So this is kind of a confession.

Not a lot of people know this, but I flunked music college. No, back it up. I didn’t flunk. There were lots of access barriers. I faced physical and mental barriers, and if I’m honest, I didn’t try to get the help I needed. Identity stuff. I didn’t want to be Disabled then. That was a loaded word at the time.

Whatever. Music education was not for me. The irony – I’m a full time musician and highly respected music educator – isn’t lost on me. I was the last person who was gonna make it from my college.

Where I really cut my teeth, and got where I am today, was in art college.

Reeling from having to drop music, I found myself on a franchise HND via Birmingham Institute of Art & Design. Visual Communication. This wasn’t Fine Art. This was modern, this was free thinking, and not reliant on technique.

I never considered myself to be a “real” mark-maker, partly because of my hand impairment. My partner, who I met in art college, is a ”real” artist. She can paint, draw, in that Fine Art discipline. I always used to say I just made a weird mess.

But I wasn’t making a weird mess. I was learning to think clearer and more creatively than I ever had before. I was exploring the moment. No, I can’t really paint technically – how could I ever with CP? – but I can learn, and think and exist in my abstract paintings.

And after several years of being too busy with music to do anything else, I’m back and enjoying painting again. I’m painting every day. Digitally mostly, but rediscovering my old love of acrylic on canvas. My daughter and I have a daily watercolour challenge. It’s helping me a lot.

Of course, the one piece of visual communication that many people know is the Tic Tac No. I started this in art college, and have slowly refined it as my brand, my trademark.

This represents a simply truth – there are things in life that we know are wrong, that are sold to us as being right. Injustice. Inequality. Even when what is right is there in plain sight, we don’t always acknowledge. The Tic Tac No is a reminder to go after the truth, to follow what you know is right. I have it tattooed, and people buy t-shirts with it on. It has a life of it’s own.

I found myself at art college, at a time when I was lost and confused about being a musician. I was at an all time low, musically. I built myself back up in the art studio. And now, after the most intense musical adventure of my life – touring all over the world with the gloves – I’m learning who I am now, in the brush strokes.

I’m not at rock bottom musically now, of course. I’ve enjoyed incredible success with the gloves and all they’ve given me. But I definitely feel a chapter drawing to an end, and for the first time in my life, I don’t have a plan. And it feels good.

I have big ideas about how to paint and bring what I’ve done musically together for the first time. There’s a physicality to playing the gloves that would be a powerful thing to explore visually – explicitly – can I paint music? What does painting sound like? Where do the gestures and visuals meet composition? All that stuff. Right now I’m not overthinking it.

I’m just in the moment, one brushstroke at a time.

Massive Trigger Warning: frank discussion of pain, medication and drug withdrawal.

Today feels significant. It’s been one year exactly since I lost took Tramadol, which was given to me for pain relief some 5 years previous. It’s a lot to think about. I’m not even sure what I want to say.

Most importantly, I don’t want to demonise pain medication. Many people I know live a better quality of life for taking pain meds, many people wouldn’t even be able to function without them. And early on, they improved my life no end too.

But it didn’t last. After a few years, I was trapped in a cycle. I was no longer getting any pain relief, I was just on a four times daily rollercoaster of warding off withdrawal drowsiness. I had a bunch of other cognitive and physical side effects that I had just put up with fo years, but I couldn’t take any more.

Going through withdrawal that at the height of a pandemic was a terrible idea. Opioid withdrawal is some serious shit. The first couple of weeks of Trainspotting sweats were the easy bit. Then came the panic attacks. The tremors. Uncontrollable anger. Constant agony through my whole body. Sleepless nights. What felt like heart attacks. I was in A&E several times a month for months. All in, I think it took about 6 months to approach normal. And with an overstretched NHS at the height of COVID, it was a big risk. In April 2021 I was finally diagnosed with Functional Neurological Disorder, believe to be caused by Tramadol. For me that manifested in Parkinson’s like-symptoms; shaking, ticcing, and constant anxiety. That diagnosis came as something of a relief; it gave something to make sense of what was happening to me.

Living with pain is hard. Managing it without medication is a big task. I have system. It’s all encompassing. I’ll talk about it another time. I’m wary of glorifying med-free life. Am I better off without Tramadol? Yes. Absolutely. Ableds, be warned; this is not a green flag to tell disabled people to throw away their meds. I hate pointing that stuff out, but this is not an inspirational tale. Everyone is different. I knew I was slowly being fucked up by them, and had to take the leap. I’m honestly feeling healthier now than I’ve ever felt.

Had I known a year ago what the following six months of hell would be, I doubt I’d have done it. After a few weeks, I thought I was dying. Angry determination set in. It wasn’t even about being medication free. I just wanted to see if I was strong enough to survive. Again, this is not advice. I was repeatedly warned of the dangers of sudden opioid withdrawal. I felt I could beat it though, and I did.

Life is still a bit one-day-at-a-time, but it’s getting better every day. I’ve no idea how I found the strength looking back, but I’m grateful that I did.

I’ve torn off the Band-Aid. I was sceptical about performing live via webcams and such – is it real enough? Thanks to the Disability Rights Utah for the opportunity! Mission accomplished.

So what was it like? Well… as most of you know, I’m primarily a live performer these days. I’ve played A LOT of shows, done a lot of performances, for literally thousands of people all over the world.

I’m also reasonably comfortable in front of the camera, having been able to work with amazing directors like Lee Cogswell & Josefa Torres. On the night my partner-in-crime and actual partner Nicci Craig handled the live shooting – no mean feat. We broadcast live via a GoPro, connected via the new GoPro Webcam feature. I was really keen to have a handheld look, and I think it turned out great.

But… it’s still a bit weird. It’s no substitute. I thought it would be like making a music video, but it isn’t really at all. There’s all the pressure of trying to get it right in one take, without the connection of an audience. The audience energy is half the show; I’m bringing just half of what happened, if that. Trying to nail a performance, in my garage, with my kids upstairs in bed… it’s a long way from the Kennedy Center.

I’m not complaining, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. It’s weird, but for now, it’s the best we have.

I’ve stopped engaging with twitter, and I’m spending less time on social media. Here’s why:

Long overdue, but I had a day off yesterday, so I thought I’d cut this together. In my last blog post I talked about the influence of Buddhism on my music making. That led to some really interesting conversations, so I thought today I would go deep and share this quite personal story of what Buddhism and Japan means to me.

My old chum Ronan – *very* keen fans will remember him opening for me on The Gloves Are On tour in Coventry – has an awesome blog about recording and music making. It’s an interesting space to occupy; in my news feed dominated by Waves Plugins and CLA tutorials, Ronan pops up with a refreshingly fuss free approach. Low cost, guerrilla studio sessions in public spaces; it’s very welcome. And very useful. Anything that makes music making easier for people is a good thing in my book.

We chatted recently about gloves, disability and my early influences. There’s some great questions – head to Light Audio Recording now!

I’m always looking toward the next thing. A new way to do things. A new place to play in. Thanks to my recent Developing Your Creative Practice award from Arts Council England (Yay!) I’m about to start my next big creative adventure. No time to sit still.

Under the working title Zanshin, this new work explores a few ideas, mostly through threads that have been asking me to tug them for a while. One of the most common questions I get asked is about composition; what is it like to compose music with the gloves? Quite honestly, I’m still learning. The amount of gigs I’ve played in the last 3 years has meant largely being a slave to my back cat – there’s been little time to compose. So that I knew had to be explored.

I’ve also become increasingly aware of the physicality of my work. It’s super-ironic; I’ve been held back most of my life by my impaired movement. I never did sports. I couldn’t run around as a kid. And here I am, making a living making a kind of music where my body is very much part of the instrument. Glove shows are very physical, and I want to dig deeper into that. And the way to ‌do that, I figured, is through discipline in the physical movement. Specifically, choreography.

So that’s in the budget too. The choreography is where I saw a neat opportunity to tie this project into my interests in Japan.

As I think most people who know me know, I recently worked in Japan with Drake Music. It was a trip of a lifetime, with years worth of inspiration. Over lunch in Kawasaki I was discussing my ambitions to work with a choreographer with our friends British Council Japan. We chatted about Japanese dance, particularly the influence of traditional Japanese dance on J-Pop. It was a real light bulb moment, and the conversation turned to the idea of me working with a choreographer in Japan. The delicateness, the discipline; the more I learned about Japanese dance the more it made sense.

Back home, reflected on this, I reached out to a Japanese choreographer friend-of-friends, Ayaka Takai. Ayaka is based in Tokyo; although we didn’t meet in Japan, our mutual friends brought her to my attention. Ayaka studied in London, and as well as being a successful contemporary dancer, she also worked in the space between dance and disability. I introduced myself; she’d already seen me in action thanks to the British Council. She totally got it. We talked a lot. We had ideas exploding from all angles. We hatched a plan, and wrote a funding bid. We’d like to once again thank Arts Council England.

But the working title. Maybe the title. What is it?

Zanshin is one of many Japanese ideas I’ve fallen in love with of late. Along with Koi No Yokan and Ikagi, it’s one of those Japanese that occupies a subtle space that is difficult to translate into Western language.
Zanshin can be described as a state of relaxed awareness, a focused alertness. The term originates from Japanese martial arts, and naturally appeals to my Buddhist sensibilities. In particular, the idea relates to a “combative awareness” of the body.
This is a good word to describe the state I’ve been trying to achieve whilst performing. I’m trying to bring a relaxed awareness to my presence in my body on stage when performing with the gloves. My earliest performances were very much of the head; internally trying to remember the next movement. That state was complex and stressful.

Practicing mindfulness taught me how to be present in my body, and I soon learned that my body knew better than my head where the next movement was to. I came to realise that performance was way less about trying to remember what to do, and much more about being in a state of focus where the performance can unfold itself.
So this idea has become really central to working in this new space. I want it to start with this awareness, this presence, in the body. I want to inform composition ideas – and ultimately songwriting – in the sense of my body. In that sense that I’m here, alive.

This might sound strange, but I have a weird relationship with my body. It doesn’t work well, and it’s kind of been my nemesis. The clue is in the language there; it’s not me. I’m up here, in my head; the wonky bag of meat and bones is just the thing that carries my brain to where I need it to be.

That’s not a very healthy way to see yourself, is it?

So, goal number one: maybe this project, through the movement and music connecting, maybe it will help me build a better relationship with my body. Myself, even. Whatever else, that would make it a pretty life changing piece of art.