Goes after myself as well as everyone else. That’s why I’m usually so aggro: I pick everything apart, and I’m often disappointed with myself.
But after I started listening to my tapes, I hardened up and saw the funny side when I flubbed. On the other hand, I have goals of my own which the karaoke was designed for, and those were mostly party trick things, like working out some hits to sing at real karaoke.
But yeah, the first two albums were edited, while I don’t think any of my subsequent albums are edited. They’re all live takes, or synth.
I’d much rather have my Daktory-era social life back than my ‘career’ in music. Dakta paid me (albeit in weed) and was very supportive of my creative ambitions. While the free work I did for the uni or Jane or Jake I’m sorta peeved about.
28yo me has become the standard bitter artist who turns down free work. And people who thought I was a savant back then don’t get to tell me what to do now. I don’t like it when people treat me like a puzzle to solve or a problem child.
And it would be relentlessly that at the uni. That’s what I have no desire for: I fucking well don’t want to be the special needs kid at the uni, like Dushan.
See: that, to me, was more tragic than what I do right now. The radio station actually hired me, while you lot are insinuating that you might if I behave: which is a disincentive, and I’d rather behave my own way.
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I chose to isolate myself from the scene, and 2021 was a practice-heavy year because I was reinventing myself, while 2022 I felt it was important to demo the new sounds a lot.
Trying to picture the future, so it helps to have a limited lifestyle for that. I mean, Alan Moore barely leaves the city he grew up in, and says that is part of how his magic works.
I wish that RNZ was as on-top of climate news as some of the Isentia briefings. Or the Stuff section.
The reviews are totally part of my plan, but the night shifts work against that, so it’ll be a crapshoot of what I’m able to make it to re: gigs.
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I reckon it’d be fair to say some of my anger is tied up in the dystopian vision of the future that I’m writing.
But that’s just me following the evidence and the predictions: so it’s bleak, but it’s an attempt at Stephenson-style speculative fiction.
Which is why Greta (and Jo) are angry young women.
+ Ghostbusters. I’m very keen to resurrect spirits, and that’s probably why I like my isolated lifestyle: like Sondheim, I use method acting techniques to help me write lyrics.
My gimmick is still that the historical personages will only use extant dialogue/letters, so I can say ‘they really said that’ when people whinge.
Which means more time at the National Library researching. The Ngata songbooks are there, plus lots of other cool stuff.
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The belated support of people who (still) see me as a dangerous, aggressive bully isn’t going to make me want to help.
The whole Dr. House thing was something that I’ve been building to since I was a teenager: I’m annoying and I insult people, but I’m right more often than wrong, and sharp-tongued.
And this whole ‘masculinity = aggression’ thing is exactly what I did not learn. I learned from meeting the sistahs that women are aggressive too.
Oh, and Chloe, who redefines aggression. I only interviewed her once, but I still think she’s one of the angriest people I’ve ever met. And the smartest.
The gender-normative standards that the artsy people have imposed on me are surprisingly regressive from supposedly ‘woke’ folks. I was taught to stand up for myself and to be angry, and that’s exactly what I have done.
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I’m not closing my page. I’m not changing anything for people who *didn’t* win. No charges, no convictions. And all the people who ‘helped’ me will ever get is a giant middle finger and a NO.
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I’m not interested in ‘the community’ - the community hung me out to dry, despite the high yes vote.
And tbf I’m far from the only trans person who doesn’t feel the love from the rainbow community: that’s what the anti-pride protests were about. I liked those Ads, though I wasn’t involved with them.
I mean, only at the state broadcaster could I be this queer/trans and still get paid.
I really do not want to be paid for music, particularly for other people’s music. I’m not a performer, and that is the truth: I’m a studio artist, but we call it bedroom pop because it’s the 21st Century.
It’d be great if people bought my albums, though. That would be a direct contribution to my wellbeing.
If ‘performing’ was just hitting play on the Preludes tape while somebody else danced to it, that’d be cool. I need to think of myself more like a dub artist and less like a virtuoso.
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I feel the same about academia: that those people are two-faced. I’m sure politics is the same.
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I think that by now I have shown that I’m willing to back up my madness to rather extreme lengths rather than write it off and say sorry to people who I honestly have already apologised to.
I can’t cure my mental illness, so better to use it as part of my flow, right?
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A lot of people made erroneous assumptions about me, so let’s not pretend like that wasn’t a two-way street between me and the many people who may have come across my pages.
That would be realistic.
And I have found it irritating as well, but it’s part of becoming more than just a face in the crowd.
If I’d become famous the normal way, I’d have had a magazine profile by now, which probably would have cleared up some of those misconceptions about *Riddle* Productions.
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