July 28, 2004
Would you give me $5485?
Aargh! All this coursework coming down on me - and my mind's completely elsewhere. My big project at the moment is getting my Creative NZ application handed in on Friday, it's the equivalent of that big essay but with budgeting and liason work added. I still need to get a couple of venues confirmed - anyone know good gallery spaces or small halls in Hamilton and Napier to put on a show?
I'm asking for funding to make a CD and do a tour of the North Island with The Winter. I showed my proposal to Biddy Grant at Standing Ovation and she said I wasn't asking for enough money for CNZ to take it seriously. So I added in a food allowance for everyone (since people like to eat) and hireage for a van (since Auckland & back's probably too far to walk carrying gear). Currently the spreadsheets tell me to ask for $5485 all up. The theory is that if they offer less we can cut corners and it'll still be doable. $5485 is alot of money to me, but would be chicken feed for a filmmaker.
After a slow start to the year the last couple of months have been good for my live playing. There was the visit to Auckland, the Bomb the Space and Word Festivals, and I should be playing again on Sunday at Thistle Hall (The Winter's first anniversary gig!). I've got something good brewing for Meatwaters in September but overall I'm going to have to cut down on my extra-curricular activities to concentrate on my coursework - either that or fail the course, & being an old man of 25 now failure's not really an option. Also I should get some new material together for future live stuff - to regurgitate the albums would be death by nostalgia.
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In other news, this week's the film festival. I haven't seen anything yet. I'm actually tempted to see nothing at all in it, so I can say I've boycotted it. I got shat on by the film industry, and the major regret I have over the last six or so years was wanting to have anything to do with it in the first place. There's a local film in the programme that I helped out with - it was filmed at the flat where I was living, I even have a cameo role and one of my songs used in the soundtrack. The free ticket I was promised to the premiere never arrived.
The making of that film was an intense time. I was completely broke, bills coming down, working unpaid on the film. I'd recently finished the Mantis Shaped and Worrying album which used up all my creative energy, and was working on the short story 'Overgrowth'. My relationship with Elisa was in its final stages of collapse - I'd developed a bald patch on the back of my head from the stress (though it was initially misidentified as ringworm, which didn't endear me to her). The soundtrack to the time was Bob Dylan's amazing Live 1975 album which had just come out. The irony of that album is that just as Dylan is creatively firing on all cylinders, having written great new songs and giving his best live performances, and being loved by the audience, his marriage is collapsing. The album climaxes with a version of 'Sara', with his wife Sara in the audience. "Sara, Sara, don't ever leave me, don't ever go".
Here's a self-portrait I drew on the computer from that time.
Something had to give - I got dumped. I shaved my head the next day, hence my bald appearance in the film, gave the film a couple more days then pulled out. Then I went and got a series of builder's labourer jobs, some cash and so fairly well paid, but after a while that dried up and I went to work for Quin Workforce for $9/hr before tax. My psyche was in tatters. The flatmates I got on well with moved out and the replacements turned out to be an unpleasant couple who filled up the walls with cut-outs from Women's Magazines and drank opium tea all day. Poisonous mushrooms appeared in the compost heap (not making this up).
The next short story I wrote was 'Whin the Autumn Wain Sex Begain to Fall'. I did a couple of performances of it this year, at Photospace in May (ask Fi) and at Happy in the Bomb the Space festival. It made people laugh, and Jeff Henderson told me it was my best performance he'd seen. So that's all good. Remember the William Wordsworth formula for poetry - intense emotion recalled in tranquility...