September 26, 2004
Utopian weekend
I made some progress this week, so am feeling a lot better than I did at the start. Last Saturday was one of my low points when I went to two parties in a depressed state, moped around a bit and left early. I have three main things on the go at the moment:
1) Shorthand. I had a minor breakthrough on Thursday where I was writing shorthand and for the first time it felt natural. I’m still slow and have a high error rate – so still nervous about passing – but from here I can probably use it to write just about anything. It almost certainly helped that I went to see a really good local band, The Flower Orphans, and shared a joint with them then wrote stuff down on my pad while they played. Maryjane has its uses once in a while. Shorthand could have potential for poetry etc distinct from normal English. Because most of the vowels are left out and some of the letters are nearly identical shapes, some words can be enigmatic eg ‘get’ and ‘good’ are written the same way. I also talked to the bass player Maree and got a quote from her to finish off the chapter on the Space I wrote near the start of the year – I’ve been meaning to get around to the second draft for ages.
2) I made a great discovery with the investigative piece I’m working on. It’s a secret which I can’t tell you (yet), but my head was spinning all of Friday. There’s a substantial story in there, but unfortunately I won’t be able to write it in time for the course.
3) Got an Ascension Band jam scheduled for Tuesday. Since I’m heading south for a while in a fortnight it’s not aimed towards a gig but just for its own sake. I’m happy with the band – it seems to be the solution to my frustration with getting The Winter organised, and it offers a way to move on from Loose Autumn Moans. Because the AB doesn’t have a fixed lineup, if someone can’t make it we can still continue. It’ll be a different band every time, and so the big group is actually easier to organise than the trio. And LAM was deliberately stripped back and acoustic – this is my chance to crank up the electric guitar, and to play with a whole new range of instruments and colours. Nigel Patterson is a local keyboard player who I’ve known for a couple of years. He finished his degree in jazz at the end of last year. He’s always been a good player, but since finishing his studies he’s been really branching out and finding his musical voice. He conducted the AB at the gig and seems pretty keen on the whole concept, so he’s a good guy to have on board. There’s talk of doing a Fringe Festival show in February, making an album, taking the group on tour… watch this space.
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Spring’s definitely in the air, and the days will be longer than the nights from here on. After getting the above done, the weekend I can only describe as utopian.
Saturday a friend Ian came over for a jam and brought his video camera to record it. He showed me his footage of the Ascension Band gig – looks good, worth releasing in fact. I could put it out on DVD? We played guitars for a bit, and did an improvised music/theatre/comedy/dishwashing piece in the kitchen, which climaxed with Ian spreading molasses over his face. Then by coincidence the Mormons arrived, so we brought them in for a videoed conversation. Ian was hilarious with his long rambling questions that took ages to get anywhere (and the molasses not completely washed off). And I was impressed by how afterwards he told them very earnestly that the church should be taking a stand against sweatshops, and gave them some websites to look at. I’m not sure if they’d heard of Noam Chomsky before, hopefully they do take it to heart. It was all very amicable.
Then in the evening I went over for another jam with Jesse & Nigel from the Ascension Band. We recorded it on dictaphone, and it was pretty anarchic – moving from room to room, lots of instrument swapping (several guitars, organ, piano, drumkit, violin, harmonica, bass guitar, kitchen utensils, wind chimes) etc. And after that I went over to Happy to see the Elephant Men play, and Nigel was opening for them – doing his first solo performance, on the grand piano.
Sunday the weather was fine and warm, t-shirt and shorts weather. I sunbathed on the patch of roof outside my window, then went for a good long bike ride around the bays. The view of the South Island from the south coast was the best I’ve seen it, with snowy peaks on the sounds. Must be freezing in Otago still, I’ll have to take my woolies. But here people were out swimming (and not just in wetsuits), a sure sign that winter’s gone.
In the evening as I was cooking dinner a flatmate’s friend turned up with some fresh paua he’d been given, so that made a great addition to the meal. I hadn’t had paua in over a year. And after that I went to Jeff Henderson’s place in Island Bay where he gave a performance with the Dodecahedrons (3 double basses, synth, sax and drums) and laid on a delicious curry. I’d already had a great meal but it was worth having a small taste.
It’s hard to imagine a lifestyle more idyllic than I had this weekend ( and finishing off Sunday night with a bit of blogging by candlelight). Does it mean I'm about to be hit by a bus? It’d be churlish of me to complain that things could still be better with some female companionship. And there was the Will Oldham review that I was supposed to write today but didn’t. Oh well, tomorrow. I have to get up early and go to class for shorthand testing – talk about contrast. Maybe I should have a cold shower to get in the mood?
http://fiffdimension.tripod.com
PS Another good thing that happened is that my albums are now also available from Eclipse Records in America (though it's still cheaper to just get them from me)
September 23, 2004
2 steps forward, 1 step back
I’m gradually chiselling away at the mountain of work. Main project is the investigative feature piece which is getting interesting – I don’t know what I’m eventually going to discover, which I guess could be a definition of investigative.
Flipping through the course notes I also discovered I’m supposed to write an obituary! Know anyone who’s died recently? Then there’s the piece on Will Oldham for Lucid magazine, organizing the trip down south, trying to find a summer job to come back to, a couple more stories to do for the Kapiti Observer (which I said I’d do and shouldn’t weasel out of if I want to work for them over the summer), work experience obligations at the Regional Council, and various minor tasks getting my portfolio in order. Oh, and don’t forget shorthand. As if I could. That one’s the killer – I know I can get the other stuff done, but shorthand I’m not entirely sure of passing even with effort & homework. If I don’t pass that I don’t pass the course. There should be an option of doing a private shorthand course over summer and getting it accredited – the tutors say there aren’t any. Smells like bullshit.
I’m feeling slightly more relaxed than a few days ago, I guess since I’ve got a couple of pieces of work out of the way in that time. The piece I was asked to write for the Happy newsletter ‘Secret City’ on the Meatwaters Festival – see previous entry – got rejected though for being too ‘lightweight’ and ‘not putting the music into a critical context’. That’s fine, I’m even inclined to agree, though if I’d gone deeper into analysis I don’t think I would have found room to mention all the bands who played. But if they want analysis – which I can do – they should ask for it at the start rather than just saying ‘Dave, can you write us something on Meatwaters, 600-1000 words, no other restrictions?’ and then complaining that it’s not what they wanted. I thought I was doing a review. Anyway I’m not going to rewrite it – sorry guys, too busy.
Two weeks to go, it's kind of scary. I really hope this hair loss doesn't continue. And the weather down south better be good for tramping. I feel an urge to go bush for a while.
Oh yeah, and it's the Spring equinox today...
September 22, 2004
Meatwaters review
It’s that time of year again – Meatwaters. I come in to Happy on Thursday as Disasteradio’s set gets going. It’s electronica that doesn’t go üns-üns-üns, but rather has a kind of bouncy swagger to it much like Luke Rowell himself. I can just imagine Mark E. Smith biliously toasting over it.
One good thing about the Meatwaters festival is that the acts are all totally different from each other - while the umbrella of the festival shows that the differences are just fine detail, they’re all part of a wider canvas. The two members of Armpit come from opposite directions, Dunedin and Hamilton, and meet in the middle with a couple of nicely evocative feedback/atmos pieces. I like the first one better than the second but couldn’t tell you any more detail than that, this is music that lives in the moment.
Throughout the festival, performers are accompanied by Mike Heynes’ video projections which alternate between imagery of blood, cadavers and meat in unsanitary-looking conditions on one hand, and light/colour/energy patterns on the other. Each band gets a different projection and they all seem strangely appropriate for the music.
If I Had A Gun’s ‘good ol punk rock’ image belies the fact that they have a pretty good dynamic sense and range of moods happening. It rocks but could have done with a bit more volume to give it physical impact. Golden Axe then follow with the festival’s most spiritual/religious set, using keyboard synths and prams with fairy lights, and wearing full head bandages. It’d be great to come across them busking under a bridge or in a random dark alley somewhere. Then a perfectly-timed shriek from Diamanda Galas goes out over the PA after their set. It feels somehow cleansing.
The Fingers finish off the night with a fascinating trawl through a range of rock styles, from New Wave to Chuck Berry to blues and a hint of Messaien, all without actually quoting any of them directly. Chris Palmer’s guitar and scat-singing shows an enormous range of musical influences being twisted 90 degrees and given a mainline caffeine injection, and festival curator Kieran Monaghan matches him all the way on drums. I’d buy their album for sure.
The second night is the most epic in terms of length. The Nether Dawn’s set makes a good overture, Antony Milton starts with a nugget of singer/songwriterism and then blows everything up through a microscope to reveal the vast terrain of peaks & valleys on the surface of a seemingly flat piece of paper.
Milton then joins the ten-piece Ascension Band, who have a seedy 70’s pimp look about them. About the only way they could be construed as a John Coltrane tribute is that they have no sax players. I can’t comment further since I was one of them.
Campbell Kneale’s solo project Ming gets the award for the festival’s loudest act; I suspect some covert negotiation/bribery going on between him and the sound guy. I’m not sure the difference between Ming and Birchville Cat Motel, possibly this is less of a monolithic glacial drone and more a tapestry. It somehow has the texture of really good rock guitar and there’s a lot happening in there. The long comedown is just as important as the buildup, as the noise calms down and gradually resolves itself into sounds of laughter. Is the audience in on the joke?
After this Backyard Burial’s metal set comes across as strangely peaceful. And then Gfrenzy’s alt-country is downright pretty, at least until they start singing about chopping people’s balls off.
The Flower Orphans represent a new paradigm for many of the regular free-improv crew from the Space if you can remember that far back. This is no longer free music, it’s very structured but the lessons learned from long periods of improvising together have been taken into account and used as building blocks for something new. Their ongoing Thursday residency at Tupelo is taking on a legendary status of its own. And it’s great to see the way organist Nigel Patterson’s been branching out in the last year or so.
Saturday night I start the evening with a trip to the Michael Fowler centre to see the NZSO perform Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. It’s not strictly anything to do with Meatwaters but it could happily fit in. Squeezing the whole orchestra inside Happy might be a stretch though. With its sudden dynamic shifts, staccato bowing attacks on the strings, brass & percussion blasts, and unresolved tensions my Californian friend Jesse called it “the birth of heavy metal”.
We head over to Happy where Cortina get the evening going with a cohesive set which benefits from Richard Falkner’s return from Melbourne. Ian Goldsmith looks like he’s having fun dancing, they should let him play an instrument next. Guitarist Ace Hurt, who bears a surprising resemblance to Peter Jackson, comes up to me afterwards to talk about William Blake.
For his duo with Kieran, Jeff Henderson plays bass guitar, reminding us that he’s not just a brilliant breakdancer/saxophonist/pianist/everything-elseist. It’s aggressive distorted funk improv but doesn’t quite reach the heights of the San Francisco bass/drums duo Sabot who were here a while ago. The omission of saxophones throughout the festival is interesting though, given the strong presence the instrument has in the Wellington scene, and in an odd way helps define the festival through ‘negative space’.
Go Genre Everything are the penultimate act, with some dirty surf rock that gets people dancing – so that’s what that short Aussie guy who was hanging around by the door the other night tape-recording conversations was here for. Then Meatbix from Auckland conclude the festival. As well as the inevitable cow getting chopped up and sped-up porno imagery, the face of Buckminster Fuller appears a few times on the video projector – another intriguing piece in the grand Meatwaters jigsaw. There’s a great Celtic feel to Meatbix’s music, which blends perfectly with the metal element. I’m impressed by Dogphart’s guitar playing, he sounds truly on fire – as you’d hope a man would be on his wedding night. He and vocalist Tenessee Pussy get married on stage a couple of songs in, making this September 11th a truly singular event and a celebratory high note on which to end the festival. Punk’s come a long way since the ‘no future’ days...
September 18, 2004
survival mode
I guess I don’t handle stress that well. I’m getting hair falling out, couple of white hairs appearing at the temples, stomach cramps… Hope I don’t end up bald from this course.
I made some small headway today, got the Asia 2000 application written and was approximately diligent about doing shorthand practice. I also coughed up the $80 for the bike crash on Tuesday. I think I would have had a better than even chance of winning in the disputes tribunal as I probably did have the right of way, but I felt guilty about my brakes being not great. And this way I’ve avoided making an enemy (who works at the local supermarket where I go fairly often).
By coincidence Student Job Search phoned with some work for tomorrow, waterblasting a house. If I do seven or eight hours work that’s the $80 covered. But I have to get up early and go out to Paraparaumu for it and the weather forecast is not looking good.
Manual work is good as a survival mechanism. I’m going into ‘survival mode’ now. This is pretty mild really, the course will be over for better or worse in three weeks. I have the diploma and right to call myself a journalist, and $5500 of course fees riding on this. All the other work I’ve done will be for nothing if I fail the shorthand tests. It’s puny in the universal scheme of things but still looks important here on the ground. Survival mode is where I basically become a robot to work on a goal while I get through a bad situation. It’s only three weeks and a large-but-finite quantity of work to do, this is mild compared to last year when I did some truly shitty hard labouring jobs, under adverse social & environmental conditions, for several months to survive after I got dumped. Better than suicide – and I paid off my student loan as a result.
The flipside is that survival mode’s not much fun, and my ability to interact with other human beings goes out the window. I went to two parties for two different groups of friends tonight – totally failed to relax and enjoy myself, or to communicate with anyone. The women stay away from me in droves.
My grandma wrote to me not long before she died that we have to spend 90% of our time doing things we don't enjoy. Is that a particularly Scottish attitude I wonder? I've spent a large chunk of my time since rebelling against that, giving priority to recreation & art works ahead of dishwashing jobs or whatever. This year they took priority over shorthand practice. So as a result for the next couple of weeks I have to become a recluse and spend all my waking hours on homework to catch up (with allowances for meal breaks, trips to the gym etc).
At least there’s light at the end of the tunnel. No don't tell me it's a train coming.
September 15, 2004
the home stretch (& stress)
1) I crashed my bike on Tuesday. I was riding down Rintoul Street when a car turned left into Stoke Street. I almost avoided it but not quite. I would have stopped OK if my brakes had been better. Driver says he was well ahead when he was turning. I don’t know whether to fork out the $80 he’s asking for and effectively flush it down the toilet, or whether to let him take me to the disputes tribunal. In that case if it goes against me I might have to pay the full cost - $230 - of fixing a minor dent in his door. I hate confrontation. It could have been far worse though, the bike’s OK and at least I wasn’t injured.
2) Shorthand practice is stressing me out; I’m banging my head against the desk quite often. Have to get to 80wpm within three weeks or fail the course; as of now I’m not quite on 60wpm.
3) My clock radio (timing device) and electric razor (noisemaker when played through guitar pickups) went missing after the Ascension Band gig. Hope I can get up ok in the morning.
4) Three pieces of music journalism (a small CD review and two more substantial pieces on Meatwaters Festival and Will Oldham gig), a news article (Resource Management Act amendment bill), and a feature article (health & safety in film industry art depts) due in near future.
5) Also a business & economics test next week.
6) Application for work placement in Phnom Penh or Shanghai was due yesterday – I haven’t started it yet.
7) I haven’t had enough exercise recently.
8) Guy in Auckland who I was hoping would review the Loose Autumn Moans album says he doesn’t like it. He says the music’s good but the words are “too loose”. What the %&^# is he talking about? The %&!#ing album’s got the word ‘loose’ in the *^&#!@ing title!
9) I got a haircut today, feels weird.
10) Three weeks in Mosgiel (outside Dunedin) working for Taieri Herald coming up in October. Then have to find a job.
I’m feeling stressed & depressed. I’ll feel better tomorrow once I can start actually tackling some of this workload. It’s the home stretch - and it's no bigger than what I got through at the end of August. I can do it. I have to be able to…
September 12, 2004
Rites of Spring
I’ve got four weeks to go now on my course then head south. Shorthand is the albatross around my neck at the moment, it’d be so frustrating to fail the course because of it. Can’t allow that.
The gig on Friday was great fun, though one problem with playing live is that everything seems anticlimactic for a while afterwards until a new one comes up in the future to look forward to. I’m probably too busy to do another before the course finishes, but I should play in Dunedin (that was 80% of the reason for asking to go there for my work experience posting). We should get the Ascension Band together again for an informal jam session though – everyone was pretty happy with how the gig went, and there is a feeling that we should keep it an ongoing project. I guess that’s an incentive to live in or near Wellington for the summer.
Me, I think it’s just great to have an outlet to crank up the electric guitar – can’t do that at home (except through headphones but that gets claustrophobic), and it makes a change from playing mostly acoustic this year. Ironically the big group (ten-piece) was easier to organise than The Winter (a trio) this year – here if someone can’t make it we can still continue. And a big group takes on a life of its own – I convened the group and conducted the rehearsal but then Nigel, the keyboard player, asked to take over conducting on the night. That was fine with me, he’s a full-time musician with a BMus in jazz and plenty of ensemble experience, and it meant I could concentrate more on having fun with the guitar. The band should have looked interesting, ten guys all doing different things. Very casual dress, and several pairs of tacky tinted plastic sunglasses - 70s looking? And Warwick, one of the bass players, is taller than I (I’m 6’3”) so he stands out anywhere.
I’m on a nocturnal rhythm at the moment, this is going to be the fourth night in a row of going out for live music. Will Oldham tonight - I've wanted to see him for years. The three-night Meatwaters Festival has just finished, and I also saw a pretty good death metal band at Valve on Thursday, as well as the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra performing Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring on Saturday. That’s the piece famous for causing a riot at its premiere in 1913 – one of the classic works of early modernism, lots of percussion, sudden dynamic shifts, and unresolved tensions. My Californian friend Jesse (Ascension Band bassist) called it “the birth of heavy metal”, which made a lot of sense.
Today’s pretty dreary outside, non-stop rain, so staying indoors. I’m tired from the late nights, they’re one reason not to be a professional musician. My natural rhythm is more like 10am-2am, rather than the musician’s rhythm of 1pm-5am. There’s also the ugly sensation of coming home with clothes stinking of cigarette smoke (you can tell I don’t spend a huge amount of time in bars). I’m one of the people looking forward to the ban on smoking in bars coming in at the end of this year – although I have been toying with the idea of taking up smoking temporarily to calm me down when I do shorthand practice. Almost certainly a bad idea.
Wrapping up affairs in Wellington has been a big theme for me in 2004. I keep revisiting places I went a while ago and seeing old faces again in different contexts. Elisa was working at the bar for the three nights of the festival. It was great to talk to her at first, we know each other so well, but then she said something like “well, I’ve wasted enough time with you” which spoiled it for the rest of the time. I went along to a party in Hataitai after the Friday gig - same address where I went to a party in 1999, which is described in the track "After the Filmshoot" from Loose Autumn Moans - and ended up staying til the sky was getting light. There was one girl who was pretty friendly and started kissing me – felt lovely until she said she had a boyfriend and it all fell apart. That kind of thing makes it pretty tiring being single I find, not that relationships are any less complicated.
The other odd encounter I had was on Thursday with a guy working as a painter on King Kong, which started shooting this week. He offered to buy me a drink but for some reason I had an overpowering urge to decline and buy my own - there's a lot of water under the bridge between myself and the film industry. I was happy to have a drink with him but didn’t want to become indebted in any way (even though he’s probably earning $25-$30 per hour and I’m on a student allowance). I guess that might have given offence? I’m really not much good at social manoeuvrings and games, I’m sure I come across as blunt (when I’m not being overly quiet) to some people.
Speaking of which, I need to go do some homework now.
September 07, 2004
ascension / spring
The weather’s been great the last couple of days. Friday should be fun, with the Meatwaters Festival on at Happy. We had a rehearsal tonight for the Ascension Band’s gig – it was sounding promising: Three guitars, two basses, two drummers, keyboards and computer, with violinist and trumpeter joining us on the night. This is going to be worth seeing.
It seems to fit in with the spring weather, spring being the ascension season. One bummer for the year has been the complete lack of gigs by The Winter, although I did manage two separate duo gigs with Mike and Simon. Logically they should now do one without me. Oh well, that band was a very 2003 concept. This winter didn’t have all the narrative associations & personal upheaval of last year’s. This winter it was just a shitload of coursework to get through.
I’m into the last phase of the course. My one major remaining task is to beat my brain into shape regarding ability to write shorthand. I can currently write around 45wpm, probably no faster than my longhand. I need to reach 80wpm by the start of October or else fail the course. Guess I'll be doing some practice then (sticks finger down throat). Writing fast is an uncomfortable sensation – I hate being rushed, I like to take my time with pretty much everything. In this case there’s even a risk of OOS (or RSI). I reached my quota of 40 stories published with time to spare and without once using shorthand but that’s not the point. Oh well at least some of the other pressures have lessened. I’ll just write one or two more news stories, make them good ones to submit for my final portfolio. And spend time researching what to do next when the course finishes.
I’m feeling fairly upbeat this week. Two days in a row I got to sit on my sunporch (patch of roof outside my window) and get some Vitamin D and read. It felt so good – ultimately relaxation, pleasure and learning are far more important than work. I’m reading Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller at the moment – one of the 20th century’s good guys. He was convinced that the technology exists to eliminate world hunger and save the planet, it’s just a matter of allocating resources in a sane manner. Now if only we could convince the big world powers to stop wasting energy on ‘defence’ and do something useful with it, civilization might just survive.
It’s good that spring’s arrived. About time for some renewal. Hopefully see you at Meatwaters...
September 05, 2004
study break
Study break this week so have had some time off. I've just got back from town, where I went after my friend Dave's goodbye party. The sky was getting light as I came home, winter's lost its enveloping darkness. I'm at a funny stage with not knowing what the future holds. Only five weeks to go on the journalism course, which I expect will fly past. Assuming I can get the rest of my work completed satisfactorily I then get to go to Dunedin for three weeks work experience. Then, since I'll be in the South Island I should have a wander around, hopefully do some tramping.
This week was unsatisfying tramping-wise. I got the Treaty of Waitangi assignment in, I thought it was a bit of a rushjob, but it got 14 out of 20 which was better than I thought though unspectacular. I'm not going to be a top student in this course - that requires total dedication whereas I'm constantly thinking day-in-day-out about my writing & music which is my real priority. On the other hand I'm absolutely aiming to pass the course, failure's not an option. Time management and multitasking are skills I've had to pick up to get a bit of everything done. I do feel like a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none sometimes though.
Anyway, tramping on Wednesday fell through due to shitty weather, then Thursday I had to work indoors at the Regional Council on a perfect fine day, then Friday the others cancelled on me. I did however bike up to the Karori Cemetary and walk through Otari Wilton's Bush as partial compensation to myself. It's funny how Wellington has a little bit of everything, including a couple of patches of native forest. There's an 800 year old rimu in there which is worth seeing.
One good thing about study break was the chance to read and listen to music. I got a stack of books & CDs from the library. Johnny Cash Live at Folsom Prison is great, 50s rock & roll but the songs are about stuff, not just inconsequential teenage drivel. I also got albums by the Boredoms, Henry Cow and Laura Nyro - I see no contradiction. I really enjoyed reading George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London, I could learn a lot from him as a writer. I'm currently tackling some Buckminster Fuller and his ideas on sustainable use of resources. I also got a biography of Osama bin Laden, but it was written from a fairly right-wing American establishment point of view so I couldn't get into it. Although it was written before September 12th 2001 so it shows that some intelligence people thought of him as a threat before then even if their government ignored it (and the WTC attack happened about 1.30am on September 12th here if I remember rightly - different date because of the time difference: September 11th passed without incident).
Back into classes on Monday for the home stretch. What I have to figure out is,
am I leaving Wellington at the end? Should I give up my flat when I go to Dunedin? I have to get a job for the summer, but it doesn't necessarily have to be in Wellington. Then off overseas next year if the saving goes ok. Not sure whether to go to Asia or Canada first?
Decisions decisions.
It'd be a pity in some ways to give up my flat - I really like this one. I've got a decent size room, a patch of roof outside my window that I can use for a sunporch, there's a good section with plenty of green, a large bath, a vege garden I planted, lots of books (some worth reading), a nylon-string guitar, a very friendly cat, I don't have to look after the bills, and we share the groceries so there's always food in the cupboards. I also like the gas cooking and use of candlelight, gives the place a different feel to use power sources other than electricity. It's been a great base while I'm at Massey, none of the hassles of previous flats which is good because bitching over phone bills or whose turn to wash the dishes would be an unwelcome distraction. It's been a pretty good period and home. 2/3 of the way through the year now, with a girlfriend the one thing missing that I would have liked to have (chronic singleness my unwelcome distraction). Other than that I'm fairly content.
It's probably just as well to be back to classes tomorrow. Having free time but missing out on what I wanted to do (tramping) I got a couple of visits from my old enemy depression. I'm experienced enough to know that it's probably always going to be something I have to deal with and work around, so it was nothing major just a mild down feeling. It could be partly because I'm between writing projects at the moment - I need a new idea. I beat the depression off by going up to Otari Wilton and enjoying the bush. But part of the reason I haven't had it so much this year is that I've been too busy. Hence, have to stay active for the rest of my life - keep one step ahead of the black dog always. It's been good having the structure of a course to keep me occupied; after that into jobhunting purgatory again. I loathe jobhunting. Oh well, I'll come up with something. But the future is a big question mark at this point.