I keep seeing these reflections deep in the currents back to me (Israel Nash)

Photo by Tyler Nix on Unsplash

Wie geht's?

Here are ten things I thought worth sharing:

1) Reading Celestial Navigation (Anne Tyler) was an interesting experience. I've mentioned her books a lot in my blogs. She has an amazing ability to get inside her character's heads. Jeremy is a piece of work!

2) A quote from 365 Days with the Saints is a great way to start my day. Each day features a different saint and a quote. Today's was Blessed Anne of Saint Bartholmew: Silence is precious; by keeping silence and knowing how to listen to God, the soul grows in wisdom and God teaches it what it cannot learn from men.

3) Concurrently with whatever novel I'm reading, I also dip into Lennon on Lennon - a compilation of interviews. John on performing live on stage: You put yourself in front of the public, and it's like the Roman theatre...it's a very sort of masochistic scene to stand up there day after day, offering yourself as a target for their love or their hate, depending on how good you are or how they feel that night.

4) Rest in peace. The last Mojo magazine I read (Feb 2022) had obituaries for Graeme Edge (The Moody Blues' drummer); Maureen Cleave (journalist who wrote excellent pieces on The Beatles in the sixties. her 1966 interview with John contained the 'We're bigger than Jesus' idea that created headaches for the fabs); David Longdon (Big Big Train singer who died accidentally); and Billy Hinsche (honorary Beach Boy) amongst others. 

 
5) Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart plus Israel Nash albums Lifted and (especially) Topaz (on vinyl) have been my soundtrack this week. Blissed out summery sounds have helped with the cold snap as we officially started winter.

6) I dug out the DVD player on the weekend to watch a couple of films that I bought years ago but forgot about. Allied was good value. A Robert Zemeckis film starring Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard. Billed as a romantic thriller - it was enjoyable! 

 

7) The Richard Linklater trilogy - Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, has also been sitting on the shelf for a few years. I bought it while living in the UK a few years ago after loving Boyhood. The late autumn, early winter cold/overcast/rainy afternoons have been perfect for catching up with these three romantic dramas.

8) Ian McEwan's Sweet Tooth is my latest book. I've read some great books by him, but I've also stopped reading a few of them a couple of chapters in. Sweet Tooth, with a female protangonist, is of the former variety thank goodness.

9) Waves was a NZ band from the seventies. Their eponymous album (a second one, added to the first on that Spotify link, was recorded but not issued until years later as a bonus disc) is a bone fide NZ classic. It's the-three-amigos' album of the week!

10) Cheekily, here's a link to another six via my Jewels For The Thirsty weblog.

Love and peace - Wozza

Carry on till tomorrow there's no reason to look back (Badfinger)

Recent 2020 passport photo

Wie geht's?

Recently, very recently - last Sunday during our weekly family zoom in fact, Keegan wondered whether I was on a nostalgia trip. I believe he said (I'm paraphrasing obviously) something along the lines of - I don't care about 2007, I wanna know what you are doing now.

First up - no I'm not on a nostalgia trip per se. More that I don't have much going on really aside from the work/sleep/work/sleep treadmill, with a fleeting side interest in football, music, American politics, books. I'm pretty boring. Shock horror probe!

Plus I had fun taking a photo folder at random for the recent posts and seeing what it had to share.

But anyway - for Keegan and anyone else who cares - here's what I'm currently doing:

Losing weight (a week ago during a visit to the doc about my painful knees and she says to me, she says - have they hurt more since you put on weight? She says. Erm, as I squirmed - maaaybe, says I. I rushed home and weighed myself - 84.7kg. The heaviest I've ever been. So I determined to lose the excess 4.7kg. The plan: no to cakes, biscuits, snacks between and after meals, fizzy drinks and yes to fruit, water, three simple meals a day. The result? The loss of 2.5kg in a week. Nice. 2.2 to go before I celebrate with a donut from the Little Frimley Kitchen). Ha ha!

Reading (Mojo's October issue, My Life in Red and White - Arsène Wenger's autobiography, and James Sallis' Drive) - two of the three are up-to-date, of the moment texts - I'm counting Wenger's as such because it was just released.

Listening to music (high rotation awards go to The Beths latest album released this year, and Bruce Springsteen's latest)

Watching - we've just finished watching season 1 of The Queen's Gambit and we continue to enjoy Modern Family - both on Netflix.

Working wise - ERO are due a visit so that stokes up the paperwork.

Travelling - two trips to my Gisborne campus in the next two weeks - one is my regular visit (where I'm typing this right now!! at the Portside Motel), the other is for ERO. A week after that they visit my Hastings campus.

Miscellaneous - Walking, mowing lawns, some gardening, some Jade and Asher visits...that all makes up my now.

And you're up-to-date!

Love and peace - Abu Keegan

Look at me, can't you see, all I really want to be, is free from a world, that hurts me (Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Wie geht's?

It's been a cruel couple of weeks, what with the murder of George Floyd and the anger that engendered. My escape (dealing with a 24/7 world that has Trump as a 'leader' is tough, so I need to escape from time to time) is via books, of course.

Books read:

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
The Blue Door - André Brink

A Gentleman In Moscow - Amor Towles

Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe

Mojo May 2020

Shindig! Issue 101

Most recently I finished A Gentleman in Moscow. A copy came to me via my colleague Julie at school, which was very generous of her - thanks Julie! 

It's just a great book - well written, with characters that are endearing, and there are plot twists that you never quite see coming. 

The return from lockdown has meant my music magazines have finally returned to stores. Shindig! had a cover story on 1970s' Beach Boys' albums (nothing new but I love reading about them) so that hooked me and of course, Mojo has been a fixture in my weekly reading for many years. Great to have them back.

Now I'm reading Robinson Crusoe. That story and Towles' book are perfect post lockdown come downs (Towles' lead character is sentenced to permanent house arrest in a Moscow hotel in 1922; Crusoe is in another enforced lockdown that we can all relate to much more intimately now).

Defoe's style is tough - back to real Dickens-esque concentration on sentences that last paragraphs. Once I get into the groove it's very rewarding though. Really!

Love and peace - Woz

Nothing is real (David Copperfield, John Lennon)

Wie geht's?

Books bought:

• Glory Days - from gumboots to platforms (Ian Chapman)
• A Tale Of Two Cities (Charles Dickens)
• Kidnapped (Robert Louis Stevenson)
• Robbers' Roost (Zane Grey)
• White Butterfly (Walter Mosley)
• Mojo (Feb. 2020)
• Beat Instrumental (August 1969)

Books read:

• David Copperfield (Charles Dickens)
• Mojo (Feb. 2020)
• Beat Instrumental (Aug. 1969)

As indicated on my Jewels For The Thirsty blog yesterday, having finished David Copperfield, I'm feeling a little culturally bereft.

Once into the swing of Dickens, his characters come alive and it's like I've been living in 1850, sneaking peeks at David's journals as he writes.

Now that I'm done, I miss them.

Nick Hornby says he struggled reading things for a while after finishing his copy, and I get that. So, my solution is to go bang up to date with the latest Mojo. 

That and an old music magazine from England - Beat Instrumental from 1969. I bought it for the interesting article on the then 20 year old Rory Gallagher. Interesting because, even then, he's holding his battered guitar!

The Beat Instrumental and all of the books bought recently come from the Little Red Book Shop in Hastings, all except for Glory Days - that was a free copy from a stall at one of our favourite coffee shops, in Waipawa.

After that, I'm not sure - I think I'll go for one of the westerns - Zane Grey or Louis L'Amour. That should provide a nice change of pace before I launch into Turgenev's Fathers And Sons.

Love and peace - Wozza

Sometimes they found it, sometimes they kept it, often lost it along the way (Jack Bruce)

Wie geht's?

Having spent another weekend throwing away stuff, I can't pretend I've got the Marie Kondo tidying gig licked yet.

This weekend saw us saying goodbye to Myrtle, our faithful Massey Ferguson 1940's tractor - sold to a parent from my school. The Minister of Defence (father-in-law Brian Smith) did a lot of work to her recently and she was going beautifully but it needed to be done.

And disposing of four boxes of unwanted Mojo magazines. Real Groovy didn't want them (only copies of Record Collector hold their value apparently), nor did The Piggery second hand bookshop.

So I donated them to the local second hand shop in Maungaturoto.

Neither action felt like much of a wrench. The initial pleasures I derived from these objects is enough.

Then I got stuck into my books again and hauled four boxes to The Piggery. She bought two box loads and I'll donate the rest (some Beatle books among them).

Again - didn't feel like any kind of betrayal to my past (I've stored and moved all this stuff around many times over the years).

I feel I'm almost there with the books, however, I've felt that before.

CDs are next. SWMBO thinks I should get rid of them all but that's not true, that's impossible.

But I am being more brutal this time out. And it's amazing how the pile is growing.

Update coming next post!

Love and peace - Wozza

I'm going down to Louisiana to get me a mojo hand (Muddy Waters)

Wie geht's?

The problem (part 1 of 3): being what to do with a couple of hundred copies of Mojo magazine that I've collected over the last 20 years. That's a lot of magazines. They are heavy and they would take up a lot of space in a storage locker when we go to the UK in August.

The problem (part 2 of 3): as my colleague, Liz, correctly identified recently - I'm obsessive compulsive with wanting to preserve the complete set of Mojos (from issue one until now with a few annoying gaps along the way).

The problem (part 3 - collect the set): I've been firmly embracing a tidy up mission thanks to that Marie Kondo book that Mandy lent me. If a possession doesn't bring me joy I need to get rid of it. But I couldn't face throwing out all those Mojos man!

Solution: It seems obvious but the solution came to my fevered brain at 2am a few days ago. Embrace the fact that I'll never fill those annoying gaps of missing issues; pull out and keep only the issues that bring me joy.

So far I have a pile of Mojos with Beatle related covers and a second pile of issues I'll read again (100 best albums ever type of thing).

Now I just need to see if someone is interested in taking the rest off my hands.

Literally, a weight has been lifted!

Love and peace and groovy baby - Wozza

So indistinct! It seems to exist (Lao Tzu)

Mood Indigo

I read a review in Mojo magazine,
this morning,
concerning The Frank Griffith Big Band
(“the whole exuding
old-school craft and charm”)
and for a second I thought
of buying it for you.

You have a birthday coming up;
26th July 1928, you
would have been approaching,
let me see, 85 old-school years.

But then, again, like a mirage,
you slipped from my real world grasp
of possibilities, and

my mood changed.
To indigo.

(WNP 2013)