Posts on Jan 1970

of Mushrooms and tadpoles

Last night. I dreamt of mushrooms and a vagabond. You know? The type where an old man comes up to you brown teeth and all and says “Child, do you never want to dream again? Dip your hand into this bag, and you will know peace. Or then,” he paused, taking out another bag. Pink and stained from all the memories of the world and he says “this one though, will make you dream colour, but you will also know misery. You see dreams are a curse, they make you so hungry. I’m hungry…you have cinnamon? They are nice things…Hurry hurry, pick one child, because you are running out of time.”

I had to ask then. “Are dreams bad? Can I not pick? I will dream when I feel like it thank you very much, and no I don’t like your mushrooms either ways. They look like goldfish eyes” Then the vagabond sniffles, glows and vanishes. I pull a face. He leaves both bags behind. One a dream giver, the other the dream void. I try and pick up the bags, knowing them to be powers of the world but as soon as I touch them I start to dissolve into sand that divides into rivers that flow like spores/ sand into the bags of mushrooms.

70% into the dream-giving bag. 30% the dream void. I remember noting this as I fall into sand. 2 sand rivers sorting and dividing into the bags. Funny how statistics are such vivid and round numbers in dreams. I’m down to my chest now, slowly atomising into sand. There’s a tray of cheese crackers, what looks like good cheese and some wine and I help myself. Atomising is such a slow process. I am almost bored out of my mind about my inevitability.

And I laugh. Suddenly it’s too funny when you are all half sandy and half humanoid. My laughter spills the half drunk wine spills and my sandy bits are soaked. Hmm…tadpoles, wine and sand make tadpoles. Now I am a third tadpole colony a third sand and a third human. It’s a giddy ride, when you are a million tadpoles at a time. It’s almost like having compound eyes except…maybe worse.

Now I’m puking my guts out from the disorientation. hmm…pizza from the night before. NASA should have trained me for this I remember thinking. O wait, it doesn’t make sense, I have no stomach so WTF? Where is this river of reverse gastro food source?! I wave my hands through the sea of puke, sand and tadpoles tracing the source of my digested food. Hah..rope like things, this must be my guts, so I pull…

The mushroom bags come alive like tents when I pull, like puppets. Humanoid puppets, bursting with mushrooms. It’s getting crazy, the mushroom bags from Mr Vagabond now look like frankenstein monsters gasping and the like. They are pulling back my guts too, with arms that look like tentacles and sand bags. I’m insulted and it becomes a matter of pride. So I suppose I should be fighting for my intestines so I pull, they pull, it’s all a great show of strength. All this time, I’m a million tadpoles swimming in a murky morbid sea of puke and sand. I’ve never been busier.

It’s all very distracting, by now I’ve figured that closing my eyes makes the puking go away. Which is a relief, but the mushroom monsters still have my guts.

This is a problem.

Then of course, it occurs to me that my hands are dissolving now and I’m going to be losing the tug of war so I put my intestines into my mouth. At this point I discover that my intestines taste like the best snake candy in the world, and forgetting my fight I start chewing.

I realise to my horror I can’t stop chomping through the rest of myself from the inside out. The mushroom humans realise this too and they start looking really scared and really small. I don’t stop, I can’t stop…chew chew chew this is all I know. I slurp the tadpoles and the sand and all the mushrooms and the bags and the sea of gross out. I am my mouth.

All this time my eyes are closed and I don’t want to open them anymore and I feel my eyeballs slipping out from behind my sockets as my mouth burrows into my face like a giant mutant termite and empties out my sockets and then I think I hear my skull cave in. At this point I know the universe has stopped. At this moment I’m all knowing, all hearing and I know I’m the only one left in the verse. Then I cry and retch huge pieces of flesh and I am me again.

Somewhat. For some reason I’m now wearing a McDonald’s uniform behind a sign that says tadpoles for sale. $4.99 ask for the special upgrade. A girl comes up to the counter and asks for a tadpole special, someone unrolls my sticky frog tongue and gives it a good wipe on the food tray, from my drying spit is a sea of tadpoles with the face of the vagabond….

Freudians can shut up now.

Naked bodies and head transplants go on a ferry ridee.

I woke today to my neighbours chasing each other around their house naked, it took me a good 10 minutes to make my coffee, return to the ongoing scene, spill caffeine on myself to realise, hey I’m not bloody dreaming… So now that I’ve finished acid washing my eyes, I can now proceed to, for no reason at all read up about head transplants.

Maybe it’s the moon but I’m itching to swap some heads today….starting with the naked neighbours. Pity about the spinal cord not being able to reconnect thing…or the possibilities could have been endless. Aside from the medical implications of things, I imagine reading adverts from enterprising fitness freaks might put up…”Give us your bodies and we’ll train it for you!…Taking personal training to a whole new level.” Or in some cases, the disciplining parent, “You two better get along or you will wake up sharing a body.”

Of course youtube never fails us with the visual material. Here’s one of a monkey’s head transplant.

On another tangent. Gig coming up April 18th.

Those in Sydney you are coming yeah? I need some human heads

Sleepwriting moth.

Given the popular orient belief that moths are embodiments of the newly deceased. I catch myself getting absurdly happy when I see one perched in a ceiling corner or on my kitchen table. Maybe I really want a visit from a soul I love but my mind knows it needs to move on, and snap the fuck out of it. Pronto.

In the realms of dreaming and needing to finish the last of the demos for the album, I awake to find this poem on my laptop with not recollection of having written it at all. So unless there’s a ninja poet living in my quarters that I don’t know about I’m guessing I’m sleep writing again. Something I’ve not done in awhile. Not sure the poem is yet but it’s reminding me of some mutant moth made of haiku. I’m thinking I’ll file it here for future reference. It’s not quite curling into a song at the moment.

Hiss
I am crackling mist

Shapes
I inspire

kiss
At the nape
of rusty necks

then
I flake.

Burn
I see love in the light
of dancing shapes

Fire
the smell of my wings sing
and singe

Sting
I am scorpion
born without the kill

7 years
times up
skin itches

soul
in transit

grab
I am moth

fly

More gigs, a playlist and pictures

More gigs afoot come April 18th at the Luna Park. This time I play support for Aleeoop and also VideoKidz. More details pending

Pictures of the gig on 22nd Feb uploaded to go. Courtesy of Aili Li, who was the cute girl in the Yukata get up kind enough to man the merch stand for spidey.

mage

At the insistence of Mr hacked2death, I’ve decided to put up background music playlist for that night as well. Youtube links provided wherever possible see how nice I am?

Canta Per Me – Yuki Kajiura
Laisse Tomber Les Filles – April March
Flowers – Emilie Simon
新貴妃醉酒 – Li Yu Gang
Machismo – Gomez
Tank! – Yoko Kanno & The Seatbelts
What Else is there – Royskopp
Sayaisha Ingoma – הפרויקט של עידן רייכל
Mushroom Hunting – Yoko Kanno
Sinnerman – Nina Simone
Fleur de Saison – Emilie Simon
Valse De La Lune – Yoko Kanno
Kioku – Yuki Kajiura
Theme from Lime Cafe – April March
Ghost in the Shell – Yoko Kanno
The Skeleton key soundtrack – Conjure
Baah Elichem – Miri Masica

Enjoy the music all, and yes details for the next gig and some goat speak coming up in a jiffy

Poltergeist and Aliens!

Poltergeist and Aliens!

** posted a week late due to to reasons in previous post :(**

Gig on Friday was great fun. We had pirates, nurses, bleach characters, inuyasha and the lot grace their presence at the gig. (Kudos to those whose ammunition got checked and triple checked by the rather bemused bouncer at the Sandringham Hotel. ” Sorry Mate!!” ) Long live fake weaponry and bouncer confusion.

Perhaps it was the invocation of the spirits and general strangeness of the day, the very talented bandmate Sofie Loizou experienced a laptop seizure, my keyboard died once and then proceeded to give me the F-word quite literally on stage….this was followed by a realisation that it would only play sounds of gunshots instead of my usual piano settings. The Hyaku Monogatari presented quite the portal for strangeness to occur on stage and we should perhaps not do this too often because I’ve read somewhere that spirits do fuck with electricals.

I’m still awaiting photos taken by the lot of you and so far I’ve found this rather disturbing one on the goat’s camera.. I swear that the real me has black irises and am very very much human so…WTF ? I wasn’t even singing anything scary…well ok, not at that moment anyways.

no iris

For the lot of you not quite familiar with the realms of Anime and Karaoke, I hope u enjoyed the stream of songs not quite found on the radio u know — all courtesy of Smash! Karaoke. And yes, yes, it is Karaoke, off key singing and general laughing on stage and off stage is allowed and encouraged. So the next time I hold something l like that, I’d expect the lot of you to stumble your way to stage. Shyness is the only crime. 😀

I’m sorry to say that I missed most of Toydeath, amidst a full day of setting up the stage and then going off to grab a bite/ shower and getting into stage gear. I’ve seen the footage of their gig kindly taken by friends and I’m making it a point to stalk their next gig. Insane costumes, crazy crying toys and above all, what seemed like olympic levels of insanity on stage. What’s not to like?

Anyways, thanks to those who rocked up again. Hope u enjoyed yourself and pictures goddammit! I demand pictures! Yes, and that includes pics of you in your cosplay costumes on the night.

I pass u on to the goat who will now host his very own lost and found section in a post soon after this.

ok I’m one week late for this but photos, photos now.

My need to remember.

Dear Ah Ma (grandma)

This isn’t so much as a eulogy as my need to remember you.

I remember my childhood at the old house, where you had a rabid goose with an arse fetish that chased us around the compound, and chickens and rabbits and a huge swing and how you took care of all of us cousins as our parents went to work. It must have been tough, all of us being babies/toddlers, but you managed. Somehow nothing was impossible for you. You were formidable to me then, you still are.

We never felt left out with you, you loved and care for everyone of us. I remember waking up to the smells of your cooking and how you made sure that the family always gathered and remained close. I still smell your cooking coming from mom’s kitchen and in a huge way I remain comforted.

I remember your stories. Especially the ghost stories. I know you didn’t like us to hear them, but you told them anyways, always after heaps of insistence from us kids, but when you did tell them, they were delivered well, like everything else you did for us. It struck me that it didn’t matter where you told them, they were always eerie, always entertaining, even when told in a bustling shopping centre when we were waiting for mom to finish her shopping. I remember my brothers and I fearing the toilet and all general dark places for months after one of your tales.

You know, Ah Ma? I still tell your stories at gigs these days, and it brings a smile to me to see that your stories still scare even the bravest of my audiences. I think you would be proud.

It is at this moment that I can almost see that wry smile you wear when you don’t quite know what to do with us.

I remember your attempts to do my chinese homework for me. Most times you would sit beside us, an old dictionary in hand and a string of colourful curses bestowed on my well meaning Chinese teacher for setting impossible questions for us. You were always so patient, no matter how mischievous we got.

I remember the sleepovers. They were always fun, sometimes we would go for short car rides or just sit together watching telly while I asked you all too many questions about the times before and fairy tales, I did love your fairy tales. It didn’t matter how many times you told the story because you were a gifted storyteller. You were a great listener too, and always you had a consoling word for my less than enjoyable times in school. Somehow you always made my days a little better, you were great like that.

I remember sitting at the back of the car with you sharing an ice-cream or a packet of chips. You’d sneak a bite here and there like the rest of us and buy us more when mom wasn’t looking. To us, you were always the cool friend that we were all too lucky to have. Remember how we all ended up playing the ouija board together despite your misgivings, and the scary tales of the ouija you told to top it all off?

I remember the games we played and it seemed only yesterday, we stood in awe when you slammed us at a game of badminton when we were arrogant teenagers. (Full disclosure: you didn’t tell me you were a national sportswoman in Malaysia, basketball wasn’t it?)

I’m sorry I wasn’t around more when you got ill. Denial, general artistic poverty and lack of time took me away, and yes I always thought you would get well again. You always bounced back from the worst of things and I was sure you would this time, now I wish I got to see you more before you left even when you stopped telling the stories, even if to just hold your hand.

Your funeral brought all of us back together again, for awhile it was old times where my cousins and I were doing things together again. It’s never going to be the same though, and everyone is missing you in their own way, because bits of your stories continue to be told amidst the silent tears. In a way I guess, the storyteller in you lives, even if through us.

Last friday, I thought I heard you say goodbye while I was on stage, when I was telling a story that was one of yours. I’d like to think it was really you, leaving me with one more story to tell.

I’m proud to have known you Ah Ma. The honour was all mine. Go in peace now. I love you.

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