On the money Kent...

Music And Colour And All 

The Senses Mixed Up

When we listen to great music we experience colour. Some people actually see the colours, others have a vague feeling of their presence. When this sensation isn't apparent it isn't music you are listening to.

Image via Wikipedia

Touch can give us a sense of taste, try it when you stroke a lover's skin and you'll know it is true, you'll know what they taste like. We can hear the sounds in a great painting. Again, some can actually hear the individual noises, most of us receive the sensation of the sound. The silence in some paintings can be daunting and completely unlike an absence of sound.

All the senses are connected and should inspire each other.  Most of what I experience around me is aimed at a singular sense and lacks the depth to trigger other responses. I've been trying to work out what has been making me feel so uncomfortable for so long and today it just came to me. This knowledge was in me, another human triggered it. 

When other humans inspire all the senses at once we know something deep and real is happening.

Parkstreet.

KENT PARKSTREET

The Unchosen Few

The day of the Lord cameth less like a thief in the night, more like a firestorm of death at around eleven on a Tuesday morning. I guess it was night time in the other hemisphere where most of the people lived.

A lucky handful survived. Comparing notes later we realized that none of us had kept up with our paperwork and we were all still in bed when it happened. Only the lazy made it, a new clan of inner city wasters were all that remained of this city.

A couple of pothead engineering students cobbled together enough solar panels and pumps to satisfy our energy and water requirements, a morphine addicted doctor keeps us healthy. There is plenty of stuff, so much stuff, so few humans.

A bunch of strippers and hookers are with us, their Daddy issues perished with their Daddies, what was bad news for most has worked out pretty well for them. As the majority they have ensured that women and men share this life equally.

It turns out the ashes of sinners makes perfect soil for growing fruit and vegetables, the fish have returned to the harbour, we have thousands of yachts to play with and fish from.  The air is clear now the dust has settled, the water is clean. Every day in this new Eden is simple and free and easy.

As the only surviving songwriter my ditties have become the songs of a culture. I have to write more carefully, knowing that what I produce now will endure. We are all careful about what we do and say, we have a great responsibility to create a culture of beauty and equity for all.

We, the unchosen, lazy few, we are humanity. The way we think and act now will affect our offspring and theirs. We don't have rules and therefore don't have sins. We have love and kindness and making new things.

Every day we wonder why we didn't live this way before the day of the Lord?

Parkstreet.
http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

VERY NICE MR PARKSTREET

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Two Boys Kissing

There is a new elevator in my building. The doors open more swiftly than the old ones. This morning when the doors opened I caught two boys, well, young men, sharing a kiss.

They were a little embarrassed, but not really, they enjoyed someone witnessing their romance. Cute as buttons in their fashionable stripey shirts and designer jeans they held hands as they entered the elevator and disappeared.

Even the world's most cynical man, and that could well be me, can't help but feel a little mooshy when faced with new love. I love that the two people involved feel like they invented the feeling. That showing off a public kiss is displaying their relationship to the world, and it needs to be displayed because it is important.

It is important. The excitement of new love is the reason we get out of bed in the morning. Even with an old lover the memory of that first flush lingers and sustains the difficult times. Us single folk look forward to having that feeling again, even better if it is returned by the object of our affection. The very moment two people, via words or any other method, say out loud that they are completely smitten is a golden moment. Spoken honestly it is truly beautiful.

Whenever romance doesn't go the way we'd prefer, like most of my love life, we swear off love then butter up again when a stranger stirs us. I had no desire to kiss either of the two boys in my foyer this morning, but I want to thank them for reminding me how sweet life can be.

Parkstreet.
www.myspace.com/kentparkstreet

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The Gutter As The Road Less Travelled

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The Gutter As The Road Less Travelled

Milan Kundera wrote a scene involving a woman stepping off a crowded pavement, walking in the gutter, staring at a flower she is holding in front of her. The flower is the only beauty she can find in an aggressive city. The people call her insane. The obvious inference is that she is the only sane one, that the pedestrian parade is the real insanity. 

The gutter is sometimes the road less travelled. Sometimes the only beauty is a flower plucked from one's mind, a memory, the smell of a coffee, the taste of a lover, the feel of water, the sound of Coltrane, the sight of a flower. A life filled with beautiful moments will be full of beautiful memories. Stepping off the pavement and into the gutter is the tradition of the bohemian and a fine tradition it is.

There is beauty in every step we take, every step chosen with a spirit of beauty.

Parkstreet.

http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

Monky Business

I'm Thinking Of Becoming A Monk

I'm thinking of becoming a monk. I'm not a member of any religion but I dig the robes and it's the only way I can see to hide from the world and decide what really is worth fearing and what is worth desiring. Just the process of deciding what I couldn't give up has been instructional. Could I give up blogging? Could I give up my flute? Would I have to give these things up? Could I give these things up?


There are many things worth fearing. There are many things worth desiring. Just one year of peace without distraction to work out which of those things are for me, one year to become real and whole, to forget the word "should", one year to listen to my own soul singing and learn my own song.

Taoists often talk of the "ten thousand things", the constant stream of distractions that prevent us feeling in tune with the natural world. If I don't become a monk finding a way to ignore the ten thousand things may be the other answer.

The only time I feel in tune this way is when I'm travelling with just one bag and one instrument, and a device to write on.  The world turns and I turn around it, all I need is a monk's robe and I can start my own exclusive order. The Order of Wandering Flute Playing Solitude, but with the benefits of being able to go out for coffee.

Parkstreet.
http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

Solo, improvised flute track, Warm Up, available for download at iTunes, all the other sites.

Indeed Kent, indeed...

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

TRAMPS LIKE US

Go traveller.

Here's to all the dharma bums, the makers of music, the dreamers of dreams, those who live on love and air, the joyously lost, the gloriously adrift, the seekers, the circus joiners, the exiled, the wanderers, the stumblers, the free, a green tea toast to you all.

May you all find a place to heal your lonliness, a person to call home, a vocation that finds you.

May you never lose faith in redemption through travel, may your restlessness lead to peace.

Go, traveller.

Parkstreet.

KENTISM

Image via CrunchBase

youporn, Imagination, Feminism

I recently changed internet providers so I had a large amount of data to use up before the end of the month. I used it to satisfy my curiousity about youporn, have a look at what was going on over there.


It wasn't purely academic interest, I had all the usual reactions a boy might have, but I was also struck by how ordinary the whole affair was. In an hour I could only take a general view, if someone wants to pay my internet bill I'll spend more time time looking into it more deeply. Anyone?

I noticed that porn production houses are using the youporn site to run teaser campaigns, to be expected I guess. This professional and semi professional material is standard "dumb girl who can't get enough" nonsense, or one girl and six men scenes.

I was very disappointed by the amateur scenes, they seemed to be porn copies, anonymous male, sex crazed female. I'm surprised how many women in this post feminist era choose to post videos that depict themselves as passive, being used for pleasure by men. Surely women have their own fantasies beyond the average? There is a small percentage of different scenes on youporn but the vast majority seemed to be in the same genre.

Compared with the variety and imagination seen on youtube youporn is a huge disappointment. Are we really so boring? Is there really nothing more going on in the real world?

Can the sex lives of a generation be summed up by oral, anal, facial, swallow? Is that all there is? Is that the role women really like? Surely now that women own their sexuality there is more. Maybe the people having imaginitive sex are too busy doing it to bother filming it, or maybe they are concerned about being judged.

I'm available if any imaginitivee women want to break the cliche, I see it as my duty to freedom of expression on the internet. Until the offers start flooding in I think I'll dodge youporn. Being bored by porn just makes me sad.

Parkstreet.

Image via Wikipedia

What Happened To You, Man?

What happened to you, man? You used to be cool.

I love this quote, it works so effectively on stage and on screen. It's old enough that I have no idea where it came from, maybe you can tell me? 

As much as I love it I believe it is rarely true. Generally the discovery that someone is uncool is due to me opening my eyes to the truth, not a sudden change in that truth.

I knew a woman who apparently did lots of cool things in the past, but none since I met her. When she was an idealistic arts student she did something with Burmese refugees on the Thai border, I could never quite work out what she did, but she did something. I was pretty impressed. I've since worked out that spoiled rich kids have always travelled to where the drugs are cheap and there is no social disgrace. This woman had a huge range of such interesting stories, but nothing seemed to happen now. It just took me time to see that she was never cool, she just wrote a cool past.

I knew a dub reggae drummer who gave up playing for his family. His wife, four kids and others got the best of him, he played for fun and satisfaction on weekends. Some might say he'd lost his cool but when I saw his kids kiss him in public, how safe his family felt because he was there I knew he was always cool, drumming in bands or not.

Cool isn't dependant on environment, fashion, social pressure, cool is internal and real. It can't be found or lost. I'll always love the words,"what happened to you, man?", but I know that what really changes is my perception.

Parkstreet.

GROWING WITH KENT

MESS

There was a time when I used to crap in my own pants then expect someone else to clean it up. I was very young. I don't remember but I'm assured it's true. I'm pretty certain my first words were,"would you be kind enough to direct me to the bathroom? This current arrangement is undignified for both of us." Today when I discover a baby has created such a mess I hand the little critter back to a parent. Baby poo is their problem.

When I was twelve years old I drank so much champagne at a new years eve party that I threw up all over a bathroom. I intended to use the white pocelain receptacle but the room was spinning like Steve Austen's space craft so the nouveau riche bathroom carpet took a hit.

I was in no state to clean up, it was Mrs. O'dea's champagne and she was silly enough to carpet a bathroom, let her deal with it.

At sixteen I got hammered with my mates for the first time. I snuck home, dashed upstairs for a shower, clean the beer smell off my breath, and sat down to a family dinner. It was a middle class home so no one noticed.

I learned to hide my mess.

As I headed into adult relationships I discovered the joy of stoic silence. A zen condition of nothingness whereby the other person is forced to fix any problems for both.

Belligerence was an interesting phase. "You got a problem? Fuck you!" Very effective. If you don't like my mess you can fuck off, accept me, accept my mess.

I remember chatting with a very cool piano player. I was talking about that moment at a wedding reception when the annoying enthusiastic girl has you by the hand, insisting that you really want to dance, that she is helping you by physically dragging you onto the floor. I was trying to invent a method to diffuse that situation politely, without resortting to breaking her pudgy little fingers. I couldn't imagine a way, I'll never forget his response. "I don't let it get to that stage in the first place."

This idea had never occured to me before. I was familiar with every response to a mess once my pants were full of it, the idea of being a grown up and not making the mess in the first place was brilliant. Don't drink too much, don't let a relationship fall apart before I act, don't crap in my own pants.

I have a friend who keeps on returning to a violent, drug addicted man. I don't know how to explain it to her. There won't always be a parent, a policeman, me, to help her out. Maybe she just needs to crap in her own pants until she grows up.

Parkstreet.http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

Sunday Lunch And Dolphins And Sleeping And Sex

Sunday Lunch And Dolphins And Sleeping And Sex

Today I was invited for Sunday lunch. It was an old fashioned, civilized and civilizing affair, complete with roasted chicken, potatoes, apple tart, cheese and coffee.

The hostess and one of the guests have both spent a lot of time in Paris. They informed me that Sundays in Paris usually consist of eating far too much food, sleeping, waking up long enough to have sex then going back to sleep. Sadly I was only invited for the eating too much section of the program but it was delightful just the same.

I figure this is how dolphins spend most of their days. Find an innocent, slow moving school of fish, eat too much, float about smugly, have sex, repeat every day of your life. Dolphins have it going on. If I believed in reincarnation I'd be living a good deed kind of life in the hope of coming back as a dolphin.

Humans should spend more time eating too much food, sleeping and making love, even if it's only on Sundays. It's that simple. We should. My blogs usually try to find an analogy between a story and a philosophical idea but today all I want to say is that we should all spend more time eating, sleeping and fucking.

That's all.

Thanks for the gorgeous lunch Laura.

Parkstreet.
www.myspace.com/kentparkstreet

Image via Wikipedia

street

St Kilda and Kent

Image by SOCIALisBETTER via Flickr

Sharing The Life

There was a time before cell phones and the interweb when musicians lived in the inner city, stayed in touch with each other by drinking in the same bars, taking coffee in the same cafes. Networking was a way of life, not a button to click. Like minds would meet through friends of friends, through reputation, by taking the time to talk to each other.

When I was starting out the Galleon Cafe in the Melbourne bayside suburb of St. Kilda was the musician's cafe. The waitresses were sexy and cool, the food cheap and good, the cork board on the wall covered with hand written ads for flatmates wanted and band members needed. Over the conversation hum you'd often hear an over excited young rocker talking a little too loudly about recording a new DEMO in the STUDIO, desperate to be overheard. These guys never lasted long.

One of the golden moments of my early career was entering the Galleon and feeling the hush, recognition, the whispers about the flute player. The flute player was me, I'd made it, on the St. Kilda scene I was someone. In the overall scheme it didn't mean much, but my heart sang, these were my peers, my musical family, I'd graduated to relatively well known status.

Looking back that moment means a lot to me. The inner city scene is a thing of the past, in Australia anyway, but for a couple of years there I was living the dream, a working musician with a name, a place, a community. Who better to be recognized by? Some crave approval from family and friends, but they have to love you no matter how crap you are. Others court the general public. The general public has taste up it's arse, just look at the records they buy. They buy shit. They buy what the television tells them to buy, and now what the internet tells them to buy. Britney Spears? Really? So fellow musicians who share one's way of life, live next door, frequent the same venues, play in the same bands, recognition from them means everything.

Today young musicians strive for web presence, site hits, media recognition. I know why they do it, I'm in the same game, but it ain't the same. They'll never feel the warmth of the Galleon in winter, chicken and leek pie, a table full of fellow players coming and going, sharing the life.

Parkstreet.
http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

Solo, improvised flute track, Warm Up, available for download at iTunes, all the other sites.

Heroin Or Ego

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Heroin Or Ego

So I'm walking up a lane between two old red brick apartment buildings, leafy, quiet, cool. I pop out onto a large pedestrian laneway, cafe tables and umbrellas, sunshine. A woman coming the other way, she's obviously just taken a large dose of heroin.

Her brain is processing information slowly, to her I must appear suddenly, from nowhere, not there one second then there. Her zombie eyes stare at me, her body walks in the direction she is looking. I step out of her way, by the time she fills the space where I was I'm gone, there one second then not there. This woman is accustomed to apparitions, staggers on her way without looking back.


After coffee, half an hour later, I'm walking past the posh shops around the corner. A shiny happy girl steps out of a shop right in front of me. She moves faster than a heroin addict, my arm collects hers as I side step her. She shouts abuse at me, an ugly mouth on a pretty girl. Her sense of entitlement, her belief that the rest of the world should step out of her way, it disgusts me.


I should go back but what can I say? Should I have to explain manners to a grown up? She'll be shocked if I tell her she has less class than a street junky.


Addicted to heroin or ego, the result is the same.


Parkstreet.
http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/


Studio single, Drum, available for download at iTunes, all the other sites.

Parkstreet Musings

Musical Tradition.

The other night I sat up watching an overnight music video show dedicated to Aussie rock from the 1970's. Some faces were familiar, I played with some of the guys from that era in the late 80's and early 90's when they were the same age I am now. By then they were considered the gentry of rock and roll, I was honoured to play with them, learn from them.


 This tradition of passing on musical knowledge and spirit is a beautiful thing. It is present in every form of music. It takes two to make it work, the experienced musician with a love for his craft and the patience to teach, the novice with the humility and desire to learn. Like any other creative pursuit becoming a good musician requires self knowledge, without it one is just playing party tricks one after the other. Humility is the first step to self knowledge. Humility is way out of fashion, an almost forgotten word.

Wherever I go I hear young musicians who don't understand their craft. They are clowns or actors or freak shows, many entertaining things but not musicians. They use music to serve their own purpose instead of using their talent to serve the music. This is the one lesson I heard from older musicians from every field, jazz to punk, that our job is to serve the music.

These old masters knew humility. They'd gone from national fame and fortune to playing with me, a massive fall. The ones who had kept playing, who came to a small gig and cheerfully nursed me along were the true players, the men who lived by a code of honour when it came to music. Most of them had suffered for it, their ex wives couldn't understand, most people they met couldn't understand, maybe I gave them something back by understanding what they were trying to tell me.

All the guys I saw on television had much more commercial success than I've ever had. Because of what they taught me I've never needed to strive for fame, they freed me to pursue my own musical desires. Seeing them as slender young men full of energy and power, strutting peacocks under lights, filled me with joy. I felt like I shared their night in the sun, that I'm part of their tradition.

Parkstreet.

http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

Studio single, Drum, available for download at iTunes, all the other sites.

ENOUGH SAID, THANKS KENT!

Serenity.

I've decided that serenity is as simple as being in the groove with change, feeling life as a continuum instead of a series of expectations and results.

It's been a long day, that's all I've got.

Parkstreet.http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

A Glimpse Of The Seedy - Kent Parkstreet

Cover of Working Girls (Widescreen)

Friday, January 21, 2011

As a teenager I cleaned a bakery for cash after school. The handful of dollars it paid me was plenty for all a schoolboy requires, cigarettes, six packs.

I also cleaned the toilets out the back, they were shared by a whole row of shops and backed onto a mechanics workshop next door. After cleaning those loos night after night I noticed a crack in the wall gave me a glimpse into the mechanic's tea room and their posters of young ladies with their boobs out performing simulated sex acts on various parts of automobiles.

If you'd shown me such a  poster under normal circumstances I would have commented on the embarrassing custom of Australian men turning their cars into fetish objects, I was a precocious little prick. Somehow peeking at those images through a crack in a toilet wall, when I should have been working, made it exciting. It was a glimpse into another world that I never knew existed. The girls in my upper middle class life didn't look like that. Their hair was never teased that way and they certainly didn't possess such enormous breasts.

I occasionally take coffee with a couple of working girls. They carry bags on their shoulders on their way home from work. I always wonder what's in those bags? Of course I've seen lingerie and sex toys before, but in the context of coming straight from a day at the brothel they seem more interesting than usual. Working nights I've always known a few strippers. Hearing their stories over a beer early in the morning is always fun. They are just work tales to them but to me they come from an exotic place I'll never know.

These working girls and strippers find their work pretty awful most of the time. It's a world driven by male ego, drugs, exploitation of the desperate. They treat it like work, they talk about most of their clients as if they had come in on the bottom of their shoe.

Chances are that the same guys who hang saucy posters in their tea room are the customers of hookers and strippers. In real life I find it sad and pathetic. I'm certain their wives and girlfriends do too. No one is ever going to offer me money to pose naked or have sex with them, I'll never pay for those services, it's all a fantasy world to me.

Glimpsed through a crack in the wall of the everyday the seedy appears exciting. I wonder if the people on the other side of the wall, those who live in that seedy world, ever sneak a look back at me?

Solo, acoustic Red Brown Dust available for download at iTunes, all the other sites.

Parkstreet.http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt. 3.

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Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt. 3

Ian Dury's Reasons To Be Cheerful Pt. 3 is on high rotation on my iPod right now. Not surprisingly this song makes me cheerful, sends me off in search of other reasons to be cheerful.


The first one that comes to mind is in Tolstoy's War And Peace. There is a scene where the young aristocracy are riding in sleighs through the perfect snow, in fancy dress on their way to a traditional festival. The girls are wearing men's suits, charcoal moustaches, hair tied up under hats, they are free to act outside the usual constraints of their polite society, they seem more vivacious and exciting than ever before. The whole passage is stoked with desire and joy, a celebration of youth before youth became a buzz word or a demographic. You know that all the participants will remember this night their whole lives, the feeling spreads to the reader.


Another is a simple drum beat. It occurs twice in James Brown's (Get Up I feel Like Being A) Sex Machine. The horns play seven perfect hits, the drummer cracks the eighth and kicks the whole band back into the groove. I've listened to this song over seven million times and this drum beat still hits me in the guts every time.


My mind wanders to Kerouac, On The Road. Kerouac is looking through the rear window of the car that is driving him away from Cassady. Cassady has a sad, beat bandage hanging off his sad, beat thumb, the thumb that hitched them both across America. Kerouac has been forced to choose between doing the right thing by one friend or leaping back into wildness and freedom with Cassady. The sheer bloody awfulness of this moment, the humanity, the honesty, that someone wrote this and I got to read it makes me feel ecstatic.


My friend paints. He paints real good. Once he painted a large abstract, cloudy greys that dragged the eye deep into the canvass. It takes a while to notice the life sized dog, a black and brown boxer, in the bottom right hand corner. The dog is almost photographic, real real real, so damned doggy. The abstract becomes even more beautiful for the presence of that dog. Nick's excellent technique and sense of humour thrill me.


That's plenty of reasons to be cheerful for now.


Parkstreet.


http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

PARKSTREET'S - What Is Jazz?

Image via Wikipedia

What is jazz?

Scantily clad lovelies singing "all that jazz" is as much jazz as a sterilized safety pin is punk.


Jazz is punker than punk. It isn't rebellious for the sake of it, it is ignoring any rule that stands between the musician and the music.


Jazz is surfing the seventh wave, improvising on a surge of nature that supports me but will feel nothing if it spits me off it's face. It is surfing at dawn, no competition, the audience that can take the cold is welcome, and welcome to join me on the wave.


Jazz is the Tao, dharma, the spirit of the day, it is style but not fashion. It is the roar of the sports crowd, the silence of the night, the rhythm of sex, the groove of the city. Jazz is the fearless life, the fearless death. Jazz will go wrong on occasion, depending on the definition of wrong.


Jazz is a harsh mistress but in the mutually consented fun way. Jazz is being truly alive for one moment so I know what it feels like, so my daily life can strive for the same reality. Timeless, ageless, flowing with the universe.


I hope that clears it up.


Parkstreet.
http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/

PARKSTREET UNPLEASED!

Image via Wikipedia

ABBA And Hitler.

I sometimes joke that if I were permitted just one trip in a time machine I wouldn't go back and kill Hitler, I'd go back and kill ABBA. I was recently informed that making jokes about Hitler was in poor taste. I tried to explain that I was joking about ABBA not Hitler but met deaf ears.

Of course I know that ABBA can't be compared to Hitler. Of course I do. They are loathesome but not mass killer loathesome. My politically correct culture has trouble discerning the difference between the subject and the joke comparison. Key words have been implanted in tiny minds, the reaction is Pavlovian.

Political correctness was useful for a time, bringing attention to the way some words are used derisively often by habit not intent, explaining that these words can be hurtful no matter how they are used. Like most fashions it went too far. Just like a glimpse of g string became low cut jeans that exhibited all, so political correctness has become blunt and overbearing.

There is talk of ABBA reforming. I'll continue to compare this event to Hitler putting the party back together again. Like any fashion PC will go by the wayside, people look back and wonder what made them show off their knickers, what made them lose their ability to see a joke for what it is.


Parkstreet.
http://www.parkstreetquotes.blogspot.com/

Kent Parkstreet's St Kilda

Tuesday, January 26, 2010
St. Kilda, Melbourne, Australia.
For us St. Kilda was like like one of those children's pop up picture books. You know the ones, you turn a page and the enchanted paper forest lifts up, then folds neatly away as you turn the page to reveal the next scene. Our pop up book was called St.Kilda, Architecture, 1850 to 1970, and we were the children.

Jack was a local, the genuine St. Kilda article, a Princess of Princess St. She'd owned the book since she was five and was happy to share hers with me. I was a fortunate partner in crime.

We'd walk the streets late at night holding hands. She'd show me all her old favourites, mansions hidden by orange brick apartment blocks, worker's cottages with histories from dock worker to artist to pot dealer's shop front. We'd open dusty old pages she'd nearly forgotten and sometimes discover new treasures for the revised edition we were writing together. It was like those buildings didn't exist unless we were looking at them.

We'd exchange extravagant gifts of real estate. I'd offer her a grand Victorian mansion, she'd present me with an Art Deco apartment. We'd make foolish plans, balls in the ballrooms, breakfasts in the ingles, cocktail parties in Port Phillip Bay windows. We were the most benevolent of landlords, allowing all to live in our vast estate free of charge from us.

We'd walk the streets late at night, holding hands, the poorest of property tycoons, the silliest of children, then up to the stairs to the rented apartment that was really ours, a cup of tea and a cigarette on a cushion on the floor, close the book, a kiss, and so to bed.

For Jacqueline.

Parkstreet.
http://www.kentparkstreetblog.com/
Solo, acoustic, Red Brown Dust, available for download at iTunes and all the other sites.

Introducing Kent Parkstreet - Humourist, Musician, Raconteur

Monday, January 3, 2011

Resolution.

My resolution for this year is to, as the kids say, harden the fuck up.


I refer back to my old theory. If one is an arsehole ninety nine times in a row the one time one is nice will be remembered. If one is nice ninety nine times the one time one screws up is remembered. My women friends tell me of all the awful things their men do, the same things over and over again. After they've told me they go home and screw him. From now on they can tell someone else.


"Tell the bloke you are screwing, or screw me then tell me."


I'm going to harden up at work, put a price on my talent and experience. I'm going to harden up socially, not be the guy who nurses the lame duck and therefore be associated with him by others.


An old friend once told me,"some musicians are real dogs, others aren't doggy enough" when he was worried I wasn't tough enough for the music business. I'm belatedly taking his advice.


Woof.


Parkstreet.
http://www.parkstreetquotes.blogspot.com/