a day in the crypt

17/02/25: making art without judgement, for no other reason than to live in the moment

Blue Bucket Of Gold is a free weekly newsletter from me, the musician Catrin Vincent. If you pay, I also offer long-form content, like interviews with your favourite artists, new music and songwriting prompts. This newsletter is a passion project; a deep-dive into the human psyche from someone whose life was transformed by discovering how art can heal. It started as a way to digest my favourite music, then turned into a vehicle for change, a beautiful way to understand myself and the world through writing. Please feel free to share and support in any way you can. Thank you for reading.

Morning light filters through two twin skylights. With the salt of last night’s drink on my lips, I sling my rucksack over my shoulder, grab my pillow and plant my feet on a rickety ladder. The two side wooden slats of it pull back a centimetre from the hole as I press my weight into it and descend…and a little more…then as I reach the bottom, they fall back to safety again. I make it to the floor.

London is full of these rooms, little corners in big Victorian houses where people build make-shift creative palaces, pouring their quiet voices into something outside of themselves. A million voices amalgamating into one low, inner-city hum.

I’ve stayed the night in my friend’s attic studio.

These rooms are my backdoor into London; kind friends with sofa beds, spare rooms, friends texting me, “seeing you is like medicine”. The time to leave was long ago, but my studio is still here, like a museum frozen in time.

My studio is ‘the crypt’. A lot happened here, but it’s still functioning for now, and I’ve been grafting. Under exceptional circumstances, I made a whole album here last year, and now, I don’t know how to reconcile the space with a new era. Max’s manuscript paper lies on the floor like flostam from a shipwreck, Alfie’s unused P.A sits gathering dust. Pete’s drum kit glistens in the fairy-lights, barely played.

Before I descend into my living museum, I meet Vinz for coffee.

Vinz is my close friend of seven years, someone I have a deep musical kinship with, and who everyone has a lot of respect for.

“How have you been?”,

“…lonely”.

We all say this, now. He’s talking about missing the music community that once coalesced around this studio. Most people have left London. And I think somewhere in last year’s heat, I knew everything was so impossibly ephemeral, that it was only a matter of time before less-wealthy music communities broke down. I remember how that realisation made me savour everything even more.

The question is; where will they rebuild?

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