I generally don't read non addressed 'City of Sydney' mail. I don't believe in it. Well actually that isn't entirely true, beyond the facts that I can see looking out the window like when a tree is wrapped in what looks like the slats from a futon mattress, and the letter is telling me the car space that kept cars from parking in my street is now public property soon to become a bike clearway I understand that public architecture remains a form of attempted social control but I can accept that because on the streets the ambivalent middle classes I hide amongst seamlessly adjust their lives accordingly to public policy as long as they get a seat at the latest complex eating establishment. Having said that you don't need a set top box to work out Bourke St is under attack from within. The road workers - mayor Clover Moore's high viz army famous for the relaying the footpaths of Kings Cross so when developers and real estate agents called it Potts Point no one would notice - that once passed the time between cigarette breaks building footpaths and roads that brought 4WDing Double Bay mothers to Dank Street to a place they had heard about at the local Aboriginal Art gallery called 'East Redfern' for 10 kilo bags of flour and $80au bottles of extra-uber olive oil are now holding ripping up those roads and sending all drivers to toll roads off South Dowling street.
I wonder what other compulsory social engineering might become involved in the Redfern council area and will Ed Hardy's fashion designs seem normal when 'high viz' clothing is compulsory for pedestrians following the occupational health and safety police take over of 'community relations'?
But I don't get these feelings only in my home town, don't get me wrong I love Melbourne but I'm glad I don't have to deal with the states obsession with geometrical shapes in public art and giant non-parallel lines which distract and confuse me every time I see them. Recently I saw pieces of one of the federation square buildings which had fallen on a temporary book stall in a freak weather incident. If Carl Williams was under that fallen roof it would have made the news...
When french philosopher Rene Descartes stood at the window he looked down watched the top hats and wondered if the bustle of the suits and top hats of the locals in 1620 were not men but robots, how could he know if others are conscious when he sees the world from his own minds eye, do they see the same world as him? When I look out the window I wonder if that dog owner knows their designer dog has crapped on the newly laid grass and will I remember not to walk in it. My problem is not actually with any dogs or their owners my problem is that it is impossible to get a coffee on a Sat or Sunday without a 4 course tapas deposit on a table.
No photo can describe how good that desert tasted, I have no resentment towards my suburb every minute waiting in line at Bourke st Bakery is worth it, I have the best coffee I have tasted from Hobart to Hamburg within walking distance I have risked everything from Goat Curry to Crock from in the pub bistro, I just ask one thing City Of Sydney?
It's been a busy start to the year. In a continuing trend of the music industry festivals have eaten live music as one can easily see in the increase in number of festivals verses the decrease in the number of middle level touring acts. From the slightly embarrassing local council gig to the corporate sponsored monolith of the national touring scene individual tours become harder to remain viable as festivals suck the cash out of the ticket buying public.
I don't beget the promoters right to have a go, and most definitely there are some interesting concepts and lineups out there however it's the two edged sword of art verses social event that is beginning to effect quality and diversity. Along with the hit and miss nature of outdoor sound the ever increasing rules and noise restrictions there is the changing face of the festival attendees. How many times have I walked out into 'punter land' as those on the inside oft refer to public areas and just wander through a vacant mass of heavily sedated walking wardrobes, C.U.B.S (Cashed Up Bogans) more pathetic than a zoo full of endangered animals where all the males are sterile...Is anyone watching the gig, does anyone really give a shit?
I may be dramatic and as far as shit goes I'm not one to shit in my nest, indeed due to nature of my work a significant amount of my income is derived from these events, but I'm not alone in saying if festivals stopped tomorrow I wouldn't be overly disappointed. People would go somewhere and people will always want to collect in groups to check each other out, its social anthropology and necessary for continuing the virus on the earth otherwise know as the Human Race.
But there is a problem.
Music is dead. As a commodity and as a tangible entity this seems patently evident. I feel an underlying sense of dread every time I update my music player watching the listeners connection with recorded sound drift further into a sea of zero's and one's. When compact disks have been extinguished all you will get is an authority to play a file on a object that changes faster than the subject of the material. What happens when laptops don't exist, when you can't afford or be bothered with updating the operating system of current music player? It's happening now.
The great liberation of ideas and information stemming from the internet and such technologies as the ipod has some at the cost of quality. No one seems to care as the hunger for content outweighs the desire to listen to quality recordings. I shudder at the sound of a highly compressed mp3 coming out of a mobile phone. And the delivery system is far from the utopian democracy the internet claims to be. This is most evident in the huge lawsuits made against individuals under cover of copyright laws. Large companies scrambling to reinforce dwindling share holder returns, music is just fodder for online marketing, something to listen to in the background when you are masturbating in 3D on your virtual gaming console. In the very near future it will be impossible to listen to music unless you are connected to the company who are supplying the data, every time you play a song the internet will register with some shadowy database. Notice how every time itunes updates the song count returns to zero? Thus making sure the latest uninspiring 'Kings of Leon' release stays near the top of every playlist. You Tube, itunes, the historical revisionism of 100,000,000 'hits' on you tube won't make 'Short Stack' anymore listenable or relevant in 2 years from now.
You are currently listening to ...... you told facebook what going on with you they told google who knows what you are doing anyway, which side of the bed you like to sleep on and how you have your coffee, and they own this information, you don't in any tangible sense.
But in the face of this fake immediacy lies the artists chance to gain back creative control and live music remains the place. Even in the seemingly alienating ever expanding global discourse the opportunity exists to do something new. Back in the day before recorded music people would wait months for a touring orchestra to come and play some new music and in that it was performed live it has an immediacy and originality that still to this day can't be captured in a download.
It's in the sunburn you get from the outdoor concert, the shitty taste of cheap beer in a can (or worse plastic) the ruined shoes, the dust and mud, the portable toilets, the glazed eyes and over excited kids passed out by 2pm. Get the hire car, back the truck up, load the gear, sweat through your shirt, do the gig, smash a few beers (unless driving), never look at what time you got home just what time you gotta get up and do it all again. Have a laugh at the munted punters and think yourself lucky every night is Saturday night and your doing your bit to make sure these kids have a good time. It's a great gig and still better than a real job.
I am in a mood. On the way home from my morning walk (how civilized does that sound, what a joke, I got home at 4 am ate a cup cake I found in the fridge and set 2 alarms to make sure I got up for the 1030 int airport run, cut my thumb on the only suitcase in the bus and bled everywhere but not on the artist thank fuck, then returned the bus with blood on the drivers seat well just a spot but I wonder if they will try and charge for that, then got a cab with an Indian who was also an electrical engineering teacher, I wanted to ask him about qantum physics as he taught physics also, but he wanted to talk about the economy, about how no one is going out. This is a conversation I have had several times recently - or a variation on a theme like the dude(s) who wouldn't let me pay with a card and then just gave me a blank business card as a receipt and said "you fill it out", I know that's not a tax invoice even when they fill it out but whatever I'll still claim it and I'll visit the issue of the economy and cab drivers at another time. Next I arrived back at the gig from last night to load out the backline, went home and decided to go for a walk that reminded me how Crown St is like the East Village, NY or at least filled with people trying to be that but I'll come back to that) jokes started to fill my head evey few steps. And I thought fuck I need a pen cause I can't type this shit into my phone fast enough and twitter on the phone isn't working at the moment, cause everything and everyone was becoming funny or ironic or my version of these things. So I knew I needed to capitilise on this flow of energy and spend some money, cause normally I can't be bothered unless its on food, coffee or the occasional nice bottle of red. So I went into my favorite record store http://titlespace.com/ and became a member, which is great cause I can get discounts and I'm happy for them spam me cause they are cool and approachable, so I filled out my occupation on the card as 'Existentialist' and thought, hey if I can prove that to the ATO then everything is claimable. Before that I ate sushi which is my comfort food cause without miso soup I am nothing.
Lets get one thing straight, this is a blog dedicated to people who think I think too much or talk too much or can't concentrate or don't listen or a variation on those themes. Thanks but no thanks, there is alot going on in my head, but no more than anyone else, I just get emotionally attached to the flow of my thoughts and excited about people and ideas and I wanna see-hear-feel-everything NOW. This is one context of nowness, that is in time and relative to my ability to stay with that nowness and find a way to capture those thoughts. But to understand anything about now you must watch the following video.
My own emotional nowness is something I struggle with, sometimes it helps and sometimes it works against me. For example often I say dumb things or obscure things or use phrases or words in the wrong context because I like how they sound or think they might be funny (I workshop jokes constantly, and when Christian is real tired he starts talking in the third person or worse rhyming...). As far as context of conversation or ideas goes I'd like to introduce the idea of post-context. Anyone who spends much time with me will at sometime be exposed to me speaking in tangents, explaining the people or places behind the story I'm currently telling. This can be frustrating for people whowant me to just get to the point, but that's not really my goal, my goal is telling a good story and if some fact or truth emerges at the end, then great, but if not I don't have a problem with that. I am not a script with a beginning middle and an end, I'm work in progress and a situation in flux. On the downside often I say silly things to people I really care about cause I'm thinking all these things at once and my brain goes into overdrive cause I'm a bit nervous about saying the wrong thing, and something senseless or insensitive comes out. Meditation helps me contain and in fact expand my emotional nowness, they call it being 'present' and discovering this has had a BIG effect on my life, and I feel without it the constant stream my thoughts and feelings and how I relate to them may have driven me mad, whatever that means.
I'll admit sometimes I find it hard to concentrate when someone is speaking. Positively its because I am having these awesome thoughts, inspiration or ideas about something they have said but negatively its when I'm thinking about something else or some witty response or I think I've already worked out what they are talking about, all of which are rude and selfish and habits I am trying to break. Having said this I guess I should understand why people get frustrated when I go into that zone of speaking in tangents but I am still bored by people who criticise me on the tangent method without understanding what my broader project is, and that is to learn new things and stay interested. I understand I need to listen to other people to learn new things and not just talk endlessly but when I'm telling a story about something that has 'happened' I'm trying to get some further understanding myself about that event, and I do that by explaining the context or importance of the people or things involved in that event. Which gives the story itself new meaning, new value. I didn't just walk down Crown and buy sushi I experienced existence itself. The thing about me rambling as I do is in part my personal attempt to explode context and see how everything is in fact connected but not determined, hence the story about the cab driver is not only 'in context' its post context.
Stop. That discourse is going to shit people and bore people. Try this.
As an introduction to what I am positing as a new idea called 'post-context' the previous was probably as appropriate as it was incoherent. Post structural linguistics like spelling and grammar is something I'm interested in but not that good at and what I'm also trying to get at here is my ongoing inquiry on how the individual relates to the rest of the world, and therefore a question of identity and weather it exists within the self or out there in the world as other people perceive it. Today I was one piece of odd clothing away from looking like a drug addict. A stupid hat would have done the trick (I'm not talkinAdidas track pants, which is standard outfit for the borderline homeless, I'm talking bad fashion that indicates someone couldn't match the colors they put on this morning) but on Crown street its all relative and when your me you can't tell if your Fred Perry cardigan is green or brown but probably olive anyway.
As some people close to me know I am obsessed with 'it kids', arty looking people, and really hot chicks who look really pissed off. This is my concept of cultural 'nowness'. I'm talkin high pants, wayfarers, single gear bycles, art school, no school, karate shoes and 2 piece bi-curious electro with an afro-cuban influence. My town is loaded with these types I'm even friends with a few of them on facebook so I can keep track of where 'it' is at. I'm equally intrigued and bemused by the front of ambivalence, pretentiousness and their well held belief they are on the cutting edge of music or fashion whilst at the same time think they are making a bold statement by listening to Fleetwood mac and quoting Hall and Oats (both of which artists I love so I don't really have a problem with 70s rock being cool, because it has always been good just don't get me started on the 80s..). Having said this I'll take the rockers over the suits any day and nothing is funnier than a bunch of Eastern Suburbs types slummin it down at the hoey. Strangely, just like Newtown is now completely gentrified and owned by gay property developers, on the weekends the 2010 area fills with office workers, yuppies and other up to get the edgy arthouse living experience. For a deeper understanding of the Jersey effect (people from the Burbs coming into the cool suburbs on the the weekend and other cultural phenomena check http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/full-list-of-stuff-white-people-like/ and without ruining the locals chances of getting a table for breakfast or creating a false economy like the one we have on Dank St in Redfern where BMWs cruise the organic markets for over sized bags of flour and a coffee is soon to be over 4 bucks (AU$) Marrickville is the new Newtown.
Recently my thoughts on Crown street have been legitimised after spending time with some young Americans who had never been to Australia. They happen to be in a really cool highly anticipated indy band and their reaction to people here helped me understand the cultural insecurity that underlies the overly earnest reaction to many bands artists people that visit our little island.
To eat and get a vibe for Surry Hills I sent them here
I fuckin love the food and the coffee at Kawa and the idea I can be amongst some of the most uber eccentric people in town, who look really disappointed when I'm sitting in, I'm not sure why but I'm quite sure I'm not concerned. What made me laugh was the fact that 'highly anticipated' indy band member thought he was sitting in the uber cool parts of Brooklyn (and everyone knows how happening that is) and like I regularly do, couldn't believe how hard these people were trying to look weird or cool or something. But take heart just like these boys from Atlanta managed to stay out of the influence of the nowness of New York and maintain some originality then so can Australia continue to be socially and culturally progressive and keep new ideas coming.
Right now I need to sleep. And that the best idea I've had all day.
