Chotto Matte play the Glasshouse next Thursday the 22nd. Hope you like the image. Hope you can come along!

beanstalks

It is now when i am sitting in my room which shall not be my room for much longer and i cast my imagination a little higher upon the beanstalk, that i may consider the plateau of recent memory - I am in my room - i am listening to Gustav Mahler (the first symphony) - it is about 26 degrees when they said it would be 39. We thought it would be dark clouds and deep crags, sweaty corpses soaking in the gutter - a broken bell struck by deaf and despairing patients - fearing death, wanting death.

In my last entry i spoke of struggle and dread - but those emotions have faded, as all things do upon the shores of time. Even when i was suffering, was i really suffering? What of suffering when one recalls the moment and its events, and all that one sees floats and flickers, a steady candle in the window, dancing, winking, like a knowing friend? I held my fear, my anxiety, suckled it and rocked its cradle. Cooing for one's affliction nurtures blindness, frenzy, rage. Discovering the horizon, yet again, my imagination forgot its paternal preoccupation, let the crib alone to burn, and set each foot before the other - gleeful about mountains.

Now i have a Kaossilator. And i promise that Chotto Matte shall seize his weathered beard and swallow the sky with eyes not meant for seeing. If you read. You should attend.

But what of recent events? There was some irritation of a personal nature - as there often is in times of vulnerability. But i have seen some of the most amazing music this last week. There was the Necks at the Corner last Monday. Had i known how immersive, moody and affecting the live phenomenon could be, twould not have been so long before i came. Such is the gulf between knowledge and experience - to know about... what a jib!

And then we went to see the Silver Apples (!) support Spiritualized. I went for the apples - but was pleasantly surprised by the spirits. Simeon had me worried - how would this great artist, now in his 70s, manage to reproduce music that was written and recorded 40 years ago, without the assistance of the drummer (with whom the project began) without compromising the overall power of the music? Was it compromised? It was compromised. It did not sound the same. Electronic beats and stomping techno rhythms stand in as a questionable replacement for live percussion. That said, the artist has successfully reinterpreted his own work in a way that is both progressive and challenging, within the realm of contemporary music, whilst remaining true to the intensity and imaginative complexity of the original vision. And he is doing it onstage, on his own - in Australia "for the first time." And if that doesn't inspire artists of all walks across all fields of creative enterprise, then nothing will. Simeon's performance was a rare and precious gift - one i shall cherish in the vaults of my memory - no matter how high i must climb in order to find it.

Monday. It was time to see Krautrock super group Harmonia play. And who would have thought three old chaps with laptops and a couple of instruments could rock the nuts off the East Brunswick club so effortlessly. Bass heavy programming and intricate melodic patterns intersecting and rejoicing on the air.

And now in the third week of 2009 i am reminding myself that it was once the third week of 2008, and 2007, and will one day be the third week of 3004. And one can't help but let go, look to the slowly setting sun, and smile.

Thank you

rage

A thrown up thought thickens, curdles and coagulates like cream spilt and sputtering, strewn and simmering as the wings of midnight moths, such motley miasms quiver, quiver and dissolve - as steam on the breeze, a tongue gliding by pearly whites collecting scraps of trespass, tranquilizing, seizing with Caesar's unshaken will to power at the hour of et tu brute? We fell like honourable men to sweetly coated bullets of atrition - all men with one woman in mind, all women with one man, reflected, rippling, returning eternally - acceptance of the end our only answer to death, the ultimate beginning, breaking down and disintegrating, dislodging the illusion of the one and the whole, the whole in the one. A macrocosm and the memphis mule, alone by the pool, bring me coffee or tea, i read the clouds, watch the sun, and think of Jesus. I read the clouds, and whisper: I am.

I am suffering at the moment. After the Chotto Matte performance Melbourne came into full colour and i thought for a while that i could stay here, build a life for myself, be happy and content. I remember the rush of such ecstasy dripping from the most menial of tasks, ethereal emanating from the most bland and boring company. But the energy fades. And now i am sad. And the sadness wont budge. On Monday night, after a grinding day of repressed angst and crippling anxiety, i thought i had overcome the beast - we went and saw the Necks play at the Corner and life was affirmed and despair was abated, for a little while. Sensing the quiet rage stirring, i went for a big bike ride to Brighton and back, and somewhere in Melbourne the seizure was upon me. I spent the night sulking in the dark, my limbs heavy and brittle with the fever.

They say that anger and desperation are good, motivating emotions for overcoming and transcending situations that are unsatisfactory. And so i make manouvers and confront some demons. And there are camels, perishing on my horizon. But this is not me - this is not who i am. Broken? Miserable? Terrified? This is not okay and cannot go on any longer. My hands are shaking. It is because i am anxious. It is because i have made one tentative step. I must make another. The Beach Boys play in the background.