Another brick...

Some people thrive on being busy. I don't. I think it's highly irritating. Particularly when you actually care, deep down, about what you're doing but can't spare the time to do anything properly. This week I'm cramming for an exam, hurrying through an essay, and speeding off to work...and it all seems so ridiculous. When you rush stuff, you're ridding it of any kind of deeper value it may contain. There was no eternal significance in anything I did today. Which is a shame, because I really do think the essay and exam are important and potentially very interesting, but I don't have time to make them substantial for myself. This is what happens when education is costly and study support is next to nil: lots of students madly rushing to learn what they need to in between shifts, and then forgetting everything the day after the exam because nothing's had a chance to work its way particularly deep into the memory circuits. Needless to say I'll be glad when things calm down a bit and I can start doing things properly again.

Silly Bulls

The tour was good. We got back late last night, and I'm truly knackered and aching (5 days of pretty much constant car travel). I'm meant to immediately start thinking about my last uni essay for the year, which is due on Friday. I'm finding that more difficult than I imagined (and I did imagine it would be difficult). Now I find that not only does my body hurt, but my mind has slowed down considerably. Maybe it's a testament to the sophistication of the chatter in the tour mobile, but words more than two syllables are leaving me dumbfounded.

Looking forward to uni being over and starting to write songs again. It's been a fair while since I've had the time and the drive to do it (usually these things don't coincide). But writing is something I don't really stop thinking about, even if I'm not doing it. If you're a writer of songs, you're always evaluating other people's songs as a writer, which makes listening to music both fun and educational (and no I'm not getting paid to say this). Over the last few months I've built up quite a mental collection of 'things to try' when I write the next batch of songs. Some of them are musical - types of chord changes or melodies, and others are lyrical, although I find the lyrical ideas are always a lot vaguer than the musical ones. I'm not the kind of writer who always carries around a notebook to scrawl any 'inspiration' down. Having tried this a little in the past, I find this method too piecemeal - it's rare that a song presents itself fully formed, and to try and construct a song with a dozen or more fragments of lyrical material isn't what I call fun. I like to keep things a bit more spontaneous and organic - I think you can always tell if a song's written in one consistent 'mood setting' or if it's been tampered with when another mood strikes, thus ruining the purity of the mood. I probably sound anal...But it is exciting to have a clean slate in front of me, and to design record # 2 from the ground up.

Good idea, Huw

Huw, the guitarist in the band I'm in, started a blog a month or two ago. I'd been thinking of starting one for a while, and I guess this gave me the extra shove I needed to get one going (I'm not allowed to leave comments on his one until I sign up for one of my own, apparantly...). Blogs are quite strange though - I've always thought so, and continue to do so. It's like a diary, but for anyone to read. It's like a soapbox, but for people who aren't important enough to have a real one. Sure, it may be one of the ways the internet's making everyone feel more connected to the world and to their fellow humans, but it still smells fishy. I imagine my blog will primarily be a way for me to organise my brain, and to get rid of crap that insists on polluting it. That's the excuse I'm using anyway. I could write in a diary, sure, but then nobody would have the chance to tell me that my brain needs fixing from time to time (which is absolutely the case). So if you care to read any entries, please feel free to refute and/or generally go ballistic on any of these thoughts.

My band's called Plastic Palace Alice, and we're going on tour tomorrow with a Sydney band called Cuthbert and the Nightwalkers and a Brisbane band called The Rocketsmiths. Fun will be had no doubt, but there's a hell of a drive on Sunday back from Yamba (a few hours south of Brisbane) to Melbourne. Touring - at our 'indie' level - is certainly not the romantic thing it's made out to be by pop culture. Spending days on end in the same stinky car with 5 other stinky people (yes ladies, you can smell too) ain't the plan for the rest of my life. I might have to get used to it though, as it doesn't look like this reality will change anytime soon. We've just released a single and organised the release of our first album for March next year. Between now and then, we'll be touring quite a bit and planning all kinds of future conquests. One day we might even make some of our money back. I don't expect to make a profit, however, until at least the second album (working title: "The Great Recession").