I'm finishing up with uni this year. There's just 7000 more words to write across three subjects and I will be a Bachelor of Arts. Yeah. Another one of those. So it's more than appropriate to bumble through a blog about changes, spacemen and other Bowie subjects.
It's a funny thing, uni. Several times during the degree I have been unimaginably pissed off with it and wanted to throw in the towel, but then I'd have a great lecture or do an essay that let me engage with my studies and made everything seem worthwhile again.
The fact I'm not pursuing further studies in the areas of my first degree (including Honours) points towards an equally and possibly truthier truth, that I really only went to uni because it's the right thing for a white middle class kid to do and I stayed there because of fear and, in recent months, the fact I was so close to finishing that it'd be 'stupid to stop now'.
As Arts has taught me to disapprove of dichotomies, the truth lies somewhere between the two. (But definitely leans more on the side of the second explanation.) It is also stupid to talk of uni as if it has finished because it all hinges on those 7000 words, which I have two weeks to write.
Nothing really grabbed me intellectually in terms of my two majors in History and English language, probably because I didn't respect the disciplines in terms of putting enough time into researching things in History or developing an understanding of x-bar theory in Syntax, for example. Don't ask.
The Arts degree is a well-rounded education precisely because of the corners it teaches you to cut. Discuss.
Uni has been best for the people I've met, the student theatre I've done and the emotional trauma it has caused in me that has made me grow as a person. Which, because those things were why I went to uni in the first place, makes this degree a mitigated success. Another crowning achievement of this level of education is making me bugger around with clichés in a manner that is jarring to the reader.
I'm doing another radio show at the moment. It's on SYN again, but instead of being at sparrow's fart on Sunday morning, it's from 10am - midday on Saturday morning. The frequency is 90.7FM or you can listen via the website already linked in this paragraph.
It's much the same as the old show was, but I've interviewed a few people already and will have more content as the weeks roll by. It's great to be at a more reasonable time so I don't have to talk in a monotone and play a lot of music, although there still is an awful lot of that. I would send you to the show page on the Student Youth Network site, but I don't have one because I joined the block late. Pirate radio, with permission of management, until Christmas.
Along with radio, the last weekend was pretty full on band-wise, with three gigs in four nights. I broke my tambourine at the gig on Sunday. This is but one indication that the band is increasingly more rock'n'roll in general: Parko has also started to cut his hands up unintentionally at gigs by playing bloody hard. He's got a white strat so his guitar ends up looking very Andrew W.K. by the end of each gig with blood streaks all over it.
The Robot Invasion debut five track EP is very close to being done. The artwork is looking great, the final touches to the mix are being done and the launch is set for 22 November at The Arthouse.
Also playing with us that night will be some great Melbourne bands we've shared the stage with over the year: San Salvador (with bassist Ben in one of his last gigs before he's in Queensland for good), Rise and Shine and Escapist. It will be a great night. Please come along and bring your friends! Every single one of them.
After the launch, we're over to Perth to play some shows and then home to Melbourne for a couple more gigs before Christmas.
Daft Punk, Art Brut and the Lorne variety of Falls Festival will also be minor highlights of the pre-2008 period.
I'm listening to Girl Talk's Night Ripper from last year at the moment. I originally got it in what originated as preparation for Falls, but the album has become a complete joy that brings the funk train to the station just when it is truly needed.
I'll finish this with a quote recently posted on John Maeda's SIMPLICITY:
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do."
Walter Bagehot
Walter Bagehot
Peace.
