In around 2009 I started a twitter account to get what seemed a direct line to gossip coming out of parliament house. In those days there didn’t seem to be any trolls. But it quickly got sordid. Soon i had my first exposure to what is really a kind of psychological warfare using images and … Read more
I’ve recently discovered I’m living near to a Buddhist temple that seems to have its main links going towards the Burmese Buddhist tradition, with an enormous golden Buddha statue at its heart. It has a beautiful smaller shrine around the back with a marble Buddha surrounded by a small collection of interesting statues in different … Read more
I just put out some more music – the first EP “To Eternity” is left overs from my recent release “The Present Race” , demo quality material really, but i like it. The last two songs came about after my 2022 India trip, the first two are from earlier on when i was still going … Read more
I was reading about fathers who write memoirs that barely mention their own family. I don’t often write too much about mine because it feels private and personal and also that is the part of my life that contains my strongest and most complex emotions so it’s the hardest subject matter to write about. But … Read more
Tada! This is my new EP – six songs exploring themes of climate destruction, ageing, genocide, tyranny, loss and self immolation for art. I recorded all the songs myself at home, in the hall and the bathroom, over a few weeks in mid 2023. Most of the songs were written in 2020-2022 and record the … Read more
There’s an Elliott Smith song I’ve been trying to learn for a while now, called Son of Sam. The studio version which opens Elliott’s figure 8 album has a nice video directed by Autumn de Wilde (there is a funny story somewhere about how hard it was to control the red balloon) and it captures … Read more
After my India trip I had the idea that what the world needs is more quiet places, like Ramanasramam, and that I could turn the farm into a big contemplative garden. I had a fanciful idea of some kind of meditation or temple complex at the heart of it, which could also be at the … Read more
I have so many disconnected thoughts right now. One is that our path through life is just like that of a quantum particle – we subtly interact with the other versions of our self that ‘might have been’. Reading Nagarjuna i suddenly get an insight into emptiness as the space between things. but we are … Read more
For a long time whenever i meditate i have wandered in my mind back to Arunachala, the holy mountain in Tamil Nadu, India, which i visited when i was 19. The mountain, and the Ramana Ashram at its foot, have stayed with me through all the subsequent years, a touchstone of silence like no other … Read more
Watched the eclipse of the moon the other night, the ‘blood moon’. Mel took a photo through the telescope (below) as ‘Brain Damage’ played and I thought about whether i should buy that Moog synthesiser I’d seen on ebay that morning. So far i have resisted the temptation but it’s hard to. So many disasters … Read more
I began writing my memories in this post, and i think i’ll put down some more though it is a very messy state right now. my first three years were at Farrer Primary, a small public (government) school in the newish suburb of Farrer, in Canberra’s south. My grandparents had lived there and mum in … Read more