Revelations.

From Wikipedia:

Krill is a shrimp-like marine invertebrate animal. These small crustaceans are important organisms of the zooplankton, particularly as food for baleen whales, manta rays, whale sharks, crabeater seals, other seals, and a few seabird species that feed almost exclusively on them. In the Southern Ocean, one species, the Antarctic krill, Euphausia superba, makes up an estimated biomass of over 500 million tonnes, roughly twice that of humans. Of this, over half is eaten by whales, seals, penguins, squid and fish each year, and is replaced by growth and reproduction.

Once, a very long time ago, I was having a school camp in the Queen Charlotte Sound, on the Northern end of the South Island of New Zealand.

It was right on the water, and one morning, when I woke up early and went down to the dock, the entire visible surface of the water was covered in red krill. I didn't know what krill were yet, and I was a bit shaken, as the guy in the bunk next to me was reading Revelations from the King James Bible when I went to sleep. God, he was a fucking nerd.

Anyway, after a little while, this somewhat cooler kid called Rhys comes along, and tells me about krill. His Dad worked for the Department of Conservation, so if there was an animal in New Zealand that Rhys didn't know about, it must have just escaped from the zoo.

Then of course we dived off the pier into the freezing sub-Antarctic waters (Southern krill like to chill), and the krill went into our underwear, and I had one swim up my ass, which was uncomfortable and hilarious, all at the same time.

For all you know I could be talking about the summer of 1948. I never mentioned an iPod or an iPhone. And that's kind of the point here.

I'm not young any more, and although I pass for 20-something, my body hurts like 60-something. I do close combat fight training 5 or 6 times a week, and I have to work much harder than the younger guys to get the same result. I'm getting on.

Things change.

My mind certainly has.

I was talking to my girlfriend about music the other day, saying how I have 6 years worth of music on my iPod, but when I want to listen to some music, I can never think of anything to dial up. I just don't really love any of it any more.

I'm in an "I don't care about music" phase, which to those that know me, should illicit some kind of mild shock response.

But I don't care about art either, or motorbikes, or any of the things that usually get my happiness quotient rocketing skywards.

I'm thinking of selling my guitar collection.

And I felt guilty about having all that collected music. Bob Lefsetz says that owning music tracks is soon to be over (I agree partially). He says soon we're all going to be subscribers to the cloud, basically that no-one will own music, but rather we'll all collectively stream whatever we want from one source. We will all own all the music out there, together, just by subscribing. I still think greedy little people will want something physical to hold onto...more than just some digital code that signifies they listened to it first. People like to hoard, and that will be a hard instinct to break. But I digress...

I have all this collected music on my drives, and I'm over it all. I don't love it any more. And I realised obviously the music hasn't changed, I did.

I realised, somewhat pathetically, that my love for things has dropped off because whenever I love something, it generally dies, leaves, or turns out to be prostituting itself on the side.

Yup, issues.

And through the long journey of my life so far, my love has faded in comparison to the kick-ass laser cannon of power that it was back when I had things like enthusiasm and naïveté. Back when I'd spend all day and half the night in the mosh pit at a music festival, headbanging non stop, as opposed to going to Soundwave for all of 3 hours, doing nothing more physical than standing and watching a couple of bands, then getting tired and going home.

If I saw that biblical ocean of blood again tomorrow, the last thing I'd do is go swim in it. It's cold in there! The energy for stupid (fun) things just isn't there any more. So serious all the time. Shitty old man.

I wonder if it's possible to get it back? That awesome rush of excitement. Bob Lefsetz gets it occasionally, but I hate the music he likes, and mostly he's being sentimental as opposed to objective.

I can actually see and understand the generational gap. I see how the kids are different to me and my people. I see how we fall short and they thrive. I'm glad I'm not a kid nowadays, I wouldn't last a minute.

Let's hope inspiration, excitement, true passion, and surprise reconnexion to the love of music/arts/whatever floats your boat is just biding it's time, waiting to jump out and blow our minds again.

And for those of you who are still super excited by the same things you always were- how do you do it?


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.