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Last Friday the 13th Iain and I played at Uralla’s Top Pub for the Get Off Your Arts Dance Party, in support for Tijuana Cartel and playing after The Knobs. At the peak there must have been over 50 people there. It’s hard to focus back to this event as already my mind is deliberately erasing the memory of it. Some things went really well – we got to set up early and make sure all everything was running perfectly for the PA; and some moments during the performance had a nice spark to it. But the usual drawbacks and mad surprises were present: no payment for playing; no certainty with food arrangements; stunned unresponsive audience; storm water leaking heavily onto the playing area threatening electrocution and causing flooding of the floor during Ed and James’ set; bumping and damaging equipment; and of course people getting roped into running the PA when there should have been someone formally taking that role all along. I found it very hard to get into the performance, and only felt the magic once during “Life This Free”. But otherwise I just couldn’t keep up with Iain and where he was going, nor did I feel emotionally committed to the whole operation. Earlier in the evening I had a mild panic attack from feeling claustraphobia and noisy indecision inside the pub and had to run outside just to breathe. To tell you the truth I probably would have been happier at home in bed with a Stephen Donaldson book!

I’m feeling a little burnt our from a few things, playing live and rehearsing is part of that. I feel I need to “heal”. Perhaps a break is in order, but I’m not sure. There are other things to organise first:

Late last week R and I received notice from the rental agents that our landlord wished to move back into the Galloway Street residence where we are living. We have been given 6 weeks. This news came as a bit of an emotional blow at first, but I’ve since taken it on the chin and starting to figure out the daunting puzzle of how to pack up everything. This means we’ll have to find a new rental, at least for a short time like 6-12 moths, while we plan and initiate building our OWN house somewhere else in Armidale. It’s all a little bit of a case of bad timing. This means I will have to put any studio production work on hold at least for the next month or so while we move, and who knows if the new rental we have to settle with will have an acoustic space I can use for work. I’ll update you all of what will happen here, if I can: my internet access may be little more restricted for a while. Maybe that’s a good thing.

Your massive simple spheres
All red, green, blue and yellow
Roll across the land
Sponging everything up
No secret is safe, not one part of nature unscanned
And you return this to your masters
Without even knowing why
And they tell you how to hold it
How to show it, and what to withhold
And slowly your mouth speaks lies
That keeps us all watching, feeding, sucking
Until we have no lives unless we buy
Buy into endless slices of cake
That keeps us simple and keeps us slow
And there’s no time for thinking
Or causing things to improve
Because sooner or later those balls
Will come and roll over us and keep us small
And while we buy mute
Greed burns all the remaining green
We fall asleep, thirsty, hungry and blank
With the vague thought that sometime before
We must have created you
We must be getting what we deserve
The stars come out, look down upon us
And that last connection… It just hangs there…
It just hangs…

Ghost Inputs (Iain MacKay and myself live) will be playing at the Get Off Your Arts Black Friday Dance Party, which is this coming Friday. We have a few more practices to go to make sure we’re playing up to the same level of energy we had last year. This is straight off the back of a ‘warm up gig’ we did last Friday at a private party in Armidale…

With every gig I come away thinking “now I’ve seen it all” but I keep getting surprised with new random insanities. This last gig hosted all the usual madness of having no run-order, no sound check, and random people everywhere on all sorts of substances. But the cheery on top was undeniably the stage set-up: “erected” in a back yard on uneven ground causing the whole thing to slope forward in differing degrees. To add to the odd situation there was a tarp above the stage which was so low that when you stood up your head disappeared up into it, meaning that the audience couldn’t see who you were! The combination of a sloping stage and the low hanging tarp meant that I had to stoop over to play, which ended up making my back a bit sore. The whole PA and lighting was run off just one power point and there were weird glitches and blips causing the whole thing to feel like it was going to fall over at any second. Iain had no power to his laptop so that decided to make a problem of itself mid set – nothing like a recalcitrant computer to make you feel helpless on stage. Despite all the above we had some ok moments where things came together. I couldn’t help but feel a little numb to everything, perhaps out of self preservation. Yet again I’m scratching my head thinking is it worth it at all, but I have hopes that the gig we have next Friday will be a little better. I’m kinda missing time to work on my own albums…

I’ve been running on empty a little bit lately, hence not much posting here.

Hunz’s RPM Challenge mixing was a lot of time consuming work but also a lot of fun: it’s now all finished and shall be released soon! The album is called “Thoughts That Move”. I will let everyone know when it goes public – you have a good one to look forward to!

Other than that, work has been insanely busy and time consuming due to the teaching semester starting (meaning I’m running around again recording all these lectures). To top it all off R and I have been doing a lot of ‘house hunting’ and ‘property hunting’ in the last couple of weeks. That can be enough to totally do your head in with all the options and possibilities. At this point we’re leaning toward buying land and getting something build for us (not by us), possibly using new green technology and ideas. And of course, we must include somehow a new space for my studio! I’d miss the old roomy acoustics at Galloway Street, but our time here is now limited, and it’s now the moment to commit the ghastly act of conformity and join the property investment game. Part of me feel icky about this, but part of me accepts the inevitability of it all, perhaps looking forward to the quiet modest commitment. I’ll let you know when the decision has been made.

Other parts of me yearn for travel. Sometimes I get cabin fever from being locked in studios all the time, and the cooling crisp air of an approaching autumn beckons me to be on the road. Some new ideas are entering my head either way, but all I have to do is reclaim my time to enact them…