On Touring I decant my feelings to the page. A cheery Sydney morning, the King St Cafes pulling a roaring trade from the milling crowds of early shoppers and kid-toting, lycra-wearing café hoppers. I’m camped out in a two star hostel, but where these two stars have come from and who awarded them is suspect. The sheets are clean and the room smells moderately fresh, but that’s where the stars end. Both beds sag in a desperate attempt to allow gravity to return themselves to the earth and the materials they were moulded from. The fridge hums softly in time with the fluorescent light’s incessant flickering and after ten minutes of idly attempting to focus I rise from bed to unplug the fridge and switch off the light. I’ll work in relative darkness, the laptop glow providing most of the room’s otherworldly light. One would expect the window to furnish some illumination, but a combination of accumulated dust and what appears to be a life-time supply of bamboo poles stacked against the side of the building distil the light into one single beam that shoots across the room and highlights Tom’s empty bed. … We played last night. An hour set of gin and soda inspired blues ramblings. Its always tough to work a crowd, and this crowd was in the particularly tough camp, their attention split between two screens displaying alternate games of rugby league and a pokies station with greyhounds achieving some form of life purpose by running in circles for human enjoyment. We start in middling territory. Boogie blues with a strong beat. No chord changes. None of that twelve bar crap. We sit on a chord and thump out quarter notes. If we can maintain this long enough, people will start to pay attention. Over the ten minutes of the first song, the games end. The lights dim. The bar staff turn off the screens, the greyhounds end their race, and the attention turns to us. The audience slowly realize we know what we’re doing. Competency bred from experience. We’ve done this before and we’ll do this again, a thousand blues riffs repeated a hundred gigs a year. Over the course of the year we probably play in front of a collective three thousand audience members, and while it would be nice to have that entire audience at one gig, we’ll take what we can get, and winning over a crowd of thirty people is where its at tonight. Two people start the dance floor, and then another two stumble in from the beer garden to join in. There’s a vague sense of appreciation from a drunk couple air-drumming on the side of stage. Whistles punctuate the end of songs and toe-tapping turns into hip-shaking and a crowd of thirty swells to fifty. A girl steps on to stage mid-song and staggers over to me to ask if she can stage-dive. I shake my head, an emphatic no. She takes this as tacit approval and shoulders Tom out of the way to jump face-first into the crowd. She takes the mic stand with her, one foot idly kicking it off stage as she flounders on the hands of the crowd. Not large enough to support any real attempt at stage-diving, the crowd drop her to the floor and I next see her getting piggy-backed around the venue, wildly cheering to herself. Our set swells and sways. Old classics separated by TK originals. None of it is familiar to the crowd, but its interesting music and played with feeling. If you have enough energy you can sell anything, Tony Robbins providing the perfect example of high-class BS shadowed in a cloak of ‘you-can-do-it’ mentality. But our music isn’t a self-help manual, and this isn’t an exploration of spirituality for aspirational Millenials. We finish on a high, back pats all around and I return to the hostel, dropping Tom off at a late night venue to continue the celebrations. … It’s midday the next day and Tom hasn’t returned home… Should I be worried?
On Self Promotion I sleep better the day after my album launch. It’s funny that a human generally unfazed by the day to day of life can be so emotionally swept up into a little sixty minute event. In the grand scheme of things, this launch represents an infinitesimal part of my life thus far, one twenty-fourth of a day that represents one seventh of a week tied into fifty-two weeks over some thirty years. The human psyche is a wild thing. The actual peformance aspect of performing isn’t the deterent. Organizing gigs or rehearsing band members or emailing press contacts isn’t an issue. Building a music career, whilst tough, feels like merely stacking a series of little tasks together into interminably larger projects. A tour is fifteen shows broken down into a series of contacts, each with an assignable name and an email address. Contact the right people and it falls together. But promoting myself is the stumbling block, the thing that grows my sense of unease. Having to sell to friends and family and the wider unknown public (internet and otherwise) is tough, and you never quite feel like you’re doing it correctly. I tie my self-worth into seeing people at shows, and I understand it isn’t healthy. … I examine the next step. I’m falling in love with performance from a singer-songwriter’s perspective. The songs begin to develop, the playing starts to take care of itself, the stories get polished. I’m slowly developing as a musician, and while I acknowledge I still have years and years to go before I’m completely comfortable with myself as a performer (perhaps reaching that plateau could spell the end of this iteration of my musical life), an enjoyment of the process is apparent. Enjoyment of the process is the crucial part. It allows me to dive into ideas, to spread myself thin between a million different artists and songs and lyrics. Anything that tickles my interest can be a kick-off point for an hour or day or lifetime of study. … So how do I clash these two things together? I’m invested in myself as a musician. I’m interested in seeing myself develop. I’m excited to see what happens over the next couple of years, and I enjoy nearly every aspect of what I do. The only thing that troubles me is self-promotion. … As always, I come back to Paul Kelly. ‘Stumbling Block’ I can’t get around it and I can’t get through it I can’t go over it and I can’t go under it I’m scared of what I might find if I ever get behind it Stumbling block, stumbling block, stumbling block If I wait a while it just might go away I suppose I should just get down on my knees and pray I’m sure if I could get just one good night’s sleep it’ll look better in the day Stumbling block, stumbling block, stumbling block Maybe I should pay someone to come here and remove it Or I could just chip away at it bit by little bit I guess I could build me a bomb and blow it up in one big hit Stumbling block, stumbling block, stumbling block Some of my friends say I should call in the mystics Or find me a philosopher to come here and tell me it don’t exist First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is Stumbling block, stumbling block, stumbling block If I ever get done with this I’m gonna make a brand new start I gotta get my thinking straight and put the horse before the cart If I had the balls I’d wrap this thing up in plastic and call it art! Stumbling block, stumbling block, stumbling block I’m gonna call up every TV station And the museum of science, maybe they’re looking for a special donation I could sell tickets and take it on tour all around the whole goddamn nation Stumbling block, stumbling block, stumbling block It’s in your mind, she says, it’s within you She likes saying stuff like that, I got a problem if it’s true If you can’t get rid of what’s inside you it’s bound to destroy you! Stumbling block, stumbling, block, stumbling block
On finding purpose I used to say that my purpose was to make people dance. A hilariously condensed version of an on-going life goal, but at the heart of it, a pure and achievable purpose. Every day I could evaluate myself: ‘did I make people dance today’? If not, why not? In a nutshell, a great reason to exist, but possibly not multi-faceted enough to make the daily trudge of life worth pursuing. For a brief period before this I studied jazz, mainly interested in bettering myself as a drummer. This was possibly the most self-indulgent part of my life thus far, spent indolently enjoying the process of exploring myself by listening to music and playing drums. For an even briefer period before this I worked in fast food, creating sandwiches for people’s lunch. At the heart of this is creation, but not many would see it as a purpose, and even fewer as a reason to exist. Still, it was an honest way to make a living and instilled several positive qualities within me (mainly an entrepreneurial spirit and a desire to never work fast food again). … I stumble upon a copy of Seneca’s ‘On The Shortness of Life’, an essay written some two thousand years ago. This particular copy is covered in highlighter, notes scribbled around the margins, from when a twenty-five year old me discovered Stoicism and endeavoured to re-structure my life around it. “It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it’s been given to us in generous measure for accomplishing the greatest things, if the whole of it is well invested. But when life is squandered through soft and careless living, and when it’s spent on no worthwhile pursuit, death finally presses and we realize that the life which we didn’t notice passing has passed away. “ Seneca continues on to perfectly encapsulate and criticise me at the same time: “What about those who are absorbed in composing, listening to, and learning songs? The voice, whose best and simplest flow is naturally straightforward, they twist into sinuous turns of the most feeble crooning. Their fingers are always snapping in time to some song that they carry in their head, and when they’ve been asked to attend to serious and often even sorrowful matters, you can overhear them quietly humming a tune. Theirs isn’t leisure but idle occupation.” … Recently I find a greater joy in writing words. I find joy in playing guitar. And indeed I still find joy in playing drums (a blessing because I still earn most of my living playing drums). But there’s also joy in teaching, and joy in relationships. There’s joy in learning, and joy in building a small business. There’s joy in running, and a definite joy in leaving everything behind to dive into the waves on a warm summers’ day. But is this purpose? Could it be that a life lived between various pursuits is enough to bring a sense of purpose? While I’d love to dedicate myself to one thing, becoming a true master, I think my spirit has been endowed with a sort of wanderlust, a need to continue to grow and develop in numerous different directions. … I leave you with the great American poet Mary Oliver and her poem The Journey: One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice– though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do– determined to save the only life you could save.
Ten Minute Musings I’ve been working through the idea of daily writing. I’ve experimented with it for the last three years, long periods of inaction broken by short frantic periods where I write daily for three weeks and then subside just before the repetitive action becomes a habit. My daily writing generally takes the form of a ten minute free-thought exercise. Timer goes on for ten minutes, laptop or notebook is opened and I begin. Nothing pre-planned, nothing structured, just a quick mind dump of ideas. When the timer goes off I stop, save my work and move on with my day. Sometimes this is good. I get my ideas out, my mind quiets for a minute and I gain a sense of stable clarity. Most days though, the pure act of stopping frustrates the hell out of me. Pausing in the middle of an idea and closing my laptop leaves my mind spinning in a certain free-fall. Ideas come quick and fast and I grasp them, fidget with them for a second and discard them as new ideas rise to the surface. It’s amazing how the act of recording the thoughts my mind conceives can cause my mind to create new thoughts. Sort of like digging in a scrap heap I guess. As you unearth ideas you begin to see the edges of new ideas buried deep below. Ten minutes later and you’re deep in a hole of your own choosing, attempting to dig upwards. I was introduced to the ten minute ‘Morning Pages’ concept by a writer named Julia Cameron, but many others affirm its value. Lately I’ve been developing the concept in a new way. I still begin my day with a ten minute mind-dump, a meditative ritual to get the mind started, but as I wander through the day, if particular problems or ideas or thoughts come to mind that either worry or excite me, I use them as a fire-starter for a ten minute free-writing session. Same rules apply: timer on, notebook open, I begin. It’s wildly interesting to see how the physical act of expressing your thoughts in a digital/physical medium changes the way your mind toys with ideas. I find this act clarifies ideas, soothing my mind and also sparking my creativity. The pure act of distilling my mind’s ramblings into cogent thought stops them trundling around the back of my mind, interfering with my day.