There is Veni, Vidi, Vici. And then there is the opposite. He didn’t come. He didn’t see. He lost. Which was very much the feeling tonight as I drove home from the studio/rehearsal space that I share with some people. A Caesar dethroned with his laurels in the stew, a hung-over toga party – stabbed not by a microbrute, but my own ability to suck.

Actually, I managed the Veni-part. I showed up. I got to the studio. And sometimes shit happens, or you happen to be shit. It’s ok, I guess. There are other nights – of hubris and foolish triumph. Best are the days and nights that I just keep adding parts to songs and suddenly the song appears, completed.

Tonight I wanted to record acoustic guitar for a track on my Mannheim EP. The song is called Summerhands and is suffering badly from demoitis. It was originally written in C which had me singing at the top of my range, and not so angelic as I would have hoped. Still, as is the case with every song, there were a lot of lovely accidents in the production process which I now have no chance of repeating.

The idea tonight was to record it in G and to imagine the old attempts didn’t exist. I didn’t even check what the tempo was last time. It turns out I ended up pretty close. 94bpm instead of 95.7 last time.

This is not that interesting. Not for me, and not for anyone reading. I showed up. I didn’t win. I might have learnt something.

The important thing is process, not product. Every once in a while we slip. Two steps up, one step back etc.