'learn how'

Frankly, I'm actually a better singer than the theatre dorks, and that's why they want to use my voice (for free). They want me to show them how, and my answer is that the folk songs are public domain, and it's not like they have a problem singing songs by dead white guys that have American accents... People might whinge that I can't hold a note as well as Mandy Patinkin, but I can produce a smooth sound from the bottom to the top of my register. I learned some of the bel canto technique from Ravil, and picked up the lilting thing by osmosis.

Perhaps I could sing opera or musicals professionally, but I'd despise it. When people compare me to Don, they completely miss the part where he ditched a promising career as a french horn player to write songs. Also, When I Was Romeo was largely intended for the politicians, not the musicians. I mean, in the video I said the song had emerged from my Question Time notes, and explained on my AMPP page that the lyrics were chosen for sound rather than sense, particularly in the chorus.

'you let me go' -- that was the phrase that stuck out.

You know, I don't think any other NZ songwriter has had to deal with the reckons of the SIS as they write... Or their enemies treating their interpretation of the song as if it's somehow definitive. I know that all those dorks were raised on death of the author: that's all well and good if the author is actually dead, but when it's someone that lives down the road from you, then it's a different kettle of fish. I mean, I got in trouble for suggesting that there was a connection between Don's music and the show tunes that I love. That's one of my interview questions...

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Jane and Owen, the answer is that nobody on the NZSM faculty writes for the voice as well as I do. They just don't know how. In fact, this is a moment where I'd like to bring up that I'm genuinely well-known as a composer across the world.

I mean, musicals and opera are a cottage industry that's growing smaller every year, but in that context I'm probably about as famous as Salina is.

Despite not having a Masters and despite having lived in New Zealand for my entire adult life. People really dug These Words and Portrait of a Knight, and it seems like the Dakumentary is probably the biggest success of mine, as it reached an audience that wasn't dyed-in-the-wool opera buffs or well-known composers.

In addition to that, you all took Jake's side, and I'll never forgive you. I'm sorry that you feel guilty now, but maybe believing me in the first place would've been the logical thing to do, rather than calling me a pervert.

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I'm sorry that VUW can't accept the legal reality of sole authorship = no movie. I'm sorry that a bunch of Māori artists can't accept that either.

All these people could simply send me emails, texts or even (god forbid) call me up and arrange meetings. Making my re-entry to polite society conditional on being Tina suggests that you're only prepared to forgive me because I wrote a million-dollar script. This isn't even a case of Tall Poppy syndrome: this is a case where a society that's more collective than the US is trying to force a 'community-minded' project to exist, even though Shipwrecked on Islands is equally community-minded and has all the good songs that they want to use to demonstrate their wokeness.

One story is a slightly solipsistic and self-indulgent journey through my transition, and the other is a story about the future of Aotearoa (Te Riu A Maui), and is literally modelled off a genre of film that is about delivering something for everyone.

Tory simply missed the part where Shipwrecked could've been made as an animated cartoon in Wellington. Though that doesn't generate much income for crew people, it's entirely possible that it could be some wacky fusion of live-action and rotoscope AI paint and conventional animation.

Plus, if I got A Night to Remember, The Day the Flat Burned Down and The Plaything off the ground in Wellington, that would generate some jobs too. I didn't just sulk and refuse to go along with it because I'm an overgrown baby, but because the contractual negotiation was handled in a poor and probably illegal fashion by people that thought their sense of entitlement was legally binding. I wrote another script; I wrote a bunch of shorts. -

One more thing: Of course Chloe wrote a lot of the Dakumentary. I just can't fix the Weeded Out title file. Karl said it would be hella expensive to fix it. I doubt anyone would think that I wrote Chloe's speeches: she obviously wrote those.