Tag: writing

Music is great! – 2nd December 2004

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

frequency lab with grey daturas, hit the jackpot, vincent over the sink

waiting waiting waiting at the airport – finally a customs guy finds us and wants to know why jj, yukari and koji have equipment with them – i just tell him they were recording before and have come back to sydney for one night before flying back to japan.

eventually limited express (has gone?) come out and we sheepishly load up the car and drive into the city to frequency lab.

we take everything up and vincent over the sink start pretty soon after – these two guys are great but we only get to check out a couple of songs before hunger calls.

we make it back to see hit the jackpot who are another wonderfully simple band – playing with a complete disregard to anything at all – they’re cool! i’m running around wondering if everything will be ok as the place fills – it looks to me as though the equipment is ropey and the drumkit will fall apart but it’s all there is…grey daturas manage to crank everything up a notch and chris on sound manages pretty well with the noise.

the place is packed now and no one else should be allowed in but it seems the place is getting more and more full as people squash right up to the microphones. a 10 second soundcheck and limited express (has gone?) special show time begins once again with ‘free style riding’ and ‘aloha!’

the grins are wide on everyone around and people are climbing over each other to get a view. the enthusiasm is running both ways as the band crank up the tempo, heat and intensity. jj makes his way into the audience during stop-go and yukari during tiger rock.

limited express (has gone?) finish special show time with another crazy run through ‘talk to me, all right’ and a ripping version of spy which disintegrates into a squall of noise before a jj jump to full stop.

the audience won’t let them go though and beg for more so get treated to a beautiful rendition of ‘drawtoborn’ and another quick run through ‘free style riding’ after which jj and yukari get carried through the crowd to rapturous applause.

everyone is happy!
everything is good!
limited express (has gone!).

jj – “thank you sydney audience! thank you punk rock! we are rock and roll! certainly we will come here again”
yukari – “it is no problem, language or different country, music is great!”
koji – “tonight we rose to the occasion and the last show of the tour was a great show”

So Long… – 14th August 2001

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

So long since I held you
Now I feel you again
Gentle in my hands
My very favourite pen

What words we’ve missed
In all that time
What memories lost
In my lazy mind

Will you come forth again?
Keep my juices flowing
How long this desire burns
I’ve no way of knowing

18th Oct 2024 – After a crazy four years of living life, rather than writing about it, I found myself returning to the comfort and safety of pen and paper.

*WELCOME BACK!!! – 27th July 1998

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Email to TLJ

Yes, yes – welcome back to the world of technology and email (and the reply button – no doubt you’ll have a gazillion mails to reply to and I will be last on the list because you talk to me so much anyway and you have to get home or go to lunch or meet someone else more important than me – and you ask me if I still write – do you still write? that is the new question). Will you come to China with me – I’d feel safer with you there. I want to go there – go to the villages and mountains – the great wall and lots of things. I’m gonna check it out at lunchtime. Why not….

Call me, your sick friend who loves you dearly

*This morning – 9th July 1998

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Email with TLJ:

S: My princess, this morning, this cold morning I pulled out of the driveway and onto the road to prison, my personal prison but my day would not be clouded by these dark thoughts. In the dullish light of the day, a beautiful silver-leaved tree shone out to me and spoke in a way I hadn’t seen in a long time. It spoke the whispered words of love and light and life. Without doing anything at all the tree made my day. Within that thought was a vision of you. Thank you.

T: thank you sweety.
S: Anytime (when I get the time – that’s a song by the Descendents – ‘When I get the time, I write a little rhyme – for you’)
T: i was just thinking the other day “how come shaun never writes me any poetry any more?” i suppose it’s because the wooing is over……..hmmmm?
S: Are you wooed? The poetry isn’t over – it’s being written every day.
T: i haven’t seen anything you’ve written lately, which is a shame, cause i was hoping you’d never stop writing.
S: I promise to never stop.

T: i remember when you started writing poetry when i first got to know you. you wrote this poem because hayden
had fallen while on some play equipment and about how worried you were – you told me about it.
S: Hmm..I don’t remember that – but a lot has happened since then.

T: i’m really sorry about what you and your wife and hayden have had to go through over the past week.
S: It’s been rough but I’m really glad Bronwyn and I have been able to still be parents for HJ despite us being separate.
T: thank you so much for your support too – it has been much appreciated. i really hope your wife gets to england and hope hayden’s 200% better by then.
S: I do too – it would be excellent for them both and everyone in England.

T: it’d be great for her to catch up with everyone. it’s only a shame you can’t see your friends and show hayden
off together.
S: We’ll take him when we go shall we?
T: and you really need to see your mother – she’ll sort you out!
S: She got me into this mess in the first place!!
T: missing you,
S: Not as much as I’m missing you sweety
T: i really hope hayden gets better soon,
S: Me too
T: and that you get to england soon,
S: we..we get to England.
T: love you, tlj
S: LoveUtoo sh

Just a fly (Outwardly we’re lying, inwardly we’re crying) – 24th November 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Sorry if this seems just a bit disjointed to you. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this. It must be experienced. It is not something that you can plan. It just happens, flows. The experience is quiet now. Try not to induce the experience with drugs. Drugs can cloud the memory, therefore disposing part of the experience. Drugs can increase the awareness of the experience as it is happening, please be careful.

So she read on the side of the bottle of small green and purple capsules. Shit, maybe she ought to take them, looks like dust had been gathering on the bottle for a few weeks at least. What did she need them for? He walked into the room, sat down and collected his thoughts. ‘Fuck!’

He started eating the toast. Imagining he was a fly in the room watching himself, envious, eating the toast. The radio breaks his concentration. Something about people dead. But he’s heard that one.

Walking towards the window, toast in hand, the fly bangs his head. Slowly he lifts the net curtain. The sky is blue and white and black. People get on the waiting bus. ‘Two to town please.’ ‘£1.50.’

Sat down in the sideways seats, the vicar and the whore talking about world domination. Falling up the stairs stupidly, a blind man, two boys with hands in his pockets. The coat a sort of grey/green checked affair, made of that weird shit material you ‘normally’ associate with old people. Use the word normally carefully. Use the word carefully normally.

The boys laugh at the girls for liking flowers because they just like their guns. The boys laugh even harder at boys liking flowers. Well it’s just not natural is it? Fucking laugh. Ha ha ha ha ha. Can’t fathom the feelings you’re feeling. Really screwing with my head. Don’t want to take no shit but keep in touch with sense because of love, because something feels right and in them thar bones. Can’t talk to you sometimes but I’m glad I haven’t got a diary. I finally get off the bus. Wonder what the vicar was saying? Only heard the whore’s side of the story. Can’t imagine it was all true.

Walking to the shopping centre being chased by chip wrapping paper tapping my ankles in the wind. Black girl on opposite side of road looks happy. Don’t see many round here, especially not happy. But you mustn’t cry. Something will happen to make you laugh, so just be happy waiting for it. This feeling is so intense. It is encompassing the whole of my brain. When I am away from you, I try to see through your eyes without having any idea of what you might be looking at. I want to be inside your head.

Pass the record shop, kicked the habit years ago. That’s a lie – I just keep it a secret now. I know, I know – no secrets. So I shall have no secrets in the search for trust and truth. But when I get to heavens gates will they refuse me entry? Whose decision is it and why? My feelings are from the heart – my emotions are often stupid and derelict – please try to ignore them, for they are not important. I have violence in my hands but restrained. Prefer to do constructive things.

Walking onwards I could see it coming.

Hey. Wait. Don’t. Step. Out. Oh. Shit. Too. Late. The. Lady. Hit. The. Bumper. Now. Her. Blood. Decorates the road. Pollock style. Single colour. Walk away. Try to see through the crowds eyes. No need to watch in horror in person. Like a prison inside their minds. So easy to get in but so hard to let out. No imagination.

Long, long green fields on a warm day with a sprinkling of clouds to add a bit of variety. I can imagine it and I know I’ve never been to that particular place although there are certain places it could be. The mind is a wonderful thing. Use it. It’s Friday lunchtime. Free from all forms of addiction for nearly a week now. Constant barrages of noise infest the brain – self-inflicted though. A change in patterns and waveform varies the mundanity. A true eternal worrier. Don’t get pissed off with it for me. See it through and I’ll be as good as I can. Sometimes it would be nice to talk without laughing. Sometimes the laughter seems like riddles. But I don’t know if it’s just me imagining me imagining me imagining things, if you can sort of understand?

The skies turn blue, pink, purple and white. So vivid he thought. The street lights at night though seems so cold. I seem depressing. Walking back from work onto the housing estate, everything quiet, he gets so depressed. Just sits down, eats his tea, watches telly. Lost. No stimulus on the nerve endings in the brain. Dead to the world. Seems like a government plan to me. Gentle, subtle persuasion. The fucking mind games seems so obvious sometimes but it just can’t be real. Which leads to doubt. Complicated stuff.

Focus your thoughts on one particular subject. Little, minute, stupid – any subject, no matter how irrelevant. Work your mind around it totally. Examine its structure, how it formed, its purpose. If it has none to be seen, invent a purpose. Wrap yourself in your thoughts, become the subject. See from the inside. New perspectives. New concepts. New beginnings. One day you will die. Do you wish to spend from now till then with me? Or is there something you would like to do? Don’t laugh at me because I may feel hurt. Laugh with me and we can rock together. There is nothing sinister in my urges.

Trapped inside his own bubble. His own space. Pushing against the sides. They stretch forever. Never near a breaking point. Sits down quietly and contemplates a strategy. Wait. People stare at you in the avenue. What could they want? What could they see? What makes them think they’re so great?

So the story continues although it was never a story. More of a gut feeling. An explanation of intent. There is no flow at the moment. Something close to me as interrupted the patterns in my mind. So easily distracted sometimes. But I can rest assured the thoughts shall return. Life is usually stranger than the drugs you can use to help you find your reality. Could we be addicted to life? How can we give it up? Some people look at you like you’re a freak. They suck and I won’t let them get me down. The people in the minority are the survivors.

“Head colds are bad for the memory, darling” she whispered sweetly in his ear. What was his name? Not darling for sure. “You lay there and I’ll get you a cup of refreshing tea. Maybe that will revitalise your energy. It won’t clear this stinking headache. Substitute the word ‘fuck’ with ‘freak’.

She rolled out of bed. It seemed empty and cold now. Lacking security, as the monsters gather. Whimpering cowardly. Ain’t it good to be alive? Here is a box marked confidence. It isn’t a trick. Open and see. The world and his wife rushed out like a Spielberg special effect. All over the goddamn room.

He finally woke up and got up. Scaly teeth – brushed clean. Someone died on the pavement. Someone is happy. Someone is making love in the flats opposite. Someone is pouring milk on their Weetabix. Someone is racing in an ambulance to hospital. Someone else is driving the ambulance. Someone is on telly. I don’t wish I was someone else. I am someone else.

6th May 2021 – Not sure of exact date of writing. Pages were stuck in the 1994 diary. The title “Just a Fly” got me thinking about the Thatcher on Acid song ‘Fly’ but I couldn’t find any lyrics from it to use as a title here but whilst searching I found this other ToA song title which seemed to suit perfectly.

You can’t expect too much from two braindead brickheads – 2nd November 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Pic: Lawnsmell at Phantom Records 1997

These entries are a bit less frequent for two reasons, two opposite reasons. First is that we’re pretty damn busy doing crucial things like sorting our lives out! Second is that we’re not doing much, like in particular, like nothing really worth writing about. Occasionally, I’ll think of things that would be cool to write but it’s usually at a time when I don’t get chance to write it down and my memory, better it is getting, but it’s so jam packed with things, new things, new learning processes, that I inevitably don’t remember.

Something I do remember though is going to sleep a couple of nights ago, there was a big thunder storm, Libby came over with Reg and Gough, we walked them back up to the railway station and stood at the park, on the hill, waiting for the train and watched the huge swirling masses of grey thick air meeting with the light delicate coastal air and the clouds made faces like the gods that were controlling them, all this happening right within our eyesight about a mile away, great shots of lightning burst across the sky or down to the ground in a spectacular style, big drops of rain fell but only a few lonely globs of wet, it did rain hard after we got in and the fireworks had finished, though about an hour later another rip of darkness came over with some more shorter bursts of fire. It fell dark and the air smelt dank and musty and powerful.

So after all this and later when we was dropping off into that land of madness, it was deadly silent, no wind rushing through the huge gums outside our window, no bow and creek of the wood in the sway and no footsteps and no cars, no airplanes coming into land, no goods trains running through the station, no sound and I started to wonder if outside was still there and if it still existed and where it may have gone, I wondered if the hall outside the bedroom door was still there, if we were trapped inside this room like a strange Tardis, where would we wake, hmm I fell asleep soon and forgot about it until now.

And today has been a good day, with the pursuit of information about a college type course in computing, a mad fuckin’ Englishman gave us details in his own peculiar manner, he couldn’t stop his mouth and couldn’t stop his brain, listening to all the conversations going on around him and putting in his own two-penneth worth, interrupting his conversation with us or whoever he was talking to, he was keeping three of us going at once on the counter at the information desk, mad chatterbox, organiser, know all, friendly type weirdo, we ran out and laughed our heads off.

From there I went to the city to introduce myself to a guy called Joolz, or maybe Jules, or I guess even Jewels, who runs the record shop Phantom Records, and he was a sound bloke with lots of interesting stories and information and I asked him to let me know if there was any openings in the shop in the future.

You know there was lots of other stuff in between like walking through the city and getting on the train and stuff but it’s starting to feel a lot more normal to me now and not worth mentioning, like I would never used to write about work because even though it was half interesting to me when I was there, like the internal politics, it’s not something I’d want to look back on in years to come and think about for a second time, it would be cool if i can get into some job that is interesting to write about and remember in my twilight, here’s hoping. (or maybe I’ll just do some job that earns me enough money to take the time to go off and do interesting things -ha ha the catch 22 of life and work).

And yesterday I sat and read a book from start to finish, man, lazy old day, cool, man.

All manor of thoughts – 10th September 1994

~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

Up at the crack, Broni way ahead, up with the tummies at 5.30, unable to sleep and kicking me around some, so she left to watch cartoons before stirring me out of fitful dreams. She frenzied herself around me, preparing everything for our holiday, while I sat and read another chapter of Tom Sawyer. Oh, I realise now what opportunity I’ve missed in my youth for my quest for knowledge – but it has brought me to this point in time anyway, eventful and enjoyable always.

So we hit road, chasing the sun as dark clouds ominously gather at our smoking tail and the time disappears behind us too, today. Not some drag of a journey as a three-and-a-half-hour drive might normally be but us in holiday mode, just happy playing dodgems on the motorway (soon to be called freeway in my new language!).

Our destination, sleepy old Drayton Parslow, for a final visit to Isobel, Broni’s cousin or other. Her house, the manor house, old, white and glorious, set in a garden a child’s playful imagination would be lost in, hiding under draping bushes on the bank up to the door, by the big dark brown barns. I took a brief second in my mind to imagine playing and running and that second grew suddenly into a whole childhood of adventure, of buried treasures and guns and bombs. In reality, I only really remember playing football and doctors and nurses in some of the gardens I grew up in!

Inside the house, the charm of things old remains. Old high ceiling kitchen, long thick table, one corner with a master’s chair at the end. Next corner, a sliding door into a pantry of surprises of homemade preserves and bean wine, 1987. A clutter of claustrophobic cans begging to be opened in this wonderful place. Opposite, a huge free-standing cupboard packed to the very gills with bone china, several sets of varying patterns and varieties, sweet pea flowers for us today.

Large cast iron candle holder hangs gothically from the ceiling and small piles of mess of papers or vegetables punctuate the spacious glory where families must have sat in their Victorian lives, leaving ghosts in the air of memory.

Each other room beholding a cob-webbed past for my eager historical mind to play in, pictures on walls of previous occupants, painted in colour, where my mental images are TV black and white and back-before-TV old paintings of whoever, probably a great Aunt Fanny, old even then, a strict woman with sad eyes and tight pursed lips, regally dressed for her commissioned painter. And I can sit here happily and dream up lives for these people whose existence may mean nought to me, but now, even in this brief moment, our paths have crossed.

A friend of Isobel’s pops in, evening time, dark outside and I sit quietly listening, exploring thei polits converse and I’m hit, oooooh – h – h, aren’t people’s lives so big, S -O – B – I – G. Each person’s story so hugely relevant to themselves, so many tiny stories, so much background, upbringing, shaping thoughts, shaping attitude, direction. So important, that lust for life, life so important, I’m hugely happy, hugely inspired.

This house, in night time, one room lit, next room black as blackest devil’s night, no invading dim dull grim light, but total darkness, like stuck on with glue, each room a separate entity, each with identity not for invasion. Wish to stay for several weeks to travel the depths of its ghostly stature.

And my dream, in dozing rapture dreams like before sleep, like, can still hear radio in back, influencing the direction of your dreaming, so I wonders if there’s ever a day gone by when no murder has been committed! And think, that like we have a national no-smoking week, maybe we can have a national no-murder week.

Well, whaddya think?