RIP Jeff Hanneman - and why I still respect one of the heaviest bands on earth

Two random autotrivias :

1) I once did a stint as a blow in DJ on a heavy radio show as 'metal REALNAME'

2) the riff to Slayer's Raining Blood was my best party trick back in 1991-2 (when I could actually play a bit of guitar). I have just unleashed a string of tributes to this band on Tumblr and facebook.

My enduring respect for them may seem incongruous, and I listen to as much jazz as heavy rock these days (and very little true heavy metal). But some of those bands, Slayer in particular, were important for me at a very vulnerable time. Depressed and lost at 18, and reacting a little to having woken up to what the world is really about - coming off the back of 2 years at an exclusive boarding school into which I fitted like a royalist at an IRA convention - this music told me I was not alone and allowed me to vent. And, as the blues, Mahler or Ornette Coleman can also demonstrate, sometimes that sadness or darkness can lift you up. Whereas, if it all seems like shite, some happy chirpy false pretentious halfwit popping out sugar coated lyrics can make you want to reach for the medicine cabinet.

RIP Jeff. You were something real in a world of fake, I respected that and I still do.

Driving back on the Hume Highway with road songs

Early Paul Kelly, a surprising amount of noise, I thought; accoustic, low key, folk-country but he gives sax and snares and guitar solos and dirty rock as well.

Family can be heartbreaking. Now I am in a better place and my role is to squeeze Beloved's arm and to help her steer through and beyond the broken timber into open highway. We drove for a long, long time, across two borders, for negligible returns measured in thimbles of warmth and cold spaces between hours.

I spoke to Beloved's mother. I asked for no more letters that represent the continuing tumble of psychological abuse and mental illness from generation to generation in that family. I heard about how my Beloved is unilaterally wrong, on everything, and how not one such thing could possibly taint the efforts of her mother. I noted the language of favouritism and rejection, the unpacking, in a few minutes of frankness that family never engages in, of years of building resentment and defences based on a false narrative, on a martyr complex, on an obsession with hating the former husband and shifting his ills to one of his daughters. I quietly, carefully (for my oft-assertive personality I was an angel of subtlety and restraint, I promise) pointed these things out. Perhaps the only person to ever do so. A sad, messed up but ultimately abusive person wrung her hands and refused to agree to even trying to meet her daughter half way, to conversation, to any sort of compromise, before walking quickly out.

I am glad we had this discussion. I repeated thrice that there be no more correspondence which, coming from such a place, can only be designed, no doubt subconsciously, to manipulate, draw out guilt, and cause continuing pain. She seemed to agree to this, if nothing else. Beloved, exhausted from 36 years of effort, did not complain about my uninvited intervention.

The JJJ hottest 100 is eclectic and that is a boon on a road trip. There is no sinking into a mood, an artist's favoured key or time signature, and becoming hypnotised by the gum trees. There is M83, and with that breadth of sound bringing to mind (in this time of 80s revisionism) Tears for Fears, and a ripping, screaming sax solo, I was disappointed to learn 'they' is just a 'he'. Starting to skip Gotye, out of familiarity but not contempt. Appalled at finding Lana Del Rey in my earworm.

Beloved lost her Pop, the children's Great Grandfather. For a variety of reasons, perhaps visible in the previous paragraphs, he and his now-deceased wife were quasi-parental figures for her. Dominating her childhood memories, providing a needed bedrock of stability and unconditional love. A sad life that commenced with more than a dozen kids living in a small shack, survived the most brutal battles of Papua and Borneo, lost 2 brothers in a terrible car accident when he got back from war, evolved into that of a successful farmer, husband, parent and, through the prism by which I knew him, much loved and stellar grandparent.

Gentle explanations of loss and death, hints of reflective comprehension from a 5 year old Bear. The generations assembled in the park opposite his hospital, in the final hours, and the joy of Bear and Mitts as they played with so much family they see so little of was ironic, but perhaps, as a celebration of continuity and the goodness Pop has left behind him, appropriate.

Why does it sometimes take a funeral to bring people together?

Beloved likes Emma Louise, Jungle, best of all. It takes her directly to Offspring, to cosy couch evenings stretching back through boxed sets of Secret Life and Love my way. It is strong, but also soft and reassuring. It is all I want to be as we ease in next to our house, back in suburban Melbourne, our children safe, excited cats already talking from behind the door, heater waiting to be fired up and a month's worth of chocolate to be eaten.

As days become years

As Beloved peeled off to bed, I went out for a walk. Like so many evenings capping days that drag on, circling around the screen, files, briefings and other bureacratic occuclutter. Evenings that fail their promise of something to make the day seem worthwhile. Worth more than merely paying the bills.

We are tired. Everything makes sense. But that doesn't change the wait each day for the third part of life, the one where you are adults with your own agency living your own life, to engage, even if just for an hour.

I told an older relative, with a comfortable looking nuclear family life in Surrey, England, that we are thinking of getting someone in the bungalow out the back, perhaps an au pair. It sits empty, unvisited, and we thought if there was a boarder who could babysit from time-to-time we might be able to do things like go out on occasional dates.

...Beloved and I, to be clear!

And anyway (as Bear says when you pause in a conversation with her) they replied that it sounded like I was pining for the past, going on dates and all that; better to adjust to life as it is now. And not for the first time in recent months I found another person's helpful view of my stage in life almost suicidally depressing. And realised that even a happy-looking twee family in Surrey can be the post-script to some compromise that forever consigned some romantic notion like, well, romance, or affection, to a cold little graveyard in the far corner of the park.

Perhaps going out together is not important to those people. Perhaps all of it became less important. But in the words of a Black Crowes number I've been messing around with a bit on my old, scarred, nylon-string:

She don't know no lover,
No man I've ever seen,
To her that ain't nothin',
But to me it is, it is everything.

I walked along the ridge above Merri Creek, where the street lights are infrequent and muffled by dominating trees. It was dark, quiet. Now and then a house was fantastically lit with Christmas lights. A lone skateboarder peeled off into a driveway. A couple of dogs murmered unconvincingly.

All my closest slept. No war threatened them, no fire or floods approached our suburb. There was food in the cupboard. These things are all good and I am thankful. But we only live once, and if we spend our days apart, grinding our faces into computer screens in giant hives, then at some point surely we need more.

Signature noises and tweety-bird pogues

Mitts has a sound, everyone is impressed and Bear is slightly put out. He raises a warble at the back of his throat, I think it's his tongue flapping away loosely, and can raise it, lower it, pretty much sing tunes with it. I would write rrlrrlrrlrrlrrlrrlrrl or rdlrdlrdlrdlrdlrdl or simply rrrrrrrrrrr, yet none really capture it.

When I sing to him he say "STOP SINGING". However on my looking offended he sometimes relents, "Sing Daddy". He relented for Nature's Boy, a version involving his name every couple of lines and references to sitting in a tree (he and Bear have discovered that it's fun to be stuck up in the fork of the tree out the front by Daddy, who then sits under them fretting and waving his arms around behind them ready to make some attempt at catching).

Bear decided her signature noise would be speaking in a high squeaky voice, which is a bit of a thing she has, perhaps not the one I'd have chosen to show off. I'd have gone for some singing instead. She pulled out a few Coldplay lines the other day, but the best moment came from sitting in the very same tree, telling me she was a bird, then singing:

Tweet tweet tweet tweeeeeet,
Tweety tweet tweet tweeeeeet,
Tweet tweet tweeeeeeeeet,
Tweety tweet, twe-tweet....

and so on, being, OF COURSE, Dirty Old Town by the Pogues. Note for note. Which we had on in the car a few weeks ago.

A Bear likes her music, in her own way. My little brother was with us. He was out the back playing and singing, very nicely, a very talented lad. I was feebly picking along improvising, feeling very outshone. But Bearsy, every time another song started, demanded 'Play your notes Daddy' before she would dance.

Enjoying every moment.

.... Enjoying every moment apart from trying to change Mitts' clothes and apart from being woken violently at 6am...

Eva Cassidy, Clare Bowditch, and the Fields of Melbourne

Beloved came home from the Eva tribute breathless with excitement, almost teary with emotion and told me firmly I was to go see the final show Sunday afternoon. She would mind the kids and it would be done. I simply could not miss it.

Eva Cassidy has perhaps the most beautiful voice I've heard. Her story is told elsewhere, but it is short and tragic, and reflects not only the essential unfairness of life but also the cold, anti-creative machine that is the music industry. I discovered her posthumously, like almost everyone, at the tail end of my time in London.

I am a closet singer. Correct that, there is nothing closet about it, I've had lessons and sang a song I had written at my wedding. But closet in the sense that if I had half Eva's (or Clare's) voice I would be weaving tales of woe through the venues of northern Melbourne on a regular basis.

My version of crooning was wrapped up in my early romantic haze with Beloved. The first night we got it together, I asked if I could get her something, she joked 'sing me a lullaby', and I picked up the guitar in the dark and warbled out 'Van Deimen's Land'. She wrote home about that effort! The night before she was to leave, on a separate journey to our chosen home in Melbourne, we huddled together and rocked on the step of the bathroom, and it was 'Waltzing Matilda' (the sad, reflective version not the rugby cheer squad version!).

As she left she handed me a present, Songbird, and told me that when we met she expected me to have learned, and to sing to her, Eva's version of Fields of Gold. And I did. And we are married with Bear and Mitts. So there is back story...

I couldn't help tearing up in that song, beautifully rendered. Clare did a wonderful job. The show intersperses songs with anecdotes about Eva, and some from Clare's life that are a bit like the one above, symbolic encounters that give subjective response to the narrative. The musicians were exceptional- you could hate the songs and Clare's voice (well you would be a robot, but anyway...) and still enjoy seeing several incredible musicians. This was perhaps the only time I can remember when I had an emotional - in the soulful, balladic sense- response to drumming!

When I bought Clare's album afterwards, and asked her to dedicate it to Bear and Mitts, she added 'Top Dad'. I was rather chuffed. I decided to spare her the story about how she got the last 2 car seats in Darebin right in front of Bear in the queue.

I came home and picked up the guitar. I was still singing in the car this morning. Dreams and all that. Although the conclusion I reached is that with musicianship like that around I would do better to put my creative energies into bonsai.

The Awesome Dancer (not so awesome...)

So what exactly is disruptive misbehaviour in a 3 and a half year old?

Beloved and I are both feeling a bit thrown, well, quite upset, after getting bailed up by the teacher at Bear's dance class at the Awesome Dancer in Thornbury. She wasn't subtle. Bear doesn't always do what she's told, and when she [gets bored?] wanders off in a different direction or doesn't follow instructions properly, a couple of other kids (who I note approvingly must look up to her a little) do the same.

This particularly riled the teacher, who emphasised that because these other kids (who are Bear's friends from outside class) followed her, she was disrupting their learning.

Gutted. And not quite knowing in which direction to feel bad. Is Bear's behaviour, which is not loud or aggressive, age-inappropriate raucousness? We push child care to tell us if anything's up, but they've described her as generally obedient, patient, and a good sharer. This last point particularly comes out when we observe her with her other peers, and she seems to us to show mature conflict-resolution skills and tolerance.

Are we being those parents we don't want to be, who can't see that their precious little angel is really wild, undisciplined and in need of more discipline? If we aren't, perhaps someone (who teaches classes of much older kids as well) has a slightly impatient and even age-inappropriate attitude. Certainly the fact that she said

I don't want to shout at them, but...

twice, might have been telling. Because I wanted to reply 'great, I don't want to put a call in to the department administering your Working with Children Check'. But again- perhaps we're wrong, and 3 and a half year olds should know to remain tightly disciplined in dance classes.

Perhaps they should accept personal responsibility (or in lieu we, as their parents, should suck it up) if their own conduct leads others astray.

After all, Bear isn't 3 and a bit anymore, you've got to grow up sometime.

...

My childhood (and beyond), so much boredom, so much unfed creativity, so much annoying teachers with my inability to focus on their head-slapping repetition, all rushed into view. Bear already makes up songs, paints, loves to just get into an activity and explore. Are we letting her off the leash, setting her up for trouble? Should responsible parents get in and crush the dissent early so that their children have the best possible chance to thrive in school, being, per the Prussian model it evolved from, set up in much the same structured, one for all, way?

Kids are full of so much creativity and joy. Looking around, at the way we become as adults, I suppose it's not surprising we try to crush it out of them early.

Age appropriate kid versus impatient teacher, or feckless fawning parents? Certainly this will preoccupy Beloved and I for several wine-fuelled chats on the couch...

Wiggly Party & a Deskbound Daddy

As I jot this down, in a quick 5 minutes mental transition between 2 tasks on my desk, Beloved, Bear and Mitts are sitting 4 rows from the front at a Wiggles concert.

I know, I should be more concerned about the branding and so in. Indeed, I think they've made the same mistake as many adult rock bands in transitioning to bigger, more polished settings, sounds and albums. But when push comes to shove (and I'll bet there'll be some frenetic shoving at knee level today!) they aren't bad musicians, their messages are healthy and inclusive, and they get the kidlets singing and dancing. So I'm excited for them, for Bear in particular, and a bit disappointed that I'm missing out.

This morning Beloved went in to wake Bear up, talking up the gig. And Bear responded:

"I want daddy to come to the Wiggles concert too..."

*sigh*

Best children's stories - Tubby The Tuba

Beloved's favourite story from when she was a little girl... her old LP had long since disappeared, and it wasn't in the shops, but here's the audiobook. We just took a listen and both of us had moist eyes... Bear pinching my hand, thoughtfully, while Mitts just rampaged off and tried to climb the couch.

Tubby, a Tuba, just wants to play a melody like all the other instruments...

Enjoy, Tubby The Tuba.

Bear breaking out in song

Yesterday: "You can't always get what you want-want... you can't always get what you want-want"...

Saturday: "This time ba-by I'll be-ee-ee bulle-e-tproof!"

Spanning generations, my girl chalks up some serious cred with Rollings Stones and La Roux, respectively. Particularly impressed that when I started singing the former with her, and we did the "try some time, you just might fi-ind", she hit the dominant fifth to create the perfect harmony for "get what you nee-eed".

[While I'm pottering about music, KD Lang.. wow. Hallelujah should now officially be banned from reality TV shows and minor diva cover albums for evermore. It has 3 owners, that's enough.]

They're good kids. Yesterday I was sick, and sickly, and flopping around with sallow eyes and no energy. She gave me hugs, Mitts gave me concerned looks. I felt loved.

Memo to the Net: 5 years worth of thoughts on blogging and life... A post-script in assorted figments...

I've fallen into hiatus again. It may be the last time. This may be the last post, sans bugle.

Sometimes its nice to vent and talk for a moment about life. Sometimes its nice to live in the moment. Sometimes there aren't enough moments.

You can't do it all on one blog. Funny doesn't want to read dry, dry doesn't want to read teary. You can't help but care.

It's hard getting too close to a movement you aren't part of.

Being flamed by the other side is unpleasant, slightly. Being flamed by your own is sickening, it turns your world on its head, makes you wonder why you have found common political ground with someone like that.

I started poliblogging 5 years ago with a firm belief that my side of politics held most of the decent people. I now hold the firm belief that it holds a marginal majority of decent people. I have come to be suspicious of extremes, I like the line that joins the yin and the yang.

You can't capture the emotions of parenting on a blog, not fully. It's an experience best enjoyed in person.

Men and women, even those who are trying hard, are still a long way from understanding each other. It is worth the effort, but there is still a long way to go. Very few people are really trying to understand the other.

Debates about music and sport are pointless, logically. They can, however, be a great test of the character of both yourself and those you think you respect.

A room full of bloggers is a study in asymetry and disjunct. It is also a guaranteed source of excellent conversation.

Keeping confidences can be hard. When someone has coffee with you and talks about how they're considering joining either Party A or Party B, then joins the latter and within weeks starts virulently attacking Party A and all of its supporters on their high profile blog, you don't break the confidence. But its frustrating, and you learn about the nuance that underpins so much polemic.

The more people you tell, the less you can write about. Anonymity is the friend of fine personal blogging (see my first 10 or so posts...).

Before LOLCATS was big, I gave you Chairman Mao, don't forget it.

An idiotic blog about a talking cat is an amazingly popular idea. A talking cat is a very funny, and telling, way to discover that some of your favourite threads are populated by people with an irony bypass.

It was also my wife's favourite.

A post about a 60 year old bodybuilder will attract daily visits from people who have searched for 60 year old bodybuilders on Google. It will prove to be the post with the longest tail. You will find yourself wondering at the meaning of life. (redux, perhaps?)

The kids are doing fine, thank you. Mitts is walking around holding on to things, taking steps, and Bear is jumping, painting, helping me water our new mini herb garden and still taking no prisoners. Beloved is back at work, enjoying the return to adult interaction. Minh and Mao are enjoying the new house and the greatly increased time spent outside.

I'm on tolerably better terms with my father, and with myself in respect of my father. In his own, emotionally retarded ways, he's been making small efforts. He still isn't being a proper grandfather, but perhaps the worst interpretations I started to put on his actions were excessive. I hope so, disappointed as I am.

Being a parent is complex. Try to listen to the narrative of the person, allow that to sit apart from the narrative you've adopted. For my part, I'm tired of existing narratives. All of them.

The second hardest thing to capture in a post is raw emotion. The hardest is humour.

It will be reasonable to call for an end to anonymous blogging when it is illegal to hold anything a person has said on a blog against them in a place of work. When you see pigs fly, let me know.

I have learned about mutuality and ethics. I learned not to flame, as I don't like being flamed. Something my mummy said about doing unto others springs to mind.

In this and other things I believe blogging has made me a more thoughtful person.

Blogging is often more like talking than the kind of writing we associate with articles and books. The world does not understand this.

As large group and corporate blogs take over the 'sphere, I reflect that the art of the editor, now much maligned, was always at least as important as the art of the writer.

Writing posts is quite easy. It can be done efficiently and balanced with a decent workload. What drains your energy and time is going back to comment threads to see what people are saying about your last assertion.

Godwin's Law is a crock, designed to allow history to repeat itself. It is based on the negligent conflation of two distinct acts: asserting equivalence and drawing analogy. If you see people cracking down on dissent, or touting racial nationalism, or calling for war at the drop of a hat, history is there to remind us of why we find these things so repugnant.

Feed readers, facebook and twitter have all been invented in the time I've been blogging. What does this say about a policy focussed on teaching primary school kids to use laptops?

When I was in primary school, Ataris had just been invented. I wish I'd learned to work one of those Ataris inside out, I'd have been so much better off when I hit the workforce in the late '90s.

People have given me some touching and profound advice on this blog, and shared the most personal and instructive experiences. Thank you, I am grateful. This has been a highlight.

Once you start keeping 'a record', such as things your kids are doing, a blog can become a source of incredible guilt if you are not diligent and thorough.

Long posts that talk about all sorts of unrelated crap are rarely read. I know.

Part of the reason for previous blogging resurrections was a sense of wanting to reconnect with my online peeps. Facebook has now been invented, there was always email. Mine's armagny [atsymbol] gmail DOT com.

The answer to that is, I don't know, maybe.

Work is hard to find satisfying once you've turned down 2 or more opportunities to do jobs you'd prefer. Even if they were on less pay, or in Canberra.

The Oz Blogosphere is ostensibly saturated. But there are major topics that are all but ignored. I'm not sure why, or whether there is value in exploring them, but I do think there is still room for more, well-placed, writings.

Ditto political parties. On a left-right axis the space is largely filled. On a more nuanced, multi-axis analysis, there are some large empty spaces, and they sit surprisingly close to the middle ground.

Australia is an inherently conservative country, and the likes of Tony Abbott or Barnaby Joyce should be treated with the respect that you'd give to a Taipan in a sleeping bag.

Like music, and probably other creative arts I know less about, writing can sap your emotions as much as it can buoy them.

Child hatred is as common as doting parental blogging. Sometimes, when I'm reading some bigot's rant about prams in cafes or pregnant women, I wonder "Do they vote the way I do?" I hope not, but the thought is troubling and not easy to dislodge.

A way to test the true mettle of your favourite bloggers is to experiment by joining in the same old threads under a different ID. See who treats you like an outsider, see the snobbery and exclusion embraced by some of your favourite blogerati. It can feel like the sandpit all over again.

All good posts must come to an end. So must messy, tatty, incoherent ones.

So must messy, tatty, incoherent blogs. I have, after all, given you an engagement, a wedding, 2 cats, 2 kids, and an outstanding reason to explore old Brandy.

Back to hiatus, perhaps not for long, perhaps for ever.

Love yaz all.

A.

Oh Don't Go There

I must admit I was a bit shirty on the phone to my mum last night, putting in the odd dig at my old man that probably could have been left on the shelf. Occasion for the call- to suggest she suggests he calls his old school mate, who he's also been in the process of brushing off and rejecting, because his old school mate is about to die from cancer.

Possibly it wouldn't hurt you to let him chat about what's on TV for ten minutes, Pa?

Anyway, I tell her happily about where Mitts is at: pulling himself up on things, standing (in fact yesterday he started 'stepping' along the edge of the couch while standing, an exciting milestone!), blabbing lots of semi-articulated words like "da da dgggst" and "anderzz" and "itstst", yanking at books, and bashing enthusiastically on the xylophone.

"Ooh dear" she says, unenthusiastically. Then, without directly relating it to her comment, she starts to babble on about how you can start to tell if kids are going to 'be musical' at this age.

Context- Mitts is 11 months old.

She continues. At this age apparently I was waving my arms around like a conductor to my favourite music, Gilbert and Sullivan (I'd like to point out my tastes did evolve, thankfully). Mitts has actually done the same to Mussorgsky but I leave this out, because this already ridiculous piece of historical fluffery takes an ill-advised turn.

"I knew you would be musical then", she slaps in for effect.

... (pause as my blood pressure goes up a few dozen kilopascals)

"Shame that was discouraged" I understate.

"OH but we BOUGHT YOU saxophones and lessons and things" she jumps back, the usual themes. I was bought something. What more could a kid ask for?

"Yes but you-know-who then actively discouraged me" I reply, still holding back about 5 cannons of rising anger.

"Well you've got to get over it sometime" she retorts, again a bit too quickly.

"No. I. DON'T".

She shifts topics and moves away, wisely. I fume long after we finish.

Yes I got some lessons when I was very young, and a guitar, and much later was able to convince them to switch from a small car to a sax for my 21st present. I don't deny this was financially fortunate. But it counted for sweet F.A. because when this became my overwhelming passion, something I was practising several hours of every day, something I was actually getting very good at, my father attacked this love of mine with a venom I still can't fully make sense of, as part of generally attacking everything about me that he didn't identify with.

In fact in a big worked-up rant about how music was a waste of time and I had no talent anyway, he said he would support me studying "anything EXCEPT music".

This in the context of whining on all his life about how his father didn't support him going to Uni, and how I was so lucky because I'd be given all the support I needed. As it happened there weren't any relevant courses available within 1000 miles of where I lived, and the only courses I was aware of charged fees, so just as when he was a boy, in this particular context, a complete lack of support did make a difference (I actually applied for the Army so I could afford to send myself to music school, a story for another day).

Coupled with constant put-downs about how if I had any talent it would be more obvious, I'd go nowhere, be a loser and so on, this kinda fell short of encouragement.

My mum didn't actively participate, but she didn't do much to contradict this message either, until I was in my mid 20s. I remember vividly the day she said something that sounded vaguely encouraging, remember being touched by it, while reflecting on how it was an offer of hay to the horse that had already bolted. I'd ground myself up with frustration and self doubt for about 4 years when music was all I wanted to do. The dreams had blurred, the time mostly passed.

So it wasn't her fault, but in her constant babble about how when I was a little bub I did this and that before I was the age dot, I don't need her to make some claim on me being a child prodigy, or that being something she spotted and encouraged. Leave it alone, for fcuk's sake.

And here's a message to people who have at some point colossally screwed up a relationship: moving on is possible, but don't ever, ever tell us to get over it. That's a way of saying you don't really think you did anything wrong. And that's just a way of inviting a whole pile of visceral anger to leap out of the place it's been buried and fly down your throat.

I'll finish on a lighter reflection, on the merits of the internet. At the time of the arguments above I was living in Darwin, and my knowledge of the courses available to me was limited by what was on offer, or in the library of, the local Uni-Tafe. I did not know, and had no immediate way of knowing, that there were courses at places like Box Hill College that taught exactly what I wanted to learn.

It is sometimes hard to imagine that just a few years ago that sort of functional information simply wasn't available. If you didn't know something was out there, or where to start looking, then that was that. All I knew about was the Conservatorium in Sydney, and a whole bunch of fantastic music schools in the US that I could attend if I saved about a year's salary....

Dangling Posticiples

I just love the phrase "dangling participle", having first encountered it in a comedy skit where someone erudite and witty (Fry comes to mind though my memory's vague) used it in a pun. Intersection of grammar and sauciness needs no elaboration.

This post merely updates a few things raised earlier, I just wanted a more interesting title than 'updates' or 'stuff I talked about earlier, redux'.

We got the finance, we are mortgagors, souls and all.

My parents have confirmed they won't be coming for Chrissie. In their usual frustrating way they've also given us a sizeable cheque to 'make the house a home', a very nice thought given they aren't very well off. Lime tree, ladder, rainwater tank, lawn mower, gardening starters kit and outdoor setting are all on the possible uses list.

My 'horn envy' posted a couple of weeks back has not abated. I made a random purchase on iTunes and it turns out I picked a classic: Sonny Rollins' 'Saxophone Collossus'. Got lost in his laconic improvisations on the train this morning. Got excited when I saw the clip for a dark, Seattle number involving members of the Screaming Trees, Alice in Chains, and a random, avante-garde tenor sax player (Mad Season 'Long Gone Day'). Felt a tinge of inspiration.

Found my latte flannie. Bought it. Hint of aqua emphasises my 'soft' credentials.

Mitts has pushed forward, officially 'crawling' in a technical sense, though the technique for sustaining this more than about 4 inches is still beyond him. Still, each time he lifts his head, grunts, and plants his face into the carpet I give him a big cheer.

And of course the Saints lost, though I'm happy with their efforts. We all watched the dying minutes, even Mitts. The result didn't need explaining to Bear, given she knows their colours and at the end there were numerous shots of lads in Saints colours bawling their eyes out. Understandably.

Life goes on. This can be their year for regrouping. It will be my year of slate-clearing. The work has already begun...

Searching for Latte Flannie

I am looking for a shirt, I'll know it when I see it.

Flannies are back in, or at least variations on checks that do look suspiciously like flannies in some guises. As much has been recognised by the fashionati.

I've fetished such since seeing a couple on the back of the singer from TV on the Radio. It takes a lot to impress me in a band these days, but TOTR impress me. It's not surprising that something he was wearing a year or so ago is now popping up everywhere.

It's of course entirely sensible that I model my sartorial style on a large black male rock star, as I am all of these things and more.

The challenge, for a dedicated inner city latte type like myself, is flannie-lite; the shamelessly pretentious goal of achieving aspects of the whole drunken mountain man look in a shirt that's also got a few effete touches, like a nice Euro fit and material that's, um, not flannie.

I'm not alone, James Matheson, that hard rocking bourbon beast, was on TV in one the other day. Beloved liked it so much she went out and bought a carbon copy for Mitt-Mitts. To wear to a wedding!

(With post topics like this, I'm surprised I haven't cracked the 1000 visits a day mark!)

Horn Envy

While I'm talking music I will share that I am going through a bout of sax withdrawal. Your scribe once was a good heavy rock guitarist, the kind that could pick up a guitar at a keg party and stop the room with a few chops. Then I got into free jazz on the recommendation of Soundgarden's Kim Thayil and Living Colour's Vernon Reid, and from there explored the entire back catalogue of jazz while my bemused friends stuck to their metal/grunge (a neat schizm in my friends that has largely held to this day).

Sticking on Ornette Coleman between Slayer tracks raises eyebrows, I can tell you.

When I like something, I want to play it. The sensible thing would have been to delve deeper into jazz guitar, building on what I'd already learned to become a great guitarist. But the solo horns are the soul of jazz, and I ended up taking up tenor sax for a while. Coupled with me starting law, this crippled my development as a guitarist as I didn't have time to practise both.

Then I got into singers and songwriting and the sax languished. Again, I liked it, I wanted to play it. And I've vastly improved my vocal in the decade or so since. But vocals are an instrument where if you are born with a $50 Kmart job, you will never upgrade it to a Gibson or Selmer.

I still play the guitar, but after trading my tenor for a soprano sax, for ease of transport, I lost the latter along the way (it was stolen out of a car that I had shipped up to Darwin, to be precise). I have not picked up a sax for several years. I miss the blend of simplicity and infinite complexity that comes from improvising on a single note instrument, and I miss the warm, rich nuance I used to draw from my old Yamaha Tenor with its gold-plated Otto Link mouthpiece.

Perhaps, one day soon? I leave you with the very essence of noir...

A Beautiful Song

I found a song, I want to share it. An iTunes bonus found while scrounging around the works of Martha Wainwright. Set the Fire to the Third Bar is a slightly improbable duet between Ms Wainwright and Snow Patrol (yes, of Chasing Cars fame, the indie Hoobastank!). It is 100% duet, that is, they don't break away into solos, counterpoint or call-and-response and barely deviate from the same melody.

And it works. It is beautiful and understated.

After I have travelled so far

We'd set the fire to the third bar

We'd share each other like an island

Until exhausted, close our eyelids

And dreaming, pick up from

The last place we left off

Your soft skin is weeping

A joy you can't keep in

I'm miles from where you are,I

lay down on the cold ground

And I, I pray that something picks me up

and sets me down in your warm arms

More on the Wikipedia page. Enjoy, if you are into simple sentimental stuff.

Kyle and Australian Idol: burying a history of gleeful abuse

Kyle Sandilands, professional thug and serial ridiculer of children, well at least vulnerable teens, has lost his post at Australian Idol. Now. Finally.

Not back when he was on Idol, ridiculing teenagers or commenting leerily on their looks. Back when I thought the big scandal he was risking was a suicide. A poor, pathetic, low-esteem teenager humiliated on stage, told everything they loved was beyond them, going into the dressing room and picking up a belt...

The producers of Idol have long sat by while judges indulged in rudeness and worse. They left Kyle on the panel, despite his clear lack of anything approaching useful musical insight, lapping up the ratings, ignoring what must surely have been thousands of complaints.

I, a long time tragic viewer of this pulpy show, enjoying as many do the flashes of brilliance from the talented contestants themselves, found myself cursing and telling the living room what I'd do if that was my daughter and he spoke that way to her. I'm sure I wasn't alone. I don't think that much of any of the judges on Idol, but being annoyed because Dicko is a generational bigot who swoons at mediocre prog rock from the '70s while ridiculing anything vaguely interesting written after 1990 is different to feeling a bit sick as you watch a 17 year old being humiliated and ridiculed for fun, Kyle-style.

Why wasn't something done? Would those producers have feigned surprise if one of their charges had burst into tears and revealed some horror from their past during a vicious tirade at Kyle's hands? I'm not sad to see him go now but it's a bit rich to suddenly discover that he's a bogan pig when a long-term habit of indulging in ridicule and nastiness belatedly backfires on him.

While we're here, why is it the So You Think You Can Dance franchise can score big ratings while using judges who actually know their stuff, and while allowing for experimentation, individuality, and some cutting-edge artistry in their format? Could the next Idol judge possibly be vaguely musically literate?

Myf Warhurst?

TV watching- an early victory

One of the times we have been most relaxed about Bear and TV is the final feed- a quiet drink of milk on the couch around 6.45-7ish. I get Bear some warmed-up milk while she 'helps clean up' (often by pulling a few more things out of the shelf) then we flop together on the sofa and stare at the box.

The highlight for Bear is Wednesday nights when "Simon an' Maggie are going to put it on it"; we watch the Cook and the Chef in action and Bear interrogates me constantly about what that is or what they're doing. Beloved usually wanders down just before 7, having fed Mitts, and requests the closing moments of Neighbours. The news headlines come on, then by the time it gets to sport (about 8 minutes on ABC news these days) we're trundling up the stairs to bed. All things going well Beloved and I are standing in the kitchen 10 minutes later toasting our continued hold on sanity with a glass of red...

Recently Bear has been throwing a spanner in the works, but one I'm quite proud of. As I've offered to put on the TV she's told me in no uncertain terms that the TV won't be going on, and requests ranging from

"dum dum the mountain song" (classical music, specifically Night on Bare Mountain) to

"Mitt-Mitts' music box the beatles' one" (Baby you can drive my car, as played on her brother's new music box)

are proffered instead.

Beloved has even made the mistake of walking out and putting on the TV, only to be shouted at by an incensed 2-and-a-half year old music afficionado!

Will it continue, or will we end up dealing with the flaccid misery of TV or game addicted kids, as is being discussed at Essential Baby? Fingers crossed, and while I have to keep reminding myself not to fall into the trap of 'pushing' a particular hobby every iota of interest the kids show in music will be matched by enthusiastic facilitation at our end.

Even at risk of humiliation: last night as I put my dignity on the line to entertain with a rocking air-mike rendition of drive my car, Bear stared at me, unflinching, as if watching a 6 foot purple frog roll its eyes.

*back to the couch*

I read my first word I read it I said it I said "I"!

"What's that Bear?"

*points to a capital letter 'I' on the page*

...

"Can you say that one?"

*moments tick by, a Bear wearing her problem-solving face*

...

"Ay!.... that's Ay!" she correctly states and a dad starts whooping with glee.

"Hey BELOOOVED, Bear just read her first word off the page, she said I, as in the letter 'I' which is of course a word, I'm so proud, did you hear me she READ HER FIRST WORD I AS IN "I", Beloooved...yay, WELL DONE BEAR, YAYY!!"

Beloved returns a volley of similar excitement from the other room. I sit there bouncing my feet and grinning ear-to-ear. Bear smiles, a little bemused.

Who says parents become obsessed with trivia?

At just under 2 years and 6 months my girl read something off the page and I am excited because I love and am sentimental about reading. Well, that and the usual overwhelming dad-pride.

Speaking of....

She's also into singing. This morning she sat next to Mr Man and sang for him, he stared back in awe, I got overwhelmed with the Ah-cutes. Last night she stopped as we were coming down the stairs, looking serious, and broke into a rendition of 'dancing face' by Justine Clark, complete with frowns, wiggling ears and other highlights. I cracked up laughing, but she didn't miss a beat, continuing with the song and hamming it up even more, clearly impressed with the effect she'd had.

Daughter's always on stage.

(Updated the title slightly! Bear has been talking her head off for ages, the excitement here was about her recognising a word, albeit a single letter, and reading it off the page with no clues.).

A Thousand Kisses Deep

Aside from an exceptional rendition of The Partisan, I was blown away by a spoken word piece at the Leonard Cohen concert, so much so that I feel the urge to share it here.

A Thousand Kisses Deep...

Read the words...

Hear a truncated version of them unfold...

Top 5 Bear singfest numbers

Top of the list has to be "So what.... I'm a rock star... got'm rock moves... an' I feeeeel aaaalright, tonight, s'alright, tonight....... so what... I'm a rock star..." On it goes, Pink should be impressed. Sometimes there's even air guitar.

But fear not, there's also age appropriate music like, um, Ladyhawke; Paris is Burning.

Justine Clark probably comes in third with I like to Sing, although I might be just showing personal preference for Ms Clark, who I've almost bumped into on Spring Street. Almost the same spot I saw Denton today. But I digress...

Fourth and fifth (probably a bit higher in truth, but truth can be disturbing) would have to go to some Wiggles action, probably 5 little ducks and Henry Rockpuss (Octop...).

But the best thing of all is when she pulls out the tambourine, or xylophone, and says "daddy do it toooo", and we slam out some noise and in the middle she's smiling and she says...

"Jamming!"