I am frantically finishing some mixes for a screw-jack E.P. I stole a can of peaches last night for dinner. Shit is so fucken hard at the moment. I dunno why I think that things will get any better. Look at the world… it’s just not set up for people like me. It’s fucked. I feel so close to breaking point. I go out there (points vaguely outside) and the people are all just locked into their shitty fucken eat, work, sleep routine that there’s just no room for color or swagger or any kind of wonderment. They kill people like me when we get too big for our boots, Jimi, Lennon, Jim, all victims of a system that hates for anyone to step outside his or her station. Lucky for me I’m shit at everything I do huh?
Bah, look I hate leaving shit like this so I’ve come back to try and temper my angst with something hopeful. Bear with me as this may take some searching.
I love making music. A local radio station described me as a “serial collaborator” this week and I guess it’s true, I love to make music and making music is usually better when there are others involved. Everyone’s creative juices intermingle to make a sauce that is more than the bits that go in to make it. I had dinner with Malcolm and his family the other night and his Mum said that she could not sing, that she’d auditioned for choir as a child and been told to not bother. Her sisters were both in the choir and were, apparently great singers but she wasn’t. She claimed that, in her head, she sounds perfect but people who hear her complain of grievous harm done to them by her voice. I commented that I was sure I could teach anyone to sing and have, on occasion, coaxed music from people who swore they couldn’t make it. It’s not so much that I like a challenge, given the choice I would rather work with people who are secure and confident in their own musicality and/or creativity but I hate to see an opportunity go to waste and will easily sit with someone as they find their voice.
I think that it stems from the fact that I was told, at a young age that I couldn’t sing and yet here I am. I badly wanted to be in bands and stuff at high school and the only way to do it was to audition for the head of music. She sat me down at the piano and handed me the sheet music to “Obla di obla da” by the Beatles and raced off into the song expecting me to sing. I did my best and fortunately I was well versed in The Beatles but she stopped me after one verse and screwed her face up and said “I think you’d be better off learning guitar”. Now listen man, I aint saying I was great but I had been in Kapa Hake for 10 years prior to this and had done a handful of school plays and stuff as well as singing and playing guitar and bass in church bands for a few years as well, I wasn’t exactly a novice, you know? This lady just cut me to shreds after a couple of bars of a shitty little ditty that’s more of a gimmick than a song and threw me on the garbage…. SO when I see a person who has been the victim of this kind of horrid yuckiness I feel obligated to rescue them and wash that sour taste from their mouths. One thing I have found in life is that a little discouragement goes a long way and if I can rewrite one shitty script for one person then I feel like I have struck a blow for truth, justice and the american way.
There ya go. Much more hopeful, optimistic and readable. Now fuck off, I have some wallowing to do…
I received a complaint last year about the music I make. They weren’t so much concerned with the volume but that I play the same song over and over, sometimes for days on end. I do that when I am working on a song and I try to only really thrash it when I am near the end and it at least sounds like music. In the initial phases it probably sounds very strange, particularly the synths before the drums are on… “Warble warble bleep bloop bip blip warble zoing bleep bleeop” Like that… I, on one hand, am feeling motivated and strong and, on the other hand, am fearful and reclusive and hurting. I feel like stuff is collapsing and that maybe the powers that be are gonna stomp on me. I haven’t been doing anything too illegal and there’s no reason for it, I just feel afraid and it manifests in me just staying in my comfort zone. Yesterday was really hard. I needed to find money to do something special for my mate Vader and I didn’t really have any success. I had a gig mowing a lawn but it fell through and now I am trying to sell some instruments, anything, so that I can do something special for him on the weekend.
As I have said many times, poverty has it’s benefits. I don’t drink or spend money on things like sweets and bad stuff, but the inverse is also applicable in that I cant spend money on the kids or on even regular food. This weeks groceries consisted of two loaves of shitty bread, 4 cans of beans and a can of tuna. That’s for a week. I’ll supplement it with fruit from the fruit trees I have access to, especially the grapefruit tree and I might sell an album or two here and there.
I learned today that some people are having trouble buying music on bandcamp because of some technical issue, I dunno, I dunno how to navigate this digital economy. So I have been working really hard the last day or two on a couple of tracks that should be finished and on the Screw-Jack page in a jiffy. I sometimes go for weeks with nothing that tickles my fancy and then suddenly the lens will clear and things shine into focus and the music becomes again, it simply becomes. I don’t know a better way to put it. I uploaded an old album called “Distance From The Monster” last night. I’d given a copy to my flatmate years ago and she said they were listening to it in the car on the drive back from Auckland. It reminded me of it and so I went searching for it online and couldn’t find it… So I rectified that. It is hard to listen to. It’s borders on half decent but I am a picky bastard when it comes to my own work. I’ll just leave this right here…
So my garden is doing great, I’ve planted 12 tobacco plants with another 30 or 40 to go but which are still too small to put in the ground. I um’d and ah’d about planting Poppies and decided it was a bad idea, the last thing I need at the moment. I am making good decisions lately and I suppose I ought to pat myself on the back for some stuff, I am doing ok, better than I was 6 months ago. Up and Up, you know? We got two new kittens yesterday, they are Siamese looking and cute as fuck. They even act like Siamese cats, very snobby and they are inseparable. They hiss and spit if you try to pick them up and they are currently barricaded in the fireplace. The big cats are all being locked out at the moment because Larry the bird is inside and they want to eat him so it’s giving the Kittens a chance to acclimatize without the bullies around. They are really cute and I hope we can keep them.
There’s work to do and I don’t feel like hiding in bed or reading so thats a real bonus coz typically, when I am broke and stressed, I just hop in there and block the world out. Not today though, I really want to be working. So I better get off here and do something else. I hope you are well. I was listening to The Velvet Underground this morning as I stutted about the University. Soul food man, soul food.
My friend has gone missing. Her Mum (sic) went to the effort of finding me (not always easy, through official channels) to ask if I’d seen her. It’s not unusual for her to go missing but it is unusual for her people to worry and so now I am concerned too. I cant use her name, even though her name isn’t even her real name. She is a really special lady. I once asked her if I could “Life Draw” her, in the nude. Yes I kinda was being a sleaze but I also did want to learn how to nail those curves that ladies have. (Mind all those puns). So it took me a few days to get her to put clothes back on. She just liked being in the nude and I didn’t mind either but the kids were getting a weirded out.
She is a strange creature but she is lovely and I hate to think that she is in trouble. Her story is famous. Her dad kidnapped her and held her hostage as a rape victim for several years in the Canadian wilderness and after the trial she was resettled here in Hamilton with a fake name and family. I only found this out a couple of years into our friendship after her “Mum” sat me down and told me the whole story. My friend had asked me if it was ok and her permission was given for this disclosure, it was not any breach of confidence but all the same it was a harrowing story. I would not be surprised if there are movies and books based on her story. Anyway, at the time she was contemplating having a child and her caregivers were establishing how strong her network was and what kind of support she would have. In the end they took the baby from her and her boy friend, he was a mental health survivor too and they were high on crack when the baby was uplifted. This was a good decade ago but I remember it like yesterday. It was pivotal for her and she never really recovered.
I dunno why I am telling you this. I feel really sad. Not that she is missing but that her life is still carnage. I have not seen her in 4 or 5 years and I hoped that she was doing ok. I met her in a mental ward. We are supposed to get better but some of us just have hurts too deep. Things can always be worse, I guess is what I am trying to tell myself. Be happy with what I have because others have it worse. I hope she finds her way home soon.
I made my last payment on the drum kit today. I am broke again, one more week of noodles and toast… Its my sons birthday today. I cant wait to see him tomorrow. I hope you are ok. xxxm
I spend a lot of time surfing YouTube. What I enjoy most lately is seeing how other cultures live. I love the films showing how people live in places like Africa, India and China. Mostly because these are the people I see in my neighbourhood and I find them more fascinating than the Pakeha or Maori people in my community. I do not see harm in these people. I see furtiveness and fear of someone like me but I do not sense the harm that I feel from the Kiwi people. I think because I know how mean and unable to share Pakeha people are or how vicious, volatile and duplicitous Maori people are. I use the word “Are” in both cases because I experience it, constantly in my life. I know that not all people are these things but many are and I tend to stick to myself. I am watching a documentary type film about a place called “Migingo”, a tiny island on a lake in Kenya near the Ugandan border inhabited by over 1000 people in tin sheds that cover the entire Island.
Its amazing. It reminds me very much of a place called Kaiaua where my family comes from. There was a time where the houses were all ramshackle and I definitely remember some places made of corrugated iron with packed earth floors. Crates of Beer for breakfast dinner and tea, naked kids running around and subsistence living supplemented by laboring jobs in the fruit and veg growing businesses, you know? It was a scary and unpredictable place when I was a small white boy and it remains so today. Underneath the gloss of the 4 wheel drives and the holiday homes that same stagnant poverty continues to fester. Anyway, Migingo looks cool, people have very little but they are thriving together and I think we could learn much from them. I will attach a picture. I have befriended a Kenyan family here in Hillcrest over the last year and am a sort of surrogate member of the family now. I admire their pride and the bravery it took to pick up and move out here. Hamilton is a hostile place to Africans, the Somalians who arrived here in the early millennium found us unwelcoming and suspicious. A rash of brutal rapes perpetrated by Somali men didn’t help matters and we got off to a rocky start but now, in my mind, they are Kiwis, as much Tangata Whenua as I am and I love them for the vibrancy they lend to our bland culture.
New Zealand is famous for “Bland”, the world mocks the way we destroy any salad we make by dumping a boiled egg and a block of dull cheese on it and our dress sense, nightlife and sense of humor are regular targets for comedians the world over. Africans are demonstratively joyful. Unlike us, a nation that will only really get excited about sports or politics. I have seen my friend Chomba dance for joy at the most simple pleasures and it is indicative of their approach to life. When I think of those guys I think of them with brilliant and contagious smiles. When I think of a stereotypical Kiwi, I see a well maintained haircut, a stern visage and some kind of brown attire. I guess I am feeling a little hostile towards my Pakeha brothers and sisters today. I feel that the gap between us is so huge sometimes that it seems impossible for me to operate in tandem with them even tho I am more than half caste myself. The Maori in my dominates much of my values, I suppose and I sometimes find the distance between us treacherous and impassable. I often feel like this inside the music community. There are a handful of us that are Maori, I could count us on two hands, Emerys, Pakis, Tupuhis and um… … Wairehu and um, hmmm, maybe one hand, oh yeah I guess Mr Marama siddles on over to the music scene by default. I have found that it’s best to keep my Maori side under wraps, it has caused division and conflict in the past, particularly with the academics. Their views tend towards Racism often and yet their style of discourse is unyielding and dismissive. I don’t talk about certain issues in the social circle of which I am but a fringe dwelling on a fringe dwelling on a fringe.
I dunno why I am talking about this.
I love the diction and inflections of the Kenyan patois, it’s earnest and passionate in a way that isn’t creepy of forced. I befriended a Somalian couple a few years back who had opened a store up at the Te Aroha St shops. They were so hard working but there was some kind of war going on between them and the Indian shop keeper a few doors down and it was very hard to watch them lose their business. Week by week their prices would go up and their stock would dwindle as suppliers stopped supplying and funds ran dry. The last thing I bought from them was a tin of Somalian incense, I can still remember the wonderful smell. I paid $40 for it. The first time I bought it it was $10. I felt so very bad for them. It was wonderful stuff too man! You had to rinse out a tin can and place a dollop of the incense inside it and then place it on the stove and burn the shit out of it. You close all the doors and windows while this is happening and after that your whole house smells amazing. I would like to find more of it. Ive never seen it since. They were a lovely couple, He was a Doctor and She was a Nurse but they lacked the funds to retrain and so were trying their hand at owning a store. I often wonder where they are now.
I am making dub today. I am actually pretty excited as I have an idea to work with and the gear is all set up. I have just been waiting for the rest of the household to wake up before I start. We now have a Pigeon, 3 cats and two kittens. The Kittens, we are hoping will adjust to Larry the Pigeon (Larry Bird, get it?) but the cats are a constant threat to poor old Larrys life and he has to be constantly minded. My flatmates found him as a baby, alone and half dead so they brought him home and now he’s just about ready to be released. That will be a sad day.
I am really suffering from anxiety and panic at the moment. I have this dread in the pit of my stomach, it feels like a impending doom, it feels like I’ve robbed a drug dealer and they are coming for me. (I haven’t but that’s the general feeling) I live with this day in day out. I sometimes wake with my heart racing and in and close to terror. I have lived with this forever too but it never gets easier. I medicate it but that only minimizes the effects, it never chases it away. I hope you are ok, gentle reader. I hope you are well and comfortable, safe and sound. It’s Vaders birthday today. I will see him tomorrow. I guess that’s where the fear is, I have no idea how to make some money in a hurry without doing something stupid. Ugh. Anyway, see ya.
xxxm
I was never a good gambler. I have, on occasion, been drunk or deluded enough to tell myself I was but I was not, not ever. Don’t get me wrong oh faithful friend and consumer of drivel, I did win now and then. I won big too, a few times but if you throw money at “gambling” for long enough you will find that the odds fall in your favor. It doesn’t make you a good gambler it just proves that the odds are working the way they should. If they are working right the house will be winning but not winning so consistently that you pack it in and take your money elsewhere, just enough luck comes your way to keep you feeding the beast.
I’d love to tell you that I played Blackjack or Poker or Craps or something sexy and Vegas like that but the truth is that my favorite game is the Poker Machine. and I estimate that I’ve put tens of thousands of dollars into those fuckers over the years. I had a flutter about 6 months ago when Rob and I went out to drink beer one afternoon when he was ‘sposed to be at school but it was Robs money, not mine. In fact the only other time I have done it in recent years was also with Rob out in Raglan. Again, his money, not mine. Other than that I just do not do it anymore. I think that the reason is that I only ever really gambled so that I could have something to do, so that I wasn’t just sitting in a bar drinking, alone. You see?
If I was sitting there at a machine then no-one would question why I was there, no-one would try to talk to me and I’d not feel so much like a loser. I used to wear headphones too, just to make sure I’d be left alone. For the most part I was able to leave ahead of the game, after all… the drinking was the reason. If I spent all the money on gambling without leaving enough to get drunk then I’d defeated the purpose. Now and then I’d hit a “Jackpot” of 1000, 1500, 800, whatever. I was really good at taking that money home. I was good at recognizing that it was good fortune as opposed to skill and resisting the urge to double up and let it ride. I do recall a few times when I just felt the niggle of being on a “Roll” and turning a few hundred into a few thousand but not enough examples to suggest I was a great gambler.
I did it in small corner bars and in the big Casinos. I can recall, at least one time, that the clock went around 24 hours twice without leaving the premises. They have safeguards in place now to catch people who are doing that but, you know, casinos are pretty lax about “Problem Gambling” any lip service paid to community spirit is just that… lip service. Sure, they say “Leave your kids in the car in the car park and bring your rent money, welfare and whatever you can borrow from the “instant Loan” place across the road! come on down!”.
I don’t gamble anymore. I guess it’s because I learned to take better care of myself plus I learned that me, drinking like that ends up in trouble, hurting myself and the people I love and sometimes innocent strangers. There was a period, living in Raglan and using a lot of Meth, that I set up an online gambling account. I bet there’s still a few bucks in there too but I have no desire to fire it up. Something fundamental inside me has shifted and it contains no attraction. I would rather play the free ones with no money involved. You still get that little dopamine hit when you win big but you don’t get the desperate shame and fear of having spent everything. Gambling is a tough master and I have sat in “Gamblers Anonymous” meetings and seen the haunted faces of the men and women it has destroyed. I do not identify as a Gambler but I wanted to find out for sure so I went along once while I was at Rehab.
The online gambling thing is interesting. The drinks are cheaper for a start and there are no people to be afraid of. My mate plays them but he is a gambler, a real good one and he makes money from them. he’s always careful not to make too much but he subsidizes his income with online poker. I know another guy who amazed me one night by saying “Shit we need more money” then walking into the Casino in Hamilton, slapping our last 20 bucks down on the blackjack table and walking out 10 minutes later with two grand. No joke. I was pretty fucking impressed by that but I know that I don’t have that kind of thing in me. That was an amazing few days. We got into a fight as I recall. It was in slow motion. There was this guy, really drunk young Maori guy, probably tweaked too and he was stumbling up the footpath towards us and a group of young people. One of them was equally drunk and not looking where he was going, happily joking with his friends. I could see the young Maori guy taking an instant dislike to this happy chap and as the two collided in the street I saw it all happen in slow motion. I managed to pull the young fella out from under the swinging fist that was coming at his unsuspecting head… this only enraged the assailant (fu… assailant! don’t think I’ve ever used that word before) and all hell broke loose. It seemed like suddenly all these strangers were suddenly beating on each other and me and my mate were right in the thick of it. I saw the police coming and managed to drag my mate and at least one of the others away just in time to avoid arrest. Hamilton at night time is no joke. I don’t know why people continue to subject themselves to it, if I had my way we would cordon it off and just let them all kill each other and then start again from scratch.
Anyway, I listened to this interview with Tom Waits in which he says “Just write it down, whatever comes, don’t censor or shape it, just get it all down, just take pictures of it” and the first thing that came into my head was, for whatever reason, Gambling.
Tonight we are playing in town. I still don’t have a drum kit. I asked to borrow one and they said yes and then at the very last minute they said “Oh but you cant have all of it”, so now I have a handful of hours til showtime and half a drum kit. I feel really anxious now because playing with half a kit is fucking hard, it changes everything and I noticed last night at rehearsal that my timing was all wonky as a result of having to to this weird transposition to re-purpose a tambourine. Anxious to the point that I don’t want to play. I can’t just not turn up but I really would prefer that they just play without me rather than play badly… It’s shitty timing coz I only have one more payment to make on the new drum kit and then this wont be an issue.
I will leave you there darlings. It’s not a biggy and today I think Dayna is coming to hang out with me in the garden so I am not going to give it anymore thought.
So, the Moofish album is finally done. 21 tracks, sent to mastering yesterday and we should have a finished product by Monday. Pretty exciting. I am going to try and describe last night but I am really not sure where to start. Lets start at the end… a smile and some time with a beautiful woman for an hour this morning. It was a nice way to wake up despite the calamity of hungover and confused. I walked all the way home from the city last night, in big kicker boots, with no socks, my feet are bloody stumps and it really hurts to stand up. The reason for that was that I was dragged into the city at the last moment and only had time to grab a pair of boots before I was shoved in a taxi by my “friend” Sebastian… the word “friend” is in quotation marks for reasons that will soon become apparent…. Picture me, in a dirty hoody, manky old shorts, held up by a string tied around my waist and these big, fuck off, army boots… I’m amazed I even got in… We went to Billys to sing karaoke and I did a ramshackle version of bohemian rhapsody. It was entertaining enough that someone filmed it but it was crap enough that Billy turned my mic off before removing it from my hand with a sad shake of his head. Ah man, so many memories of Billy, my favorite line was “No Odee, no more Iron Maiden”, that was 10 years ago , maybe more, he is still there and I still suck at Karaoke. I remember one time Kim and I went out down at the mount and I pretended to propose to her and sang “My Girl” and all these people believed it , it was funny as fuck. Anyway, after karaoke we wandered south down Victoria st, looking for another bar that would let me in dressed like a demented lawnmower man. Unfortunately this cop gave me a funny look as he was abusing some other guy so I siddled up to him and took a big long sniff and said “Bro, do you smell pigshit?”. He didn’t take too kindly and got rough with me. After he calmed down Seb was standing there laughing and just as he was about to let me go my way I “But bro, they fucken do smell like fucken pig fucken sheeeeeiiiit!!” he he he he was furious but just then someone got bottled across the rd (Like I said yesterday, its pretty common here), so I said to him, “are you gonna stand here and arrest me for calling you names or are you going to go and help that guy who really needs a cop right now?” So yeah he fucked off. When I turned around my “Mate” was nowhere to be seen and I’m stuck in the city with completely inappropriate footwear and a 3 or 4 km walk ahead of me. With not even a cent on me for chips or a pie. I stopped on the way and returned the spade I’d stolen a few hours before when me and phil were out hunting for poppies (we’ll get to that) and touched up some of my stencils with a purple paint marker I’d been clever enough to have prepared earlier. I scribbled Helter Skelter in a few spots and mocked the people in the Gym at 3 am coz…. well, fuck man….
Now, I had no idea that seb was coming. I’d been out busking with a local homeless guy called Phil and after we finished jamming I snuck him into our garden and fed him a big plate of Lasange. He slept on the grass out the back and was gone when I got up today. I was paranoid that he would waken the flatties coz I have found that people get a bit uptight when Phil is on their property, he is an acquired taste but I like to help him when I can. I was actually down at the shops to buy some Vape juice with some money Matt had given me earlier and I saw old Phil busking away, not making any money and generally garnering displeasure from the people who don’t wanna see folks like Phil when they are buying their Pizza or whatever. Yeah so I raced home and grabbed my Uke and the rest, as they say, is history.
I feel hammered and I really think I am quite happy to be broke coz I couldn’t do many more days like that this week. Two mental missions is two too many. I just wanted to jot it down before it all fades. The look on that pigs face was worth the whole, painful walk home. Fuck those viscous fuckers… Sorry, I have, as you can tell, some resentments…
Anyway, I am going to drink lots of water and get my head screwed on to do some work tonight. I am back on the drum kit tonight and tomorrow after a hiatus and I expect to suffer a bit while my body remembers what to do. I don’t want to be this waster I am being, gentle reader, but when I sober up long enough to feel… it fucking hurts so much. I guess I am doing ok. a hangover like this is never the best time for inflection and self appraisals, more like time for slow music and cigarettes and lost of water.
Here is a track I did recently for a Poet named David Merritt. I hope you enjoy it, he’s got a wonderful way with words and I am really pleased that he has chosen to work with me. I’m off back into my little world. I love you, xxxM
So I am experimenting with guitar again. I have relied on synths and stuff a lot this past year and I am trying to rediscover my inner guitar player. I think I do ok. I am also experimenting here with a little trick using a delay that, hopefully, enables the software to behave a little like analog tape. As always there are no vocals. The lyric I had in mind was “Get it if you want love” but, you know? I’m shy…. enjoy.
Yup, its a two times day today. So I have this little ritual lately. The people I live with are really cool and I have started trying to cook them something wonderful once a week as my budget allows. Not that good food has to cost a lot but sometimes the more you can spend, the better the results… not always though. I am back down to the great NZ 12 dollar grocery shop… bread, cheese and raman stlye noodles… “Mi-Goreng”, the red ones… anyway, this week I also bought some pasta, and veges and have made them a lasange. I know, I know, I did pasta last week but I had to work inside a pretty tight budget and Italian food traditionally comes from working inside budgets… Things like Pizza, Lasange and stuff come from servants sneaking bits and pieces from the kitchens of their employers and making do with what they had so… you know… its a fine tradition. The lasange is in the oven now and the house smells wonderful. I love it that they will come home from a hard days work to find the place clean and a meal ready for them. They are good people and I love doing stuff for folks, I truly do.
Last summer I spent in Raglan and the best parts of that were that on pay day I could make something really nice for the people I love. It’s the thing I miss the most about being in a family, cooking for people. So, you know? It’s no surprise that I do it when I get a chance. I have friends who are also broke and I would love to cook for them too but the occasion never arises, the stars don’t align, whatever. So, that’s all. I have just pulled it out of the oven and now it will sit on the windowsill and set, I like my lasange to be quite firm so that when you cut it it stays in one piece and you can see the layers. My mum used to make it… One day I went to stay at my mate Jasons house for the night and his mum made lasange and it was amazing… Mums was kinda sloppy and was more like stew with pasta in it, Mrs Gables was fantastic, it looked just like Garfield’s from the cartoons and I was a fan from then. So yeah, if there’s one thing I like writing about more than music it is definitely food.
This weekend marks the 13th birthday of the statue of Riff Raff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show in our town, celebrating the artist who not only played Riff Raff in the stage show and the motion picture but wrote the show as well, Mr Richard O’Brien.
Here’s the statues own webpage, there’s a cam there somewhere where you can watch the goings on in the city, it’s particularly funny/gross at 3am on a Saturday morning.
The image on the front page of the site is the live feed and if you fuck around with it you can make the cameras pan around and stuff. There’s some guy sitting there smoking at the moment and it looks like a beautiful day in town. It’s certainly shaping up OK here in Hillcrest.
So, I first saw this film while I was in high school and I didn’t really get it but that didn’t stop me loving it. It was sexually quite confusing and yet compelling at the same time. I loved Tim Curry from that moment on and, like most school age kids in NZ, I had to learn the “Time Warp” and dance it at assemblies and such. Once I came of age and moved to Hamilton it took on mythic proportions and it seemed like everywhere you turned there was some spot of historic relevance to the movie. I lived in the house it was rumored that he wrote some of it in, I lived opposite the mansion that allegedly inspired the whole thing and I walked past the film theater that inspired his love of the stage and gave the show it’s quirky “RKO” appearance. In Hamilton you cannot really escape it. Why would you? It’s a fucking fantastic show and film. There was a smattering of christian type backlash against the statue… A 10 foot transvestite in the center of a bustling agricultural center is always going to attract a few detractors but it’s stood the test of time.
The park (Built on the site of the old Embassy theater, no less) continues to evolve under the kind and careful guidance of my friend and veritable model of tolerance, endurance and community spirit Mr Mark Servian of the clan McGillicuddy. It features a multimedia aspect as well as a hands on “laboratory” with dials and levers, lights and bells and things to turn, push, pull, yank and slide. If you get the correct combination, more things happen and it’s really fun to watch children realize whats going on and see them work it out, like the worlds largest and most demented rubix cube. The Toilet block sports bathrooms done in the disco style, reminiscent of George Michaels “Lets Go Outside” music video and the building also features a “Dressing room/Green room” type thing, complete with one of those backstage mirrors with lightbulbs all round it. This is specifically for performances in the city and for street artists to use for costume changes and so forth (it’s also quite handy for storing libations for thirsty musician types during performances). All wrapped in tasteful themed murals, it’s a beautiful island of magic in an otherwise lifeless and drab city center. The area continues to evolve and will eventually extend right down to the river front and feature larger and more purpose built performance spaces and I certainly expect Mark has more clever tricks up his sleeves.
It is really, seriously, fucking cool.
In a town as uptight and conservative as the Tron, it’s one more little iconic beacon of art and wonderment and I feel fortunate every single time I walk by it, never missing a chance to climb up on there and fiddle with riff raffs pistol. Here are some pics… The smiley gentleman is Mr Marti Wong who did lots of the fantastic metalwork and the other Chap is Mr Servian. Also I think that young man playing with the toys is my mate Rohan…
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Today, however I’d ask you to cast your eye back thirteen years as I tell the tale of the first birthday, the unveiling of the statue itself and the one time, in recent memory, that Hamilton was truly cool.
I myself didn’t play on the main stage that night but we did play at Ward Lane, to a jam packed, sweaty crowd who were all dressed in drag or some kind of Rocky Horror theme. After the show we trecked, as a mob, down to the site where they had erected a huge stage and sound system as well as blocking off the streets. I may be wrong but I think there was also a rugby game or maybe the “Field Days” or something on that night as well and the city was a veritable throb of energy. The Statue itself wasn’t actually disrobed until midnight. This was back in the times when people stayed up late, you see. For some reason I remember being up on that stage, maybe we did play? Nah, I doubt it, still, it was a great night! The party ended, for me, well after dawn, across the river at another dubiously famous iconic Hamilton spot, pleasantly and unashamedly wasted, semi naked and definitely ready for bed.
One memory that sticks in my mind is of trying to Pick Mr O’Brien from all the thousands of other Riff Raffs that night, damn near impossible. I wholeheartedly expect the spectacle to return to the streets as the citywide move towards the river continues, surely we will put some of these fantastic spaces to use. The main thing that stifles these types of things is the city wide liquor ban. I’m sure it reduces some peoples fear of being out but as far as I can see its just as, if not more, violent now than it ever was. I know more than anyone else that you do not need booze to have a good time but there’s a special energy inside a crowd of happy kiwis at a night time event with a few drinks under their belts. I dunno, maybe I’m stuck in the 70s and 80s and remember it all with rose tinted glasses. I do remember the fights and the flappy flesh slap sound of a face that’s been “bottled” so maybe, just maybe, we are better off but I’m pretty sure that shit happens regardless. It’s not like I want to be out boozing in the city, it’s just these odd occasions once or twice a year when it would be nice to get people out dancing in the streets. They do stuff in the city now and then but it’s all run by this one asshole who imposes his musical taste on an entire city… not only that but those silly fuckers pay for it. Hehehe, fuck em.
I do not believe it is just Hamilton that has gone soft. I think that the whole world has retreated into it’s devices. The rising cost of entertainment, social lubricants and the rising threat of violence or awkwardly having to come face to face with homelessness has sucked a lot of the fun out of people to the point where they think that 11pm is late for a Friday and the notion of a headline band not taking the stage til midnight scares the bollocks out of people who once used to dance and fuck and snort ungodly things up their noses until the sun rose a second time. I guess it’s for the best. We can’t have people behaving like that or else they wouldn’t turn up to work and who would flip the burgers and count the beans then huh?
So maybe how about taking one for the team and come down to embassy park this Saturday evening? The show starts at 7 and goes until 11:30, featuring music followed by a live performance of The Rocky Horror Picture Show! All free, all in the outdoors on a balmy Hamilton night with restaurants and bars all withing a zero minute walk. In fact if you were real lucky you might get a seat in the adjacent Chinese restaurant!
If not, I’ll catch you fuckers on the flip flop. Whatever you do, do not buy my music.
Good morning. I saw the sun rise yesterday. Frantic and terrified of sleep, rampaging in my mind right up until the point I let the new day and weariness drag me under. When I finally woke yesterday at 4:30pm there were all sorts of curious and seemingly inexplicable clues as to what I’d been up to. Whos wheelchair is this and where did all these road signs come from? Conspicuous by its absence was the bag of weed that had fueled this madness. I took solace in the idea that if I’d left it somewhere out in the world then hopefully one of the local homeless found it and it brightened up their day.
I never mean to get that hammered, it just sort of happens. I had no money left after making a payment on the drum kit but a local dealer traded me a bag for a couple of pots of tobacco seedlings, he threw in a hip flask of vodka and… now there’s a wheelchair in the garden…. These things happen to me all the time.
I found it, broken, in the rubbish pile outside the Auto Garage on the other side of the park so I raced home to get some tools, fixed it up and then drove it around Hillcrest for a few hours, stopping when my arms got tired to roll a joint and listening to Bob Dylans “Highway 61 Revisited” album at volume. My initial idea was that it will make a great frame for the beans and tomatos to grow on. I don’t claim its a past-time for everyone but it seemed to tickle my sense of humor for a while. I remember taking it home and returning to the park to play ukulele for a few hours. My playing is too loud to be done at home in the middle of the night but is just right for way out the middle of the park. I usually look for the cricket pitch coz that’s a good indicator that I’m right in the center and unlikely to wake or annoy anyone. After that I came home, remixed our recording of Gram Parsons “Love Hurts” with Patti Smith and then retreated to the garden to lie in the fresh and fragrant early morning grass listening to a Nirvana concert and blazing one last doobie.
I don’t choose to do things like this alone, I just don’t know anyone else who is as weird as me so, for now, it’s a solo sport. I collected all the road signs on my first journey to collect the weed, I just thought they would make a nice addition to my garden and now, 24 hours later I begin to feel human again. I briefly ventured out last night to find food before slumping into bed again, it takes a lot out of you, being a psycho-naught.
I bumped into my friend Tipene yesterday and he lives just around the corner. I’m gonna message him later and propose coffee and a nice big catch up. I aint seen him since his mama died so it will be nice to reconnect. I wont tell him any of this stuff, that’s just for you, kind reader, coz you don’t judge me or browbeat… “At your age?” etc. Fuck that… I may have lost a lot but I have not lost my sense of wonder or fun. Even if lying about the garden in the wee hours will give you a nasty, chesty cough. So I will go, squeeze some grapefruit and tentatively check how much damage I did on social media… I do remember posting a song and trying to get folks to listen. Craziness, but not bad craziness.
Speaking of Craziness. I suppose what prompted this was the passing of Charlie Manson. A lot of people were being horrid about him but surely he paid for his crime? He was a cool guy for a small minute. Garbage Dump is a good song and has a great message. Yep he did all kinds of mental evil stuff but we, as a society, stopped him from doing more and now I feel we must forgive him and try to celebrate anything good he did. He was an icon of the 60s whether you like it or not and I can’t help feeling a little sorry for him. Anyway, I watched some of the many interviews and docos the other night and I feel like I’ve celebrated him as much as he deserves, no stencils for charlie…
So the pipeline that the Standing Rock folk we’re afraid was going to leak and the Oil-Whores we’re adamant wasn’t, has. I knew this would happen. I wept as I watched the drone fly over a great tract of earth forever ruined by 5000 barrels of Crude. One of the main concerns of the people was that the pipes would be pumping what is known as “Dirty” oil, a far more caustic and dangerous substance than ordinary oil (if that’s possible) and so we see the first chapter in the story of the great destruction of Turtle Island in the digital age. An act of stupidity, a great shame and something we must all claim some responsibility for here in the west. We all profit, in some small way, from the progress made by North America, we all enjoy the benefits of that savage and horrid culture, even if it’s only by using their search engines or watching their movies we are culpable. There are worse things happening in the world but this is one that I know about and so I feel a sense of responsibility for it.
I don’t drive. I know, I know, I have driven and I will again but at the moment I get by with feet, public transport and friends when necessary. I walk miles upon miles to service friendships that, as far as I can tell, won’t even hop in a car to service mine and I bus to the city when I need to do stuff. I feel no sense of moral superiority, more of a distrust of my peers who will drive to the corner store rather than walk… That particular blood is more on their hands than mine. On the other hand, I am a junky and so I am responsible for, some would say, a far more destructive industry with far less benefits than petrol ever had. So there you go gentle reader of mine... The Ying and The Yang.
So here’s the song I was singing as I walked in the door just now, it’s a real dozy and it will cut your little heart to ribbons in the most delicious way if you are just open enough to let it.
I have about 2000 tobacco seedlings. Ok ok that might be an exaggeration, but maybe 1000 and counting. If you would like to try growing them I will gladly pot you some for you to pick up. They are really hardy and once you get them in the ground there is not much that will stop them from maturing. They are super easy to cure too, you can have smokable tobacco in about a week if you really rush it through from picking or you can have a really fine quality tobacco in a few months if you take your time and let it cure. I do a quick one to get started. Usually I have smokes from the leaves that fall off and die or get damaged by wind or cats or feet or heavy rain or whatever and need to be plucked, plus, you know, sometimes I’ll nab some of the nice big fat leaves at the bottom just to give myself a head start. The sooner I can be smoking it, the sooner I can stop paying for it. I have a huge garden this year and intend to plant enough to last me a year. Plus I am hoping that, due to being in a stable home, I can leave the plants in the ground after harvest and get a second crop later in the year. I think it would be entirely possible to let them grow into some kind of tree even. I’m gonna give it a go. The curing process is quite cool and I’ll post a blog about that soon too. It’s fun and involve lots of booze. It can be time consuming but it’s really rewarding and I believe that, due to the bespoke nature of it all, that there are less chemicals, more nicotine and therefore less carcinogens as you smoke less and enjoy it more. I don’t know if you smoke , gentle and kind reader, but the cheap and nasty smokes that are on the market taste and feel horrid.
I’m listening to Sananda Maitreya, he used to be called something else but he has changed his name. I recently read an interview with him. The music industry destroyed him at the peak of his career and it sent him into a terrible spiral. Apparently there was only room for Two “Black” superstars and Prince and Michael Jackson had dibs on those spots so he got munched up and spat out. However, for one brief, shining moment he was the greatest recording artist on the planet. Not a bad story for the kids, or whatever. He has such a beautiful voice and a pretty face and man he can dance too and play instruments. No wonder those other two were worried. Well, having said that, he explained that it wasn’t Prince and Michael themselves but the heads of their respective record labels. Record labels that would soon after cause Prince to wear the word Slave on his face for the best part of a decade.
I have all this music trivia in my head. I have been a sponge for it ever since I was a kid. We have a magazine in NZ called Rip It Up. When I was a kid it was a free weekly or monthly newsprint paper type of thing and from the age of about 10 or 11 I would catch a bus into the city on a friday night and go to the record store with a few bucks to buy a single or a cheap L.P or tape and grab a copy of Rip It up and nab any posters or other music mags that were going. I’d then go to the music shop and buy a pick or any strings I needed and paw over the instruments. I wasn’t really into electric guitar or amps yet so I wasn’t spending too much time there… yet… Then I’d spend what was left on hot chips and maybe drop a few twenty cent pieces into a video game at one of the two arcades in town before bussing home to watch “Radio With Pictures”, Red Dwarf”, “The Young Ones” and maybe hit the fish and chip shop for more chips and another game before midnight. They were good days, kids were safe out there in the dark. Or at least we thought they were. Invercargill was a different world. ANYWAY, what I meant to say was that I’d get that magazine home each week and absorb it like a sponge. I knew all the names of the bands, band members, producers, label heads, film makers, critics and stuff. I am still like this. If I buy and album I am flipping to the back page to see who they are thanking, who engineered it, who mastered it, who is it dedicated to, where was it recorded, who was playing what on which track and stuff like that. Then I’ll sit there and follow the lyrics through the songs and well, yeah I am a geek kind and patient reader, a geek truly. I love all that stuff. It’s of no use to me mostly but it means that when mike and martin start jabbering on about the stuff they know about I can usually follow along or at least be savvy enough to ask the right questions. The best part about having my own house was having friends.
So I was up early again. My dreams are potent and vivid and they wake me three, four or five times a night so that when the sun rises at 530 I am eager to be up, if only to placate the ache in my back or to dance away from the nagging dreams that seem to belong to someone else. It’s a beautiful day and Ravi Shankar is now buffeting the neighbors with that twang that belongs alone to the Sitar. I could never be a Sitar player. I am probably too old now but I am far too steeped in narcotics to submit to a guru and live according to the rules. I’d love to though. My friend traveled to northern India , found a guru and studied for 3 years. He also spent 6 months learning Tabla and the Ragas associated with those two instruments. Now, I have never heard him play either but is seeps through him and into his music in other ways. It must’ve been an amazing experience. The 60s and 70s were, as far as I can tell, very special.
So I dunno about much today, I am afraid to look at the news, seems like musicians are dropping dead again and I don’t wanna know. I have been for a huge walk today and I am going to try and find a way to earn some money. I really want to have my new drums before this weekend but I am still $200 short. Ah fuck and my flatties just told me Ive got bills this week too and my welfare has been cut because I didn’t fill out a form right. FUCK! Fuck money sucks aye friend? Anyway, if you have any jobs I might be able to do, gimme a holler. I can do manual stuff and am pretty nifty at video, audio editing, writing copy, producing audio segments like ads or podcasts, I can do graphic design and assemble stuff like logos and “Photoshopping” stuff (to a point) and I can make music and art to specifications, produce beats. I’m pretty ok looking too if I can do man-whoring I’d probably be pretty happy and could even supply a doctors cert with a clean bill of health, I’ve had the old snip/snap too so there’s no chance of babies and I’ve got a single bed that I could sweep the cookie crumbs and guitars off it onto the floor so it can be used as a “work-bench”, a work-bench for a man-whore! Ha ha ha. Anyway… yeah if you hear of anything (except the manwhore bit), I’d love to be useful. I really like making stencils and stuff, if you’d like something turned into a stencil that you could spray paint over your own canvas or your neighbors fence…. I just want to feel useful. Writing copy is probably my best asset. Reviews, endorsements, biographies and stuff… Sorry, gentle reader, I guess this is coming off as desperate… Well, I am. I really am desperate and afraid. Today’s lunch and dinner consist of grapefruit and tangelos from the garden. The thing is though, it passes, it has never killed me, being poor. I am sure I’d remember if it had. I refuse to sell drugs or do anything nasty like serious crime. I’d grow pot but I do not know what I am doing. I started setting up bitcoins and I downloaded Tor yesterday. I want to buy a bottle of lsd25 for the summer, to share with people at festivals but that’s not to make money, that’s to bring people joy and to spread love, peace and open minds. I spose you could make a lot of money with one vial of it and some blotter paper. Meh, I love the idea of dressing up in costume and offering people mind expansion out of the blue.
I do hope you are well and happy out there, who-ever you are and wherever you happen to be. Don’t let em get you down ok? You are shiny and wonderful, you must be coz I don’t tend to associate with anyone who isn’t. xxxxMark
My living situation is really quite singular. I live with a couple. In the ordinary world you might call them elderly but they are not. They are topping 70 but they are not straights and so they wear their age more at half mast the way most of us that dwell out here on the fringes do. The house we live in was bought and paid for by rock n roll. My landlord played in bands his whole life and managed to convert that into a home for himself (and me, it turns out). Much of the same costs are associated but it’s nowhere near your normal renting situation and I am constantly humbled by their generosity and kindness. They can see that, though I do not have a real job or anything like that, that I give back to the community and the wider world through the work that I do do and that it’s something worth supporting. It feels sometimes a little embarrassing in that my own family are pretty comfortable and yet I have found the support one normally finds in their whanau from a couple of people who aren’t related and are not obliged to awhi or whakamanaaki someone like me (sorry, there just aren’t english words for it. Just now they offered me their BMW, they don’t like it and are off to buy a bentley or a Chrysler or something like that and so they ambush me in the kitchen and basically offer me a luxury automobile, more or less for free or for whatever I can afford. This kind of generosity and compassion is unheard of in this day and age and yet there it is. So I am going to try and get my license. I cannot accept their offer, it is too much but I can get my license and maybe I’ll be able to be more helpful to them in return. I’d love to be able to help Mike out more too with the band coz he drives me and Martin around all the time and never bitches about it. I loved having a car. I only ever left town once with it and was careful to never use it for anything other than neccessity. I believe that that is why I got away with no license, because I treated it with the respect it deserved and also that I was generous and free with it’s use in that anyone was welcome to use it. So generous, in fact, that I gave it away. So despite the fact that I am not very smart, I am kind and it seems that that comes back to you if you are open to it. I still have no food. Those guys would probably feed me as well but I just cannot be that much of a scumbag that I’d rely on them that much. Don’t get the impression that they are wealthy coz they are not, they work a couple of part time cleaning jobs and I reckon that if they didnt own this house things would be much harder for them. So I try to be helpful, I clean and whenever I have spare money I try to cook them a nice meal. I am fucked at the moment but as I said the other day I am trying to see it as sacrificing for my art.
I did take a look at the news. Malcolm Young passed away yesterday. The Rhythm guitarist for ACDC he was a staple in my ear drums as a youth and I am grateful for all the music he throbbed into existence with his guitar. The chunky chordwork and blistering riffs he played really heavily influenced me as a guitarist and his sense of style was pretty much exactly the way I like to dress, boots, jeans and a t-shirt… Although his were usually tight and tiny whereas mine fluctuate due to the fact that my weight goes up and down according to the drugs I’m using. He was a Rock Star, plain and simple.
I want to make music today but I don’t want to play with the people I played with last week. I think that I have to draw a line there. I love encouraging new or struggling musicians but I can’t carry shitty ones… you know? Sad, and a little harsh, but true. Plus there’s just too much room there for me to get hurt and I felt over exposed on that front. Plus they want me to walk there and back with all my gear and… well, fuck that shit, fuck it right up its arse. So I guess I’ll just be here today, licking my wounds and hoping. No-one ever asks me to do stuff. It feels like if I stopped approaching my “Friends” for company or to make music I’d quickly find that I faded from memory. Maybe I’m just unlikable and the people who do respond to me do so out of charity? I dunno, all I do know is that the only time people ever ask me to do stuff is when they need help. It makes me feel pretty bummed but, nah there’s no “but”, it makes me feel bummed.
So I just wanted to tell you how much I appreciate the folks I live with. They can be weird, a little racist and sometimes I do not understand why they have to shout all the time or shit with the toilet door open but they are lovely and they are freaks, just like me… and probably you, if you are reading this drivel
Hi. Its 6;30am and I’ve just woken from a series of curious dreams. The dreams were curious in that I wasn’t “me”, I usually am myself in dreams but in these I was someone else with a completely different life, memories, character and personality. It was bizarre to wake from, a little confusing. The other curiosity is that I can remember a lot of the details, usually they fade quite quickly upon waking. Sometimes I can’t even tell I have been dreaming. Strange and yet wonderful. One of them as horrific and in the end I had to just lie down and let an angry mob kill me, my last memory before waking was a guy with a golf club (a titanium “Driver”, 1 wood) wailing on my skull. My final thoughts inside the dream were of how strange that it didn’t hurt. In that dream I was some kind of Maori academic, living inside this University for racecar drivers. That was a few hours ago though and the details begin to fail. The one I had just now was far weirder. At first I was part of a family and we were at this restaurant in a place called Gore (right?). It started off as a real place, a bistro that I’d dined at as a kid with my family but it quickly became an American chocolate factory with these villainous factory owners chasing me around the place because I had uncovered some kind of fraud and was set to expose them. I escaped with the help of a security guard who turned out to be an undercover agent. Then I was transported to this weird hippy festival where a Russian guy, covered in Tattoos was explaining to me the joys of owning a house-bus and doing the festival circuit. There were girls and a cool scene where I was an itinerant reggae drummer with these cool effects on my drum kit so that I could play whole compositions just using various delays and phasers…
So… I just wanted to write it all down because, in my experience it all fades before too long. I remember one part in particular in which I tried to describe my love. Seems that me and this character from the last dream have more in common than I thought. I am awake now. I think I’ll get some coffee and start my day. I am really struggling. Yesterday with Dayna was great but it hurt to see her go and when she left I kinda just fell into bed and I have been there since. Didn’t feel like eating or reading or making music. That’s depression aye? There’s no two ways about that so why am I taking these pills if I can behave like that? I suppose money plays a part in that there isn’t really anything to eat, no smokes and I cant really go out broke so I ‘spose that has a bit to do with it but still, even with no money I could read or make music or walk or do yoga or something. I think I will have some more to say later after I get some caffeine in me ok? I hope you are ok wherever you are and whatever you are doing today gentle reader. It’s sunday morning here and outside is still and quiet. I can hear the roar of the traffic at a distance but mostly it’s just birds. The world is all glisteny from the sporadic rain and it feels like a nice morning to get up early and have the whole world to myself for a while.
Band practice was last night, strange and prickly moods everyone was in made for some pretty great sounds. Lots of bits of gear missing too which added a “cobbled together” folky feel to everything. At one point I played four separate instruments on one song. It’s never enough though and I often giggle at the people who get all angsty and start pointedly looking at their watches coz 11pm is creeping up… on a friday night… as grownups… I dunno, maybe they are off to fetish clubs or running out of cocaine and are expecting deliveries… I suspect though that they are just old and dull. Thats ok though coz they make great music. I often feel like we are just hitting our stride when we disband for the week.
I am expecting Dayna any minute now. My wonderful grand-daughter will come shining into my world like a ray of light and I feel happy. I am hungry but she is bringing food for herself. There’s none here. I am spending every cent I have on things like rates and a drum kit. I tried to get food last night with $3.50 and there just wasn’t anywhere that would oblige me. If I’d had another dollar fiddy I could’ve got a pizza but I didn’t. A hungry boy to bed after 3 or 4 hours of playing. Feels at the same time depressing and kinda cool… suffering for the art, you know? There wont be food here til… actually I dunno if I’ll even get groceries for a couple of weeks yet as Vaders birthday approaches as well. Heh, I am sure I’ll work something out. I am selling a few tobacco seedlings this week and I can offload a few guitar pedals if I get real desperate.
So that’s all. I haven’t looked at the news yet and so I probably wont.
Motorhead were fantastic. Apparently there’s a life sized bronze statue of Lemmy in the Rainbow Bar and Grill in L.A. You can go and have a drink with Lemmy and even sit on his seat and play his fruit machine. Today feels like an “Overkill” or “Orgasmatron” kind of day. I’d like to tell you that I dealt with yesterday well but I didn’t. There’s a pile of used up poppies in the corner of the room and there’s a big empty spot in a garden around the corner. It’s a pretty big slip but at least I didn’t shoot it, just a couple of sleepy cigarettes and a sore tummy. I am considering cooking the hay all down into a tea and sharing it with Martin but we shall see, I’m not hurting as much as I was yesterday. It’s none of my business what she does and I should be happy if she is happy. The sad thing is that it was just a rumor and shes still miserable. I’m a cunt for getting upset about it, it’s not like I have any strings attached or anything. I wish I could be there more for her. Families are funny things. Especially broken ones. I know heaps of people who just cannot stand the people they made babies with and have nothing to do with them but I just don’t feel that way, about anyone. Babies are made out of love and to deny that is to scar that kid I think, or at least to make them feel weird about the conditions of their birth. All my kids were made of love and nothing, ever, is going to shift or alter that.
I deserve to be alone.
It is Karma for a life lived recklessly and for the hurt I have caused other people. I assume that once I have worked off some of that Karma I will find love again. For now I think I need to be living a better life than I am. Not in any kind of “Resolution” kind of way, just that I need to be more active and participate more in the lives of the people I love. I have such a wonderful life, when you add it all up but I squander it on depression and fear and self centered morose bullshit. What I mean to say, gentle reader, is that I want to be better.
Today is a beautiful spring day and I believe its nearly my mate Harveys birthday which means that Vaders birthday is just around the corner too. I was worried that I’d missed it. I was filling out a form the other day and I had to ask what year it was… That’s pretty bad huh? Ha ha ha the person I asked was bemused by it but I was a bit confused and frustrated that it just wouldn’t come. Was it 2018 or 2017, I honestly couldn’t tell. I was also alarmed to find that it’s November, the second half of November even. Oh well, Rock N Roll and all that…
So I am having second thoughts about playing the New Years Gig. They would only give me one ticket and I was hoping to be able to take one of the kids. I thought about getting the band to come and springing a little country on them. I think it would be a nice change to the Doof Doof Doof. However now that I am ‘sposed to get myself and all my equipment there without a car or a helper… I think I’ll stay home or at least just go and play a set on a laptop without all the trickery. It’s more like a DJ set I guess. We shall see, I am really enjoying Pitch Black lately. I have them on my mp3 player and I love having it with me as I stalk through the suburbs on my way to and from the things.
So I will leave you there. I haven’t seen whats in the news yet today so I haven’t got too much to say about anything. The world seems to be really ripe for revolution and yet there exists so much apathy from the people who are comfortable. This Facebook, Twitter and Instagram world has lulled us completely. I leave my phone turned off now. I have only had it a month or so but I only use it to take pictures. I only topped it up once and now its just a burden. Within a week it had used up all it’s memory and now it complains to me every five minutes that it’s unable to update and, as a result, it runs super slow and clunky. If there was an emergency I would be much better off racing to find another phone… this one takes a good five minutes to do anything. Point is, I do not use it. I don’t want to be one of the robots with their nose in their social media all day. I do not. So, you know? I guess I am doing ok in that respect. There are many ways in which I am doing ok and I suppose I need to cut myself a little slack.
The world is really scary at the moment. I find it terrifying the level of scrutiny we are under now. Everything and anything can be watched or listened to or streamed or you know? You know what I mean gentle kind reader of mine? The devices we have allowed into our lives represent such huge liabilities in terms of our own personal security and yet we fucken line up to pay top dollar to have them. The “Smart Phone” will be looked back upon as a weapon against humanity I am sure of it. The Darpa plan to have human minds wired into the “Cloud” by 2030 is on track and if that doesn’t frighten you then it really should. I like the idea of non-conformism in the face of this. I know people who are absolutely not involved in any of this and who will be cast as revolutionaries simply because they have refused this technology right from the start. I guess it’s a tad hypocritical writing about this here, like this but I will definitely be drawing the line at implants or similar… right? So will you, I hope.
So I am going to make some music and maybe do a little home cookery. I am feeling better today, foolish but I am ok. I love you.
xxxxMark
Please buy some music if you are able to, a little goes a long way. It is peaceful and calming and great from meditation, dancing, fucking, reading or even sleeping.
Anyway… Where were we before we were so rudely interrupted? Ah yes, homelessness. There is now a small camp in the little park behind my place, in the bush part. They have even started chopping down the fucken trees for firewood and I wonder how long before there is a whole little town in there. This summer, in my opinion, will see record numbers of kiwis living outdoors because they either cannot afford a place to live or (more likely) they find it impossible to achieve a stable place to call home. I am so fortunate in many ways. There is a version of myself that could easily fall through those same gaps and it makes me feel very sad and frustrated. How hard is it for a developed nation like this to take care of this relatively small and innocuous sub set of society? I struggle with these kinds of dilemma mostly because it seems so easy, simple and straight forward… If people are living outside, build fucken houses for them. Then again… we are still locking people up for growing, selling and owning cannabis, a thing that the rest of the planet seems to be getting their heads around. Heh, mind the pun…. So, perhaps I am expecting sense from a senseless system? Either way I will keep buying food for those poor bastards in the park when I see them out and about. I thought about just rocking into their little camp just now to say hello. I should have I guess but I didn’t want to intrude on what little dignity and privacy they have left. Perhaps if I come bearing food next time it will be ok?
Today is hard. I walked up to the uni to meet jake and he was out. He’d left a note though so it was ok. I want to go to the show tonight at Creative Waikato. The Dr talked to me about an aversion therapy type approach to the anxiety and fear that has been stopping me from going out. So tonight I am going to try working it. I have asked a friend to come with me and once I get there, if I feel yucky I will try and sit with it and if I can’t I will allow myself to leave without running all the guilt and shame scripts, just let it be. There is a huge part of me that is still pretty skeptical and can’t actually see me going but it’s hours away yet and I have time to build myself up to it. They offered me benzos yesterday. A 5mg dose of Valium 4 times daily. As if I’d stick to it, he he he it would end up being 7 20mg doses (More like 1x 140mg dose probably), for one day and then hang out for the rest of the week. 5mg, a little yellow one, wouldn’t touch the sides. To their surprise I politely declined. I do not need any more monkeys on my back thanks. So, you know? I am doin ok in some ways.
Last night I went and smoked a couple of joints with rob, we drank Jim beam and talked shit. Rana has a new job and she told me about that plus their friend Macaila was heading my way so I didn’t have to walk home for a fucken change. My body isn’t dealing well with the forced marches home at 2 in the morning. Some of them lasting well into the next day, depending on my level of intoxication. If I am really stoned I will just as happily curl up in a bush for a nap before continuing. Heh. I am going to lay off the big missions and try spend a few nights at home. I suppose on some level I am really just trying to avoid the feeling of being alone in here. Anyway. I’m feeling more alive now. I am cleaning this piggy room today and weeding my garden. A day for hydration and decent food and hopefully a show tonight. Come along if you like. I hope you are doin ok wherever you are, whatever your thing is.
What a day. I feel like I’ve been pissy drunk for days. I have turned down hard drugs three times this week, all so I could piss in a cup today and now that it’s over I wonder why I bother. The Dr, after 2 years of me telling them that I need more, has finally relented and so after tomorrow I may find that I do not need to drink as much as I have been. It’s good news but it seems so simple and yet it took them 2 years to hear me. They are turning the antidepressants up too. I know that some people might think I am weak or that I rely too much on chemicals but I wouldn’t be here today without them. That’s a fact, aint no doubt.
Ha ha ha so last night was fun. I did a big lap of hillcrest on my way home and fixed up all my stencils. They now proudly say RUNT. I stopped and shared a joint with a guy called Roy who is living in the park and I bought him a pie. He wanted beer but I was like “Bro I cant afford to pay for you and me to drink”. Listen man, I am way way out there now. I am not real connected to anything but the music and the wobbly state of my mind. I am right out there now, gentle reader.
I heard “Scarlet Begonias” on my mp3 player today and it bought her swimming into my mind. I miss her. I miss her so much. I can see her in that blue tie dye dress, stretching her arms up like a cat and smiling at me and I… I just miss her. It still aches and I dunno what to do about it. It makes her sick, the way we treated her. The things that woman went through just because I wasn’t able to protect her from the madness that my lil family can be. Urgh. I love her, gentle reader, I love her with all my heart and I aint even seen her face for a year now. It hurts so much and I just stay drunk as often as I can without causing too many ripples coz whats the point now? Huh? I can’t even talk to her and I work really hard to not try to email her or even look at her social media. I’d go crazy. I can’t even look at her picture. I just wanna sit with her and drink coffee or smoke cigarettes and talk and smell her.
I guess I should consider myself lucky. I know what love is, I have tasted it, probably more times than most people get to and yet I just really thought I’d finally found it, you know? I destroyed mine and Kims relationship years ago and I figured I’d just ruined everything and then this wonderful human walked past me on the street and my whole life changed…. (dot dot dot)
All hell broke loose. Of course.
I’m sorry. I don’t talk about this much. Only Alicia really knows the whole story. It hurts so much. As I type this tears are strolling down my cheeks and I am amazed I even bother getting up in the morning coz every day is just a fucking drag. I guess it might be different if Kim had actually wanted to try put things back together or if Jo had stayed but…. well, it wouldn’t matter anyway coz I only really want this one thing and it’s an itch that just cannot and will not be scratched. I know I need to let go. I went to a shrink to talk about it and it was fucking pointless… Whats he gonna say that I do not already know? It is just gonna take time…. But it doesn’t seem to get any better. I do not think about her from the time I wake up til I sleep, like I did for a long time but it still sneaks up on me on days like this and I just want her to forgive me and come back. I guess I’ll delete this now. I suppose I better. What if she still reads this shit? I’d hate for her to read this. She would just want me to be well and get on with life. She is kind and I doubt she feels anything too hostile towards me, the last time I saw her she gave me this really sad little smile and it broke me. Literally rocked me down to my knees on the side of the road as she drove away.
It hurts so much.
Urgh. As if alcohol is ever going to improve this situation!
What else?
Well, as I said, Malcolm and I had a jam last night, it was really good. His guitar playing is really coming along and he still has this real keen vibrancy about him in his approach to music. He is still in the honeymoon phase. Ah fuck, I’m sorry. I will stop this. Hey the Cannelloni turned out real great. I’ll attach a pic. I still haven’t had any but my flatties demolished half of it so it cant be too bad. I’m happy to cook it for ya if you buy the ingredients and a box of beer or a couple of bottles of wine. No problemos.
I’m going to start my day now. Its 2pm and I’ve only just got home from doing my things in the city. I was out of bed and on the bus in about 7 mins this morning. I met this lady at the bus stop and she goes “You look like you just got out of bed…” I hope this lil rant hasnt bummed you out. I’m ok, I’ll just keep making music. Hell man, for all I know everything could turn around tomorrow. Hey I made a really good decision last night. I have been kicking around with this guy that is really toxic and I really only do it coz he drinks like me and… misery loves company kind of deal. As I sat there last night watching him treat his wife like shit, her and I would just look at each other and I could see that the things she has been telling me about him are true… he’s a nasty, selfish, backstabbing, manipulative ass and I am a better person than our friendship reflects of me. So I aint going back. I made sure to nuke the bridge on my way out, just to make sure I couldn’t go back. He doesn’t even know where I live, our friendship rests upon my energy and I guess if I just stop feeding it it will die. Goodbye. I have so many good, nourishing friendships. I don’t need that shit. Fuck I miss the kids, I am hoping that Dayna will come on the weekend. I’m going to bail. I love ya, you know that.
Feel free to ignore this drivel….
My Cannelloni goes like this.
Half a large Garlic, crushed
1 large Onion (Preferably red) diced fine
Eggplant, roasted and scooped
Potato and Kumara finely diced
Cannelloni tubes
Spinach
Cottage Cheese, Tasty Cheese (Grated) (ShitLoads) Parmesan Cheese
Milk (1 cup), Flour, Olive Oil and Butter.
So….
The first job is to use half the onion and garlic along with the milk, oil and cheese to make a simple roux sauce as a base for the cheese sauce… You want to end up with about 3 cups of sauce… Less is definitely not more in this instance. Set aside. You know how to do this I am assuming… it’s piss easy and a great party trick.
Next, roast off the Eggplant, remove from its skin and set aside. I dunno man, about 200c for 15 minutes will do it. Alternatively you can just dice it up with the Potato and Kumara… Plus… if you are a meateater, just substitute these veggies for lamb, chicken, beef or turkey mince (or simply add meat to the whole thing… there’s no wrong answer… unless you are a cow…
So fry off the diced veggies along with the leftover garlic and onion. Once you are satisfied they are all well done, plop in 2 cups of diced tomatoes (Canned will do) and a teaspoon of sugar (always with tomatos) and reduce for a while till it has a firm, sauce texture. Not to firm though as you want a little liquid in there to cook the pasta.
Steam or boil the spinach until cooked. Set aside the remaining water to use if you think your sauce might be too dry, its full of vitamin c and iron and stuff.
The assembly is the tricky bit. The filling should be equal parts Cottage Cheese, Sauce and spinach. With fingers (Hands washed or gloves on) pack the enter with a centimetre or so of cottage cheese, then working outwards, a little spinach on either side of the cottage cheese and finally fill the rest with the sauce. It’s time consuming but fully worth it.
Lay them out in a deep dish, they end up looking a bit like sausages or roofing tiles. Pour over the remaining sauce and then top with ALL the cheese sauce until completely covered. Dust with Parmesan and then bake at 180 for about 40 mins, keeping an eye on the topping, if it gets too brown simply wind the temperature down and let it sit in there. The Cannelloni tubes will cook evenly, this is one of the few times when “Al dente” is not enough, like lasagna you want it to be well cooked in the juices and liquids of the sauces. Once it is done, let it sit for a while before serving as it will set a bit and become easy to serve and eat, if its a big sloppy mess it will not be much fun and you might as well have made spaghetti.
Anyway, that’s what I am up to today, peace love and mung beans.
m
I love Tuesday. I can sleep in, I normally take my meds and then nap for an hour while they begin to work and then get up, make coffee and do stuff. It probably seems trite or lazy to you but its one of my few true luxuries. I get to skip the hour or so of tricky maneuvering until my day can actually start. Weekends are a bit different, for different reasons but Tuesday… man…
I’ve been listening to and watching a fair bit of David Icke. I do not necessarily buy everything he says but I like his take on things. I like a few theorists like him but most of them play devils advocate and allow the audience to make their own decisions. David comes right out and states his beliefs firmly and without wavering and right or wrong, you kinda have to admire that. If nothing else he says is true I still love the way he calls out the minority, tiny minority of wealthy bloodlines that rule us wholesale like cattle ranchers or battery farm poultry mongers. I truly love the word “monger”. Fish mongering whore was a favorite catch phrase of my mate Duncan.
One time, back at the turn of the century, our flatmate Cath received a delivery of an entire set of office equipment due to her having a severe injury and needing to work from home. Compensation paid for it all and it was a real life saver for her. However, before she got to use it… You see we were at home drinking in the morning on a weekday and she wasn’t there when the courier started piling all this shit up on our front porch… I mean what would you do? We set to work setting it all up right there on the porch and began running a pretend business. We started off by setting up the desks facing each other and plugging the phones in and then cold calling real businesses and transferring calls to each other “Mr Gallon calling for Mr so-and-so, please hold…’ Then we’d hum some “on hold music” for a while before transferring the call and demanding why the hell they were wasting our busy ass time! It was great fun. We did this for a while and then started ringing our friends and inviting them over for urgent meetings with the board and pretty soon we had a veritable party going on all based upon this phoney office theme. We had ratty suits and ties by this point and had probably rattled the feathers of half the business people in Hamilton. There may have even been a few fake orders that bemused or confused many of the towns big wheels for months afterwards.
Fortunately Cath was well used to our antics and joined in when she got home. If memory serves correctly, she didn’t know it was her stuff she was using as comedy props for drinking games until later in the evening when we boxed it all back up and started carting it off to her room. Those were really good days. Those people were all sort of either actors, crew or bystanders (coke snorters) of Mr Smints fine and unseen Hamilton Porn feature film that was allegedly shot, in part at that house in the summer of 1999. Hamiltons Music, Art and Theater crowd is nothing if not colorful and wild. The fire bath at that flat was never short of patrons and the sleepout in the back yard, had an endless string of visitors, sometimes in twos or threes. Life was briefly everything I’d dreamed it might be. Sex, Drugs and Rock n roll. It all fell apart and I tried, very very hard to hurt myself.
I was thinking about that incident last night so I suppose that’s why those days are on my mind. It was not, in hindsight, a “cry for help”. I was genuinely distraught that I’d been discovered and led the police and ambulances on a short but brutal chase before succumbing to the hundreds of painkillers and vodka in an unlocked garage I’d stumbled upon after jumping from the second or third floor of the motel I’d been hiding out in. Desperate and horrifying days and I am so sorry to say, gentle and kind reader, I really and truly felt that the only solution was to end it all. I could think of no other thing that might alleviate the pain and despair I felt.
It’s embarrassing to say that it took me a very long time to grow out of that kind of thing (Both the insanity and the self harm) but I did. I finally feel safe from myself after a lifetime of trying to hurt myself when things felt overwhelming. I have felt this way for a few years now and it is a good feeling. I guess you can’t truly grasp it if you haven’t been there but I suppose that is the point of this huh? Communicating it so that people might understand and have compassion for folks like me when it happens. Suicide touches everyone, a bit like cancer huh?
I do not know what to do with today yet but I do know that it wasn’t a struggle to get up and that’s the reason I love Tuesdays. You see, although I no longer desire death, I aint all that enamored with life just at this particular moment and so the distinction can sometimes seem particularly negligible at times. I think I’ll do something that isn’t music today, maybe paint… yes I think I will go get a canvas and get it on. What do you reckon?
Hey I found a Drum Kit but the guy selling it has a really bad rating on Trademe (new zealands version of Amazon… almost) and I’m a little concerned that I will pay him and not get a drum kit but more of a sinking feeling followed by murderous wrath and that’s almost like a drum kit but nowhere near as useful. I have a gig in a week or two and I really need to be able to play it but…. fuck 😦
Anyway, things always work out. I read once that most of the things we fear and worry about never actually happen. There’s a wicked good thought for the day huh ole’ reader of mine? Have a good day out there, where ever in the world you are. You are loved and appreciated, if only be me. Later.
I feel so lost, gentle reader. Mired and steeped in fear and sadness and this icky hurt that just rages on and on and on. I take the pills they give me. Mostly so I can sleep on the nights I don’t obliterate myself with drugs and alcohol. I saw a pretty woman at the supermarket. She had such a great smile and tattoos like mine and she tried real hard to make eye contact and smile but… well… I know what happens when I go ahead and talk to pretty ladies like that huh? I fall in love and I dunno if I can take it. Despite the fact that I want so badly to find it… She’s fucken out there somewhere, bright and happy and its all over now, baby blue.
Ah Monday! Well, I’ve had one of those weekends that only I can have. I went out for a jam on Saturday and didn’t get home till 2pm the next day. I just wandered around the city stopping in at peoples places. I had a nap on Mickeys floor for a couple of hours. He and I smoked weed and then went to the bakery at 6am for pies before stopping at this abandoned Meth cooking house to raid their Orange Tree. Then I fell asleep under his table.
When I woke up at 11 am Mickey was asleep with an Alastair Reynolds audiobook and I let myself out and walked away. I stopped in 5xrds and spent the 6 bucks I had on a couple of drinks and then went to Mikes to watch some YouTube and stuff that he found on his computer. It was nice to just hang out with him coz I hardly ever see him outside of Runt, I kinda miss the old cunt. He seems to be doing really well, losing weight, articulate and funny, the way he was when I first reconnected with him a year or two ago. I am lucky to have those guys, I’d be pretty lonely otherwise I think. Day in Day out spent alone, nights and nights stretching back forever. Urgh. Then he took me home and it all started again.
I cooked pasta for a mate the other night, a really mean Cannelloni and a Lasange that was saved for the kids. I was a bit hurt and confused when they wouldn’t even let me crash on a sofa until the buses started in the morning but, fuck it. People teach you how to treat them by the way they treat you I guess and I will maybe think twice before doing that again. I am old, 3 or 4 kilometers is a long walk at 1am and I do it all the fucken time…. No one bothers really lifting a finger to hang out with me and yet I will go to great lengths to service the friendships I have. Perhaps I am wasting much of that effort…. I just do not understand people, I really don’t,. Sorry, i wasn’t gonna bitch today.
I am watching more Vice stuff about North Korea… I am fascinated by the whole thing. On one hand they are mental but on the other hand they kinda did hand Americas arse to her so…. you know? Perhaps we could organize an air drop of Punk, Dub and Blues music for the teens in North Korea? Maybe whole packs with an mp3 player and discrete headphones and a way for them to charge it! H eh he now there is a worthy cause man!!!!! I would love to do some traveling. I asked to be supported by my Dr to go to Thailand a year or so ago but they wouldn’t even consider it. I contacted the Thai embassy and tried to organize my medication on that end. They go “Well, we have a form to fill out for that…. BUT… it is never approved.” Heh, well there’s a waste of paper right there huh? Mike threatened to take me to Cambodia with him but I guess he changed his mind. I could probably start saving some money and do a little traveling myself. I love the idea of going home for a week or two sometime. Traditionally those trips are free for alls…. Traditionally I barely make it out of town without being arrested.
I have some new music, I think it’s really pretty, it reminds me of early Massive attack and the more I listen, the more I love it. Perhaps I could keep working on it and post each new iteration? I dunno. What I do know is that this is wasting a beautiful day and I better go get busy.
I love you, but you knew that….
m
P.S – Hey! They are already doing stuff like firing usb sticks with western movies and music over the border into North Korea! Wonderful!
I think that people are inherently mean. Given the chance they would rather hurt you than help. It sucks but fuck it, man, I just try to not be like that. In the face of staggering odds. Fuck you guys. Dicks.
So it was Charlie that fucked Corey Haim huh? Corey Feldman has been going on about this for years but he never named names and now the beans are spilled. Apparently it was consensual… I had a gig yesterday, a few bucks for a quick vocal mix but the guy decided to not pay me. It’s funny, his first response to my work was all praise and “OMG!” and then when it came to money he was like “Ah man, not gonna use this mix, ra ra ra ” people are funny. I bet my mix is up on his bandcamp page right now. Brb, I’ll go check…. Yup, there it is… people man, people… Anyway, today I’m off to help my friend move house and then I am going to dig my garden. My fucking room is a tip, pill bottles and cans and the detritus of someone who really only comes in here to sleep or to make music. It’s probably disgusting but I don’t mind and I’m the only person in here, huh?
So I received a new pack of tobacco and I have got em sprouting, I am not paying to smoke any more, why should I? It’s way past the point where the insane tax they put on it has covered smokers for health care and it’s such a small thing compared to the other unhealthy things. They don’t tax booze, petrol or sugar anywhere near the way they tax smokes. Funny old world.
So we played last night. It was a funny energy but we got there in the end, we really really need drums but I just don’t have any money and I refuse to sell instruments to buy other instruments, that’s fucken stupid. I think I will go into town and layby one next week, just chip away at it 50 bucks a week or something. That sounds do-able. Ha ha ha I’ laugh if they gave me credit, that could be cool. Fuck man, I just looked at new drum kit prices… fuck that, fuck that hard. I’ll find one. Urgh, somehow. It sucks being an original artist in NZ, I tell ya. Theres just no money in the shitty kinds of music I play ha ha ha. Anyway, when did lack of money ever stop me huh? Never, thats fucken when! Mother fucker!!!! So I’m outy, gonna go help chelsee move house but I wanted to stop in and say hi. I p[layed mando last night, it was really cool. I had some lead malfunctions and I need to go buy new leads before I play again too. Actually maybe I’ll buy a soldering iron and fix em up myself.
Urgh I feel fucked today. Ok I am up, out of bed and ready to be a part of this stupid world….
I found this cool clip of Frank Zappa sitting in with Pink Floyd, really early Pink Floyd… The Pink Floyd even Pink Floyd. I like it coz it reminds me of the free form jamming I did last night. Someone has been asking me to jam with them for years so I finally thought “ok, how bad can it be” and it was actually pretty cool. It’s so funny, beginner musicians always want to talk but not play. I love to hear new musicians lay down the rules to me, you know? Like, in their vast experience it must be done this or that way and there’s all this jabber but no music being made. I just smile and wait patiently, safe and secure in the knowledge that words don’t count for nuthin once the song starts…. It comes from the heart, not the brain. Anyway, I had fun and I got to listen to another really fine band rehearse. They invited me to their show tonight but, of course, I am barred from that venue for asking the audience if they had any weed, during a rock n roll show… fucken stupid if you ask me.
So I wonder who the fuck I think I am saving myself for as I’m strolling home to an empty bed night after night, week after week, month after month…. I know I am waiting, that’s all I know. I have this tiny little kernal of hope and it sits right there in my heart just hoping that…. well, I dunno but I know that its worth hoping for. What have I lost if I wait forever? Nothing. Its worth waiting for, thats all I know. Ok? Ok. So back to business I guess. There’s a bunch of stuff happening musically. Funk Therapy asked me to help them record their album, that’s going to be fun. Runt is playing in town on the 25th of Nov so I need to find a drum kit and I am waiting for my appearance on “In The Fridge” to be released… I cant wait to see how it looks and sounds. I am anxious but quietly confident that it will be good.
Please take the time to listen to Frank and the lads, its really beautiful. Smoke a blunt before you do. I was in this cool situation last night where the little brass bowl that the people put pot in was empty so I tipped all the weed I had in there for everyone to share and then next minute another dude drops half an Ounce in there and it was a smoke out. This is at 2am and Half way from Mardon Rd to Hillcrest. I am getting a real good work out most nights walking home from where ever I find myself. There’s a cool mandarin tree and a park to have a little nap in if I get tired. Fuck I am a weirdo aye? Out there fumbling about in the night with the other creatures while the good people are tucked up in bed. Oh I got to jam with Vaders friend Ingram last night, he played drums, that was fun and I saw Chris. Nice night, way better than the scumbags I have been wasting time with lately. I got a falafel burrito from Mickeys place and then finally got in here at about 4.
Have a good day out there, spare a thought for Ginger Brown, she aint got nothin at all….
At some point you have to have a sense of humor about it all and have a good laugh at what neurotic, self centered wee creatures we can be sometimes. I was walking around Hillcrest this morning with a huge smile on my face thinking about the band and about what wonderful music we have been making lately. I wonder what folks make of that because it is just not done, to smile, when one is abroad. In cars, bikes, buses or walking, folks maintain a somber almost aggressive tone. I remembered a time when I was in love and the thought of someone else, wet, naked and in ecstasy would being the most wonderful grin to my face and it would carry me through my day, that happy thought. Point is, at some point I realized that I was considering what others might think about this big, stomping weirdo with a great happy grin walking around…. it only made me smile more. So a sense of humor is important.
I’m just popping out for a smoke, I’ll be right back…
I went to the studio this morning to see Jake and had a crack on the new amp up there. It’s an old NZ made Roland Jazz Chorus. A twin speaker combo with this rad Chorus/Vibrato effect tacked onto the side of the gain channel. A really beautiful old piece of kit donated to us by Mathew Bannister. It’s amazing how much of my studio is in there. Every time we do stuff there I see a bit of gear that looks familiar and I’ll say “Hey man I have one of these” and they will go “Dude, that is yours!” he hehe. I love hanging around there. It’s so bizarre that those people really think I am fucken cool. I don’t get it, perhaps they are just encouraged that someone is prepared to hang around this scene doing what they do for as long as I have, maybe it gives them hope. I love celebrating their successes with them too. I am gutted I missed the show the other night and I am glad I got to hear it from outside.
There is so much gossip about me lately. It makes it really hard for me to do stuff because I never know what will get back to me later on. It’s not like I hide anything. Considering I post a daily update from the inside of my shabby head it makes gossip seem pretty fucken pointless. I wonder what motivates people to be like that? I know the joy of talking about someone else but I try not to do it as a matter of course. I’d mush rather talk about someones triumphs than their shortcomings. Who knows how other people think man, certainly not me buddy.
I have new music but I am holding it back, waiting for Matt to do his bits but his darling daughter is in Dunedin hospital with some kind of scary abscess. She will, jah willing, be opening her eyes from surgery around about now and I am waiting to hear news. I am grateful for the health my kids enjoy. God I miss them but I am not sure how to get time with them without it being a mission. Once the Uni pool opens I think I will see more of them. It just sucks that I still don’t have a home in which to have them. Its really hard. It hurts. I was thinking today that maybe now that the sun is back I could bus out to Raglan for the day and take Vadey to the beach again. We had such a cool summer last year, me and him and laurie.
There’s not much else to report. I am broke, buy an album please. We are playing in town in a few weeks and I really need a drum kit but I haven’t found one yet. I am struggling, in many ways, today was really hard to get up. I lack all motivation sometimes and life feels like everything has been dipped in treacle and its a drudge to do anything. And sometimes it is not. I am watching guitar tutorials with people like Keith, Kurt Vile and Courtney Barnett and I even did a bass lesson with Lemmy last night. Life could be worse I guess.
There’s all this gossip getting back to me from that party I missed the other week, apparently there was a nice big back stabbing session concerning yours truly and it’s all because of this one guy not having a life of his own to talk about… He turned up there and spilled all my beans to all the people I admire and aspire to be a part of in this little town and now I feel rejected and silly. Panic and anxiety are manageable but there is a need for the people I trust to be a little understanding… This guy must’ve seen me panic and then race off to talk about it. It’s not like it was spectacular… I said “I think I’d like to go home now”, then he kept saying shit like “Nah you’ll be ok, drink some beer” and then, after saying “I’d like to go home now” 4 times I just stood up and wandered home. Hardly worth talking about huh? Well, wrong… apparently.
I did a cool thing yesterday and helped someone else. I’m broke as a result but fuck it feels good to be able to do something for someone else. Then I went to Malcolms and jammed with him. It’s amazing because I have been drumming on these songs for a year now but switching to guitar has been quite hard. Malcolm is still a beginner so he’s really patient and understanding when I don’t get it the first time. It’s so refreshing to play with someone unfettered by all the rules and bullshit, he just plays straight from his guts, it’s not always in time or pretty but its definitely got soul and that’s all that matters.
You see, I was walking home last night, scribbling peace signs on letterboxes, bus stops and fences and I remembered the thing that matters the most… I am an artist. A really good’un too. I don’t need to get all hung up on all the shit I write about here so long as I get out of bed every day and make music I will be just fine. That’s what I remembered. It felt really good. H ah aha I blazed a joint in the middle of that park I tell you about… Its this bush walk in the middle of hillcrest, there are pathways and a scout hall and at 3am it is pitch black inside there. Once I tripped and only just got my balance… I’d have broken a leg coming off that boardwalk in the dark… So it feels really exciting. So yeah, I sat down there and got stoned.,,, well.. stoned-er and just listened to the night creatures and the creaking of trees. It was really nice. I stopped by my mandarin tree too and got a feast for the rest of the walk home. After a long walk and a lot of weed there’s nothing quite like fresh, sweet citrus.
I loved it when I moved to the north Island and found that every house has a lemon, mandarin, grapefruit or orange tree. Mind blowing! Hey so Malcolm showed me his journal last night and explained what he does. His is very different to mine… he diarises each day, making notes and observations. Mine is kinda from the heart and contains all my fears, hopes, triumphs and failures… he contains what gauge string he put on or how his new bike seat is performing and what time he got up…. You know? Like an actual diary. Really cool and he writes it all in this really tightly packed longhand with a for real fountain pen. Pretty cool. Anyway. That’s all for my journal today, gentle reader. I guess I scare people off with how mental this is sometimes but who gives a fuck. Its just a way to keep track. I like to go back and read from years ago… now and then Facebook spews up some “Memory” and I get a little slice of what my life was like on that day. Mostly, I hope, it is hopeful and positive. Sometimes it is sad. Sometimes confused and hurting but it is all real. I cannot be anything else. I do love you though and I am here for you if you need me. That’s what friends do….
Hiya. I am watching “a hard days night”, if you have never seen it you could do worse. No one dies, not one person, well, not that I can remember… No one is slashed through with a sword or even killed by anti music bombs like in Yellow Submarine. Sure its the same machine that brings us all the death and hate that modern movies deliver but its a more innocent age and the music is the point. I love it. It’s so silly and cute. It makes me think of love coz that’s all those guys seem to sing about sometimes in the early days.
Listen man, so as I was trying to get to the show the other night with a head full of hash cookies I stumbled upon a new piece of graffiti on the over bridge and I leaned out with my camera phone to get a snap of it. It looked like a stylized “Knight” from a chess board and it was beautiful, done in two tone pink and purple with a drop shadow. When I got my phone back up and had a look I was surprised to find that it was not only John Lennon but it was MY john lennon stencil from months ago! After that I managed to wander past more and more of my stencils and I realized that for whatever reason the powers that be seemed to have left my work alone for the time being. I think that is the mark of good street art… it either gets left alone, augmented or stolen and mine seems to have lasted. Yay.
Some fuckwit with a wiki page hassled me for stenciling Nirvana art around town. Clearly they don’t get it/ I am lost. This broken heart just lingers and smacks me around the head every day. I miss my love, I miss my kids and I miss having a home of my own. I am grateful to have a place to live but it’s not a home is it? Its a room, with fuck all of a view. I bought seeds today for the garden. I plan to get out there this week and dig shit. Anyway, I just wanted to tell you about my stencils. I’ll see if I can attach a pic of it… Can you imagine my surprise? Reaching way out over the bridge to take a snap of the new artwork and to find it’s mine! I love shit like that!
I tried to watch the new Thor movie last night. Purely as an act of patriotic solidarity with it’s director. He’s a fantastic wit from Aotearoa and his film “Hunt for the wilder people” was an amazing chapter in the history of NZ film, right up there with UTU and Goodbye Pork Pie and even the great “The Quiet Earth” (also) starring Bruno Lawrence. I turned the film off after 20 minutes. I loved the inclusion of a Led Zep song while Thor is battling these fire demon things “Hammer Of The Gods…” oh fuck yeah! It, by all accounts, is no mean feat to license a Led Zeppelin song for a film, they are notoriously stingy… But after a while I found that I was just witnessing gratuitous death and violence. There is one part where Thors sister slaughters an entire army and I am thinking “How can we watch this whilst it is mirrored in our society?” No wonder I am unaffected by the recent gun slayings in America… I see it all the time in the films of Hollywood. Look at Deadpool or something like that… The death counts are huge in these films.
I am listening to Bob Marleys speech to the United Nations when he won the UN Peace medal… Who kills more people than the UN huh? How many deaths can be laid at their doorstep? Anyway, that the film industry colludes with the war machine is of no real surprise or even consequence… It’s easy to turn it off and I feel like I have made a huge life choice not to participate anymore. I will have to revisit this decision come christmas coz there’s a new Start wars movie…
I am really feeling despondent. I find it harder and harder to give a fuck about anything. I have been here before but also I remember how hard it was to open up and to allow myself to be a part of stuff. I dunno if I will ever climb out into the sun again. I hope I will but I see less and less evidence of it in me lately. I love making music but no-one seems to have any passion for it around me. Music, man, even the word sends tingles up my spine still. It’s magic. It’s truly magical. The other night me jane chris and mal…. man… it was magical and it sounded fantastic. Weird country psychedelic massive. I’d love to fuck with it and add some dubby drums but….
So I am struggling to find motivation and strength but I know damn well that I am not alone because I hear it reflected in the voices of the people I love and the people around me. Some of them run on anger, some on love, some on coffee or cannabis or booze and some on hate but none of them seem to be running under their own steam, as if this world has sucked them dry and they must find it outside of them. I run on music I suppose. Lucky to have something I guess huh? The area I live in has many mental health clients and I sometimes wonder what mysterious motivations those people run on. I am fortunate in that I am able to distance myself from those who run on greed and money. Fortunate that they cross the road when they see me coming. Life has it’s perks. Anyway, Bob is wrapping things up at the New York Hilton and they are presenting him with his medal. People love that man so much. To watch one of his live shows is to really see something special. We are fortunate to have music in this age of war and politics and bullshit. Indeed.
Hiya. Strange world to be living in at the moment. I spend a lot of time alone, in my little room either reading or making beats and playing with the instruments. Three times in the last week or so I have gone out, expecting nothing more than an ordinary night out and three times I have chickened out. Anxiety is a bastard. I wanted to go see the show on friday night but I panicked when I got there and listened from outside. Now I’d also had 4 or mr Fishs’ fine hash cookies and he is scared of just one so… there was more to it that simple anxiety… like the fact that it took me an hour to negotiate a simple 5 minute walk and much of that hour was spent attempting to climb a tiny hill that seemed insurmountable at the time. The fact is, though, that the more I imagined trying to socialise with humans, the more my head did itself in and I admit that I was afraid of the people. Same goes for the other times. I’ve been laying off the drugs and the booze this week too, trying to get some calm and peace. I really do love to just hide in my room and read. I always feel that people might think I am strange because of this but I dunno, I don’t harm anyone and it beats watching tele or whatever it is that other folks do.
I finally have an ipod again and it really helps me get about the place. There is something really soothing and safe about having music with me. I felt really hurt the other day. I arranged all this stuff to take someone out for the night and they just didn’t want a bar of it. I guess that’s where some of the anxiety came from too. I find it really hard to go to a show or a party alone. It stems from being a kid and braving up to go to a disco or stuff like that and then getting there and realising that I didn’t really have any friends and people would always ask me “Who did you come with?” and I’d feel so bad and not know what to say. To my credit I did carry on going out and when I got to Hamilton and University I started going out alone heaps and found the most amazing musical scene I’ve ever known, there were other misfits like me and they all made music and art and I felt, finally, at home. So it fucks me off to find that I cant even go to a gig without messing it all up.
I had a full blown panic attack last week too and that tends to linger, that feeling of shame and , I dunno how to explain it but I feel guilty or something because I figure that people must think I’m fucken weird… You know? You know, right? Anyway… its a beautiful day and I have a good book and nothing to do for days on end so I’m really just trying to take care of myself. I missed my psyche appt today, again, but I didn’t really want to go, I don’t see the point… if I open up to those guys about how I am doing they will just make life even harder and , gentle reader, life is already fucken hard. I am present and mindful as often as I am able and I am not just sitting on my arse all the time. I do heaps of walking (no doubt I will do more now that I have music to go again) , I potter around in the studio I have set up and I go up to the fridge and hang out with Jake sometimes, I am gardening very slowly, I am still waiting for my seedlings to poke their little shoots up and I read. My mate Millie used to remind me of just how lucky I am to be able to live like this. Many people would love to have my life… billions of em, I expect. So gratitude plays it’s part and keeps me getting up outa bed. Days like today are fucking hard. I had dinner with a couple last night who had a horrendous fight towards the end of the evening. I find it really upsetting when people fight like that. I remember Mum and Dad fighting and it all comes back. These folks live just a few doors down from another tragedy that’s currently unfolding for the second or third time too. But these aren’t my stories to tell and jah knows I am no innocent.
I’d love a cuddle, some skin on skin. The full moon always reminds me of the thing that’s truly missing in my life and I guess I have reasons for not feeling that great. Things will change though… they always do.
So I have a problem and it’s doing my head in. As you all know I have a habit and a facet of that is that a part of my life is controlled by a few do-good-ass social workers and a Doctor who still needs to check his notes to remember my name after a couple or three years. It’s the adversarial style of health care that has made this DHB (District Health Board) famous throughout the country as the absolute pits. I don’t feel cared for at all by them, I feel like they are some kind of moral police that set a bar as high as they can and make sure that I exist well below it then beat me with a stick as often as they can. I tested positive for amphetamine last time I presented urine and I know damn well I aint had any in about 12 months, maybe longer. I am not saying I am in anyway an innocent and I will damn well use it again before I’m done on this planet. Speed is great for dancing, fucking and making music. Its a fucking nightmare if you start doin it every day for weeks, then months on end but, like anything else, in moderation its a lovely little experience enhancer for grownups. So now they are coming down on me for a false positive that I imagine appeared due to a flaw in the urine drug tests that can present positive results from certain energy drinks and synthetic sweeteners. The Dr will sit there and straight out lie to my face that this impossible and yet I know damn well that its the truth. They warned us in Rehab not to drink Redbull or drinks like it and not to eat food with poppy seeds coz these will both present as narcotics. So I am feeling a little bit embattled, you know?
I just cant understand why they cannot see how well I am doing compared with how I was doing 4 or 5 years ago. Idiots and morons. Not one of them was born here and yet they expect to pretend to be able to relate to a middle aged half caste junky from Invercargill…. Assholes. It’s poppy season and they always tend to get all punishy around this time of year. Fuck em. I bet the cough mixture I had on the weekend shows up this week too. Argh! Its a nightmare. I think if we had cheap drugs here I would just get off. My mate Roger The Dodger always said that the only problem he had with Heroin was it’s scarcity… you get sick when you cant score and he reckoned that if he could assure his supply he would gladly enhance his day with it, the way straights drink coffee… even coffee will fuck with you if you cant get it… trust me on that hombres…. Roger is a fairly upstanding citizen too, I aint talkin about a scumbag, this guys a respected member of society and a bit of a legend in certain musical circles… the high end, not the covers kids down town.
I’d like to bitch about that too… This town is fucked… ONE dude owns all the bars in town and dictates what can and cant be played by the “Bands” that work in there. I never go there but here’s the thing, there are so many great bands working in Hamilton lately and yet the shows are kind of segregated in that we are excluded from the bars in town because we play our own tunes. Instead we have to play in venues that aren’t really set up for the kind of live music experience that will incubate a scene. The meteor has its logistic issues, Nivara lounge is almost impossible to generate a standing, dancing audience, plus the barman talks at the top of his voice through the show. There are a couple of high capacity venues in the cbd but they are run by religious organizations and with that comes strings and, finally, Ward Lane remains unopened, perhaps a QuakeSafing issue? Don’t get me wrong, I love the Meteor and Nivara dearly but it feels wrong that the local music scene is excluded from the bars in the city… it feels wrong to me, short sighted and a bit yucky that the music is tainted with greed and capital gain, those are no ways to grow a creative community and a creative community that is nurtured can create a creative economy and a creative economy serves everyone involved… even the fuckwit who owns all the bars. Low class fuckhead.
Sorry, I get a lil excited when I think about shit like that.
I’m going to the Goth and The Pixie album release tonight. I have a pre-release of their album and it’s beautiful. So very different from what I expected, very eclectic and rock n roll, so wonderfully like how Htown music used to sound but so wonderfully original too. A group effort centered around Macaila and Wai, its the fruition of a crazy couple of years that have seen our little scene mature with these guys snuggled up at the heart of things. It’s not just a celebration of The Goth and The Pixie, its a mile-stone for the whole scene and the more people we can cram in there tonight, the more it will affirm and encourage all of the people who make original music in this little corner of the world. Hamilton Music is amazing, consistently independent throughout the decades and fiercely original and resourceful. The urban Jangle that has no need for commercial success and, in fact, which sometimes willfully shuns it, Htown is fucking cool… Way cooler than the shit in the CBD would lead you to believe.
Come on Down… I’m bringing cookies! (More shit to show up in my urine tests)
Hiya. I feel almost apologetic, I’ve been really down this week and it spills over sometimes. Let me tell you about two or three happy things. The first is the pizza I made last night. Fresh steamed Mussels, prawns, shrimps, fresh smoked fish (Was still warm when I bought it!), Capsicum, Tomatos and tomato paste as a base, onions, garlic olives and a sprinkle of basil in the dough. Oh yeah and CHEESE. Lot’s of fucken CHEESE.Droid taught me that the secret to pizza is heat, plenty of heat, as hot as the oven will go. So Chris Fish and I just spent an hour chatting and eating pizza. He bought me over some cookies that I’ll take to practice tomorrow. We finally finished the Moofish album yesterday. I put the final synth and bass parts on the final track. Scott Newth has been mixing them and Dan Howard is mastering them and then they will decide what to do next.
I went up to the studio this morning and while we were sitting there this old guy came up. I thought he was an electrician, there to fix the air con but he was a muso. He played us these video clips from teh 70s and it turns out that he was some kind of rock star in South Africa back then. He played this kind of country slow jam stuff and was successful. He had some pretty cool names to drop too, Mutt Lang probably the very coolest but there were others too. Here he is….
It was a good morning and then it was a great catch up with Chris. So I am feeling stronger today. I am going to lay off the booze a bit. I have been crying a lot and the emotions are too hard to wrangle when I’ve had a drink, I get stuck down in that sadness and grief. I will work harder to get my arse out of this sad space but I dunno man, it’s hard at the bottom. Things are hard all over, I know that and I try to be grateful for what I have. I try to contribute to my community and I think I do.
I’ve stayed away from the news today, lately I have been trying to keep up with what happens in my world but sometimes it can be hard to bear, the things we do to each other as human beings… we could be better than we are. Anyway, maybe I’ll have more to write about later on. Otherwise I’m gonna go get stuck into some work and see what I can conjure from the aether. Here’s some music while you sit there….
I feel so sad. I dunno why but I just cant stop crying. I have reached out to my “friends”, I have done all the things that usually help… Cooking food for others, making music, meditation… all that shit but somehow there is just this huge wave of sadness tonight. I guess I touched on it earlier and maybe this is just the tail end of a panic attack but it feels more like its own thing. It hurts to reach out to people who I have always been there for and be turned away, you know? It’s not like I was asking for anything more than time and friendship. I hate this. I hate this stupid life. It does not make sense, all the wrong things matter to you fucken people. Fuck it, ride on.
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