A.J. Walker

writerer

Time To Plant A Tree

In these days of multi social media hangouts creating a place where the links to all of them are in one place is a neat idea. I’m not sure how late I am to the Linktree party but I’ve arrived and I’m glad I have. The set up is quick and clean. No messing about. As simple as it should be.

Set it up on Thursday night and put the link in the Bios in my two
Twitter accounts and my two Instagram pages - one each for my personal Zevonesque account and for my Real Ale Liverpool (Realeliverpool) accounts. As well as having links to both sets of Twitter and Instagram it of course has a link to the website (i.e. here) and to the YouTube Channel.

ZevLinktree

Haven’t yet linked it to Goodreads or anything else and I may well not. Goodreads seems to have become a more problematic place these days. And obviously I’m not on TikTok or Facebook. These Linktrees must be pretty tall trees for some people. Anyway, in short, you can find me more easily than you could before. ‘Hurray!’ I can hear the cheers from here.

If you’ve got multiple hangouts on the internet thing then I can thoroughly recommend getting on Linktree and connecting those buttons.

One thing I’ve noticed on my
YouTube Channel is that it is predominantly me reading poems at the moment: I’m going to call this my ReadMeSpeakMe period. I need to get strumming some new songs to rebalance the channel.

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To You, To Me, Two YouTube

Got busy with it for a bit yesterday and managed to record myself reading a poem I'd written around nine years ago, and then followed it up with a bit of singing. Two vids for the price of one. Who'd have thunk it?

ReadMeSpeakMe is still on a holiday so it was back to reading a poem of my own again after last week's effort, 'Schrodinger's Poem'. It was serendipitous this week as I found the poem printed out in a notebook I was contemplating throwing out. Even more serendipitous the poem was called 'Serenity'. Spooky, hey! It's a lovely word, serenity, but the poem is the story of a growling drunk angry at the world and quite looking forward to death. So not so lovely at all.

Serenity Pic1
Click on the pic to discover how unserene

The vid starts with a brief mention of Neptune Brewery, my favourite local brewery, as I had a few of their cans yesterday in a quite rare event of drinking more than two beers at home. It's funny but while some people have been driven to drink, during these long lockdown months, I've been driven away from it. I'm drinking less than I do when normalcy reigns as I find drinking a social thing. Even if I'm by myself with a book in a pub it is social: you're getting served by someone, chatting to them, and you're drinking in the company (or at least vicinity) of others. Often you end up chatting to people you know and/or complete strangers. Drinking in pubs is a social thing in a group or not. Drinking at home is not a social thing. Most days if I open a bottle of beer at home I rarely get around to opening another - and sometimes I don't even finish the one I've opened. Drinking at home doesn't grab me, which I take as a good thing (and is why I won't buy wine, because if I open a bottle of wine it is going down like the fruit juice it is - you're asking for trouble with that stuff). Anyway I ended up over a period of over five hours drinking five whole beers! The insanity (you can get thrown out of pubs for drinking that slowly). Had five different beers, but my favourite was 'Turbulence'; get your tasting tackle around that stuff.

The Neptune Three

So there is the beer and there was the poem. All very serene. There was also a quick strum, which only came about because of yesterday's
VSS365. The prompt word was load, and for some reason it made me think of the Eagles song 'Take It Easy' - and trying to loosen your load when there's seven women on your mind (good luck with that one!). I wrote the VSS365 and got a couple of comments from people who seemed to think it may be me with seven women on me mind; rather than a classic song lyric. It made me post a link to the original song on Twitter and further than that; me to have a wee strum.

Take It Easy Pic1
Click on the pic to Take It Easy.

This brought out the guitar I was given by Sue, which was my mate Ken's lovely Tanglewood. He only passed away last month and in some ways it already seems ages ago. It is so lovely to have such a gift from Ken's long time partner. To think he sat in his room learning songs on it, and now I am. I'd never played the song before, and it shows, but I will add it to my practice to maybe get onto an Open Mic repertoire at some point. We shall see.

So that was Sunday. A two video, five beers kinda day. Cheers.
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ReadMESpeakME

#ReadMeSpeakMe is on a break at the moment. The first week off I didn't do anything although I did consider doing one of my own. So when the second week came I couldn't not do it. I've only got a few poems on here, but I picked one of them and did it. This week then Read Me Speak Me is really reading ME the poem by me, not just me the poem. Or something like that.

Schrodinger's Poem is a fun poem about the best poem ever written, which also happened to be by me: if I've remembered right. Then again if the box containing it is opened maybe, just maybe, it'll just be my misplaced shopping list with beers and cheeses on it. We'll never know now as I seem to have misplaced the box. Typical.

Schrodingers Poem
Click on here and be transported to not the best poem, but to 'Schrodinger's Poem' a poem about the best poem.

Haven't written any poems for a while - hey it's hard when you've already created the best poem ever, everything else is a disappointment. But maybe I'll get the poetry pencil out again.
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Voice Activation: 4

Sunday is rapidly becoming 'ReadMeSpeakMe Day'. And this week's Sunday was no different, at least from this perspective. If you are not aware of it (and I wasn't until a few weeks ago) it involved @readmespeakme posting a weekly poem every Sunday with the request for people to record themselves reading the poem and posting it on - or via - Twitter.

For the last three weeks I've recorded vids short enough to put within a Tweet but this week it was about ten seconds too long and I didn't want to edit the start or ends of it. This meant the obvious option was to put it up on YouTube. So that is where it has ended up. I may well put all future ReadMeSpeakMe efforts up on YouTube even if they are short just so there is a one-stop-shop for it.

Storyteller

This week's poem was from @sojourner97 titled 'The Storyteller'. It was just three verses and as I was setting up my phone and iPad to do the recording I was messing about with my guitar and it came to me to read the poem over a few chords, which I did. I of course read it as a poem too. All in one take as well - no editing required. After the day I had, or maybe because of it, I was remarkably relaxed. Due to playing and reading it the vid was over the length permitted on Twitter which is why I had little choice but to put it on YouTube.

Anyway, if you click on the photo it will take you through to the YouTube vid and you can see for yourself.

And why not get up on to @readmespeakme and check out the poems and the readings from the many talented people who get involved?

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Twitter links:

@zevonesque
@sojourner97
@readmespeakme
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