Dear readers,

After a number of set backs and a very busy month of prepara-tion, issue 1 is finally here! I know the design is rushed, and large portions of the site aren’t working, but at least we have an issue right?

Most of all I’d like to thank the many contributors and friends who have so generously allowed us to use their content in this issue. If you have anything you think might sit well in the next issue, please join the website or contact me through the contact form.

There is a number of pieces that did not make it into this issue. This was not necessarily due to the quality of the submission. Due to time constraints, I simply was not able to proof-read all submis-sions. This often meant spelling mistakes or grammatical errors would get thrown into the ‘next issue’ folder to be dealt with later ( by the way; please proof-read before submission ).

Also, I hope no one is offended by the order in which pieces have been presented. The order doesn’t effect quality, and was often dictated by article length and how well the article and im-age looked together when typeset.

Hopefully in the future we are either able to secure ad revenue or some form of sponsorship, which will mean we can offer rewards to contributors for their effort.

Once again, thank you to all those who contributed.I have really enjoyed going through your content and putting this all together.

Cheers, Brett

I SSUEONE

PREMIÈRE

the gossamer4 A TRIBUTE TO ALBERT SCHWEITZER article freddy woodhouse

6 THE MISTRESS’ TOWER short story joshua dean

10 MANIFESTO OF THE POET-ECONOMIST article alexander abraham

14 THE DECEPTION OF FOLK CONSCIOUSNESS article andrew latham

16 VAGRANTS photo kent dunne

18 YEASAYER: ODD BLOOD review brett richardson

20 JULIE poem jason morales

22 A CHEAP PLASTIC DISH short story thom crowley

24 AN UNHEALTHY TRUST poem christian jenson

26 19 REASONS WHY NEW ZEALAND SHOULD LEGALISE CANNABIS article vincent eastwood

28 BURYING OUR FATHER poem alex

30 A HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO JAZZ AND BEING PRETENTIOUS article brett richardson

ALBERT SCHWEITZER, A TRIBUTE

Today’s date, the 14th of January, marks the 135th birthday of the

philosopher, musician, physician and theologian.

I have always thought it is a great pity that Schweitzer’s name is not a staple of philosophy departments and I suspect this has a lot to do with his notoriety as a theologian – a rather distasteful vocation to many students and teachers.

And yet, there is much in Schweitzer’s work which firmly establishes him as a philosopher who is equal – if not supe-rior – to his famous relative Jean-Paul Sartre and the sickeningly over exposed Freidrich Nietzsche.

In fact, there is a curious similarity between Schweitzer and Nietzsche. Both delighted in the visceral immediacy of life and dismissed metaphysics as a trivial pursuit that fails to answer the pressing question of how we ought to exist. ‘Reverence for life’, as Schweitzer called it, should be man’s ethical and spiritual core.

Anyone vaguely familiar with Nietzsche will here be able to see where the simi-

larities end. Those who consider them-selves a disciple of Nietzsche would lash out at such awful notions as spiritu-ality and core ethical values. ‘We can abide Schweitzer’s affirmation of life’ they might say ‘but this descent into Christian morals should consign him to philosophy’s rubbish heap’.

It is this kind of response, one that I have heard on more than one occasion, which convinces me that Schweitzer is the greater philosopher. Accepting that the material world is ethically neutral, Schweitzer finds not a moral void to be filled by some ambiguous Übermensch, but a great wealth of spiritual depth that we must struggle to realize.

Schweitzer writes:

“True philosophy must start from the most immediate and compre-hensive fact of consciousness, and this may be formulated as follows: ‘I am life which wills to live, and I exist in the midst of life which wills to live’.”

by FREDDY WOODHOUSE

PHOTOGRAPHY

KENT DUNNE

That he does not revert to Schopen-hauer’s pessimism or Nietzsche’s bor-derline nihilism, suggests a sophisti-cation and sensitivity that those two formidable Germans lacked. Ethics for Schweitzer was a drive to show good will to all life. This will is not a blind will. I think of Schweitzer’s idea of will as a resonance that echoes within the souls of all people. Like language it is innate and universal. It defies both the paradox of fundamental relativism while at the same time allowing for the great variety of cultural practices.

We should also remember that unlike Nietzsche, Albert Schweitzer lived life according to his philosophy. He did not glorify the wolf over the sheep but treated all men as equals and dedicated much of his life to overturning the great injustices of Western colonial-ism. Compare Nietzsche, who ended his life as almost the polar opposite of his übermensch ideal, writing deranged letters to his acquaintances calling on the European powers to take military action against Germany (they would wait another fourteen years to adhere to his untimely command).

It is my hope that Schweitzer will become Nietzsche’s successor in phi-losophy departments. If so we might hope to see a more nuanced approach to ethics, and an abandonment of the mentality that has led to the rise of post structuralism and deconstruction, trends so ridiculously obscure they can serve no other purpose than to serve the egos of the supposed ‘theorists’ who partake in them.

A greater attention to Schweitzer might see far more valuable principles at the forefront of the academic conscious-ness. Instead of the worship of the über-mensch we might act on Schweitzer’s appeal to think and act upon what we know is morally correct and to listen to his wise dictum that emerges from the ancient principle of human kindness:

“Therefore search and see if there is not some place where you may invest your humanity.”

When I was young, and my Grandfather was still alive, he’d take me to places

of importance.

Once when the wind blew cold over the cliffs of the great gray sea, my Grandfather showed me a tower. He moved, lumbering, like a bear; and he blinked with his eyes like frozen absinthe repeatedly, probably irritated by the sun, as he ran his hand over a stone ledge and told me.

“The sullen body of a dead Mistress and her two bas-tard daughters once lived there.” He told me the local tale; history and myth entwined: a local noble not discreet enough about his ulterior life needing to clean up, with a knife, what was left physically of his betrayal to his wife.

“What is inside now Poppa?”

“It’s touristy, nothing there today that we should be interested in really. We’ll take a look if you like though.” It was like any ruins; the climax of events surround-ing the place already passed.

When I was eighteen I was lead to a tower by a ear-man with a bushy

gray beard and eyes of frozen absinthe. I had my favorite book under my arm, it’s dust jacket depicting the back of a woman in full dress.

Inside the tower the bear that I followed told me “Don’t look. Touch”. Beyond the entrance I was lead by dust particles, ribbon dancing, up long stone stairs. In a furnished room, before a great and dusty window, a woman stood with her back to me in full dress. I rec-ognized her as the Mistress of the tower and asked the bear to introduce me. She smiled at me briefly as he did this, a condescending gesture reciprocating much gratitude and bowing on my part.

“How do you do?” I asked. She ended the smile and, as if continuing a past conversation, speaking from mid sentence, dis-cussed with the bear the cold wind coming from the great gray sea.

As I tried to keep up silently with the con-versation time rolled on and the bear was led off to a private room by the dead Mistress. I felt a tug at my hand, the youngest bastard daughter of the Mistress pulling me backwards wanting to draw me deeper into the tower. The bear would have warned me against venturing alone, I know. I being a frail child of time, while him with his strength and windy arms able to protect me, keeping me gathered in one place.

Mira was her name, he sister; Alése. Alése was older, though younger than me; but because I was introduced to her by her sister I was a trifle of a thing.

Mira showed me secrets, things I shouldn’t have known. She told me of herself and showed me her inconsistency. A body that died at 14, the thoughts of an adolescent, the experience of a century. This was a specimen of greatness, I could tell.

THE DEAD M ISTRESS’ TOWERj o s h u a d e a n

Unconscious of my own frailty, I continued as her companion and she showed me what went in hand with eternity. She could change shape at will; she was a great writhing snake made of vines, she was a young pale girl, she was something I couldn’t tell.

“What was that one?”

She told me it was her pet “Are you familiar with gene splicing?” (Vaguely) “...Well I’ve crossed a mollusc with a frog. Would you like to see?”

There was a blue thing in a glass container, frilled with obscure wobbly flesh and with two legs and no eyes.

“Watch the crab.” She told me.

She delivered a brown crab half the size of my palm to its mouth where it was firmly and quickly bitten in two and taken down. The creature then resumed it’s

solid stationary stance. Mira smiled and looked at me expectantly. I smiled back.

She took me to a perch and leaned on the frame of French doors

overlooking the great gray sea. I wondered of the

situation and stole glances at her sup-

PHOTOGRAPHY SPENSER STEELE

ple and pallid, inconsistent body.

“Don’t look. Touch” I remembered.

“Mira, would you like to spend the night with me?” Her head snapped towards me, her eyes animalish, her head inclined as she slightly and unconsciously licked her lips.

How hard it must have been to be an unsated pubes-cent confronted with eternity. She said quickly, trip-ping over her words, “We couldn’t. Well, we shouldn’t. Why? Tonight?”

I touched her shoulder, fingers only partially slipping through her “We should. I love you in your inconsistency.”

Mira again took my hand and wound me through the depths of her mother’s tower.

We passed Alése who ignored us. She seemed arro-gant and bored. We passed doorways and hallways and archways and pathways as we traveled downhill forever. We came to a room I assume she had locked and gained access with a small brass key. Inside we were held by light coming from a great window sur-rounded by lace curtains and underlined by a row of porcelain ornaments. Horses and children and moth-ers and the sky all represented by fragile, painted and worked clay; frail like me and my kind.

We spoke her hours of trivialities and novelties, our conversation laced with nuance and subtly. We covered a wall in the carefully extracted pages of a dictionary, glued all her books together and put her window in front of a wall. Musical and worldless, there was no light not spotted and artificial.

She lay down before me and removed her dress, her eyes never meeting mine.

My fingers’ caress only caught her every third stroke and our kiss seemed breathy and thick with sweet smoke. Her long white legs took me and I carried her. In the throes she was feminine, animalistic and con-fident; but forever with her eye’s shut.

Her form changed and I was caught by beasts and horrors and beauties and anything she thought of.

We lay and we slept we fucked and we slumbered. We were the animals

that transcended time, lay waste to god’s rule and took all that we wanted.

Sweetness made vile, contentment made desire, adult made child, made sex formed from dreams torn asunder.

She told me “Lover, I seek to make up for my bodies loss with love’s consistency. Will you be mine, mar-ried in time, before the world and the great gray sea?”

I loved her without exception, this dead girl of mine, of course I would love her forever. She killed me with the knife of her mother’s lover.

Three wounds, in quick succession, applied to the heart and palm.

The bear found my corpse and took me above “for air”.

The bear: “It will be a delicate thing to get you out of this one. You have years to live and she would have taken anyone. You’re a specimen of greatness, a child of time; you die in another place, in another way. Now, she has your heart which you need back.”

Mira’s Pallid body was still spread out, inconsistent in it’s fever. She got up to meet me, took me again by the hand and drew me back to bed where she lay on top of me and told me secrets of forever.

“I need to shower, stay here.” This was Mira. I grabbed her twice by the pale wrist so she’d notice and not pull away unencumbered. “At the end of time you’ll have taken far more than your fill. You change shape and deny god’s undeniable will. Because of this you’ll be judged poorly; your heart swollen and purple. Even knowing this do you choose love and eternity?”

She smiled quizzically and replied so lightly “I do; you said you do too.”

While you clean I gather my body and ask the bear to escort me to the

cliff top of the great gray sea.

The bear put me back in my body and repaired my heart and wounds, all the time assuring me I had done the right thing.

“You’re a specimen of greatness, this I can tell. You can have my body too, it’ll serve you dutifully.” As he took me, and I took him in, I looked to the sky thinking of Mira lost in her own spell.

“Bear, I think you just want to be a part of greatness yourself.” I muttered and headed for the sea as I stunk.

My reflected eyes, the color of frozen absinthe, no longer scared me. I washed quickly. Efficiency is an

PHOTOGRAPHY SPENSER STEELE

I have visited the tower few times

late in life. After my days with Mira it was lifeless, dusty and covered with vine. Tourism has thought it an opportune place to cash in on and magic is lost with every flash of a camera and stupe-fied smile.

Though I no lon-ger wish to

visit the halls of the dead Mistress’ tower, I have to, just this once; this child will know of the bear, the mistress and his grandfather’s lover.

Poets are, traditionally at least, bewildered and slightly intimidated by the world of business. Aside from the necessary, and for some, wholly abhorrent, contacts with publishers and such, most poets avoid the business world like the palsy. As a demographic category, poets and businesspersons remain almost entirely separate amongst the population.

Poets, on the whole, behave totally unlike business-people in almost every regard, and businesspersons do their utmost to avoid poets and the circles in which they drudge. Businesspeople, for example, might be seen to be cavorting around in a pinstripe suit with a preoccupied manner, appearing to run some sort of business, whereas a poet is often seen moping around in a cardigan and corduroy pants, crying and appearing to do very little.

I digress, the point I am trying to make is this: Poetry and business need not be as alien as they once seemed. Lessons learnt in the world of business might eas-ily be applied to the realm of poetics. If my meaning

escapes me, I need only put my poetic mind through the eye of an accountant, an eye that is, by and large, refreshingly economical and unmuddied by the vaga-ries of centuries of inbred art-wank.

The incisive eye of an accountant can be used to eas-ily cut through the self-referential and pretentious wankery of a poet to discover and nurture that much lauded ‘economy of meaning’ by demolishing the diminutive hillocks of obscure literary allusion, the

rolling foothills of overblown, unnecessary, and hei-nously prolix verbosity, the crag-tipped mountains of bizarre and counter-intuitive syntactical expansions and glacial alpine heights of random semantic forking – in other words, whole formidable poetic mountain ranges can be quickly and easily earth-worked and bulldozed down into imminently manageable and family friendly plains and grasslands. This is easily and rewardingly achieved through the application of the most basic of economic concepts.

The First Step:

It is paramount for the poet-economist to recon-sider their entire way of looking at poetry. The first step in the process is to look at your poem not as an emotional baring of the soul, or a raging manifesto against stagnant status quos, or any other such naïve hallucination, but as a product. The first step, in other words, is to rationally discard the ideas that a poem might have an intellectual value, an emotional reso-nance, a political angle – as all such ideas are inher-

ently false – and in fact abandon any idea that a poem has any value other than monetary value.

The poet-economist is a poet that has realized that a poem is naught but another commodity, and has awoken to the money-

making potential of the word. Once this crucial first step is taken, the rest of the steps to the ‘econ-omy of meaning’ fall easily into place, and the path to effective sale of poetic-product is laid.

Tips for the intermediate Poet-Economist:

Following the awakening of the poet-economist in you, you will begin to look at the aspects of poetry differently. Poetry, after all, is equally about the redistribution of wealth and the exchange of goods

MANIFESTO OF ThE POET-ECONOMISTTHE POETIC ECONOMY OF THE WORD Alexander Abraham dystope19.blogspot.com

The incisive eye of an accountant can be used to easily cut through the self-referential and preten-tious wankery of a poet to discover and nurture that much lauded ‘economy of meaning’.

P H O T O G R A P H Y

P E T E R K R U G E R

and services as any other commodity; in fact poetry inhabits a highly profitable position as both a good and a service – see below.

The Privatization Of Meaning:

One of the main steps from a more conventional poetic position to that of a poet-economist is the involvement in gaining control over the three pillars of poetry: Meaning, Form, and Content. This process is a difficult one to follow through, but once mas-tered is known to unlock as yet unheard of heights of profit and creativity.

It is not best described prosaically; rather, it is more effectively portrayed in the form of a 9 step program. Each step is of increasing importance, ranging from infinitely important to astronomically important. The steps must be completed in order, particularly steps one to nine. The order is easily deciphered but not numerical. Paradoxically, it becomes obvi-ous how best to complete the list only once it has been completed, however, once the programme is completed, this won’t seem nearly as paradoxical.

1. Poems are a profitable commodity.

2. Meaning is what enriches poems and makes them profitable.

3. Meaning, like any other resource, is in limited supply, and thus, like any other resource, must be marshaled with extreme care.

4. Meaning, like any other resource, has different values for different demographics, and must be marketed correctly in order to most appeal to those demographics.

5. Meaning in poetry is composed of an almost count-less variety of aspects, but first and foremost by form and content.

6. Form must be controlled and considered with the utmost care as it is form that most consumers iden-tify as the first aspect considered of a new poem.

7. Form is also content and thus produces meaning,

and thus is a resource, and thus, like any other resource, shall only be released for the right price.

8. Content produces meaning, as well as being the second aspect considered of a poem by a potential consumer, thus content is both a resource and a marketing tool for meaning.

9. Form is the first method of marketing meaning, content is second. However, as both also are, effectively, meaning, both must be marketed and delivered themselves with extreme care.

Once the program has been completed, the poet-economist will be free to move on and master his own ledgers and profit margins. Keep in mind that these instructions must be adhered to strictly, or they will cease to properly function as instructions.

Service-Oriented Poetry:

The change from a mere poet to a poet-economist is a change in priorities. From the self-centred, elitist priorities of a ‘classical’ poet, a poet-economist will turn to a new set of priorities and answer to a new master: the customer. Poems you write will no lon-ger inhabit a selfish ‘universe of you’ around which all other readers orbit, rather, you, and many other poets, will orbit the bountiful ‘sun of the consumer’ competing to drop into lower orbits and scoop out profitable rays of consumer interest. The main char-acteristic of this change is in the way the poetry is written: you are no longer writing to fulfil whatever egocentric desire previously motivated your writing, rather, you are writing to fulfil whatever egocentric desire motivates your audience to read your poetry. Every time you sit down to write a poem, foremost in your mind must be the requirements of your cus-tomers. What do they want to read about? What do they want to hear? How do they want to hear it? This is difficult step to take, and requires quite a jump in writing method and in terms of research. You must be constantly alert and aware of the ebbs and flows of

From the self-centred, elitist priorities of a ‘classical’ poet, a poet-economist will turn to a new set of pri-orities and answer to a new master: the customer.

consumer taste, ready to strike on a particular front at the first vague sign of customer interest. This is one of the trickiest aspects of the poetic economy lifestyle to master – as whilst one must at all times stay one step ahead of competing poets by capitaliz-ing on the popularity of a particular theme or style, one must avoid, at all costs, any kind of avant-garde or new wave experimentation as such ventures are risky and may not pay the requisite dividends.

Homogenization of Discourse:

It is in the interest of the poet-economist to join, find, or form a movement to apply to their poetry. If one thing is to be learned from the world of busi-ness it is that the more homogenous the product the greater its appeal for a consumer. Consumers don’t like big changes. They don’t like big decisions. If your poetry is too alien to the prevailing poetic climate, then your poetry will not be profitable.

This may not seem obvious, but if your poetry requires customers to move too far away from what they are comfortable with then they will become uncomfort-able. Uncomfortable consumers are like uncomfort-able sheep: irritable, volatile, fickle, and moments away from death.

The poet economist is like a dutiful shepherd, care fully tending to the every need of his conformist herd and ensuring they do not stray from the larger flock on the green pastures of the ‘plain of profits’ towards the deadly ‘cliffs of the new’. Thusly, you must strive for a poetics that is easily pigeon-holed, easily genred, easily lumped with other poets. A shepherds job is made infinitely easier by the assistance of poetically like-minded shepherds, and with more shepherds, the size of the flock will grow!

Conversely, goatherds are universally despised on the ‘plains of profit’ – so don’t be a goatherd! This particular step is not a hard one for many poets, as for countless millennia – from Homer to Chaucer, through Byron to Bernstein, via Bukowski – poets have regularly been wedged voluntarily or otherwise into easily marketable groups. See the Romantics, the beats, the imagists, l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e or the Black Mountains or any number of countless others for valuable examples of this technique.

P H O T O G R A P H Y

P E T E R K R U G E R

As one stares out into the environment in which they reside, one cannot help but be amazed at the rich con-scious and subjective experience. Flooded with an onslaught of sensory information, the mind provides a seamless unity and continuity. The mystery of how such an advanced capability not only works, but came to be, stands to be one of the greatest mysteries facing science in our day and age.

While this is a contentious statement, an understand-ing of the mechanisms that govern our experiences, whether of a materialist or idealistic nature (and dare I say it; dualist) strike at the very core of our being. It is this pursuit of understanding, however, that has led to a decrepit image of intellectual pursuit in this area. This image problem can be attributed to the disproportionate amount of credence given to our ‘folk understanding’ of what it is and what it means to be conscious.

Each of us possesses a deep and personal conviction of what we hold conscious and subjective experience to be.

Such intuitive understandings can be used as a starting point from which we venture, problems arise when these so called ‘common-sense understandings’ also serve as a benchmark from which all truths must follow. Progress is stunted further when these benchmarks are deceptions detracting from reality. In exposing these deceptions more explicitly, it is hoped that our folk understanding will change, facilitating further progress.

Typically in its most simple formulation, consciousness can be thought of as a reference to the individual’s total state. This is to say that a person only possesses con-sciousness if they also concurrently possess a general-ized state of being ‘awake’.

Any individual who does not possess this generalized state, as is the case when an individual who is asleep or in a coma, can be said to be unconscious. While the generality of this claim bears some resemblance of

the ‘truth’ it is deceptive and does not provide a clear understanding of what is required for an individual to be conscious. The most obvious omission is that of the cognitive function of attention, which when absent gives rise to the well known phenomenon of ‘change blindness’.

This is most illustratively observed in our visual percep-tion, it is not restricted to any sensory modality. Any information regardless of medium to which we do not attend, does not register in our conscious awareness.

Another conception of consciousness can be found in defining it in terms of its functional and behavioral manifestations. Simply stated an individual’s actions are representative of their conscious state and thus in effect are controlled and caused by them. Intuitively this would seem to be true, as for the most part it appears clear that my conscious state precludes any action I may or may not choose to take.

This view was turned over with the revolutionary experi-ments conducted by Benjamin Libet and the discovery of a potential backwards referral effect. In essence, it appears that an individual’s actions are already repre-sented in the brain in the form of a readiness potential, before they are even consciously aware of the action they are to take. Although this suggests that consciousness is not involved in the generation of behavior, it does not mean we are unable to control our behavior.

Conscious awareness appears to preclude any overt display giving an individual time to ‘veto’ the behavior generated. This provides a semblance of control, albeit not in a traditional sense.

The most advanced folk conception of consciousness can be described in terms of the human’s unique capa-bility to display a cognitive capacity for meta-cognition.

Consciousness is often seen as the ability to produce thoughts about thoughts. Problems with defining con-sciousness in this way should become painfully obvious when we consider what is generating this lower order, or in the case of false beliefs, higher order thoughts.

In essence it appears we are merely circularly defining consciousness, by appealing to it as the solution of its own problem.

An additional problem with this view is that it appears

Intimacy and Mystery: The Deception of Folk Consciousnessa n d r e w l a t h a m

PHOTOGRAPHY PETER KRUGER

to make the claim that thoughts or information genera-tion (even in its original form) is reliant on a form of proto or baseline consciousness. This claim is refuted through case studies and experiments involving indi-viduals displaying blindsight. Information generation even in its simplest form is not reliant on consciousness and can be done in the absence of awareness.

Information or states with a capacity to be made avail-able via report, reasoning and behavior are classified as access consciousness, and it is this form of conscious-ness that have been made reference to thus far. This has been done due to its explicit nature that has made it the subject of almost all scientific investigations thus

far. As a result it is also the area which has suffered the most from our unwillingness to let go of folk knowledge.

There is, however, phenomenal consciousness, which refers to the internalized, subjective or qualia that accompanies a conscious state. Due to its personal and implicit nature, investigations into this area are still in their infancy, leading to a large proportion of our knowledge being grounded on these folk intuitions.

While this in its self may not be problematic, if prog-ress is to be made we must be willing to let go or adjust any folk intuitions that contradict reality as it stands.

“VAGRANTS”KENT DUNNE

All Hour Cymbals had all the tells of a virgin album. It began in a frenzy of optimistic youth, giving everything it had early in the race, then it climaxed early before getting the stitch and finally limping embarrassed over the finish-line. So the first thing I noticed listening to Odd Blood was how well-paced it was.

The Children slimes modestly into first place with a groan of dirty vocoders on a bed of synths and plonky percus-sion. One could be forgiven for think-ing Tricky or even Marilyn Manson at first, but you would be very wrong.

Yeasayer returns in recognizable form on the 2nd track Ambling Alp, and evolves its sound delicately and con-fidently. Every track from there is a welcome development on the previous, without the feeling of slack towards the end which plagued the debut. Indeed, this is a band matured.

In 2008 Yeasayer toured with indie electronica duo mgmt, and this influ-ence can not go unnoticed. Yeasayer seem to have veered towards the more upbeat electronic feel, reminiscent of Of Montreal, which served them so well in the singles of their debut.

What we are left with is an upbeat and danceable foray into the next decade of music, an early contender for the ‘best of 2010’ lists and a potential cult hit.

YEASAYER Yeasayer pranced into the spotlight in 2007 with the flamboyant All Hour Cymbals and the unforgettable singles 2080 and Wait for the Summer. This debut donned glitchy synths, gospel-style vocals and a joyful psychedelic attitude making it an instant hit.

Their live shows were intimate and energetic, but despite leaving their show thoroughly impressed, I feared this experimental band might soon slip into obscurity. Thankfully not.

“AN UPBEAT AND DANCEABLE FORAY INTO THE NEXT DECADE OF MUSIC”

ODD BLOOD

DUE 9TH FEB 2010

IllustrationJussi Jääskeläinen

www.kobaia-design.com

P H O T O G R A P H Y

K E N T D U N N E

Too long now a sunrise was the only memory you photographed. You always spoke of Athens and its colonnades of stone. Marble, a forgotten story. Your fingers didn’t want to let go. Didn’t believe the Mediterranean held anything more than love-starved, rained-upon Londoners.

They’ll go to Ibiza like they do every year, perform the art of Hedonism with groggy eyes. Stunned. Another day In helpless paradise.

They told you Sam was on a hilltop road Where truffles and boars dare to grow. Near Milan? You never said. You did imply He was a lover, though. One with fine fingers, Obviously used to piano. A grey-haired sergeant Oblivious to a new world Where marriage was for the old, The infirm. For the cornstalks Refusing to dislodge their roots In a cyclone.

Athens is so far away from Kansas Where you first learnt to sew. A seamstress. Thimble and thread Your deliverance and bread. A mother, too blind to read the daily paper.

“In our days, there were no such things As fancy surgeons Willing to contemplate anything But how to prevent Untimely death.”

I read each story slowly, let you savor the sights Of another century torn by war and infernos. I mention how many died, how many decided It was time to fight.

You take especial pride in these victories Of the human condition. I guess that’s where you and I Can agree far too easily.

I see the missed connections Spanning fifty years. You are alone now. I know this. You know this story will end.

Julie

j ason mora les

I started working here because I’m a girl in her twenties who’s attempting to pay rent in the city and I have a degree in humanities. I come in at least five mornings a week and I’m here until noon or three pm, usually. We’re always swap-ping shifts, and I end up opening every day of the week over the course of the month. Anyway, for the past six months, the whole time that I’ve worked here until a few weeks ago, every single morning, the ashtray on the patio was absolutely full of cigarettes.

It’s not like there’s a lot of foot traffic in the area, or like there’s no other places to smoke, either. I mean, most people passing through work around here or they’re going to the movie theatre around the corner. We’re in a sort of an office park. There’s a fountain in the middle. I always looked around at the other tables in the morning, our patio is sort of a big outdoor area with a couple other restaurants. One of the other places has a bigger outdoor area than us. We just have two metal tables with two metal chairs each. It’s not really an eat outside kind of place. Our place isn’t, I mean.

Do you mind if I smoke? I’m trying to quit but every time I tell this story I end up wanting a cigarette. I can smell them when I tell it. Thanks.

So basically, we close at midnight or one, and the bartenders and bar backs don’t get out until, like, two because they clean up after they everybody gets out of the bar. And I asked them. About the cigarettes, I mean. Like, I said, to one of the bartenders, some joke about how they don’t ever empty the ashtray on the patio and he told me that he always does. I mean, he wasn’t kidding around either. There wasn’t any reason for him to lie, I mean.

It’s a pretty upscale place. It’s pricey is what upscale means. It’s an office park. They keep the wait staff young for the usual reasons: energy, gullibility, image. People tip when they want to

look cool, on dates and all that. You have to seem capable but fed up with their bullshit. That’s how rich hipsters spend money. Anyway, it’s upscale enough for the ashtray to sit out there all night. Not that people are dying to take a cheap plas-tic dish anyway, but you walk a mile down the road, where things aren’t so trendy and hip and office-filled, and tables and chairs are either pulled inside or, like, bolted to the concrete or something. There aren’t any things outside that are there for the taking, I guess I mean.

I got it into my head that it was one person out there smoking by himself. Stupid shit made me think it was. Like, it was always a full pack of ciga-rettes. Exactly twenty cigarettes in the ashtray. Always. I mean, to smoke that many cigarettes yourself between two and six in the morning is pretty intense, I know, but it was always exactly twenty. I didn’t start out counting them, I’m not a psycho, but I was emptying these things almost every morning. Sometimes seven days in a row, if I was covering two other shifts. I noticed they were all Camel lights and I got curious, I guess.

So I thought it was one person, or that was my picture of it. I figured it was one person because there was always one chair pushed away from the table and the ashtray full of cigarette butts. Everything was always in the same place. He became a real person to me, or I really started to think of whoever was filling up the ashtray every night as a person, like, an eating sleeping breathing person who always came to this place, after Thanksgiving.

I mean, I started here in the summer, early June, and every single time I went onto the patio I’d empty this guy’s cigarettes into the trash bar-rel. I was doing this for this guy for months and months, and I knew him for that, right? And he knew that someone was emptying the ashtray and leaving out there for him. Even if he didn’t know it was me most of the time, he knew that someone was.

A C H E A P P L A S T I C D I S HT H O M C R O W L E Y T H O M C R O W L E Y.W O R D P R E S S .C O M

P H O T O G R A P H Y

F R A N K O K O S I C

So Thanksgiving rolls around, what, like a month and a half ago, and we’re closed all day on Thanks-giving and I come in the morning after Thanks-giving and I know it’s going to be hell day, Black Friday and all that, everyone’s going to be out in full force, and the ashtray is basically overflow-ing with cigarette butts. Like, spilling over the sides, a few butts are sitting around the sides of the ashtray. And I realize that this guy, this per-son, was out here Thanksgiving morning and the morning after. Two nights in a row.

I don’t know. All of sudden, I felt bad about not emptying the ashtray for him on Thanksgiving. Like I should’ve come in and done it myself. I mean I knew that that’d be crazy, but I just thought about it. That’s when I really thought of him, you know? While I was pushing his chair in and picking up all the butts.

§

I thought about it a lot, after that. I didn’t need to think about it so much but I did. It was too easy to. You go so fast and everyone wants some-thing from you and your mind kind of wanders. Mine does, at least. So I kept thinking about this character. I just kept thinking about the cigarette smoker, and it definitely didn’t take long to walk by the patio area on the way to the subway from the movie theatre after a late show, right?

So the movie got out at 3 am, and I’m walking back to the subway, this is like a week ago, and the girl that I’m with has a car but I tell her I’m just walking to the subway and kind of hint that I want to be alone, which is a total bitch move but I wanted to walk by there alone.

So I kind of blew her off, and I go walking through the office park and towards the fountain, and I see him there. He’s sitting back, like I imagined him, sitting that way that guys sit with one leg straight in front of him on the chair that’s pushed under the table, his chair is pushed out to where it always is in the morning, and there’s a pack of cigarettes and a plastic lighter on the table in front of him. He’s smoking and staring straight ahead.

He’s got a baseball cap with the brim pulled down low, and he’s sort of slouching in his seat the way that guys do, with his chest kind of caved in, almost. He looks like he’s in his thirties maybe, and before I know it, I’m walking up to him, I’m like five feet away from the table. He looks tired and pissed off and sort of like I imagined him, actually.

He looks up at me and seems real bored, real annoyed. He seems like he’s about to say some-thing, and I feel like saying to him, real fast, something about how I always empty his ashtray every day and how I just wanted to say hi, maybe ask him why he’s always sitting out here, and I realize how completely fucking nuts me saying that is going to sound. Anyway, the guy sort of notices something in my face or whatever and closes his mouth. Doesn’t say anything. I don’t know what to say either, and after another sec-ond or two, I kind of hurry away. I don’t know why I did.

Like, why did I walk up to him? Or if I did walk up to him, why did I not try something? Any-thing. Why not ‘Hello’? Anyway, I didn’t open the next morning. When I came in the morning after that, this was a few weeks ago, the ashtray was empty. He hasn’t been back since.

§

That night, after I walked away from him, I kept thinking about going back. Going back and explaining myself, mainly. I even bought a pack of Camel lights at the 7-11 and smoked one outside the subway station, trying to decide what to do.

I was standing there and smoking when two black guys walked by. One of them was wearing a dew rag and a long tee shirt. The other guy was wearing dress pants and a dress shirt and a tie and brown leather shoes. I looked up at them and then I looked away, like I was really interested in smoking my cigarette or something, and I heard one of them kind of laugh a little. I should have said something.

P H O T O G R A P H Y P E T E R K R U G E R

When I put my elbows in the window frame, and look

outside into the wasteland, you don’t need to look for the worms in the apple, the apple is fine, ripe , preserved, genetically manipulated, but they poke their heads out on oversized billboards.

Why is life so short? is it? do we make it?

A friend of mine dreamt for 500 years in a night, they called him mad and gave him pills, Right... the doctor has two left hooves, you don’t need to look for the worm, he will burrow down your throat.

So Dance you monkey, do that thing that’s funny. I’m gonna make you move, I’m gonna make you dance, Dance, with the donkey

The white mans line dance is a disease, an anorectic convention that eases you in to the head spin of a preserved life, thee free-form dance comes with ease, the random transient flow with the beat that leads us into the sweet treat of the head rush of the life of a fleet of meat-babies climbing out of the whirl, of the mechanical grail with silica sails, control of our soul, control of our whole, worm babies bob in the surface of stagnant water, fishnets flow in streams coated in live algae, the green beard of the wooden giants, who earths the flesh,

and dirts the fresh, and flirts with death, laying larvae in the core, like an leathery omni bore, bore with lace into the sore, and lost contact with the whole, too materialistic for a soul, pulling the carriage of complex-ity, like an easily distracted foal, burning like coal, give me a burning bush, give me new ashes, white glow around the red eye is cancerous, not cancerous like second hand smoke or roasting in the sun, cancerous like the rot in your head that makes you, kill a man, kill a girl, kill a child,

The teacher is to blame as much as the man on the hill who, gave the order polish the gun and drop the bomb

Dance, you monkey dance he’ll make you laugh, he’ll make you feel good dance, you monkey dance with the donkey pull the Ass out of line pull him into the rhythm of the beat

To listen to the heart of renew-able thought into a continuous flow of interpretation that jumps into the saddle to dissociate the meaning of the babble ears taped shut with band aids and hearing aids,

Stand up and bring the poet back to life, He’s been tongue tied and fried

an unhealthytrust Christian Jensen

for generations generation x stomped his head into the pavement stand up, ride the hooves of the past into new horizon, the song in the air was mixing the curves, scratching the hymns into new voice, that our music carries strong, can we change biohazard into biodiversity, can we change dystoia into new topia, not eutopia, your rustic cusp is an illusion

In the shadows you raped a brave new world, stand up, dance ride the hooves of Our ideas into new horizon

Dance, you monkey dance he’ll make you laugh, he’ll make you feel good dance, you monkey dance with the donkey pull the Ass out of line pull him into the rhythm of the beat to listen to the heart of renew-able thought into a continuous flow of interpretation that jumps into the saddle to dissociate the meaning of the babble ears taped shut with band aids and hearing aids

Stand up and bring the poet back to life, He’s been tongue tied and fried for generations, generation x stomped his head into the pavement, stand up, ride the hooves of the past into new horizon, the song in the air was mixing the curves, scratching the hymns into new voice, that our music carries strong, can we change biohazard into biodiversity, can we change dystoia into new topia, not eutopia, your rustic cusp is an illusion, in the shadows you raped a brave new world, stand up, dance, ride the hooves of Our ideas into new horizon

P H O T O G R A P H Y

K E N T D U N N E

19REASONS WHY CANNABIS SHOULD

BE LEGALIZED IN

NEW ZEALANDWhy should cannabis be legalized? Here are the main points the New Zealand public should be aware of.VINCENT EASTWOOD

P H O T O G R A P H Y

S P E N S E R S T E E L E

REASONS WHY CANNABIS SHOULD

BE LEGALIZED IN

NEW ZEALAND

01 15,000 arrests per year. Mostly the poor, the young, ethnic minorities and workers.

02 1 billion nzd in black market profits per year made mostly by gangs.

03 In the usa 84% of illegal drug users use only cannabis.

04 $500,000 million nzd in taxable revenue in the first year alone (conservative estimate).

05 700 prison inmates that can be let go to make room for real criminals

06 417,000 police hours approx. being used to fight cannabis in nz. That is 200 full time officers which can then be simply re-allocated to fight more serious crime.

07 70% of all weekend crime which is alcohol related.

08 50,000 industrial uses for hemp. Almost any-thing you can make from wood you can make from hemp, which also produces 4 times the amount of bio-fuel than other plants, an area the size of Taranaki covered in hemp could provide 100% of New Zealand’s fuel needs.

09 400,000 regular to occasional smokers approx. in New Zealand, meaning the law is broken 200,000 times per day.

10 Many people currently have little respect for the police force, particularly the youth who are deliberately targeted. Legalization hopes to restore that respect.

11 It is currently easier for children to acquire cannabis than alcohol, With a similar set of regulations and controls we can protect children from underage usage which can be harmful to their brain development.

12 New Zealand currently has experienced a drop in tourism. This industry puts $8.3 billion in to the economy each year, accounting for 19.2% of export earnings. The Netherlands for has 1 million visitors specifically for cannabis from France each year.

13 Every state in the usa that has approved medi-cal cannabis has seen a reduction in usage. In the Netherlands usage went from 20% to 8%, and the reason given by many of those people is that their social circles changed because while one is criminalized, one must be with others that are also criminalized, this is why cannabis smokers friends are most likely to also be cannabis smokers.

14 52% of New Zealanders have tried Cannabis, so if it's not you, it's the person next to you.

15 Medical cannabis can be prescribed for hundreds of treatments, including cancer (high thc hemp oil has been known to affect cancer according to Rick Simpson in Canada), multiple sclerosis, depression, glaucoma, arthritis, and muscle pain.

16 The recreational users of cannabis who choose to grow will have more expendable income to pay for necessities.

17 Removing Cannabis' legal status will allow the public to be educated on responsible use and how to seek treatment if any ill effects (like addiction) are experienced, previously many people who develop dependence issues with illegal drugs are too afraid to seek treatment because of the fear of authorities.

18 20,000 new jobs can be created by an emerging cannabis industry, this would be a huge boost to the economy of New Zealand and would trigger a "rural revitalization" reversing the current trend of Urbanization.

19 Prohibition has been an impediment to edu-cating people. Lies like: “tinnies are laced with P”, “cannabis makes you addicted to heroin”, “cannabis makes you go insane and kill people”, “cannabis makes you unmotivated and turns you in to a loser” or “cannabis makes you commit crime”, are commonly repeated amongst prohibitionists and the discrimination and criminalization of smokers may disappear if instead proper education is encouraged.

P H O T O G R A P H Y

C H A R L E S WAT S O N

For a little while we put our thoughts to sleep. The hearty laughter blan-

keting the room drowns the sound of ice softly knocking together in our glasses. It covers every inch of the house like clockwork. Regular intervals of call and response. Story, laughter. It’s our family’s prayer.

These moments have more emotion, more passion, and more energy than can ever be expressed. Empathy flows through the room. A loop of joy strikes to each and everyone our hearts. Our bellies rumble, sides split, and tears roll on. Even after the story is finished and the laughter has subsided, we can’t shake off the giggles. They’re halfway points between more laughter and more story. We don’t want either to stop.

We realize how complacent we have become by those who surround us. With a single death we remember what family means.

BURYING OUR FATHER

by ALEX

fictionalaudience.blogspot.com

When did the word ‘jazz’ become such a clean word? Somewhere

along the way the term was unsoiled and uprooted... even deemed fit to dangle from a white collar! All but lost is the word that inspired the likes of Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs.

This was the music that inspired a Gen-eration to embrace their insobriety and to trumpet their imperfections from besooted urban roof-tops and brick dungeons slick with smoke and thick with bewhiskered old ‘niks. These were not ones to plug their short-comings. Instead they sought to parade the gap-ing holes in their jelly-roll souls, open and wide enough for the muffled groan of a midnight saxophone to roam... not unlike a breeze, or a river.

In this spirit I beg you: bring back the Beat, that pretentious nicotine-stained Beat! Bring back the beat with no click-track, that which swings like the hips of a drunken dame for a dollar. Bring back that strutting homeless bass-line, those piano chords in ragtime, and ‘oh God!’ the subtle tap of a snare rim rap.

a HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE to JAZZ APPRECIATION and BEING PRETENTIOUSBRETT RICHARDSON

Holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars! Holy the hideous human angels! Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas! Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazz bands marijuana hipsters peace peyote pipes & drums!

Allen Ginsberg - Howl

P H O T O G R A P H Y

P E T E R K R U G E R

For just this purpose I have written a quick guide for the jazz-curious, because if you’re not with us now, there’s a chance you may never be. So hurry up you “better git it in your soul”.

We shall start with Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue (of course), the most popular jazz album of all time, and arguable one of the most accessible. The 2nd track, Freddie Freeloader is a classic based on an unremarkable 12-bar blues pat-tern. Jazz songs are often unremark-able. The ‘song’ itself is almost inert, a blank canvas, and you really shouldn’t be interested in the canvas.

Go on, play Freddie Freeloader. There’s a brief brass introduction to begin with; nothing much there. They establish the backdrop with a simple melody. It’s utterly unremarkable. However, 3/4 of a minute through, the band dies away and Kelly’s keys take point. Listen for a moment; this is jazz. When a good jazz musician takes the lead, every note is refined. 2 minutes in Davis takes lead. Notice the delicate way he ends each note. Some notes linger; some slide off, disinterested. Some notes arrive late... and some don’t seem to arrive at all. This is it: the sound of an artist simply amusing himself.

Miles had with him some big-names on this album, but for simplicity I’ll only mention Coltrane (tenor sax) and Kelly (piano).

Wynton Kelly (piano), had a rather accessible album named Kelly Blue which managed to keep its tempo. This is important because slow jazz pieces will often put new-comers off the genre. Don’t be afraid to skip these if they don’t suit your mood.

I’m going to advise against John Col-trane’s most popular albums. Not because they aren’t good, (they are), but because Coltrane has a tendency to focus on scales as opposed to melody. My opinion is that his less popular Dakar album is far more accessible for this very reason. The 3rd track Route 4 is particularly worth a listen.

No introduction would be complete without mentioning Charles Mingus (double bass). Mingus is known for driving hard-bop bass-lines which make his music very lively and animated. I recommend listening to the Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus album, and in particular, the 6th track II B.S. Also, there is a track on YouTube, Charles Mingus - Moanin’ which begs to be heard.

When you hear a solo or piece which appeals to you, look up that individual musician. Chances are they have an album in their own name. This is a great way to branch off and discover new sounds. Otherwise, you’re on your own from here. Oh, and remember, pretentious isn’t always a bad thing.

“I never thought that the music called ‘jazz’ was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all other dead things that were once considered artistic.” - Miles Davis

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