On Normalcy Back into the swing of it. It appears life is accelerating to normalcy at a much faster rate than expected. A much faster rate than hoped to be honest. I was ready for another couple of weeks rolling out of bed at 8.30 am, but it wasn’t to be. The government has decided we’re back to it on Friday and suddenly I’m staring down the barrel of getting out of bed, putting on actual pants and riding my bike to the various schools I teach at. Wild. I’ve also booked some gigs. What a concept. I had one day of productivity a couple of weeks ago where I emailed a venue I’ve played at for years to see how their opening up was going, and next thing I knew they’d booked me in for two gigs. Then another venue emailed me to reschedule a cancelled gig from July and suddenly I’ve got two rehearsals this weekend for two gigs the next weekend. Ludicrous. Continue reading “On Normalcy”
On Ongoing Priorities I can feel the first breaths of summer. It’s been a long monotonous winter, another one to tie into last year’s where we thought it could never get worse. Turns out it could get worse, we could do the exact same thing again but without the novelty that got us through the first one. To be fair, I’ve been pretty happy this lockdown. I’ve got enough on my plate to keep the weeks rolling past. I’ve been exercising and eating well and spending enough time catching up with friends on the internet that I feel connected. I’ve been reading and listening to new music and doing practice, although not as much as I’d have liked to in hindsight. But that’s how it always is. Steve told me the other day that this might be it. This might the last month of lockdown passivity we might ever live through. We might never be given this much free time in our adult lives again. Continue reading “On Ongoing Priorities”
On the Ongoing Passing of Time I’ve been thinking about time, as these glorious days of full sunshine and warm breezes start to waft in. It’s been a mere blink of an eye since we were here last, twelve months ago. I’ve thought often of how time is tied to memories, memories are tied to actions, and actions are tied to the places we inhabit. As much as I’d love to recall thoughts I’ve had over the years, these thoughts are infinite, a galactic ticker-tape that clicks and clacks throughout my days. There’s no way to count the thoughts I’ve had, no way to categorize them, to neatly place them in to boxes. Sure, I can vaguely group them, ideas I have on music and reactions I have to people I meet, but thoughts are so ephemeral, blink and they’re swamped by the next wave of thoughts and so on until we die. Continue reading “On the Ongoing Passing of Time”
On Missing Live Music I’m missing live music. I open up Instagram with my morning coffee and the first thing that pops up is a video of Jacob Collier and Justin Lee Schultz, jamming together on a green room keyboard after a festival. It’s just such a joyful stretching out – two young guys with a genuine love of music playing over a tasty little chordal vamp. There’s no audience, no pressure, no end goal, just a shared exploration of music, and I love it. I know for a lot of my musician friends, the pandemic has taken away careers, income, all semblance of future plans, and I’m definitely feeling this myself, but the thing I’m mourning the most is the spontaneity of music. I miss just being able to turn up to a venue and see something happening – a group of people who’ve worked collectively on this shared thing to a point that they can get together on stage and play it live. Who knew that with enough time practicing mechanical motions we could learn to express emotions through physical vibrations. Truly amazing. Continue reading “On Missing Live Music”
On Doubts Recently I’ve been finding myself doubting some things that I’ve always done. I put it down to COVID of course. With the once in a century shut down of planet earth its easy to start to scrabble at the edges of everything you’ve held sacrosanct and pick holes in things you believed were too strong to fail. I’ve seen it with lots of friend too. A wave of teetolarianism and vegetarianism is sweeping through my friendship group, accompanied by the dual waves of exercising and going to therapy. Everyone I know is going to therapy. It’s great. Inspiring. Beautiful. We’ve learnt to think and talk about our feelings. Is this related to the ongoing stress of this global pandemic? Or is it just merely a reflection that we’re getting older (and maybe now able to pony up the therapy fees that we couldn’t have done in our 20s). So what am I doubting? Continue reading “On Doubts”
On Self-Reflection I’m relatively bad at self-reflection. Which seems like a strange statement to make for a man who posts a weekly blog on his website about his thoughts, but here’s how I’ll justify it: I often write my feelings down, but I seldom return to these written thoughts to think about them. I’m starting to acknowledge that this is a weakness of mine and that it’s relatively easy to fix. Like everything in life, you just need to ‘do the work’ (hello objectivism, see Ayn Rand for more details), but as always, talking about the work is easier than doing the work, hence this blog post. Continue reading “On Self-Reflection”
On Writing (part 3) Write for the cool clear days of winter. Every day a crisp clear reminder of this year that has been. Brilliant blue skies and bold colours, washed down from the heavens with the brisk pull of rain. Illuminating morning beams thrown light across the back yard, every blade of grass a reservoir for a floating water droplet that kaleidoscopes across a microcosm of hidden worlds beyond the human gaze. We stamp our feet for warmth, tuck frozen fingers in to armpits, blow clouds of warmth out in to the cool. I turn my car heater to its highest setting, spend the first few moments in aching agony as it starts blasting colder air across the car and then slowly streams into warmth. I pump the space heater at my feet while I write in the shed, cocooned in scarf and beanie, slowly leaking warmth and words on to the page. Every activity is accompanied by a cup of boiling water, carried around the house, carried across the backyard, carried in to the shed, clasped in one cold hand while I write with the other, then hands clasped together to pass the warmth between them. Every conversation punctuated by the same refrain it’s a bit cold, the same knowing response just another couple months, the same shared experience of a cold that isn’t much on the mercury scale but seems to hit much harder than many other places on this planet. I’ve wintered in Canada, Scotland, Iceland, and each of these places holds a much stronger grasp to the miserable title of winter, but somehow Melbourne’s winter still hits me the worst. Continue reading “On Writing (part 3)”
On Writing (part two) Write for compliments. Write for critical feedback. I’m conscious that I have two writing minds. I have the me mind, that one that unlocks occasionally, pulls out of his rut and performs wild feats of imagination. He is me, obviously, but he is also a wider part of my personality that I can only access when I detach from the actual thinking part of me. Like breathing or locking in to a groove, the more you think about it the harder it gets. But when you’re in a flow state and there’s something drawing the really active part of your imagination away from itself, this imperceptible subcutaneous shift occurs and the writing gets effortless. This is the writing that I do for me, from me, to me. It’s occasionally self-critical, but generally wonderfully pragmatic and I disappear in to a voice that sounds like the me in my head. In sounding like me I can talk to myself in a way that’s much more permanent than the self-talk I indulge in mentally. It’s on the digital page after all, and the digital page is forever. Continue reading “On Writing (part two)”
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”
On Waste (part 2) *Quick note: the pic above is from Glasgow, circa September 2014. How time flies! This was just after I’d bought that hat. I’ve worn that hat most days since. Great investment. OK, on with the show… … A kid at school questions why I’m constantly bringing half a banana in as my snack. I tell him this story: Imagine you had a beautiful chocolate cake. You spent ages mixing it, filling it with chocolate chips, baking it and it looks absolutely incredible. Well in the process of moving it from the oven to the bench you drop it, and it lands neatly on its side on the floor. What do you do? Do you throw the whole thing in the bin? Or do you cut it in half and discard the floor side, keeping the delicious non-floor side for your tummy? How close to the floor-side do you cut it? Are you happy to have a 95% non-floor cake? I think we can all agree that taking a kitchen sponge to the floor side of your cake to scrub off the little bits of ick is a step too far (or is it…?) So most people would happily eat most of the cake, as long as it hasn’t been in direct contact with the floor. Well at home I have a big bunch of bananas. The only problem is one end of each banana has started molding, just ever so slightly. Resourceful me cuts all the bananas in half, throws the moldy bits into the compost and brings the other halves to school for my lunch. Delicious. A seven year old’s perspective… that makes sense. Continue reading “On Waste (part 2)”