am i freezing? yes i am. but, it is raining and i am full of joy.
since our second car was stolen last week, i have been walking home from my yoga classes, which has been a great time for reflection and to just chew the scenery.
i live near the merri creek, which is en route home from class. yesterday, two escaped budgies stopped to eat some seeds on the ground right next to me. they looked very happy in their new habitat. i don’t think i’ve ever seen one out of a cage. what an exotic bird, that we have come to know as a common pet. they look very old worldy, when you look at them with new eyes (does it take new eyes to see the old world? apparently it does).
when i am teaching and practising yoga, i am up early and out and about in my neighbourhood, but my music life is all about late nights and overt behaviour. i haven’t found my balance there, but i believe that is my journey. i’m all about guilt, which is such a waste of time.
i teach a few friends from my music life. it’s great to share this with people i normally would see at the pub. i’ve made a ‘yoga mix’ playlist for my ‘rock and roll’ class (which is the only thing rock and roll about it), featuring bonnie prince billie, feist, stereolab, lush, the arcade fire. all good music to do yoga with. we start with the bulgarian women’s choir and end with the cocteau twins. ethereal transcendant sounds. of course, music is an important part of the session to me.
you’ll be pleased to know that this last tour i just finished, would be deemed a success.
i still come home and crash, as happens with any big production, but i did enjoy myself and i did feel satisfied with the outcome. every time i go on the road, i believe i am coming a little further around that corner. people are finding me again and new fans are increasing. phew! it has been a hard slog, so i welcome the results that this last tour revealed to me.
it was so much fun to share the tour with dave mccormack. he is such a sweet man. sam and i watched his show every night and enjoyed each one.
it was my first run of shows with the latest addition to my rotating roster of available musicians, sam agostino of ‘digger and the pussycats’ fame. not only was he an outstanding accompanist, but an easy, light-hearted fun kind of guy to take on the road.
prompted by the devo-esque design of dave’s ‘davo’ t-shirts, sam suggested i come along and see devo, when they performed in melbourne. it was one of my new year’s resolutions to get out and see more live music and i’ve been a little more active in that scene, but mostly to support people i already knew playing at local bars. so, off i went to festival hall. i had a ball, though i did have to purchase some ear plugs mid-way. why do they have to make them fluorescent orange?
the writing has been steady. the response to my new song, ‘delicate’, was encouraging, although i find it best to forget things like that immediately, or i get writer’s block just mentioning the words, ‘external approval’. in fact, i tried to take the energy i had created from the tour straight into a writing retreat the following weekend and found myself flailing about like a five year old in the throes of a temper tantrum, on a supermarket floor.
still, it was phillip island, a beautiful place to lose your marbles:
these things are intangible and a loose grip is best employed. i like to look the other way, by pretending to do something else, then surprise myself by coming up with a song while i was deviously distracted.
thank you to everyone who sent in photos. it’s a bit hard to take them yourself.
love to you all,
ang x