"Over the past few months, I’ve been overwhelmingly drawn to the sound of ‘The Lonesome Violin’. I place the phrase ‘The Lonesome Violin’ in inverted commas, as it’s not always strictly a violin. Not even a viola or some other stringed instrument. At first, I thought it was a country thing, but I don’t think that’s quite right. It does seem to have a sort of country-esque vibe to it, but there is something else harder to pin down; a solitary sound that follows you about. In the recent predicament, it has been subconsciously scoring my daily movements; a personal soundtrack to our collective solitude. It is a mimic and not a mimic. Sometimes it manifests itself as a fiddle, but other times can be found in the distortion of an elongated voice or the pitch bend of a synthesizer. It is not even necessarily a particular sound, but maybe a mood; something that burrows through the gauze of my earphones and clings to the air next them with a kind of cinematic grandeur.

 

        It has a habit of snaking its way into things. Sometimes, I find it sliding into bed with me. Other times, it crawls between the slices of my morning toast with the butter, inevitably ending up in my mouth and hanging out between my teeth. It does not sparkle, but rather is slicked with sand, saw toothed but soft. Often, I think of it as a small directional wind but slipperier, pushed about inside a tiny, greased, invisible straw. With the recent reduction of physical contact, it began to worm its way into my flat and hum about the walls. It seemed to skim upon their surface so frequently that in the end, I would just invite it in. I would switch on my Bluetooth speakers and after the customary awakening jingle, there it would be again. And again, it found itself skimming about the small rooms, over the woodchip wallpaper and the old fireplaces. It was in pop, indie, country, electronic, plastic, synths on the edges of voices and curved movements of strings. It buzzed around my ears, shoulders, abdomen, getting its fingers in; gave my feet a nice rub. It’s a friend, I think. But a mopey one."