Regrets

I haven’t got many regrets.

Yes, there is an occasional memory of an awkward romantic situation that (for some reason) pops into my mind at midnight just when I am trying to sleep.

But apart from that, I tend to look forward rather than back.

However, there will be one regret that I know I will have, and that’s not attending the last Black Sabbath gig that took place in Birmingham this weekend.

Black Sabbath was a band that started it all and steered me back to music after my love-hate relationship with the piano.

Electric Funeral was the first song I learned on a guitar as a young teen, and I think that was the moment when I knew in which direction to go. What I wanted to do.

Unfortunately, I never saw Ozzy as he cancelled the tour to which I had tickets a few years ago, and I couldn’t get the tickets to this weekend’s event.

Believe me, I tried, but there were too many people, and it was down to luck.

So, I watched the stream, teared up a little, but ultimately thought to myself that I made the right decision when it comes to my ‘career’ (rather than studying law, which is what was expected).

And that’s mostly due to these four old boys from Birmingham.

P.S.

The story has a good ending as instead of going to the gig, I got to perform at the yearly recital for the kids and parents, which was also nice. It was the 4th time we did that with my tutor, and I did pretty well this year.

WHAT AM I WORKING ON

Not much has changed since last week. I have completed the last round of notes for our upcoming series - Julie’s Gone

If approved, the mixes are ready to be scheduled for release.

But I started another side project (I don’t need to sleep), recorded a few of my YouTube videos in Polish and posted them on a brand new channel.

I want to run this experiment for a few months and see which does better - Polish or English.

To be fair, I’m pretty bad at both.

And on the main English channel, I released a video I recorded like 6 months ago. It’s about modern film music and why it’s not as memorable as the oldies.

WHAT AM I READING

Poland: A History by Adam Zamoyski. I finished it, and it is interesting how different Poland, and the idea of Poland, was before the partitions, and up to WW2.

I think what I learned back at school touched on that, but the curriculum was definitely built toward a modern idea of what it means to be Polish. Which is quite a recent invention.

Rzeczpospolita or Commonwealth meant diversity of thought, religion and nationalities; however, the new nation was built on one religion, one language and an ethnostate.

Which made it easier to create an identity, but it definitely wasn’t like that for the first 900 years of Poland’s history.

But what the book portrays extremely well is the nation’s fight for survival - during the 100 years of partition, then both wars and 50 years under Soviet rule. During which the hostile nations wanted to decimate and erase Polish culture and people.

I have lived for almost 20 years in the UK, and it is always baffling to me when I listen to Westerners who praise socialist and communist systems (and would like to implement them) without understanding the brutality and terror these ideas brought to Eastern European people. Maybe they should read historical books like this one. Or talk to my parents (and grandparents).

Chopin by Adam Zamoyski. The Polish history book depressed me, so I decided to read a biography next, and why not follow with one of the most influential Polish pianists - Fryderyk Chopin. I tried to learn one of his easier Nocturne pieces a couple of months back…with mediocre results.

WHAT AM I WATCHING

The Flash. I just started the movie, and yeah…it’s bad. I mean, some jokes are ok, but the massive budget wasn’t well spent, as the CGI and green screen look unbelievably ugly. You can also spot where reshoots and additional scenes were added. It’s a mess.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you (hopefully!) next week!

Mike

https://mikemigas.com/

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