My Music

Guitar blues for relaxation:

Ever since my early 20's I've owned at least one guitar. Everywhere I went the guitar went with me. I've been writing my own music since 1996 and I'm starting to get dividends from all the time and practice. There have been times in my life where I barely played, but each time I've gone back to the guitar I have made noticeable inroads in my progression towards a passingly competent musician.

The greatest challenge for me has always been understanding and applying music theory to my playing. I have never had a guitar lesson as such and I cannot read musical notation. Each time I dive into the "maths" of music I resurface with little gems that allow me to play more expressively year after year.

To me, music, particularly guitar music, is how feelings sound. This has always led me back to the blues time and again. I believe playing the blues is my best form of musical expression. I feel the music rather than play it technically like I would a cover of a popular rock song. I have been always best able to improvise and develop my own signature sound and style with blues and rock blues sounds. My music is quite percussive often and this is a serious throwback to the great music of the Australian pub bands of the 1980's.

Music is how feelings sound

Sitting in the sun on an autumn afternoon on the front porch watching the sunset is my favorite venue. Improvising minor pentatonic scale progressions is my idea of a great way to kill a couple of hours and just relax with my music. For as long as I can remember I have wanted to own a Maton 808 series acoustic guitar. These hand made in Australia instruments have the sweetest tone and beautiful mid range and sustain. 

Recently I got the opportunity to finally get one. I opted for the Performer model which is basically a lighter cutaway 808. http://www.maton.com.au/acoustics/performer-series.html

I also own a Yamaha acoustic which is a fine instrument, it lives with my BFF in New Zealand at the moment. And my go to instrument for many years has been a much loved and faithful Squire affinity strat, with a humbucker pickup fitted at the bridge, red of course, because red goes faster! Until fairly recently I also owned a Garrison 12 string acoustic but it was hell on my fingers and nearly impossible to bend the notes with a bluesy feel. Many years ago I owned an old battered Maton electric guitar it weighed a tonne but it sure had a sweet tone, I really regret selling that instrument.

Well recently I decided it was time to have a go at recording some of my original improv music and putting it out there, so I got some cables, I downloaded the great open source music editing software known as Audacity and sat up most of the night playing record producer. The bulk of the music was recorded using the new Maton EBG808CL Performer. The strat got to pretend it was a bass for this exercise and my nifty little Digitech RP50 modelling guitar processor got to fiddle the effects and play the drums. The Peavey rage 158 amp got to show it's stuff a bit too. So these two first attempts ended up as video's mainly because I couldn't figure out how to upload MP3 files direct to facebook... Anyway here is my music, warts and all ;-)

The photo's of the art in the slideshow for this video is all my own work, I like to sketch and paint with watercolours too.

Here is the second little demo, the pictures in this are just some from my collection of art and images I've always liked.

Well that's it for this blog post. Until next time ;-)

Addiction - A Disease

I am your disease

I hate. I destroy. I revel in your suffering. I wish you a slow and immensely painful death.

Let me introduce myself. I am the disease of addiction. I am cunning, baffling and powerful. I am so patient, devious beyond your comprehension. I have killed millions. I will never stop or relent.

I love to ensnare you, to surprise you, to entrap your vulnerability and use it against you.

I get great pleasure from pretending to be your friend and lover. I have given you pleasure and comfort, is this not so? Wasn't I always there when you were lonely, afraid, confused, angry, bitter, broken and broken again? When you wanted to die, didn't you call me? Wasn't I always there?

I love to make you hurt. I love to make you cry. Even more I love to make you so numb you no longer hurt or cry. I am ecstatic when you can't feel at all. This is my most glorious deception. I give you instant gratification. All I take in return is your long term suffering. I love to confuse and run riot through your pathetic emotions. I've always been there for you.

When things were OK in your life you invited me. You said you didn't deserve these good things. I was the only one who agreed with you. Together we were able to destroy all that was good and wholesome and well in your life.

It's a great cosmic joke. People don't take me seriously. They take heart conditions, strokes, cancer, and even diabetes seriously. Fools that they are, they don't even begin to comprehend that without my help so many of these other ailments would not be possible. I am such a hated and feared disease but even then I am denied, completely, absolutely denied.

Graciously I do not come uninvited. You choose to have me. Oh so many have chosen to have me over reality, peace, serenity, health, love and life on life's terms. More than you could ever hate me I hate your recovery. I hate your Higher Power. I hate your twelve steps. These things weaken me and prevent me from functioning in the manner to which I am accustomed.

So as you grow in your recovery, I must lie here quietly. You don't see me. But I am growing bigger and stronger than ever. I progress with or without you. I always did, I always will. When you barely only exist, I live to the fullest. When you live to the fullest in recovery, trusting your Higher Power and following those twelve steps, I only exist.

BUT. I am here. Growing, hating. And, until we meet again, I wish you continued death and suffering. Jails, institutions and, always at the end, a pitiful, ignoble, pathetic, weak, powerless and painful death. Deny me, I dare you...

The following Article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald Today, under the heading:

Addicts know many fears, but the law is least among them

Kate Holden

May 25, 2012

OPINION

For five anguished, exhausting and educative years in the 1990s I, like thousands of ordinary Australians, was addicted to heroin. And I can honestly say that during that time the thought that heroin was illegal was very far from the top of my mind.

I was focused on protecting myself from violence, hoping to avoid overdose, battling overwhelming messages of shaming and hostility from society and simply getting through each day without collapsing. In this way, although I was never actually charged with using heroin, the criminal penalties attached to the drug would inevitably propel me further and further into a dark, unhappy, alienated and criminal world.

When society already hates and fears you, what is your interest in observing a law that seems so arbitrary (alcohol is legal) and unjust (addicts are the most vulnerable in the drug supply chain)? Everything has already been lost. What's a criminal conviction to someone whose body is screaming in pain and has nothing further to forfeit?

I'm not expecting pity for heroin addicts, though I believe sympathy, at least, is more useful than revulsion. What I propose is reconsideration of prejudicial legislation that is wrong, no matter that it is based in genuine concern for the wellbeing of society.

Criminalisation of drugs such as heroin simply does not make sense. Whether you view drug addiction as illness, affliction, vice, symptom or destiny, my experience was that I never intended to become a heroin addict. Legality wasn't my concern when I was one. And my suffering was truly punishment enough, if punishment were even warranted for what is basically a problem more akin to mental illness than criminal malice.

I never, ever, met a junkie scared straight by the law. ''You'll be next,'' a counsellor told me, pointing out a girl headed for prison. Even that dire warning couldn't permeate the slimy combination of shame, defiance and disbelief I was wrapped in. The drug owned me: it was that simple. All I could fight for was the dignity being steadily stripped by prejudice, poverty, desperation and illness.

Illegality did not deter me from heroin any more than it had prevented me and every well educated, employed and emotionally stable friend of mine from experimenting with other drugs. Soon I was not only a victim, a sufferer and a patient; I was also a fugitive and criminal.

Heroin is expensive, even in the 1990s when it was comparatively cheap. By the high point of addiction I needed several hundred dollars a day - every day. Black market economics grossly inflated the price. This ''prohibitive'' expense in turn pushed me first to petty pilfering, then illegal sex work on the street. There was simply no other way to finance my habit, nor could I defeat it.

I ended with a criminal record, not for heroin possession but for street soliciting. (This police record, incidentally, threatened my entry to the US several years later on a tour to speak about recovery and rehabilitation to drug users.) Others - usually males - turned to burglary, mugging and scams. Thus, one supposed criminality engendered real others.

Buying drugs on the street I risked rip-off, arrest and violence. The dealers I met were generally fellow users (or gambling addicts), as captive and hapless as I was. Unregulated supplies of potentially lethal drugs meant injecting unknown substances, abscesses of the veins, organ damage and dangerously fluctuating potencies. Being present at an overdose meant risking further criminal charges, from possession to manslaughter. Stricken people were left to die alone as their associates fled in fear of the law.

I shot up in lanes, on railway sidings, among rubbish and in cafe and bar toilets. Being a junkie doesn't mean you don't find rubbish smelly. Fearful of discovery, I fixed up hurriedly and therefore carelessly; there are public toilets in Melbourne that still fill me with a sense of humiliation and horror. If I had overdosed in a lonely, weed-grown lane, no one would have noticed for some time. Unconscious and vomiting in a public toilet cubicle, I would have traumatised an innocent discoverer.

Heroin addiction was a geography of exile. Becoming a pariah only made me seek the drug's consolation all the more.

Medical practitioners regarded me with degrees of sympathy or contempt. Magistrates sighed and made examples of me. Newspapers called for the extermination of my kind. My family wept; and terror grew in my heart by the year until it was all I knew. Hope, like heroin, was too expensive.

But none of this was soothed, or avoided, by the threat of criminal charges. No one, neither myself nor the community, was protected. Rather, it was shame, suffering, silence and stigma that flourished in the shadow of those punitive and futile laws.

Kate Holden is the author of In My Skin and The Romantic. Go to smh.com.au to join the WikiCurve debate on drug law reform.

For an interesting article published recently in Time Magazine about how sibling brain studies are shedding some light on the roots of addiction take a look here:
http://healthland.time.com/2012/02/03/siblings-brain-study-sheds-light-on-the-roots-of-addiction/

Living With The Black Dog

Art and music as depression therapy.

Pretty much all of my adult life I've struggled with depression. On those occasions when I was compelled by those who cared for me, I sought medical help. Against my intuition and generally skeptical, I would go to the quack, get the inevitable script, take the new "wonder drug" and let myself be chemically crippled and constrained. My imagination would evaporate. My perception would narrow and become hazy. I would be an artificial "normal person" for a time. Six months here, a year there and I would wean free of the medication and begin the cycle all over again.

This is probably an acceptable solution for many who suffer from depression. And I can only say more power to them. Trouble is, for me, chemical solutions inherently lead to a struggle within my core self. I really would prefer to exist and find balance without chemical adjunct medication. It really does matter a great deal to me.

I believe we are wonderfully made and the solution to problems often lies outside simple modern chemistry.
There is of course ample evidence in ancient treatments and cures from many cultures to adequately support a reasonably rational argument for alternative medicine in many shapes and forms. But that is not what this story is about. This is a simple story about how I am learning to live with the black dog by exercising my own creative impulses.

 

I am increasingly becoming a firm believer in the power of realizing creative energy. I find that the time spent in the creative process almost always releases me from my day to day worries. I seem to be immune to the black dog in a creative flurry. Of course there are time constraints and sleep requirements. Work has to be done. Business has to be run. Friends deserve love and attention. Family needs me. Other than that and incidental requirements I spend every free moment I have now painting, writing stories, lyrics, music, poems, playing the guitar, imagining new art. Creating.

The old black dog he's not so bright.

This one is a song I wrote on Sunday about the Mongrel.

Play it as 12 bar in B and just ad-lib the lyrics in a bit of a kiwi accent, it works...

Black Dog Blues:

Black dog on the prowl, don't show no fear.
Coz he all hunt by smell, fear smells all sticky sweet..
He'll get on your trail.
Black dog on the prowl, keep your powder dry.
Coz if your powder get wet, he gunna know for sure.
You can't fight him off.
Black dog on the prowl, you know he there.
Look him right in the eye, He'll tuck tail and cower.
Mongrel fool black dog.
Black dog on the prowl, don't feed him man.
Stop kicking dust with your boot... You gotta lift your chin.

                                                                 Don't let Black dog in... 

Chris Rea - Black Dog. Listen to the lyrics carefully, this really was a serendipitous discovery which came just in time for this story.