People with skills don’t always reveal them.

“An artist is one with the skill to provide more and the will to refrain.” A lesson I had forgotten.

It takes time. And so I spend time…

…and I try to spend it well.

Time is ice in the hand. You have to be a real, cool, customer.

Sometimes you have a streak of rotten luck. You give away your skills for free. You give them to people who you think deserve your time. Then you never hear from them again. They pass their time, and their judgements, idly.

Its my fault, really. I confuse people’s enthusiasm for a free performance with real, lasting, friendship. I make friends fast. Too fast for some, I suppose. Yet sometimes, I even make fast friends.

I wouldn’t be anyone else, and how could I be. Indeed, how could anyone be anyone else? I’ll waste time with thousands of people, just to find those with skills.

Just to find the others.

Other times, you find you are at home in a place you’ve never been. Your family is sitting round the dinner table, but you’ve never met half of them before. The dinner table is a crate of beer, or a pub table. Dinner is on the house. You know everyone’s street-name, and their real names too. They know they’re in good company, and you sense you’re with ‘good people’. ‘Joe hep’ is nowhere to be found.

That’s when skills get revealed, lasting memories are made, epic moments of beauty and laughter illuminate your life. I had one of those moments this weekend. Though I was little tipsy when it happened, I was there when the ‘curse of wales’ was under the glass. I was there, and it wasn’t in my deck in the morning.

“The art is in concealing art.”