Brand New Year, Happy New World

I'm back home after a lightning trip to bring in the New Year with IcePick and KelSuperStarSinger, surveying my surroundings and being happy with what I have.

Jonah is looking out the window. He plays a game with the three little dogs who border our flat. They like to hunt him from window to window and bark whenever they come across him. Jonah feels that he has the upper hand, because jump and carry on as much as the little tackers like to, they can't get past the fence or anywhere near him... and he knows it.

He'll lounge around on the sill and look down his nose at them for a while until they get bored. Then abruptly he'll disappear and reposition himself at another window. Fun and entertainment for all, except maybe the neighbours!

Brutus the oversize goldfish is wriggling away in his not-so-clean tank. It seems like he gives an extra happy wriggle whenever he sees me. The guy is a legend. He floats around giving a fuck off world I can't be bothered look until his light comes on late in the morning, and then it's all wriggle and happiness until about eleven at night when the light switches off again.

I have a guitar beside me on the lounge and plenty of friends to talk to. I have a job that is interesting and cool and pays well. I have goals to set and bridges to burn.

Life is good.

End of another year

I'm not going to see the fireworks spectacles anywhere.

I'm not going to wear a stupid mass-produced hat with too-tight elastic and the staples barely holding it together.

I'm not going to have one of those god-awful noisemaker things hanging out of my gob, and I'm certainly not going to explode any party poppers.

I will try to count the countdown in real-time, rather than join in with the pissed over-excited crowd that always rushes it exponentially the closer they get to one.

I'm not going to hug random people I've never met.

I'm not going to have a million facebook photos of me with some other person.

I will, however, farewell a rather shite year with my good friends and contemplate the goals I will set to make the coming one a tad more enjoyable.

Born today: Newton

"Newton was not the first of the age of reason: he was the last of the magicians."
- Keynes, John Maynard (1972), "Newton, The Man"

Sir Isaac Newton was born three hundred and sixty-seven years ago, today. At the time of his birth, though, it was Christmas Day, 1642. It just happens that England hadn't adopted the Gregorian calendar yet. In fact, the Brits didn't change to the different style calendar until quarter of a century after Newton died, so the poor bugger was stuck celebrating Christmas and his birthday on the same day. They were the fourth last in the old Europe to join in on the whole Gregorian calendar party, so if he'd been born somewhere such as Spain or Portugal he could have enjoyed separate Christmases and birthdays his entire life.

Most people have seen cartoons of an apple donking Newton on the head, prompting him to come up with the theory of gravity. Well... not quite true. Watching an apple fall from a tree in his mother's garden prompted him to think on gravity. Not whether it existed, but whether it extended so far from Earth that it could also be the force holding the moon to it's orbit. Since he guessed the same force was responsible for other orbital motion he named it "universal gravitation".

"The" tree is a subject of some debate. The school that Newton went to (even though his mother took him out of school to be a farmer for a while - which he didn't like much)claim that they bought "the" tree, uprooted it, and plomped it in the headmaster's garden years later. Apparently his signature can still be found on the library window sill - so possibly the school has spent more money on refurbishing their gardens than they have maintaining the buildings.

Woolsthorpe Manor, Newton's family home, reckon they still have it safe in their garden. Trinity College in Cambridge think they've got a descendant of it in their gardens below the room he lived in when he studied there. You can even buy a descendant tree for yourself, from the National Fruit Collection, for your own inspirational benefit. Perhaps you could place it next to your model of Archimedes' bath. I feel a theory on the rate of decay brought on by fruit fly invasion coming on.

Resolutions?

It's leading up to the end of the year. That precious time where you think of all the resolutions you can make for the coming year. Where you plan to instigate changes, usually radical, and hope they make your life swiftly better.

Reality usually reduces that to one simple sentence.

"I'm never going to drink again."

However, I face another New Year's Eve of not drinking and instead falling asleep on the lounge in front of the television. In previous years I have played in front of drunken mobs of idiots, wishing I could join the throng in order to not witness the tragedy from under the bright lights of sobriety. This time around I've got to work a nasty long shift New Year's Eve, and a 4am start isn't particularly condusive to partying after work.

So what will be the focus of my lounge-bound life-altering resolutions?



Up Yours, All Right

That's it. Whatever way I can find to say Fuck You, This is ME I want to embrace and try it out.

Hey, something's gotta work. This past year I've been run down by the people I trusted, I've given myself more the enough knocks of my own doing, chance has given me some dodgey turns and frankly I didn't want to come out of it alive.

Why? I think I got so caught up in wanting to be wanted that I lost sight of the real me. The sometimes funny, intelligent musician who had a genuine love of seeing new things and finding wonder in the world. I want it back. Fuck you, this is ME.

And if you can't hack it...

Don't bother sticking around.

Reasons To Smoke

No-one likes a quitter.

Strangenesses

Today I found myself sitting in a gutter having a really interesting conversation with a complete stranger.

Life throws some weird things at you sometimes.

Blast from the past

Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth
- Tonight, Tonight The Smashing Pumpkins

I've been brushing the accumulated dust off a few of the old albums I've accumulated. In listening to them, I think that I've also been brushing the dust off a few old memories, too.

One of the albums I've brushed down and breathed back into life is The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, which is a two-disc odyssey mainly composed of polar opposites: fuzzed out anger, and sweet lilting love tunes. There's an overall attempt at hopelessness, but honestly it doesn't stick. What I find amazing is that even though I haven't bothered to keep the dust from gathering in layers on the surface of this album, all it takes is one listen to have it all come flooding back. You know what's coming in every song, you anticipate the opening to the next track, all those words are still tucked away in your mind ready to sing along. All without being aware that the knowledge still exists somewhere in there, dormant, but ready to rise given the need.

I think the lyric above - you can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth - can be interpreted in a positive way. Yes, you leave a piece of youth with these things that gather dust in dormancy. But blow the dust off and it's still there waiting to be experienced again. In those moments, time is never time at all.

In which Vic huffs and puffs and swears a lot

Lately, due to the unfortunate demise of my car (an incident involving large amounts of oil loss, a sleep on the side of the road, a few kilometres walk and eventual abandonment of the offending vehicle), I have resorted to the "Track and Treadley" method of getting to work on those days that the Roster Gods decide to bestow a shift upon me.

Generally I'll hop on the bike at about half past three in the morning and zoom on down to the station. It's about a ten minute ride. Not far, and only one bitchy uphill in it all. The rest is exhilaratingly downward - especially when you've not long been awake. Actually, when you're still really not awake. A quick sling of the treadley over the shoulder, slog up and over on the stairs and I'm there: a platform that seems like it's on the edge of nowhere. The Last Outpost Before the Crossing of The Great Swamp. But here's where the fun begins. Here there is no ticket machine.

Well you just hop on don't you? There's no such thing as turnstiles at the other end around here. You get on, you get off. Mostly it's honour and policing.

Honour. Pffft. I could buy a ticket at the other end. There's a ticket machine where I step off. But why buy a ticket when you know that you've already scored the ride for free?

It's also become a bit of a fuck you stance on my behalf. We're pushed all the time to utilise public transport, yet it takes you four times as long to get anywhere. And cost? You want me to pay my taxes and then shell out on top of that another four bucks for a ten minute trip on a train that runs only once an hour and sometimes, occasionally, gets to the station on time? Fuck you.

Uhuh. Fuck you... until the potential of getting busted looms. Lack of honour meets policing.

Like last night. I hopped on at my station, contemplating what I was going to do with myself being nearly an hour early for work. I was in the midst of a hazy locker-organising dream when I spied the pair of befatted blue uniformed transport cops working their way toward me from the back of the carriage. Fuck you became Aww FuckIt! rather quickly. I'd cleaned my wallet out completely at home and left not a cent in there, so I couldn't even fall back on the idea of buying a ticket at the other end. What if I pretend I'm asleep? Nope, they saw me get on with my shining silver steed. What if I say I'll buy a return on the way home? Nope. These people are pretend cops, puffed up on their own authority. Not a chance in hell. BAIL!!!

Luckily, some poor bitch was in the same predicament as I was, and a little closer to them. She held them up for just enough ticket-writing time for me to get lined up at the doors to bail at the next station. So fine was the timing that one of them even offered to help me with my bike at the door.

Escaped! Phew!

Now I am at a station halfway between home and work. My regular station, The Last Outpost Before the Crossing of The Great Swamp has been left far behind and we're now right in the middle of it. I am now at The Birthplace of Mosquito. Seriously, the people here have followed the Australian supersizing tradition and have stuck a big mosquito likeness on a pole to show what they are famous for. The next train is a whole blood-draining hour away. And it will arrive after I am due to start work.

Aww FUCKIT!

So I huffed and puffed and swore a lot. I slogged away on the trusty treadley, headed for work the hard way, huffing more and puffing more and swearing quite a lot more.

Have I learned my lesson? Maybe enough to carry four bucks with me just in case. Probably not. The danger of being caught is still by far outweighed by my views of if the system is fucked, fuck the system.

Juvenile?
Probably.

Cost-effective?

So far.

The commandments in relation to coffee

...and there began the working week. And she decreed to those followers who rise early for the great olfactory gift the coffee bean hath giveth:

Thou shalt not covet tea, the lesser
Thou shalt have a preferred vessel for the partaking of the elixir, and mourn such a vessel in it's absence
Thou shalt abhor styrofoam
Thou shalt not speak before partaking of the first cup of the elixir
Thou shalt not use the hand that holdeth the vessel of elixir for any menial task, lest the elixir be spilled upon carpet
Thou shalt not waste
Thou shalt not order decaf
Thou shalt not douse fellow workmates with the contents of an entire cup
Thou shalt not taint thy own elixir with foul and evil soy
Thou shalt depend upon this life-giving substance daily

Here endeth the lesson, she decreed.

I've been messing about in Flickr groups quite a lot recently. Through a local contacts group I've come across a few interesting people. There's also plenty of ones that I would never bother meeting, but that's the same in the wider world as well, I guess.

Anyway, one of the better local contacts invited me to join another group. It's sadly addictive - a group where a theme or technique is decided by anyone, and then three photos need to be submitted to match that theme. After that, the members vote on the submitted photos. To me it's a great way to review other works and learn more about what I like. Also I've submitted a few and been surprised by some of the results. You only need to get five votes to win a round, but that's five votes that I had no idea were out there for the things I see and take pictures of.

Most of the challenges are decided by the first person to post a photo in that round. Usually somebody pops up and chooses "sunset" or "rocks" or "rusty" and really doesn't put too much thought into setting a real challenge. Everybody has sunset photos. We all think they're brilliant. Probably most are pretty good, but come on. It's not difficult to get a good sunset shot. The sky is doing the work for you there. That said, though... I still love a good sunset and I'll shoot them as much as I can.

I jumped in first on one of the challenges in order to be the person who decides what it's going to be. Here was my challenge:

BONES



The moderators removed it, and changed the theme of the challenge.

Seriously.

What the fuck???

So it's not your happy clappy shot. So? It's a fucking skeleton. There's no maggots (though if there were some around I would have shot them, too). To me it's a visually interesting combination of hide, skull and grass. If you wanted to be completely trite about describing it you could say a celebration of the continual cycle of life in nature or something similarly profound.

Close-minded arseholes, I say.

At least I didn't post this one:



The whole thing amuses me more than pisses me off. But it gets me to thinking...

If we approach photography, as well as any other art form, as a means of historical documentation why the hell are we always obsessed with recording the happy bits? Do we seriously want a historical record that says everything was peachy for us? What the hell will the next generation learn from that?

I would much rather see photos of destruction and things that are not readily available to my eyes than pictures of your gappy-toothed grinning sprogs with ice-cream smeared on their faces. A picture of a screaming child is more emotive, and more informative about that child than a posed-up PixiFoto Santa session. Do your kids seriously spend all year grinning hopelessly? I fucking hope not. They'll end up more shallow than Paris Hilton.

When I introduce music composition to students the first thing I discuss with them is intent. If you want to write a piece that inspires your audience to visualise every nightmare they ever had, go for it. If that's your intent. If you want to write a piece that makes people get up and leave the performance in disgust, go ahead. If that's your intent. If you want to write a piece that makes your audience visualise skipping down streets lined with picket fences, bursting blooms of flowers and bright sun, go ahead and do just that. You're most likely to find though, that the pieces that have more depth of emotion have more impact.

So why expect any different in photography? Give me reality any day.

Bones and all.

Quote of the Day

"Be not estranged from your booty,
lest you need to shake it."

- Kaz Cooke, The Little Book of Crap

Bring It On

I love a good comments fight. I've never been truly harassed but honestly sometimes I'd welcome the opportunity to get in and get sharp with my words. Last year I had a person calling themselves "Devil's Advocate" who challenged me on a few things in my comments. Those were brilliant days. I was filled with fire, checking my email constantly, waiting for the next move in a war of words with an unknown enemy. It was an exciting dance of debate and sticking up for what I believe.



Recently I posted this photo in my Flickr photostream. One person commented, which is nice considering I don't often get many comments. Until you look at it. Here we are:

only a BONEHEAD would leave that old junk there .. please clean that up or tell somebody to recycle it .. in canada you get paid cash for bringing in scrap metal like that to the metal recycler

Oh yeah. Game on, buddy.

I checked this person's photostream just to see what they were interested in. It must be set to private, because access is denied. That just makes this person another "anonymous". Somebody who feels happy to leave comment on somebody else, but not expose anything of who they are.

Game on.

Because I left it there, you are implying that I am a bonehead.

It would be better that you know the situation before you attack somebody in the way that you have. True, the person who had the trouble with the tyre should have taken it with them, but you are saying also that a bushwalker who finds it should lug it all the way home with them.

Ask yourself where the line is between rubbish and relics. If you found a shack going to ruin out in the bush would you jump up and down about it being recyclable? Or would you view it as a relic? As a photographer, I would rather observe, take a picture and leave. That is my perogative.

I appreciate your care for the environment and think that it is admirable. Your decision to sling around names such as bonehead, in caps no less, is less than appreciated. Constructive criticism of my work is more than welcome. Names are not.

Vic

I'm somewhat disappointed with my reply. Hindsight says that it could have been far better constructed. I'm out of practice.

The funny thing is that apart from this one all you seem to get for comments is Beautiful shot. I'd much rather being called a bonehead. At least there's some thought behind it (misguided though it may be). Plus it means Word War. But what happened to constructive criticism? What about qualifying why you thought it was a beautiful shot?

Anyway. Somewhere out there is a person who called me BONEHEAD. Indeed, my brain is protected from harm by a skull made of bone, but that is beside the point. I hope and wish for this person to take up their sword and join the match.

Bring It On.

Spider and the Spiderettes

There was a spider in my kitchen sink today. Now, I don't know what everyone else does in this situation, but what I do is approach the spider's inability to scale the sides of the stainless steel as a perfect opportunity to study the little beastie.

This one has a lumpy, ugly, hairy back. Why the hell do you have lumps? I say aloud to the hopelessly trapped arachnid. On that I leaned a little closer and squinted at it. The lumps all over my captive's back were not lumps at all. They were baby spiders. Spiderettes. Hitching a lift! Lazy little fuckers.

I reached toward the trapped traveller with the ride-scabbing spiderettes and immediately two or three bailed out. Ah-ha! They know when they've been busted skiving a free ride and they try to do a runner to get away from the hand of Vic.

The interesting thing is that the ones that bailed were easily able to scale the sides of the sink. If all of them left the shelter of the back of their host, and went out on their own they would find freedom is just at the top of the stainless steel. Yet these spiderettes insist on hanging on the idea of somebody else giving them a ride out of there, effectively weighing the ride down and with their laziness, destroying any chance of their own salvation.

There's so many parallels to human life that can be drawn from this.

Resolution

Last night I intended to see the New Year in alone, camping somewhere picturesque. The idea behind it was to set the tone for the year. That is: Fuck everyone. The focus is on me." That is:- what I want to do, what I want to see. Want to come along? You're welcome. Anybody can come along. If you don't want to? Fuck off. I don't care about your reasons because they're not mine to deal with.

Anyway, the bosses that be decided I should fulfill my obligation to be at work early on New Year's eve, and be back early on Friday also. A lovely picturesque camping trip with a deadline just isn't the same, so I stayed at home for the big night. Tired, but relaxed knowing that there was a day off to be had today.

I contemplated getting dressed up, walking down to the train station and kicking back to watch the fireworks in the city, but tiredness was a major factor. No way am I going to get there, not be able to deal with people because I'm tired and cranky and make it all the way back home again. It just wasn't a sensible option. I kicked back and raised a few vodkas to myself, and before I knew it the sleepiness had kicked in and it was only ten. I set the alarm on my phone for eleven thirty, lay my head on the lounge and "rested my eyes".

The alarm woke me up to hear the revelry of the street. I said a quiet Happy New Year to myself and had another doze on the lounge again.

Around six this morning I woke up feeling alive and empowered. Why? This is my year. Mine. I will see the things I want to see and wait for nobody. It feels as though there are waves of energy coursing from my fingertips. That I have the Midas touch. Will there be obstacles for me? Of course. But in the spirit of parkour the obstacle will become part of the landscape and could represent a launching point to a better line of movement.

Fuck everyone. This is my year.

Capping off yet another week

I've just been to the psych yet again. This has been a constant fight to "get back the old Vic" that I had. Actually, really, to build a new Vic that respects and retains elements of the old one... but is a hell of a lot stronger.

She wants to see what positive work I've been doing toward my goals. Fair enough, that's what I need to do and she has to follow up on it. But when it comes to music she doesn't see that the things I have been doing are absolute milestones for me with respect toward my attitude changes. To a non-musician it seems that getting back into music means that you should go out and gig next week. HORSESHIT. Maybe somebody who has no respect for skills and reputation would. Not me.

Why the hell am I posting album reviews here? Because I'm listening to anything I can get my hands onto. That doesn't impress a non-musician either. Yay, you listened to something. It doesn't seem impressive at all. But what she doesn't get, and that I have to fight to explain in a recognisable manner to her, is that when I listen to something I am critical about it. I don't kick back and let it flow. I analyse, I constantly try to find what could be improved or what the strong points of a piece are. This sort of exposure and analysis is so integral to moving forward as a musician, but so overlooked.

Am I playing, even at home? A little. My instrument doesn't scare the hell out of me any more. Yet, I pick it up and it's a fight to build up the old skills I had. They fall into disrepair so quickly once you stop playing. There is no way I can handle a regimented practise routine yet - the failures I would measure against myself in this would create more frustration than positivity. The fact that I play when I want to shows that I building back the skills without the pressure. Does anyone hear me playing? No. I live in a granny flat seperate to the lives of others and really who gives a toss whether or not I decided to have a bash at my own acoustic version of whatever I've been listening to?. Forward progress? For me. It means that I am inspired, thinking. The fact that I'm playing is building the old skills up without the pressure of practise. The fact that I'm not inflicting this on anybody else is circumstance mixed with respect. Nobody should have shitty playing inflicted upon them without their consent.

When am I going to gig again? Not tomorrow. When am I going to look for others to gig with? Also not tomorrow. There is nothing respectable about somebody who goes for an audition and says, Oh, I used to play but I haven't picked it up in a while. Fuck off, you are not a musician and you have no dedication. I will never turn up unprepared. It's unproffessional. It shows no respect for the other musicians. So the hard yards have to be done at home, alone.

I bought a drum kit today, which I know will be intrepeted by most as a departure from guitar toward another instrument. Again, it's a fight to explain what this truly does for me. Playing a variety of instruments builds your musical knowledge but still has the same core activities involved. It doesn't mean you are giving up one for another, it actually helps your playing across the board. Like hell a non-musician is going to understand that one.

Apart from the music, I've been working and sleeping. Sometimes I take photographs. Sometimes I go on the internet and read about whatever takes my fancy. At work I have been spending hours occupying my mind and hands with drumming patterns and thoughts on what I've been listening to.

Photography has been a way for me to look creatively at what is around me. Kat and I have been playing tag for the last couple of weeks on different themes, and it is my turn to pick one again. I haven't posted many from the last theme, but lets blame that on a time thing. Like the music, just because you don't see it, doesn't mean I haven't been doing it.

It's my turn to pick a new theme.



The new theme is trees.

Remember: Just like the tree falling in the woods with nobody around, if you don't see the it... Doesn't mean that I'm not doing it.

Making Music

Dear Dive,

I first started reading you back around the time when I had a solo date with my laptop and anything alcoholic I could lay my hands on for National Drunk Blogging Day. That's coming close to two years ago now.

What really sold me was almost wetting myself while reading a post you wrote on playing New Year's Eve gigs. In the ranty viciously humourous fashion I love to see from you, that piece hit all the right points. While trying to avoid urinal disaster and gasping for air, I just had to keeping saying Bugger it, you're so right! I was sold.

You're amazingly supportive. You comment all the time even if I seem to never answer. It was you who gave me the name Groover. From such a distance you would not believe how much of a positive impact that contact with you has made in my life.

It's important to step back occasionally and think of the positive. You have people who have never met you who love you to pieces - how cool is that?!

I've been meaning to join in your Let's Make a Racket Thursday series since you started it. Yes, it's been an embarrassingly long time, but I'm here now. Just like a drummer I've turned up for the gig eventually.

This is one of my pieces - not a racket as such, but it's here. It's a classical guitar trio written in my first year of Uni (there'll be a few of the Uni days posts coming up - brace yourself). Citrus Twist, performed by myself, Stephen Tafra and Stephen Thorneycroft [aka EphenStephen] in a loungeroom. For performance identification we were usually known as Totally Plucked.

Glad to see you couldn't keep away from Blogville for too long!

Cheers,
Vic

p.s. Eat plenty of curry. If life ever tries to bite you on the arse again at least you can fart back.

PhotoHunt: View

The views I like the best are the ones without platforms. Without man-made zones and protections so that tour buses can pull up and dump hundreds of camera-clad tourists and have their arses protected from possible lawsuits when some fat middle-aged lard stumbles on a rock and holy shit! has an encounter with nature.

I like to feel like an explorer. I like to feel that I own the experience I have with nature, not that I'm sharing it with hundreds of lardassed pretenders who are really only waiting for the next McDonalds atrocity to roll on by. I like to stand on the edge, with no platform as a barrier between me and the experience, and feel part of the danger, the raw, the wildness of it all.

The person in this picture is EspressoHead, who is shortly going to abdicate to the mossier pastures offered in Ireland. Remember these places, dude. They're all part of who you are.

What do you feel on the edge?

I've just been away for a random destination weekend with a good friend. It was brilliant not to be constrained by time for a couple of days. Decisions about where to go next were made on the basis of Why the fuck not? and without much other limitation. Want to stop there? Why the fuck not!

Of the many adventures we had - ghost towns, mailboxes galore, crystal blue rivers and limestone caves - the most brilliant was finding a random walking track in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. National Parks signs always lie - this is a fact that I have always been aware of and will forget without fail before embarking on a walk - a walk that is signposted as just over a kilometre will always be a shitload more. I think they are working in conjunction with personal trainers. Just a little bit further is in fact twice as far as you've already come. We walked and walked. I whinged and whinged. We ran to make the distance fall away quicker and still we weren't at anything that looked remotely like a lookout. But what do you do? They have you over a barrel. If you give up and turn around because the sign lied about the distance you miss out on the reward at the end. So you keep going. And going.

Then you come across something truly amazing. A view that puts your life in perspective. A view that has been formed over millions and millions of years and my existence is not even a breath of wind compared to it's lifespan. Yet I can stand on the edge of this amazing formation and be completely overwhelmed by the experience. As beings, we are driven by emotion and each of our individual experiences are completely unique. I am the only person who can ever experience my own emotions, as much as the person next to me can only ever experience their own emotions.



I have been driven by a need to share my own experiences with others and I have come to realise how pointless that actually is. While it is awesome to have travelling companions and shared adventures the only emotional experiences I really need to nurture are my own.

More rambling.

The last few days I had some surprisingly happy moments. I find myself liking some of the things I do at work, even the hours are terrible and the pay is less than that of a trained monkey.

I went to see my doctor today. Two weeks ago I was a messy lump of indecision when I went to see this doctor about fixing the shit that has taken over my brain and functions. Today I walked in, was at ease straight away and spent some time laughing with her. The result, though was a weird one. Instead of being just normally happy, I walked out of the surgery to find my hands shaking uncontrollably.

I've had that reaction before in a different context: performing a classical guitar to an audience and coming through it all okay. Adrenaline rush. But why with a doctor? I didn't have an adrenaline rush going up on a work platform high above the ground on a mine site yesterday, even though it was my first time going more than a couple of metres off the ground in a wire basket. So why now? Adrenaline because I have perfect blood pressure and an informal chat?

The brain is weird. My answer? Join the local library and borrow some books on philosophy.