I’m super excited to see that 1000 lovely people have subscribed to this blog (especially since I have been a bit rubbish at regularly updating it of late) and a big wave hello to the new followers on the Starboard Facebook page!
This is an awesome surprise and a good wake up for me to share more with you all.
To celebrate I’m selling signed paperbacks of Which Way is Starboard Again? for NZ $9.99 with free postage in New Zealand.
50% of the proceeds still go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation . Mental health is severely underfunded in New Zealand and this is a fantastic organisation that deserves all the support it can get. I have already made our first donation of $200 so thank you so much for everyone who has been a part of that.
For those of you who would like to donate more the $19.99 full promotion is still available and there is more information about it here
If you live outside of New Zealand and are interested in buying a copy, drop me an email at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort postage. The book is also available on most ebook platforms, but I don’t have control over the pricing of those. Do shop around though, I have spotted it on sale at different sites. At the moment Amazon has it at $6.59
In other news, book number two is definitely on the way and I will share a sample with you shortly. I am also investigating turning Starboard into an audio book, I just need to get my head around the technological side of that!
Will keep you posted.
Again, thank you so much for the support. It might just be a matter of pressing a subscribe button, but it means an awful lot to writers like us – so yay you!
This is one of those blogs where I publicly announce I am going to do a thing so it forces me to do the thing.
The thing I’m referring to is another book, which I am in the process of writing (and now I have told all of you so I can’t back out).
I think it will just be an e-book this time. Though when I say ‘just’ an e-book, please don’t take that the wrong way.
Ebooks are great, I’ve read some brilliant ones. I’m talking more length really. I suspect I won’t have the material for a paperback as this story covers a shorter period of time. It’s more of a taster. I don’t think the process of writing and finishing it isn’t going to be any easier than it was for Starboard though!
Sorry sailors, but this time it’s not about boats – but it is about travelling.
I found that, next to the sailing and the crazy, quite a few Starboard readers picked it up because they were interested in travel writing. So this time I thought I’d give that a go.
This is going to be a story about travelling to the United States. A story about alligators, firearms, cowboys and an island that is home to more than 500 cats.
It is also a story about travelling there at a particularly unnerving point in time.
When we left the country’s president had just started lobbing bombs at Syria. While we were there North Korea’s leader was (mercifully unsuccessfully) launching missiles in our general direction and making all sorts of nuclear threats- it really was a fabulous time to be over there with an anxiety disorder!
Despite all the background excitement we had some fantastic, memorable, hilarious experiences, met some wonderful people and had many of our preconceptions challenged (in both good and bad ways).
I’m going to tell you right now, I’m really nervous about writing about the US. There is so much history, culture and shared experience that I have not lived through and can’t possibly truly understand.
As a western tourist I am fully aware I am writing from a place of privilege. There are some heartbreaking things happening over there right now and I am writing about a holiday – but I hope I will be able to do some of the places and people we saw some justice.
Like Starboard, this can only scratch the surface. I wrote that book after living in the South Pacific for just a few months. In this case it was mere weeks. There is absolutely no way you can get your head around a country in that period of time.
It was a fantastic adventure though, and I am looking forward to sharing it with all of you.
My working title is Gators, guns and keeping calm – and, because I now know you need a tagline explaining what the book is about (thanks Starboard publishers!) – an anxious Kiwi’s guide to the United States of America
Though it’s early days yet and in a month’s time I might decide I hate it and go with something entirely different. Any better suggestions much appreciated – feel free to leave them in the comments 🙂
The trip was initially just going to be to Hawaii for Paddy’s 50th birthday (Hawaii Five-O styles) but then I discovered Tom Petty was going to be doing a tour in the states at the time we were going to be over there.
Since Petty to Paddy is like Bowie for me this absolutely had to happen. We worked out Texas was the best timed and placed concert, so I bought us tickets to his show in Dallas.
We thought Hawaii and Dallas would be an interesting enough combo, but then we got talking to travel agent friend and suddenly the trip grew.
So thanks to her the book now covers the following destinations: Hawaii – Waikiki, Maui and Lanaii (the island of 500 cats), San Francisco, Texas – Houston and Dallas and (the place I have wanted to visit forever) New Orleans.
Here’s some sample pictures to whet your appetite (and an entire album of cats for the cat people). I’m hoping if I go for e-book format I might be able to include a few more photos that I could with Starboard, but I’m not entirely sure how that sort of thing works. I’ll have to do my homework!
It was a pile of socks I had been staring at for more than a year before finally trying, and failing, to do something with.
I used to have a system. When an odd sock came out of the wash I would put it in a basket in the corner of my room. Periodically I would upend the basket and paw through it, reuniting them with their mates.
I don’t know when the basket became a monster.
One day the multicoloured mess became insurmountable. I had so many socks I couldn’t close my sock draw and the unmatched pile had become a semi-dormant cotton volcano threatening to erupt.
Some of the culprits
The odd sock basket came with me when we moved to our new house – and sat there for a year.
It would glare at me malevolently, reminding me that we had been in our new home for 365 days and I still didn’t have my shit sorted.
The sock pile embarrassed me. I would shove it in a corner and forget about it for a while – then another odd sock would turn up. I would promise myself I would take the basket upstairs, sit in front of the telly and sort the damned thing out – but then I’d be too tired from work, I’d have to cook dinner, there were cat videos on the internet that needed watching…
Yes I realise I was projecting onto the basket. My socky nemesis became a representation of all the things in my life I had been putting off doing. If I could conquer the pile of socks, then everything else would follow.
So that was what I was going to do last weekend. I was finally going to slay the sock monster.
I had a plan. I was going to watch Guardians of the Galaxy in preparation for seeing the second film before it finished in the theatres, dump Mount Socksuvius on the floor and sort it out while watching something that made me smile.
It all fell to pieces when I couldn’t make that happen. I missed the film being on television and was annoyed with myself for that, but that was okay because it was on Netflix -I’d checked the night before. Only it wasn’t, it was only on Netflix US not NZ. I tried TV on demand, nope. Lightbox, nope. It was a 2014 film for chrissakes, it should’t be so hard!
This upset me much, much, more that it should have.
The problem with being a functioning nutbar is that you often have no idea what silly little thing will make that functioning stop.
OCD is like that for me. Most of the time I’m pretty flexible. If situations change on me I can go with the flow and find a way to make things work. Other times I plan things meticulously in my head and if things don’t conform 100% to that plan I get really upset – irrationally so. The worst part of it is, I know it’s irrational. That’s why it’s so frustrating. I know it doesn’t make sense to feel so upset, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to stomp my feet and pull my hair out.
There doesn’t always have to be a reason, but this time I think there was. I was a bit stressed, my circadian rhythms were only just starting to sort themselves out after returning from my first (non-sailing related) OE, I was trying to start a new writing project (more detail on that, and the OE, in the next blog) and it seemed my house and garden were falling down around my ears. I was trying to do all of things and achieving none of the things and now I couldn’t even watch my movie and organise my damned socks.
Chucking them out and starting again wasn’t an option. I have issues letting go. I like my socks – they’re interesting. They have cats and boats and skull and crossbones, stripes and spots and so many shades of orange.
Of course you can match cats and boats or spots and stripes, I do that all the time – and I have done that with as many as I can, but some are different sizes or different types. Some are gym socks, some are socks to wear with boots. It doesn’t always work.
One of the upsides of having OCD is that, usually, this sort of thing is fun. I love organising books, sorting out nuts and bolts on the the boat, colour coding buttons – but for this one I have a massive block.
And what did I do with the ones that didn’t match? I didn’t want to put them in the landfill, I don’t think socks are recyclable and odd socks are a pretty stink thing to donate to an op shop.
Paddy, who had been stoically coping with my irrational anger and looming tears, came to the rescue with that one. Car enthusiasts use a lot of scrap material as cleaning rags when they are tinkering around with their automobiles. I could put the ones I wasn’t going to keep in a rag bag and chuck that in the clothing bin. No sock left behind!
As I sat there contemplating the pile in the middle of the floor and I had a sock-related epiphany.
The sockpocalypse (asockalypse?) I was staring at was a perfect metaphor for my own brain. It’s exactly what I imagine it looks like in there – an unruly pile of colours and textures that don’t always always do what they’re told.
A bright, beautiful pile of crazy that’s sometimes impossible to keep under control.
I love it and I hate it and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The best socks I have ever owned have all been bought for me by my Mum. They come in packs of three and either all of them match or none of them do. They’re interchangeable so it doesn’t matter if you lose one and I think they’re the answer for me.
The socks, like my brain, are a little bit different and help me do things in my own way.
Don’t pair? Don’t care!
I went out yesterday and bought Guardians of the Galaxy on DVD so I can watch it any damned time I please.
The giant pile of socks is still there, it’s in the middle of the lounge so I can’t miss it. I know it’s silly, but I feel like if I can get that under control I’ll be able to handle everything else.
I’ll get the house and garden sorted, I’ll start exercising again and I’ll write – a lot. Watch this space!
I got ‘the call’ from the publisher – Starboard has been out for a year and the copies they have left aren’t moving anymore.
With limited space in their warehouse it was time for the oldies to make way for the new kids, leaving me with the choice of buying up the stock they had left or letting them pulp the excess.
Because I couldn’t bear the thought of my first book becoming garden mulch, there really was no choice.
So I am now the proud owner of 22 boxes of my own book.
My book-babies
All up I sold just over 1000 copies, which isn’t too bad for a first book with a Kiwi publisher. Now it’s my job to move the rest.
I’m still fundraising for the Mental Health Foundation so if you or someone you know would like to contribute to that you can buy it here for $19.99, with 50% of the proceeds going to them
If that’s not affordable for you though, just drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort something out – I have plenty of them!
Seriously, I have plenty of them.
Other plans for this many books include; building a giant book fort and filling a pool with them so I can swim about in them ala Scrooge McDuck.
I was hoping to make one of those cool book Christmas trees you see on Pinterest but with copies of the same book but I ran out of time before Christmas (I suspect I will still have enough left to be able to do it next year though!)
Any other suggestions for what to do with a stupid amount of books would be much appreciated!
Please don’t think I’m having a cry here. As I said, I think Starboard went pretty well for a first book by a new kid. I just wasn’t going to let what was left be turned into mush. Thank you so much to the thousand plus people who bought it, to those who bought the e-book, to those who got it out of the library and recommended it to their friends. The support has been amazing and overwhelming.
And yes, there will be more. I’m working on a couple of projects at the moment (fiction this time) and there will be a Starboard followup when life lets us do another big trip.
Short version for busy folk – 50% from Which Way is Starboard Again? book sales will now go to the New Zealand Mental Health Foundation – you can get it here for $19.99
Reading the stories generated by Mental Health Awareness Week has been both inspiring and depressing.
It has been inspiring to see the strength of those living with mental illness and speaking out about it to remove the stigma, and depressing to hear about the state New Zealand’s mental health system is now in – particularly for young people.
I was lucky enough to receive excellent support when diagnosed with OCD, anxiety and depression as a teen (20 years ago) through the 198 Youth Health Centre in Christchurch (now 298 Youth Health) and the Youth Specialty Services there. I read a story in the Sunday Star Times about a Ministry of Health target that 95% of youth referred to mental health services have their first treatment within eight weeks. Thousands assessed as ‘non urgent’ are waiting longer than that. I honestly don’t think I would be here (or at least who I am) if I had to wait that long.
I know there isn’t a huge amount one person can do to help. If I wasn’t certain I would take it all home with me I would retrain and join the mental health profession.
What I do have though is a book.
A book about living with mental health issues and going outside your comfort zone. A book about bumbling around the South Pacific on a boat and the amazing people we met there. A book that people living with anxiety issues have told me made them smile (which is by far the best review I could ever hope for) and a book I hope I can use to raise a little bit of money and awareness for mental health services in New Zealand.
So I’m now working with the awesome people at New Zealand’s Mental Health Foundation to see if I can make that happen.
From now on, from every copy of Which Way is Starboard Again? bought through me for $19.99 50% will go to the Mental Health Foundation.
You can buy them here
or if you don’t use PayPal just drop me a line at whichwayisstarboardagain@gmail.com and we can sort something out.
The Mental Health Foundation will also be selling the book through their website and I’ll share the link when I get it.
So if you are interested or know anyone else who might be – point them our way. We would love your support.
Last mental health awareness week I recycled my coming out of the cray cray closet blog but a lot has happened between then and now so I think it’s time for a new one.
One of the drawbacks of writing a book about being a functioning nutbar is that it puts a whole lot of pressure on you to be exactly that.
You’ve just gone and revealed your biggest weakness to a bunch of strangers.You have told people they can get through it because you have gotten through it. You’ve told them you’re okay so you have to be okay. Otherwise you’re a big fat fraud.
The funny thing is I was okay. Everything was going great. I’d had a book published, I’d made my dream come true. I’d been getting all sorts of great feedback, I’d been in the paper and on the radio, I’d done a bit of public speaking. My life was full and busy, but it was full of good things. There was absolutely no excuse for my brain to break.
In hindsight the warning signs were there. Things had been going so well for so long that I had slipped back into bad habits, I was staying up too late, drinking far too much coffee and having energy drinks for breakfast. Then I was wondering why I wasn’t sleeping. I was permanently wired – jumpy, paranoid, clenching my teeth and counting on my fingertips (an old OCD habit). I was getting slack about remembering to take my meds.
It’s exhausting being on edge all the time. Eventually you are going to crack – and I did quite spectacularly.
It had been a great day. I’d caught up with some very dear friends who were visiting from overseas. It was lovely and sunny so we started the day with a boozy brunch and went from there. We ended up back on the boat that evening. We had a brilliant catch up and loads of fun. Then everyone went home – and I kept drinking (I’m not a big drinker so this is quite unusual for me). I had decided I wanted to turn my brain off and that was how I was going to do it. When Paddy tried to get me to stop I shut myself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine (again, this is not normal behavior for me).
The night ended with me lying on the floor of the boat screaming unintelligibly and refusing to move. It have been quite frightening for poor Paddy. Eventually I crawled into bed, freezing cold, and passed out.
No surprises that the next morning I felt awful. But it was a frighteningly familiar kind of awful – the thick, black hole in my stomach told me this was no ordinary hangover.
I spent the day alternating between feeling like my heart was going to pound out of my throat and just feeling leaden. I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to move. I felt empty and numb.
I finally had to admit it to myself – I was not okay.
I talked with Paddy, who had noticed I hadn’t been ‘present’ for a while. Like I was going through the motions but I wasn’t really there. It was such a relief to finally admit it.
It is so important to let people know when you are not okay, but it can be a massively hard thing to do. When I was a teen living with mental illness I didn’t know how to. I have a letter a friend wrote me when I was about 15 that I keep to remind me how important it is to communicate. It says “it’s like you are lying on the floor crying out in pain but not telling anyone where it hurts.” I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. But for the first time my friend got me thinking about how what was going on with me was affecting other people. I thought by bottling it up and keeping it to myself I was protecting my friends from having to deal with the mess in my head, what I didn’t realise was that what I was doing was even more frustrating and confusing. It took a long time and a lot of trial and error before I felt safe and comfortable sharing with people I cared about, but it was definitely the best thing for all of us.
So here I was admitting defeat and calling in the professionals. I called in sick at work the next day (one of the few times I have ever let myself do that for because of my mental illness) and visited my GP. I would have had no qualms taking the day off if I had the flu or a tummy bug but, despite my preaching in print, this was so much different. I couldn’t possibly show that kind of weakness, what if people thought I wasn’t going to be able to do my job?
There was no choice really. I had to go private. I could have gone into the public system but would have ended up on a waiting list – and when you are a sweating, shaking, twitchy mess, a waiting list just isn’t going to cut it. I was lucky,I could afford it. So many people can’t and that’s so wrong. I won’t start ranting about the state of our mental health system or I won’t stop, but I will say everyone needs access to this type of lifeline. There are good public services out there – they just need money and support so they are available to everyone, everywhere in the country.
My nerves about talking with my work about things proved utterly unfounded. They were great, and totally fine with me leaving an hour early once a week to take my brain in for a tuneup.
So I sat down with the head doc to see what we could do. We decided not to mess with the meds because they seemed to be doing their job, it was just me being rubbish about taking them. Instead we tried to unpack some things. We talked about what was going on in my life and every time I went down a new tangent she would gesture towards the carpet and mime putting something down. ‘Okay we’ll put this one in that basket and come back to it later. By the time we were done I was convinced she was going to run out of space on the floor for all the imaginary baskets.
“So basically you’re saying I’m a basket case then,” I dad-joked. This was to set the tone for most of my visits. We would talk about stuff, I would get uncomfortable and start cracking jokes. By session three she worked out we weren’t getting anywhere. Every time we scratched a surface I would throw walls up by trying to make her laugh.
In the end she said to me “you seem to have a real problem with having a mental illness”. I was outraged. “Don’t be ridiculous! I’ve written a book about having a mental illness, I tell people there is nothing to be ashamed of because, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Of course I don’t have a problem with having a mental illness!”
But I had to be brutally honest with myself – I did. I had to be okay because I had told the world I was okay. I’d told everyone that battling with your own brain does not make you weak – but I wasn’t drinking my own Koolaid. Do as I say don’t do as I do. It’s okay not to be okay, but not for me.
Realising that was a turning point for me. I actually started working on things. We reached a natural conclusion where most of the baskets were empty or at least only part full. I was looking after myself, taking breathers, easing up on the coffee and booze and getting my medication levels up again.
I still get twitchy at times but I am on top of it now. I’m enjoying life and I’m healthy again.
I guess my messsage is- and it really is – it’s okay not to be okay. The busiest, toughest, most outspoken of us are all allowed not to be okay and realising you aren’t okay is the first step towards fixing it – no matter how many invisible baskets you have to use.
PS – this is not a recipe to follow for everyone by any means. Talk therapy works for some people and it doesn’t for others, medication works for some people and doesn’t for others, exercise, getting out in nature, eating and drinking healthy -it’s the same deal. I find a combination of all three – meds, talking and making time to get out and about works for me, but none work on their own. It’s a process of trial and error and whatever works for you is totally legitimate.
Six months ago I lost my idol. The man very much responsible for me being me. I was devastated at the time and so was much of the world. David Bowie was such a huge part of so many lives – it was impossible to believe that someone who was so brave, intelligent and downright magical could be gone.
I said everything I needed to say in a blog I wrote at the time but what I didn’t share was a tattoo I got two weeks after.
It didn’t seem right at the time, the internet was wall to wall Bowie and it just seemed a bit soon and a bit twee. I got it for me, it was part of my grieving process and I wasn’t ready to share it with the world.
It all just sort of came together. The idea popped into my head fully formed while I was talking to my Mum on the phone. I wanted the black star from his final goodbye album, but that on its own was too dark for me.
Then the Aladdin Sane lightning bolt flashed through my mind, cutting across the star.
It represented everything that was sparkly and spiky and magical about him, that was it. That was my tattoo.
A friend of mine recommended a tattooist (Craigy at Union Tattoo) who just happened to have a cancellation, so what I was expecting to wait a while for happened within two weeks.
(Unfortunately the only decent pic I have of it is the one taken just after it was done. Have you ever tried to photograph your own wrist?)
It’s only little but it’s perfect. It makes me sad, but it also makes me feel strong and I smile every time I look at it.
It also turns out to have a very practical purpose.
I wanted the design on my wrist but didn’t really think too much about which one. In the end I just went with the one I didn’t wear a watch or fitness tracker on. It wasn’t until I was doing pilates (yes I do pilates – I may not be particularly good at it but I do it!) and I was having my usual issues of working out left from right, that I suddenly thought – I can use my tattoo!
It turns out it’s on my right side – my starboard side. I suddenly had an epiphany – I have a star on my starboard side. I wrote a book called Which Way is Starboard Again? and Bowie has answered that question for me forever!
Next time I’m out sailing, if a boat is heading towards Bowie I’ll know to keep clear.
I also conducted my own nerdy celebration of Bowie on the six month anniversary by helping orchestrate an augmented reality tribute. Before there was Pokemon Go there was Ingress (and before that Geocaching) – both are GPS based games that get you out amongst public art and sculptures and places of significance. My Dad got me into both, being a retired airforce navigator and fascinated with that sort of stuff.
I won’t go into too much detail but basically two warring teams united to create a digital lightning bolt across Lyall Bay.
The details are here (you don’t have to understand the lingo – the pictures say it all.)
Bowie was always an early adopter of new technology – I like to think he’d get a kick out of it.
I’ll end on a quote from a book I have recently read – Simon Critchley’s On Bowie, which sums him up perfectly for me.
“Bowie has been my soundtrack. My constant, clandestine companion. In good times and bad. Mine and his.
What’s striking is that I don’t think I’m alone in this view. There is a world of people for whom Bowie was the being who permitted a powerful emotional connection and freed them to become some other kind of self, something freer, more queer, more honest, more open, more exciting…He was someone who made life a little less ordinary for an awfully long time.”
PS. SHAMELESS PRODUCT PLACEMENT! Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is on sale $19.99 for blog readers. Free postage within NZ
So, rather ironically given I work in communications for a living, it turns out I am a bit of a rubbish self promoter. I need to try harder to let people know Which Way is Starboard Again? the book is out there.
To that end I have spruced up the blog and transferred it from the basic seamunchkin.wordpress.co to seamunchkin.com. If you already follow the blog your subscription has been transferred and nothing will change – it just means it’s easier to share and buy through the website.
I’ve put up a page about the book here and even have a dinky PayPal button
which you can also access here for people who would like to buy signed copies with special messages directly from me.
All the Facebook, Twitter, G+ links have been updated and I’ll put a redirect on the original blog so, other than the new look, it’s pretty much business as usual.
So if anyone you know is interested in reading about sailing, anxiety, projectile vomiting and ant wars I would really appreciate it if you could point them this way.
Thanks for bearing with me – back to your regularly scheduled programming!
I’m packing up my house at the moment. There’s an exciting and scary and stressful and wonderful reason why I am, which I will write about once I’m done (and no it’s not the next sailing trip yet. Unfortunately El No No won that particular battle).
I couldn’t have picked a worse time to pack up my house – the boat is out of the water and demanding attention, Paddy and I are both busy with work and all sorts of other things keep getting in the way, but that’s the way it is.
Packing up my house and my life has also thrown up an added complication. It’s making me want to write. I’ve had a block for ages but now I keep finding things and thinking things and seeing things that make me want to stop and scribble. Of course I can’t – the best I can do is make notes and hope it will all still be there when I get a chance to stop.
I did find something tonight though that I really have to share. I have to share it because I have been witnessing people struggling with stepping back and seeing themselves for who they really are lately – both in the real world and online. People who don’t have the perspective right now to see that they are great.
It’s a silly thing and I haven’t really known why I kept it until now.
Back in the 90s when I left high school I was given a “work skills and personal skills” statement. It was basically a summary of a bunch of comments from my teachers about what sort of person I was. It was pretty quirky and informal and I suspect they don’t do things this way any more, but it made me smile so I kept it.
In my last year of high school I was going through a lot of crap. Normal teenage angst compounded with learning to accept and deal with having a mental illness. It was something only my family and closest friends knew about. When I think back I picture a scared, stressed out drama queen trying to cover up everything by being loud and cracking jokes. What I didn’t see then, and what I am only just starting to see now, was the strong, tough young woman trying to find her place in the world and not giving up when things got hard.
That was what my teachers saw.
Here are a couple of passages that will give you an idea of what I mean (an also a bit of an insight into what a stroppy little shit I was). The emphasis is mine.
“Anna has a very independent, individualistic approach to life and asserts her personality through rather unorthodox but quite spectacular means such as her frequent and eye-catching changes of attire. Although she has an idiosyncratic approach to life in general and school in particular, her ideas and behaviour are always positive rather than negative and narrow-minded. She is not influenced by currently popular fashions or fads and presents herself to the world as she wants, not as she thinks she should.
Anna’s unorthodox approach and her witty, ironic personality means that she gets on well with a wide range of students, some of whom tend to regard her as an iconic figure around the school. Although she always speaks her mind (often forcefully and at some length) she is sensitive to the opinions of others, in fact, she is very interested in other opinions, even if she disagrees with them entirely.”
Teenage Anna was strong and stroppy and entirely herself. She was actually pretty awesome – it’s just a shame she didn’t realise it at the time.
I never thought I’d say this, but I actually aspire to be my teenage self again.
This is a weird sort of a blog, but I guess it’s a message to other teenage (and adult) me’s out there. It’s too easy to get wrapped up in negative perceptions of yourself and not step back and see the person you actually are. Sometimes it takes an outsider’s perspective (even if it is nearly 20 years too late).
It’s too easy in the panic and the stress and the pain to overlook all the good that you are. You don’t see what your teachers see, what your friends and your family see.
So please, just bear with my self-help hippy crap for a minute. Just take a step back, breathe and actually see yourself. You are pretty awesome.
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
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.
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?’
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