Jed Bartlett and the lack of answers

Firstly, apologies for not posting anything sooner. I, like most of you, also have a job that is kind of getting in the way of my Bali-based thought processes. My job consists of writing and recording continuity links for Discovery - sort of "Good morning and welcome to Discovery Channel, next up, Amanda Lamb takes a young couple to Peru in A Place In The Sun...". The reason I disclose this mind-numbing information to you all, is that currently, my brain is a huge ball of mush and goo because of this job. Thinking about Bali, or anything springing from the notion of Bali, has left me simultaneously depressed and furious. Again, like most of you I suspect, time is going to have to be the small moments of time I get on train journeys, or when I get home trying to avoid eating in order to focus on the task in hand. I am forever ripping articles out of newspapers on the train, causing consternation amongst the next person to pick up my copy of 'Metro', when most of his pages fall out. Seriously, you should see their faces when that happens - like their world has fallen out of their arse cos they couldn't read the article about the World Beard Championships.

Anyway, the long and the short of my musings have led me to the idea of writing two songs. One will be rather bizarre I think, as following the Sunday meeting I have had so many things buzzing round my head that I think they'll somehow all fall in there unwittingly. I am always more taken by microcosms of things, taking something huge like the Bali bombings, and making it smaller and smaller until you can see the heart of it. With this in mind, I've been thinking of writing a love song, about a tourist's holiday romance with a scuba diving instructor. I'm sort of better at story songs, something with a narrative that maybe seems to be taking you to one place and ends up in a restaurant on the tourist's last night by the sea.

The second song idea has taken hold thanks to my obsession with The West Wing. For anyone who doesn't watch it, it's the best drama i've ever seen on TV, and kind of dominates my evenings right now, as the 6th series is out and it is, as usual, brilliant. Anyway, an argument between President Jed Bartlett and his cheif of staff Leo McGarry yesterday was bang on the money about what we can do to stop these senseless suicide bombings. They described it as a 'cycle of violence', and as Jed yelled "How does it end, Leo?", Leo's response was "We don't know how it ends". And the fact is, we don't know. There is no simple solution to this puzzle, no peace talks that will make all this just go away, and no easy answers at all. It made me thing of when I was younger and life seemed to be full of easy answers, as every problem had a solution. Things are a little different now, more simple yet far more complex.

Anyway, blah blah blah blah