The Chant Of The Lizard King

How many stories have you told yourself today? Told yourself the one about how you're not good enough yet? That's a good one - maybe it's your favourite because it's the one you tell yourself as soon as you wake up. How about the one where the script is a line or two your folks threw out at you one day. That's also a good one - one of my personal favourites if I'm honest. We've all got them. You might not think you do, but you do. Let's not forget the off-kilter ones either - the ones in which all the messages to yourself are positive, crazy huge fist in the air positive and yet, every time you shoot your arrow, somebody moves the bar.

Stories are all we consist of. There is nothing else. Some are true, some are false but it doesn't really matter because you will believe them all anyway. Think about it. The tribe you've chosen to belong to - and yes you belong to a tribe, it may be a religious tribe, a political tribe, a musical tribe, sports tribe, dieting tribe, shopkeeper tribe... and you can probably hoist the flag on multiple tribes you belong to without even knowing it - is a group story. 

Point of this piece? I've begun to look for the space between the cracks - for the silence in which I'm not telling myself anything at all - because I'm quite liking the idea of telling myself a whole library of different stories. Not in a 'turn your life upside down' kind of way, but I'm certainly smacking my hand down on the reset button and today, that consists of listening to The Doors at a volume that suggests I should call the police on myself.

If you do something with conviction for long enough, you don't even have to convince yourself of the reality of your situation. The lie will simply take over... and that's a good thing. Fake it 'til you make it but you had best make sure when you start the lie that it's a good one and worth spending all of the minutes of your life chasing.

Notes On Being A Lion

As ever, I got up this morning with the lark. A very particular lark in fact who doesn't like to get up quite as early as the other birds. He finds around 8.30 perfectly acceptable and that's fine with me. This lark knows the big picture.

Today is Saturday. In the nineties when I was living in a house with some of my band mates (which now seems like a life somebody else used to lead on my behalf) Saturday used to begin with a bag of chocolate donuts, a never-ending stream of coffee, cigarettes a-go-go and all of us sitting around the coffee table trying to figure out what we needed to do next to get The Gods on our side. 

Such offerings were obviously of no use to The Gods - maybe they were expecting a blood sacrifice just like in the good old days.

Anyway, while I was out with Hector this morning looking for Hobbits, my mind was wandering like it does and I came up with a list of things I should work on today it looked like this:

1. Grow a different kind of beard. I don't have a beard that people with beards would call a beard but neither do I have a blank face. In recent months, I've toyed with a 'style' I don't think has a name. Chris Cornell favours it and so do I - I think it's because it's easy, but that said, one wrong move with the razor and you're looking at erasing your whole face to put it right. Actually, I kind of like this - scrap that. I'll roll with it.

While I'm feeling happy with my face, a guy comes out of the woods with a lead and a collar. He asks if I've seen a dog running away - and I think, if you're going to carry the lead and the collar, the dog will run away. People can be so dumb. 

This puts me off my stride and the list of things I was going to work on evaporates. The guy with the non-dog came along at the right time. Maybe The Gods just needed a few years to accept the fact that a bag of chocolate donuts is equal - if not superior to - a blood sacrifice, because this is a well-timed intervention. I don't need a list of things to work on today at all. I don't need a list of things to work on any day.

Does that lion I so often reference construct a checklist of very important items in order to validate his role as a lion? No. He doesn't. He simply is but I'm pleased this lion also took a few moments to care of his facial hair before facing the day. 

If I wasn't so busy thinking of ways to be clever, I'm sure I could be quite smart

MR SMITH: LIFE COACH

"When you introduce a pistol into your story, sooner or later, it has to be fired."

Adapted from Murakami who adapted it from Chekhov because today, I'm hanging out with giants.