Matt Mecham's Personal Blog
Welcome.
I fancied a bit of a change and decided to give WordPress a whirl. There wasn’t anything wrong with Moveable Type, it’s a great platform but WordPress has matured into quite a nice little application.
I’ll be tweaking this template a little over the next few days when I get some more time, so don’t despair at the stock header image just yet.
Umberto Eco once said: “I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”
He makes a good point. A lot that passes as life doesn’t make sense and is rarely fair. We all have to face difficulties and make decisions that we don’t want to make. We somehow get by and face another day.
Life does not define you, it’s the way that you react to it that does.
Imagine, if you will, that you’re happily married with a son. Imagine that you’re hitting a career high. Imagine that you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and have six to twelve months to live. How would you react to that?
For me, that’s not something I have to face and I hope it’s something you never have to face.
I stumbled across Brian’s blog recently and have found it a bittersweet insight into how one copes with an awful and unavoidable truth. Less a depressing liturgy and more a philosophical awakening.
Read it and try to learn from Brian’s experiences.
“He who has a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
Back in 1999 a little known Scottish group called Travis released their second album “The Man Who” (produced by Radiohead’s long term producer Nigel Godrich) and virtually changed the face of Indie music overnight.
I fell in love with the album’s clangy and bittersweet reflection and played it for months. It was such a landmark album that it inspired another fledgling band by the name of Coldplay. It turned Travis into a huge international success.
Their 2001 follow up album “The Invisible Band” was a change of direction. Their melancholy was replaced with bouncy pop and never hit the same high. 2003s “12 Memories” was a dark, politically driven hodgepodge of ideas and concepts which fell a little flat.
There were rumours of them splitting and I figured that was that.
I figured wrong. It’s been four years, but they’re most definitely back and they’re back with a handful of stunning songs with their album “The Boy With No Name”. The titular boy being Fran’s newly born son who he referred to as “The boy with no name” while he and partner Nora deliberated over his name.
Their first single “Closer” was released on Monday and it’s a true return to form. It’s more mature, more confident but it is of the same pedigree as “The Man Who”. Check out the video which features a cameo by long term friend of the band, Ben Stiller.
The album is out on the 7th May and I can’t wait.
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