2012!

Amount of creative activity achieved in last 24 hours: 0

Listening/Reading: King Creosote and Jon Hopkin's Diamond Mine/ The Story of Swimming by Susie Parr

Hair Day: It needed some blondifying, so made an attempt at a home remedy this week. Result: dirty orange/blonde streak. Yeah!

What I can see from my window no. 20: A great big dirty slash of butter-coloured sky at twilight

Merry New Year! 

I'm not having all that gloomy 'winter is here, and there's no tinsel and over-consumption to make us cheerful anymore' malarkey. January is, like the overripe satsumas leftover from Crimble, fit to bursting with parties and possibilities. Having earnestly made long lists of my bests arty things of 2011, I'm now already into my Best Art Exhibition of 2012, having been to Tate Modern to see Gerhard Richter's show before it closed. It was all my favourite things: big splashy abstract canvases, near-dribbling off the canvas and with sort of 'apocalyptic disco' colour choices. Coming out of there into the South Bank's darkness made everything look a bit Richterish: the Thames looked like one of his trademark squeegees, the oily molasses water dragged through with the hot orange of the bridge's lights, and we all looked shimmery and only half-real, like his paintings of photos. Here's a lovely video of Gerhard painting.

Tacita Dean's Turbine piece, Film, was also marvellous, and maybe my favourite of all of the works installed there. Fresh from watching Mark Cousins' wonderful The Story of Film (an odyssey through the history of film on More4, narrated in his very idiosyncratic Scottish lilt), seeing the hands-on beauty of celluloid, chopped and layered, in an age of the digital, was beautiful and funny.     

I've also notched up my first gig of 2012, and a marvellous one it was too, with Metamorphic supporting Troyka in a sold-out gig at the Vortex in Dalston, packed to the gills with enthusiastic people out at their first jolly of the year. It was great to be able to play to a knowledgeable jazz audience, and I hope we can do a few more in 2012!!

Other creative resolutions for 2012:

• To practise my flute for the first time in 6 years (ok, pick it up at least once in the whole year)
• To read for 30 minutes a day (ok, read for 10 minutes a day, mostly Time Out magazine)
• To record 2nd juice album (and get even better reviews than for the first one)
• To do a killer You Are Wolf tour, having written whole new set of songs 
• To have a DOLLYman gig somewhere other than the Spice of Life. 
• To be on the radio even more than last year
• To do something NEW, whether it be a possible Richard Long-style walking composition, making visual art, make some visuals for gigs, write a piece for juice and electronics... 
• To get on THE TELLY and BECOME THE NEW GARETH MALONE...