If my life is mine, what shouldn’t I do? Everybody just wants to fall in love, everybody just wants to play the lead.

During the last week of semester a conversation I had with a classmate went something like this:
R: Don’t get tooo stressed out, it will all be fine. I mean, heck, I love jazz school.
Me: Asides from the obvious, why do you?
R: Well for one, who the heck else can say “I go to jazz school in a castle”?!
And I guess he’s right.

These photos were taken on Friday night in town with Sinead on our walk back to my car. The photos in black and white were unintentionally nice angles that I found when I took a closer, chilled out look at the surroundings that I’ve had for the past semester. It’s funny how everything that I usually bustle past in a rush to and from classes actually appeared really photogenic to me, on a cold, winters night at 1-2am. Perhaps the combination of the cold night air and the lacking elements of people and time restraints was what made these usually mundane corners pop out to me that night. The first 3 photos are taken just a few metres from the Kenneth Myers Centre (the “castle” that jazz school is located in, photographed below). The second 3 photos are just around the corner where I would usually park my car if for some reason I had shorter classes and decided to drive instead of ferrying. The last 7 are all taken around the same block as well. The odd photo is of the view out of my car and through the rearview mirror; and the sky tower was shot off a reflection.

Isn’t it ironic that most people my age I know agree with me wholeheartedly that Auckland (and NZ in general) is such a beautiful place to live, and yet we cannot wait to leave the minute that we can – most likely when we’ve finished completely our degrees. I kept intending to take photos of the amazing view that I am treated to by my daily to and fro ferry rides, but I never remember to take a camera. Maybe next semester.

Being out 3, 4 nights in a row has really taken a toll on my sleeping habits and overall tiredness. And, although I have officially finished Semester 1 at jazz school, my final assessments didn’t go as well as I would’ve hoped. I know I can’t really blame anyone for anything, but one thing that was beyond my control was the failure of the drummer during a very important song that I had arranged, and had high hopes for. There’s only so much that I can do as a bass player when the drummer doesn’t play in double time as per rehearsed. I’m just upset that it is my mark that will suffer, and most especially when it was the first time that I had nailed an entire structure of a solo without getting completely lost of out this world – let alone the fact that it was without music! I have no idea how I managed to memorise ten tunes over the space of a couple of days, but I know my arse will be kicked into gear next semester, and I will start earlier. One more exam for my Computer Science paper on Tuesday, and then I will really really be on holiday. That is, if the lingering work that’s been prescribed in advance for next semester can qualify as a total holiday. It’s once again times like these that I envy those doing other degrees the true joy of having no work to haunt their minds over semester break.

These last photos are just… well, some shenanigans we got up to. I haven’t really looked at the band photos I took that night.

Surprisingly, I have a kind-of backlog of blog entries I never got around to posting. Maybe I will catch up.

I act uninterested but I’m not fooling anyone

Saturday night was the 2nd EP release of a friend’s band, Artisan Guns – their latest is called Hearts, and the gig was hands down their best show yet. Took my camera out for a spin for the first time in ages; I must say I did miss it, but for a change I was hanging back and being chilled out about the shots I got, unlike some other photographers that came along with flashes and all. Unprofessional. All their blinding flashes from both sides of the stage just irritated the band and audience, asides from just being a pure pain in the arse, they weren’t particularly polite nor apologetic either. I was happy to see that the shots I’d peeked over their shoulders were all fairly bland and unexciting… using flash kills all the atmosphere, silly! Especially when the boys did such a lovely job of decorating their stage, and draping it with their own handmade pool flags – like in their video for their single.

We had plans to take a whole bunch of post-party shenanigans, but some drama arose and Lottie and I were forced to abandon such plans. To be frank: I was pissed off. Speaking of which, we’ve started a tumblr so go follow us @inyournightdress.tumblr.com!

Her off beat dance makes me fantasise

I’ve been missing for over two whole weeks now. And to be honest I have noooo idea where those two weeks of mid-semester break went!  I hate how that always happens to me – making plans in my head about how I’m going to spend my short holidays, and have it whiz past without me having achieved much, if anything at all. I hope I’m not the oooonly person that does that? I think a lot of it can be attributed to me simply wanting to fully relax after such a wound-up 5 first weeks of university.

Actually, to call it mid-semester break is highly misleading. There’s two more weeks in this ‘half’ than prior the break – because they’d aligned it with the Easter weekend, grr! I thought I had it baaad last half, it’ worse now. Crunch time. But I’ll try my best to keep blogging, because all of my pent up stuff isn’t really helping.

At the moment I have so many mixed feelings. Whilst I do not regret having chosen to major in Jazz instead of Law, I guess my tertiary pathway isn’t exactly soothing all the doubts and worries of “what happens after?”, etc. Also, in terms of the more pressing changes in my life that will be coming up in the next few months:
1/ I will be 19 in one month and two days. I’m not excited. At all. I don’t want to be in my last year of being a teenager! Not to mention it will be during the height of my stressful days.
2/ In June/July during semester break our family’s going on holiday to Australia. Whilst that just sounds like fun and games, it’s just really going to lead to a messed up denouement at the end of it (I reaaaaally shouldn’t think like this!) becaaauuuseeee…
3/ My younger sister is moving to Malibu, in the great City of Angels to attend Pepperdine University. I’m not ready to see her off (and she’s nervous as hell to leave as well), nor live in a house alone with my mother, and have 4 family members in 3 different countries. It sounds downright selfish and pig-headed, but I somehow feel as if I’d be happier if I were the one leaving home first, rather than feel like I’m left behind?

Oh shit, I don’t know.

One good thing of the day: I did my best ever solo in Improv class today. And trust me, it still wasn’t great, but my lecturer (also my bass teacher) and I are both glad to hear that I am making some progress. Albeit slooow and painful. But it’s progress nonetheless!

Friend’s EP Release gig this Saturday night. I shall be less gloomy!

P.S. Lottie – this blog title is just for you, and so is this “P.S.”
xx

M-A-N-I-P-U-LATE

It’s official – The Dead Weather is the hardest band I’ve ever photographed. And to think I thought a two-piece (Crocodiles, Aus) with only one red light on in the far bottom corner of the stage was difficult! Turns out, The Dead Weather had the dimmest blue light I’d ever tried to shoot in. As much as I love the first-3-songs-no-flash rule, it’s a hell of a hassle because the first three songs are always the most dimly lit. Bands have a tendency to build up into their set – and I don’t blame them – but their lighting follows too. Photographically, I wish the rule was last-3-songs, since they always have the most amazing lighting sequences (for big bands anyway), and the best songs with the most energy. However, for those exact same reasons, I like taking advantage of my free entry and being in the actual audience, right up the front, on the opposite side of the fence. It’s a weird, contradictory feeling.

Here are the highlights:

Love, love, love her – Alison Mosshart sexy-danced her way through the set. The males went wild. I want just a fraction of her energy and stage presence when I ever end up playing a show – she always sings like how I sing when I’m very alone in the car, late at night, haha.

Jack White’s drumming was simple. But so, so tight.

And I love how I have this weird habit of capturing a double-exposure-like effect at each gig. It’s awesome just leaving the shutter open and seeing what you get at the end of it. Risky. But awesome.

Oh, and the last pic is of Alex, the drummer from Street Chant – they’re one of the most enjoyable supporting acts I’ve seen. None of that “omg, get off the stage and bring on the headliner already” business. And it helped that 1/ he’s a good drummer & 2/ he’s cute. It’s a shame I don’t think I’ll see them again, since they’re moving to Melbourne.

And so my relax-for-an-hour with Project Runway is drawing to a close. It’s back to practising 2x basses for me – I have assessments starting next week,noooooo! I think I’m going to start blogging more sporadically with random thoughts and odd photos; instead of feeling like I need to construct a substantial post.

P.S. I’d almost forgotten until my friend just reminded me by asking me details about it: I was half stalked in the crowd by some foreign man. He told me he loved me and that I was beautiful – I’m not sure what his heavy accent was, some kind of undistinguished European, plus it was loooud out there – repeatedly. So I escaped whilst he was busy having a push-out with a dude next to me trying to talk to me between songs. Am I supposed to be flattered or scared?!

It’s cold outside and the paint’s peeling off of my walls

It’s awfully frustrating but I’ve been home sick with a sinus/throat infection for the past two days. I’m not exactly better, but I’m going to make myself go to uni tomorrow, just because there’s so much work to be done, aaaaaand tomorrow night I will be photographing The Dead Weather’s concert at the Powerstation! So for that, I will be forcing myself out of bed at 6.30am to catch the ferry in the cold, and resume daily routines until my evening of adrenalin-fueled excitement… just there mere thought of shooting Jack White and Alison Mosshart… ahhh she’s so sexy, I wish I could be her. Now, I don’t usually do the whole adoration, omg-I-want-to-be-you-you’re-my-idol thing, so this is saying a lot.

Anyway, all that just means there is guaranteed eye candy on here later this week. But what I really wanted to blog about was writing. The photos in this post shows my stack of 10 extra-large postcards that I wrote whilst on the 89th (I think?) floor of the Taipei 101 last month. For some strange reason, it made me feel reaaaally dizzy to look out the windows that day, and after about 15 minutes of feeling nauseous I gave up and resorted to becoming a spectacle at the postcard-writing benches. Appaaaarently my postcard writing efforts were enough to warrant a small crowd of Chinese tourists that decided to watch, look over my shoulder, and I swear a flash of light indicated someone (other than my friend who took these) had taken photos! The only real downside to writing on such huge postcards – asides from a sore hand, since I hadn’t written by hand at all since Nov/Dec exams – was the fact that it turned out the postage cost per postcard ended up costing more than the postcard itself. Absoluuute faaaailure. But I was glad to find out that everyone who received one was happy to be surprised by a shiny big postcard from me.

I’ve gone compleeetely off topic though. What I’d wanted to say was that, after two days of milling around at home doing next to nothing (I did practise upright bass for half an hour… but standing that long made me dizzy, boo), I concluded that I miss writing things. I don’t know where my know-all red notebook has gone. The one with pages crumpled by tears or torn our of rage. The one I wrote my most traumatic heartbreaks or ecstatic achievements in. And worse still, lately I’ve been feeling like my blog is a bit hollow. Towards the end of last year, I’d been shooting gigs or something of the sort virtually every week – so my blog entries became based around those. I never really blogged about anything controversial because I prefer those debates in person, with people I can interact with immediately. Nor have I sought advice via my blog, unlike many bloggers out there. So this left me thinking – what the heck does my blog consist of?! Well heck, I still haven’t answered it. But I think I’ll try to write more. More often. I can’t believe this has been a habit of mine for over half a decade.

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