Overheads

Nature is filled with examples of things that require occasional episodes of destruction in order to promote growth. People take shears to plants many times a year to clear away struggling extremities and give their plants a fresh lease on life. Indigenous tribes burnt swathes of their land to encourage new plant life and coax the animals back along with it. Capitalist economies do an interesting impersonation of this process too: creative destruction. It's actually a pretty tidy parallel. After creative destruction occurs, things grow back but never quite the same way.

At this macro level, it is clear that many different facets of life benefit from such a cleansing. But as people we find it pretty hard to take the advice of biology and economics. So often in our lives, we take our things with us. But just like gardeners and indigenous tribes, sometimes we have to set things on fire in order to facilitate any new life that might want to sprout from underneath.

I urge everybody to think long and hard about all of the overheads in your life. These overheads could be something you own, an activity you spend time on or a regular expense that comes out of your pocket every month. Consider each thing carefully and deeply and try to establish whether there is anything that is there only as a remnant from a past incarnation of yourself. What value does each element bring to the person you want to be today and into the future? Your mind might be clearer without these things in your way. You might have more free time to do things you always thought you were too busy for. Stripping some things away clears your field of vision and takes weight off your shoulders that you may not have even realised was slowing you down.

Doing this is so hard because engaging in the self-talk that is required in these situations can be like questioning a compulsive liar who is trying to cover something up. We find it so hard to be honest with ourselves about our failures and misjudgements that we invent reasons to hang on to these things. Just as much as we have trouble coming to terms with our own past mistakes, much of this difficulty is the fear of things we cannot control about our future.

When you travel, how much luggage do you take with you? So much depends on the length of your trip and your destination, but how often have you returned from travelling with a few things sitting in the bottom of your pack that sat unused? How often did you wish you brought more luggage? Think about the effort you spent carrying those things through airports, onto trains and walking around the street, not to mention the brain power you have to expend keeping those things safe. Nothing satisfies me more than boarding a plane with just a carry-on bag and walking straight from a bus to a terminal and then onto a plane. It's lighter, it's faster and it's freer.

Think about your wardrobe or your freezer. The hard drive on your computer, your bookshelf or your rack of DVDs. Think about that appointment you keep every second Wednesday. What about that pile of vouchers you've got stacked next to the phone for restaurants and massages that you've got to use before they expire? The ones that will save you fifteen percent on something you weren't even that interested in in the first place? Are you still watching the movie channels you pay for? Or reading that magazine that comes in the mail each month? Reconsider the things that are pulling at you in some way. These are your overheads, and they might be holding you back from something great.

Sessions

About ten days ago we Myyth boys, armed with enthusiasm and a fresh batch of songs, carried out a plan to do some downmarket drum recording in Andy's shed. Considering the type of studio we used for the 'Museum' EP last year, it was most certainly back-to-basics. Instead of having the pick of the studio's microphone cupboard and a beautiful space in which to place them, we pooled our own and set them up. It was all very unwieldy.

Doing serious recording is always fun but stressful. Often you are under significant time pressure and don't really have the opportunity to do much testing. Preparation can only get you so far. You just have to cross your fingers and hope that whatever goes wrong can be easily fixed or accounted for. 

I've been playing music with Ryan, our drummer, for almost a decade. Anyone who has seen him play might wonder why I stuck it out this long. He just isn't very good. If I develop some sort of back pain when I'm older, it's because I've been carrying him all these years. I'm sure Andy is going to have to spend hours on the computer tightening up all the tracks to account for this. I do not envy that.

Ahem. 

I suppose that the environment we recorded was more interesting than your average shed. The things you can see on the shelves behind Ryan are books and DVDs relating to an old family business. Without going too deep into it, the material on the shelves was concerned with helping people out of some of the most horrible circumstances that human beings can be in. It was interesting and sad to see the kind of predicaments we humans manage to find ourselves in and the sorts of help we end up needing to get ourselves out..

It was freezing in there. The portable heater than Andy bought in did a pretty good job of keeping my legs warm, but I doubt it did much for the others. If Ryan's drumming wasn't the loudest thing within a twenty-six kilometre radius you might even hear the complaining in the recordings.

We're recording bass this weekend, so it's my turn to step up to the plate. Keep an eye out for more updates from the studio and for new material from Myyth soon.

Engage in spite of it all

I had a completed piece ready to go. It was good too; in fact I'll probably still run it in the next few weeks. But I want to be honest here. I think people have come to expect that of me, actually. So I'm going to be honest with all of you.

Politics has been an obsession of mine for maybe seven years. One summer I read a few books on political issues and my life was never the same. i was so captured by it all I went on to study politics at university for four years. I was one of the few students in my year that was primarily interested in Australian domestic politics, the cut and thrust that affects the lives of Australians every day.

I identify myself as a progressive person in almost all aspects of my life. My father was a long-time union member and my mother's family are not altogether different. Much has been written about why people vote the way they do, but there can be no doubt that the preferences of your immediate family does have a big impact on these things. I am certainly no exception.

Since the genesis of my obsession I have never been less inspired by the state of domestic politics. At different times I felt engaged enough to yell at my television and be critical of different policies and approaches in discussions with friends and colleagues. Right now I feel like I'm watching a football match where my team isn't playing. Events are unfolding before me, and some of them are interesting in the way that any sort of drama and high-stakes struggle interests me, but it certainly doesn't feel like I've got significant skin in the game.

I'm not entirely disengaged from the political process because otherwise I wouldn't be writing this. But what is saddest to me is that I'm not particularly engaged on the important policy issues. I am interested in the hand-to-hand combat but I figure that I'm probably not alone in that most of the other far more important issues have faded to the background for me. I've prioritised my writing, my music, my work and my friends and family. I just don't feel like it's worth the energy I committed to these things whilst I was at university.

I've never been an activist; I have always considered myself more of an analyst. For instance, I wrote eighteen thousand words about the Rudd Government's policy response to the Global Financial Crisis for my honours thesis. That was a time that demanded my utmost attention because it felt truly monumental and impactful on this country and the world. I haven't felt that way about an issue for a long time. I hope that one day I can regain this passion because it's fundamentally part of who I am and I don't like feeling this way. The political system is not fundamentally broken, but right now I'm sure a lot of people feel like it might be.

We are going to the polls to vote on this stuff in a few months, guys. I urge everyone to think long and hard about all of this stuff and make your vote count. Many people have struggled, fought and died for this right. Think long and hard about the way your vote will affect you, the people you care about and the country as a whole. Consume as much information as you can from as many sources as you have available to you. Learn the name of your local MP and their likely opponent. Go to the polling booth on election day not with a sense of obligation but a sense of privilege. Buy a sausage in bread, talk to the people who share your local area and smile. Think not about the appearance of any person who stands for office or any of the other distracting trivialities that others may try to draw attention to. Find out what people are positive about and truly stand for. Be able to clearly and logically articulate why you are going to vote the way you are if someone asks you. Do not be distracted by negative tactics by any candidate or party.

I haven't given up and neither should you. Try to be positive and engaged through out this whole mess and know that soon things will sort themselves out one way or the other. Things have been more confusing than this in the past and we have recovered. It's OK to be uninspired, frustrated or disappointed whatever your allegiances, but it's not acceptable to give up.