Gertrude Stein vs Neil Young

I don't set out to procrastinate or get distracted.

It just happens along the way.

For example, I'm cleaning up my desk. There's a pile of official documents, computer hard drive cables, business cards, shirt buttons (??), a funny note from my staff and other scraps of paper with stuff written on them - ideas from friends on where to buy silk for surfboard fabric underlays, repeat medication slips from the doctor, financial statements and then I spy a post it note with just this written on it "mexsgarage.com.au".

I have no recollection how that came into my possession, so I fire up the computer to investigate it via Google.
It's some sort of automobile website for a crew who do impressive classic olde cars makeovers.

I stare at the post it note again. Is it even my scratchy handwriting?
I decide not and turf it.

While the web is up, I check my email and there's something from one of those online travel agents promising bargain prices. Maybe I can afford that return trip to WA and catch up with Corey at Margaret River, I ponder.
So I send him a text to find out when he's flying out of that mining site in the middle of the desert - the one where he gets paid to blow stuff up and shoot critters like this.

In my distraction, I have let the water for the morning coffee boil and gone cool. I start to reboil it. The water here is suss in summer anyway.

While that's happening, I spot an interesting email from Byron Bay, the epicentre of the surfing rainbow. Ohhhh look at that! Jim Banks has a sale on and the photos of his new Indo board range have me dreaming of exotic locales.
Meanwhile,  the water for the coffee has boiled and cooled again.
I have lost an hour I'll never get back.

The photo below sums up my shifting focus and distraction perfectly.
I bought some beautiful little roses at the markets, thinking I'll do a macro Tina Modotti style shot. I got distracted too many times and now the blooms have gone belly up. Since we are having a heat wave I end up getting some nice shots of rosarian decay.

This is what they should have looked like.

"A rose is a rose is a rose" - Gertrude Stein

I'll probably get distracted and go off on an artistic tangent all the same again in 2014.

It's not all bad, though.

Sometimes artistic deviation can lead to interesting results. As the great sage Young once remarked when commenting on his various stylistic changes away from Mainstream Music:

"Travelling there was really boring 

so I headed for the ditch. 

It was a rough ride 

but I met more interesting people there." 

- Neil Young

The Other Green Room

Less than 100 meters from the chaos and carnage in the lineup there's another green room - a tranquil spot in the rain forest where a whole miniature universe exists if you take the time to be still and focus.

BIG thanks today for those who fought and continue to fight to save our natural wonders.

"Dream until you can dream no more" **

I can't quite believe that he's gone. I mean I never knew Al Byrne so don't have any stories, but his accidental passing in Bali, both shocked me (sad face) but also reminded me of my first channel bottom surfboard and the impact of AB and the other "channel guys" have had on me and my surfing over the years - guys like Simon Jones and Jim Pollard who pioneered and persevered with the whole cumbersome craft of goughing clinkers and channels into surfboard foam and somehow glassing the the buggers.

My first channel bottom board was shaped by another Byrne - Phil of the Wooloongong crew - a six foot, post-punk twinnie bought from Kirra Surf, just before Big Simon got us all on thrusters.
Even today, when I'm driving down a certain street I'm still reminded of the day my older brother, "Bandit" drove me down to buy it in his Falcon "shaggin wagon".

It was around the time our folks sold up and moved to a small place at Broadbeach. "Bandit" and I lived together in a dingey post-war house that seemed to have a good collection of vinyl albums and 10oz beer glasses. My car was probably getting repaired after I rolled it.  I can still see Bandit's ridiculously long locks blowing in the pre-air-con highway slipstream, while his cassette player cranked out my first attempt at double tracking my own guitar.

That twinnie was a speed demon on points from Lennox to Noosa. Both me and the board were pretty hopeless in the barrel but for speed and reo's, we were UNBEATABLE. This last statement has never been tested empirically, but that's my position, OK? Let me dream.

A yankee surfer we got to know back then once said he'd never seen anybody go so fast on a board.  Somewhere in the Brinecave there's a few spools of Super 8 showing me what I used to surf like. I'm almost tempted to bust them out. "Dream until you can dream no more" - Simon Jones

That red and white checkered twinnie also witnessed the famous Coolum pub brawl and the equally memorable keg-in-a-tent episode as well as helping me court the love of my life. And even though it never had a cover and usually just got chucked in the back window of my Holden Gemini, it had nary a ding in it when I passed it on to Bandit's stepson, after I moved to three fins (albeit still with channels).

My affair with channels continues thanks to Mr Jones of Byron Bay, who crafted me a wonderful board, that's launched me along the reefs of Cokes and Sultans, the rocky ledges of Moffatt's and the sandy points of Noosa. Thank you Channel Guys for stoking a surfer through the decades.