Porcupine and other things

For years Gideon would play Porcupine Tree albums when we were listening to music, or just doing the washing up. I couldn't stand them. I used to turn them off because certain albums (particularly Metanoia) drove me round the bend. Then, maybe 18 months ago I copied the entire PT catalogue onto my iTunes and after skipping PT songs when they played I finally just let them play through. Then Deadwing was released and my view of them began to change. I know, I know, I fell prey to their most commercial effort so far, but what it did do is make me go back through the old stuff.

I now have a minor obsession with them, so much so that the story I wrote yesterday was inspired by a very strange track on PT's very first album called "Space Transmission". It gives me the creeps if I listen to it late at night. The story was also aided by listening to "Dark Matter" and "Light Mass Prayers" from the Signify album and Ghosts on Magnetic Tape, which is a drone-style album from one of Steve Wilson's other projects, Bass Communion. I had them on repeat while I was writing the first draft version on Monday. The story went places yesterday I had no conscious plans for, which is always nice, and makes me wonder where these things come from.

In other writing news I had a story and a poem rejected from a magazine earlier this week, which did not aid the bad mood. Anyway, I emailed my friend B, who read them before they went off, and mentioned how I have a tendency to see the bad side of all these things. She came back with this:

I have been saying to myself lately that the world is full of people who like to tell you what you can't do. Sometimes its ourselves too!

Bollocks to them!