The Proper Way to Treat a Lady

One of the salient points of living in a room with a hole in the roof during the wet season was that I had to keep anything electrical somewhere else. Fortunately, being a man of simple means and small bedroom, this really only affected two things. The first was my computer, which is a laptop and easy to move around.

The other was Samantha, my Korg Triton synthesiser and ever faithful companion through thick and thin. Over the years we’ve spent many an insomnious monsoonal night together, listening to the rain beat down, watching the lightning and pouring our souls out to each other through that special bond that can only be shared between a man and an electric piano.

But recently we’ve started to grow apart.

I first noticed the problem when Mary came back into my life. Mary is my old flame from high school who returned from out of nowhere over twelve months ago now. She has nothing like the bond with me that I share with Sam, but then I guess you never forget your first love. When prison ministry came along, Mary’s lighter body and … ability to run on batteries made her the perfect choice to carry along with me. Suddenly Samantha found herself left at home in her box while I was out ministering with another keyboard.

When we moved into a room with a crack in the wall, it was the last straw. We both decided it would be better if Samantha stayed at the church for a while until I could figure stuff out with … the roof. The roof has long since been repaired, but Samantha seems happy in her semi-permanent position up front at the church. It’s convenient for everyone (well, everyone except Sasha the church’s old Roland piano who has been unceremoniously relegated to the floor behind the wings) but there have been plenty of nights when I’ve come home late and missed the comforting glow from Samantha’s touch screen after a long night at sepak takraw training.

To be honest, things had been rocky for a while before Mary came back. Ever since we started up with the local apostolic church it hasn’t been the same. The music is all guitar based and all in the same key (E major, also known as “the key of alto”, “the key of Hillsong” and “the key of ‘for God’s sake hasn’t anyone told them there are 11 other major keys, to say nothing of the minor ones?’”) and there really hasn’t been the chance for us to expand, explore and experiment with the sounds we’re capable of producing together. Even when I bought her a brand new Roland amplifier for us to play with together, it just wasn’t enough to compensate for a life of repetitive chord progressions and shallow (some might say theologically untenable, but that’s a rant for another post) lyrics.

All that changed last Sunday morning. We amiably and respectfully went through the motions like we do every Sunday morning; two fast songs to get everyone hyped and then two slow songs to get everyone “worshipping” (Why do we even associate ‘worship’ with slow and emotional would-be power ballads?) and then the special guest preacher stood up to speak.

It had been a while since we’d had a guest speaker at church. I had forgotten that pentecostal pastors – especially pentecostal pastors from big flashy churches down south – like to have the big finish to their sermons accompanied by reflective piano and string music.

I’ve managed to convince the worship team at church not to make me do this, because in my opinion if the words the preacher is saying are true and spirit-breathed, then they’ll carry enough impact all on their own and won’t need help from a musician. And if they don’t carry the sort of impact that comes inherently with being spirit-breathed and true, then I’ll be damned if I’m going to lend any power to a bung message with my expertly crafted and emotionally manipulative soundtrack in the background. It makes me into a hypocrite and makes Samantha feel like a cheap prostitute.

Unfortunately, no-one had thought to warn the guest speaker that this church was possessed of a methodologically rebellious keyboardist, so when the preacher reached the end of her talk and realised she wasn’t quite as powerful as she wanted to be, she actually called over the microphone for the keyboardist to come up and help.

Tragically I was out in the lobby at the time, as I had quietly removed myself from the auditorium about half way through the sermon. I found her theology a little wobbly, but didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else, who seemed to think her interpretation of Haggai was fantastic. The worship leader had to come out and find me and tell me to get my butt on stage and fire up the emotionatron.

Ordinarily I would have resented this, but I realised something amazing as I reluctantly climbed on stage and started to play: It was just me and Samantha up there. No guitarists, no drummer and no singers. Just me and my keyboard, together again. We didn’t have to play in E if we didn’t want to. We were free to express ourselves properly and let the music flow into whatever key, mode or range she wanted.

And freak me sideways if we didn’t set that room on fire. Garry and Samantha: the reunion album. Except it wasn’t an album, it was just an altar call. But what an altar call it was. The congregation must have really got into Haggai that morning, because at least half of them came forward for prayer. And we weren’t going to fade out, as if the people who were prayed for last were any less important than the ones who rushed forward to be first. We kept playing until the last person had said amen and the preacher had finished.

Forty five minutes later.

For Samantha and I it was a new team record for endurance altar call backing, but the time just seemed to drift past like a … big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff. Me and Sam were back at last, better than ever. And now that the crack in the wall is gone, we’re thinking it might be time for us to move back in together. God knows I’ve missed her.

You can make of that what you will if you want to, but it’s probably best not to over-think it.

Garry with 2 Rs

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

I lost another old friend and role model yesterday. And this time it’s not an actor or a rock star. This time it’s personal.

She was a great woman of God, who was part of the team that taught not just me, but dozens of other Darwin Christians roughly my age how to own our faith and be serious about the things we claim to believe. Even as she battled cancer she was a source of joy to all those who knew her, especially her husband and young children, who now prepare to enter a very different world.

It comes as a bit of a kick up the trousers for me too. There’s the pain and sadness of losing an old friend for starters. But something deeper than that twists when I think back on all the truth and charisma that was imparted to us back in the day. And how for the last eighteen months or so I’ve been so vocal and bombastic about carrying on those ideas now I’m old enough to do something about it. And how I’ve done basically nothing at all about it.

Lately it seems I’m dealing with the vanishing or flat out destruction of some pillar of my youth every other week. I suppose that’s how it should be, as I’m far too old to be standing on pillars these days. But when I look around I don’t see many signs of reconstruction. I’m not over-awed by the abundance of great role models like I was when I was a starry eyed teenager at Easter Camp.

Maybe I’m getting old, or maybe I’m just a cranky cynic whining about how they don’t make them like they used to.

The obvious solution is to do it myself. “You wanna see a miracle son? Be the miracle.” And while it’s all very inspiring and self congratulatory to imagine stepping up to become the very hero I looked up to as a kid, the more I look back on those days the more I question whether I’ve got anything like what it takes. They really don’t make them like the used to.

For today, it’s enough to mourn and remember the life of a magnificent woman of God. Tomorrow is a question for tomorrow.



Garry with 2 Rs
In memory of Krysti Etherington

Hump Day Blues

Wednesdays are usually the time when we celebrate reaching the mid point of the working week. The “hump day,” as it has come to be known, is a time when we start to see compelling evidence that the weekend might get here eventually. What a time to be alive.

For me, the last three Wednesdays in a row have bought on chronic coughing fits. I don’t know why. I’ve eliminated diet, environment and lifestyle as factors, so I’m left with some rather untenable conclusions about what might be causing it. As the great leader of men once said:

“If we eliminate the impossible, then whatever remains, however unlikely, will probably eventually show up on Garry’s blog”.

It started way back when I was on my last week away in Wadeye before starting my new role which leaves me in the city more or less permanently. I was still battling the cold I picked up on my epic weekend of unadulterated awesomeness in Queensland, so when my lungs began a concerted effort to turn themselves inside out after work on the Wednesday, I took it in my stride, hacked up half my trachea, curled up in a ball and cursed my own existence. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Last week, after a tragically unsatisfying game of indoor beach volleyball, I drove home, showered, and then coughed for a steady half an hour before eventually spitting out a couple of hundred grams of sand.

It’s not unusual to find sand in unexpected places following a volleyball match, but two dilapidating coughing fits in a week left me more than a little concerned. I booked in to see the doctor for a check up. I had some juvenile Asthma when I was… a juvenile, and I’ve always dealt with the fact that I have unusually shallow lungs (not to mention my personality).

Doctors always seem to me to be much more interested in just about anything else than in what their patients think might be wrong. We spent a good twenty minutes discussing my diet, lifestyle, blood pressure and family history, which was all fine as I asked for a general check-up. My body mass index suggests I’m still slightly overweight for my height, which I already knew, but did reveal to me that I’m approaching the solution from entirely the wrong angle. I’ve been putting all my energy into losing weight and eating properly. What I should be doing is concentrating on growing taller.

We chatted for a few more minutes about how I probably don’t need to be worrying about cholesterol, blood pressure (mine was slightly high, but apparently that could be accounted for by the stress of meeting a new doctor. This strikes me as a little odd, not to mention a violation of the Hippocratic oath) or various types of cancer at my age.

Finally the doc told me off for not eating breakfast, instructed me to eat more fibre, do more exercise… and gave me a clean bill of health. According to her I was the healthiest person she had seen all week. Of course, it was only Monday lunchtime, so that’s not such a big deal.

“What about the Asthma?” I asked, helpfully.
“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” replied the doctor, encouragingly. “You probably don’t have that.”

So there you have it. Or not, as the case may be.

Last night before volleyball I had another coughing fit. If the doctor is to be believed, there’s nothing wrong with me. So I’m left with only one viable conclusion:

I’m allergic to Wednesdays. Make of that what you will.




Garry with 2 Rs