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.

Tick tock!

So Ben has gone into "holiday training". He's riding his bike loads, swimming during his lunch breaks, and wearing in his new skateboard like a bucketful of gnar. Also, he is doing loads of writing, which is spectacular - I think that me being away most nights selling t-shirts helps.

Yes, it's me, the disappointment you've all been waiting for. I'm 8 songs behind, the band never played in Bathurst (and now the Buckleys have moved to Scone, so the challenge is kind of moot anyway), schools were harder things to infiltrate than first thought, I still don't have my licence, and I somehow never made it on TV.

I guess priorities changed. I still blame the pure evil that was my former workplace for this spiral of desperation and general chaos, although I wholeheartedly know that leaving was the best decision I could have made. I also blame the car for shaking any faith I had in my driving abilities and for taking all our money. Putting more energy back into the band was another factor that veered me off course for a while and took any spare change left behind the couch.

BUT ALL IS NOT LOST! There are still 62 days left. That's two whole months! That's more than 8 weeks! Loads of time...

I am still hoping to:
- Complete the Coast Track. In winter. It's going to be awful and I might get cold and cry. But it will also be a bit beautiful and maybe we will sit around a bonfire and roast marshmallows and that would be nice.
- Finish the harbour walks. According to Wikipedia, "the perimeter of the estuary is 317kms". Stupid giant harbour! If this was any other harbour I'd have seen it all by now!
- Get my break dance skillz.
- Finish my scrapbook.
- Do my Yeats artwork (I was originally planning to use a digital medium, but then I remembered I suck at that. I'm going old skool and buying me a canvas).
- Cook Heath a lasagne.

And the fundraising ball (or at least, as close as I can get to it)!! All I'm saying is, keep Friday 22nd July free, people. What better way to cap off a whole year than by celebrating the hell out of it for a good cause?

As for the in-betweens, well, we'll see how we get on. I can't afford to take a weekend trail ride, but I will take another horseriding lesson. A couple of times, it was almost like the band nearly was about to consider making a video clip. Now it's really happening, but it won't be finished in time to count. We'll have finished filming it, but editing... not so much. I've not joined a local theatre group and performed in a Shakespearean play - but I have been employed at Australia's most well regarded Shakespeare company. I can't help but think that must count for something. It has been great to be reminded of how much I dig the Bard.

I'm now secure in the knowledge that I'm employed at least until we leave for the holiday, so I can relax a little and get to meditating on all this again. Or just plain meditating.

A story

My Mum told me the most amazing story the other day. About how her and Dad got married on a Monday. And how they went to the church in Manila and by coincidence, her old theology teacher from college was officiating the marriage. Who she used to have a crush on. And how happy she was to unexpectedly have him there, because he had been such a great teacher.

I think this is my new favourite story.

HIIIIIIIIII

Hey! I'm writing a blog! Hello! What have you been up to? O RLY? Cool. Yeah me too.

So six weekends of pre-wedding parties, hens nights, engagement parties and actual weddings has been awesomely fun. But I would like my life back now. This is on top of the Day Job v Night Job juggling, with some days finishing at one place at 5.30pm and beginning at the next at 6pm. Now you're starting to get an idea of The Tiredness: a phenomenon rendering me without the energy to finish full blog posts. Heck, even full sentences become too much of a

Can I have a chocolate bar?

The good news is, the temp job I was supposed to have for three weeks at Prestigious Theatre Company got extended for a week, and then another week, and now they've hired somebody but he can't start for a month. So I've got a whole month more to luxuriate in being able to pay rent. Hoorah and stuff! It's a beautiful thing.

The only thing left veering me off the ABT race track and slamming me into the wall of tyres also known as 'failure' is the band's rehearsal and recording schedule, which is about to take off in a big way. Sure, it is going to be all kinds of rad to finally get an aural snapshot of the band circa 2011, but it may also bankrupt us. Hence, I keep working two jobs.

(If you fancy giving us a little push and don't already own a copy of our previous EP, you can download it at Bandcamp - please excuse shameless self-promotion).

I should really do a comprehensive post on where everything is at, but the short version is that there hasn't really been progress on anything. Even the Japanese, which is the only thing I was getting anywhere with.

In other news, I'm proudly banjo-sitting for the next 18 months while Alex is off in the UK being smart at a university or something (oh and also getting married). I have already discerned that all Sufjan Stevens banjo tabs on the net are rubbish, so I am getting my ear tuned up. Hopefully this will inspire me to catch up with all those songs I have yet to write.

I should probably post a picture of something to make this post feel a little more entertaining than it actually is. In that case, here's a picture of me getting ready to go to roller derby.

You're welcome.