triumphant burst of joyous music

the dunedin sound. flying nun records in the early 80′s with it’s punk rock-like diy aesthetic. the sound was mostly 60′s garage style recorded  by chris knox on his trusty four track.

when i started playing music we would always write ‘flying nun’ songs, as the tepid jingle jangle did not relate to what we were into, and yet somehow this is what music from new zealand was meant to sound like.

‘i am going to the dairy to get some milk’

something about the pedestrian nature of the music made us think every song was about such mundane things.

a later collaborator who had moved from dunedin to whangarei to play ‘music like that’ [referring to the jam session we had just had], showed me the error of my ways and corrected my lyrics

‘i have a hole in my shoe and am going to get my methadone’

i need a cobbler.

as green as grass.

i know a man who is a gardener. he always has the biggest smile on his face. one day i was  on the train when i saw him with his wife and child, and they both had the same big smile.

i had wondered if it [his smile] was something to do with following the seasons, being in tune with nature, working outside in elements. man closer to his natural state.

i wondered so much that i though about getting into gardening, i have had gardens before, nursed a broken heart by going from friend to friend and digging gardens.

there is something about being tired at the end of the day from manual labour that can’t be beat, it is a different kind of tired, somehow more fulfilling, than a job using the mind.

so how does this cause the whole family to smile like that ?

i guess i will think some more…

i have been thinking about the phrase ‘burning the candle at both ends’.

do you need a special candle holder to do this?

headphone land, with decent noise cancellation and enough volume one is transported, replacing the natural soundtrack of your environment, with a soundtrack of your choosing, give one an entirely different sense of place.

today i heard the term force field to describe the phenomenon. i for one know that it can make me bolder, being in another world to everyone else gives one the feeling that no harm can come of you.

deeper reflection on the idea of force fields, i have realised that although they block things coming into the field, in every science fiction version, the shield allows outward fire.

note to self: be careful what you sing along to.

the landlord from the young ones said it best

The actor’s act – discarding half measures, revealing, opening up, emerging from himself as opposed to closing up – is an invitation to the spectator. This act could be compared to an act of the most deeply rooted, genuine love between two human beings – this is just a comparison since we can only refer to this “emergence from oneself” through analogy. This act, paradoxical and borderline, we call a total act. In our opinion it epitomizes the actor’s deepest calling.

From Towards a Poor Theatre by  Jerzy Grotowski

wait grotowski? balowski?  i always get names confused.