Too Much Fun

Shout out to the creative crew at the TooMuchFunCollective operating out of a leafy side street in Sunshine Beach, where the sun is shining and everybody's wondering whether the weather will turn that low pressure system into an analogue wave machine.

The Blurred Crusade

Hope your weekends don't fly by in a blur.

Song to the Siren

Another bleak and cold autumnal dawn as the frangipanis become shrubby skeletons, as I fumble with the gas stove that seems to have only two settings - Microflame or Flamethrower.
It's one of those slow mornings when you need the haunting mystery of a band like This Mortal Coil and a splash of colour. Other bands like The Czars have covered Tim Buckley's beautiful Song to the Siren, but today it's the voice of Elizabeth Fraser of the loose collective of musos that were This Mortal Coil that gets me in the frame of mind for The Commute.

"When I'm as puzzled as a newborn child

I'm as riddled as the tide

Should I stand amid the breakers?

Or shall I lie with death my bride?

Hear me sing, "Swim to me

Swim to me, let me enfold you"

Here I am, here I am

Waiting to hold you"

from Song to the Siren by Tim Buckley 1970  

Distraction

I'm sitting at an old Mac in the kitchen at the end of the Easter - Anzac Day - school holidays while the sun and rain fight it out for my peripheral vision. I'm supposed to be hunting through my archives for some barrel shots of Ben Nothling of Holster Fashion taken on a cold, bleak, rainy day like today - the sort of day when ships get wrecked on beaches while nobody's watching.

Instead, I'm distracting myself by looking at some beautiful blog work by folks who think that Polaroid 100 film rocks. Not a wave among them. The imagery is moving and has the wow factor. I don't know where "the wow factor" comes from - apart from screaming across a good sized wave inside a barrel.

I know it's my reaction to what I'm seeing before me. I'd like my images to have the wow factor but cannot be objective about them. I love every shot I took today. I need a few days away from them before I ponder "what was I thinking?" and press delete. Maybe I should ask The Art Historian who's in the other room listening to some American ladies on TV sitting around a table dissecting the dichotomy that might be Donald Trump. Best not to disturb her.

I get back on task after another coffee and find a couple of sequences of images of Ben. These are from the same wave - only a few seconds but much "wow" apart.

Anzac Day 2011

After surfing with the ghosts of my father and brother yesterday, a few of us took my mum to the Kawana Waters ANZAC Day service. It was a public holiday in these parts - a day where we honour those who perished in war and give thanks to all those who returned from war after sacrificing their youth and their health - both physical and emotional. We also remembered war widows like my Mum who married and cared for the returned servicemen in an era when there was no such thing as counselling.

It was heartening to hear the efforts of the next generation, too - the local primary school band; a couple of poems about Anzac Day from some of the local high school students and the haunting bugle tune The Last Post played by a grommet of about nine. As dignatories, old chaps in suits and war widows like my Mum rolled out of the little surf club sheltering us from the rain, we placed a small white wooden cross with all the wreaths in memory of my late father, who penned these words many years after he returned from war:
"My parents came to the Depot to pick me up, along with my hammock and kit bag. I was grateful they left me with my thoughts. The immediate days after my demobilisation were quite strange and seemed surreal and I. like a great number of ex-servicemen only felt at ease when in the company of other ex-servicemen. I well remember sitting in the middle of  our back lawn at Kedron yarning with a friend who had been a P.O.W. We would all automatically stop talking if someone came who was not a returned serviceman."

"From the time I went away as a 17 and a half year old eager, bright eyed and bushy-tailed teenager, till the time I returned to civilian life as a 22 and a half year old sadder and wiser young man, I had enjoyed a comradeship that is borne out of complete trust. "My life is in your hands. Your life is in my hands." That comradeship continues today."
BIG Thanks Dad. And Mum.

The Son Also Rises

One for my Christian brothers and sisters. Happy Easter.

Bells Beach (not)

Contemplation and Spectacle

Busker Tim

Classical Gas(ton)

One for Sharp Martin

Twice Hamish

Twice the Hamish plus once the full moon = a few weeks ago.

Wach n Roll (Part 1)

This kid clearly didn't know he was in the presence of surfing champions  - Tom Wegener and Christian Wach who won the Seaglass Project Finless Comp at this years Noosa Festival. C Wach donated the board to raise money for Japanese tsunami victims. Way to roll.

Confession

I have a confession to make. I promised various people that I'd send them photos I took of them - a couple on the beach at Nana Brine's, Rich Pavell at Currumbin Fish Fry, Rusty Miller at Noosa, Tim at his Big Shell and my mate Phil. 

And I haven't done it.

Yet. 

Sorry folks. You will get photos. 

Thanks for your patience.

Jesus Came to My Birthday Party

Analogue era musicians Midnight Oil proved that fans don't have to understand all the words in order to enjoy the music. And so I find myself enthralled and intrigued by the moving music and sometimes indiscernable lyrics on the latest long player from another Aussie band The Middle East titled "I Want That You Are Always Happy".
The tunes range from the melodic to the maudlin to the mysterious, but always interesting and moving. For a taste download track 4 combining controlled fuzzy distortion with whimsical lyrics like:

"Jesus came to my 

birthday party when I

was seventeen

It was a long time ago"

Jesus Came to My Birthday Party

The Middle East 2011

Share the Love

Today's post is dedicated to the wonderful folks at the Sunshine Coast charity, Frangipanni Dreams. You people are the best. Thanks for sharing the love with the lonely, the elderly, the financially distressed and the dispossessed. Life isn't just about us.

"I know you think that you 

should make a trip to Calcutta, 

but I strongly advise you to save your money 

and spend it on the poor in your own country. 

It's easy to love people far away. 

It's not always easy to love 

those who live right next to us"

Mother Theresa

Beautiful Day

It's a beautiful day - especially if you share a dawn surf with a few mates.

10" x 35mm

Section 43

It's raining hard on the tin roof. It's bleak. And I have slept in after a late night shooting with a 20 year old British Bowens monobloc. Too make it worse, I had a disturbing dream where Paul McCartney's guitar riffs were better than Keef's.

So to get the brain into gear while I make my preps for Commute #96327, I hunt up the song Section 43 by Country Joe and the Fish - a version they did at the Monterey Festival a good decade before I visited that lovely part of California. The psychaedelic sonic wonder ends after six and a half minutes and iToons shifts my ears to Jefferson Airplane's Somebody to Love. But all I can hear is Jim Carey's version in the movie Pet Detective(?) and click on the next folder of tunes - a bunch of songs about the moon. In all this time, I have managed to make a coffee and look out the wooden windows at the rain a number of times.

I slap a bit of meat and cheese on a few bread rolls. (No butter). The big headphones keep my greying temples warm while the iToons on the computer kick along to their own logic. And now they have taken me back to more recent times with The Rabbit in the Moon's electronica remix of the Stone Roses' "I Wanna Be Adored". Brainwave - psychaedelic superband - Keef Richards, Country Joe and Ian Brown. Sorry Paul, John Cale is on bass.

Gas Chair

Comfort Zone

I'm a bit nervous this morning. Have to give a presentation in front of some leaders in my organisation. I'm always amazed by the ease with which some folk can talk or sing or play in front of a crowd as I'm more of a mumbler than an orator. Big thanks to (L-R) Rusty Miller, Peter Howe and Jim Stevens for their beautiful tunes a few weeks back. Yep Rusty was the tall dude on the cover and also heading out in an early shot in Morning of the Earth and Peter played on the soundtrack. I should have asked for some tips on presenting from these pro's.
So I'm off to get out of my comfort zone. (It's the same nervous feeling when I go surfing in bigger/wilder waves than I'm used to - except I don't expect blood if I wipe out badly today!)

Brine Brothers

Brine time

Water - under the board. Air - expelled from the lungs in post-wave banter. Fire - from an autumnal dawn.

Fresh Ink

The only downside to getting fresh ink is that you have to wait a while before you can get back into the water. (No the plastic bag around the foot is not recommended!)
Johnny Cash ink by Sam Clark Tattoos. Reo by Gaston Otti. Feet by the Too Much Fun Collective.

One Planet