I had a very inwardly grouchy day today. Begrudgingly productive and inexplicably irked. I kept it well contained.
I’m not sure why the day panned out the way it did. Maybe because I forsook all writing last night for Mad Men and House, and then got out of the wrong side of bed all grizzly and icky.
Oh well, Yo La Tengo tonight.
A while ago I wrote a list of things I like and endorse wholeheartedly. I’ve been meaning to write the things I don’t like list for a while, and today seems like the very best day to do it.
THINGS I DO NOT LIKE OR ENDORSE WHOLEHEARTEDLY:
Asymmetry
Hidden catches, mean tricks or false advertising
Grit in the bed
Courtenay Place after about 10pm in the weekend
Subway (smells too much like bread)
Blues music
Gigs that start after 11 o’clock on school nights
Getting up before 8am
Tequila
SPAM
Growing basil (or should I say killing basil)
Blue biro
Southern Comfort
Tyre chalking
Cyber inanity
The Bee Gees
Spin class
Cabin fever
Being caught without a pen
chardonnay
lycra
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Filed under: daytoday, meandering, things I like | 8 Comments
Tags: every day, things I like, weariness
ugly beautiful
I have just turned the house upside down looking for a book, in order to commence this blog, and still haven’t found it. The book in question is Sport 37. I wanted to write about a particular passage in the very excellent short story, Descent from Avalanche, by Eleanor Catton. I can’t really describe very well what the passage sews up – a sort of rumination on the woman’s physicality and appearance and the power she finds her aesthetic ordinariness – but I have been thinking about that passage in particular, off and on, ever since I read the story. It has made me think a lot.
About beauty and what it is and why we should happen to care so much about it. About beauty in art (in whatever form art might take). Beauty as the elusive yardstick. The thing everyone trips over to get to. Or covets, or begrudges in the beautiful others. The golden rule. The Paris Hilton paradigm. The quest that most often ends in something that isn’t entirely what you’d call happiness.
When I find Sport I will post the passage as a comment. I think I am allowed to do that. I’m not sure if it’s infringing any copyright rules.
I’m not really interested in a world where everything is deliberately and manipulatedly and conventionally beautiful. I don’t watch The Hills, for example. I am fascinated by red carpet events, true, but not just for the obvious reasons. I like to marvel at the spectacle of them. (I also like marvelling at pretty dresses that cost more than I earn in a year.)
This is the building we looked out on from the balcony of the apartment where we were staying in Auckland last week. There is something quite intriguing and glorious about it. We spent quite a bit of time pondering its being. And we never got to the bottom of the reason for its existence (it’s definitely not an old apartment block, we determined that much), which only added to the mystery factor.
I often refer to Umberto Eco’s book, On Ugliness (a nice run-through of the depiction and significance of ugliness in art through time, but I’m not convinced it is worth the $100 I spent on it).
I am far more interested in ugly/ordinary things. As subject matter.
Last week, also in Auckland, I decided to walk from a meeting on Symonds Street, down K Road, down Ponsonby Road and down to where I was staying in Freeman’s Bay. For old times’ sake.
The K Road stretch isn’t exactly a gorgeous address, but I was struck by its grubby beauty. It took me back.
I actually have to go now and pretty myself up (ha ha) for an excursion outside the house. This requires me to not be in pyjamas, unfortunately, so I had better go and do something about that.
Filed under: New Zealand landscapes, beauty, daytoday, writing | Leave a Comment
Tags: beauty, New Zealand landscapes, sightseeing, things I like, ugliness, views, writing
Frankie
I have been a very bad blogger. I should have put up my gone fishing sign but I kind of never got around to it. So today I am going to do two posts. I think I am, anyway.
It’s Sunday and I have been in town avoidance mode. I think the Sevens has been and gone now, so it might be safe to venture out. It was a bit surreal seeing Batman and Snow White hanging out together at a pedestrian crossing on The Terrace on my walk home from work on Friday, and I must say we did do a late-night lap of the nite spots from the safe haven of our car for a bit of a pre-bed wildlife excursion. It’s all quite odd, if you ask me. But, then, I’m not really one for dress ups or travelling in packs to begin with.
But anyway, onto Frankie. Last time I checked in here, late last month, I was dreading the edit.
I was picturing having to scrap a whole heap of the early stuff. I had visions of me throwing my hands in the air/packing a colossal sad/resorting to the bottle/wailing next to a bonfire fuelled by 176 pages of single-sided, angsted-over rubbish.
I am happy to report that it’s not actually that bad – so far, at least. It’s not anywhere near that bad, actually, and I’m feeling quite chipper about it. Chipper, but not smug. There’s some chopping needed, and some additions (plus I need to finish the damn thing), but the way forward is clear. And, on a couple of occasions I have even forgotten that I’m supposed to be editing. From time to time I’ve actually relaxed and found the story pulling me along.
I even have my own Frankie writing soundtrack. I’m not gloating, really I’m not. You could say I’m just pleasantly surprised, for the time being. Anything could change at any moment. But the baby steps don’t seem quite so babyish any more. And it’s fun. It’s really fun.
Filed under: Frankie, daytoday, music, things I like, writing | 1 Comment
Tags: diary, Frankie, music
my dreaded edit
Tonight I discovered a marvellous combination. Gin and marmalade. Not all in one, but as complements to each other.
My latest trick is that I unplug my laptop and can only procrastinate as long as the battery lasts. I figure I have got about 10 more minutes right now (I spent the rest of the battery playing with these scissors, drinking gin and tonic and eating marmalade on toast and now the good times are coming to an end).
Edit time is looming and I am a bad, bad editor. Oh, I can edit other people’s stuff just fine, just not my own. I hate it and it scares me. Maybe I hate it because it scares me. I am a notorious overwriter, both in length and in a tendency to florid over-explanation and over-expression (e.g. saying the same thing three times in a row because it sounds nice). A lecturer once called my writing style that – florid. It’s the sort of comment you don’t tend to forget (like being described as diffident by your teacher at the age of 11; I remember that, too).
I would happily keep writing and writing, but the trouble with that is I’m not prepared to hand over an overblown bundle when I finally stop and get someone else to do it for me. That would be too embarrassing. So I have no choice but to edit.
I’m always interested in hearing about the various ways people write and edit. I know people who would take editing over writing. I have friends who LOVE editing. To me that’s just weird. I like tightening sentences here and there, for the sake of some punchy prose, but anything on a bigger scale than that freaks me out.
This is how I operate. Every day when I start writing (not to suggest that I write every day, unless you count work writing) I read over what I wrote the day before (or the last time I wrote). I give it a nice light edit and then leave it on its own and move on.
So everything has been read over. But not all in one go. I have no idea how everything hangs together, or if it even does. This is not helped by my currently erratic writing practices. I do not write the book as it unfolds – that would make far too much sense. Instead, I jump all over the place and write ’scenes’ as the mood takes me. I do have a list of scenes mapped out. It may be disorganised but it’s actually not particularly spontaneous. I write these scenes in separate documents and then copy and paste them into the master document roughly in about the place where I see them fitting in.
This morning I got to work after a long weekend of writing. As I sat down to take stock of the week ahead I was struck by a horrifying thought: I have nearly reached the end. I have nearly run out of scenes to write. This can only mean one thing. I will then need to print everything out and sit down with a pen in hand, starting at the beginning.
I have to do it this way, printed out. It will only be a first draft – a very shaggy one at that – and I have my trusty readers on standby to step in once I have made sure it’s not the ravings of a total lunatic. Also I will no doubt end up losing a chunk of 20,000 words or so. It happens every time.
The one thing I won’t have written is the ending, because I have it in my head that this has to be written in a certain place, and I need to go to this place to write it. I will write the ending right at the very end. I already know how it all pans out, but I am prepared to be surprised. I am saving the ending for my special treat, once I have got the most nasty editing out of the way.
Enough on Frankie. My battery has got a big yellow exclamation mark next to it now.
Filed under: Frankie, daytoday, mind games, writing | 2 Comments
Tags: Frankie, overthinking, writing
Yesterday was a bit of a funny one. A series of Saturdayish mishaps.
First I set up my serious writing space. This is the writing space I reserve for writing stints of four hours or longer. I actually don’t use it much at all. I’m usually at the kitchen table.
Serious writing space has an elaborate and very clever USB contraption which allows me to fasten just two thingies to my laptop and I am fully wired up with big monitors and external everything. (Printer is wireless, so I can print from bed if I like. Sometimes I do like. Just because I can.)
So yesterday afternoon I sat down to write – a clear evening ahead. I mucked around for quite a bit updating my lastfm writing playlist (very important – I considered this activity to be ‘ground work’, in no way associated with the act of procrastination).
The cats came slinking in. I had my laptop stationed in front of the mothership (monitors, wireless mouse, external keyboard, external hard drives and so on) but really I was just using the laptop. Oh, apart from when I played Bejeweled 2. The wireless mouse came in very handy for that. For the record, I am not totally deluded. When I played Bejeweled 2 I was totally procrastinating (although I was also contemplating plot stuff as well, so you could call that procrastination with a hint of multitasking).
Just as I went to commence writing proper, something very odd started happening to my laptop. Strange things were being highlighted and buttons were pushing themselves. Strange messages were appearing on my screen. Cntrl + Alt + Delete failed me utterly.
Our antivirus protection expired a couple of months ago and I hadn’t renewed it. In a slight state of panic, fearing for my unbacked-up two-thirds-complete manuscript, I fled the house and made my way in a blur across town to Noel Leeming, where I forked over cash in the hope of redeeming whatever I might have lost at the hand of cyber evil and degeneracy.
Upon returning to my serious workstation, the cause of the ‘virus’ became immediately clear to me. I now call her Sylvievirus. Danger in a cute and deceptively fluffy package. Sylvie, her love affair with keyboard-sprawling already well known to me, was stretched out on the external keyboard, partially obscured by the screen of my laptop (although I had known she was there before I exited the house in a state of irrationality, so I can’t claim ignorance, only idiocy).
Oh, well, I’d been meaning to get around to the virus protection software eventually. So not a complete waste of time, although by then the afternoon had well and truly passed me by.
By this time, a little defeated but also a bit smug at coming out of a close shave unscathed, with all my words quite safe, it was time for a glass of wine. As I drink alone these days, I poured a drink and settled upon a suitable activity. Finishing the latest batch of 50 cards seemed appropriate, especially as I had discovered a big new craft knife in my playroom.
The lightbulbs in our kitchen have blown, so I sat in dim lamplight with SJD and The XX playing and set to work. I am truly at one with myself when I am making stuff like this. I completely zone out. Simon headed out the door to the Matterhorn, but I had special dispensation because I was on a ‘writing weekend’.
Hold on, I will give you an example of what I was doing.
(Plus in pretty much every other colour of the rainbow.)
Things went swimmingly, for a while. About 2.5 glasses in I ran the craft knife through the top of my index finger. I ruined a few cards in the process. Some skin flapped. I won’t go into much more detail.
But I did have a thought at the time, as it happened, and it’s that I’d like to talk about. (Not the bloodshed or pieces of shredded nail…)
In my philosophy class last year, one of the things we discussed one night was whether your essence ever changes, over time. Whether you’re born one person and die another. Whether at the core of things, in amongst a lifetime of change, there is an unchangeable ‘you’. How much of us just is, inexorably, and how much of us comes to be? You could call on the nature/nurture argument but it’s not quite that.
So much changes, that’s the thing. Even the way we are changes. The things we do and like. The way we look. The people we love. I thought a lot about it. Maybe we are all just protean. With a few genetic predispositions thrown in. Maybe we hold onto an idea of ourselves that slowly morphs and adapts over time. But maybe that’s all it is: an idea.
I have come to a conclusion, though. There is an essential ‘you’. I base this on the only roughly empirical evidence I could draw on. Me.
Going back to the first memories I have, the first time I remember myself as a whole person, capable of reflection and consideration, I still want exactly the same things that I did then. It’s still the same me. Frighteningly so. I didn’t know any of this back then, obviously. I didn’t know what would eventuate, but none of it is at all surprising to me.
So, when I carved my finger up yesterday night, I had a flashback, deja vu, call it what you will, which confirmed to me that I’m the same person I always was.
On the very same index finger I have a 23 year-old scar, also from card-making. I was making a birthday card for Karen Shieff’s birthday. I cut the pad of my finger with a pair of scissors. Stupidly I ran around the house looking for sympathy or adults (neither to be found), shaking my hand. I got blood all down the white hallway.
Yesterday I didn’t shake my hand too much. But the experience took me right back there. And I realised something. That is, I will probably always be making cards. And injuring myself. Whether I like it or not. And that I am the same person. I felt yesterday just like I did 23 or so years ago. It’s a strange thing to realise. But nicer that than not recognising yourself at all (like when I look at my driver’s licence).
On that note, the stationery shop I have been talking about starting up is now open for business. Or it least it will be in the next 24 hours, I’m told. You can visit me here, and think about the bloody injuries I have sustained in my labour of paper love.
Filed under: animals, arrested development, daytoday, makeshift art, writing | 1 Comment
Tags: cats, diary, every day, makeshift art, writing
animals in our art collection
A while back I noticed something. A lot of our art somehow involves animals (also a lot of typos, but let’s not confuse the issue). It was never deliberate. I never once thought oh, it might be cool to start an animal art collection. It turns out I have been turning into the crazy cat lady without even noticing.
The mother of my best friend in primary school had a big-time rabbit art collection. Ceramics and all kinds of stuff. You’d wake up in the night, all of seven years old and there would be rabbits everywhere. I suppose they do breed, rabbits. They were classy rabbits, too, antiques and shit from all over the world.
Our house is too small for a dog (or so I’m told, although I’m sure I could fit one in), so maybe subliminally that’s where some of this stems from, but I don’t really think so. We have two real cats, Sylvie and Bax. Mogwai (see below) never saw his third birthday. That cat was crazy, and left the biggest grieving hole in my heart I’ve ever had, as stupid as that might sound.
This is one of Matt Couper’s dogs, c. 1999 or so (Matt, you can post a comment here if you want to set me straight). He is the first thing I see as I descend the stairs in the morning. We got the gramophone and dog above as as sort of a tribute to Matt’s dog.
And this is what we have come to call Ohakune Dog, by Leigh Mitchell-Anyon.
Sorry about the shit photo with the bookshelves and me in the background. Just squint your eyes and pretend we’re not there.
And some dogs in the Joycam polaroids here. Fritz and Pavlova (below left).
And here is Pavlova again (above right), a photo I keep of her beside the bed, along with a photo of Simon when he was younger and looked like a lion.
Pavlova was our family dog. She died at the age of 15 or so, the day that Turin Brakes came to town, c. 2003 (I know this because I remember crying at the gig, and the mirrorball sparkling wetly above me). She was one hell of a girl. She used to like to sleep in the middle of the road and make cars drive around her.
And to your right is Black Cat, by Mark Rayner.
Scroll down a bit and you’ll meet Mogwai, mentioned above. Photo by Jo Russ. I can see him from my bed, and some nights I still remember to say goodnight to him. Sometimes I point him out to Sylvie and Bax and say say hello to Uncle Mogwai. I know he is not really their uncle, but it saves me explaining the full story.
And it’s not just dogs and cats. These are Emma McCleary’s wallpaper birds (below right). Emma and I used to live together, once upon a time.
And here is a platypus-type creature (below left) with an otter in the background. I have forgotten who did this, and have buried the paperwork. I bought it online from a gallery in Auckland a couple of years ago when I was going through a bout of insomnia. I woke up in the morning and remembered I had bought it.
And this is a cartoon we pulled out of a New Yorker calendar. It still cracks me up every time I see it. In case you can’t read the writing it says: I had my own blog for a while, but I decided to go back to just pointless, incessant barking.
I think this might be one of the funniest things I have ever seen.
And that ought to do it. There is also a sort of faux leather-clad papier mache camel we inherited, but my camera died before I could get the photo of it. I took it as a sign.
Mostly we try and hide the camel round at our neighbour’s house for ’safekeeping,’ but he keeps finding his way back to us.
Filed under: animals, collecting, things I like | 1 Comment
Tags: animals, collecting, things I like, trinkets
an eternal flame
Sometimes Simon asks me to write something for his blog. Last night I did. The subject was bittersweet songs and what they dredged up from the dreaded memory files.
Tonight was going to be the night I wrote my long-awaited (ha ha, not really) Animals in our Art Collection post. But now I’m buying time and rehashing day-old writing. A little disappointing, I know, but it’s better than putting up a gone fishing sign, surely? (The fishing sign is on its way, don’t you worry about that.)
It means I can have a ‘working dinner’ – that’s what we have around here lately – and crack on with Frankie, who is positively bursting with new things to say right now.
Later on tonight we’re going to see Neko Case at San Fran Bath House, which will be ace. We went to see The Books and Camera Obscura last night. It was pretty cool. I was a bit sad that Camera Obscura didn’t do 80s Fan though, which is my favourite. So I bought one of their tote bags with a peacock on it, and all was well again. So shallow.
Right, here’s what I wrote yesterday, followed by the link to the full post. And I’m off to do the Frankie thing. Wish me luck.
Every time I hear Eternal Flame something weird happens to me. It’s not really what I’d call nostalgia – because that would imply a recollection of something pleasant – and it’s not like abject terror from an accidental confrontation with a suppressed childhood memory or anything. Maybe it’s somewhere in between the two things. Maybe there is a word for what I am about to explain, but if there is I don’t know it.
I’m sure it’s the same for everyone. I’m not really sure why it is that music is so evocative of time and place or, in this case, a particular memory. Why you can’t just listen to an old song, one you’ve known forever, without it being wrapped up in a whole heap of emotional stuff you thought you had jettisoned (when, little did you know, it was just sitting in your cerebral recycle bin all this time just waiting for its cue to resurface). Why even the slightest snatch of song can bring it all back, good or bad, vivid as the day it all happened.
[Actually, I do have a few theories on why this is, but this isn’t the place for them (and if I did take the risk of boring you with my bush lawyer approach to pop psychology right here I might not get invited back).]
So, a case in point. Eternal Flame. In what we used to call Form One back in the day, I wanted to be in the school choir. Or actually maybe it was the school production. They held auditions. St Cuthbert’s College music department, 1989. I remember the room, the layout of the room, the light in the room. I remember the angle of the piano and the colour of its wood. I think I even remember the texture of the carpet in the room. I don’t remember what was written on the blackboard in the room that day, but I don’t want to think too much about it. I think I could probably remember even that if I tried hard enough.
More than anything I remember how badly I wanted to be in the choir. Or the school production. Both, probably, but I think I have conflated two separate memories, rolled them up into one big eternal flaming.
I remember rehearsing in my bedroom. And I mean rehearsing a lot. I remember the nerves. But nervous as I was, all of 11, I was spurred on by a vision of greatness, by sheer determination and probably a good deal of weak-kneed naivety.
I think you might know where this is heading. You know that feeling when you’re the last person picked for a team in gym (that was me, too, but that’s a whole other story, and one that has nothing to do with music). Or those scenes in American high school movies where they post a list of the chosen few on the bulletin board amongst the lockers in the corridor. Cheerleading or band camp or gridiron – the particular extracurricular activity doesn’t matter. What matters is the moment when you look for your name, starting from the bottom up, and it isn’t there. The moment when Eve is expelled from Paradise comes to mind. That might sound dramatic, but remember we’re dealing with an eleven year-old’s emotions here.
What I couldn’t see clearly then (but can now, of course) was that I was effectively tone deaf, heir to a strong and inescapable fortune of tone-deafness. The very fact that I even fronted for the audition was an act of sheer prepubescent stupidity that from that moment on I very quickly grew out of. With a couple of decades’ worth of water under the bridge, I now mark up the music teacher for keeping a straight face.
And that’s what I think of when I hear Eternal Flame. My very first rejection, the first dashing of hope.
As a postscript, after years of piano and violin tuition I managed to find the tune. If you are ever involved in an evening of Singstar with me and I won’t give the microphone back or play nicely, then now you know why. I do have something to prove.
Songs with a bittersweet taste (courtesy of Blog on the Tracks)
Filed under: Frankie, arrested development, mind games, music | Leave a Comment
Tags: diary, eternal youth, Frankie, music, overthinking, writing
I post this photo to illustrate that we were all cute – once. How cute am I? Pretty, pretty cute. (If I do say so myself. And I do.)
Sometimes I find it helps to make a list in my head of things I like (and endorse wholeheartedly). Just whatever comes to hand.
Here is today’s list.
THINGS I LIKE:
blue hydrangeas
symmetry
bed
muted colours
people doing stuff for me
me doing stuff for people I like
Frankie
making lists on Monday mornings
jugs (ceramic – not mammaries)
coming home (wherever home may be)
making stuff
exotic lotions
putting pretty stuff on the walls
Dog Point sav
loyalty programmes
talking shit late at night
not getting up before 9.27am
forgiveness and trust
thinking about cigarettes sometimes, when I am drunk (but not smoking them – I hate that)
getting off planes & feeling like you’ve stepped into a sauna
babies’ skin
basil that doesn’t die on me
finding lost stuff that means something
*********
And that’s just for starters.
Filed under: Frankie, arrested development, daytoday, happiness, things I like | 7 Comments
Tags: caring, every day, happiness, things I like
summer reading
I had such high hopes for myself, reading-wise, this summer.
Here is my updated stack of books. Sometimes I think I just like to look at them. I read a few pages from each here and there. Sometimes I get to the end of a book.
Sometimes I think I just get overwhelmed because there are always so many books I want to read at any one time. What if I pick the wrong one?
Wherever we go, though, we have a giant haul of books to lug with us. Heaven forbid I go somewhere and get caught without a book. Simon has a notebook in which he writes every book he’s read. He reads everywhere and all the time. In the car, outside shops. I just think about it. If I’m reading lying down I fall asleep. If I’m reading sitting up I get distracted and end up doing something else.
Anyway, these are the books I am either part-way through or intending to crack into before the summer passes us by (oh wait, it already has).
Filed under: books, daytoday, things I like | 1 Comment
Tags: books, diary, things I like
yes, I am a brick
I stumbled across this brick in Havelock North a week or so ago. It was sitting atop a brochure stand (saying free please take one) outside a shop. I was on my way to get a spray tan in order to wear a dress with an inordinately plunging neckline, hoping with and against hope (which is correct, technically?… If you hope against hope surely it’s like walking under a ladder or sticking a pin in a voodoo doll which turns out to be perfectly modelled in your own image…?) not to look like a flaking zebra at the wedding.
(It turned out I looked more like a mildly bronzed beast at the watering hole/communal trough, which was good enough for me.)
This brick tickled my fancy. I didn’t take the brick with me or anything. I just took the photo. Nothing like a red-bricked piece of kiwi ingenuity in action.
The letterbox gorilla – promised in an earlier post – has long captured our imaginations (or at least piqued or curiosities) on our frequent jaunts from one side of Hawkes Bay to the other. Why has he got a scythe? Come to think of it, I guess he is flanked by fields. That probably explains it. I hadn’t really considered it until now. Also, I hadn’t noticed how cross-eyed the letterbox gorilla is until now. I suppose you don’t notice that kind of thing from a passing car.
Filed under: animals, found stuff, things I like | 2 Comments
Tags: found things, things I like, trinkets
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