22 Dreams

(for submission to the 'Songsmith') "...life is short, life is sweet, this much I know..." - kate It was with much sadness to have discovered this week that one of my musical heroes had just passed away, Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle , aged 63. Kate was half of esteemed folk-duo Kate & Anna McGarrigle , forged with her older sibling, Anna. From the early seventies, the duo were plugging hit songs to artists such as Maria Muldaur and Linda Ronstadt. In 1975, Kate & Anna McGarrigle released their eponymously-titled, Grammy award-winning, debut LP to much critical and commercial acclaim. Since that year, the McGarrigles have released a stream of albums that have won consistent critical favour and devotion from music-lovers worldwide. I discovered the McGarrigles in 1998. My sister showed me a glowing review in the Sydney Morning Herald of the remastered sisters’ first album, by Bruce Elder. I was impressed enough by my own sister’s e...

There i was, blankly trawling through myspace, to find a Wainwright bulletin, "Kate McGarrigle dies". I knew that the Church were supporting Rufus Wainwright (or was it the other way around??) and that Rufus had to cancel because a family member was 'critically ill'. I was wondering who that may have been, but I didn't give it too much thought. It turned out to be Kate McGarrigle, the mother of Rufus, who died of a rare form of cancer. Kate had the folk duo 'Kate and Anna McGarrigle' along with her older sister Anna, and they released award-winning albums spanning over two decades, from the eponymously titled award-winning debut album of 1975, right through to Matapedia and the McGarrigle family album of the late '90s. They released a Christmas album in 2005, though I never listened to that. I feel terribly saddened for this loss. Of the duo it was Kate who particularly piqued my interest. I preferred her voice, I loved her musicality - her touch...

(Twilight, Sunday evening, 10 Jan, Sydney University) Had a lovely weekend. It was packed full of summer activites. On Saturday I drove Sarah down to north Wollongong to spend the day at the beach. The beach we went to was 'dog friendly' and it was amazing because there were dogs everywhere leaping and running about, splashing in the sea and body surfing. They were so happy, so alive, so full of joy and in the moment, and to be in all this happy canine presence was most gladdening to us. The north Wollongong strip is only about an hour's drive south of Sydney and it's an astoundingly beautiful place. There are rows of pristine beaches that are backed up by lush mountains. Up until 25 years ago it was very cheap to buy there as those suburbs were coal-mining villages, full of fibro cottages. Now it is extremely expensive to buy into that area, and why not? It is paradise. On Sunday I went to a family do in the southern Sydney suburb of Kirrawee. It was a gloriou...

This holiday period hasn't turned out as well for me as I would've liked. Sure, there were some fine moments. I went to Tasmania, I drove up to the Central Coast, I did walks and worked in the garden, and spent time learning Bach cello suites on my bass guitar. But I've also felt distracted, and pained. I'm disappointed to admit that I've relapsed into the emotional backpack I'd once been some 15 years ago. I blame the weather, partly. Most of the time the weather has been unpredictable and murky; cloudy, coolish, still days that do not sit comfortably in the high summer of late-Dec/early-Jan, instead reflecting and refracting from the ghoulish pain that sits in the stomach and has been set free to vapourise throughout my body since putting my feet up from work for a lengthy five weeks. It all started on Christmas day. I decided to open a bottle of vodka that I won at our fab Christmas party at the Doncaster just up the road from drama school. I'd ...

My uncle passed away 9 days ago, on the 22nd Dec. He died comfortably in his sleep in hospital. He was born on the 22nd April 1916. So he lived to 93. That's coming and going on the 'master' number. He wasn't my blood-uncle, he was my mum's sister's husband. They were married for 63 years. My auntie's still going at 89. The funeral was two days ago, on the 29th. I gave a reading at the funeral, of which I was most honoured to do, from the book of Ecclesiastes. We went around to my auntie's apartment in Bondi Beach a few times during that week after his passing. I've rarely visited them over my adulthood years, but going back to that apartment four times within the space of a week flooded me with that sense of utter familiarity, that this was once my second home, a place I'd come to every Sunday from childhood to early-teens. Auntie & Uncle lived on the top floor. The kids - my cousins (all of them at least a generation older tha...

It wasn't until I met Sarah that I discovered what pet ratties were all about it. I'd always thought that the value in keeping rats as pets is that they run up and down the length of your arms, across and around your shoulders, and that they're "intelligent". Well I was wrong. Pet ratties offer so much more to their owners and carers, and those who love them in general. I know now that there's a world-wide community of rat lovers who love keeping ratties as pets. Last weekend we drove up to Newcastle to visit a 17-year old girl who's offered to take Sarah's rats from her as Sarah is moving out from her apartment. We'd visited Hannah some weeks ago to inspect the environment and TLC factor, and everything was at or above expectation. And she was such a nice, decent girl too who obviously loved rats, and her family were amazingly lovely people too. This trip was to be the deliverance trip, taking the cage and the toys and the food and the rat...

"With the Church, what remains...is real, tangible magic - ultimately unidentifiable and unexplainable." - Robert Lurie, No Certainty Attached , 2009. I've just finished reading Robert Lurie's biography on Steve Kilbey & the Church, No Certainty Attached . In reading this book I was immediately struck by how good a writer Lurie is; he's my hero now, not Kilbey! I think he's done a damn fine job in balancing critical, well-researched perspective with the passion he has for his subject. His grammar and vocabulary are ace, too. I'm enthralled! So I'm going to use this book as an influence, a template, for my future scribe-extrapolations! ;) Robert Lurie intersperses his narrative with occasional autobiographical anecdotes, such as his account of discovering the Church and the 'Starfish' album in 1988, and the immense, lasting impact the band has made on him. He talks about his time in Sydney in July 2003 where he met up with Steve Kilb...