I'm 50 today.
I’m fifty years old today. And it actually feels alright. Along with my wife and three kids, I sat in the wheelhouse of my (still unfinished) lifeboat studio this afternoon, sipped tea and ate homemade chocolate cake, gazing out over the North Sea. Life is good!
Thanks to everybody who wrote on my FunWall, posted me an email or a text, or sent me a multimedia birthday card.
In this era of podcasts, web sites, and ‘celebrity’ lists in daily papers, a birthday is quite exciting when you’re semi-famous: not only do ALL your friends miraculously remember your birthday, you also get dozens of heartwarming strokes from people you hardly even know!
I also got old-world analog constructs in the form of flowers, a prezzy or two in the mail, and lots of cards. But I think my favourite birthday card of all time has to be the one below, drawn (in haste today between Year 11 school classes) by my brilliant younger daughter Talia.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Congrats Thomas, hope you have a great day, and the year ahead brings you everything you wish for.
Tim from Australia.
October 14th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
The transducer will seduce ya…. Have a happy!
October 14th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Boom! There’s a cannon for the first fifty years!
Boom! There’s a cannon for the next!
( was paraphrasing an artist’s song for his birthday tacky? ah well, too late!
)
Happy Birthday! And here’s to many more! Thanks for all the memories and wonderful music, both those that have been and those to come!
- Nick, from Connecticut
October 14th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Acckkk… almost missed it… but with four minutes to go…
Happy Birthday Thomas!
That’s a great card from your daughter…
All the best,
Darren.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
Happy B Day! As others have already wished, here’s to many more as full as the first fifty have been – cheers!
October 14th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Happy Birthday! \(^o^)/
October 14th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Mein gott! Fifty! And sounding happier in a jacked-up lifeboat than a prince in a palace. Congratulations are otiose. As they say among the younger set – epic win!
Can’t draw. Can make fannish tit of self. Voila.
[Parental advisory: the following contains scenes of murdered metre and mild doggerel]
Half a hundredweight of years
Two hundred passing seasons
That’s the way the planet turns
Pop go the reasons
Tom is making music again
In Internet staccato
Making songs embroider the world
(Bass? More legato)
Fifty years! The funk! It still burns!
Six hundred months can’t stop it
The urge to make just won’t be slaked
Spark up that rocket
Happy birthday, TMDR
Who gave us all Europa
Verse by verse you write out your life
Never the coda!
October 14th, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Happy happy birthday, Thomas! I may be late, but please do forgive me, for I am ever living in the past (or, from my point of view, you are from the future– five hours, to be precise).
I absolutely LOVED your daughter’s card. She seems to understand you
(This, mind you, from more or less a stranger, but I live in the fantasy that _I_ somehow know you, which is, of course, patently ridiculous).
Wishing you a year of forgotten dreams suddenly and inexplicably realized, a safety net that never binds or tangles, and true friends from unexpected places (and, maybe, times)
Cheers!
October 14th, 2008 at 6:29 pm
congrats ! for years my friend , a HUGE Beatles fan , would call and play Birthday by the Beatles over the phone to wish me one . the only problem was it was usually 6-7 am when he called , the family didn’t approve . anyway , Happy Birthday , I’ll see you in six years when I turn 50 .
October 14th, 2008 at 7:00 pm
Still the 14th here, so I’ll say I’m not quite late with birthday wishes! Thank you for all the musical gifts you’ve given us in your first fifty years. I imagine the best is yet to come!
Tonight, I’ll raise a glass of bubbling seltzer in your direction, and with a chorus of cicadas as accompaniment, sing you a quiet “Happy Birthday” from my spot on this flat earth.
October 14th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
I’m fashionably late as usual but I do hope you had a very happy birthday and I hope you have many, many more to come. The card your daughter made is just fantastic, and it sounds like the kind of birthday I dream of (my own boat on the shores of the Atlantic, wind and seasalt in my hair…ahhhh).
October 15th, 2008 at 3:33 am
happy (belated) birthday, from yet another person you hardly even know (but met once)! hopefully the next 50+ years are as awesome as the first.
October 15th, 2008 at 3:44 am
And a belated happy 50th from me, too, Tom.
Hope the celebrations were good, but not too much that lose focus on all this tantalising new music that yuo’re now working on.
All the best.
Rob
October 15th, 2008 at 4:30 am
Ack! I’m a day late. Close, as they say, but no cigar.
Happy Birthday that man.
October 15th, 2008 at 5:46 am
A belated happy B-Day to one of my all-time favorite composers. There’s no way you are 50. Why that would make me… err…
October 15th, 2008 at 6:05 am
Happy 50th, Thomas! I just turned the BIG 5-0 in May, and I feel wonderful. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the most creative time of my life! I wish you all the best, and I can’t wait to hear your new music – especially ANYTHING produced with an audio-molecular, intergalactic sonic transducer. That’s my favorite instrument!!
Wishing you many more years of health, happiness and inspiration,
Chuck
October 15th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Just another message from someone you know at least somewhat as I poke my head up out from a murderous grape harvest to with you a belated happy 50th birthday. It is no understatement to say that you’ve changed my life with your music and I am very glad that you were born!
October 15th, 2008 at 10:50 pm
First I was early, now I’m late, but oh well.
What a civilized way
to celebrate a birthday, I must say! I’ve never met you in
person, Thomas, but perhaps some day.
And if that fabulous sketch ‘s the sort of thing Talia can do in a
Hot damn, she’s got the lifeboat flying.
hurry, I cannot imagine what wonders she could come up with if
she took her time! I’d call her brilliant, but you so scooped
me on that, ha ha.
Neato.
This is what I love about art: you get to see things (and people)
through another person’s eyes. You can look at a painting, a
sketch or a sculpture, and think, “Wow, so that’s the way things
look to him or her.” The way the brain interprets what the eyes
see is fascinating, isn’t it?
And hey, Europa–hi, remember me?
Anyway, how exactly
does one harvest murderous grapes? Hee hee!
Peace and good cheer, Kara
October 16th, 2008 at 6:36 am
Talia’s drawing is tremendous! Quite a talent brewing there.
A belated Happy Birthday, Thomas.
Tea & homemade chocolate cake: it does get better, does it?
cheers!
Dr. W / wadcorp
.
October 16th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Happy Birthday, Thomas!
Go to your favorite tea bar and have one on me. Just tell them to put it on my tab.
For my birthday, I want my wife to be able to buy me the newly released ‘Thomas Dolby – Off the Grid’ Album.
October 17th, 2008 at 8:13 am
Happy belated birthday, Thomas.
I just turned 49 today. It’s nice to know that I’m still younger than at least one of my music heroes
Soon, we could be older than a U.S. president. I won’t start to worry until I’m older than a pope, though.
I just wanted to suggest that you consider including your daughter’s fanciful rendering of “Lifeboat Studios” on the cover art of all future albums recorded there. Somehow it reminds me of the prehistoric airplane drawing that Roger Dean used to put into many of the early Yes materials.
Mike
October 17th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
the drawing is amazing, and the Dolby figure on the deck seems somehow reminiscent of Munch’s “The Scream” – in a good way!
October 18th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Joyeux anniversaire Monsieur Dolby.
I’ve been a fan from way back.
I really enjoyed “The Sole Inhabitant”.
Best of luck with everything.
October 19th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Congratulations, hope you have many more, and I await the final results of the transduction.
October 19th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Happy Birthday, sir.
As a fan slightly less than half your age, I’m always happy to see folks like you who remind me the best is yet to come.
October 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
I turned 50 last year. Frankly, I’m surprised to be “here”. I remember being a tenth of this age and wondering what I and the world would be like in 2007, looking at it from 1962.
Popular Science said we’d all have flying cars and we’d have colonized Mars by now…
Point being I had no idea in 1962 what I would experience in the next 45 years. Obviously, Popular Science didn’t either.
Lomg story short, welcome to 50 and as if you didn’t already know, here are two Truths that folks wiser than I taught me:
(1) “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” (John Lennon)
(2) “I know that if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire, I’ll never go any further than my own back yard. For if it isn’t there, I never really lost it.” (Dorothy Gale – The Wizard of Oz)
Enjoy being 50. It was long road to get there, and if you are like me when looking back, there was no other way to “here” from “there” except the one road you traveled. And even if I could go back and change the outcome, I wouldn’t…not to say that I won’t have a lot of questions about the trip when the journey ends, mind you!
But they’ll be completely different questions than the ones I had in 1962…
October 24th, 2008 at 11:52 am
I’m a day late dollar short here, but I tried to login on your b-day and had issues with WordPress. Anyhow, Happy belated B-Day!!
Brian
January 1st, 2009 at 4:29 pm
Happy belated birthday. I’ve been meaning to join this blog for quite some time but life has otherwise prevented it. The card your daughter made is absolutely brilliant! Reminds me of something my young daughter would say when I’m working on one of my crazy inventions.