Schrodinger's Cat

fire/water

Anything I can say about Christmas looks foolish & insignificant next to the earthquake in Asia so I’ll keep this short. Especially when the last couple of days has been a sequence of good food & sunshine. Nature teaches humility though – some of the family went kayaking down the Ruamahanga river and there were some spills. I’d just dropped off my brother in law Olivier and my Uncle Roy who was trying to paddle himself and his intellectually handicapped son Mischa – they lasted all of 30 seconds before capsizing and I had to jump in and swim after the kayak floating downstream. I got on it but not in time to avoid a fallen log and so I capsized too. All good fun for me, but it was only a grade one or two river. Eric, my dad’s-ex-wife’s-current-husband also came out on his trip and had a rather less pleasant experience but was lucky to be helped out.

Along with the kayaking, an energetic game of soccer was the Christmas highlight for me, with just about everyone joining in and a few falls along the way. And it was good to see my youngest sister Bronwyn again (youngest as in only 14 years older than I!); she’s living in Korea now, apparently not planning to move back anytime soon. She’s got a boyfriend and seemed pretty happy.

Now I’ve eaten enough to last the rest of the year I’m heading back to Wellington. I’ve been looking forward to today – it’ll be the last recording session of The Winter, the band I played in last year and who it’s been impossible to get organised this year. Mike’s off to Melbourne in a few weeks, so this will be our 11th-hour swansong. I had a great time playing with these guys last year, hopefully the magic’s still there…

crying like a fire in the sun*

This is the third evening in a row I’ve sat up with my laptop & a candle, feeling at a loose end. I’ve been unproductive this week, had a legitimate day of rest on Sunday after the gig then haven’t got much done since. I've hardly touched my guitars, and I decided the short story I'd gotten stuck on at 600 words actually ends there - I'll call it a piece of flash fiction. So I'm in a transitional no-man's land, need to come up with some new ideas. I’m reading Samuel Beckett’s How It Is and a couple of books on mythology, maybe find some clues in there (or not).

It’s a weird feeling watching Wellington shut down around me for the holidays. I spent the two months (already!!) from finishing the course til Saturday withdrawing into my own personal universe to get the Live 2004 DVD and the first stage of the Fringe show done. Third year in a row I’ve done that – last year it was Parataxes and Loose Autumn Moans, and in 2002 Anterior Pathways and Mantis Shaped and Worrying. And once again I emerged blinking into daylight – the summer solstice no less – and the rest of the world didn’t notice. I’ve gotten out of step with everything and don’t have a job – familiar story. Art takes sacrifice y’know. Be nice if people would actually buy the bloody albums (grumble grumble).

I took some action on jobhunting – the prospects aren’t that encouraging. I’m not too fussy though, I just want a bit of income and preferably some time outdoors while I work on the Fringe show and then piss off overseas. Leads so far:

1) Proofreading at a legal publishing house, $12/hr. Boring as hell apparently, 10-20hrs/week.
2) Gardening & maintenance at Karori Cemetary. Fulltime, outdoor work but something like $10/hr.
3) Plant work at Otari Wilton’s bush – 18hrs, unpaid.
4) PR trainee for PR firm – fulltime, 1yr, $35K salary. Could be alright to open up a career, but there’ll be other applicants and would it involve selling my soul?
5) Nga Uruora Kapiti conservation project – worked for them last summer, got a glowing reference & they’re happy to have me back. Trouble is the job’s WINZ-subsidised and I’d have to wait around on the dole for six months to qualify. No thanks.

For the moment though it looks like I’m up against the Christmas break, so just have to sit back and enjoy it, and see the rellies. I still have to do Christmas shopping – luckily my family believes in minimising presents, but it would be dodgy to turn up completely empty-handed. My nephews are the biggest challenge since they’ve already got everything. And of course I’ve left it to the last possible day.

My family are a good bunch of people, I’m lucky in that respect. I got a surprisingly complimentary email from Dad about the show on Saturday:

Mum and I really enjoyed your show. Much slicker than we had imagined it
would be - even though its not entirely to our taste, we could appreciate
it. Keep it up. Have to agree that your Japanese friend spoilt it
somewhat. I felt it quite detracted from all that you had done. I doubt if
anyone was offended. A couple of the girls sniggered embarrasingly. I was
just bemused at the lack of originality and taste.

Love Dad

I don’t know where I’ll be for New Year’s – Wellington looks the most likely. I’ve got a recording session scheduled for the 29th of December with The Winter! I seem to have got Mike & Simon pinned down to that date – the only possible option apparently – but it could yet fall through. Playing with them as a band last year was one of my favourite musical experiences, there was a special chemistry between the three of us, but the futility of trying to get us together in one place at the same time to play has been one of the big downer themes of this year (although it partly inspired Ascension Band’s no-fixed-lineup approach). But I got an invitation from an American record label Last Visible Dog to contribute something to a 3CD compilation album with the theme of ‘extinct species’. Mike’s going away to Melbourne so this will be our last opportunity to play together – it seems fitting to contribute something by an ‘extinct band’ as our swansong, and should be a good bit of exposure if it all works out.

By procrastinating on the jobhunting until now I’ve cunningly given myself the new year period off, so I should take the opportunity for a holiday. Where to go? There’s the inevitable call of the South Island but then there are transport difficulties. I’m thinking of heading eastwards instead – East Cape, Gisborne etc is the one part of the country I’ve never seen, so it would complete my mental map of Aotearoa and make it appropriate to move on.

I bought my 2005 wall planner and put it up. 2004’s only got a week left! At this stage the pencil-plan for 2005 goes: Fringe show til March, then Melbourne til August or September, then come back and finish shorthand, then off to Asia. Subject to much revision of course…

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

*Title of this entry is a quote from the Bob Dylan song 'It's All Over Now Baby Blue' and intended as an oblique reference to the pagan custom of lighting bonfires on the summer solstice to add to the sun's power. This entry was written by candlelight. How's that for pretension?

Postscript 24/12: I was awake til 6am and then of course slept through the morning, so it's now lunchtime and I've STILL got to do this Christmas shopping. I've got it planned out apart from the 11-year old nephew's.

I did have an odd dream, something about getting sneaky access to a hideously expensive top-of-the-line grand piano/organ/synthesiser hybrid instrument in a hall, but of course only being able to play it in my rudimentary way. I was scrambling around trying to find my dictaphone to record it. Then there was something about it being loaded onto a cargo plane, and me getting on the wrong flight. I guess you can see some of my current preoccupations in there...

debrief

That was one of the weirder nights I’ve had – the first time I’d played in front of my parents for a start. I told them they should come see the show in March when it’s all together, but they decided to come over for this one. They brought earplugs luckily. It definitely wasn't their thing, but they were able to acknowledge that it had structure & dynamics and took a lot of work to create.

The music was great, not perfect but pretty damn shit hot. We’re onto something, and it’s not just an imitation of what Jeff Henderson, Campbell Kneale et al have been doing so well for years. Ascension Band’s the next generation, partly hence the name, and we have a different approach and an original sound.

So nothing to worry about there - we proved to ourselves that we can play genuinely new & important music and get it pretty together. On the other hand everything else was a bit rusty. The musical centrepiece was all there but the whole thing needs work to come together as a show. Last night felt like a dress rehearsal. That’s OK, one of the main intentions behind last night was as an opportunity to make as many mistakes as we could so we don’t have to make them again at Fringe time. Quick list:

a) Still setting up at the nominal showtime of 7.30. Need to get there earlier – 6pm rather than 6.30, since of course some of us were actually arriving at 6.50.

b) Unable to soundcheck beforehand because of a group having a meeting in the next room – make sure we don’t clash with anyone else, since we do put out a fair bit of volume.

c) Stage lights too bright – bring gels.

d) Drunken Japanese vocalist – give him clear instructions not to drink beforehand. Atsushi’s been great at the practices, but he was just too loud this time (I had to turn him down on the amp eventually) and didn’t fit in all the way, and missed a couple of Nigel’s cues. And was it really necessary to get naked at the end? I don’t think anyone was offended, or if they were too bad, but it just seemed a bit tacky. Stripping off in the heat of a performance in a bar setting while the band are fully rocking out could be great, but doing it as an afterthought (or encore?) while we’re packing up’s not the same. Alcohol’s a social drug; a solo drunk is just embarrassing. There was an interesting awkward comedy moment at the end when Atsushi tried to talk to my mum about music – she said she likes ‘easy listening’. Which Ascension Band isn’t…

e) Other band members (myself included) going out the back to smoke pot before playing – probably glaringly obvious to the audience what was happening. If it helps the music then I don’t see anything wrong with it, so long as it’s not a crutch or an everyday indulgence; the legal situation is purely arbitrary. But we could be a bit subtler about it.

f) The opening acts need to flow better. The plan was to start with Nigel playing piano while people enter, but the piano was away for maintenance. It should be back when we do it again. I got Craig Ireson in to do a couple of poems, so he did a quick preview of his own Fringe Show and seemed a little rusty. Early days though, no biggie. Then I did a solo acoustic rendition of ‘Summer Skin’ off Loose Autumn Moans – and stumbled through. A pity since the previous night at Photospace I’d nailed it. My guitar playing’s always been my Achilles Heel – I’m fine at free improvising, but when I have to play a chord progression or melody my shortcomings become apparent.

g) Nigel forgot to bring the microphone for his minidisk recorder. Recordings of the shows are essential, since there’s a brilliant album in there which the international music underground should recognise even if the locals let it all go past. I got a Dictaphone recording of this one, but I’d imagine it’s just a big roaring noise in mono with no bass and a lot of tape hiss – certainly nothing of releasable quality. In a way it’s ok since this show was a practice – means we have to keep going and see it through.

h) $35 door take, or seven people paying – need way more people to come. This could be the hard part. Once we subtract the cost of posters and the hall hire, we made about an $8 loss. The single biggest expense is the $140 Fringe registration, and then when we do the show again we’re going to have to absolutely promote the hell out of it. I haven’t done this before so I don’t know at what point it becomes worth paying for advertising, because an alternative is to keep it low key – the overheads aren’t that bad so we could get away with modest promotion & small audiences. It will be a challenge just to break even though. There’s the melancholy awareness that with this kind of music, no matter how good we get it’ll never draw a huge crowd. At least I’m improving from the Thistle Hall show I organised last year which lost $60 (and went unrecorded). I’d never let lack of money prevent me from doing what has to be done artistically, but it would be nice to not be the one paying for it always.

It’s an odd feeling having the shows for this month out of the way – I’m actually kind of relieved. The all-consuming attention the music requires can really mess with the rest of my life. I’ve barely been looking for a job since finishing the course and my bank balance is drying up. The Fringe Festival is going to be an even bigger commitment, but I’ve got the first stage out of the way and assembled the above list. For the Fringe it’ll be a matter of timetabling – I should have a job, and it’ll be one of those intense but manageable times that are so stimulating.

The rest of the evening after the show was a bit of a letdown, maybe something to do with the weather. The after-party didn’t happen. I was dropping off Miles and his drumkit and met a woman wandering around the street. She asked if I had any spare shoes as hers had broken, and was walking barefoot. Being an unusual request I decided she could have my old sneakers that I never wear and gave her a lift up to my flat. She had more requests – socks, cigarettes, alcohol, painkillers, a jersey, a ride (except she wouldn’t say where to). It was a cold night so I loaned her a jersey that I probably won’t see again. I drew the line at buying her cigarettes or booze but offered a cup of tea which she declined. I don’t know if she was expecting me to try and have sex with her, but I wasn’t going to make any moves. I gave her a lift, except without directions it turned into a circuit round the block. I offered to let her stay the night but she declined and we went separate ways.

I went into town to meet Nigel at Indigo and see a metal band. Metal’s like a foreign language to me. I could see what the band were doing, but it didn’t touch me. I also went to Good Luck bar where there were a range of beautiful & unreachable women. I danced for a bit but it was just the usual nightclub pop song crap they play every other night, and my heart wasn’t in it. I was probably giving off pheromones that said so. And then there was the band at Matterhorn doing an offensively bland & inoffensive 12-bar shuffle - Mum probably would have enjoyed it. I got bored and went home, and the rain was pissing down along the way.

So back to my flat, and ‘the womanless bed’ in George Orwell’s perfect phrase. I don’t feel any interest in casual sex these days, could be a sign of getting older. Wish I had a girlfriend to snuggle up to though…

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Showtime!

Don't forget, gig tonight (Saturday) at Newtown Community Centre (cnr Colombo/Rintoul Streets) at 7.30pm. A ten-piece band the likes of which you won't have seen before...

See http://fiffdimension.tripod.com for the gig flyers & further info. I'm saving storage space here to be nice to Iona.

Rare foray into political blogging

I don't usually do politics, but thought you people might enjoy this one. And it's an experiment in using the net to spread information...

Thanks to Amy for finding it.

strategy gaming?

How’s this for today’s horoscope?

Arranging a big social event is sure to make your eyes gleam with delight. You're never happier than when you're putting your organisational skills to work. Invite children and loved ones to join in, and assign them tasks that appeal to their individual strengths. Just remember you are captain of the ship.

Seems to bode well for the gigs next Friday & Saturday (see my website for the flyers). There are some hurdles to get over of course – our bass player is off wandering the South Island, the drummer’s got a knee injury, and the other guitarist and computer guy are also out of town. It’s kind of built into the ‘concept’ of Ascension Band to never have the same lineup twice – others will join in though and it’ll have a totally different character from what we did at Happy in September.

Speaking of which, I got the first copy of the Live 2004 DVD done. It’s been a slow process, having to get footage in correct file format, synch sound & visuals, add titles etc. Compressing it all to mpeg format took the computer six hours or so, an overnight job (I had to get up at 4am to tell it to start the next one), then preparing the data for the disc took another 45 minutes. Hopefully from here it should be a straightforward matter of copying discs, not sure how long that takes. It should mainly appeal to people overseas, as you Wellingtonians can simply come to the gigs.

I had some odd misgivings about going out tonight, it was the mr sterile album launch at the Cross. I have a certain ex-girlfriend in that band, albeit hidden under a white fat suit and fake moustache. I felt sad watching them, there was a feeling of obsolescence on my part. We’re no longer relevant to each other. She joined a band who are literally going places – moving to the Czech Republic around March. I should also leave about the same time, first stop Melbourne then who knows?

I may end up returning to Wellington around next August for a couple of months to finish off my journalism diploma – I still have to pass shorthand. Or I might put it on hold for a couple of years and spend the obligatory year teaching English in Asia before hitting Europe. The annoying thing is that I have to decide by Christmas whether to re-enroll. Either way it limits my options, or at least decides my course in advance. I spent today putting together my application for the JET programme – but I won’t know until February whether I get in. So the red tape of bureaucracy reaches out to smother.

I was feeling cynical before I went out tonight about the whole social politics in the arts scene buzz. Wellington’s divided into scenes and sub-scenes, and there is a certain amount of competition going on. It feels a bit like a strategy board game, with alliances and backstabbing, and maneuvering for advantage. You’d think art should be above politics but it’s all intertwined. Elisa can wipe the floor with me as far as social games go, and she’s positioned herself in the mr sterile team, where politics is the explicit subject matter rather than merely implicit as it is for me. I don’t know whether she really believes in the anti-capitalist side of it, but the band gives her plenty of opportunities & exposure and hence social power: politics of a different kind. But I managed to psych myself up to see her again and went along tonight.

I couldn’t play in mr sterile myself if I wanted to; my style is way too loose. On the other hand Wellington would be boring if everyone played like me, there’s infinite room for diversity of approaches. My advantage is being an instigator rather than a bandwagon-jumper – at worst it gets kind of lonely. I’m bringing a new team onto the board with Ascension Band, hopefully enough people will rally to the cause and we’ll do some great music. The music of mr sterile is totally different from what we’re doing so the whole competition idea is bullshit, and I completely support their efforts.

Rather than risking yet another tiresome & ugly confrontation with Elisa I simply avoided her. There was nothing to gain by knocking the old scabs off yet again. I’d like to give her a big hug before we go our separate ways, she’s a wonderful person (or can be). Her bass playing’s alright, she doesn’t need me to tell her that. I bought the CD, will maybe give it to my nephews for Christmas.

It’s good to move on. I had my birthday on Thursday and felt fairly content during it, working on gig flyers & preparations. The post-gig party on Saturday can double as a birthday celebration even if I don’t tell everyone. Elisa’s utterly irrelevant to me at 26. I thought I looked ok in the mirror, my hair’s definitely thinner than a year ago but it’s nothing anyone else would notice – no bald spot yet, but the hairs have spaces between them now. I still blame shorthand, which is unfinished business. Oh well, it’s an excuse to come back when I get tired of smog…

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Finally, someone got it!

David A. Edwards - Mantis Shaped and Worrying
(http://fiffdimension.tripod.com)

George Parsons
Dream Magazine #5
http://www.dreamgeo.com

Not bad for a birthday present...

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

Readers' poll question

I need some advice here, maybe this could be a readers’ poll? I’ve been working on the live album DVD and got the footage of Ascension Band looking and sounding pretty good. There’s also a recording of my solo set at Happy in July which it would be good to include – but if I do that will it unbalance everything, making it look like it’s all about me?

The video of my solo set’s pretty unmusical - guitar/tape noise and spoken word, slightly theatrical – the visuals add a good dimension and it’s in b&w, probably wouldn’t work with just sound. It occurred to me that a way to balance the disc out would be to include footage of one of Nigel’s bands or solo performances, but unfortunately there’s no suitable video available at this time. If I wait a few months there could be. Ascension Band’s a collaborative venture, with he and I taking two of the main roles. I’m the organizer/composer and he’s the musical director, so including video of his stuff would provide a good counterweight to my solo set. This seems to be the best way for me to work, find a more technically accomplished musician to help get my ideas into shape and provide a setting for my abrasive sound-scribbling – Paul Winstanley and Mike Kingston have fulfilled that role in the past. And an album for me is not just a bunch of stuff thrown together, it needs to have a definite shape or overall arc.

So I could a) wait til Nige does a suitable performance that gets videoed (next year some time, thus making a delay and requiring the ‘Live 2004’ title to be scrapped), b) release the disc with just me and Ascension Band, c) cut my solo set out, or d) scrap the project entirely. Which should it be folks?

I had a productive evening with Nigel on Friday designing the poster for the gig on the 18th (Newtown Community Centre, 7.30pm) – it looks great, but I’ll leave it til closer to the date to post here. Keep you in suspense. We also listened to the recording of our last group jam, and it wasn’t perfect but definitely moving in the right direction. It should be something really special by the time the Fringe Festival comes around. We’ll also have a party after the gig on the 18th so maybe I should consider that my birthday celebration – I turn 26 this Thursday and haven’t organized anything for it.

I’ve also got a solo acoustic gig on the 17th at Photospace Gallery with a couple of other guys – it’ll probably feel a bit like a warm-up for the following night, but warm-ups are valuable for building momentum. It’s the acoustic/electric yin and yang. I think I’ll go out of my way to make this one mellow and tuneful (by my standards). I’ll have to come up with some kind of good flyer too. And of course there’s the usual problem that spending time on music takes energy away from jobhunting. At least I don’t have any course requirements getting compromised now.

I’ve actually been feeling fairly content the last week or two, gigs coming up give me a focus that keeps depression at bay – but it’s scary how fast the dates are flying past. My travel savings plan is going nowhere, and won’t move until I start earning. I’m working on my own projects now, which is good – but they don’t pay. In fact I’m losing money on the whole music thing, have done since I started, it’s a bit of a black hole.

I often wonder if I’m strangling my music by writing about it all the time on the weblog. Really it’d be much better if a critic were willing to put the time into my music and interpret it. But none seem to come forward so I end up doing it myself. I’m sure other people could pick out things in the music that I wouldn’t have spotted – so far it’s just brief reviews comparing me to people I haven’t listened to. But we also need a reviewer to come along on the 18th – if you can publish a review somewhere I’ll be happy to put yr name on the door…

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

On the ‘gig' construct/phenomenon (a non-review)

What is it? Well it’s a ritual event / social congregation / entertainment / artistic presentation space and also a vehicle for ideology to come forth. This evening I was torn between going to see the Japanese band Limited Express (Has Gone?) at the Cross or taking part in Jeff Henderson’s ‘Not Quite Quiet Choir’ performances at Weltec in Petone and at Happy. The Japanese band’s name seems highly appropriate as I paid to get in and then missed them entirely. That’s the second time I’ve done that this year, I also forked out for Lynton Kwesi Johnston (sp?), which was a lot dearer, and turned up after he finished.

In this case though there was also politics involved. Elisa, my ex, was playing in one of the opening acts, an all-girl rock band called the Blow-Up Dolls. I shouldn’t comment on the name, except… y’know, just look at it. I had meant to go along and see the performance and give her some feedback, but what would be the point? The dynamic between us these days just feels like mutual disdain and the whole thing’s tiring and doesn’t seem worth bothering with any more. We’ll both go separate ways next year which will be a relief. Maybe in ten years we’ll spend a really good day together.

So I threw my lot in with the choir. There was a line in the JG Ballard novel Cocaine Nights that I read recently, about it being more important to be a third-rate painter than to see a Rembrandt exhibition. That’s kind of been my philosophy, tonight I got to have a practice at performing under a conductor, pretty much the kind of thing you could get in music school except I never went there. I almost signed up for the popular music course at Nelson Polytech one year, I had just about enough formal musicianship to qualify (with a bit of study I could have passed grade 3 theory - not now). But they were talking about how the one-year course let you record a single as your end-of-year project and the second-years got to do an album. I’d already done an album when I was 19, and was working on my second. Conceptually I thought I’d staked out a good patch of ground by doing the spoken word and free improv guitar alongside the songwriting, and using a lot of acoustic textures but with an edge of dissonance – in that sense I was ahead of the formally trained students. I valued and value originality over proficiency. Nelson Polytech seems to me to produce a lot of technically good music but it’s the rough edges and even the mistakes that I go for. In this case the choir was a bit of ensemble practice, which is useful experience for Ascension Band (gig on the 18th!!).

When you do a gig you’re arguing a position. When a band chooses to play within a genre, they’re aligning themselves with something. If it’s very polished sounding that makes a statement, likewise if they’re a punk band who ‘can’t play’. I’ve always had a particular refusal to play covers, defining my outline through negative space. The closest I’ve come was a Beatles anti-cover on The Marion Flow, the throwaway track which is totally stupid but which some people seem to like. Conceptually it’s all there in the words, you don’t actually need to hear my recording of the track which could just be annoying.

She doesn’t love you no no no (x3)
You think you’ve lost your love, well I saw her yesterday
You’re absolutely right, she told me what to say
She said fuck off, she’s not thinking of you
She doesn’t love you and she don’t care if you’re blue

Etc etc

I don’t have any particular relationship with the Beatles, some of their stuff’s good, some lame, some brilliant, but my life doesn’t revolve around them the way it does for a lot of rock fans. I wouldn’t even call myself much of a rock player or listener – my guitar playing’s about disruption and muscle spasms rather than power chords. Derek Bailey, Sonny Sharrock, Robert Quine and Marc Ribot are some obvious guitar heroes of mine (as opposed to Eddie van Halen or Andres Segovia, say). As far as rock guitar goes, Lou Reed on the Velvet Underground’s ‘I Heard Her Call My Name’ is a defining moment. If I had to pick a favourite rock band I’d probably go for The Fall, as they make me laugh* and I want to dance to them (though I haven’t seen them play live, which is where you really come to understand what an artist is on about – hopefully they’ll still be going by the time I get to Europe). I disagree with Stevie Starr, a fellow journalist/muso who also bombed out on shorthand, that music should set out to produce a specific emotional effect. To me the sound is what it is, and if that generates an emotion then great.

So pastiching the Beatles was easy since their song was just a cultural reference point to be parodied. Whereas with Bob Dylan, a cultural figure of approximately equal weight, I have a definite master-pupil relationship. He doesn’t go outside of song-form though**, so I do a lot of other stuff. I wouldn’t dream of trying to play any of his songs, but I do take on board a lot of his aesthetic. The guitars and harmonica, that voice...

Is this OK for a non-review of the gig tonight? Come to Photospace on the (16th? 17th? Tbc) and/or Newtown Hall on the 18th - it seems good to present the acoustic/electric sides of the coin back to back - to find out what I’m talking about.

http://fiffdimension.tripod.com

*’It’s not true unless it makes you laugh’ – pearl of wisdom from the Illuminatus trilogy (by Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson).

** On second thoughts, not true. He's written two books and made or been involved with several films.