I have an hour at the Gearin Hotel on March 12th. By then, my next cd should be ‘done and ready’. There’s about forty five minutes of music and - with a bit of conversation - could take it up to an hour.
I’ve never had a cd launch. I’ve done little more than work with AMRAP, here in Australia, who perform the legwork in respect to community radio stations - and are very good - and have used www.cdbaby.com to sell digital versions of my songs..... not that I’ve earned anything above $50 over four years. Apart from that... individual responses from worldwide community stations but it’s a busy world of new or old music and so I reach this point where this group of songs feels different and - not that there’s anything wrong with the old - but the times do focus the mind along the needed lines and I need do more..
I have an opportunity to see how these songs work, acoustically and whether I can hold an audience for that length of time alone. The organisers don’t want a band, as such, on the night in question and that - in itself - is something to work towards and will require me to ‘play along and get better’ with the rhythms that Bob has created and - then hit the mark. Hmm... I’m actually looking forward to this without trepidation but I will still take a towel just in case energy becomes heat as does sometimes happen.
Two of the four men that I work with at the Group Home are enthusiastic about ‘the new songs’ - they are a critical component in public feedback as both are musically selective albeit disabled in ways which require assistance.....but aren’t we all.
I’ve just done two shifts and now have ‘days off’ in which to refine the artwork in preparation for the print run of the cd.
I’m as ‘content’ as I’ve been for months. I no longer feel as though I’m embroiled in a conflict which has no definition.
Although the police move slowly, I can do no more, for a week or so anyway, than allow them to do their job - as their time allows. In the meantime, I can put together a scrapbook, via the computer, to aid the police but I’ll need a steep learning curve to achieve this.... I’d rather mow the lawn and do a bit of pruning.... or play guitar or play croquet.
And so it goes ... there’s food on the shelves at the supermarket at the moment and life appears to go on as normal but I’m haunted by many images - one being of the elderly American couple, living in a house far too big for their needs and whose life savings and thus their future has disappeared. In the hideously intrusive way in which T.V. reporters have of stating the obvious and then asking “How do you feel?” - the woman stated that they’d make the best of it and - as her face crumpled - turned to her husband for ... validation ... only to find that he just could not ‘rise to the occasion’ and was rendered ...mute...... how could it not be so.
It’s a horrible vision of the future to see the threads of society’s fabric unravel. I don’t mean to be or sound alarmist but .... wouldn’t you feel just a bit pissed off to know that your old age is bleak instead of ‘a grey nomad lifestyle’ fuelled by a superannuation entrusted to a derivatives market which needs be made ‘null and void’ if the world has any chance of restitching the future. This particular and obvious course of action is being ‘out sourced’ to a model of the future which requires a consistent and voracious consumer driven market to succeed. Just like the one which led us here.
A world in which the food of the nation is just part of a greater ‘globalization’ project is madness. The granaries of Biblical Egypt held enough grain to feed the population through seven years of drought. As of a year or so back, I believe the U.S.A. had a week or two in storage. Everything hangs by a knife edge and I understand why my autistic friend at work loves the black and white movies of yesteryear...... people knew how to behave..... there were ‘standards’ and the social intercourse reflected those standards - which were basically the standards of ‘decent’ society.
Love matters and how brief the opportunity we have to express that love.
It’s Australia Day today and our ‘Australian of the Year’ is Mick Dobson, a highly respected Aboriginal. He suggests that we are now mature enough, as a nation, to have a conversation as to whether this day - which marks the first landing and is, thus, Invasion Day to the Aboriginal nations, be replaced by another worthwhile date which would indicate ‘the Birth of a Nation’ in a more inclusive sense. Very wise approach. The Prime Minister doesn’t agree but I haven’t heard why.
My friend - who is electrically bright - offered this cool thought regarding the electrical Universe proposition.
If I understand him correctly, the spectrum of radiation - of which visible light takes up only a small proportion - can all be visualised as waves. Ultra violet, infrared, x ray and gamma, radio and light. Some of these waves oscillate at very high speed and move from crest to trough and back again in small distance. Other waves may be a million miles or more from crest to trough and back again. Each of these frequencies has an electro/magnetic field. The two fields interact - visually they may be at an angle to each other so a minimum of three dimensions is needed to express the idea. Space is neither cold nor empty.
It’s the visual idea of moving through an ocean of oceans which appeals to me. The invisible and inaudible waves of radiation in huge billows and fierce little cross current crests arriving from all parts of the Universe in every conceivable angle.
It helps me to remember that all these types of radiation are ‘just’ energy.....and that matter is energy solidified or in liquid or in gaseous form. Now we know of plasma - a forth state of energy and have the instruments to register its form.
The magnetic field surrounding the earth, when subject to solar storms, gets bent by the solar wind to take a shape which is more than just reminiscent of Aboriginal rock art ‘spirit beings’ to my eyes.
What an interwoven existence and how dimly aware I am of just how connected everything is. Goody, goody..... ‘light echoes from the distant field’ and I get a glimpse of it.