What I'm Working On

One Last Time

I'm prepping a CD of 'Satellite City: Live at the Manning Bar'. Yes, I'm re-working those recordings one last time. Sometimes I feel like I've polished these recordings so hard there's nothing left of them to enjoy for myself. However, it is this one last time because after this process is done, I'm consigning it to history - and so I should. I've been the custodian of these recordings for the last 19 years and (yes, you read that right, 19 years!) it's getting to the point where if I can't get this off my plate for good, I'm just going to not deal with it at all.

Even so, I trotted on to Sydney Uni campus to get some photos of the Manning Bar - and it was closed so I ended up with some photos of just the Manning House from outside. It's been years since I'd been on campus; so damn long that I couldn't even recollect my angst of trudging past the Physics Building towards and away from the Bosch Lecture Theatres. All I could recall was a vague feeling of discontent and not belonging. Winters used to be shit, and summers were shit too. I used to hate it, but it was long past the embers' last flash of anger in that fire.

When I listen to it as closely as I have done, all the faults manifest themselves mercilessly while the actual *good* seems to recede more and more. It's hard to explain but I feel buried in the faults getting more and more depressed. All the charming mistakes and bum-notes just revert to being just that, while the added clarity actually sheds light on what exactly it was that was being played. You know this used to be good and fun, you think, but the process keeps demanding closer inspections of things that perhaps are better left to sleep in time.

Yet I have a memory of what it was like to play these songs on those particular nights - and its significance still resonates within me, and it is that which keeps me at the grind. The pleasant surprise is, there are people actually waiting for these recordings. I guess the best outlook is that this time next year, it would all be history at long last. Until then, it is one last herculean effort to get it right. Really, the last step is just getting it self-published and them I'm done. I feel like I'm staggering to the finish line with this thing and when it's all said and done, I'll crack open a scotch in a lonely room and have one last listen and be *done*.