Schrodinger's Cat

what the critics are saying

The Broken Face:

I first got in touch with Dave Edwards of The Winter after writing an article
series about underground music.from the South Island of New Zealand. If my
memory serves me he wrote me an e-mail saying that the music I wrote about
indeed is great but also wondered if I'd heard the music coming out of
Wellington, mentioning that there's a big (for NZ) scene of improvised music
coming more out of the free jazz/European improv tradition that I probably would
enjoy. I had heard bits here and there and I can still not claim to be an expert
but thanks to some on-line searching and a few purchases the picture is at least
starting to get a bit more complete.

One part of that picture is a number of projects revolving around the
aforementioned Dave Edwards and the one that's up for inspection right here is
the Winter trio and their debut album "Parataxes". What we get is a strange
sonic brew that includes dissonant rock textures, rough outsider folk-blues
mysteries, electric and acoustic improvisations and a considerable part of tasty
feedback. Imagine equal parts Derek Bailey, New Zealand's Pumice and classic
'60s blues/folk and you're in the rigth ballpark. So I guess it's obvious that
The Winter walks the tightrope between lots of different styles, but they also
veer back and forth from the relatively structured and mellow to what easily
could be referred to as a disjointed aural mess. It's all in all a complex
listen that won't appeal to everyone, but anyone interested in eclectic NZ
experimentalism will want to seek this guitar/harmonica/cello/percussion album
out.

Dream magazine

Dave Edwards + the Winter "Loose Autumn Moans"
(http://fiffdimension.tripod.com) Here Wellington, NZ composer Dave
Edwards mostly goes it solo with some able assistance from duo or trio the
Winter. Often Dave is singing, or very nearly so, as on the jazzy opening
track "Summer Skin", or the almost folky "Working Like a Fountain in the
Slender Morning Chill", elsewhere the sounds are more scattered,
accumulated and fragmentary, as he sing/talks in a latter day fractured
Barrett unreeling narrative. There are some free noise experiments and
clattering nonverbal splatter, but most often this feels like slightly
depressive verbose spoken word expositions over acoustic improvisations.
Guitars, violin, cello, and percussion all stack up into these unwieldy
assemblages framing Dave's flattened intonations. Edwards recalls a less
tuneful Kevin Coyne; but he's got a persona that's all his own.

George Parsons
Dream Magazine #5

Gig at Arc last night was fun, or at least I know I must have played reasonably well since I didn't finish thinking 'man that sucked'. It was a short set opening for the Futurians & the Chandeliers (from Wellington, seemed just like home). I should hopefully have a jam with a couple of local guys and maybe do another 'Arcoustic' set on Monday 8th.

I put in an application for a part-time reporter job with Kapi-Mana in Porirua, which'd be great as I'd actually rather be a journalist part-time than full-time. I could then also work outdoors over summer for Nga Uruora Kapiti the rest of the week. Maybe get a flat at Paekakariki and come into Wellington for the weekends & keep the Ascension Band going (I'm just listening to the recording from Meatwaters - sounds pretty solid). Or maybe I'll get a job in Dunedin. Too early to say. Jobs are always going to be the deciding factor... SNAFU.

considering moving to dunedin

I’m coming up to the half-way point of my Mosgiel internship. I got told off for not refilling the kettle and they probably find me a bit casual about the whole turning up on time thing… unfortunately chronic lateness is a deeply ingrained habit which I think came about during those formative years when I lived just across the back fence from my primary school. So ever since I’ve been leaving home to go somewhere at two minutes before I should be arriving, regardless of travel time.

I guess as far as the work goes, I can think of worse jobs but it’s not exactly what I’d want to do for a living. I do get a little bit of influence on the paper’s content though – as I’m now half the editorial staff. I’m doing stories this week on possum trapping, water quality and revegetation work so there are my interests coming through. And I’m taking my notes in shorthand, though not 80wpm.

I still feel a little unstable, I’ve been noticing my mood go up and down unpredictably. I was doing alright until about August then the wheels fell off for some reason. I went to a doctor who gave me antibiotics for my bleeding gums but wasn’t much help on the hair loss. I had a good 3-day weekend in Dunedin though (had sex Saturday night, played a gig on Monday, the two rare & beautiful things I live for), and the notion of actually moving down here for a while is taking hold in my mind. It seems more relaxed than Wellington, less snobbery (at least at first glance). Dunedin’s largely oriented around the university though and becomes a ‘ghost town’ over summer when the students go home.

On the plus side the rents are cheaper than Wellington, there’s an OK arts/music scene, the weather is great over summer and the daylight’s nearly an hour longer (dusk at 10pm near the solstice), and there’s all the South Island wilderness to explore. There’s also Deep South icecream which you can’t get in the North Island – delicious (though Kapiti icecream is even better but that's expensive and hard to find). On the other hand the winters are pretty harsh, but I don’t think I’d stay that long – mainly I want to save up and go overseas around about next autumn so in any case I’m cutting my ties with Wellington for a while. I could even get into the international traveler lifestyle of migrating to avoid winters indefinitely.

Dunedin even looks a bit like another country, specifically Scotland where my grandma was from. It’s got a lot of big old stone churches (not all used as churches these days – some are offices and one now holds a strip club), statues of Queen Victoria and Robert Burns, and a lot of European trees.

I haven't decided whether to move down but it looks like there are some arguments in favour. I'll spend a day or two jobhunting after I finish the internship - can't be any worse than jobhunting in Wellington.

Acoustic gig on Monday went alright, I should do an electric set on Friday in between the Futurians and Chandeliers sets.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Friday night in Mosgiel

This is one of those comedies of errors that I can see the funny side of but wasn’t laughing at since it happened to me. I got to the end of the first week at the Taieri Herald - one down two to go - and they’d won some free drinks at the local pub. I’d been planning to go into Dunedin for Friday night but to be sociable I went along for a couple of (free) beers. The newspaper staff are all women – one reporter, three advertising staff (typical ratio probably), a manager and a secretary. It turned out one of the youngish ones is a) single and b) kind of cute (though very short, which would normally put me off – she’s also a jockey). So I tagged along when they decided to go for dinner at another pub (there are three or four here). I had ‘the vegetarian dish’ which was a mild and unspectacular but filling curry. By the end of the meal it was starting to get dark so prospects of getting to Dunedin were fading – not many buses and I wouldn’t hitchhike at night. In Dunedin there were several good bands playing at Arc Café and I’d also arranged to meet a girl who I’d emailed off a dating website (there goes another of my dark secrets).

But I got stuck at the pub in Mosgiel. There was a guy doing a one-man-band act (guitar and playing along to computer backing tracks) who wasn’t bad considering the repertoire was mostly 70s pop covers. I had a couple more beers but the dinner was soaking them up. The thing I find with beer is that the first one is always the best, especially at the end of a day’s work, but continued drinking just becomes a chore. And as far as alcohol goes beer’s pretty inefficient, I feel bloated before I get drunk. Being my usual shy self I didn’t get into the social scene with the locals much. There was a guy showing a fairly major forearm scar he’d got at the freezing works, made me feel self-consciously like a middle-class townie.

I also had my laptop with me, which was making me nervous that it might get stolen. Like they said in Fight Club, ‘the things you own end up owning you’. So when the hourly complimentary van departed I got on it to take the computer back to where I’m staying. It was 10.30pm, not that late so I dropped the computer off and started walking back to the pub – just in time to see that I’d missed the late bus to Dunedin by five minutes. And I took a wrong turn somewhere and couldn’t find the pub. I ended up wandering out into the country and must have walked a few kilometers before getting back to the house. I could pay the $30-40 for a taxi to Dunedin but I don’t really have that kind of disposable income, and it would have been a hassle to arrange a bed there late at night without notice.

So Friday night was a bit of a write-off. It occurred to me on waking this morning that I could have dropped the computer off and got the van back to the pub – benefit of hindsight. In all the night was just another skirmish in my ongoing campaign to prevent myself having a happy & successful life. Talking to locals at a pub was actually a fairly important thing to do for a trainee journalist trying to get a grasp on a new small community.

I have the long weekend free, hopefully I can entertain myself somehow. The girl off the dating site has end-of-course and work parties to go to Saturday and Sunday nights so I probably won’t meet her, and the Wolfskull guys aren’t jamming again til next weekend. I really want to go tramping but without transport and a partner it could be impossible. I suppose I can always walk the Dunedin town belt by myself. I’ll see what happens. And I’ll leave the computer behind, see if I can cope without it for a couple of days.

& I should play at Arc Cafe on Monday...

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

change of pace

I’m in Mosgiel, just outside Dunedin. I didn’t know this before I came but apparently it has the highest retired population per capita in New Zealand; it’s known as ‘God’s waiting room’ (as in ‘God will see you now Mr Partridge’). My first story was on the fuss over the disabled car park outside the post office being moved ten metres down the road. It should be good though, there’s enough to keep me busy at work to not get bored and it’s all about learning the craft. Today I had to interview an 11 year-old who’d won a short story competition, reminds me that it’s been a long time since I’ve had contact with kids outside my family so probably good practice. I think I might have hit my own creative peak at 10, and I seem to remember being pretty happy then (there was one school bully who plagued me but I hit back at him that year and made him cry).

Even with the relatively tranquil pace my mediocre shorthand is somewhat of an obstacle. I’ll start using the Dictaphone as backup and I should have a bit of chance to practice shorthand, maybe I can get up to speed by the start of next year’s diploma course and do the test then. Toni, the Taieri Herald’s only fulltime reporter, made an observation that now seems blindingly obvious – to pass an 80wpm test easily you should be practicing the passages at 90 or 100wpm, just to get used to moving at inhuman speeds and so the test itself seems easy by comparison. Whereas I’d been practicing at 60 or 70, trying to get comfortable with that, which is the wrong approach. Hopefully catching up on shorthand late will be easier than trying to juggle it with a hundred other things while doing the rest of the diploma.

I went to the chemist and they gave me some vitamin B ‘executive stress’ pills – I ‘look too young’ for natural male hair loss (though old enough to take that as a compliment – and I have a friend my age, also a journalist named Dave, who lost his hair two or three years ago) so they said it was probably stress causing it, which I can believe. I’ve been like a learner driver on a hill-start at a red light, frantically revving and stalling and not moving forward. They said stress could also be behind my bleeding gums. Either that or gingivitis, but anyway I got some kind of mouth-rinse medication for it. Hopefully all this medication plus a gentler pace and change of scene will have me back in shape by the end of the three weeks. I feel a lot calmer - I’m not in a state of total burnout like autumn last year, I just made an error of judgement with the course and only gave it 75-80% of the effort required and got thrown a bit.

I had a minor creative leap the other day when it occurred to me that as the short stories I’ve written since last year have a thematic continuity (ie my personal preoccupations with bitching about the film industry, sexual frustration, lack of money and writer’s block) I could put them together as a book and self-publish. I made a book called Anterior Pathways in 2002 to keep myself occupied (& sane) while unemployed. I think I did 50 copies at the photocopiers and it’s now ‘out of print’. It was a good experiment, and I found that several people who weren’t interested in hearing my music were happy to read my prose. If I do a ‘sequel’ it’s already in somewhat darker territory so I’ll have to write another story or two and work it towards some kind of ending. Then I’ll be ready to leave the country I guess.

I also had my first go at playing Dunedin-style improvised music on Tuesday night, with the band Wolfskull. The music scene was my main motivation for coming here; the town has a strong musical history and there’s still good stuff happening though not on the same level. The music's quite different from Wellington’s free scene, still improvised chaos but evolved more out of guitar rock than free jazz. Unlike a lot of Wellington players, these guys don’t have degrees in music - which made it easy for me to fit in. I like how they've got all kinds of cool instruments (Hammond organ, analogue synthesizer, plus guitars, drums etc) but they're half broken - and no one seems to know how to tune a guitar. I also saw the Dead C earlier this year in Auckland; the whole ‘Dunedin sound’ thing is quite a different aesthetic approach, but one that feels oddly familiar. It’s slower than Wellington maybe – which is good as I really felt like a change of pace.

Likewise I’m boarding in Mosgiel with a Christian family (solo mother and teenage daughter) – Christianity was something that’s part of my upbringing in a very loose sense (I went to Sunday school briefly) but which never really took hold. I'm getting hints of what my life might have held if my family were southerners (they’re all in the North Island except for a cousin in Christchurch). It’s all some kind of North/South divide metaphor thing maybe. Yeah whatever.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Dunedin again

Last time I was here was this autumn, and the trees that were then all golden are now blooming again. I skipped the wintery part. I was half expecting snow in the streets, but it's been sunny & warm during the day. The temperature will drop at night though.

I spent the weekend pretty much locked away in my room reading George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying - I think he's my new literary hero. That book's a fairly dark satire quite applicable to how I've been feeling recently. For some reason I just ran out of steam on the course a month too early. I made the fatal error of letting depression get to me. It's sad how my hair's been falling out the last couple of months, maybe as a result of that, if it doesn't stop I'll end up with a bald spot. I wouldn't mind going grey but really don't want to be bald. My dad's kept his hair pretty well but my grandad had hardly any so I could be in trouble. Maybe I'm using the wrong kind of shampoo or maybe it was shorthand that did it.

This morning I was a nervous wreck, getting up late and then scurrying around frantically to get ready for my flight. I made it to the airport OK though. The flight to Christchurch seemed surprisingly quick, and there was nothing but grey out the window. The physical travel seemed illusionary, especially since Christchurch airport looks pretty similar to Wellington's - same chain stores. I felt better being out of town though, had a slice of pizza at the airport and got the next flight to Dunedin. The small measured doses of food and drink were oddly amusing - 100ml of chilled water on each flight, a lolly before Christchurch (which I dropped on the floor, interfering with the sterile feel of the plane), 15g of chocolate and a cup of coffee before Dunedin.

There was less cloud further south, and looking down on the South Island from the air was pretty wonderful. I can absolutely see why they call this 'the mainland', I'd like to spend a bit of time here. The snowy alps looked pretty enticing.

One of my bags failed to turn up in Dunedin - has my laptop in it so could have been a major problem. They say they'll courier it to the newspaper tomorrow morning though.

The Mosgiel newspaper is pretty provincial - one reporter. Her office is small and windowless. She seems slightly mistrustful of me, hopefully I don't prove incompetent. My shorthand sucks but if I actually try and use it for note taking it should improve. The hours are 8.30am-5.30pm, so I'll have to get up early since I'm spending tonight in Dunedin.

I've also got a gig lined up for tomorrow at None Gallery if any of you are in Dunedin. I didn't bring a guitar though, too much hassle in the end to carry around. Maybe I can borrow one, or failing that just perform a short story. I really have no idea what's going to happen tomorrow, the sense of improvisation is refreshing. I'm definitely in for a challenge here, but that's a good thing. It does feel a relief to be out of Wellington.

http://fififdimension.tripod.com

The last Friday night in Wellington for a while

It’s Saturday afternoon so I’m starting to get over the hangover from last night. The end-of-course party was OK as parties go I suppose, went for ten hours (I was there for eight of them). Having crashed & burned miserably on shorthand I can’t get the diploma and wasn’t sure if I wanted to go along. But I did and was pretty sociable, apart from avoiding the shorthand tutor. It’s my fault not hers & I’ll sort out some kind of re-sit later, I just don’t feel up to thinking about it just yet. I lost count of how many beers I had, but stopped just as I was beginning to feel queasy and managed to avoid a repeat of this Valentine’s Day.

I ended up with the impression that I don’t have very much in common with my (now-ex) classmates. Probably just as well since journalists as a whole have to provide an overall picture of the society in which they live – it would be a terrible loss if they were all like me. But I found the sausages, rugby on the big-screen tv, emphasis on alcohol consumption, and bland mainstream music a bit weird. I made two token attempts to put on CDs I’d brought (everyone was asked to bring some) towards the end, which I thought were pretty accessible: Tom Waits and Anti-Pop Consortium. They were each met by a swift aaarrrgh turn that shit off response which took me back to my high school and first flatting days. Oddly the music of choice included a lot of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Band, The Beatles, Trinity Roots… all stuff which I rate, but for me it’s partly the way artists have to be prepared to challenge audiences and if necessary not give them what they want that matters. Neil Young’s ‘dark period’ albums Tonight’s the Night and On the Beach are masterpieces, Dylan & the Band are famous for getting booed all over the world in 1966, the Beatles’ songs are OK because they did things like ‘Revolution 9’ as well (my mother refused to believe it was the Beatles when I played it to her, and couldn’t even handle ‘I am the Walrus’). And I doubt that my classmates would enjoy Derek Bailey for example or even recognize what he does as music.

The inevitable discussion of the merits of Britney Spears had me in an ‘against’ minority, and I pointed to her appearance in Fahrenheit 9/11 saying we should all just follow ‘our’ president as evidence of the links between pop music, corporate capitalism and conformism. The argument for was that it’s OK to tune out to something mindless once in a while, which is OK but in the case of Britney Spears one could argue that her music just plain sucks. I think I will go see Alien vs Predator this weekend though.

Maybe it’s partly because the party wasn’t a celebration for me since I didn’t get the shorthand, but I didn’t score anyone (though it did seem to be a night for the singles to pair up). Some of the female classmates are distinctly sexy but somehow I just wasn’t interested. There was an attractive older woman who was flirting with me but she would have had to outright ask me home with her for anything to happen. It takes a special/unusual kind of woman to be interested in me (backhanded compliment to the very few who have), I think the rest just look straight past me. And I wouldn’t have the faintest clue how to ask someone out, I generally wait for them to ask me – which can mean waiting a very long time.

I also wanted to go see Nigel at the Cross to talk about ideas for the Fringe show in February, and went along there after the party dissolved. The Chandeliers were playing to a full house of people, all really into it. I remember seeing them last year playing there on Wednesday nights to five people. Their music has improved a lot since though, presumably reflecting the time spent on it. A Fringe show is going to be a big undertaking, too much for me on my own so it’ll obviously have to be a collaborative venture and it’s great to have Nigel on board. My friend & valuable collaborator Mike is also keen to do a Fringe show – he’s got a musical presentation of George Orwell’s 1984 in his head which he wants to make happen. That’ll be more of a ‘musician’ thing though, complete with scores so my ability to contribute would be limited. My Fringe idea is to work up something good with the Ascension Band, which I see as a way of getting a bunch of people together and providing a loose structure while letting them all express themselves individually - kind of based on the John Zorn method of telling people when to play but not what to play. The band should be a mixture of trained (to give it form and musicality) and untrained (to keep it raw & unpredictable) players. We’ll have to work out if there’s enough common ground to combine the ideas or if they need to be separate shows.

The downside of going to the Cross (with a few drinks inside me) was seeing Elisa there with the latest in a long series of new partners. I warned him to look out for her or she’d ruin his life, and said to her ‘I wish I’d never met you’. So much for growth & maturity this year. The last time I saw her she gave me a rather petty & hurtful putdown just when I thought we were having a good conversation, so this was payback (and probably venting my shorthand frustration). What used to be a beautiful relationship’s now deteriorated to the level of a childish slanging match. I shudder to think what a divorce with children and property involved must be like.

So, feeling angry with myself for not putting enough work into shorthand, having failed to find a lover or long-term friends in the course, and just generally feeling alienated from the Wellington scene it’s just as well I’m leaving for a while. Going into exile maybe, not sure for how long but in any case it’s intended as a prelude to traveling around overseas, a way of easing me into a new nomadic lifestyle. I’ve been in one place long enough. I’ll take a guitar, pen & paper, a harmonica in my pocket (my good luck charm – I lost mine a while ago so need to get another), and be open minded and meet new people on the way. It'll be good. Two more sleeps then I’m out of here.

I'm a little worried at the moment though as my chest feels a bit heavy & I'm coughing up a lot of stuff from deep down. It seems to happen once a year, and four years ago it turned into pneumonia. I suspect that's what's going to kill me in the end, I'll go not with a bang but a whimper. Hopefully not for a long while yet though. I might just flag going out for Saturday night and have a bath and read a book instead. I borrowed a couple from my mother's bookshelf to take away, William Faulkner's The Sound & the Furyand George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I also picked up JG Ballard's Cocaine Nights from a 2nd hand bookshop so those are my reading for the trip. I'll have a low-key weekend, wrap up warm, pack my bags and work on a couple of short stories before I go. It'll be nice to not have assignments due.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

not going to give this one a title

The internet-as-tower-of-babel metaphor has always been a good one, millions of voices shouting across each other. Blogging allows anyone to publish solipsistic drivel for a worldwide audience – please excuse me if I lapse a bit here. The shorthand went badly so I’m angry at myself.

Advance warning: this entry has me ranting for a bit and then builds up to a dark-secret confessional at the end which you really won’t want to know about. I just post for the sake of keeping everything transparent. I can’t handle secrets, which is maybe why I find the idea of writing shorthand – which people say must be cool as you can write ‘secret code’ – quite unappealing. Like learning a foreign language just for the swear words, kind of sterile. Communication is what matters. But in this case the entry is just me ranting to myself and you should pull out before the ending, WHICH IS MARKED IN CAPITALS.

The structure of the year since February has been divided into three main activities. There’s shorthand, the rest of the journalism course, and everything else in life. Or four if you count sleep. There’s enough time to do three of them. Unfortunately I can’t function without sleep (one reason for getting out of the film industry) so one of the others had to go. It’s not like I’ve been slack this year (well, maybe the odd day here and there). Some things I’ve done include writing a 9000-word book chapter on Wellington improvised music; performing in the Bomb the Space, Word, and Meatwaters festivals; applying to Creative NZ for funding to release a CD and tour the North Island; submitting a script to Radio NZ’s ‘Open Story Season’; getting my music distributed by Eclipse Records in America; and (re)starting the Ascension Band, with plans afoot to put on a Fringe show in February.

But it was either all that or shorthand (or maybe all that AND shorthand but not the rest of the course work, which would just be silly; or all that and shorthand and the rest of the coursework but no sleep… you get the idea). Focussing exclusively on the course and putting everything else on hold was not an option for me – although those who did take it are getting much better marks.

Or maybe I’m just coming up with an artifical rationalization and I really am lazy. Shorthand classes started off slow & boring and gradually gained momentum until they became fast & frustrating & highly stressful. And every day I could think of a dozen things I’d rather be doing than shorthand practice, so the odds were against it. I have picked up the theory though, and I can actually write shorthand – just not word for word at high speed.

The chief paradox/frustration in my life is that the creative activities which I do put a lot of effort into make absolutely, in fact less than, no money. I sell a disc every three months on average, which is far overtaken by the stream of discs that get sent off for review or traded or given to people who helped make the music. Or simply stolen - this has happened. Bloody filmmakers (not you Amy). The last gig I did was great fun but I didn’t get paid for it and my guitar lead went missing – so running at a loss. Now it's not that money is the motivation for making artwork - if it were surely I could find far better ways. Having a creative outlet is simply an innate psychological imperative, not too far behind breathing & food & all the other necessities. But it becomes a nuisance when it intrudes onto other things, and seeing some kind of return on it would at least give a sense of it being acknowledged. As I'm the one spending money on it it looks like mere self-gratification (or masturbation) whereas art is meant to be a form of communication, which is all about getting across to other people.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I’d taken up the saxophone at intermediate as I vaguely thought of, or done tertiary music study instead of something career-focussed (like a BA in Theatre & Film maybe… stop sniggering). I’d have some musicianship by now. On the other hand high school music classes are pretty uninspiring from what I’ve heard. I’m attracted to dissonance, looseness, the moments that sound a little bit ‘off’. It was Bob Dylan who got me started on the whole subject of music, and he was best known for being ‘that guy who can’t sing’. But he somehow gets away with it in a pop context, whereas having a style that’s mostly based on disruption & dissonance means I’m pretty unpalatable to most listeners. It’s hard enough for me to get a gig, let alone become popular.

I used to compare myself to Dylan, pacing myself against him. I got my first album finished at age 19 and it was all original material, whereas it took him until 21 and that was mostly folk covers. So I had a head start on him. But by age 22 he’d written some pretty significant songs, 23 he was accelerating wildly, traveling the world and breaking boundaries, and at 24 he’d changed the face of popular music. I haven’t done too badly, I’ve got a modest back catalogue by now, but I haven’t been able to do music fulltime or make a living from it. I wouldn’t even want to. I figured out last year that Dylan overtook me by moving to New York at 20, playing music fulltime, getting a major label to distribute his discs and a manager, and having a forceful personality. I’m in New Zealand, have a scattershot approach which has to include study & jobs & whatever, am a DIY guy languishing in obscurity, and am fairly quiet by nature. He had seven or eight albums by this point and was a multi-millionaire, I’ve got five which have all yet to reach triple-figure sales and am running at a loss – bah! Anyone who wants to manage me and/or distribute my albums please feel free to submit me a tender.

I’ve also got the ongoing problem that despite all my musical learning & development, I still basically can’t play for shit. There’s a theory that the essence of creativity is working within limitations – my limitations are technical ones so my creative work is about finding ways to get around them. I can function well within my own idiosyncratic ‘noisy’ (rather than ‘noise’ which is a recognized genre that I don’t fit into) sphere, and if something melodic is needed I can hopefully get someone else to play it. So maybe my role is to be the coordinator/organizer guy. Seems to be that way with the Ascension Band anyway. It’s a good role to have. Nigel’s the musical director, even though I came up with the overall structure of the piece we did… I’m rambling.

But yeah, anyway. Chief paradox. The art doesn’t make money, and art and ‘real life’ (for want of a better word – meaningless phrase really) get in the way of each other. I’m interested in theories of creativity – hopefully an excess of theory doesn’t interfere with my ability to actually create – hence as much time is spent writing about the music as actually playing it (or maybe it’s just having a blog outlet). Creation is something to do with energy and letting it flow. When the qi flows, everything feels totally easy and natural. Tension creates blockages – it’s hard to do anything creative when stressed out or depressed or wallowing in self-pity.

It seems like the people who excel at anything do so because of single-minded dedication, doing one thing fulltime, and beyond what most people would handle. Whereas maybe I've made a mistake in spreading myself too thin, trying to do several things without mastering any of them. That's even one of the things that attracted me to journalism - the chance to not be a specialist in one field but to learn a bit of everything. But even journalism's too narrow a field, I want to be a novelist and a musician and a conservationist as well. I'm thinking of going the teaching-English-in-Asia route next year but maybe that's just another excuse for me to shift tack and avoid committing to something yet again? I very much doubt I'd do it for a career.

This was going to be (even) more of a rant about shorthand. I may well have just flushed my course fees and a year’s hard study down the toilet. The writing practice, and getting most of it published has been good. The general broadening of horizons, political awareness and knowledge of how cities and communities work has been good. The shorthand has been horrible. And I don’t feel like I know the people on the course well enough to be long-term friends, which is a pity. On some perverse psychological level I suspect I may have 'chosen to fail' to punish myself (see below, or preferably don't). I'm not the only one who didn't get it but we are in a minority.

My memory of 1999 to mid-2002 is starting to grow dim. Before that I was in New Plymouth so it’s a different part of life. Mid-2002 on seems to have a kind of narrative of its own, a ‘growing up’ or disillusionment period. Which is not to say it was all or even mostly bad – parts have been excellent.

Continued rambling – abandon structure / linear argument.

One thing that's made 2004 distinctive is the state of my two index fingers. There's a scar on my left one from where I accidentally cut it with a (surprisingly sharp) kitchen knife in February. And my right one has had a wart on the side. But just in the last week or two the wart's been going away by itself. Odd how it coincides with me moving out of one phase of existence into different territory. My new physical defect is bleeding gums, I must put greater effort into brushing my teeth.

Couple of dreams recently: one about sitting with a group of high school classical musicians waiting to go on stage. I had a huge guitar the size of a double-bass and didn't know any of the music. Was I supposed to 'improvise' along? Then another dream about overloaded electrical wiring giving off smoke, which somehow turned into smoking pot with a couple of guys I knew a few years ago. I haven't smoked pot for a while, in fact I wouldn't know where to get it now. The last time I had a puff on a joint was the one time that writing shorthand's felt remotely natural (though admittedly I was writing slowly). Hmm...

WARNING: DARK SECRET AHEAD, SENSITIVE READERS STOP READING NOW

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Tying together the qi and disillusionment threads somehow – a big disappointment I’ve had was in the first couple of days of January. I was at the Visionz festival, a fairly low-key New Year’s. Nothing stood out musically (except maybe a Celtic violinist on the last day), and some of it was kind of lame. But for chilling out, friendly people, good weather, being outdoors it was perfect. At the time I had this creeping/crawling/horror/death feeling in the back of my mind – long-term readers will recall that last October (just about on the anniversary now, maybe I picked up a bad vibe from it) I had an utterly insane unprotected sexual encounter with a transsexual prostitute and had to spend three months waiting to find out if I’d caught hepatitis or HIV. Fortunately it turned out that I got off with a warning. But in January I was still waiting, and all I could do was attempt to stay calm and enjoy the simple pleasures of being outdoors while I waited til February. There were yoga nidra classes at Visionz, which teach the art of relaxation. I greatly enjoyed them, and felt some of my accumulated tension from 2003 (a difficult year) melt away.

However the yoga wasn’t enough to prevent me from committing an atrocity. To cut a long story short I met a friendly willing girl and had sex with her in a tent on the beach at Abel Tasman national park. I made sure to use a condom, but it broke and that was no excuse anyway. What I did was monstrous, going beyond insanity into outright evil.

I’m not trying to justify it because I can’t, although thankfully there was no disease to spread and I did discover later that she had a boyfriend who she hadn’t told me about. So neither of us should have let it happen. Two wrongs don’t make a right though. Bad karma was generated. I started this weblog to put up the awful truth about the initial prostitute encounter - and whatever else I might do, for the sake of keeping my life totally transparent - but chickened out about posting this extra wrinkle. Anyway there it is. I’m not proud. That is the worst thing I’ve done I promise (OK OK, one more that I still feel guilty about: at an early age telling my babysitter for no reason that she was ugly and I hated her – must have been horrible for her). And I failed shorthand, so I’m at a bit of a low ebb right now. Hopefully rock bottom for this year – the consolation of which is, of course, from here on things can only get better.

exam week

It'll be nice to have something to post other than how busy I am with this course. Two exams down (interviewing, news writing - the easy ones), three to go (shorthand, global journalism, media law - the ones that require a lot of study). Seems rather a lot for one week - and all the coursework was due last week and we don't get a study break between. The final attempt at shorthand tomorrow is the one that worries me - normally if you don't do well at something you can at least scrape through with a C. Here just getting the C will be a big achievement, while the higher grades are off in some unreachable fantasy realm. There's actually a strong possibility of not passing it at all, and thereby failing the entire diploma.

I've got transcripts of some of the previous 3-minute passages that have been read out - hopefully a) I can memorise them and b) they'll be read out again. If the same passages turn up again tomorrow then I'm in with a chance, otherwise no show. 60wpm is doable (just), 70wpm a bit too much and 80wpm is insane. Hopefully whatever the outcome my hair will stop falling out.

The good thing is I get a change of scene after the exams - down to Dunedin for three weeks to do work experience on the Taieri Herald and just generally be out of Wellington for a while. I sent in my application to go to the Chathams with DOC for three weeks, if that works out I'd be spending my birthday there and not getting back to Wellington til mid December.

The strawberry plants I put in the garden seem to be doing pretty well, hopefully there'll be some to eat around Christmas. I harvested two cauliflower, a cabbage and a big leek for dinner last night. The brussell sprouts have gone to seed so I'll pull those out and put tomato, rocket and pak choi plants in their place. Will be something to come back to. Growing veges is hands down the best way to eat but it kind of keeps you tied to one place. A change of scene will do me good though.

And I put some new stuff up on http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

3 beers later

Today was the day for handing in all the coursework. Of course I just about but didn't quite get there, I still have to look up a property on www.linz.govt.nz and find out the previous six owners, but I'll do that tomorrow. I've posted a couple of other bits of work as entries here (3 entries in one day, a new record).

After finishing at the uni I went to visit a friend, hung out for a bit and was given a beer. Then on the way home there was an exhibition opening at that little triangular gallery opposite the takeaway bar on Riddiford St. So I went and said hi to a couple of people and was given another two beers. Celebration for (almost) finishing my course workload? Only now I'm back home, the beers are wearing off and I suppose I could go into town but don't have the money to proceed any further. The bathos of student life.

Handing in the work's not really an ending at all, now I've got to get into exam study. And I've got a final attempt at shorthand on Thursday. On one hand they're allowing it to be generous but on the other it's just prolonging the agony further.

In other news I've been listening to some good new music the last couple of days, the David S. Ware Quartet, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Derek Bailey's Ballads and John Zorn's Electric Masada. Great stuff.

And I got a reply to my Official Information Act request for the piece of investigative journalism I'm doing. It's too late for the course, and it's still a secret so I can't tell you what it is yet. It'll be interesting though...

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

obituary

Wellington-based writer and musician David Edwards, who successfully fused wordy lyrical epics with atonal guitar modernism, died today at age 25.
Edwards, who had released five albums, died from an overdose of shorthand practice at his flat in Newtown.

Born in Wellington in 1978, Edwards was raised in the Taranaki town of New Plymouth. He wrote from an early age and his first work included a cartoon series ‘Space Fleet’ which he wrote and illustrated at age six.

While attending New Plymouth Boys’ High School Edwards became influenced by the music of Bob Dylan, which he later described as “finally something I could relate to”. Undeterred by his complete lack of musical talent he started writing songs on an out-of-tune acoustic guitar.

He released his first album, ‘Scratched Surface’ on CDR at age 19, eventually selling over 20 copies. Writing in Real Groove magazine, Chris Knox said “this lo-fi singer/songwriter oddball has a unique take on the genre – he’s pissed off, a tad fucked up (as usual) but not full of lugubrious self-pity (as unusual) and is quite happy to get raucous & obnoxious in just the right kinda way”.

His second album, ‘The Marion Flow’ was recorded on a budget of $550 and eventually released in 2001 after he moved to Wellington. It featured input from well known musicians including Paul Winstanley and Chris O’Connor.

Edwards noted “some of the critics were confused by The Marion Flow’s mixture of acoustic pop, spoken word, noisy post-punk and free improvisation – to me it was perfectly obvious how all these things were part of a continuum”.

The song ‘Dope Smoking Wizard’ became his biggest commercial success, earning $50 of royalties from APRA. However he was increasingly influenced by free improvisation and avant-garde music, and became involved with the scene revolving around the Newtown venue the Space.

Edwards turned away from pop songwriting with his third album, 2002’s ‘Mantis Shaped and Worrying’, which gathered widespread critical incomprehension. New Zealand Musican magazine described it as “a series of random squeaks, squawks and squeals accompanied by a dreary monotone voice reciting obscure diatribes”.

The critical backlash was thought to have been responsible for Edwards’ reclusive behaviour in early 2003 when he disappeared from the public eye, but he later revealed that he had been working on building sites to pay off his student loan. He wrote two short stories, “Overgrowth” and “Whin the Autumn Wain Sex Begain to Fall” at this time which are widely considered unreadable.

In mid 2003 Edwards formed a band The Winter with cellist San Shimla and drummer Simon Sweetman. They played a number of gigs and released the instrumental album ‘Parataxes’ before appearing as the house band in the Wellington International Jazz Festival show ‘Speakeasy’ at Bats Theatre.

The Winter also appeared as the backing group on Edwards’ final album ‘Loose Autumn Moans’. Liz Barry, host of Radio New Zealand’s Homegrown show, declined to play any of the tracks, saying “I just can't get into this sort of experimental stuff - it's just too strange & discordant for my show”.

Edwards’ achievements in 2004 included writing a 9000-word book chapter on Wellington improvised music; performing in and helping organise the Bomb the Space, Word, and Meatwaters festivals; applying to Creative NZ for funding to release a CD and tour the North Island; submitting a script to Radio NZ’s ‘Open Story Season’; getting his music distributed by Eclipse Records in America; and squeezing in a graduate diploma in journalism at Massey University on the side. Edwards always maintained that could not have done everything else if he had spent more time on shorthand.

At the time of his death Edwards was working on an “electric symphony” for the 2005 Wellington Fringe Festival with his new group the Ascension Band, a twelve-piece ensemble conducted by keyboard player Nigel Patterson.
He is survived by his parents and by his website http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

ends

ethics project

Working for the Department of Conservation from May-August 2003 was a great opportunity for me, and I picked up a lot of skills which practically form the backbone of my CV now. It was also an important turning point in my life, as it helped give me a new sense of direction. Having grown disillusioned from a series of failed attempts to ‘break into’ the film industry (ultimately deciding that from what I’d seen of it I wouldn’t want to work there anyway), and struggling to get over a painful relationship breakup, the job came at just the right time.

One of my first jobs for DOC was publicising the transfer of red-crowned kakariki from Kapiti to Matiu/Somes Island. It was one of several interesting learning experiences – before that I had no idea what a kakariki was, and assumed it was a kind of tree.

Fast-forward to May 2004. I was doing the Massey journalism course, partly on the premise that upskilling myself would improve my prospects of further work in the conservation field. I knew that there was a second kakariki transfer due. The first transfer was of all male birds, to assess whether they had any impact on the island’s vegetation before introducing females to start a breeding population. I thought I'd be helpful and write a news story about the second transfer. Since I’d seen the first transfer from the birds’ arrival end at Matiu/Somes, I thought it would be interesting to see & write about the birds at the capture end on Kapiti. I was also keen to go out and see Kapiti Island for myself, as I'd spent the summer looking at it every day while working for the Nga Uruora conservation prokect in Paekakariki.

A change at DOC since I worked there was that the Poneke Area Office’s community relations manager who’d employed me and who I had a good rapport with was away on maternity leave. Her replacement was less helpful to me and didn’t respond to my queries until the team was already on Kapiti and scheduled to leave the next day. So, thinking I’d use some initiative, I got a ferry booking at short notice and dragged Grant Hannis out of bed at 6am to lend me a camera. I went to the island, interviewed the DOC staff there, and was lucky to be there at just the right moment as a kakariki was caught. I got a good story and some great photos.

The trouble is DOC didn't want any publicity until a few days later, as it could cause some kind of problem with funding applications for the Matiu/Somes Charitable Trust, who were paying for the transfer (something to do with dates for funding rounds). But since the community relations people hadn’t involved me in the story they didn't tell me that. I got caught in a crossfire between DOC wanting to hold the story back and Diane Joyce at the Kapiti Observer wanting it right away or she wouldn't publish it at all. This was all happening minutes before the newspaper deadline on Thursday.

It occurred to me later that alternative options would have been for Diane to be willing to wait a few days, or if DOC were convinced the story would be harmful for it to not be published at all in that paper – the others would still have written something based on the DOC press release (such as the one-paragraph story that appeared in Capital Times).

As a compromise I sent the story to DOC to check over, and they cut it down from 730 words to 420 - which counts as censorship. I had to choose whether to accept this. Rather than submit the original out of principle or bloody-mindedness I went with the edited version.

Information that one of the birds in the last transfer had died, and that one of the ‘male’ birds was actually a female so the colony had started breeding prematurely, was excised. They also took out the part about the Matiu trust funding the transfer – which seemed odd since that was public information available on the DOC website. From there I went into a paragraph about what DOC are spending money on, which includes trying to save the only remaining population of orange-fronted kakariki, in Canterbury. That was removed as well, maybe as they thought it complicated the story - species transfer to offshore islands is not always a solution, and the orange-fronted kakariki live in beech forests which don't occur on islands.

I was left thinking I shouldn't have taken on the story at all if I had a conflict of interest. How would I handle a more serious story where DOC could be in the wrong? Not everyone's sold on 10-80 for example...

I asked Sue Galbraith, the DOC media advisor for advice on what constituted conflict of interest and got this reply:

Hi David,
It's great that you are interested in covering conservation issues. It's important though that the people you interview are aware that you are a journalism student and the story you are writing will be offered to the media. There would be a conflict of interest if you used confidential information that you had sourced through your role with DOC rather than through your research as a journalist.
We appreciate the opportunity to check over your conservation stories for accuracy. I am happy to offer advice. However I would appreciate more notice than you were able to give for this story.
Regards, Sue

One DOC worker on the island who I’d worked with last year had complained that I had not identified myself as a journalism student, thinking I was there as a DOC employee. However I only spoke to him for a few seconds, time to say ‘hi’ and not much else. I didn’t use him as an information source for the story, and certainly would have told him if there’d been more time. I made sure the people I did ask questions of knew.

As for ‘inside information’, I knew about the bird dying and the misidentified female from my previous involvement with the project. So it was legitimate for this information to be taken out of the story, though their reasons were because it would create a bad impression of their work. The information about the orange-fronted kakariki I obtained by phone research. It was taken out as they didn’t see it as relevant to the story. This seems to be coming from an attitude that PR people can decide what the story is – journalists should simply sit back and wait for the press release to arrive.

I found the whole experience uncomfortable, having a foot in both camps. I was pleased to be invited to Mana Island for a transfer of yellow-crowned kakariki there later in the month, and also to see a feature article in the Dominion Post on species transfer that went into some of the risks involved. There was no damage to the Matiu/Somes Charitable Trust’s funding chances that I know of, and my story seemed to be a workable compromise for DOC, myself, and the newspapers. As for furthering my DOC career though the diplomatic row may have done more harm than good.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

last chance to pass

I did dismally at shorthand this morning, so it's down to tomorrow. I was fine at the start of the first one, there was even a little voice inside my head saying 'this is easy'. But - maybe as punishment for this hubris - by the second or third sentence it was starting to get ahead of me. After a while I had to leave a gap to fill in later and skip forward, and the torrent of words just continued. When it got to the end I'd completely forgotten what was supposed to go in the gap. We have to get 97% accuracy so that didn't cut it.

Then the second three-minute passage was a fast one so I had no chance, just got frustrated. Because of the higher speed the fast passages have more words so they're exponentially more difficult. I managed to restrain myself from throwing the pen against the wall and storming out, but only got about half of it down so not even worth handing in. By the third passage my hand had seized up from the tension and I was writing at a crawl and making mistakes on the most basic words.

Shorthand's an arcane skill with limited application. Isn't it cool how you can write secret code that noone else can read? Not really, I don't have any interest in keeping secrets. This weblog's partly a diary, partly serving my need to write a lot, and partly to keep everything in my life transparent and make some attempt at explaining myself to the world.

I met the course target of 40 stories published weeks ago and never once needed shorthand to write them (there was one interview where it would have been useful, but tape recorder would have done just as well). By comparison to having to handwrite at least 80wpm shorthand, we're only expected to type at 30wpm. But not passing shorthand = failing the entire course. $5500 and a lot of work down the toilet. That's not counting the opportunity cost of not getting a job for the year instead.

It'd be OK if the shorthand classes weren't so bloody boring. Anyway I guess I'll be practicing furiously tonight, pulling an all-nighter if necessary. Then once it's out of the way I can walk away and never use it again...

Oh, and the Corrections Dept job fell through. While they were busy being out of the office & on the other line & not phoning back they found someone else.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Music vs journalism

I drew up a ‘To Do’ list of 22 tasks for before the course finishes in less than a fortnight. I’ve achieved one so far: I bought a new lightbulb for my desk lamp. Next week I have to pass shorthand by Wednesday at the latest and hand in all my coursework, including a couple more stories and an essay on journalist ethics (which, needless to say, I haven’t started yet), by Friday. Then exams the week after. Then, who knows? Probably work experience for the Taieri Herald in Otago, and then conceivably three weeks on a DOC weeding mission to the Chathams if I’m accepted for it. So it might be mid-December before I get back to Wellington. On the other hand there’s a temporary communications job going at the Department of Corrections here until Christmas which I should have a reasonable shot at – follow in Suraya’s footsteps?

It’ll be good to have this course out of the way, I’ve been noticing a distinct emptiness to my bank account. Not that money’s a major focus for me, but it’ll be good to get off the student allowance and into a paid job. On the other hand if I get stuck on the dole I'd be $10 a week worse off than I am now and I don’t want to go there again for sanity reasons. A personal financial nadir I remember came about a year ago when I was living in a deeply filthy flat on Wallace Street (not getting a job because I was working on Loose Autumn Moans): the toilet kept getting blocked, so I went to the Warehouse to buy a plunger – and the transaction was declined due to lack of funds*. Seemed oddly symbolic.

There’s also been a vacancy for a junior reporter at the Wellingtonian this week. I’m not even sure about applying for that, it sounds quite unappealing. It’s described as a ‘busy, competitive environment’, they want someone with good shorthand skills, and the editor is (in his words) ‘a bit of a right-winger’. And there’ll be competition for the role. I hate competition, I always think of cooperation as a better model for humanity to follow. Does that make me a communist?

The cooperative venture that’s going well is the Ascension Band. Three people who played the gig didn’t show up for the jam on Tuesday but there were three new faces. There’s a kickass band in there if we stick at it, and it was good practice for me to rein in my spastic guitar style and do some ensemble playing. Other guys said the band’s good as a chance to break out & have more freedom than usual, so we’ve struck a good balance. The band’s about the most ‘rock’ thing I’ve done, even more so on Tuesday than at the gig. The repertoire so far consists of one good half-hour piece in three movements, but there’s limitless potential to do more. I reckon work up a 60-70 minute electric symphony and perform it in the Fringe Festival.

The trouble with this journalism course is that to do well at it requires total dedication, whereas because I spend most of my waking hours thinking about (& sometimes even working on) my extra-curricular activities my course grades show me as a pretty average student (or even mediocre if I don’t get the shorthand pass). I should be able to do at least some exam study though – my reward for getting through next week’s workload. Music keeps me sane and gives me a reason not to kill myself. I feel a lot happier when I’ve got a gig scheduled on the calendar, and conversely I feel down a couple of days after them. I envy professional players who do gigs all the time, but then it becomes a job thing. And I’d miss getting sunlight.

As far as the arts go, music’s much more of a social outlet than writing. I’m finding it hard to be a passive consumer though. I went to the Midnight Burlesque at the Big Kumura last night, bit of a mixed bag with music, stand-up comedy, fashion show, dancers, and guys hanging things off hooks stuck into their penises. Not having anything to do with organising the show – though they got some lotteries commission funding so I want to find out how they did it – I felt pretty superfluous and the only part I really enjoyed was dancing to the Chandeliers (who’ve evolved from being a fairly plodding surf instrumental trio into a really dynamic band in the last year) at the end. The big workload is always in the back of my mind at the moment so it’s hard to relax – I’m thinking about music when I should be studying, and thinking about study when I should be enjoying a night out.

Physically I felt good that day, having swum 40 lengths of the Freyberg Pool rather than my usual 30, but my face had broken out in shaving rash from using cheap nasty blades so I looked all pimply. In keeping with the spotty teenager look, a particular girl who I'd developed a crush on was there & I had no idea how to do anything about it. I blame being an only child with introvert tendencies, no extended family nearby and sent to a boys’ school, for my stunted social development - but that doesn’t mean it’s an excuse. I’m not so bad I couldn’t go and talk to her, but no idea how to get beyond ‘polite conversation’ level. Suffice to say I had one of my not-uncommon walking-home-alone-while-listening-to-the-dawn-chorus ends to the night.

I had a dream this morning, where I was in the audience as a grey-faced midget clown came rushing out do do a performance and fell flat on his face. He had to get up and brush himself off before doing his tumbling act.

Daylight savings this weekend - roll on summer.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

* Actually it wasn’t quite that bad, I was able to dip into my travel fund which I’d started building up from DOC wages after paying off my student loan. I’m quite good at savings, the problem is it’s hard to save without an income. Hence a temporary Corrections Dept job to finish off the year actually sounds kind of attractive. I could stay here and save, and keep the Ascension Band running regularly, then have no commitments after Christmas so take a holiday.