Mootpoint

I often seem to start (or end) my posts with a comment about the weather. I’m not entirely sure why that is. It’s not like it’s a filler in a “nice weather we’re having” kind of way, but more I think an admission that the weather around me affects my mood and general frame of mind pretty majorly. Interestingly, just thinking about a certain type of weather can set off different moods as well, and when I read about what the weather was like when I posted (or at least what it was like when whatever events I’ve finally got round to posting about occurred) it puts me right back in the appropriate frame of mind to be reading the post. Like a personal signpost to some future me.

Even more interestingly, if I was to describe my “home” (i.e. the one place in the world I would pinpoint as being where I feel totally at home – I’ve got one, it’s quite nice), the description would actually include a specific type of weather, a specific way the light and the clouds and the wind and the temperature would feel in order for that place to really and totally be what I’d call home.

As well as containing some weather reference, in a similar fashion to the later Simspons series, the opening paragraph or two of my posts quite often have very little if nothing to do with the remainder of what I have to say.

Just like now.

Had dinner last night with Mum and a guy called Freeman Patterson (check it – www.freemanpatterson.com) who is quite the world famous nature photographer from Canada who Mum has got to know over the past few years. She stayed with him in his cottage in Canada (on his own 80 hectare nature reserve which he has gifted to the Canadian government) last year on her round the world, teach people how to take photographs of poppies in Tuscany in new and interesting ways trip, and is returning the favour as he travels around New Zealand. He’s quite the inspirational guy in many ways. We were talking about figuring out what it is you want to do with your life, and he was saying that back in the 60s he was thinking about doing his PhD (cos that seemed to be the natural progression for him) and instead decided to take a punt on becoming a photographer, setting off into his newly chosen profession with one camera, two lenses, a VW Beetle and $500 cash. 41 years later he’s spent his whole life travelling round the world teaching and meeting people and taking photos and writing books and riding motorcycles and generally doing whatever it is he wants to do. He really seems to have managed to get the making money to doing your own thing ratio right. Hope, perhaps, for the rest of us?

No hope for the promised story about the bus trip and stag day/night, however. I totally can’t be bothered relating tawdry tales of drunken events from weeks gone past. “You should’ve been there”, etc etc… I also can’t be bothered trying to review all the movies or shows I’ve seen in the past couple of weeks, except to say that you should’ve definitely gone to see the shows (NAKED and Nudity May Offend – go to more live theatre, ya bastards) and that if you haven’t already seen any of either Dogville, Syriana or The Constant Gardner, you really should. They’re all damn fine examples of film making. If I updated more often, I’d tell you why. As it is, I’ll leave it to the nice folks of IMDb to fill you in.

Which reminds me, I’ve been meaning to blog about what I’ve always referred to as my “Cultural Quota”, or, more recently, the “Coke Embargo Policy II”, (or what my mother would probably refer to it as <insert rolling of eyes here> “Nic’s plan number 4,963″ or some other suitably large number). (Actually, come to think of it, I don’t think it’d only be my mother rolling her eyes. Or pointing out that if she had a dollar for every plan I’d ever come up with then she’d… um, yeah, anyway.) This particular plan involves me deciding that in order to truly appreciate and be part of the cultural* life of the city, I should at least be going to one live show, one live music performance, one movie, and one decent meal out at a reasonable restaurant every week.

I’ve never achieved this, the closest being making it to three out of four events a couple of times in the last six months, but the intention is constantly there, and one day…

(If anyone is interested in the original Coke Embargo Policy, then I’ve found the old page. It’s cunningly titled “music”. I rock.)

I was going to write about my PhD angst, and how I’m really not sure if doing a PhD is something I need or want to do right now, if ever, and how that really isn’t the state of mind to be in just before embarking on one. But I think I’ll stew over it for a bit longer and see what my brain comes up with. Should think it’d be the subject of a post entirely on its own.

And on the party front: my place, from 5 pm onwards. It’ll be a civilised little event, as there are plans to move to a more debauched location later in the evening.

* It’s about now some mature student (Si, I’m looking at you – I know you’re a card carrying member of the club now) sticks their hand up and asks “What do you mean by cultural? What is culture? I mean really, what does it mean to you?” to which I think I’d have to reply “Whatever the hell I want it to mean.” Because as anyone who’s ever had the misfortune to (a) try and define culture for their own nefarious point-proving purposes, or (b) tried to mark first year essays in which culture is an essential part of the student in questions overall nefarious not-even-close-to-point-proving argument knows, it is impossible to really pin down a concise definition of what culture is. In this particular case, I’m really just referring to entertainment options available wherever it is I happen to be living at the time. Nothing deep and meaningful in the least.

Last Monday was the first day that smelled like Autumn. It’s kind of hard to describe it properly, but it was almost like the smell you get off hot asphalt after light rain in the middle of summer, though there hadn’t been any rain and the ground was dry. But the wind was pretty wild, as were the clouds, and the leaves were just starting to turn, and the light was kind of crazy with that yellow-glow, washed out kind of quality that Christchurch gets from time to time. And it was kind of still warm, but there was a definite chilly edge to the air. So maybe it wasn’t an actual smell, but the overall feeling of the very beginning of Autumn that materialised in my nostrils for a brief instant just in front of the Psychology building.

Maybe.

I was once cornered at a show afterparty by a rather sloshed lead in the show who declared that she had seen me around shows, but wasn’t entirely sure what it was I actually did, but that I should keep doing it cos obviously whatever it was I did was of great benefit to shows in general… or something like that. Hugs ensued. Amusingly, the show in question was The Fiend and I had tried my damndest to not do anything on it, finally succumbing to being Front of House manager. And still apparently this had been of great benefit. Strange.

In a similar fashion, I’m not entirely sure that I necessarily do anything a lot of the time while at work*, and yet when I’m not around it all gets a little stressful. We recently had a lecture in Wellington (by Mariann Fischer Boel, EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development – speech notes here, should anyone be particularly interested) and it was decided pretty early on in the piece that the budget wouldn’t stretch to fly me up. Which was fine by me, although I haven’t been to a lecture in the Grand Hall at Parliament which would’ve been kinda cool. The first thing my boss said the following morning when I asked him how it went was “We needed you there!” because apaprently greeting amnbassadors and finding out when the wine will be served is actually quite hard to juggle. The thing is, I know how these things work, and if I had gone up I would have literally gone “Hey guys” to the people serving the wine, shook hands with the person in charge of the people serving the wine, and then gone out for a coffee with the nearest member of the TBALC diaspora currently encamped in our capital city.

I don’t really know why this has stuck in my mind for the last week, except that I’m beginning to realise that in many instances the less work you do, the more people think you must be doing something very valuable, further reaffirming my view that people can be strange.

And speaking of chances to do more work, I’ve been handed a job brief for being the Production Manager of an upcoming play which runs in August this year. But didn’t I say I wouldn’t do another one unless I was (a) paid and (b) wasn’t working in another job? (I hear you say) Why yes… It (assumably, though I need to do more digging) would be paid, and the timing would fit pretty perfectly into my whole “I’m going to quit work by July” plan, so I’m actually halfway interested. Remains to be seen if I get round to contacting the people in charge to see if they still need a Prod Man, or if the money is good enough to get me to quit here to give it a go, although even thoughthe job itself is about a third the size of producing one of the big amateur shows in terms of things what I need to get done, I suspect there’d be a whole lot more pressure to get what I was dong spot on right. Scary. And they would want the person to be the Stage Manager as well. Double scary.

Watch this space, I guess. Not often, admittedly. I mean that’d be a waste of time given how often I update, but you know, just sometimes. Yeah?

One of the coolest things to come out of the last show is the getting to actually know some of show people and hanging out after the show has finished. Crazy talk this may be, but the last few weeks have seen a relative explosion of music writing and the discovery of Christian’s awesome bass skills which are being put towards adding some extra, um, bass to the songs I’ve been writing. Damn it’s fun, and very good to meet other musical types after pretty much all previous jam buddies have fled to the North. Bastards, all of ‘em. I’ve also been getting to know Todd and Claire (Christian’s flatmates, but also theatre types and generally cool people. They have blogs, which they even update (!) (not Christian though) which makes them a damn sight more interesting than most of us). (In theory.)

So many parentheses, where was I… Oh yes, feeling much better than when last I blogged, and definitely up for the party that has been mooted in previous comments at my place on March 25! Huzzah!

That is all.

Coming “soon” (it’s all relative): NAKED, Dogville, a bus trip and a stag day/night, and Nic’s plan to get cultured and poor (or, the “Coke Embargo Policy II”).

* This is a blatant untruth. I know most days I do absolutely nothing between the hours of 9.00-9.30 in the morning (breakfast), and 4.00-5.00 pm in the afternoon (the point at which my brain activity drops to zero and I stare zombie like at my screen).