Heya!

So I’ve decided to take an extended break from drinking, and am blogging about it under the Hello Sunday Morning (HSM) banner.  I’m writing from the perspective of Alcohol and its relationship with Art and the Artistic Identity, so prepare yourself for irrelevant musings and the like. 

If you don’t know about HSM, then have a poke around the website and get to know the idea behind it.  

You can read my blogs here: http://hellosundaymorning.com.au/members/denis-the-menace/.

In other news, big thanks to everyone who came down to see me do a solo set at The Cartel last Thursday.  I have 3 more solo gigs coming up in the next month, so I’ll keep you posted on when / where they are.  

I spent the last two days holed up in my room demoing 20 new tracks and figuring out how to play with Garage Band, so the next gig I do, I think I’ll be able to bring along a “virtual” band with me via my laptop!  I’m pretty excited about this, because as much fun as songwriting is, I’ve never really considered myself to be a ‘solo’ artist - playing with other instruments is always much more fun!  Even if they are virtual… :)

Anyhow - hope you’re all enjoying your long weekend!  See you soon!

-P.P.

There is a tree in our backyard that is the ideal of what all trees should look like. Its trunk is precisely straight, and its branches arch out at asymmetrical intervals, which, even though asymmetrical, are spaced just so that viewed as a whole, the tree appears satisfyingly balanced. I’m not sure what kind of tree it is, but its leaves are wide, green and plentiful – and somewhat shaped like starfish.

When we first moved into the house, I remember looking at the tree and being excited to wonder if when autumn fell, its leaves would turn brown and shed themselves around our lawn in a magical thicket of foliage as colourless and brittle as century-old paper. It’s the end of March now, and I’m still waiting for any of the trees in this city to go bare.

Beneath the tree, there is a singular white chair facing a singular white table. I placed them there with the notion that on my days off, I would sit outside in the shade of this perfect specimen, and write.

But I never do.

I tried it out once or twice, but the ants and mosquitoes constantly biting at my feet and loitering by the tip of my nose distracted me so much that I never got anything done.

Instead, I usually find myself sitting down in the paved courtyard closer to the house when I want to think, or write, or drink tea; and often I look up at the tree with its chair and table, and imagine how poetic I would look sitting there and writing.

When you left, you said, “You only ever loved the idea of me.”

I think I’m beginning to understand what that means.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*Editor’s note: Hi all!  I’m in the process of consolidating my various bits of writing and artistic stuff into one website which should be up and running soon.  Just thought I’d post this here as well ‘cause I kind of liked it, even though it’s not music related.  Hope you dig it too!

solwat:

This is Hannah Shepherd from Charlie Mayfair. She’s alright. She’s even alrighter as this supercutesmilegif. Enjoy, world.

Original photos  by Chance. He’s not a photographer, but he does alright.

So I finally got around to updating the website…

Is it too orange?  I kinda liked it an hour ago, but now I’m not so sure…

Check it out here and let me know what you think:
www.pensivepenguin.com.au

I’m too tired to fix it now though, so it’ll have to keep.

More stuff coming soon, too!

(:>={
~!

inflatablenerd:

So, a few days ago, I had an idea, and as is common with most ideas, it was one that was probably had many, many times beforehand. But chances are, most people didn’t turn that idea into a twitter account.

As I became more entrenched in the Twitter social circles and inner politics, I started to…

The Suburbs by Arcade Fire is keeping me company tonight as I sit here with my wine and my thoughts and my strange grasp of sudden awareness.  A lightness sprung from nowhere found me flailing at the edges; brought me up to air - I was never so happy to find breath in the jolting realisation that I’d spent a month keeping my own held tight beneath locked ribs.  You get that, right?  That suddenness when all of a moment you recognise your own folly and all things click into place?  Instead of a plethora of squiggly shaped pieces you now see a picture - instead of frustration and stupidity, you see flawless perfection. Well that was how it was for me this evening; there was a lightness about the retrospection laid upon my grievances I could suddenly perceive. It felt positive.

For lent I gave up breath.
Seemed the most innocuous thing I could do

Left me feeling light headed through and through.

Forty days of black and blue faced remittance;
Paid back the debt I worked up for life given,
Time served -
Purged meself of earthly sins

Yeah, finished up me dearth.

Expanding and collapsing

Progressing and relapsing

For you it’s just relaxing

But for me it’s all too taxing

Earlier this evening, when I was rearranging our lounge room with my housemate, I pulled out a drawer in the cabinet our TV sits on and rediscovered all the CDs I own which, obviously, I keep in that drawer.  It’s a fairly common thing I think, when you’re moving house or rearranging to get sidetracked by memorabilia; the hoarde from your past you’ve managed to maintain throughout the shifts of your life which mean something, but eventually fade into common place with the passage of time.  I have drawers full of journals that fall into this category which trip me up for hours at odd intervals when I’m looking for birth certificates or work references.  But I didn’t realise that CD cases would trigger the same response…

I remember when I was younger getting so excited about CDs that I wanted to buy - about the bands that made them.  I remember being really interested in the process and the mystery of not knowing when the next album was coming out, what the CD art would be like, and then really looking forward to going to the CD store to collect my booty on the day it was released.  The anticipation, I suppose.  CD stores then were like libraries; I would spend hours browsing, picking out random albums to listen to when the name of the band or the cover art caught my attention.  This is before the Internet changed Everything, you understand.  The last albums I actually made the effort to buy physical copies of (apart from local bands I admire) were MGMT (Oracular Spectacular) and Fleet Foxes.  I’ve bought, downloaded and burnt plenty of other CDs between those - but I hardly treasure them. 

I bought Sunset Studies by Augie March the day after hearing Here Comes the Night on Rage when I was 16.  I bought Funeral by Arcade Fire because I liked the cover art of the album and I’d heard their name being thrown about.  My friend waited in line at midnight to buy the first copy of A Rush of Blood to the Head by Cold Play.  I held all these CD cases tonight and remembered vividly the emotions I felt when I played them for the first time, and many, many times afterward.  I’ve listened to them plenty of times over the years off my iPod and enjoyed them just as passionately, but looking at the cases tonight was something entirely different.

A few years ago I had a conversation with a friend fo mine about where music exists.  Is it on the CD?  No…  Is it in the guitar?  No…  Is it in the stereo?  No…  Is it in the singer.  No…  These are only signposts which point towards the music.  The music exists somewhere in between these things, and yourself as the listener; and yet, obviously, they are still an integral part of the process.

Of course the process is always subject to change.  From vinyl to CD, from CD to PC… I don’t think downloading songs via iTunes is awful - it has its own measure of value, and going to a party and scrolling through someone’s iPod is generally insightful and pretty fun.  But there’s still something about having that physical representation which is difficult to top.

My step-dad has a chest in his lounge room he lovingly refers to as ‘The Vault.’  A bit of a stoner / hippy from way back, this guy loves his music more than anyone else I know.  Whenever he throws a party, and a few rums have been downed, he and his friends (and their families, usually - the Vault has become so renowned…) get terribly excited about cracking it open and browsing the collection of records he’s amassed over the years.  Listening to the music is only one aspect of the experience, though.  Almost as much time as what gets spent on enjoying the songs goes into poring over the artwork of the albums, calling out tracks to each other and remembering earlier times - when they were first heard and what was happening in their lives at that time. 

Where does music exist for you?