In May 2010 I got myself a busking licence and decided to hit the streets of Sydney to get back into the swing of all things musical – and also to try an earn a little bit of tax-free cash on the side, of course  After only a few sessions I’ve come to realise it’s an enjoyable, mind-opening pasttime, perfect for getting my performance chops back up to scratch, which is what I need if I want to start gigging again after I release my upcoming album.  Yet on the other hand it’s also highly challenging and disconcerting, especially considering I used to play music professionally, where for much less effort, I earned about a hundred times more than what I’ve banked out on the streets!

So here, I have decided to notate my experiences as I foray into the world of amateur, cover-and-original-singing, acoustic-guitar-playing street performance.  Come with me and find out about the songs I sing, the people I meet, the enjoyment, the disappointment, and the coinage – or should I say, the lack thereof!

Busking Take 1 – 16th May 2010

LOCATION 1: corner of George St & Bathurst St in the CBD
Hooray, my first attempt at busking in Sydney!  I got off the train at Town Hall and walked around for ages trying to find a suitable location.  I was pretty nervous but eventually I settled and opened up with a killer rendition of October Grey by the Screaming Jets.
It took about 15 minutes for the first person to dig into their pockets.  She was a professional in her early 30′s and she gave me a very generous 5 cents.  And a half-hearted smile.
The next offer was from a middle-aged guy who was in a rush, but kind enough to forage through his backpack and give me a single Vicks VapoDrop.
Not long after that, a Latino-looking bloke came up to me with half a cup of mixed nuts and offered them to me by putting them right up to my face as I was singing October Grey (again). He must have thought I was homeless and hungry!  I stopped my song and thanked him, but told him not to worry. He left them in my guitar case anyway.
After 45 minutes of playing to a tough crowd, I left with $2.45.

LOCATION 2: corner of George St & Goulburn St, by the rear entrance of World Square
I initially walked down to Central Station with hopes to play in the underground tunnel, but there were already 4 buskers there so I left them to it and walked back up towards World Square.
There was a general positive atmosphere here, many more people turned to watch me compared to last time.
An Asian guy asked me for directions to World Square, to which I happily obliged. No coinage was offered.
I was grateful for the generosity of an old man with a long grey beard, wearing ragged clothes, and generally looking as though he was homeless, who reached into his pockets and gave me a few silver coins as he walked on by.
A cute Asian couple stood and watched me sing October Grey (yes, again!) – the girl gave $1 once I’d finished.
I played for about 45 minutes and left with an extra $4.15 in the kitty.

LOCATION 3: corner of George St & Druitt St, by the statue outside the entrance to the Queen Victoria building
I thought this would be an ace location because large crowds of 40-50 people were gathering at a time, waiting to cross the road.  But hardly anybody cared to notice I was there!
I seemed to be an annoyance to the 15 or so people who were gathered around the statue. Within a minute of me being there, my statue-loitering friends moved on and I became a singing loner beside a stone resemblance of Queen Vic. 
It was starting to get dark.
I played three songs, nobody even offered me a glimpse let alone any money, so I packed up & left for the day.

GRAND TOTAL: $6.60, one Vicks VapoDrop, one cup of mixed nuts (which I left on the ground), plus a newfound desire to never busk again.

Busking Take 2 – 1st August, 2010

LOCATION: Central Station tunnel (Chalmers St side)
I got over the disappointment of my first attempt and decided to try busking the streets of Sydney for a second time.  I figured that if anything, I really do need the practice!
I added a few extra songs to the repertoire this time, and there were some good reactions to Tip Of My Tongue by Diesel (a young guy singing along as he walked past), The Nips Are Getting Bigger by Mental As Anything (a round of applause from an old couple), and surprisingly, one of my own songs, Misty Water (a smile from a whole family!)
Scar by Missy Higgins didn’t go down too well.  A girl laughed and some guys gave me funny looks when they realised I was singing a chick song.
There was one other busker in the tunnel, about 40 metres up from me. He had an amplified electric guitar & played an instrumental version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps over and over and over and over and over and over again. And then he played it again. But I must admit he was really good at it.
I got a visit from my lovely housemate Laura!  She plays violin, and we’ve been jamming recently so we’re gonna go busking together one day soon.
A friendly Maori guy walked past with his girlfriend. He said quite loudly, so I could hear, that he wanted to stop and listen to some music, but the girlfriend didn’t seem interested and wanted to keep walking. He gave me a generous $2 anyway
A young couple were walking towards me at the end of my session, and the guy was holding his girlfriend’s shiny silver handbag. As they passed me, he threw the handbag back at her, but she wasn’t looking and it hit her on the head. It was hilarious and totally made my afternoon worthwhile.
I played for an hour and 40 minutes all up, before darkness fell and I decided to go home.
Although I didn’t make much money, there were a number of times where I actually enjoyed myself.
I’m starting to like busking now. I might even come back tomorrow.

GRAND TOTAL: $10.65

Busking Take 3 – 2nd August, 2010

LOCATION: Central Station tunnel (Chalmers St side)
What a mob of tight arses.
Let me put it this way. I was in the Central Station tunnel for the Monday evening rush hour, and there was about twenty times the traffic walking through the tunnel tonight as there was this time yesterday. Let’s assume that on average, one person walked past me per second. I was there for just over an hour, so of course, 3,600 seconds in an hour = 3,600 people. According to the World Wealth Report, there are around 173,600 millionaires in the country, meaning that out of a population of  22,000,000, one person out of every 127 is a millionaire.  If 3,600 people walked past me then I make that out to be 28 millionares who were within my presence during that hour – more if you take in the fact that this is Sydney and there is likely to be a higher percentage of rich folk here then anywhere else in the country. Yet all I managed to make was a feeble $4.65!
I guess people are just immune to the repetitious drone that is the Sydney busker?
Either that or I’m not singing enough Lady Gaga…

Ok so I’ve come to the conclusion that busking definitely isn’t going to be a moneymaking venture any time soon – but I must say that I did thoroughly enjoy myself.
A woman walked past me while she was searching through her bag and pulled out what looked like a stick of deodorant. But she dropped it, and as if possessed by some kind of evil magnetic force, it somehow managed to slide its way into a drainhole, disappearing right before her eyes. Oh my god that was so random and funny to watch!
Once again, Tip Of My Tongue got the best reaction of the evening; a guy walking on the opposite side of me braved the opposing traffic to chuck some coinage into my guitar case and offer some kind words of encouragement for singing a Diesel song.
Follow You Down by the Gin Blossoms is quickly turning out to be my favourite busking song to sing. I don’t think anybody has given me any money for it yet, but I feel relaxed and happy whenever I throw it in the set.
I forgot the words to one of my own songs and gave up on it half way through. Because I could!
All up, I feel my performance skills are on the increase again, my vocals in particular. You really have to project it to be heard.
I took a quick snap of the coinage before I left:

Note that $2.10 of it was my own, which I threw in before I started so I didn't feel like too much of a loser

GRAND TOTAL: $4.65 (not including the $2.10 of my own money!)

Busking Take 4 – 5th August, 2010

LOCATION: Central Station tunnel (Broadway side)
Hooray!
Today I realised that despite what I said in my previous entry, it IS possible to make a bit of money from busking – and have a bloody good time doing it as well
It was a really good session.
I went with my housemate Laura.
She plays violin, and she’s great at it.
We’d only rehearsed our set once, for about 20 minutes a couple of days beforehand.
We met up after work, and we travelled into Central Station together before settling on a location in the tunnel, near Basement Books.
By the end of the second song we had an offer from a guy asking if we wanted to play an acoustic gig one night at a venue with his band. I took his number & will give him a call next week  
A few minutes later a group of about 15 Indonesian school students appeared out of nowhere and started taking photos and videos of us. Then they all came in around us and their teacher took a photo of them while we were playing. I asked one of the boys “apa kabar?” and he smiled & actually knew what I meant. And that made me happy, because it meant that three years of Indonesian lessons throughout primary & high school finally paid off, 15 years later.
Not too long after that an Asian father interrupted us mid-song asking if he could get a photo of us with his daughters. They were very cute and we happily obliged.
An old guy stopped and watched us intently for a few minutes, so in between songs I thought I’d say hi and asked if he had any requests. After five minutes of him gibbering on about Peter Frampton, the Godfather movie, an old TV series from the 70′s called F-Troop, something about a tribe called the “Fugawi” – and that’s not to mention groping Laura’s hands in the middle of all that – he finally said goodbye and went on his merry way without even requesting a song.
I reckon the tunes that got the best reactions were Laura’s awesome violin version of The Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, and out cover of the 90′s classic, Breakfast At Tiffany’s by Deep Blue Something.
Actually, the majority of the songs had good reactions, and people were only too happy to spare some change and stop to listen. It honestly wasn’t like any busking experience I’d had before – it was enjoyable, rewarding and so much more fun to be interacting with another musician, rather than merely strumming & singing by myself.
We played for maybe an hour & a half before it started getting cold. The cool evening breeze is a bastard down in that tunnel!
Just as we were packing up we got a visit from our housemate Suze, so we un-packed-up and played one more rendition of Breakfast At Tiffany’s for her! Suze also took this snap of Laura and I in action:

GRAND TOTAL: $65.30 (so that’s $32.65 each) – plus one US cent!

So I guess busking isn’t that bad after all?

Busking Take 5 – 19th August 2010

LOCATION: Central Station tunnel (Broadway side)
Well this turned out to be another profitable and highly interesting session!
As with last time, I met with Laura after work and we returned to the same spot where we had so much success with our previous attempt.
My mate Sam bought me a Rabbitohs shirt for my birthday a few days ago and suggested I wear it while busking to see what kind of reactions I get from the people who walk past. So I wore it.
(I don’t follow rugby league, let alone the Rabbitohs, by the way!)
A woman gave us a few dollars as we were tuning up, before we even started playing.
All was going well until our second song, Eleanor Rigby, where we were lucky enough to gain the company of an absolute lunatic of a woman.
She was completely insane.
She hated us.
Laura in particular.
She appeared out of the blue the moment the first chord of Eleanor Rigby was strummed, and began yelling, screaming, abusing us and carrying on as if we had just committed blue murder.
I’m going to attempt to repeat here the general gist of what she was saying. Kids, block your ears because the language ain’t too pretty:
“YOKO ONO? I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE YOU’RE PLAYING THE FUCKING BEATLES, FOR FUCKS SAKE, YOKO ONO, YOU BANKERS ALL SCREW IT UP FOR EVERYONE, I CAN’T FUCKING BELIEVE THIS, YOKO FUCKING ONO, YOU’RE JUST FUCKING JEALOUS BECAUSE I GREW TITS WHEN I WAS 13, YOU SHOULD WORK IN THE SEX TRADE AND SELL YOURSELF ON THE FUCKING STREET, OH THAT’S RIGHT, KEEP PLAYING YOUR FUCKING YOKO ONO BEATLES SHIT YOU FUCKING BANKERS, FUCK YOU, YOU’RE SCREWING IT UP FOR EVERYONE, IT’S PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO ARE FUCKING IT UP FOR MY DAUGHTER, FUCKING YOKO ONO” and she went on and on and on.
We tried to ignore her to begin with, but she came right up to Laura and started yelling in her face, so we stopped playing and waited for her to finish. She didn’t leave when we told her to move on, and when I made a “go away” gesture with my hands she accused me of giving her a Nazi salute. Eventually she walked away yelling more obscenities to anyone and everyone who got in her way and we resumed where we left off once she was gone.
She heard us and kept yelling from around the corner, but didn’t come back, thank heavens.
Although it was pretty unnerving, the whole episode was incredibly fascinating and eye-opening to watch unfold. It’s experiences like this that make up the joys of busking!
A young guy who was overlooking all the action was kind enough to leave us $10. He must have felt sorry for us.
We were visited by some of Laura’s friends shortly afterwards which was really nice
A couple of young Irish lads stopped by to watch us play a few tunes and ended up hanging around for 15 minutes. They were really cool guys, they offered applause to U2, sang along with some Oasis, and even left a decent amount of coin despite the fact that we didn’t know any Bob Dylan (their one and only request).
Laura pointed out during one of our songs that we’d somehow amassed a $20 note. I didn’t see who put it in there but apparently it was a young female student. We were blown away by her generosity.
We played for just over an hour and called it a night before heading to the pub with Laura’s friends for a few drinks.
Nobody said a thing about my Rabbitohs shirt…
…until a guy at the pub asked if I’d shot any!

GRAND TOTAL: $81.10 ($40.55 each – I make that out to be double what I earn at work!)

Busking Take 6 – 26th August 2010

LOCATION: The open area just past the Central Station tunnel
I ventured out busking again today after work.
I was playing solo this time.
The Central Station tunnel was full as always – there were already four musicians, two people handing out flyers, an artist and a beggar.
The spot in the second tunnel where Laura & I play was taken by a guy selling Big Issues, and there was yet another guitarist further up the tunnel.
So I set up in the open area between the two tunnels.
I’d played four tunes to an abundance of completely disinterested passers-by, before a security guard stopped me mid-song and asked me to leave, as I was on private property.
He was cool about it, mind you, and I could tell he didn’t like having to ask buskers to move on.
So I went home.
I don’t think I’ll bother going busking by myself again. I might as well just practice in my room and save the cost of the train ticket.
On a lighter note though, Laura texted me and said I should check out page 27 of MX magazine.  Now, I wasn’t at North Sydney station, but I did walk past it, and I was carrying a guitar!

Who knows if she was actually talking about me, but hey I'll take the credit for it! (Oh, and sorry to have to disappoint you)

GRAND TOTAL: $1

Stay tuned for more busking adventures coming soon to a location near you.

And so I begin my journal in the small township of Tully, about half way between my home in Bluewater and the tropical city of Cairns, where I would meet up with Jess. Tully is known for being one of the wettest towns in Australia, and an eight metre statue of a gumboot was erected at the entrance to the town to signify their highest annual rainfall. It’s also the UFO capital of Australia, with more sightings occurring here than anywhere else.

I stopped at the public toilets located just behind some picturesque gardens on the main street of town, Butler St. I was particularly impressed with the art deco tiling and the dislodged floor tile by the wall:

A few days later we made a stop at Granite Gorge, about 15km west of Mareeba. Here we went for a bushwalk around the spectacularly scenic gorge, taking in the giant volcanic boulders protruding from the earth, a waterhole full of turtles and a crystal clear stream flowing down over the rocks and into the scrub. The highlight was the opportunity to feed the many tame rock wallabies that called this place their home – as many as three at a time would come right up to our hands and eat the feed pellets we were offering them.

The amenities at the privately owned Granite Gorge were very photogenic, and I loved the cute little frog painted onto the base of the urinal:

Later in the day on the way back to Cairns we made a detour down a dirt road just south-east of Mareeba to Emerald Creek Falls, a pristine and seemingly not-too-well-known natural attraction. We walked for half an hour down a deserted bush track, eventually arriving at a lookout where the track officially came to an end, offering superb views of the falls. Being the adventurous types, we continued on past the lookout, through the bush, until we reached the top of the falls and had a swim in the icy-cold waterhole.

The facilities at Emerald Creek Falls would be the first of many drop-toilets that we encountered throughout our travels:

A few days later we passed by a suburb of Cairns with the laughable name of Yorkey’s Knob. Jess climbed a tree, we walked down the beach, and I snapped away at the mural outside the men’s:

I’ve crossed the crocodile-infested Daintree River a number of times in the past but never before had I been to Daintree Village, so we opted to stop there for a quick look around before continuing further up north toward Cape Tribulation. “Village” is the correct terminology for this place; it definitely had a quaint country-town feel, and we enjoyed a coffee at one of the local cafés before I discovered the amusing crocodile banners adorning the outside walls of the local lavatories:

We arrived at Cape Tribulation that evening after spending the day discovering some amazing secluded beaches, walking through the dense rainforest, eating tropical fruit ice cream (jackfruit, wattle seed, soursop and raspberry all in the one cup… yum!), and quietly stalking a small family of cassowaries in the bush to the side of the road. The following day we went jungle surfing, where they harness you up to a flying fox and you swing through the canopy of the forest from platform to platform.

We camped the night at PK’s Jungle Village, who had put a very impressive effort into the tropical mural embellishing the entrance to their outhouse:

Venturing back down south, this time via the inland road, we stopped for a picnic lunch at a camping ground near Mt Molloy. The facilities here were unique in that a donation box was positioned outside both the ladies and the gents, with signs on the toilet walls requesting that we leave a few quid. Some smart-arse (ha, what a pun!) left a suggestion on the sign saying that we should perhaps leave a different type of donation…

We camped the next night along the shores of Lake Tinaroo. First we pulled into the Platypus Rock camping area where I found this large, earthly, redbrick toilet cubicle:

We opted instead to stay at the local scouting campground, which turned out for the best as I was lucky enough to find the one and only toilet through our whole two weeks of travel where I was greeted by a little spidery visitor!

We stopped at the tableland village of Yungaburra the next day and had a delightful lunch at the historic Whistle Stop Café.  You can’t get much more Aussie than this:

At an elevation of 930m, Ravenshoe holds the title of being the highest town in Queensland. We had a drink at the Tully Falls Hotel (the highest pub in Queensland), and I was hoping to find some kind of enlightening Godly message inscribed in the toilet walls, seeing as we were so close to the Royal Throne of Heaven itself. Alas, for I was barely able to make out something along the lines of “better guard your ass,” and “stiffy.”  :-/

By far the most exquisite toilet block we found was within the grounds of the gorgeous Paronella Park, one of my all-time favourite tourist attractions (so far) in the whole world. Dating from the 1930′s and built by hard working Spanish cane farmer José Paronella, he thoughtfully positioned the restrooms just downstream from the magnificent castle and delicate garden that he constructed for his beloved wife. He even framed the dunny block so that views of the Mena Creek waterfall could be enjoyed whilst whizzing away.

Unfortunately the toilets are no longer in use today, however you can only imagine how exhilarating it would have been to make use of the gravy bowl back in the day:

A couple of days later after visiting Paluma with my brother Jay and his girlfriend Kate, we had a quick look through the quiet riverside township of Rollingstone. Jay and Kate’s eager eyes spotted this happy fellow, Bushy at the Beach, painted on the rear of the local toilet block:

We drove to Charters Towers with my parents, which was once the second-largest city in Queensland during the gold rush of the late-1800′s. These days it’s a quiet town with restored 19th century architecture giving it a very country & western feel, and we headed up to the lookout on Towers Hill to view the streets from above. I especially loved the panorama from the small screen window inside the men’s room:

Ravenswood is another humble mining town, substantially smaller than Charters Towers, and about 100km to the east. With a population of less than 200, you could almost say it was a ghost town, were it not for the spattering of locals who work at the nearby open cut mine, and at the various tourist attractions around the township. We had a beer at the Railway Hotel where I discovered the WC, complete with a handwritten request to “please pull the leaver slowly”:

To my great delight, the final of my Toilets of North Queensland, just down the road from the pub at Ravenswood, turned out to be the penultimate of all pissers! What more could I ask for but a genuine outdoor thunderbox alongside an old miner’s cottage built in the 1800′s? Carefully restored after a cyclone in 1989, the thunderbox proved to be an historic and shitting… err, I mean, fitting… end to this journey, which I sincerely hope you have all enjoyed sharing with me:

Oh, alright then! Because you asked nicely, here are some normal snaps I took along the way of non-toilet-related subjects such as wallabies and waterfalls!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you liked the lav’s!

To contemplate you is to conjure crumbling cues of cold, cutting comments conveyed by your callous, corrupt crevice

To respect you is to reap repeated reproaching rewards of ridiculous, regretful remote restrictions

To enjoy you is to encase an extinct, enslaving essense of experiential execration

To worship you is to wonder why weary, wounded wolves whimper at the wasting, weakening worthiness

To yearn for you is to yowl at the yolkish yesteryear of your yellow, youthsome yield

To ogle you is to observe optic omission of overwhelming ornamental offerings

To upholster your uprising, unsentimental, unsweetened, unreasonable, unwilling, unflavoured, unsealed, unpitying, underexposed, unseductive, unoccupied, unadulterated, unauthorised, uncurable, unfaithful universe of ubiquitous unsymmetricality is to uglify

Just before I was due to leave home though, I heeded to the fact that the riot police had cancelled the event due to the overly raucous crowd refusing to abide by safety announcements, resulting in a number of tween girls getting crushed. I was quite disappointed – not at the ironic hilarity that fans had flown across the country for this moment only to screw it up for themselves – but because I genuinely did want to see him perform. I’d heard so much about him via Twitter and wanted to see for myself what the hype was about.

Which left me in a debacle as to what to do with my day seeing as it was so early and I was already wide awake. So I randomly decided to hop on the next train to Newcastle!

The first thing that struck me was the painfully slow three & a half hour train journey just to travel 160km. If I was still living in London I could have passed through three whole countries in that time, for heavens sake! A lot of the scenery was pretty spectacular though, especially around the Hawkesbury River area, so I couldn’t really complain.

Approaching the city though, the train line ran past the ugly rears of run-down, graffitied old shops & buildings, and my first impression as the locomotive pulled into my destination was as follows:

That really is what I thought. I was now beginning to understand why Daniel Johns’ music is so out there – clearly, growing up in Newcastle makes artists go crazy.

Following a minuscule and overpriced breakfast at a waterfront cafe, I felt like I’d not only wasted a good sleep-in, but written off a whole bloody day! Still, I thought I’d make the most of my time there and at least walk around the city for an hour or so and take some photos.

Thankfully, my dim impression of Newcastle was soon to change

It turned out to be a gorgeous little town. I climbed the 40m tall Queens Wharf observation tower, then made my way down the Hunter Street mall, discovering some amazing buildings from the earlier part of last century, before making a detour to a beach nearby the famous Ocean Baths. I continued along toward Nobbys Head and journeyed up the breakwater, discovering some inspirational and heartfelt graffiti written on the rocks along the way. I returned back through the local funfair, and finally climbed the hill to the very impressive Christ Church Anglican Cathedral.

On the train bound for home I overheard something really cute and so typically Australian. We passed through the Novocastrian suburb of Cardiff, and an old man sitting across from me said to his wife, “Do you know where they get the name Cardiff from? It’s actually a small town all the way over in Wales which is a part of England!”

I now take back what I initially said about the unofficial capital of the Hunter region. You’d think I would have learnt by now after so much travel, but it just went to reinforce the fact that it does pay to break outside the walls of your immediate surroundings when you first arrive at a destination.

So thanks to the Bieber Brigade and their crowd-crushing, warning-ignoring ways which led them to ruin their own and everybody else’s fun, I was able to make the delightful discovery today that Newcastle is definitely not a hole!

PS. and unlike Rihanna, who inspired a previous blog about my travels in Rome, I really don’t mind this Justin Bieber kid at all

I went to Italy in July of 2009 for a weeklong holiday, incorporating a few days in Rome, a daytrip south to Naples and Pompeii, then up north through Pisa, Florence, Venice and finally to my mum’s birthplace of Trieste.

I have many fond travel memories of my European adventures, but one of the fondest of them all was the evening I went to a small and quite hard-to-find pizzeria in central Rome called da Baffetto. It was just around the corner from Piazza Navona, and it was suggested by my trusty guidebook to be the best pizzeria in the city. It actually looked quite dodgy and run-down from the outside – you couldn’t see inside the windows because they were blocked out with newspaper – but the smell was heavenly, and there was a substantial lineup of people waiting outside the front door, so I decided to give it a go.

It took about 10 minutes and an encounter with a cranky Italian waiter to reach the front of the queue, and when I finally stepped through the doors I found the place was so packed that they had to sit me at the same table as someone else – a happy & smiling girl who looked to be in her late 20′s and was still perusing the menu. We got chatting and established that English was our common language. She was an actress from Spain and had a few days in Rome for business, and I soon found out the reason she was at this restaurant was because she had the same guidebook as me (albeit in Spanish of course). She too wanted to experience the best pizza in the city!

Our hungry tummies were not at all disappointed when our pizzas arrived. To the eye, I will admit that it looked pretty average, but it actually turned out to be the most delicious, crispy, cheesy, flavoursome, amazing wood-fired pizza I have ever eaten. The base was just the right consistency, and even though I initially thought the toppings were lacking, I soon discovered it was composed of the perfect amount. Every portion of the delicious, meaty salami was savoured, every string of mozzarella was devoured with fevorous intent, every sprinkle of oregano adding to the flavour sensation that made up this true Roman pizza:

My newfound Spanish friend and I ended up having a brilliant night. Thanks to her ability to speak Italian, we made our way afterwards to a bar in the inner-southern suburbs called Big Mama (also listed in our guidebooks as one of the top nightspots to hit) where we were lucky enough to see a genuine Sicilian folk band, performing a unique style of folk music my ears had never before been graced with – and something I never would have done had it not been for meeting Carmen. I still to this day haven’t quite figured out exactly what the bladder-like instrument was that the band were using (it was very similar to a bagpipe yet at the same time, completely different), but it sure sounded amazing:

Two nights later, Carmen and I again met at the same pizzeria for an encore meal. This time I ordered a rocket and prosciutto pizza; it was just as incredible as the first. We sat outside and were grouped with four Italian guys who were in town to watch some football, and I somehow managed to make polite conversation with them using the few Italian words I knew and the small amount of English they knew, along with a bit of translational help from Carmen. We then decided to share another pizza between the two of us, and after a delicious tiramisu and a shot of Limoncello to wash it all down, we bade our football fans goodnight and headed towards a proper Roman coffee shop for an espresso. It was pretty disgusting but I’m glad that I tried it, and before heading home we stopped by the Trevi fountain to bask in its glory and take a few happy snaps.

Walking back to my hostel with a smile, I realised I finally fulfilled an experience I’d been waiting for since I arrived in Europe a year beforehand: that kind of travel experience I’d read about all too often where you meet a random person in a random city who you were clearly “meant” to encounter. And what better thing to bring us together than the best pizza in the city? I left the Italian capital the next day a much richer person – and that, my friends, is why my favourite thing that starts with R is Rome.

* * *

I ended up winning the Rhianna CD but unfortunately I don’t at all dig her style of music. Does anybody want it?!

This bag of hearts, this tender vale
We’ll pick the berries as the mud gets in our nails
And it’s no barrier, as we hold hands when we walk home
And by the bed I brush you down as we brush up our own

We’ll paint your four grey walls of gold
Evade this frozen world and journey far away from all we know

Down the river we will ride
Archetypes of yesteryear, flow as we float by
And I’m a stranger to this voice in favour of all that we’ve done
Now we can run, we’ll get there

We’ll paint your four grey walls of gold
Evade this frozen world and journey far away from all we know
In these four grey walls of gold
Speak to me your fantasy, let’s journey far away to spend a…

A thousand days beneath the sun
A thousand ways to show we’ve won
So many reasons to deceive the dusty moon
A thousand seas by which it feeds the ebb and bloom
Multiply by sixteen and add three hundred and ninety-six
Divide the ebb, ensure the bloom’s the sum
A thousand days beneath the sun
Yeah just make sure it’s not the ebb that comes
A thousand days beneath the sun

© 2010 Daniel Schaumann

Many years ago, I remember waking up one morning, checking the time on my phone, and being surprised to see six weird, random words on the screen which I must have written as a note while I was asleep: “I need to talk to Gentor.”

What on earth…? It made no sense at all. I didn’t know anyone or anything called Gentor and I certainly didn’t want to speak to him/her/it. Eventually I summoned a vague memory of hearing this sentence in my head as I was trying to fall asleep the previous night, and for whatever reason I obviously must have woken up and recorded the words onto my phone.

Over the following few weeks I did some research and found that this was caused by a phenomenon known as the hypnagogic state. This is the watery, dreamlike state of consciousness your mind turns to as you are in the process of falling asleep, but not quite fully asleep just yet. During this process you may experience the randomest of images, shapes, colours, sounds, sensastions, hallucinations, or seemingly in my case, words, filtering through into the half-conscious eye of your mind – not quite with the “fullness” experienced from an actual dream, but moreso in brief bursts, and often more lucid and memorable.

Anyway, recently I’ve noticed these hypnagogic words have been coming to me two or three times a week, so over the past two months I’ve written down every one that my mind has graced me with! I’ve literally been going to bed at night, closing my eyes, drifting off, and then all of a sudden out of nowhere I’ll be hit by this short, whacked-out, extremely random sentence or question that makes barely any sense at all, sometimes even including completely made-up words that have no meaning whatsoever. I wake up and write them down as soon as this happens – and now, for your enoyment, transcribed below is this unpredictable and peculiar insight into my subconscious night-time mentality:

I first had a chicken when I was twelve.

They get all desperate to find out.

You don’t want to suit me up to be a bear?

In the process of renewing and travelling, did you go travelling?

Red guppy beach steps.

Were you a better king for Jack Thompson?

It might just be a soaked up point of water but he’s not ready to justify his actions.

Just put it with my pride and strike the wall.

Broad beans and bomb shells don’t do what they do.

There’s enough memory in this biscuit to keep the silly climber alive.

I have olive oil, but how can a product which is a mild apleasiastic help you? I can’t keep my finger on the zero.

Elevation can’t stand the personal justice of our bleeding yacht.

I love the shadow that they want.

After three nights on the same row, everyone was asking them: why did they move the traffic?

We don’t want you stoppers running into sand, come on, leave it!

What are your secrets, what did you say to them twice?

Draw the line on the strawberry glace pot.

Slipping out junk and the Rockerfeller’s procedure.

The story is of Sarssche.

Turning into a rabbit bagoon egg.

Café Piara D’ombardo.

One noodle he met her and nobody fetched her.

Heritage farm listed like a Chinese letter rip.

Quickly, you’re up the tree.

We had a faisty elephant come in to see us at number two.

There are the shortly’s, these are the nowhere else.

Don’t give coffee a break as you did at the Mandatee.

Nothing represents an actor more than a box of charred bananas .

Err….. crazy hey?! Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve experienced anything like this yourself. I’m off to bed now to compose more tales from hypnagogia…

DEMO #1: The Tree That Took My Love

- 7th February, 2010

I wrote this about a tree in London that I was sat under as her heartbreaking words shattered my life to pieces.

Click here to listen to the demo MP3

Click here to see the lyrics

DEMO #2: A Thousand Days Beneath The Sun

-27th February, 2010

Written & recorded in one evening, this song is about the choice between spending time with the one you love either in the full bloom of the sun, or in an ebb shadowed by the moon’s darnkess…

Click here to listen to the demo MP3

Click here to see the lyrics

DEMO #3: Days Of Karma

-23rd May, 2010

What goes around comes around. Except for some people who’s karma seems to be lacking…

Click here to listen to the demo MP3

Click here to see the lyrics

Youtube recordings: