Out with the old
Don't mind me, I always get insanely optimistic at the start of a New Year. It's not a bad impulse and the only trick is to capitalise on it while it lasts.

2003 wasn't all bad: I was legitimately working at a university, I started a blog and kept it happening, I had the best Valentine anyone has ever given me: a whole month of love verse snippets, I made it across for my sister's wedding and friend's fortieth (one day apart)
But I have a lot of work to do to make this year more fulfilling: places to be published, social connections to be rekindled, doubt and hesitation to be conquered

I'll keep working on the webpages and hope that the hyperlinks I hap upon here are of interest to the people who do drop in here.

I think Ella's right about comedy so I'll brighten the blog with more humorous flights of fancy.

I'm probably about done with religion but I will have links to the unnewsworthy in other lands and infuriate the blow-ins with links in other languages. Maybe I'll even find something written in Cornish
It's this sort of stuff that strikes me as characteristic of the world wide web.

As for my own indulgences, there will be comics stuff to tie you up. And any excuse for musical musing
Plus the revolving link that everyone's forgotten about will continue with this kind of thing

Hope to see you here and, for those who have their own online journals, I'll be sure to be popping my head up with commentary there as well.

Happy New Year 2004

The day after
Aaaargh! I just lost the inaugural Day After Boxing Day DIB Quiz. My computer has been going down on me quite a bit lately

Let's try again:

1. For which films did Katharine Hepburn win the Best Actress award?
   
2. Name a film directed by Peter Jackson before he embarked on Lord of the Rings
   
3. Why is Ben Affleck's insistence that he will only reprise the role of Daredevil if his buddy (Clerks creator)Kevin Smith scripts the sequel actually not unreasonable?
   
4. Where is quintessential small town American Smallville filmed?
   
5. What song title is shared by Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello?
   
6. Elle McPherson had a guest role in Friends. What is her latest venture?
   
7. What do the W in George W Bush and John W Howard stand for respectively?
   
8. What definition of WMD could retrospectively justify the war on Iraq? Extra point for creative answers.
   
9. How old are the mainmen in the 'greatest rock band in the world'?
   
10. Choose the Best Actor 2003
    

Swig
Check out all the gigs I've been to. Yes, folks, I've seen everyone from Joan Baez - described as the 'Madonna of her generation' (though I don't think she ever gave Melanie a "tonguey") - to the Butthole Surfers. And that's just the letter B.

Things got off to an inauspicious beginning with Buddy Williams who toured the very small country towns. I saw him with my parents at Beacon Town Hall. Seeing Jimmy Little recently was like coming full circle to the old style country road show where the singer mingles with his fans during the intermission.

I was not enamoured of country music; it was what my folks listened to. And it was more convenience that led me to see Slim Dusty in Northam. After that there was the first show in the 'Big Smoke';a solo by Cliff Richard (so solo that he banged on his acoustic guitar for percussion) We drove down in the Youth Group bus for that one (another highlight in the group's activities was seeing Colonel Sanders - a surreal experience when you consider his act was dressing as a southern colonel and frying chicken. He didn't even do any cooking on stage like Jamie Oliver)

The first show I went to of my own volition - rather than just tagging along - was a fitting choice , Elvis Costello at the Perth Entertainment Centre; once the largest centre of its kind in the southern hemisphere. He was my favourite artist for many years and still figures very highly despite all the MOR stylings. He's my role model as a lyricist; apart from being supremely clever in wit and wordplay, his range covers the political and the personal equally well. Of performers who began their career in the seventies, he is one of the songwriters eminently worthy of having his songs covered. They have a lasting quality separate from any raspy rendering Costello might give them.
I've seen him three times so far.

Two that got away were John Cale; I went to the autoteller and found I didn't have enough for a ticket, and Big Black; saw them advertised in Phantom Records but didn't know who they were. When I found out how powerful they were I was spitting chips.
Of course there have been many other gigs I would have loved to have gone to. But I figure, looking at this lot, that I've done okay.

A skin has formed
A week since I last posted. Well, he pouts, you've stopped commenting. I went on a wander of anonymous blogs and posted comments and you should have seen the reception - folk were just delighted that someone was reading their 'work' and took time out to offer some thoughts.

Of course with blogs you don't know what you're going to get: a blogger obsessed with the verities of facial hair, an opinionated git or offensive swine; perhaps the blogger goes on for too long or his or her entries are too sporadic to provide continuity (isn't it funny that the Macoholics in that last link call themselves sporadic, when they post regularly, while overly ambitious bloggers call themselves 'daily' and have to keep explaining why it's been nearly a fortnight - not that that link was a good example. I wasn't being pedantic, really)

Well no good whining, I'll take this blog into the festive season with a quiz; both potentially fun and requiring feedback and input.

Baptismal font
"Ho hum, another basher of Witnesses" Not at all. In fact I wonder that people categorise Kingdom Hall and Watchtower as manifestations of a cult. I would say quite firmly that the Jehovah's Witness movement is a sect but not a cult.

To my mind a cult departs steeply from the original tenets of the faith it purports to be a part of.
The second holy book and latter day prophets of 'the Mormons' is an example of this. Or the less than savoury example of Moses David, who - despite spending no more thought than necessary on a nom de plume - managed to make 'Christianity' about him and his selfseeking agenda to a selection of the seriously deluded.

Differences in degree but a far cry again from an organisation that attempts a serious (some would say too serious) examination and application of the Lord's Word as layed down in the scripture. All other considerations aside, this would seem to be the primary aim of being Christian: not to do good works, to love thy neighbour, to forego the 'sins of the flesh', but to understand and follow the dictates of the Divine Creator, whatever that might mean. Only a cult could spring from visions, dreams or other forms of message supposedly delivered from on high to some specially favoured individual(s)because, for Christian purposes, the True message is in the Holy Bible and the role of priests no more than to spread the word and do good deeds.

I don't see that anything the Witnesses attempt departs from this goal. That they may be mistaken on certain points does not divert from the earnestness and methodical nature of their enquiry. So I think it is a little lazy and insulting to write them off by latching onto their most 'bizarre' practices. "Oh they're weirdos, they don't take blood transfusions, they don't vote..." It is not - or should not be - the intention of religious enquiry to pick on some vulnerable feature and dismiss the belief system on those grounds, Piers Akerman style. A better measure by far would be to assess just to what extent they are consistent within their ideology and that of the broader context they locate themselves in.

II

If you want to turn your hose on religious callers then that is a matter of personal choice.

I thought it might have been fun to have a spirited satire on the convention where the assembled sixty thousand suddenly have giant sprinklers turned on them, or the guard dogs at Olympic Park stadium are unleashed half way through proceedings.

This'll keep you, Awake!
Not a dream, not an imaginary story...

Imagine a horde of Jehovah's Witnesses heading your way - they come from all walks of life and from every corner of the globe - and they're converging on Olympic Park for a conference. So it's the early morning train, more crowded than usual, and it's working back to rain just for the weekend. And you get off at Central in the ol' somnambulant state to find, not the odd straggler heading against the wave of passengers getting off, but more JW's than you can shake a stick at

That was my experience this morning. It's not as though I wasn't prepared for it as I'd seen and heard about it beforehand. But I wouldn't want to speculate on the respective scariness of the masses of rugby fans a couple of weeks's back and this more sober procession.

Coffee Cup Ring
footnotes
I don't know what a scholarly dissertation would make of song. There must be a reason why theorists are not keen on examining a single song in any exhaustive detail. A typical review is more likely to mention a trend to mawkishness than to do a Walter Benjamin on chorus and verse.

But before I mastered hypertext [chuckle] I did seriously think of putting footnotes on the printed versions of Postmodern Tension and One Vinyl Time. In the first song because I wanted to render it as nerdishly close to the prevailing sentiment it espouses/exposes, and in the second because most of the music acts namechecked were obscure at the time they released records in the late seventies and early eighties i.e. the dying days of vinyl as it was.

Now I like to build multiple meanings into my songs and poems so explaining them would defeat some of that purpose by needlessly telegraphing too much. And, besides, there is a real sense in which the Death of the Author is true. If you craft a piece well then it should lose overt authorial intention and become owned by whoever gives it so much as a sideways glance.

The creator of any piece which possesses something artistic, or is cast in that light, has to know when to give up their baby. They must forego their fears of being hopelessly misunderstood in intention or outcome, or both; of having their best moments overlooked on superfluities or compared unfavorably to artists with whom they feel no kinship. None of this matters compared to the work itself. It has greatness or it does not; it speaks to us or remains dumb. It cries to be released and find both praise and scorn - anything but anonymity.

I never wrote anything good until I learnt how to release the clutch - slowly - how to squeeze the trigger - gently - over time

Didacticism is dull; no matter how worthy the cause or how earnest the speaker. Yet I would not want to bury my message in ellipsis and allusion. Perhaps the message(s) just one part of a larger idea and can be weaved in.

II
So how to describe the process? Here the artist is caught between a concern to explain their work (if not themselves) and to preserve the opportunity for the critic or the puzzled observer to engage with the text (and here if nowhere else I mean text as any semiological construct; anything that projects meaning)

III
More on the process of songwriting, or leastwise lyric writing, to follow (but only if you write in)

Meanwhile a key to One Vinyl Time as a literary text (and many song lyrics work supremely well without being the least bit literary) is to bear in mind that the bands mentioned are just names for the most part:

I don't own any XTC but I share my enthusiasm with those who do. The reference here (apart from being a handy pun) is to the many XTC albums that keep the X section from getting lonely; not to any raving I've done with anyone about how good "Dear God" is or what a great pop act they are.

I've never heard anything by The Lurkers or Human Sexual Response though their use is both relevant and convenient to sentiment and structure.
A musician would not try to rhyme Human Sexual Response - limited rhyming possibilities and untidy syllables.

Of course not even I could wedge Bingo Reg and the Screaming Jeannies into the narrative. And that was despite a few sunny lunchtimes in the park musing this as joggers went by. Turns out they never released anything anyway so they exist only dimly in the memory of a few sozzled punters with a penchant for jolly sounding live acts.

And just as novelists report of characters taking on a life of their own so song stories develop beyond my thoughts on how to control them. It's the happy confluence of rhythm and meaning that makes the writing process such a joy.
It also has the potential for misunderstanding: the irony wasn't apparent, you hid the satirical intent. Maybe it wasn't the idea to work with the primary meaning OR against it but to build in different, conflicting narratives. Here I think you need another guide to tell if it 'works' or not.

I do like One Vinyl Time as a rare example of a song of mine that is not written in first person; it's all observational. And I write my fair share of downcast songwords but have a soft spot for the stuff written in a more positive voice. One Vinyl Time is nothing if not affectionate.

One Vinyl Time
Gazing across a sea of black
To the Lurkers at the back
A guy who is so ensconced
He passes over Human Sexual Response
One vinyl time

A piece of the action
Played to satisfaction
A branch of the performing arts
Where everyone plays Darts
One vinyl time

Wiring in to riot and risk
Years before the silver disc
TV Personalities what gives
I know where a Young Marble Giant lives
One vinyl time

Australian Models and British Models
Deconstructed Doll By Doll
Till Talking Heads can take control
Reconstitute your soul
One vinyl time

I'll have what she's having
Congratulations to all the intrepid souls who participated in NaNoWriMo - an exercise in writing a fifty thousand word novel in a month - and completed the task. (I don't want to think about what I did or didn't do in November: onward and upward.)

I have a friend's website that I'm trying to get a hosting resolution for now (and the haggling I've been doing at work trying to get a new scanner could help here). I'm tinkering about with my own website though I mainly add links as that is the easiest path to results and, for some daft part of my brain, the most fun.

Not that I'm not pondering over nested tables and stylesheets and CGI script. I'm currently reading Absolute Beginner's Guide To Programming and my particular absorption of the material won't be a threat to my programming friend at IBM but it does help me understand what I'm doing in a way that some of the manuals, that go into detail immediately, do not.

It's quite possible that this latest library book is a ruse on the stubborn part of my brain that doesn't want to get down to it, to stall for time. But I am mainly reading it at those times when I can't be spinning webpages anyway. And it is helping.

I have scaled back on my library borrowing as I used to take out heaps of books at once and have a fragmentary reading experience whereas now the only items I borrow in number are the CDs.

I don't have any sinister plan to rob artists of their copyright. I take out CDs for the same reason I borrow books - because I'm curious as to the content but not necessarily interested in adding this or that piece to my collection. I like a lot of what Midnight Oil did and so of course I wanted to have a listen to The Real Thing disc even though I'd more likely buy 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
And it is handy to listen fully to what an artist produces to see whether you like them. In this way I've decided george and Something For Kate are boring and The Eels are not.

But what does it taste like?
I did try to post an entry before I left but the link was down. And I've been away for three days on a retreat; most excellent. It was a series of presentations for university admin staff, an opportunity to network, and a welcome break away.

At one point a presenter said they objected to the term 'non-academic staff'; being defined as not being something else. But this can have its uses>I am a:

non-sports fan I watch Wimbledon sometimes, I laugh at Roy and H.G. sometimes. I'm bemused by the Footy Show and The Fat and even Live'n'Sweaty (despite Andrew Denton being the host). I'd never 'sit and watch the game'. I'm not tempted much by pay TV as I'd never watch the sports channel. And if you want to defeat me in Trivial Pursuit stump me at the end with sports questions.

non-motoring enthusiast I go to two main spots in the newsagent: rock rags and comic books. I've been known to have a browse through writing magazines and current affairs journals. But the racks of car mags do nothing for me. I like the look of old cars but I know I wouldn't be prepared to spend my weekends chasing parts for the Zephyr or the Oldsmobile

non smoker swallowed nicotine poison when I was two (thought it was cordial) and have little tolerance for it

non-handyman I was only handy on the farm because I was physically strong and could put up with going round and round in circles (a major part of farming). But fixing things has never been my forte.

non member of anything. I have joined all kinds of organisations. But I don't stay. PK list is the exception that proves the rule.

non-entrepreneur the one I rail against since I could imagine myself happy pursuing some idiosyncratic goal and profiting from it into the bargain. But it doesn't come naturally.

non conservative for the most part.

nonchalant

nonsensical

non partisan this partly stems from my debating days when I could argue equally well for either side and partly from being Libran.