Tuesday June 13, 2006

Extreme conditions

Was all perky and ready to leave for the bach at 8am. But worries and troubles set in. It's incredible how easily that happens. Firstly, it was impossible to find out from any of five freecalling numbers the condition of the roads in our area. It's been blowing a gale and raining a torrent - I was worried I'd get on the road and have to sit there for hours behind a fallen tree, or worse - other cars.

Then there's the Day Job issue - a pile of briefs waiting to be turned into web-writing for this upcoming exhibition. Despite the Project Manager's very pragmatic, supportive attitude ( 'Don't arrange your life around waiting for these briefs') I still feel a real pressure once they arrive to do them straight away.

As you may recall, I said in my last blog that I would spend the day yesterday loading up photos, recording my songs and doing my Te Papa writing. I did some of the photos and I recorded the two songs, but I just couldn't make that switch to Te Papa writing. I never predicted how difficult it would be to swap between these two modes  -  songwriting retreat mode and working for money mode. I don't have to travel into town or sit at a Te Papa desk to finish this contract - I can do it from the (dubious in winter) comfort of my own home. But it's still a really different headspace.

The pressure's felt strong today to stay at home and do the briefs rather than go to the bach. Coupled with a misunderstanding about my evening's activities with Chris, everything seemed to be conspiring against me. Do you have mornings like that?

Fortunately, Tyree rang me at a key moment. She ear-bashed me in a loving way - told me to get in my car with a little food parcel and drive. She told me to stay overnight up there, too. She reminded me that the most important thing right now is this retreat - that there is lots of loving energy heading my way from lots of people to make it happen. I should stay faithful to it and the Te Papa work could wait.

She's absolutely right. I really needed someone else to say that to me this morning. I'm now in the Paraparaumu Library writing this on my way to the bach to open my new Care Package...

I may not be able to write again till tomorrow night, as there's no internet connection up at Waikanae, but I'll try and sneak out later today and let you know what was in the parcel...cos I know you're all dying to know. 

: )

Thanks for the emails and messages of support so far. If you would like to email me with a kind word or inspirational thought, please do.

The two songs from Days 1 and 2, by the way, sound much better than I thought now they're recorded. I've even started experimenting with harmonies for 'He niho'.

x

OK so!

Care Package Day 4:

It's a pinboard with all kinds of crazy stuff pinned on it. The 'read me' letter stuck to it says that today's package involves doing something, because Sian thought I may be getting bored.

She's stuck to the board all this amazing detritus and I can remove it, re-arrange it, generally feck with it however I want. Take everything off and put newspaper scraps on it. Pin some of the sequins from Day 1's parcel to it in a pretty pattern.

There's a bizarre pin-cushion in the centre - a ball of pink satin held in by an encircling bunch of hand-holding, generously upholstered, pony-tailed...monks? Ha! There's drawn and chalked leaf fragments, photo fragments, cut up and ripped. A segment of one photograph looks like a skerrick of bone on a lush carpet of kawakawa. There's tiny photograph pieces that Sian's cut into the shape of wonky birds. She's skewered these on the pins so they sit proud of the board - like butterfly specimens. There are torn shreds of a photocopy of some dark, blotchy artwork. There are a lot of photos of kawakawa here. It makes me think about the healing properties of kawakawa: it's a blood cleanser, an antiseptic, a great general tonic, a pick-me-up, and it has mild anaesthetic properties. You can drink it as a tea or make poultices or stronger concoctions from it.

I remember picking some kawakawa once while I was walking up to the (geographically ill-named) Centre of New Zealand in Nelson. I brought it home for my mum - it wasn't long after her husband - my stepfather Bill - had died. I made her and my brother and sister-in-law cups of tea from it. No-one seemed to enjoy it as much as I did. If you make it right and add honey it tastes like licorice, or those aniseed wheels I used to eat when I was a kid. They cost 10 cents and were impossibly hard to bite.

 

x

OK, well I've got the beginnings of another song, probably called 'The Sister's Song'. Some of the lyrics so far:

I don't believe you'll do me harm / cause when you're warm you're so warm / and we all depend on you / I wait to see where you will move / then follow you around the room / it's a different kind of giving

I feel reluctant to write out lyrics, because (as Neil Finn has said) they're not poetry - they're always so embedded in the tune and the instrumentation and aren't meant to stand on their own. But I figure it may be getting a little dull reading about all this stuff in theory, so there's a little taster.

At the moment, the melody and the chords are fairly....avant garde. I'm not sure it'll make it onto the album or the stage. Maybe I just need something to knit it together for me - another instrument part, or a bridge. A bridge is probably essential. The verses are Bic Runga and the chorus is Andrew Lloyd-Webber meets Alanis Morissette. There's gotta be a bridge between those folks.

Just feels a bit obscure and un-hooky compared to the other two. But there you go. I always have a couple of these ones up my sleeve, for those occasions that call for something entirely un-hummable.

Can't count the times they've come in handy.

x

H