The Happiest Place on Earth

Recently it has been suggested to me that my blog has lost its edge. That for some reason, I’m not conveying that certain je-ne-se-quois (Well actually I know exactly quois. The term is “cranky”) in my posts, and it’s leaving some readers disappointed. I’m sure I can’t for the life of me think what might be going wrong with my brain that I’m suddenly so full of positivity. It’s a bit gross really.

I’m well known for my willingness to let public opinion tell me what to do, so this week I was going to post the most virulent, cynical rant I could come up with, but the truth is I’ve just come back from holidays and I’m feeling pretty damned good. So here’s another happy piece. If you don’t like it – or rather if you do like it but would prefer not to, or if you think it’s too… or not enough…

Look, just shut up and read it okay?

Kakadu is one of those places that all of us Darwin locals claim to know heaps about, but which most have us have only been to once or twice. The last time I can remember going out there we took my now departed grandmother out there to look around. I have some memories of her climbing up Ubirr rock to look over the wetlands and the escarpment. The last time she was fit enough to do that must have been nearly two decades ago.

Anyway, I recently got reacquainted with the most famous part of the Northern Territory. It’s funny how your perspective on things shifts when you look at them at different stages of your life. When I was a kid I used to run past the cave paintings without a second glance; the point of Kakadu was to climb up on top of the rocks as fast as you could. This time I actually stopped to appreciate the presence of artwork which is purportedly older than most parts of the Bible, and to admire the different colours and shapes in the rocks for moment before I went climbing all over them. And I don’t seem to be quite so sure footed as I used to be.

There is no getting past it; it’s still a magnificent part of the world. From the towering rock formations to the sprawling wetlands, it’s no wonder indigenous and migrant people alike consider it one of the most special places on the planet. Unfortunately this time around I was confined a bit to my awesome yet undeniably two-wheel-drive Ford Focus, so the big waterfalls were inaccessible. Next time I’ll have to look into borrowing/hiring a four-wheel-drive and really getting off the main road.

I also spent a bit of time in Litchfield Park, which is probably my favourite place in the world. All the better for the fact that, unlike the last three times I’d been out there, Wangi Falls was open for swimming. I spent a good two hours just hanging out in the swimming hole, remembering all the hours we spent down there on church camps when I was a kid. I challenge anyone to come home from that and write a cranky blog post.

So shut up.




Garry with 2 Rs

The Perfect Sunset Photo

I love sunsets. I’m one of those peculiar people who can quite happily sit on a beach, balcony or boat and do nothing but watch the sun slowly sink below the horizon. I love watching the colours shift and refract in the clouds, and I love that no two are ever the same.

Darwin does an awesome sunset. It’s part of the reason I love this city so much. When I’m not run off my feet with rehearsals or church or God knows what else, I’ll quite often just take myself down to the beach or to the Nightcliff jetty and watch the sunset while I think, pray or complain about the day I’ve just had. And I’m usually not alone. There’s always at least one photographer out with gadgets ranging from a simple hand held digital camera to an SLR on a tripod with a lens longer than his arm and three different kinds of light meters.

They do get some good ones. I’ve seen professionally produced photos on sale around the city from time to time and some of them are spectacular. But there’s something that leaves me a little restless about the amount of time that goes in to capturing the “perfect sunset” and putting it on a page for sale, when we can just sit and watch it for free every night.

The other interesting thing about sunset photography is that there actually isn’t any such thing as the perfect sunset photo. Anyone who’s ever stood on the beach and taken some quick snaps will tell you there’s always a better colour, light, cloud or reflection just when you thought you’d got the shot you wanted. I took a traveller down to Mindil Beach the other night to watch the sunset, and laughed as she stood up every five minutes to take another photo. I was a bit concerned for her, because I’ve seen these symptoms before: It starts out simply enough with a few happy snaps from your holiday. The next thing you know you’ve bought a fifteen hundred dollar camera off the internet and can spend entire Sunday afternoons talking about nothing except the effect on memory size of different shutter speeds at higher resolutions.

I took to her to talk to one of the professionals at the markets for some therapy and to ask about her collection of sunset efforts. Some of them were just stunning. She’d been working as a professional photographer in the Top End for four years, and we asked her which one of her photos she thought was perfect.

“None of them,” was her answer. “I keep trying, but there’s always something more you can improve. The light, the focus, the reflections; there’s just so much going on.”

At the risk of over romanticising it, I think there’s a lesson to be learnt from the plight of the sunset photographer. You could spend your whole life out there waiting for the perfect moment, for the perfect photo. But if experience is anything to go by, you’re never going to find it. You can work your whole life trying to capture it on film and end up with terabytes of photos which are almost perfect. Or you can sit and enjoy it, and end up with a head full of memories which are absolutely flawless.

Say cheese.



Garry with 2 Rs

Here Comes The Bride. In a Spaceship.

What is Garry? Stunt Linguist? Raconteur? Space Pirate? Freelance revolutionary? He is all these things, and none of them.

He’s also an organist for hire, apparently.

I’ve just got home from a gig playing organ for a wedding. It’s the second time in a couple of months that I’ve been hired to play for someone I didn’t know.  It’s a nice little side project, and it means I get to call myself a professional musician. At least on a technicality.

I also got to play the super high tech digital organ at the catholic cathedral down the road from DMUC. I don’t mean any disrespect to the DMUC organ, which certainly gets the job done, and has been fighting with me a lot less of late. But to say that the DMUC instrument and the St. Mary’s instrument are both digital organs is a bit like saying that Garry with 2 Rs and Aaron Sorkin are both writers. It’s technically true, but in reality there’s no comparison. For one thing the St. Mary’s one cost about three times as much and has a whole extra keyboard. Also, while the DMUC auditorium has been carpeted and modernised and generally made more comfortable, St. Mary’s is still all polished concrete and panelling inside, so it reverberates like an echo chamber. That means when you open up all the stops and cut loose, you’re no longer just playing an organ; you’re playing the whole building. It’s pretty cool.

The strangest thing I’ve noticed about the last couple weddings I’ve played for is that the bride and groom have had no idea what music they wanted for the processional and recessional. One bride-to-be even told me to just pick whatever I wanted. I can’t imagine doing that, but then if it were me I’d probably have the music all programmed out weeks in advance, and then go looking at suits the day before. Each to his own, I guess. The couple I played for this afternoon apparently hadn’t even thought about it until I asked them. I told them my default offering is Purcell’s (Clarke’s) Trumpet Voluntary for the procession and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March for the walk out. Most people just agree to that to avoid admitting they don’t know what I’m talking about. That works for me.

Except that this time, just a week out from the service, the bride-to-be decided she’d like the overture from the Marriage of Figaro instead. And like an idiot I told her I’d learn it. I duly downloaded a copy of the sheet music and discovered it was fifteen pages long, and really difficult. Cue four straight nights of frantic practising and devious shortcut creation. In the end I managed to learn about the first three pages and the last page, and found a way to jump straight from one to the other. And fortunately it’s Mozart, so no-one could tell the difference. “Prestissimo” is your friend in this situation; go fast enough and it really doesn’t matter if you hit the right notes or not.

Well we got through alright in the end. The building helped a bit, reverberating over all the uneven quavers for me, and the friends and family seemed happy enough. The father-of-the-bride even came over and paid me in cash on the spot; slipped it to me in a gentlemanly handshake like some kind of mafia boss. That was awesome.

So yeah: I’m a free-lance organist now. And I’m building up quite a useful little repertoire

Songs that sound surprisingly good on the eight foot diapasons:

A Song of Freedom

Blessed Be Your Name

The Theme from Doctor Who

40 (The U2 version)

Bohemian Rhapsody

Aníron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen)

The Theme from Star Trek Voyager

Highland Cathedral

Gollum’s Song

Make of that what you will.

Garry with 2 Rs

Extreme Slacktivism

Next month I’m going to attempt National Novel Writer’s Month (NaNoWriMo) again. It's an entirely silly endeavour that challenges writers to compose a 50,000 word novel during November. I gave it a go a couple of years ago, and was successful, both in the task of writing 50,000 words in a month and in the far more important task of beating Kiriibilli Kim.

Despite having a whole lot of other stuff going on, I’m going for it again this year. And this time I’m hoping to achieve the goal I failed at last time, which was to raise money for charity through sponsorship, rather than just writing a whole lot of rubbish for no apparent reason.

Up on the top bar I’ve set up a new tab called NaNoWriMo 2012. If you’d like to get behind me on this, drop a comment here or on that page. Make sure you leave your name or some way for me to contact you. You can make a one off pledge conditional on me getting to 50,000 words, or you can choose to sponsor X dollars/cents per Y words (bear in mind that even 1c per word will come in at $500 if I make it to 50,000, so be careful how you calculate that one).

Any money I raise this way will be donated to the Australian Red Cross in support of their "Save a Mate Our Way" program, which works with community members in remote communities across Northern Australia to reduce alcohol and other drug abuse and to foster initiatives for healthier lifestyle choices.

Please get behind me on this and help me make a difference for disadvantaged and at risk kids in the Top End. By sitting at my computer for hours on end writing stuff. It's like posting memes on Facebook, except it actually achieves something.

Cheers




Garry with 2 Rs