I did my first day at a new workplace. The digital arm of a large Australian advertising firm called The Furnace. I really liked it! The space is great, high ceilings, wooden floors, open plan. The people are also well, my kind-of people I suppose, from first impressions – music-lovers, witty-talkers. It seems like a vibrant family there. I’m not quite sure, what sort of on-going basis my work will be. I may just be there to fill the gaps over the new year. Either-way, I think I will enjoy working at The Furnace.

In other news, Winter People are playing The Basement on Tuesday, which is pretty exciting for me. We’re doing a long five hour practice on Sunday, to prepare ourselves. More on that in posts to come.

I’ve been very busy with work-work and re-design & back-end development of Riversend 8, so I haven’t worked on The East Coast manuscript for a week or two. I am hoping to finish with all redesign work before NYE, so I can re-focus my attention on The East Coast in the new year.

Winter People have booked a studio for January 10th, to record bass and drums. So hopefully we’ll have a fully mixed-mastered EP out by mid-Febuary.

OK, signing of now, till next time, be good to your gardens and they will be good to you.

Its December, and its been a very long time since I was posting regularly, so I thought I would try and sum up the creative produce of 2008.

My current position (read: creative-status) seems eerily familiar. This time last year I was working on a novel, re-designing my website and playing alot of shows. Fast forward about 345 days, and I’m working on a novel, re-designing my website and playing a-lot of shows. However, in fairness to myself, I don’t mean to suggest a stagnation has occurred, in-fact I think things have actually progressed significantly.

In December 2007, having disbanded my first real group, I had returned to playing and recording by myself. I was still pining after the established music venues in Sydney, wondering how I could get gigs there. Now, between my two bands, Winter People & I Like Cats we’ve played almost every venue I would want to have played: Oxford Art Factory, Spectrum, Manning Bar, The Annandale and next week Winter People are playing at The Basement. In December 2007, the biggest band I had performed with was a three piece, now I have two bands with eleven members between them (whoa, I hadn’t actually counted that before, that’s alot!). So I guess things have moved forward on the musical front in 08.

Now, “The East Coast”: When I abandoned the manuscript last year, I honestly thought I would never pick it up again – but slowly, with the months, confidence returned. In many ways, I (begrudgingly) admit, the grindstone of University essay writing has helped me. I wield the razor with less reluctance now. I used to agonize over four adjectives in prose writing. I couldn’t bring myself to remove a single one of them! Of course, now that I am trying to hone things down to their center, writing is quite slow, a single page is generally the outcome of my writing sessions. Often less. This new manuscript, is very different from the original, in style and also largely in content. The central characters and central plot points remain the same, but all else has undergone serious renovation. I’m certainly at the beginning of the battle with this new manuscript, but I hope 2009 is the year of “The East Coast”.

I have been rather unmotivated to paint this year, though I have produced a number of sketches. The antagonism of the art community towards aesthetically motivated painting [rather than philosophical] dulls my enthusiasm for it.

Hopefully 2009 will see some of these creative projects coming to fruition, not only as works themselves, but as works entering the wider world. Oh also, I turned 22 a few days ago, (sigh…) I’m getting old! Till next time world, eat your greens and look both ways.