The Antlers and thinking about life on a cold Sunday afternoon.

Life and Dreams

If I could live out my entire life the way I wanted to, I would travel constantly.
My ultimate dream is to see every scrap of earth on this planet, not miss any detail.
I want to see everything this planet holds. That's my ultimate dream.
There's an analogy I read once that says if the entire history of the earth were condensed into a phone book, then the entire history of human life on the planet would total one line of text on the last page.

That's what stage I'm sitting at in terms of my dream.

I've lived in One Tree Hill, South Australia; Takapuna Beach, New Zealand; and Oatley and Mortdale, Australia.

I've also travelled to America in 2001, and Vienna, Austria; Prievidza, Slovakia; Cheltenham and Malvern, England; and Singapore.
I can remember distinct moments that were completely unique to all of those trips, and similar moments for each of the places I've lived.

I remember the feel of the chilly waters and the grainy, pebbly sand of the edge of Lake Taupo, New Zealand.

I remember the fog and sticky vivid red mud of the wilderness around Sedona, Arizona.

I remember the wind and the sun, the rustle of the brown grass at the top of this peak; and looking out at the mountains playing themselves out to the horizon in the Mala Fatras, Slovakia.

Imagine building a lifetime of these moments, being able to recall the feel of the unique atmosphere of every single place on Earth. That's my dream.

Modern Culture

Someone in the comments put "everything i hate about surry hills."
I think it would be more accurate to be "everything i hate about society"

I have a theory that music tends to define fashion and cultural groups and vice versa, through a series of fads that a minority of society is really jumping on at a period of time. Punk was obviously a huge one.
More recently, there's been "emo".

Right at the moment, "indie" and "alternative" and "hipster" are what's in.
There's the people in any cultural group that tend to jump on a bandwagon to such a degree, and are so desperate to appeal to that distinct dynamic that they almost become parodies of what the culture is, and become everything that the culture shouldn't be.

For emo, there were those that thought it was completely acceptable to wear eye makeup in public, along with chains everywhere, and the striped socks and what have you.

Now it's the hipster. They're the parody figure.
I content myself with the fact that all these fads fade out and are replaced. For the moment though, we put up with ridiculous hyperbola of all sorts, a yearning to be ever more alternative. It's stupid and I try not to conform to it, even if just in thought. All the hipsters will just fade back into looking like anyone else in time.

I try to think about things in a progressive manner, and in a way that is not confined to one cultural group. That means I would prefer not to get bogged down in one period, just because it appeals to me. I might appreciate elements of it, but not allow it to define me. I try to take a little bit out of everything.

It's just annoying that a lot of the things that alternative culture identifies with, I also tend to be interested in.

All Night

The last week or so has been some of the crappest days of my life, to be fair.
My phone got stolen, I did a rubbish presentation for studio, and because I'd worked so hard for studio I sacrificed time I could have evened out onto the other subjects I take. All the while I was missing a whole lot of sleep - I'm still recovering.

4 out of the 7 days of the week leading up to Friday the 3rd of June were all-nighters.
There's something actually attractive about an all-nighter. I've gotten used to the feeling. You're kinda delirious the whole time, and you sort of tune-out to the normal world. Patterns in life stop becoming recurring, and time just freezes into one sort of big blur, so much so it becomes meaningless. When you never sleep, and you're constantly working, time becomes irrelevant. The only kind of reference point you have is hunger, and I guess night and day.

It's saddening when you see the sun rise through a window, with no sleep in between.

In the end though, I enjoyed what I got out of it. There's something rewarding about working your ass off for a while, even if you get shit all out of it.

I got to be good friends with Dai, who I had only sort of talked to in small amounts with before, pretty quickly after spending almost a week together with a small group of other people intermittently coming and going.
It's too hard to try and summarise all the things that happened, but Dai took a bunch of photos and put the best ones on Facebook. I'll put in some captions to try and explain what they're about. I figure visual medium might explain this best. They're in no particular order.


Doing some computer modelling in a stupid posture.

The stack of chairs we built. This was actually the penultimate night and we were very stir crazy.

The remnants of our group meal. Randwick Pizza Hut, courtesy of James.

My all-nighter kit. Sleeping bag and mat.

Me gesturing stupidly that we had made a "playhouse" with two storeys in the computer room with the desks from outside. Monica sits in the background.

Leo and Josh at about 4am, doing some plastering and painting of their foamies. James is asleep under the sleeping bag behind them both.

I was taking a brief 30 minute nap at about 8pm. Dai was under strict instructions not to let me sleep longer than thirty minutes because otherwise I would be wasting time.

The first day, when I had not yet started the all-nighter period. It started this night. Chloe and I in the workshop.

Lukas, in his pyjama pants and sleeping gear. He slept every night just on the floor. He's from the Central Coast and catches the train down every day, except for when he's sleeping at uni.