Paul Schiernecker

Author: Paul

  • Me time.

    This morning I went for a run.
    I decided to run as far as I could and then run back, knowing I would be forcing myself to run further than usual just to get home. All was going well until my ankle gave out about two miles in and I was left to hobble home.

    As I was wandering the suburban nightmare that makes up my running track I had a good chance to think. I need time like this. There is always so much going on and so many people around I struggle to put things in order in my head.
    It turns out, having thought about it at great length I very much enjoy my own company. There was a time when I wanted people around me constantly but I grew beyond it. Others haven’t, or won’t.

    My thoughts are it says a lot about a person if they are happy to go somewhere alone. I once worried what people would make of me but it really is none of their business.
    As a rule my friends run late. I don’t think they ever consider how that changes things for others, those obliged to turn up for everything annoyingly early…me. There was a time when I couldn’t stand being kept waiting, when I was self conscious and worried they would never turn up, that I was a joke in some way. It turns out they just can’t keep to time and I needed to chill out a bit.

    I never would have wandered into a cafe solo and sat and had a coffee a couple of years ago. A part of the problem is my hometown. Anyone sat by themselves reading is obviously an asylum-seeking paedophile witch and should be burnt at the stake.
    Working up in London has made me realise how satisfying it can be to just lose an hour somewhere different. It does wonders for the internal feng shui.

    My freelance work has also led me to embrace a social taboo, going to the cinema alone. The first time I wandered around Soho until I found the screening rooms I didn’t know what to expect, or how I would feel to be alone in a cinema.
    When you rationalise it, there’s no real difference between going to the cinema with twenty people and going there alone.
    It’s not like you sit chatting, unless you’re an erstwhile cunt.
    I’m not saying I will be rocking up to the Empire in Basildon on my jack jones anytime soon but it wouldn’t be too much of an effort to do it if there was something I really wanted to see and couldn’t wangle a free screening or my girlfriend into accompanying me (like The Muppets).

    I’ve got to the point where I could quite happily go travelling alone. If anyone wanted to send me on an assignment to New York or India I would be totally down with that.

    I think everyone should just take some time to free themselves from everyone else and just listen to themselves. You might learn something.

  • Turn that punk shit down Tchaikovsky!

    I spend a lot of time thinking about the future.
    I imagine what I will be like in twenty, thirty, forty years time.
    I wonder how I will live, and where I will live, whether I’ll be happy or not.
    Those are the key details.
    Once you get those established in your head, you move on deeper into that same cave.
    I think about music a lot.
    I wonder if I will play my songs to my children.
    I think about what they’ll make of it, in the same way I would listen to my Dad playing bits of twelve-bar blues on his guitar when I was little and dance around his bedroom with my brothers.

    This week I have been thinking about the phrase – ‘turn that bloody noise down’.
    It’s something which has echoed through a couple of generations, and I wonder how much worse music will get for us to shout the same things at our children. Is it just a part of growing up? I know my own music tastes have changed from where they were a decade ago, softened even.
    I try to think of what bands of our generation will be carried on, to burn as the defining sound of the 00’s.
    I wonder if we will be sat watching TOTP2 in twenty years time saying ‘now The Prodigy, they knew how to write a song’.
    It’s true of course, they do.
    It’s hard to imagine The Libertines or The Strokes being described as ‘classic rock’ by the next generation, or even to think about who or what will follow. I can’t imagine what sound defined us, because we are still living it. Hindsight may clear the whole issue up.

    I struggle with being a part of my generation. Sometimes it feels like I was wired differently, but I know that is just my attempt to be seen differently, and to feel as though I’m a unique little snowflake. The majority of the music I like and listen to is the music of the 60’s and 70’s which will soon be considered ‘grandad music’ I suppose. I find it hard to believe my great aunt and uncle who trained under the maharishi and were part of the flower power hippie movement are grandparents. It doesn’t seem enough time has passed.

    As a child I wasn’t really aware of what was happening to music at the time. On the whole I guess it was a little contrived and dull (until grunge kicked in), so I listened to a lot of glam and punk and metal and thought it was just the most incredible thing. Listening to pop music has never done anything for me. I can see why people like it but it just seems so cheap and plastic and disposable to me.

    I hope in twenty years time I am sorting through the loft of my mansion and come across a stack of CDs.
    ‘What’s that Dad’ my son will say, pulling his little raggedy head of curls and his dungarees up through the loft hatch.
    ‘That’s real music Huxley, that’s real music’ I’ll say.

    I think about the future so much I struggle to think of what I am doing now.

  • Happy blogthday

    Today celebrates one year since I started writing this blog.
    At the time I was going through some things and thought it would help to write them down, to reason things through to myself.
    Since then I have written near enough every day. On some days it has been a struggle, but I pushed myself to do it. My good friend Ben told me it was essential as a writer to write every day and recommended the idea of a blog to me. It obviously worked because when I sit down to write anything now I don’t find myself staring in dread at a blank white page. It pushes me to fill it as quickly as possible.
    From here on in I won’t be writing a blog post every single day. I’ve proved to myself I am able to do it, and I need to take the time to work on other things. I am still a blogger. It’s taken me a year to set up a domain, I’m not just going to drop off now. I’ll only post when I have something fulfilling though. I read other blogs and realise a lot more thought and concentration goes into what they’ve expressed than what I gurgle onto the screen each morning. While I’m very much a fan of how and why I write I don’t think expressing my every single thought and process is necessary anymore. I’m in danger of becoming like the people I hate, those who put “I hate Monday ugh, wanna stay in bed lol” as a Facebook status.
    I’ve got a lot of exciting things on this year, and I’m looking forward to sharing them.
    I just wanted to say thank you for sticking this little experiment out with me, thank you for your insight and I’ll see you in the future.

    N.B.
    Since I started this blog in February 2012 it has been read in 54 countries. That absolutely astounds me. Thank you so much.

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  • Post 365.

    One year in. Still going strong.
    I should probably write something deep and meaningful shouldn’t I? You know…. to mark the occasion.
    Love one another.

    No.
    That’s already taken.

    I have a dream?

    Again. Good. Very good, but done.

    I guess what I would like to say is you are perfectly capable of achieving whatever you want to achieve as long as you stay set on it as being your goal. If you stray it becomes harder but you can steer back to the path.
    Think of what it is you want to do, and head for it. It’s your patronus.

  • David Bowie – The Stars (Are Out Tonight)

    I woke up this morning to a new David Bowie song. It’s sort of like Christmas in that you’re too tired to really comprehend the gift at your feet. I’ve listened to it twice now, waiting for it to sink in.
    The problem I have with David Bowie’s return is history. I grew up listening to Hunky Dory and Aladdin Sane. The versions that play on a loop in my head have the crackles in place where the vinyl catches. They’re a part of how I grew up and they are extremely important to me. Someone coming in and attempting to change that legacy is difficult, even when it is David Bowie. That’s how I feel about The Stars.

    The video is exactly what you would expect from Bowie. He had to find someone as androgynous and awesome as himself to play his wife, and Tilda Swinton fits the part. I also like the idea of Bowie going into his local shop and saying “hump day”. It has an air of Smashing Pumpkins about the effects in it but maybe that is just me.

    My problem with the song is it sounds like Bowie is shouting over the top of the band. It’s so close to being spectacular yet there is that going on. For a guy well in his sixties though, look at him go. I’ll be buying the new album.

  • BBC Introducing.

    Last night I uploaded two songs from my new EP to BBC Introducing.
    I honestly think they’re the best thing I’ve written in a long time and I can’t sit back and just let me and mine be the only people who hear them.
    It might not amount to anything but I’ve got to try right?
    The fact is my music is a lot better than most stuff on the radio. That isn’t even me being big headed, stuff on the radio is shit. I am better than shit. Fact.

    All it will take is one of my attempts to crack through and everything will follow alongside. If my book sells then I throw in my music, and visa versa. I will always write and I will always record and the idea of earning a modest living doing those things is the biggest of my dreams.

  • Her friends.

    I spent the entire weekend with my girlfriend and her friends. Two years ago I didn’t know them and the thought of meeting them and spending time with them filled me with fear. I knew how close they all were, and how protective over Kate they are, and rightly so.

    Being with them Saturday/Sunday made me feel part of the gang (aside from the constant Les Mis song drops).
    At one point on Saturday evening one of them grabbed me and told me how happy he was for me and Kate and how good we are together and it’s something I will never forget, despite not being able to remember more than five songs played during the four hours we were in the club.

    I mention this now to anyone due to meet their girlfriend’s friends, or indeed family because it soon becomes the most natural thing in the world if it is right. I’m lucky.

  • Dan Collier is my power animal.

    2am.
    Ext.
    Misc. Brighton nightclub.
    Daniel Collier sings as much Les Mis as he can remember off the top of his head with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
    Each time I go to head inside he stops me and belts something about bread and courgettes in my face.
    Beside him debutante and socialite R-Macs stands shivering, having misplaced her glitterball suit jacket.
    Inside Tom Hullyer dances in a way in which his soul is completely exposed.

    Later that evening/morning Daniel Collier will be unable to finish his cheesy chips and burger sauce. It will be his undoing.

  • Brighton weekend.

    I’ve just got home.
    I feel cold and dirty.
    I spent the weekend in Brighton with my girlfriend and her friends. It was John’s birthday so we went to an eighties night at a club. I have an awful hangover today. We were out until about four, got kicked out the hotel before twelve and spent the afternoon feeling sorry for ourselves at John’s flat.

    Last night was fun. We drunk a bottle of Sailor Jerry’s before we left the house and tried to play Roxanne but there were no speakers for the laptop to play the song loud enough.
    I can’t remember the name of the club. That’s how wasted I was. We danced about to Bowie, Eurythmics and Michael Jackson and Kate took a lot of photos.

    It was a nice reminder of how I once spent my weekends as a student, and indeed how I spent my weeks. It’s a phase in my life I enjoyed thoroughly but have concluded I am well and truly beyond. I don’t like the way things sit on my rain when I am hungover. It isn’t right. I can’t concentrate.
    I miss the free time of being a student, the mystery that came into being each morning.
    I don’t miss the poor diet, lack of
    sleep and negative bank balance.
    I don’t have a lot now but it’s my own.

  • My first premiere.

    Technically not my first premiere.
    I went to the premiere of a film I co-wrote in 2010. I don’t remember a lot of it. Apparently I threw popcorn in people’s hair.
    My first premiere I can remember was last night. I went to see Comedown, the new film by Menhaj Huda of Kidulthood and Adulthood fame. The film stars Jacob Anderson, Geoff Bell and Adam Deacon and is an ‘urban’ horror film about a tenant who stalks around an abandoned tower block in East London killing mischievous youts.

    It’s enjoyable, and has some impressive looking death scenes but won’t be a threat at the Oscars. It’s a nice little twist on something we see enough of in modern horror. The fact it was set in the all to familiar and ominous high rise added something. Even as I left the venue I expected to see it on the horizon.

    The young cast do well to build the tension and Jacob Anderson looks set to be the next name to emerge from the scene. He handles the lead role of Lloyd well, being almost the only likeable character in the whole film. Geoff Bell is also worthy as the tenant, despite his Creep like screams towards the end.

    It’s out on DVD on March 11, and should do quite well considering it’s backing. It was a good evening, an excellent chance to catch up with some old friends and a glimpse into the glitz and glamour of it all.
    I’m kidding, you get me blud?!

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