total instantaneous communication with everyone everywhere (words of advice for young people)

so to follow on from horsemouth’s words of advice for young people we have the tenth anniversary of horsemouth’s beginning to blog. he began on the then mighty and ruling the roost myspace (now sadly declined into a zombie infested shopping mall). horsemouth likes to think that it was his incessant blogging that finally killed off myspace but at the time it was a place that would stream your music for free (and in a scaleable fashion). visions of world domination beckoned as horsemouth released his recorded in 2002 (round graham’s) horsemouth has no friends, horsemouth plays debussy etc. etc. - in theory they are still there and playable (as is the first ever blog post by the mulish one).

horsemouth saw very much that this was an amazing improvement in the ability of your average schmoe who makes music’s ability to get their music heard by the masses, a way past the gatekeeping of record labels and radio station managers (but it was in fact another false dawn on the road to total instantaneous communication with everyone everywhere).

gradually horsemouth began to write everyday and about his everyday existence (in a thinly fictionalised fashion) despite the fact that the main aim of the technology was to encourage musicians to promote their music themselves.

today is also the anniversary of robbie basho’s bonn ist supreme concert - you can tell he’s pleased with the way it is going - he feels like he is bringing german romanticism back home.

words of advice for young people

in no particular order...

1. playing music (and learning to sing): the first time I was in a band I was ambitious - when I learned not to be ambitious it all became much better fun. 
2. dancing (and learning to DJ): I had to put effort into learning to dance - it was worth it - gives me something to do at parties when I’m too shy to talk to girls. Once I DJed disco music to a room full of Italian women (not quite a peak experience - but nearly). ditto running - though I haven’t done that for years - that was more something I could feel virtuous about after having done it. 
3. travel: to the sun mainly (and one time snow - thirty degrees below skating on the frozen ice in montreal harbour). I used to go and wander round hot and dusty old towns in the interior of spain and portugal - now I just tend to go to the beach and read and swim. 
4. reading and writing and collecting books: there are lots of smart people in the world (and there are lots of smart people in books too). If you write you get to look at what you think, hopefully you get to understand yourself better and other people better. 
5.  falling in love: though fairplay this has made me thoroughly miserable on several occasions as well 
6. friendships: probably the thing that has sustained me the most in my life. 
7.  political struggle for what I thought was right: I wasn’t always right but at least I was trying to make the world a better place. This is something that won’t make you popular but if you think you are right you are obliged to say so rather than let evil have its way, I think (not that I’m always that courageous - in fact I think I’m a stone coward because I haven’t done this as much as I should). On the other hand... 
8. becoming more tolerant and kinder as I grow older has worked well for me. 
9. making an effort to get out and meet people and find out about them and see what makes them tick. 
10. saying YES to things (even when I wasn’t totally convinced it was a good idea at the time.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 

Ok this is a list aimed at young adults so it leaves out ‘going up the pub and chatting shit’.