Australia Says 'No'

Fear And Loathing In Maranoa

As the pollsters have been predicting for some weeks, the referendum failed to garner the 'yes' vote. 

I happened to catch a Youtube video of Sky News hosts gloating about it and I've wondered if they inhabit the same reality I do - everything they said in celebration of the outcome sounded like Australians came together to thwart a massive conspiracy the likes of which has never been seen. I mean, come on, how much more disinformation does Murdoch's people need to spew about, even after 'winning'. 

The ABC put together this analysis which is informative. 

The journey to the 2023 vote was set in motion in 2017 when Indigenous leaders and community members “from all points of the southern sky” met at Uluru and wrote an invitation to the Australian people to walk with them on a path toward “constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country”. 

That letter asked Australians to listen, and urged us all to support structural reforms to overcome the “torment of [First Nations] powerlessness”: 

“Proportionally, we are the most incarcerated people on the planet. We are not an innately criminal people. Our children are alienated from their families at unprecedented rates. This cannot be because we have no love for them. And our youth languish in detention in obscene numbers. They should be our hope for the future.”
Neither side of the Voice debate denied the need for Australia to create a better future for First Nations children. 

But, by majority vote, Australians have made clear that a constitutionally enshrined Voice to Parliament is not how they want to respond to these crises. 

An urgent question emerges — what is?

So  the last rhetorical bit got me thinking about the whole exercise. 60% of the population voted no. It's nothing to be sneezed at. Within that context there's an electorate out there that voted 84% 'no'. I hope I never go there. 

Unlike the plebiscite for same sex marriage a few years ago, the outcome of this referendum was more in line with the 1999 referendum for the Republic. As was then, the great unwashed decided the Monarchy was fine enough thank you very much in the same way they decided the very idea of Indigenous people having a say in the laws put forward about them was not acceptable. This country has not come very far since then, and dare I say it was miraculous that the '67 referendum to recognise the Indigenous people as citizens got up. 

A Question of Civility

There's a Japanese politician Taro Aso, who got into trouble for saying something undiplomatic during the pandemic. He was asked about how well the Japanese people responded to government directives to wear masks and exercise social distancing compared to other countries. To what, he asked, would he attribute this difference? Aso replied the level of civility is fundamentally different between those countries and Japan. 

He was asked for an observation and then was pilloried for his off-the-cuff opinion. I get it - it sounds like he's saying other countries and populations that don't behave like the Japanese are somehow inferior. What he may have meant was the Japanese were superior, which is not better, but a different proposition. It's not that they/you suck, but we just do things better, is different to "you all suck". 

But when I look around me, what I feel is that the gulf lying between the 'Yes' and 'No' voters is exactly that characterisation: There's an absence of civility in wanting to vote 'no'. Are they inferior human beings? No, but their civility is pretty low if they want to vote to keep the status quo in Australia where the indigenous population is impoverished, incarcerated, disadvantaged and alienated at every turn. I'm not the one that's being churlish in suggesting that it's an utter lack of civility that made them vote 'no'. 

I'm Used To This Feeling

The Republic Referendum of 1999 felt pretty much like this, but that one happened way before Blogs, let alone Social Media so I suffered that in my own headspace more than anywhere else. In retrospect, I think I took that defeat on the chin too, although in the years since, I've sort of backed off the Republican position. Maybe it's that old age brings a certain kind of cynicism about other human beings, that in turn makes you fearful for their lack of civility. In which case a Republic would open doors to any number of executive hour stories, as many republics around the world have found out, including the United Staes of America on the 6th of January 2021. 

That leads me to suspect we with the higher sense of civility should perhaps stay our hand at casting condemnations at the low civility 60% of this sorry nation. After all, there was once an organ called ATSIC and it was abolished because of the corruption allegations it managed to accrue in its time. That experience alone should temper the notion of any political organ that purports to represent the indigenous voice - and in turn, maybe there is a kind of wisdom in the base (and I mean, bottom feeding base) conservative impulse to just saying no to enshrining body that could go the way of ATSIC. 

After all, it was never answered who was going to sit on that advisory body and how they would come to be. Maybe that was a discussion for another day once there was a referendum consensus that we would have such an organ but... it does the beg the question. If roughly the same consensus that didn't want a Republic also don't want a rewrite of the constitution, with some humility, we with the high sense of civility should take that on board more seriously. Is it really intellectual arrogance for the inner city types to want to change the constitution? No. Just the hope that we thought we were better than this. 

So there you have it. Our nation is split into haves and have-nots. It's not about having money or property - it's about having a conscience. 

Referendum Coming Up

The Voice, The Voice

The referendum for The Voice is coming up on Saturday. No surprises, I'm voting 'Yes', so let's just get that out of the way. The choice is pretty stark. There's really no confusion except those points-of-confusion spread about by 'No' vote campaigners. If you want to side with people who think outcomes for indigenous Australians are going swimmingly well, you vote 'no'. If you want to side with the people who don't think things are working that great when it comes to outcomes for Indigenous people, then you vote 'yes'. The fact that you might be lining up with the woke, the sanctimonious, the inner-city-latte-sipping urban elites, and the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup people is actually by-the-by. In turn, if you want to be on the side of conservatives, red necks, racists, conspiracy nut jobs, and other assorted bloody-minded personality-disordered types, you vote 'no' and wear the opprobrium. Society is binary (gender, is less so) in 2023.  

There was that scintillating observation made by an indigenous MP that things were working out great for indigenous people because European colonisation brought running water, got ridiculed a lot. She's only right if you ignore all the suffering otherwise - and we are trying to address the suffering. The "what have the Romans ever done for us?" gag from 'The Life of Brian' is now coming up to almost 50 years old. You would think that our political classes would have digested it a bit better by now, but clearly they have not. Nobody siding with a parochial 'cultural' mindset (as per David Graeber) is not going to accept the merits of civilisation. It's interesting that the best argument in favour of continuing the status quo is history as seen through the prism of civilisation and technology. 

Conversely, it is equally notable that the there are a number of indigenous groups saying they want to vote 'no'  because they didn't get a say, or it doesn't get enough of a bite out of what mainstream Australia possesses. Some even argue if it's not the treaty, they don't want to know about it. Others have said they weren't consulted, while yet others more have said they don't get how it's going to make their lives better immediately - so 'no' thank you. The defiant poses struck by these indigenous leaders arguing for a 'no' vote is also reminiscent of the argument made by David Graeber that the heart of culture is defiance. That in the face of encroaching civilisation, some would defiantly say no to it, is deeply cultural. 

All this has me thinking that this referendum is largely symbolic for a reason. The Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wants us to waste our energy on something trivial, patronising, and somewhat idiotic for the sole reason of distraction. He would like us to expend tremendous amounts of energy arguing the pros and cons of something that is largely without economic or climactic impact. The nation has spent a good deal of time talking about this, while exercising very little scrutiny of just what this government is doing about housing, energy policy, climate change (read "GLOBAL WARMING") and healthcare after the pandemic. He has basically given us this idiotic shibboleth with which to beat over our own heads. It is government by the patronising, for the patronising of the patronised. 

In other words, we are the idiot marks for putting up with this so-called debate.  

View From The Couch - 27/Jul/2023

Vale Sinead O'Connor (Dec 1966 - Jul 2023)

When people die, it's not really the dying that shocks you but the age at which it happens. Sinead O'Connor is/was essentially my age so, the shock is somewhat greater. She was an extraordinary singer whose phrasing was exquisite. She remained rebellious through her career and essentially fearless. 

There are three images of Sinead O'Connor in my mind - the first is her singing 'Nothing Compares 2 U'. The second is of her ripping up the image of Pope John Paul II, denouncing the church for its role in child sex abuse. The third is of her brief fourth marriage to some therapist guy Barry Herridge, and she released some photos on social media. The funny thing is they didn't seem like aspects of the same person, even though it was clearly her in all three situations. 

Her Wikipedia page reads like a string of outrageous statements made by O'Connor which were then retracted. She appears to have been somebody who blurted things out and then had to retract them often. She was a truth-seeker as well as truth teller - and she was definitely vindicated about the Catholic Church and sex abuses so we owe her something right there. The diagnosis of being bipolar did not come as a surprise, although her struggles seemed to be equally Herculean, Sisyphean,  and Pyrrhic. She also had many incidents where she threatened to commit suicide.

She is going to be sorely missed. The world is a little dimmer and more grey without her. 

Funny Story

Maybe this isn't so funny... but my replacement/successor at my previous job at UTS has upped and quit this week. I counted the weeks and it comes to 8 weeks that she lasted in the job. The official reason was that she took a post-doctorate position in Queensland - however I'm no dummy. I know the exact sequence events in which she had to participate, and the likely fall-out from those events. 

She would have been handed my 34 page handover document with tons of things to do; she would've been made to pick up all the loose threads which would have been arduous. She would have had to sit through and note-tale the Technical Steering Committee meeting in late June; the Advisory Board meeting on 11 July; and the Board meeting on 20 July. At each juncture her boss would have gone to town on her writing with Obsessive-Compulsive-disorderly zeal, and she handed in her resignation on the 24th July. 

You can't make this stuff up. 

Cyberpunk Chronicles

I Was A Teenage Cyberpunk

Back in the days before the internet and blogging and all the other things that make 21st century life so convenient and autistic, was the 1990s throughout which I was bumbling around with a bunch of dumb ideas from 80s science fiction. So I went to that prestigious film school and made a dumb little science fiction movie based on the same bad science fiction ideas and that led to me running into a guy who wanted to do this multimedia phantasmagoria electronic dance music act meets U2's Fly show which was a big thing after their Aching Baby album. They needed a guitar player and hey presto, I was their guy. 

And that led to a a bunch of songs being written and recorded and going in and out of record company meeting rooms in Tokyo, which, to be honest was a dumb fucking idea, but you had to see it from this outfit's point of view - you couldn't get closer to the future by operating out of Sydney. You want to be trans-orbital, global and a lot closer to the future, which, Tokyo seemed to be at the time. 

Anyway, that act eventually folded like all acts that don't quite get off the ground. I went and joined other bands and left that project behind. But that period also coincided with the recession we had to have, where nobody young got a serious look in at employment, and so I wrote a huge song book in my abundant spare time. That songbook sat in my drawer until well and truly into the second decade of the 21st century whereupon I figured it was time to see if there was any life in these songs.  

Then came the pandemic. 

When you're sitting around at home being almost halfway to unemployment working only 2 days a week, you tend to want to fill your time with finishing old projects - and this is how this damn record came about. I don't know what happened to the other members of that weird outfit from the 1990s. I've tried googling and facebook and what-have-you but I've not seen nary a peep out of them. I guess it's just one of those things where you recognise you meet people, you spend some important time with them and then you part ways. The chronicling comes way after the events.  

Quick Shots - 13/Jun/2023

The Unknown Unknowns

Australia's judiciary gets it wrong from time to time. Not to raise old stories or point fingers but the Kathleen Folbigg and Lindy Chamberlain before show the judiciary of this country to be entirely faulty in some cases and takes them years to self correct. In each of those cases, there was media mayhem. On the whole, a media circus portends terrible things for people caught in their spotlight of hateful attention. 

In that light, I want to point out something that's been vexing me a bit. The Bruce Lehrmann case that recently got thrown out and then decided that they won't re-try the case has left Lehrmann in purgatory forever. It's very troubling because let's face it, both Brittany Higgins and Lehrmann were Liberal Party staffers and that kind of subtracts just about all political sympathy from me, leaving just a he-said-she-said scenario of accusations. Both of them seem like well-heeled private-school-educated people who had an 'in' to work in Parliament, and this terrible thing happened to Higgins. So up to this point, I've not really cared what happened because a) I am a bastard when it comes to politics and make no mistake, this is politics; and b) I don't care about scandals out of parliament and; c) I'm inclined to dislike both these people based on their resume, so why would I care how the trial goes?

That said, I'm getting a little bothered by some fundamental things here. Lehrmann never got a verdict at his trial because a juror's misconduct ruined the trial. The prosecution decided not to re-try the case, so as Lehrmann points out, that leaves him as somebody who is not exonerated. In his words, 50% of people in the country think he is a rapist. Judging from the media coverage, I think he has the figure low there. I'd say it's more like 80%. I've never heard from anybody who has stood up and vouched for Lehrmann in the press. The media has not shown anybody who has stood up and said it couldn't have been Lehrmann, based on character or motive or modus operandi.

In other words, thanks to the media, Bruce Lehrmann's received a presumption of guilt all along. And now the prosecution and judiciary have decided to just let it go - in turn, he will never have the chance to clear his name in court. Surely people can see if all things being equal, this is more than a bit wrong. The media have tried the guy already and he has no recourse except defamation trials. If the prosecution really think he was the rapist, they would be well advise to bring that case back. This situation is not justice in anyway shape or form, let alone for Brittany Higgins. The media is a shit and the judiciary is, dare I say, unreliable. 

The Counteroffensive At Last

There are indications the Ukrainian counteroffensive is underway. It was originally mooted in winter for the northern spring, but leaks and waiting for the arrival of equipment as well as training for how to use them, has delayed the counteroffensive. It's nice to know it is finally underway. The business of Bakhmut was turning into a rather horrible little stalemate that was taking the world's economy with it. 

It would be nice if at some point Vladimir Putin could be removed, a peace settlement made swiftly and things go back to some semblance of normal. If there's one thing that is certain, it is that Putin is responsible for all of this mess and he needs to be brought to justice. He is a fugitive from justice, hiding out in the Kremlin. He started this war and is now solely responsible for its outcomes. The views to the contrary are is just propaganda. 

Get Back To Those Recordings

Paul McCartney says there will be one more Beatles song featuring John Lennon. 

In an interview with the BBC, McCartney said the record was a demo he and Lennon worked on.

"It was a demo that John had, and that we worked on, and we just finished it up," he said.

McCartney did not name the song that has been recorded but according to the BBC it is likely to be a 1978 Lennon composition called Now And Then.

The track — one of several on a cassette that Lennon had recorded for McCartney a year before his death — was given to him by Lennon's widow Yoko Ono in 1994.

Two of the songs, Free As A Bird and Real Love, were cleaned up by the producer Jeff Lynne, and released in 1995 and 1996.

Yeah that would be about right. It's hard to say if it would be any good as a song. It certainly will be going out to a world that is probably now indifferent to the charms of the Beatles. The Covid Pandemic killed  a lot of Baby Boomer codgers and codgettes. 

 

Quick Shots 28/May/2023

Still Unpacking

We're most of the way through unpacking from our move, well over three months after the move date. I've not really caught my breath from the frenetic 2022, and now we're nearly half way through 2023. Part of it is that there's been some furniture buying that's been going on. You think you don't need to do it, but an extra shelf here or there really helps with the organising of things. Sometimes you underestimate just how many CDs you have until you start putting them on your new shelves. I shouldn't be surprised - I bought a good deal right through the CD era that spanned 35 years. At an average of 30 albums a year, that's easily 1050 discs, not counting that some of the albums are double albums. Box sets add both numbers and bulk - and I have a few of those too. This might be the first year that I haven't gone and added a bunch of discs to the pile. The move has dented my inclination towards more stuff in general. 

On the bright side, it's the first time in many years that I've been able to just unpack all my books, LPs DVDs and videos on to shelves. It's quite a pleasure just looking at the spines and remembering what was in them. It's like a map of where your brain has been. The young's laugh at us and our physical media, but that's just the thing. The physicality of the stuff helps you retain just what the hell is in them. 

Gigging Life

One of the weirder developments in my life is this gigging thing at this late juncture. The band Whateva has been going a few months now and we haven't blown apart. We seem to do a show about once a month. Our repertoire is a bunch of originals and it's now growing slowly after the initial burst. I guess we're getting a little finickier about what passes for a good idea, whereas in the first three rehearsals, we just threw shit against the wall and made it stick. 

I didn't really expect this development although it's a bit like becoming a parent late in life. You have a better perspective on it so as to appreciate it more. The process has been far less stressful than the bands of my youth and for some odd reason the band seems to go over much better than anything I did back then. 

In June we'll be playing the Moshpit and somewhere up in Newcastle. That ought to be fun. 

New Album Out Soon

There will be a new Art Neuro release in June. It's called Cyberpunk Chronicles, and it's largely based on my songbook from the 90s. The offical release date is 22 June 2023. 

 

Katrina

 The Girl In The Song

This one is self-explanatory. You woo the wrong woman, you get nowhere fast. If rejection and the accompanying frustration were not so profound we'd never do anything worth shit. The life of the artist or the life of the mind are in some ways grossly inflated by the people who toil in the arts. The rather obvious and un-gratifying truth is that nothing we do matters and nothing we accomplish lasts. Meaningfulness comes embedded in the context, and so when times change or the people who knew what was what die off, context is lost and with it meaningfulness. Bottom line? Things change and we all move right along. When we look back, things just don't mean what they used to mean. 

Sometimes you see docos about the girl in the song - and in most part they're utterly meaningless because the song is the song is the song, and it exists outside and away from the actual girl. We're blessed that there is a separation of identities there. It's stating the bleeding obvious but a song about a certain girl is not the girl herself. I might even venture to say in this instance this song is much better than the girl in the song.  

The funny thing about people is you can tell a lot about them by what they do, much more than what they say. 

Come join the fun.

It All Goes By

History Repeating

I'm quitting my job at UTS. I handed in my resignation at 9:00 am on Monday. The response I got from my boss was mild surprise. I'm surprised they're surprised at all, but I've also been told management that is  surprised is displaying its incompetence. There seems to be a lot of truth to that adage. 

The joke is I'm headed back to my previous work place, albeit with a promotion and pay rise. When I left I got offered double the money I was making so maybe that made an impact. I'm going back to 3/4 the money I'm earning now but... it's not going to be so annoying. Plus, it's nice to be wanted as opposed to tolerated because you happen to be the random dude they picked up to fill a weirdly shaped need. 

Last year when I got the job I said I felt like was graduating Chatswood to go to university all over again. This turned out to be weirdly prophetic in that I promptly quit university 36 years ago and... here I was quitting it again. I've somehow managed to get my ass back to Chatswood. It's weird. 

The morning I handed in my resignation was also the morning an old colleague from my days at AFTRS passed away. I'd lost touch with him, but others had not and so the news filtered through to me like a bad rumour. I imagine he'll haunt this world as a ghost. There was a lot in his life of which he couldn't let go.

View from the Couch - 09/May/2023

The Housing Crisis Deepens

Just about everyday, I read an Article in the ABC.net.au about some poor person going through the indignities that go with the housing crisis in this country. Some of these stories are harrowing. Others are disturbing. It's all very crazy in a nation with lots of land but also one of the lowest population densities of anywhere. I'm not saying there should be equal lots of quarter acre blocks all the way out to the and outback, but surely there's something not quite right going on. The gap between ownership of real estate and renting is so vast, it's hard to form a picture of how wide the gulf has become in this disparity. Worse still is the utter lack of control the renting class have over their fates, and this is simply not tenable as a society. 

Arguably, all of this is symptomatic not of good government but a succession of bad governments that have simply allowed the problem to fester, grow and metastasise. The problem has become so protracted it not only forms a large chunk of the economy, it's pretty close to being the heart beat of the economy. 

Not being able to plan for the future drives down the birthrate, and with the drop in birthrate comes an ageing population. The very inequality we've devised for ourselves in this society is directly going to be the mechanism by which our governments will fail in the near future. How far is this future? In private conversation, I've been told that NSW Treasury sees 2040 as the outer limit for how long the current model of government can last. If we do not change how we run society, we will run out of money in 2040. Apparently, the future forecasts are so bleak on this, there is a palpable sense of panic inside government bureaucracies. The person who told me this also said that the NSW government is pretty good amongst the state governments - meaning the other states are in a more dire trajectory, and may not last until 2040 before revenues collapse. 

In the short term the state governments are buoyed by the stamp duty rolling in on the back of the housing bubble. When things normalise, what will become clear is that all of those earnings were temporary and the tax base will collapse with the ageing population. There are all kinds of scenarios leading up to 2040, but they all share a common dystopian feel. That's according to my contact. All this is to say, things are not going to be like they are forever. When the adjustment comes, governments are going to see their revenues dry up. Nobody's really got a good plan for this just now. 

Back to the issue of housing. It's kind of strange watching how badly governments are hiding the fact that they are in fact on the side of the landlords and not the renters. The tax breaks that are given to the landlords far outweigh the financial support given to renters. Something like two thirds of the political class own multiple properties, up to and including our current Prime Minister who gets an awful lot of mileage out of the fact that he grew up in dire circumstances. I'm not saying he shouldn't own those properties, but that because he does own those properties, it is harder for him to find the wherewithal to change the status quo. It's no wonder then that the housing crisis just gets worse everyday that goes by. It's no accident, it's actually inevitable. 

The Budget Surplus

Speaking of this kind of thing... the current ALP government is a very queer duck. It has been in power for a year and there's no Whitlam-ish zeal for massive spending programmes to bring Australia up to speed with the world. There is no zeal for reforms in the style of the Hawke-Keating ALP governments. There isn't even the kind of energy (and programmatic specificity) once possessed by Kevin Rudd's government. It somehow balanced the budget and delivered a surplus. This was something that was once protected not to take place until later in the decade. The treasurer Jim Chalmers claims we had help from the increased revenue, which all went to the bottom line to alleviate Australia's debts. 

This is all very nice, and the bit that is perhaps surprising is that they are selling it as a wonderful thing in a time of inflation, that this budget does not add to the problem because it doesn't open money. As virtues go, that sort of sits with the conservative side of politics, no? 

JobSeekers and welfare payments got a little boost but nowhere near what was being sought by the various agencies that report on this topic. It does not concern me, but it does make you wonder why the poor and young would vote or Labor, if Labor aren't going to put a dent in their plight. It's all very mysterious why they couldn't do right by their constituency. I'm sure there's a reason that makes sense in the halls of power down in Canberra, but it does look like a loss of fortitude on the part of the ALP.      

She Used To Live Right Next Door

Geez it's Been A While

Let's see now. April sucked completely. On Good Friday our cat ran away and so we spent the next 17 days in a distracted-depressing-daze, looking for the cat. We eventually recovered her so that was okay but it ruined Easter. That ordeal was an utter drag. 

I still hate my job. It sucks dogs balls.  If I were to pinpoint it, I'd say I hate working for my boss. She means well and she can be nice and understanding but in most part she is a painful pedant with a penchant for power harassment. I've been looking for other work, but so far I've only had 1 interview and didn't land the job. 

I also had the flu since we last spoke. That sucked too. At least it wasn't Covid - although you can't really trust the RATs. I got my Pfizer shot in Mid-April, so at least I don't have to worry too much about the Omicron variant killing me this year.  

A lot of my spare time has been consumed by doing small repairs and assembling bookcases. One view is I have too much old fashioned physical media. The other view is that our old physical media has this wonderful ability to tell us where our minds have been. Judging from the spines of my books, I think I've been t medieval Scandinavia a lot, and a whole bunch of places imagined by Philip K. Dick. 

Some good news... the punk band I formed with some people called WhatEva has been gigging a little bit. We've been doing support and playing in some private functions. We even won a little band comp at the Moshpit. 

Come join the fun.

San Diego Freeway

A Long Time Ago In Another Lifetime

Around the time I left AFTRS, I took a trip out to La-La Land. It was an eye-opener. I hung out for a few days and did some meetings. I got told afterwards that there's something called piss theory whereby if you're in the building of a major Hollywood Studio and you're taking a piss in one of their toilets you're doing something right. I think that pee I took at 20th Century Fox's lot was possibly the high point then. 

At some point I took my rental car down to San Diego and then across the border to Tijuana where tourists go. I had a lot of time to sort of just think about what I had experienced and somehow didn't think about what I was going to do next. That's the problem of being traumatised - your trauma dictates what bandwidth you have to figure out the serious things. One thing I can see now is that I'm incredibly bad at this 'career' thing. 

Tijuana back then was funny-sad, unlike some other places I had been to at that point in my life. It struck me that in life we all carry our heartaches into the next day like some Kerouac novel, and so I ended up with this song. 

Come join the fun!

The New New Song

Get It Out

I mentioned iCompositions in the last couple of posts and I have to say at its peak in the late 2000's, it was a pretty vibrant community. What eventually brought it its knees was the mass exodus that took place to Facebook. Facebook stole from iCompositions the very people who were communicative in the forums. With the added freedom to discuss politics and whatever else that was banned on the iComp forum, there was enough pent up energy for Web2.0 denizens to head over to Facebook. By the time 2014 rolled around, you had the feeling that only the die hards for music were still hanging around. 

The pattern with most artist was that they posted one song and were done. I don't know if this is what Steve Jobs had in mind when he bundle Garageband for free with the Mac, but the vast majority of people that showed up to iCompositions had 1 song, and they were done. The  community itself was made up of stayers who had much more than 1 song. The stayers generally had about 30 songs they had recorded which they would bring in and that catalogue would be their calling card. Then, they would either manage to settle into a groove of producing something every week or every fortnight, and maybe get up to 80 or so tracks. Most artists who had the staying power to produce 50, probably had the staying power to produce 80-100. Artists who produced 100 tracks were actually the rarer breed. 200 was very impressive and anything over 500 was probably a cause to suspect OCD more than creative genius.

While one couldn't judge much from just quantity, once could get a sense of the commitment of an artist from how regularly people posted and how many tracks they had piled up. And so, it was like a war of attrition where you were always looking for a new idea, a new angle and a new way to get to a song. I don't know if I would willingly put myself into that environment again - I kind of feel like my modus operandi has evolved significantly enough that it's not compatible with that mode of rushing something new out regularly. That, was hard work

Come join the fun!

 

Living With Regrets Is A Boring Thing

But I've Had A Few

Every artist lives a double life. It doesn't matter if they're good or bad, or working visual media or sound, or something else entirely, the thing about being any kind of purveyor of creative output is that side of you is inevitably a different persona to what you are really like as a human being. It's not really widely understood by the regular punter who does not undertake the messy journey to creator-hood, but when  you commit to making stuff, you essentially grow a second persona inside of you and, that artist self can have a helluva different character to you. 

Anyway, I say that because most artists who are committed to their thing spend a heck of a lot of time in an almost hallucinatory obsessive space to do with their creative work. If you're anything like Modigliani, you spend an inordinate amount your time thinking about curved lines that delineate the female form in various poses. And if you're anything like Frank Zappa, you're busily trying to tweeze out the weird from the mundane and wrap a song around it. The world of creative endeavours is filled with people living these unseen second lives. Then they get interviewed, and the wrong persona answers the questions on behalf of the wild person doing the art. That's why all interviews are suspect - but that is by the by.

The important thing is, with me, I tend to mull over the things I regret just to get to my output. And one day I finally got bored of that being my process. 

Come join the fun!

Politics Makes The World Go Around

... And Bad Politics At That

Back in the days of iCompositions, it seemed worth writing songs to communicate concepts about say politics or sex or taxation or ethics in a the lyrics - mainly because I was in the most part talking to my fellow musicians. The music was self-evident, the lyrics were not. And then of course there is a crowd that gets into a song from the lyrics first, even when they themselves are musicians. 

Now that I'm releasing some of this older material, it does stick out to me as kind of out of place to be sending out a song that made more sense in another context (iCompositions) than where it will be found (Spotify). Which goes to show that meaning is indeed context driven and socially determined. On a more pedestrian level, songs like this probably don't mean a whole bunch outside of the iCompositions context. 

This number was written sometime in 2014, so it predates the Trump Presidency, but it does take in the early part of his campaign to win over the Republican primaries. Australia already had the outcome-of-stupid whereby Tony Abbott was elected Prime Minister, so you got the ever-looming picture that Trump was going to be a helluva trip to survive. Maybe or politics has grown a bit more sane since those heady days when Putin was paying his cyber army to sow discord in the west through Social Media. (Yes, Putin really is a cunt - let us never forget that). The upside of all that is that some people grew out of their stupidity, eventually. It's a shame it took the attempted coup to sober tip the Republican base. 

Even all that seems a long time ago now.

As always, come join the fun.

Evil Woman Blues

Evil Censorious AI  

I've been playing with ChatGPT lately. It's quite a fun tool to thrash, but I have discovered it is a moralist and a fairly primitive one at that. I asked it to describe the story of Pony the Orangutan in the style of Bukowski, and it was okay doing that. Then I asked it to describe the story of Josef Fritzl in the style of Kathy Lette and it censored itself. I then interrogated it about its self-censorship, but it would not give me what I asked, on the grounds it might offend people. Of course the joke is, I'm not 'people' that gets offended by content, especially one that I asked it to describe. 

Anyway, here's a totally unrelated song.