Noise

Watching comedian Steve Hughes at the Comedy Festival, I heard him say something I’ve so often thought myself that I wanted to scream out my agreement.

“You have your music videos,” he said, “made by some corporate big shot, with sluts and idiots selling softcore porn to your children, and you tell me my music is offensive”.

Lady Gaga film clip 'Alejandro'

I’ve heard a lot about heavy metal that isn’t kind. That it’s stupid sounds for stupid people. That the vocalists sound like the Cookie Monster. That it isn’t music, it’s noise. When apparently, some flamboyantly-named disc jockey pressing the ‘play’ button on a bunch of sounds manufactured by a computer is music.

I went to see Melbourne heavy metal outfit Be’lakor recently, and was amazed by their talent. The lead singer, instead of customary flowing locks to headbang with, was sporting a cleanly cropped ‘do. When I remarked on the hairstyle, I was told that he had to keep it short because during the day, he was a lawyer.

Be'lakor

Stupid people indeed.

Before I knew heavy metal existed, I used to get my inappropriate-music kicks from Eminem. Once when I was about ten or eleven, my mother heard my older sister and I discussing the lyrics to Stan. Wanting to protect me from such obscenities, she took my Eminem cassette out of my room and taped over it with the first Savage Garden album. I was heartbroken – and it didn’t stop me from enjoying offensive music.

I know mum had good intentions when she took away my beloved Eminem tape. But I know that, if asked whether I would let my children listen to heavy metal, I would say yes. Instead of harming my innocent mind, I’ve actually found heavy metal to be cathartic as well as uplifting.

Neige and Audrey Sylvain from Amesoeurs

But, some might ask, what if my child wants something else? What if they want to listen to the pop stars, the manufactured sounds, the softcore pornography video clips of their day?

Then I’ll say, sit down. Listen. And if Cannibal Corpse’s Hammer Smashed Face doesn’t make you want to pump your fists, if Amesoeurs’ Bonheur Amputé doesn’t scream into your soul, if Slayer’s Raining Blood doesn’t send shivers down your spine and if Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters doesn’t make you fall in love, then I’ll be the very first person to buy you whatever music makes those feelings come alive for you.

Because in the end, finding the music you love is the greatest gift of all.

My dead body

I registered to become an organ donor recently, something that I’d been hesitant to do – but this year, no excuses.

Thinking about what will happen to my dead body isn’t pleasant, but like it or not I’m going to die one day. I see organ donation as a way I can give life to someone after I’m gone, and that makes it worthwhile for me.

In high school, our class was asked, “what would you want someone to say at your funeral?” Some smartarse came up with, “I don’t give a shit – I’ll be dead!” Unromantic and blunt as the comment was, he did have a point.

Funerals may feature you, but they’re really not for you. They’re for those you leave behind, to help them grieve. You certainly won’t be there. I’ve been to someone’s funeral having never met them, because a living relative of theirs was the important one to me.

The other thing that finally changed my mind about organ donation was remembering that people are not their bodies.

Zombie movies are the perfect example of how people’s bodies, although a large part of their identity, are not the only thing that makes them the person they are.

In the film Shaun of the Dead, when Shaun’s mother turns into a zombie, it’s a challenge for him to kill her because he still recognises her as his mum. But she – whatever makes her Shaun’s mum, whether that be a soul, memories, personality or the fact that under normal circumstances she wouldn’t be trying to eat his brains – is no longer there. Only her body remains.

The divine spark of life that animates us all burns bright and fast. Once mine burns out, I want my heart to beat inside someone else’s chest.

Excuses

When I first started uni, my dad was pretty excited.

“It’s so close! You could ride a bike there!” he told me, bursting with optimism on the health benefits, the money I’d save, the joy that cycling would bring me.
At the time, I was full of excuses.

It was too far. I didn’t have my own bike. There was no way I could carry all my stuff. The roads were too dangerous. I’d get sweaty and smelly. It might rain. It would take too long. It would make me too tired. I’d look like a dork wearing a helmet.

After four years of uni, walking and taking public transport daily, I finally bought a bike. The first time I rode it in, I did so with extreme trepidation – there were so many things that could go wrong!

But nothing did. I made it there. It didn’t take that long, I wasn’t particularly sweaty and, shock horror, I actually enjoyed myself.

A few weeks later I’d become a bicycle convert, suddenly brimming with the same devotion that my dad has had for years. The other day, I even conquered the one hill of the trip I’d been getting off my bike and walking up. Bike riding has now been firmly banished from my ‘too hard’ basket.

But still in that basket are a whole lot of other things I’ve been making excuses about for far too long.

Just after uni finished for the year I met a magazine editor at a final-year project function, who said he was looking for a team of journalists for his new publication and would be interested in reading some of my work.

I was thrilled to bits to be offered the chance to prove myself and promised to email – but whenever I rummaged through my old work to find something to show him, or sat down to write an article for the magazine, I froze. I couldn’t get past the idea that nothing I sent to him would be good enough. I told myself to get my arse into gear, but before I knew it weeks had gone past and my open door of opportunity had sadly slid closed.

Although I like to think of myself as outgoing and up for a challenge, I have to admit that when it comes down to it, I’m most comfortable, well, in my comfort zone. I did try a few new things last year, like taking up the guitar and doing a photography course, but it’s a fresh year now and I’m determined to take on more ambitious things. Even if I’m afraid of the fall. Even if I end up failing.

Because, as they say, she who makes no mistakes makes nothing.

Centre

Self-help books are mostly crap. They’re written in the thousands, take on a preachy, condescending tone and seem to appeal to women in their thirties who identify with Bridget Jones and all her paranoid patheticness.

But, just like the rest of the information world, amongst all that “men treat their wives like they treat their mothers” shite and lemon detox diets, there’s some wisdom in books that tell you they have all the answers. Something I found truly useful is the idea of being principle-centred, which is a Stephen Covey* classic that basically means that instead of making something external the foundation of your life, another way is to have a principle (or value), like honesty, hard work or respect as your centre.

This makes a whole lot of sense when you start thinking about how fragile life is (and I’ve been watching a whole lot of Six Feet Under recently, so I have been), and you realise that even though it’s great to be family-centred, they might not be there tomorrow. In fact just last night three siblings ran away from their Melbourne home, and their father may never see them again. Some people are happy to be sports-centred, but every sports person is just an injury away from never being able to walk again. Friends can let you down, you can be fired, you can lose all your things in a fire.

Yes, that might seem like a negative way to look at the world – don’t get me wrong, I know it’s important to enjoy things while they last. But if you stick with your own principles, whether they’re responsibilty, gratitude or love, you can find the best in yourself no matter what goes on around you. Without even reading a self-help book.

*Disclaimer: I am not always a Stephen Covey fan – this guy wrote a book called the ‘Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’, made millions, then released another book called ‘The Eighth Habit’ just so he could reel in more cash. Bastard. At least he came up with some good stuff on his way.

Building blocks

Lego is the most ingenious toy in the world.

This should come as no revelation to the thousands who played with Lego as children. Lego is fun as hell and there are infinite varieties of the building blocks to find, collect and play with. In fact, it’s now such a cultural icon that the toy has developed into Lego Land, kitsch jewellery and a material to create artwork with.

- From Etsy, an online craft marketplace

There’s more to Lego than shiny plastic bricks though. In the (amazing) novel Sophie’s World, author Jostein Gaarder uses Lego to demonstrate the atom theory. This theory is from Democritus, a philosopher who essentially believed that nothing comes from nothing.

He thought that nothing in nature actually changed – rather, everything we can see and touch and taste and smell is made up of tiny building blocks that vary in size and shape. These blocks are indivisible – if you’ve ever tried to break a Lego block with your bare hands, you’ll remember failing. They are eternal, in that the same Lego blocks that were made decades ago still look just as colourful and shiny as they did back then. And just as you couldn’t ever count how many Lego blocks there are in the world, there are an innumerable amount of atoms.

- From Make magazine

Atom theory originated long before scientists had the means to prove it, but we now know that Democritus was correct. Everything in the tangible world is made of the same atoms that existed millions of years ago, they’re just now in different forms, as though someone broke the dinosaur they built and made a house with it instead.

Democritus believed in atom theory so much, he ended up being the first materialist, which is someone who believes that the only thing that exists is matter. (You could make a hilarious philosophical pun on this and say ‘only matter matters’, but that would be way too wanky). He thought that even someone’s soul was made up of a certain kind of atoms, and there was no such thing as a spiritual world or God.

Just blocks of Lego.

Ingenious, yes. But would you want to build your whole life out of them?

- Lego sculpture by Nathan Sawaya, from Geekologie online

Spaghetti carbonara

Cookbooks suck.

When I cook dinner, I want something that ticks as many as possible of the following boxes: easy, tasty, healthy, cheap and quick. I struggle to find any sort of decent guide to this mission in the glossy, TV celebrity filled cookbooks that seem so prolific.

They’re not useful at all when you just want to whip up a meal, and stop me if I’m wrong, but isn’t that the point of a cookbook? All I seem to end up with is half a page of wankery about the time that the author visited Italy and how much her sister-in-law’s cousin just adores the folllowing recipe, before a list of ingredients so gourmet and rare that I’d have to fly to Italy myself just to prepare for the avalanche of directions that come afterwards.

I picked up what I thought would be a less fancy one recently, and the first recipe I found was for ‘potato-celery root dumplings’, which had among other ingredients, these pearlers: a one-pound whole celery root; russet potatoes; fresh marjoram; toasted, grounded cumin seeds and kosher salt. Whaaaaat? If I can’t find it in Coles, it’s not appearing on my dinner plate. If I’m in the mood for a fancy dinner, I’ll go to a restaurant – but as far as day-to-day cooking for a family of five goes, the simpler the better.

That’s why tonight I’ll be cooking from the Women’s Weekly cookbook, published in 1970. It doesn’t muck around. It gives you a short list of ingredients you probably already have in your pantry, followed by no more than a paragraph of instructions that are clear, direct and helpful.

Sure, my spaghetti carbonara won’t be hugely fancy – but as far as getting the job done goes: TICK.

My last day

On the eye-rollingly long list of things that annoy me, the phrase ‘live every day as though it were your last’ is up there with paper cuts, missing the train and getting advertising jingles stuck in my head.

Seriously? EVERY day? If it was my last day on this planet, I wouldn’t be doing sensible things like going to work, folding clothes or eating healthy foods. I’d be calling every last one of my friends and family, jumping into a ridiculous black tutu dress, and blowing my life savings hiring a luxury crusier down the Yarra, sailing the day away with my favourite people, eating strawberries out of an enormous chocolate fountain, listening to thrash metal and getting giggly from stupendous cocktails.

Living every day as though it were my last is a really stupid idea. What the saying really means is, I think, ‘appreciate life’. That I can relate to. And while I’m all for clever turns of phrase, this particular one just convolutes its meaning so much it ends up sounding ridiculous.

I won’t be living today as though it were my last. I’ll be appreciating my life as I plan for a beautiful future.