, but could hang out with my friends all day long, when the weather didn't matter and you were in the company of like-minded young people who had their own hopes and dreams for the future and couldn't wait to ram into life head first.
Parachutes has always taken me back to an earlier time, to one which I look back on fondly, but wouldn't want to visit again, for fear of breaking my rose-tinted spectacles. You may think that Coldplay is for manic depressives and art students but it has its place. Everyone is entitled to their opinions, I'm just waiting for R'n'B artists to become a bit less narcissistic and more socially aware so I can have an empty list.

Social Media and being sociable

It's interesting that, in this era of Web 2.0, we tend to get caught up in statistics. Statistics about how many people read our blog, how many friends we have on Facebook, how many followers we have on twitter; and I'm not immune to this.
This past week or so I have been watching numbers of views on one of my videos since it got embedded in the homepage of my local church. Vimeo tracks not only views on your Vimeo channel, but views of the embedded videos too. This has given me an insight not only into the number of people who view my video, but because the video is set to play automatically, it also tracks how many visitors to the church website there are.
With all this information at our fingertips we should aim to put faces or names to the numbers, to try and understand what the effect of these numbers means to us, and to those who have now become a statistic. We've got to try not to let them make us vain in the pursuit of bigger numbers, more frequent views, more "friends" but to help us shape the way we communicate: to better inform people, to spread a feeling of community, to push the world into a more understanding and tolerant state.
We've seen recently in Egypt how the power of the internet has been harnessed an all levels, how it can be used to rally around a cause and to make a difference. It was used as a social and political tool and not an ego-booster, it wasn't about trying to create a huge group on Facebook, or for a single person to take charge and create a following, it was the voice of the people, and the voice of the world, amplified.