‘My headphones / they saved my life’.

-Bjork, ‘Headphones’. (Check out a lovely live version HERE.)

Bjork said of this song:

“I did Headphones with Tricky, sort of a thank-you to a friend who always sent me tapes with his favourite music. I saw that as one of the most beautiful and valuable gifts someone can give you. Such a tape says so much about someone’s personality and about what that person wants to tell you. I always saved a tape like that until it was evening, all the work had been done, I was all alone and had taken a bath. Then I’d lie on my bed, with my headphones on, to slowly fall asleep, listening to that tape.”

I love making mixes, although .mp3s have kind of killed the beautiful tangibility of the mix-tape/mix-cd…sharing a data-stick just ain’t the same. I don’t send as many mix-cds as I used to, though, because you can’t even be sure that people have cd-players anymore, right?

If you want to make me really happy, send me a mix-cd. I have fantastic mix-cds from Sarah, Emma and Melissa that they probably long forgot they made for me…but I treasure, and when I listen to them I feel the person who made it for me very strongly through the music, just like Bjork says.

Anyway, I didn’t start out writing this post about mix-tapes, I was going to write about podcasts….tangent…

I spend a lot of time wearing my headphones…..when I walk….to get to sleep….on public transport. These ones are beautiful Sennheiser ones which F bought me for my birthday last year. They sound incredible and definitely create a little solo-world of sonic bliss. I also get a kick out of the fact they look very much like the ones I had in the 1980s when I got my first Walkman.

My friend Emma posted a couple of times recently about podcasts – read it HERE. I’ve found her podcast posts really helpful and have started listening to many thanks to Emma and the people who fed her some suggestions.

I thought I’d share the podcast inspiration with some recent discoveries of my own lately:

If you enjoy Sound Opinions and love music esoterica and discovering new music, I can’t recommend highly enough the podcast ALL SONGS CONSIDERED. The hosts are wonderfully funny and sincere, the level of music geekery is high, and I haven’t listened to a single episode where I didn’t fall in love with at least one and often more of their selected songs. The focus of the show is SONGS not bands or albums – they are looking for stand-out songs, and they might even say ‘Don’t like anything else off this album, but this song is great.’ I appreciate the emphasis on the individual songs in the show. It’s like have a friend with great taste make you a mix-tape every week. It’s the only podcast which I sometimes re-listen to multiple times. For music-nerds only – if you are the sort of person who says ‘I don’t really have strong opinions about music – I like a bit of everything‘ this is not the show for you.

***Another tangent – I got to meet NICK BOLLINGER at work last week. He came to do a talk with Chris Bourke. I freakin’ LOVE Nick Bollinger’s music reviews on Radio New Zealand and in the Listener. He is such a warm-hearted, considered, thoughtful reviewer and he writes so well. He also has a lovely voice on the radio. I was psyched to meet him and planned to tell him how great I think he is, but then of course when he walked in, I came over all socially awkward and instead just said a professional hello and explained where he should park his car. Gah! Damn you, shyness! I did get to shake his hand though. Like his music reviews, it was very warm.)***

I love history and biography – if you don’t, skip this paragraph. My other recent discovery is BBC GREAT LIVES podcast.  In this show, host Mathew Parris invites a famous person who selects a ‘great life’ they would like to examine, then they, plus an expert on the selected subject, examine the life of that historical figure. It is ace – in a 30 minute show I can go from ignorance about a person, to being able to hold up my end of a conversation about them, should I need to! I say ‘historical figure’ but they often look at contemporary ‘great lives’ – the most contemporary I’ve hard so far was singer Kirsty McColl, who died in the 1990s. My favourite episodes so far were on Gertrude Stein, Wittgenstein,  Dylan Thomas and Goya. I also love how the haughty host abruptly ends each podcast with a clipped ‘Goodbye’.

I’m a Buddhist and there are two great Buddhist podcasts which I enjoy. They are both made by North American buddhist centres. The first is called DHARMA PODCAST and is by the Upaya Zen Centre – it has a zen-focus but is accessible to all. The sound quality is not always great as these are recorded live talks, but what it might lack in production values it makes up for in wisdom. The other one is The IDP PODCAST - this one is loosely based on Tibetan buddhism (as far as I can tell). It’s great – they have a really interesting array of speakers and subjects.

Finally, a very new podcast – there are only a few episodes so far – is from the arts blog ‘My Love For You Is A Stampede of Horses’ – Meighan O’Toole who writes the blog interviews an artist/crafter. The podcast is called MY LOVE FOR YOU. These short interviews (20-30 minutes) are interesting, relaxed and they reflect on a lot of issues around being an artist in the 21st Century. The podcasts are supported beautifully with visual material and links, too. I hope she keeps doing them, because I like them very much.

Whew! That’s it. I hope some of that was of interest.

Your turn – can you recommend anything to me?

(Here’s a list of some I haven’t mentioned which I already listen to, to avoid double-ups – Slate’s Culture Gabfest, the Moth, This American Life, Paper Machete Radio, Mental Health Happy Hour, Sound Opinions, Graham Norton Show, Front Row Weekly, BBC Comedy Hour, Guardian Books Podcast.)

Happy listening!

***

* This title is a quote from ‘Transmission’ by Joy Division. I love the opening guitar-riffs of this song so hard that I feel kind of physically sick when I hear it. (I’m sure other music-nerds will get what I mean by that.) You can see a live version HERE or an amusing but really pretty bad cover version by Hot Chip HERE. In the mid-1980s, Wellington punk band Flesh D-Vice also released a cover of it. It was total shite.)

Okay, really going now……….*in haughty BBC voice says*  ’Goodbye’.

I get a lot of magazines passed my way from family and as I read them I snip out anything which catches my eye and fill blank journals with pictures. I’m a very visual person and this practice inspires everything from poetry to life habits to cooking to gardening to craft to how I set up my house! (It’s like old-school Pinterest, right? Ha!)

It doesn’t have to be something I would DO, or WEAR, or necessarily WANT, though…it’s more just about the visual inspiration. I don’t think about it too much – if my eye hovers over it for more than a couple of seconds, I cut it out.

I’ve been doing versions of this as long as I can remember. I’ve thrown a lot of these book out, too – because of course my tastes and predilictions change over time and it isn’t like there is anything much of me in them – so I feel relaxed about chucking them if they no longer serve their purpose, which is to inspire me!

Here are some pages from my 2010 inspiration book:

 

It was a regular mattress-arama at the Salvation Army Family Store last week.

I spotted my first mattress covered in actual mattress ticking! Although probably not vintage ticking. (Ticking is a type of heavily woven fabric, usually striped. When mattresses were filled with feathers, ticking was used to keep the feathers within the mattress and stop them poking through. I am in danger of becoming a mattress-expert through this project. Hoorah, more useless information cluttering my brain!)

I love this bright blue 1970s fabric:

Scribbly flowers:

Another blue on a cotton-covered squab (does that count as a mattress?)

And my favourite of the day, another sunny 1970s one in hot colours:

Sorry about the bad photo quality of some of these – taking photographs in an op-shop means you gotta be hasty! So far I’ve had funny looks from people, but no one has asked what I’m doing or asked me to refrain.

Also, often mattresses have urky stains on them. I try (not always successfully) to avoid getting the urky stains in the shots, because that’s just URK.

 

Here is how the big vegetable bed looks right now….because it has been such a warm autumn, everything has grown quickly and lushly, which you might think is a good thing, but it isn’t really. It means that everything will be read to eat soon, and then when the really cold weather hits, the garden will be empty. Aah, well. Not much I can do about the weather!

(Go HERE FOR A REMINDER OF HOW IT LOOKED IN MARCH.)

I’m growing lots of Kale, green and purple, now that I’ve learned the best ways to cook it – it’s a great crop that grows throughout winter, much like silverbeet does.

My olive tree, which was about one foot high when I bought it, is now about six feet high and after seven years, has finally fruited! Maybe moving it from from the old garden to the new garden was ‘motivating’ for it?

There are lots of these dandelion-clocks about in the garden – I used to see them as a weed-enemy before I learned all the wonderful properties of the dandelion plant. Now I can blow them with abandon, like I used to when I was a kid.

Make a wish!

Second hand treasures of late:

My new favourite mug – my mother collected these Scottish mugs in the early 1980s, but she didn’t have the OWL. I was pretty excited to spot an owl on the front…and then when I turned it around….whole owl family! (My nickname was ‘Brown Owl’ when I was a wee thing, apparently because of my brown eyes and because I used to go very brown in summer. Hard to imagine now. Aah, 70s childhoods, aye? I remember my friends and I used to slather ourselves in coconut oil to bake ourselves in the sun….)

Enamel rose tin with lid:

Rose embroidery. I especially like that it is square:

And my favourite find of recent living memory, possibly of all time….no, it doesn’t fit, it’s tiny. I bought it because it is the most beautiful, frothy thing and it brings me great joy to have it hanging on the studio wall. It was really hard to photograph, but I hope you get a sense of how crazy-beautiful this is. When the light shines through it, it practically glows.

$5, Highbury House op shop. The lady who served me asked if I had a daughter who did ballet…I said ‘no, I’m going to hang it on my wall’ and she gave me one of those nervous smiles people give when they deeply don’t understand what you’re on about and think you are a bit weird. Tee hee.

A TURQUOISE TUTU?? ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? Thank you, op-shop goddess. *mwah!*

 

 

 

Here’s the latest of my ‘mattresses in op-shops’ finds – a sunny 70s floral. The bathroom of my childhood home had wallpaper very similar to this. 70s florals are like an instant time-travel to being a kid again for me.

My flickr group of mattress photos is slowly growing, come and play HERE if you want to…

I invited lots of my my american flickr friends to the group, but one of them reported sadly that american op-shops don’t sell mattresses because of hygiene laws….can anyone stateside confirm that this is the case?

My favourite photo in the pool so far is THIS ONE by talented local photographer Megan Young.

*

It’s Mother’s Day and I just got a card with a ‘delightful’ drawing of a cute bunny with a dagger through it’s head from my 11 year old – aaah boy-humour. He also baked me a banana-cake with chocolate icing. I love that my hard work teaching him to cook all these years is paying off and he can now independently bake cakes! He gave it to me at about 7.30am and said ‘Can we eat it now?’. Um, no.

I might as well have eaten cake for breakfast, mind you, because then I got presented with a stack of pancakes with banana and home-made raspberry jam.

Lucky, lucky life.

Big ups to all the mothers out there.*

(* I crack myself up trying to do white-girl street speak.)

I went to a lovely poetry event in Paekakariki last Saturday – the launch of Lynn Davidson’s ‘Common Land’ (VUP) and a local celebration of the recently launched ‘Graft’ by Helen Heath (VUP). Both poets were interviewed by Paekakariki poet, Dinah Hawken. It was a lovely laid-back affair with mood-lighting, a traditional ‘hall supper’, wine, tea and live music after the poetry. Quite relaxed and wonderful!

Here are Dinah Hawken, Lynn Davidson and Helen Heath:

Here are two of my dear friends, whom I love very much and who will probably kill me for putting a photograph of them on the internet:

Here is a random shot of some people enjoying the night – I wanted to show you the beautiful rose-lamp! :

Helen writes a bit about it her launch HERE, with links to Helen Rickerby and Graham Beattie’s accounts of the launches, also.

Congratulations, Helen, on all the ‘graft’ that went into this terrific book. It has certainly paid off – what a great achievement!

‘Graft’ is rich and carefully-crafted book. There are affecting and emotional poems about the terroire of motherhood and grief. There are sad/funny/sad poems about a composite character from the Hutt Vally called ‘Justine’. There are playful and moving poems about science and scientists. In short, there is a lot going on in this slim volume and it is a dense, satisfying read.

If you would like to win a signed copy of Helen Heath’s  ’Graft’, leave a comment telling me what your favourite poem by a New Zealand poet is. (New Zealand residents only, please.) I’ll randomly draw  a winner in one week’s time. Good luck!

Here’s to charmed evenings in little town halls, with moody lighting, poetry, live music and home-made lamingtons! I could do that every Saturday…

 

 

A friend sent me a little card with this quotation on it:

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”

-Dorothy Parker

I am an eternally curious (nosey?) person. I often follow the path of curious things, which sometimes leads to adventures and happy accidents…and sometimes to wasted time and dead ends. C’est la vie, non?

Here are some things I saw out walking recently:

A boat called ‘Romance’…

A bear-face in a beam – do you see it, too?

Never forget to look UP! Look what I saw on a cafe ceiling, recently…wheat and coloured discs…

And, in my idea of heaven…a tiny secret garden in the middle of a big city…bursting with vegetables and herbs…

How do I know it was a secret garden? Well, firstly because it was tucked away in a corner you are unlikely to stumble on…and secondly, because the sign said so:

I hope you find some interesting things out walking this week. X

Anna Guest-Jelley of Curvy Yoga has edited and launched a terrific e-book called ‘Curvy Voices’ – an anthology of short essays from ‘curvy’ yoga practitioners.

I have an essay in there, too. I tried to be as honest as possible in my essay. There are lots of great women in the book and I really enjoyed reading about everyone’s different yoga experiences.

You can read it for free! There is a link in THIS POST to access the book or you can also see the sign-up area on the left of Anna’s website under ‘Curvy Voices’.

It is most heartening to me that the face or, I guess, the body, of yoga is changing and more ‘non-noodle’ people are feeling safe and welcome at yoga classes and accessing all the physical, mental and spiritual benefits of a regular yoga practice.

Thanks so much, Anna, for bringing all these wonderful ‘Curvy Voices’ together! I’m proud to be a part of this awesome project.

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