Green eyes just don’t cut it, quite, for me

Nothing ever quite pans out according to plan. I have a love/hate relationship with plans, because I love making and breaking them, depending which suits. The best occurrences are when things and people I didn’t know even existed suddenly formulate in front of me as our paths cross and intertwine, then part again. There’s been a couple of really stand-out occasions where that’s happened for me, and I guess a lot of feelings have been re-evoked in me tonight from watching “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset”.

There’s always the lingering questions and regrets, l’esprit de escalier and the utter hatred at fate for having granted you such a movie-like scene in your life, only to make the circumstances unbearable. Have you ever met someone who you felt was utterly perfect for you, but just in the wrong place, at the wrong time? Is there someone in your life that would be utterly perfect for you, give or take x amount of years?

Also, I think one of the most interesting phenomena (or theory) I’ve experienced, is the time in Taipei where my friend Joel and I had met some guys on a shuttle bus out of the airport, only to meet them twice more in Taipei: once at the 101, and another time on a metro! What are the chances of that happening?! Imagine if we had been at opposite ends of this very full metro carriage? Or different carriages? And so on… it intrigues me how you could potentially be at the same place at the same time as someone, and would never have known it. We had joked that if we crossed paths yet again that we would buy each other drinks. Obviously this didn’t happen.

I would keep thinking, “had I not left that gig early, I would never have met…”, or “had I not been reading a poster in the hallway, then…” I know life is too short to dwell on these things, but at times one can’t help but wonder. It’s times like these I wish I had a very anonymous blog where I could spill all my juicy, deep, dark, sad, mysterious encounters with various “important” people.

Product of the day is the following Christmas card I made earlier tonight. The lighting ruins it, but it’s black ink on silver card with a touch of red.

I won’t try, I won’t try
to make our paths collide
because next time, next time
I won’t let us say goodbye.

say it anyway, I would say, wait for me

It feels like the dates of December have blurred into some form of collective humidity. November in California seems like light years ago. I’ve been too distracted in this gallivant lifestyle lately that I can’t seem to do more than three productive things in one day. But today I read somewhere whilst Christmas shopping that, “life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself” – an anonymous quote that just rang so loud in my head I couldn’t shake it off. So I’m glad that in about 15 hours’ time I will be having a jam with a man and his guitar, to hopefully put some music to lyrics I wrote some days ago:

If walking away was so easy,
Then why can’t we all?
What is this magnetism,
What is this draw?

Just because it’s there
Doesn’t mean you should
Just because I let you,
Didn’t mean you would.

Wandering through, your unknown house,
Learning your room, like I’m learning you.

If time was so infallible,
Then why can’t we count?
The moments are inconstant
And the moon isn’t round.

Just because you see it,
Doesn’t mean it’s there.
Just because I feel it,
Doesn’t mean you care.

Feeling up your walls, looking for the light switch,
Looking for my mind, afraid that I’m your kitsch.

When we walk so close together,
Something’s gotta give.
When you can’t move any closer,
Into me you start to drift.

It’s not about any one thing or person in particular, but rather like a snowball of how I feel, how people I know feel, and how it all somehow got magically regurgitated through this mind of mine. That sentence itself was like a snowball!

I’m going through one of those periods again where I feel like I am being too much of a Jane of all trades… If we set aside my old part-time cafe job, for the first time ever, I’ve made more money through my photographic work than playing music gigs. That said, the first year of jazz school and all the undesirables I went through this year has really shaken me from the core out. I’ve spent a lot of time on the road, on the plane, in the depths of the night with black ink trawling out from my fingertips, forming words and prose that didn’t exist on any conscious level until the moment they converged with paper. It’s hard to keep up all three outlets for me, balancing time, let alone all the mental factors – bass: practising jazz, refining my technique and writing music that spawns from some mysterious corner of my mind; photography: I’ve just not found the time to set up any of the photo shoots that I’ve plotted in my head, and have mostly just done spontaneous momentous work, which I must admit is my favourite; and writing… I’ve started up a couple of large-scale writing projects which are both hovering in my mind, with only a few pages of actual physical existence. This needs to change.

These photos are from the Viper Room where The Binges and Delilah played. Oh, Jamie Burke, what can I say? His London accent was like velvet to my ears during our far-too-short exchange. More will be uploaded soon, and I’ll be working on finishing my Californian journal.

Before I forget to mention it, one of my summer hockey teams (I play in four teams over two nights) is undefeated and we are playing in the finals on Wednesday night. Yay for a free meat pack to be devoured at a barbecue on Sunday! Yes, I’m already assuming we will hands down win. Hopefully I’ll get some satisfactory goals like I did last week.

PIXXY.CO.NZ

I am so happy to announce that, after sleepless nights of battling with resizing photos, digging out old albums and trawling through then endless folders of my photos, I’m officially launching
PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ!

Whilst in the process, I found photos that I had long forgotten about, prime examples being:

Alex Freer, Artisan Guns Hearts EP Release. I remember squinting like a mofo to get the perfect focal point. Auto-focus is useless at gigs!

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, Taipei, 2010.

Taken on Kodak Colour Reversal film with a Nikon F3, early 2008.

I wrote full lyrics for a song the other night, of which I’m quite proud, but I’m afraid this post is just too littered with random photos to give it any justice if I were to add it to the end. Here’s a compilation of last Wednesday night:

– Sinead’s first time driving into town
– Lottie debuting a dress I’ve been harassing her to wear for months and months
– Me scrambling to shower and get dressed after some very hot and sweaty hockey games. Luckily I saw no blood that night.
– Highlight of the night: watching 5 boys fail miserably at flat tire-changing attempts in the McDonald’s carpark! We watched for about half an hour whilst pigging out, then left in fits of girly giggles.
– Charlotte’s anchor deserved to be posted on its own at the bottom!

Don’t for get to visit PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ PIXXY.CO.NZ!

Oh, and how could I forget? Hats off to Dan Carter + Le Bron James shot 3 consecutive 3 pointers within a minute and a half against the Clippers today + my cat stole my side of the bed…

King of Nowhere

This post name is inspired by our national bigot – Michael Laws. Derived from one of my favourite Radiohead son’gs “There There (The Boney King Of Nowhere)”. The point is, I can’t even begin to express how I feel about THIS (go and read it, PLEASE!) so I think the easiest way out of working myself into a little frustrated corner, is by linking to this great man’s blog. I suggest you read it in chronological order, from the bottom up – it’s only 3 posts long so far, I think, but well worth a read – considering a prominent national figure (and mayor of Wanganui) basically told one of the awesomest music teachers I’ve had to “get over it you freeloader – get a real job”. Uhh, excuse me, what?! It’s 2.49am and I really don’t have the energy nor brainpower (let alone patience and coherency) to really explain what I’m bitching about right now, except go and read those two links and it will all become clear!

So as to not taint this post with any more negativity, this is how I spent my evening: went to Mezze Bar on Durham Street for dinner, followed by drinks (and an unexpected round of Jenga!) at the Library Bar for Christine’s 20th birthday. It’s scary to think that we’ve known each other for 7, going on 8 years – and she’s one of the few people I’ve been friends with, for this long. Time truly flies.

The cake I made for Christine. The icing didn’t want to be tamed today. I had written beautifully on the cake, but accidentally spilled hundreds and thousands on it… so had to cover it all up, and write happy birthday on the side. Ahhh!

My main course – Roast Chicken. It was superb. I’m definitely going back for some more of this stuff. Nestled on spinach and amazing risotto and flakes of cheese, oh my god…

The Spanish Meatballs that Tsui and I shared. Lovely stuff. Although I think I could pull this off at home if I made meatball sauce with more herbs.

View from the window behind my seat.

The cake that some other girls made for Christine. It was lovely to look at and to photograph (as you can see from the following bunch of photos…) but I must admit the difficulty with cutting it, along with the mediocre taste was a bit of a let down.

Birthday girl. The one and only. My mother has trouble keeping up with a lot of my friends’ names, but Christine’s is one that’s been well honed into her memory through the years! Haha.

On the matter of blowing out candles… I was only joking when I said “you can relight this candle and blow it out twenty times total”. Some of Christine’s other friend’s took me quite literally… I sound like an absolute bitch, but I really wasn’t impressed with the dslr they were passing around, and making her pose several times whilst kneeling on the floor, pretending to blow her candle out again and again. It’s just so posed and uncalled for. No doubt they will be found on facebook sometime very soon.

Christine and Tsui, so cute together.

I’m not going to lie, I got rave reviews – and was bloody happy about it too. “You need to spike this with weed! Then they will be looking at what’s to come…”

Some bar we walked past on the way to the Library Bar. A passing shot. Quite surprised that my snatch-focusing whilst breezing past actually worked out.

Dragged out some lights, of course.

We found this Canadian Club Jenga set that I really really wanted to nick off home with. The bartender gave me their supplier’s details since he wasn’t allowed to give it to me to keep, haha.

Some self indulgent photoboothing in my room. The fourth one down? Totally my expression towards Laws’ bigotry and ignorance. And maybe I should’ve put some pants on.

This is one for the good days, You are my centre when I spin away

It’s hardly been a week since I’ve been back home in good old New Zealand, sleeping (mostly) in my own bed. That is, if and when I sleep at all…

These photos are from last week’s beach excursion with Lottie, complete with Malteser chocolates and gold fish snacks which I hauled back from the states for her. I’ve been thinking for a long time now that I really need a bikini that isn’t mostly black. Everything I own and wear is mostly black. This one is Volcom. But finding one that fits is such a fucking nightmare. We tried to go to the beach a couple of days later, but the weather turned to shit a bit, so it’s now going to happen in two sleeps’ time.

Since being back, I’ve been to two 21st birthday parties, partied even more on separate occasions, played four hockey games, met and re-met people I didn’t expect to really talk to, and re-kindled some old friendships. This week so far I have a bass lesson tomorrow, beach plans, a 20th birthday party/dinner/drinks, more hockey games, and then rounding the weekend off at a gig.

I’ve been working on my callouses again, because, you know, they’re important to bass players and we obsess over them and show each other our callouses. No, really, we do. It sounds kind of disgusting but I guess – especially to the boys – it’s like a crown of glory. Mine’s bigger, thicker than yours. Maybe I should’ve used another noun as the object of comparison. You know. Point is, I’m glad I can feel mine returning. Running through just purely scales up and down the fretboard for a good 30-40 minutes this afternoon, I could feel my left and right hand both feeling rusty at first, and then becoming more well-oiled with fluency and precision. Where was all this determination and drive when I needed it most during the year?

People I confide in and am close to have seen and felt a change in me and I like that. I can feel that I have a new bounce in my step, so to speak. And not the bounce that my “Dr Martens with Bouncing Soles” have given me either. Today I labeled Day 1 on “becoming the person i want to be” – and already it’s been far easier said than done. Sure, I did practise today, but not enough. Later, I cooked myself an early dinner with plans to digest it then hit up the gym to get back the muscle I need, in order to support and vanquish the pains of old injuries. What happened though? For some obscure reason, I fell asleep whilst reading. The next thing I knew it was 8.30pm and the gym closes at 9pm…

Now I shall try my best to not get distracted by some other artifact on the internet, or by music I want to explore and head to bed. Yeah, right.

1 … 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 … 48