Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

Quick intro: I'm Carolan, 20, Irish, running for CCSO, studying music in Bangor.

Having ranted about Arriva on Sam's board I suddenly felt the urge to have a public blog. I confess, I do have a more private one hidden in the mists of blogspot, but if I were to tell everyone where that was I'd have to stop writing quite so honestly.

I'm just back from a lovely weekend in Dublin. I went to the RTE Living Music Festival, an annual contemporary music festival which features one composer each year. This year it was Steve Reich. How exCITing I hear you say. Well, yes. I love Minimalism and the concept of music as a gradual process, and Reich is the God of music as a gradual process (although [like most stroppy artists] he's not a big fan of labels such as minimalism).

Being too busy to spend the whole weekend partying with Reichy, I just went to Saturday's fun and games. But it was definitely the best day. I've dubbed it the Reichathon. Ten hours of solid fun. In fact it was nigh-on twelve hours by the time it was over. The day was divided into six sections, most of which featured the Crash Ensemble. There was also a public interview with Reichy and sections featuring the Irish Concert Orchestra and the Vanburgh Quartet. The Vanburgh Quartet section was the only godawful part of the day. They played Morton Feldman's Piano and String Quartet (with Hugh Tinney), an hour and a half of pure hell. It was one of those really quiet, slow minimalist pieces with a piano arpeggio followed by a chord in the strings. Just that. Repeated. For an hour and a half. Seven hours into the Reichathon, that was a poor programming choice. Especially since it was the only event held in Belvedere Chapel (yes, Joyce's alma mater, complete with Catholic hard benches for our sins) instead of the much more comfortable O'Reilly Theatre. At least they didn't play the full version .. I overheard someone mention there's also a version which is six hours long so really we got away lightly. Oh and we were sitting between one of Ireland's most eminent broadcasters, Eamonn Lawlor, and the music critic for The Irish Times, so we couldn't even fidget.

Anyway, enough of that. I should be talking about my election campaign or something. I spent quite a lot of Saturday feeling very anxious. I'm not sure precisely what I'm anxious about, and it was probably partly lack of sleep (had to get a ferry at 2:30 on Friday morning because the HSS has a hole in it), but it was an uncomfortable feeling. So I've decided to stop feeling anxious and start feeling confident. There now, isn't that better? This Will Be Fun. I still haven't got a campaign slogan. I think I'm going to spend all day tomorrow Thinking Great Thoughts. I hope Spencer and Tom are free to play the let's-design-posters game.