On Spontaneity I find my way to a local craft brewery for a gig, pedalling through Thursday’s somnolent summer sunshine down Victoria Rd, then along the Yarra River bike path. I overtake handfuls of people: the elderly couples walking their dogs, the active-wear clad mothers with prams with who walk side by side and pull off the path as I ding ding behind them, the group of teenagers who ride BMX bikes along the side of river, hopping between stones underneath the bridge at Dights Falls. Each group is left behind as I speed past, top gear enhanced by the gentle downwards slope from Northcote towards the city. I pull up to Bodriggy, find a way to attach my bike to the fencing that lines Johnston St. My D-lock struggles to make the connection, mainly because my bike is held away from the fence by the milk crate I’ve attached to the back of it to hold my groceries, my jacket, my banjo, depending on the outing. This milk crate is a source of conversation at most social engagements oh man, I’ve been planning on doing that for years, I’ve got some milk crates somewhere, but wildly impractical. Due to the nature of the way I’ve attached it to my bike, the bike’s centre of gravity sits somewhere just behind my butt. This is totally fine if I lean forwards to ride, or if I’m rolling downhill, or if there’s nothing contained in the milk crate, but under less than ideal circumstances, ie pedalling up hill with a full contingent of canned chickpeas and silverbeet, this bike has a tendency to wheelie, front wheel floating up off the ground, Pegasus taking flight in the northern suburbs of Melbourne. The first couple of times it happened I imagined I’d mistaken the issue. Surely my front wheel was coming loose, or the handlebars had developed some fault, but then I realised this distinct lack of control was my bike subtly taking off below me, shifting from a useful mode of transport to a point of interest amongst the local kids. whoah look at that guy wheelie-ing with a banjo on his back, it looks… effortless. No effort here, just this bike and me slowly drifting away from the Earth’s gravity. Continue reading “On Spontaneity”
On Fighting on the Internet *I preamble these thoughts with some other thoughts, namely that I released a very limited edition t-shirt this week. There’s exactly EIGHT of them left at this time of writing. If you’re interested in supporting my music career I’d be delighted to send you one, for whatever price you choose to pay. Link is here, and on with the show! … If there’s one thing that isn’t changing in 2020, it’s me fighting on the internet with strangers. If I had an app that could track my fighting time I reckon I’d be reclaiming a whole year in lost time. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that this is where 2020 actually went. Here I was thinking it disappeared in the blaze of a global pandemic, turns out I just got lost in a Facebook haze where like some absurd version of Oprah ‘you get a comment’ and ‘YOU get a comment’ and suddenly I’m spending my afternoon doing obscure research into the ownership of Australia’s newspapers and the percentage of readers still accessing physical papers vs those who are reading via mobile devices, all in the name of winning a fight with a friend of a friend. It’s a strange vice, and I use the term vice in a strategic sense because I feel the tightening pressure drawing me back to fight fight fight another internet random. All it takes is two minutes spent perusing the comments on an ABC article and I’m deep down a rabbit hole, clawing my way through a burrows worth of shit arguments and non sequiters and a vague feeling that I could be doing literally anything else with my time and I’d be getting a better return on investment. Continue reading “On Fighting on the Internet”