Scrappy-Do

My dear kindergarten teacher suggested that I should scrapbook my life. My life! This has been more tricky than first thought, for various reasons: firstly, I'm assuming most people choose pay tribute to somewhat smaller events, like a holiday or a birthday. A whole life is quite an undertaking for my first foray into the scrapbooking, but maybe I'm just being a wimp about that. Another sticking point has been not having immediate access to the type of stuff that should go in - I did salvage some interesting flotsam and jetsam when I was last visiting Mum and Dad, drawings and stories I wrote as a child, photos and things like that, but then me being flakey lost the scans and the printouts. I got part of the way through my scrapbook, but I got lost in the middle there someplace.

In my newfound wisdom of the big 3-0, I am compromising with a smaller project: our recent holiday. It is a lot easier to swallow since I've got all the bits and pieces collected from the month - photographs, ticket stubs, flyers and other interesting stuff from the trip. Awesome sister Becky got me an equally awesome photo book for my birthday, so this leaves me with all of my resources and no more excuses.

I'm posting, I'm posting

Alright. Here it is. I am sitting down in front of a computer and my fingers are moving across the keyboard in a way that correlates with the appearance of words on a screen, and this is enough to be considered "forward progress". As happens in Teh Blogosphere (a large continent of Teh Internetz), sometimes you fall off the wagon and the longer you wait to get back on, the more you have to say, the more daunting the task of restarting, and the more confusing the relevance (or non-relevance) of things becomes. Needless to say, I am already rambling somewhat, but it is momentum and therefore I am running with it.

Yes I turned thirty (hoorah!). Yes I failed to complete many tasks on my thirty list, for various reasons. I have a note from my mother, sir. I didn't forge her signature, I swear. I don't regret my failings as much as perhaps I should, but instead I am ruminating on many things, both expected and non-expected, and enjoying a cooling off period. I may have had a teensy tiny freak out about "life" somewhere in there -I think this is a pre-requisite of thirty-dom - and as a result I have not returned to my second job and instead am blissfully able to allow myself some headspace between the first job (more specifically, the gruelling commute), the two bands (both are excellent, thanks for asking), and doing things normal people do such as chores and groceries and grooming (my hair looks like that? Why didn't anyone tell me?).

I feel better already.

We got rid of that beastly car and upgraded to a trusty Toyota Corolla. His name is Chairman Kaga, the Xtra Good Vehicle, and he likes capsicums. He is also an automatic, which means I can already achieve a status reminiscent of driving without having to panic about what the clutch is doing and which gear I am in and what the hell why is the engine stopping???? Ben says "see? It's like driving a go-kart". It is true!

Okay well I best not get too ambitious at this point. There has been a long hiatus and I might pull a muscle or something.

Winter Ball

Hello! My name is Dee and I'm officially 30 years old (and thirty-six days, if we're being pedantic). So far, so good. I apologise for my virtual absence as I have been busy getting lost in Tokyo, eating crispy duck pancakes in London, and being mooed at by hairy coo in Perthshire, Scotland. We returned to Sydney a few days ago via a grueling 27 hours in transit, and are mostly through the veil of jetlag that tends to cloud most brain activity after such a thing.

Here is a coo I prepared earlier - pic courtesy of Becky P

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, though, I can recall that we held a Winter Ball. We did! Our lovely friends Mushu and Jimi Linton (from Ranger Spacey) were charitable enough to join us at the Oxford Art Factory and donate their time for the cause, which was Northcott Disability Services, an organisation which helps support families living with spina bifida and other lesser known disabilities. The wonderful Carol helped us to make it all happen in a legal sense.

What a ball. Many of the crowd showed up in their finest (Jimi's Colonel Sanders tie and trucker cap combo was particularly inspiring) and the room was packed out. Unfortunately the only photo I took was this one:

Accurate signage

At the end of the evening, we had raised $606.90 for Northcott. Considering that we weren't sure if anyone would show up at all, this was a pretty mammoth effort. The Gallery Bar only holds about one hundred punters and I reckon we got them all in there. I was hoping to make $500 to at least have the "500" from the original challenge still upheld in there somewhere; we were stoked to have smashed it.

And Dusker did alright. We sounded mostly like this (handsome man responsible for filming this video asks for forgiveness for drunken zooming).

Birthday time!

Happy birthday, me - have some whooping cough and a sinus infection!

I've been trying to speak as little as possible for the 48 hours leading up to the gig so that I might actually get through it. I wish I didn't feel this shabby. I think I will go back to sleep now. It's my birthday and I can sleep all I want to! Wish me luck for this evening.

x

Uh, I'm sorry, what?

So, like, I turned around, and thirty was staring me in the face, kind of like this:


As you can see, I fell off the band wagon a little bit. Sorry about that.

A few weeks ago, I read this blog post. The timing was impeccable. My feelings at the time were reflected in Jan's realisation: goals should not be chores. And for her to write that post at almost the exact point I felt it, with her doing a similar 30 before 30 and a birthday only four days after mine... it was too poignant.

I don't feel disappointed or regretful about the last few months. The only thing I really feel sad about is letting other people down. People were excited about the concept, I put a lot of faith in my 29 and most of them returned that faith. I gave almost every task I was given a good shot, although full completion of tasks is a little more sketchy. It felt so invigorating to make and re-make those connections with people, to feel a rush of expectation, to be inspired, to be challenged. But somewhere between July 22nd 2010 and now, stuff changed. Personally, I feel that some of that stuff might not have changed were it not for this project, even indirectly, and it is for the better. It has been not only a good lesson in self-evaluation, but a valuable lesson in what we can and can't control. And some things we can't control include idiot bosses, school holidays, cars that choose to break down every second day, the weather, people who won't answer emails, the fact there are only twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week, and also that no matter what I say "yes" to or how I choose to spike my hair , I am not Danny Wallace. Fortunately.

Most of all, I am still bristling with the joy of turning 30 (although it still feels very distant, I'm sure that will change in a few days), and with the accomplishments of the past year.

Oh, and I guess I should probably tell you about this:

WINTER BALL! Please help us raise some money for spina bifida services.

On my 29th birthday, Ben brought all of the postcards to the restaurant, and after dinner he relished in reading them out to me, one by one. Katie's postcard, instructing me to "hold a fundraising ball for the charity of your choice for 500 people", was the very first one. Can you imagine that? Eating an amazing meal and getting ready to hear 29(ish) pieces of your destiny, and that's the FIRST ONE. I nearly forewent desert. Nearly.

For some reason, it was very important that this - in many people's eyes the most difficult of the tasks - not go undone. I realise that we will probably not get 500 people there, but it otherwise fits the brief. All of the acts are going to be wearing formal gear, which is going to be so much rad, and we're encouraging the punters to as well. And with any luck, we'll make some extra cash for Northcott Disability Services. So if you're in the Sydney area, please come - Gallery Bar @ Oxford Art Factory, this Friday. Don't buy me a drink, just chuck a fiver into the donation tin.

"I'm not thirty yet," she grinned.

Giving blood, 2.0

With my own blood-donation song annoyingly looped in my brain chamber, I was steeled for my belated second round on Saturday (although I tried to appear nonchalant, I'm not sure I pulled it off). This time I went to the main donor centre at Town Hall - what a massive difference to the mobile unit! They had those dentist-style chairs that go up and down. I'm easily impressed by such things. The whole facility was decked out clean and white, and I even had the pleasure of being able to watch Ben 10 on the telly while they hooked me up. And as much as I'd joked about it, I was actually totally unaware that the previous hideous bruise I had nursed was not the norm. This time around I've got barely a puncture mark. Smooth.

Needle insertion point carefully obscured for queasier readers

They made such a lovely big deal about it being my 'first time' before, I was expecting it to be very ho-hum this time. But they gave me a keyring with my blood type on it to say thanks for not being a total wussbag and coming back a second time! (see, told you I was easily impressed).

No Mars Bar this time. In response to donor surveying there are now 'healthier options' for your post-donation snack, and it being 11am I was fine with that. The nice lady made me a caramel milkshake and I had a gigantic piece of raisin toast. It was all very civilised and made me forget that I was about to go into a 10-hour merch shift.

Toast and milkshake noms

Mutations

I was revisiting Beck's "Mutations" album yesterday. MAN. It's like wearing a warm liquid suit. Mmm, comfy.

Sometimes I get a chance to listen to the music I love again, and I hear beautiful drones forming, or feel little sparks of light in happy areas of my brain. I think the dead zone of musicality I've been wedged in for so long like some kind of tuneless Aron Ralston is mostly due to not having the same access to my music as I used to. It's very silly. I blame iPhone. I still have an iPod nano somewhere I should be using, I should really dig it out so I can at least have nuggets of my collection.

Thanks for your help on that one, Visual Thesaurus.

Anyway my point is, that's a great album, and it gave me ideas. Ideas. I don't get those very often.

Perhaps ironically, Jacob and Bart, the two fine chaps who suggested I channel my creative energy into the form of a song per month (each), are heinously prolific. Or perhaps that is the opposite of ironic. I can't decide.

For example: Bart created the artwork for this album for Jacob, just for kicks. Jacob then took it upon himself to make the fictional songs real. What a beautiful freak!

As Jacob becomes more involved in the songwriting, my contributions get smaller. I have no problems with that, particularly because some of our best stuff has been initiated by his newfound genius, but it does give my own typical nervous energy a tiny sense of, well, redundancy. I realise this is melodramatic at best. Fortunately as the singer, my position is assured for a while, anyway.

Being in the studio is pretty much the best of all things, especially when there is also chocolate inside said studio. Hearing songs that I've nurtured since the babydom of a few strummed guitar chords grow into strong melodic creatures of their own is hugely rewarding. You should hear what Mallow grew into. She's a force to be reckoned with.

That was a long winded way of saying: music breeds music. I will write more when I take the time to listen more, and awaken that magic little feeling again.

Also, I just received a text from Jacob, saying he just wanted to say hi. My band has awesome people in it.