Meet the New Year...
...same as the old year! And other, more optimistic, thoughts from OneTrackMinds HQ
Hello friends!
And a very Happy New Year to you all - I trust you’re all well. 2025 is here, and I hope it brings with it a refreshed mindset and a positive outlook for your all.
I, for one, am feeling pleasantly optimistic about the year ahead. We have a drastically reduced schedule of shows this year - only three booked in so far, compared to fourteen (!) last year - and while that might seem disappointing or perhaps a sign of a lack of ambition, urgency and drive on our part, let me dispel you of that thought immediately. Adam and I obviously love putting on the live shows - it’s the heart of all we do - but the burden we took on last year was a little too much, and we’re excited at the amount of headspace a less packed schedule will give us. Not only will we be able to give more of our time to making sure those shows are absolutely the best they can be, but we can also spend some of our freed-up time and energy doing other OneTrackMinds-related activities, which will hopefully prove to be just as rewarding. We’re meeting up at the end of this week for our first podcast recording session of the year, ready to launch the second season of our podcast on an as-yet-unspecified Friday towards the end of the month. As I teased in our last post of 2024, we’re also going to be putting a lot more energy in to our guest post newsletters, providing a regular supply of stories about life-changing songs in the form of this email, which should be very exciting. We’ve got some very cool people lined up already… watch this space.
After last January’s somewhat abortive attempt to launch a regular OneTrackMinds Album club on Substack, I’m conscious of not wanting to take on too much in an ill-judged spirit of renewal. Let’s be honest, this is not the time of year to be taking on new things - it’s still dark for much of the day, it’s generally pissing it down with rain, and it’s far too cold to feel energised by anything other than sitting in front of the sofa for a marathon session of The Traitors.
That said, if you were thinking of starting off the year with a new habit, could I suggest, if you’ve never previously done so, that you try your hand at keeping a diary?
Of all the wellness trends and mindfulness habits I’ve had a pop at over the course of my life, journalling is the only one that I’ve ever been able to commit to with anything like regularity. I’ve tried all manner of different formats over the years - tiny moleskine notebooks, lovely leather-bound journals from Japan, fountain pens, pencils, digital journalling apps - and while the method has varied, the activity itself has remained a pretty consistent habit.
Ideally, my favourite time to journal is first thing in the morning, rolling out of bed, making a cup of tea, and sitting in the quiet of the living room before anyone else has woken up, to scribble out the wooly mess of my still-sleepy brain. If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the practice of Morning Pages, made popular by Julia Cameron in her classic book on creativity The Artist’s Way. But even if you’re not, or have no particular interest in growing your creativity, the practice of morning pages is a genuinely beneficial activity. Even if you have no desire to keep a record of your life, or to reread what you’re writing, the practice of getting your thoughts out of your head and on to the page is incredibly refreshing. It never fails to help me out of a mental funk or to clear a foggy brain.
Keeping a record of your day to day life is also a very rewarding practice too. Writer and artist Austin Kleon has written a lot in his always-excellent newsletter about how useful his diaries for his creative practice as well as his mental wellbeing. “A diary helps me pay attention to my life” he writes. It helps him to pay attention to what he pays attention to.
Matthew Dicks, in his excellent book Storyworthy calls keeping a diary ‘doing homework for life’ - as though the things you learn from your day to day activities help you to become better at facing later challenges when they come up. A daily diary also provides you with ample evidence of the many stories that make up your life - and if you’re interested in becoming a better storyteller, then learning to recognise stories as they happen to you is a very useful skill to hone.
For the past three years or so, I’ve been religiously using a digital journal called Day One to keep a record of my life. It’s a gorgeously designed app that works on multiple platforms, and makes it extremely easy to create daily journal entries. You can add photos, maps, audio recordings, transcripts all very easily. And, if you’re feeling particularly grand and egotistical, you can print out your diary in book form1.
One of the loveliest things about using Day One is that it has a tool called On This Day, which shows you entries from years gone by. A lovely way to rekindle old memories, or, as is often the case for me, to illustrate ways in which I find myself stuck in the same mental loops.
So let me encourage you to give it a try. If you’re interested in some examples of how other people use diaries or journals, Jillian Hess’s beautiful substack Noted has examples from five of her readers who regularly keep diaries:
As far as new year’s resolutions go, it’s a pretty gentle one that hopefully won’t leave you out of breath or burned out by the weekend. Give it a go, and let us know how you get on…
Here are some other things we’ve been enjoying over the Christmas break…
Talking of diaries, I’ve been reading A Year With Swollen Apendices, Brian Eno’s diary from 1995, which was published in 1996 with an extensive collection of essays and other writings bulking out the back. I’ve already recommended Gary Hurstwit’s amazing and innovative documentary which was released last year, but if you’re yet to be convinced that Eno is one of the most fascinating creative minds ever to live, then his diaries will go a long way to persuade you. He’s an endlessly curious fellow, and his energy is incredible - I’m currently up to the start of August, and already in that year he has produced an album for David Bowie (Outside), collaborated and produced another album for U2 (Passengers), mounted an extensive art exhibition in a self-storage facility in Wembley, produced two more albums for James and Jah Wobble, taken himself off on a hilariously chaotic trip to Egypt, and overseen several charity projects for War Child. He doesn’t stop. His diaries are hugely entertaining - full of hilarious and often wildly indiscrete observations and somewhat catty takedowns. Highly recommended!
The weather in the UK has been properly wintery over the weekend. Several lucky people found themselves snowed in at a pub in North Yorkshire, which sounds lovely. Almost as lovely as being snowed in at a library…
My wife and I spent many an evening over Christmas making the most of my BAFTA membership, and watching a lot of the films up for consideration for this year’s awards. Still my favourite is James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, which comes out in cinemas in the UK on Jan 17th. I enjoyed reading this piece in yesterday’s Observer about how Dylan, always a shape-shifter, has found ways of connecting with Gen Z.
Here’s a list of the best songs you probably didn’t hear last year…
… and another list of the most exciting books due for publication this year.
If you came to our December show at Kings Place, and heard Sam Lee’s astonishing story about the power of the song of the Nightingale, then you won’t necessarily need persuading that birdsong matters more than you think…
And lastly, in the spirit of optimism and positivity that greets the new year, this story about an 88 year old man who passed his Grade 8 piano exam, 67 years after passing his Grade 7, should be enough encouragement to anyone who’s ready to push themselves into a new creative endeavour this year.
Right, that’ll do! We’ll be back next week. Until then…
KB.
Next Show - March 3rd 2025 | Tickets Here
Listen to Our Podcast | Substack | Apple Podcasts | Spotify
Follow Us | Instagram | TikTok
Of course I’ve done this.
thank you for all the suggestions! I was wondering how to fill all those days in this h n y !!