2026
#Happy 2026.
It has been a strange year, dominated by generative AI, politics, value extraction, and much obliteration of the applied arts – all things I'd rather not write about.
And we lost a few people along the way, about whom I'd like to write separately later, even if that comes too late.
I have not been recording any of my music practice. I've not been practicing much. My brain is still trying to process all the change, and my instinct is not to assume one kind of posture or another, until I have a better understanding of what's happening. A lot is going on in the music industry. Very little of note is going on in the art. This is OK, wherever I look, I don't see much support for the art. I see much about the industry.
I dialled down how much I watch BBC, or Sky, or consume trad news altogether. I started trying to feel for myself every outlet's bias – especially for those not supposed to have bias. I muted more keywords from my social media. I kept a 3 minute daily limit on one of the apps. I'm re-learning how to be more offline, 30 years after I first dialled up into the gateway BBS-es of the past, and which instantaneously became a nightly habit.
In December I spent a good while listening to random radio transmissions – as in on actual air – during the day, and at night. I learned more than I need to know about antennas, propagation, interference, toroid materials, protocols, obscure software. In some way this activity made me aware of the mundane everyday things that happen all the time which aren't in the news – completely normal stuff, fascinating things nonetheless, but things that fail to register. There's so much human connection on radio, it's ridiculous. What gets amplified and fed to us online and in broadcast is so extraordinarily different, it's simply not representative anymore.
The distractions every day, the endless flood of content, plus the weird "what's the point"-ness of genAI, call for more discipline in response, than I've ever had to have, just to sit down and practice, even to do anything more meaningful than just hopping from one passive activity to the next.
I'll be spending 2026 dealing with that.
To you I wish focus, kindness, agency, and joy.
♪♫