Category: Reality

Oh no love, you’re not alone

I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to write this. I don’t want to write this.

If I write this it makes it real.

But if I don’t write it I feel like I will burst.

It’s ridiculous really, it’s not as though I knew the guy, but a huge part of my light and life has left this world.

David Bowie has been with me since he first mesmerised me in the Labyrinth when I was a kid (and caused me to force my parents to repeatedly hire it from the video store, though I knew it word for word.)

He was with me through my awkward teenage years – when I was at my most scared and isolated telling me I was ‘not alone’

Oh no love! you’re not alone
You’re watching yourself but you’re too unfair
You got your head all tangled up but if i could only
Make you care
Oh no love! you’re not alone
No matter what or who you’ve been
No matter when or where you’ve seen
All the knives seem to lacerate your brain
I’ve had my share, I’ll help you with the pain
You’re not alone

As a young adult navigating the murky waters of mental illness at a time when nobody talked about it All the Madmen from The Man Who Sold the World was a two-fingered salute to the rest of the world. It was okay, he got it. It was our secret.

‘Cause I’d rather stay here
With all the madmen
Than perish with the sad men
Roaming free
And I’d rather play here
With all the madmen
For I’m quite content
They’re all as sane as me.

David Bowie taught me that it was okay to be different. He taught me to embrace it, to run with it and see where it led me. That if I wanted to dress in orange paisley dye my hair blue and do ridiculous stuff on stage I bloody well could. If I wanted to blast Aladdin Sane when everyone else wanted to be the Spice Girls then I should, and at maximum volume.

I was fascinated by his influences, I discovered new (and old) writers, new music and art.

He was, he is, my best friend. He taught me to be me.

I have never met the man before but he has been with me for my entire life. Through gleeful celebration and abject misery. He graduated university with me and held my hand through journalism school. He’s sailed across the South Pacific with me and celebrated the publication of my first book.

In a way he also helped develop my writing style.

Back in the days of dial-up internet that sounded like R2D2 in a blender I discovered a world much bigger than my own. In trying to navigate this exciting new place where you could easily talk to people on the other side of the globe I joined a mailing list (do those even exist anymore?) called BowieList where, through group emails I was able to banter with a bunch of intelligent, funny and eloquent people from all walks of life, with the connection of our mutual admiration of Mr Stardust. I really looked forward to those emails, spending quite a bit more time on the university computers than I needed to ‘study’.

I enjoyed and appreciated the way these people wrote, the way they made me smile. I magpied the hell out of them and discovered a wittier more confident version of myself in the process. I made friends with some wonderful people who, while we are not in touch as often now, I still think about a lot.

I graduated to other Bowie groups, The Man’s own website Bowienet and even a proto virtual reality chatroom with avatars (Bowie did everything first) and I think this is where I developed my conversational writing style. I have so much to thank him for.

I also very much associate David Bowie with my Mum. It was her ‘best of’ album that I loved (and nicked) that led me to discover him.

We were lucky enough to see him in concert when he came to Wellington for the 2004 Reality tour. It was the most amazing night of my life. I don’t think I have ever felt that high. We’d gotten seats right up the front (of course) but as soon as I heard his voice I screamed like a banshee and ran for the stage – poor Mum managed to grab the back of my shirt and go with me, narrowly avoiding being left in the dust.

We were right up the front. There was a barrier, a security guy and then my Main Man. We couldn’t have gotten any closer if we tried. Typical inhospitable Wellington it was hosing down with rain but, while the band stayed where it was safe and dry, Bowie was out on the apron prancing about, getting soaked and having to have towels regularly thrown to him. He dedicated Heroes to us for sticking it out in the rain, but he was the hero.

Mum snuck a disposable camera in and managed to sneak a couple of pics before we were stopped. That’s how I will always remember him, looking right at us with that spectacular smile

Bowie reality Welly

 

Just last year Mum and I took a girls trip to Melbourne to see the David Bowie Is exhibition and I am so glad we did. It was incredible, everything I hoped it would be. We had a wonderful time.

Mum Ziggy and I

Bowie bar 2

Bowie beep beep

Just yesterday (before I heard the news) I was blasting out his new album Blackstar, marveling at how he was still making such challenging, haunting yet gleeful music.  That he was still experimenting, still twisting and changing, still messing with our heads.

When my sister told me last night I couldn’t breathe, it was like all the air had been sucked out of the room. If it wasn’t for Paddy letting me blubber all over him like a trooper I probably would have had an anxiety attack then and there.

I had to get out of the boat, I put my headphones on and walked round the waterfront playing Blackstar and finding new meaning in the lyrics. I oscillated between feeling completely numb and sobbing to myself like an idiot.

But even then I wasn’t alone. He was singing to me. It sounds silly but it felt like he was holding my hand.

I didn’t want to write this, but I feel a bit better now I have. I am also really touched by the messages I have been getting from family and friends who know how big the part he played in my life really was. I love that my facebook and twitter feeds are filled with Bowie, I love that everyone has a song that is special to them and they are all different ones. Everyone has a different place and a time where he really spoke to them and that makes me smile.

This isn’t goodbye Mr Bowie, Mr Stardust, Mr Jones. You will continue to be the soundtrack to me life and so many others. You have shaped who I am and that is never going to change.

You left the world on a spectacular note, you played us right to the end you clever boy. Keep on creating wherever you are, you’ll keep on inspiring down here.

‘This way or no way
You know I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now, ain’t that just like me?’ 

 

I’m an author – it says so on the box! (book launch details)

Whenever I think about being an author I feel like a giant fraud. Like any minute now someone is going to come tap me on the shoulder ask for my credentials and force me to admit I’m just pretending.

The packages that I arrived home to this afternoon however are forcing me to accept that this might not actually be the truth.

Two boxes with ‘Which Way is Starboard’ printed on the side and ‘author – Anna Kirtlan’ on the address label have made everything seem very, very real.

They're he-re!
They’re he-re!
It says so on the box!
It says so on the box!

I have a partly written blog on the sailing trip which I will put up, but just quickly in the meantime – here are the details of the book launch(es):

Firstly there’s a ‘lunchtime event’ at Unity Books. The word ‘event’ makes me a bit nervous. I hope they don’t expect me to sing and dance! What I will do is blah a bit, read a bit and sign stuff. If that sounds like your sort of thing, I would love to see you there!

Unity e-poster

 

For those of you who can’t make that, or would prefer something where there is booze, I am also having a shindig upstairs at the Evans Bay Yacht Club

Evans Bay Poster

There is also a trip down South planned with a launch at Oamaru’s Adventure Books during Anzac weekend – details and confirmed date to come in another blog.

So, it’s all on folks! I’m quietly terrified but very excited, will keep you posted.

A year in captivity

We hurtled headlong past a milestone last week and I didn’t even notice – I was too busy being busy.

Paddy was the one who worked out we had been back in civilisation for a year. Fittingly it was a text message from our celphone provider that tipped him off –  thanking us for a year of our custom.

A year.

A year of celphones and emails, alarm clocks and meetings.  A year of job hunting and job finding  (Paddy), flat hunting and job renewing (me). A year of wondering where on earth the year had gone.

A year ago I had returned from paradise wondering how I would ever be able to fit into society again.

A year ago I had a tan – now my pasty white legs are safely hidden from sight by brightly coloured tights.

A year ago the prospect of not having to do laundry in a bucket anymore still excited me.

I thought I had returned a changed person. That the challenges we faced, the people we met, the fear and the excitement would make me look at the world in a very different way – and for a while it did. But I have slotted in as though I never left.

When we got back had a lot to catch up on – the tailend of the election campaign and the colossal mess that was the Rena disaster being the most apparent. We’d also missed all the internet memes. It was as though the entire country was talking gibberish. We had no idea what a ‘nek minnit’ or a ghost chip was. Now I check my twitter feed every five seconds to make sure I haven’t missed any breaking news and I am Grumpy Cat’s biggest Kiwi cheerleader (though I still don’t really get Gangnam style).

In some of the more isolated spots we visited I found myself fantasising about things that I once took for granted – ground that didn’t move, shops that stocked what you were looking for, being able to give a friend a call and meet them for a coffee.

Now I’m getting irritated by the little things – long queues in the supermarket, busses running late, people who don’t answer their emails. I’ve had a lot less coffees with friends than I planned. I have been too busy being busy.

Don’t get me wrong – being back has been great. I’ve caught up with much missed family and friends, I have custody of my fur-child again, I’ve remembered how important it is to have a job that you really enjoy. I’m getting fitter, I’ve lost a bit of weight and I’ve even started riding a bike again for the first time since I was a teenager. I’m not unhappy. I’m just shocked, really shocked, at how fast the year has gone.

In the book I am writing there is a chapter called The Time Bomb (and yes, the book is still happening – that’s the subject of a different blog, which I guess means I am officially blogging again).

It describes the battle Paddy and I had with suddenly having to deal with time. Not island time, which we all know is a pretty fluid concept, or weather time, which nobody can argue with, but ‘real world’ time. And we really did struggle. The plan was that we would get back, fix the things on the boat the needed to be fixed, get out on the water more so I could keep practising and getting more confident, and finish the damned book.

Instead, Paddy went from nautical Mr Fixit to corporate Mr Fixit, I got embroiled in politics and education and come the end of the week our brains were frazzled and we’d sleep all weekend. We began to get frustrated and began to second-guess ourselves. We’d had all this time and now we had none. What had we done with it? Had we wasted it? Could we have done things better?

I took us a while to get out of that slump – a year to be precise.

The boat hasn’t moved for a year, not really. There is a terrible looking green sludge growing on the fenders. The dinghy was practically growing a forest below it had moved so little (except for that time someone took a joyride in it and the police found it – yet another subject for another blog). But the weather is warming and so are we.

We had a big springclean on the boat before our annual Guy Fawkes party (they light the fireworks on the Wellington waterfront so we get the best view in the house), Paddy has a new boom he wants to attach, I’ve started sending material to publishers and I’m blogging again for the first time since July. I’m happy to be writing again. I get twitchy when I don’t write.

I’m going to get out sailing casually with the guys at the Evans Bay yacht club (my new flat is far too conveniently close to their bar!) and now that the weather starting to warm I’m going to rejoin the local dive club – because I haven’t done that for a year either. I am a little nervous about the latter though, since the last time I was in the ocean the water was about 26 degrees! We’re also planning on taking the boat out for a decent trip somewhere in February, which I am quite looking forward to.

Now I find myself standing in supermarket queues fantasising about a tiny little store in the middle of nowhere where you can’t find anything you want and half a cabbage costs $20. I want the ground to be moving again. I miss the sea and the sand and the people and thinking about seeing them again makes me smile.

We’re coming out of hibernation, stretching and yawning and sniffing the air, and it feels good.

And on that note – here’s some explosives.

Smoooooooke on the waaaaaateeeer….
Kabooom!
Noah’s Ark next door
Double Kaboom!
Ooooooh! Aaaaaaah! Captain Paddy keeps an eye on things
‘Splosives showing the scaffolding of the old overseas terminal development
Lots of kabooms!

Reality and punk cabaret

The boaties among you will be wondering what on earth punk cabaret has to do with sailing, and those of you reading this because I posted it up on a punk cabaret forum will be wondering the exact opposite – but bear with me, the twain shall meet, honest!

So after spending the best part of last year sailing around the South Pacific, reality has come crashing in with a loud and rather inconsiderate thud. I am back home, back at work and back to the world as I once knew it.

It’s been great – it’s been wonderful to see the family and friends I have missed so much, to catch up with my workmates and to see my cat again, but it hasn’t been easy.

Once the novelty of not having to do laundry in a bucket or ration your showers wore off, I was faced with a stark reality – the world was the same, I was not. I’m a lot better now but when I first got back I was a complete insomniac. I’d gone from being out in the middle of nowhere with sporadic communication (other than radio and the odd burst of internet or celphone reception if you were lucky) to constant connectivity – celphones, blackberries, emails that can reach you wherever you are, television, radio, advertisements, planes, trains and automobiles. And when I went to bed I just didn’t know how to switch off anymore. I would lie there staring at the ceiling with stupid radio jingles, work emails, TV cop shows and what was trending on Twitter that day whirling around in my head. It was clearly a case of over-stimulation, I just didn’t know how to turn my brain off.

The other thing that is different about cruising is the way that you look at the world. The things that are important when you are sailing are much different from the things that are important in the ‘real world”. When you are sailing the decisions you make are simpler but the ramifications much bigger. When you are sailing the decisions often boil down to where and when you are going and how you are going to get there. They are simple decisions but ones that potentially, if you screw them up, can kill you or somebody else on the water. You don’t really have time for the nuances, it’s ‘pull this rope right bloody now before we lose a sail”, obey the collision avoidance rules or you could smash into somebody else’s boat, plan and look where you’re going or you could run smack into a reef – there isn’t really much time for interpretation. Interpersonal politics, other people’s agendas and whether or not you might have offended someone kind of takes a back seat.

For some of the people we met on the islands it was even more black and white – grow, catch and find food or you starve, look out for your family and your village or you won’t have a world. If you have books to read or pens to write with, you treasure them. It’s hard to go from that mindset to “he said this, she did that” and öh my god I missed my bus and I have to wait another 15 minutes for the next one!” A lot of the crap that I used to give myself an ulcer stressing over just doesn’t seem so important anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the details aren’t important. I know that the minutiae behind the decisions that are made can have massive “consequences. I know that the political arguments and intrigues are deeply important (nowhere is that more apparent than in places like mainland Fiji which is so politically screwed up it’s beyond words) – I just need to get my brain working back on that level again. I can do it if I concentrate, but it’s not natural like it used to be.

So where does the punk cabaret come in? Well I decided I needed something to bridge the gap, something creative (other than writing), that no-one was paying me to do, and something that wouldn’t be the end of the world if I screwed up.

So when I heard that ticket sales for punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls weren’t going so well in New Zealand and they were looking for street teams to poster and get the word out, I jumped at the opportunity.

Listening to the Dolls on my i-Pod helped heaps during my first few night-watches at sea. They are so punchy and anarchic and joyful that it’s almost impossible to be scared when  you are listening to them.

This song was a particular favourite:

The Dresden Dolls – Sing

Those of you who are masochistic enough to have been with me from the beginning may remember this blog I wrote before we left:

And I never lose my wallet

The Amanda Palmer who wrote that particular song is one half of the Dresden Dolls, so I figured it was worth a repost

They are not everyone’s cup of tea, and definitely not Paddy’s (he is more of a Tom Petty man – who I also think is awesome). But I figure if we can survive eight months at sea without killing each other then we can cope with having different tastes in music. Though when admitted he didn’t particularly like my one true obsession – David Bowie – it did nearly end in mutiny. It kind of put me in mind of a song by a lady called Eileen Quinn called “”If I killed the Captain” – A sample of the lyricS:

But if I killed the captain – really, who would know?

We’re two weeks out of port, we’ve got one more week to go,

And all that it would take,

Would be a timely little shove… whoops!”

For some reason this is a favourite song among many women cruisers! She’s a little bit country and not my normal style, but the lyrics are brilliant and I’ve developed rather a weakness!

So anyway, I’ve been spending my evenings going around Wellington putting up posters in strange places, playing with glitter pens and fraggles – and it has been damned therapeutic! It’s helping me find the other Anna again. She was always there, but she’d just taken a back seat for a bit. Punk Cabaret Therapy might not work for everyone, but it certainly has for me!

So the Wellington Gig is this Saturday at the Opera House and the details for that and the Christchurch and Auckland gigs are here:

Upcoming shows

If you want to come along I am pretty sure it will be awesome!

In a nutshell yeah, I’m a different person – I’ve done some things that scared the hell out of me, I’ve stuffed up some things but was lucky enough  to be able to learn from my mistakes. I found things about myself I didn’t really like very much and things that I am extremely proud of – and I am sure I will be able to find a way to channel that into my life back home.

In the meantime – thanks to punk cabaret, I am starting to appreciated the stimulation again – bring the noise!