I wrote a card the other day to my teacher, Tyler, at SAE where I am studying electronic music production. It was a brief note, thanking him for sharing his expansive knowledge with a selfless patience, empathy and his own easy style. I bought it from the Op shop for 50 cents. It had penguins on the covers, about 20 of them, 6 of them saying 'Cheers!' ​

What I noticed as I jerkily dragged the pen up and down and sideways across the glossy white rectangular paper to form the words is how out of practice my pensmanship is and realized that, apart from filling in a rare form here and there, it has probably been a couple of years since I've actually written anything on paper.

It's all iPad and computers these days, texting on the phone (Samsung Note), emails and poetry, essays and short stories in Pages. My typing speed is probably up there in the 40's by now. With delete, copy, paste, highlight and move, easy access to online dictionary, thesaurus and rhyming apps; using technology is smooth and productive.

It used to be that I kept hand written, hefty journals. Carried them around with me everywhere and wrote in them daily. Somewhere storage, stashed in boxes, they still exist - comics scrawled, ideas jotted, poems composed. From about 1980 to the mid 2000's. I'm not sure how many - fifty, a hundred?

Now my stuff goes straight to the cloud. I churn stuff out much faster, more consistently. I love it. The process has been streamlined. After decades of scratching and scribbling, I am happy to be speed tapping and screen reading.

Then there is this blog, Art Gets Me High. My forum for art/life/creativity related thought and feelings, like this. It's an outlet that I started on a whim and has now been ticking over for going on four to five years. I would not have written the contents herein in my journals. The immediacy of the connection - from my thoughts to immediately published online incites a directness, an enthusiasm and encourages off the cuff expression.

Truth is I don't know who exactly reads my stuff but it doesn't really matter. It's just nice to connect. To have a voice. To fill the void (my void, our void, the void.)

The info page also tells me the origins of the visitors and pages landed. The other interesting thing that I noticed the other day is Search Terms. This month's one was pretty funny: theo single bed frame cream. What the?!

As best as I can work it out - the tag from Theo came from the name of the headmaster of the National Art School I attended in the early eighties. Single: my relationship status. Bed: where I love to spend much time. Frame: they hold my artworks. And cream: hmmm... with my ice coffees - but did I tag that?
Anyway, quite a search term. I wonder what that person was actually looking for. And when they landed on my site - did they read any of it. Get into it? I like to imagine they did. And that it liberated their minds - changed their lives forever. That's what it's for. ​

It's changed mine.

Writing is a great form of healing and understanding. Often with these posts I will just begin with just a vague notion of something in mind and coax it out gently as I go. Later, I will read it back and be informed by my jottings. 'Oh, that's how I felt! That's what I was thinking! Very interesting.'

I find it's also good to draw out and expand upon memories. These days I will sometimes remember something from decades ago, something that I had not thought of for a long time but that was a big deal at the time and influential in my personal development.

One of those such things is my ninth grade in high school. It was an interesting time. I was thirteen going on fourteen. We had a new teacher to the school - an international boys private school run by Canadian Christian Brothers called St. Mary's in Tokyo - and his name was Brother Robert Scripko. He was in his mid twenties, rotund and powerful. He came in an took over, revolutionised, the English and Drama departments. And he also happened to be our homeroom and English teacher. Everything he did was by the rules - his rules. One thing that was clear to everyone, very soon, was that he didn't take shit. He had a huge physical presence - tall and rotund-  and the booming voice of an orator or a fish market spruiker. On the upside, he had plenty of positive energy mixed in with his dictator-like character and a great passion for both english and drama. 

One of the best things he did was give us each a journal and demanded that we write a page - about anything - every Tuesday and Thursday. On top of that we would fill it with longer, specified assigments, once a week. When we were first told of this, there was a lot of resistance. Filling a whole page without guidance or direction at that age seemed challenging. But after not long, most kids got in the swing of things. We had to hand them in every few weeks and Brother Robert would write comments. He would grade the assigments but not the journal pages. He was sometimes harsh but also encouraging.

I grew to love my journal. I found a great pleasure and freedom in making up stories. As a big reader of comics and magazines, and, more and more, books - it was a revelation to me that you could create fiction of your own devising. It was like a game. A fun game with very broad parameters and unlimited options. One evening, about two thirds of the way through the year, I shared my journal, proudly, with my parents. I waited in my room while they perused it, anticipating high praise or at least positive acknowledgement. Finally, they called me into their chamber. 

"We notice that you write a lot about death. A lot of your stories are about death..." 

They seemed concerned and slightly perturbed. It was not the encouragement I had been looking for. I didn't really have an answer for them. But looking back, since then, I put it down to a few things. 

Death is drama. 
Life is death.
Death is the ultimate mystery.
Death is extreme and elicits an emotional response.
Writing about death is a way of coming to terms not only with it's eventuality but also a way of frame-working life.
Death is powerful and confronting. Writing about it is challenging and brave.

Of course, I knew none of this consciously back then. And I had no satisfying response to their concern. So, I slunked away back into my room. They don't get me. It was clear. 

By that age I had two near death experiences already. One at age nine when I was bitten by the most venomous of spiders, the Funnelweb. I was rushed to hospital and released after a short stay and observation. Having been bitten on the toe, not too much poison entered by bloodstream. It made me unwell briefly but I survived. 

My second encounter with death was when I was eleven. I was in a Japanese hospital for an operation. Being a foreigner there, the doctors and staff were a unused to someone of my age being bigger than expected. I wasn't easy to put out and actually punched the anaesthetist as I was going out. He overcompensated with far too much drugs and I woke up post op, on the verge of an overdose. I was fully tripping out and could feel myself very close to leaving this earthly plane, hanging on by a thread of consciousness. It was an incredibly disturbing and powerful experience - one that left me with easy access to out-of-body perception and an existential world view. 

Aahhh.. but enough of death. Let's get back to life. And the ninth grade. As well as my story writing, I was mostly known for my joke making. Practical jokes, impractical jokes, written jokes, comics, surreal and obtuse poetry... l loved to laugh and make others laugh, too. One thing about school - although I really did not like being a prisoner and being bossed around by a group of, for the most part, mentally imbalanced adults - I did enjoy sharing time and company with my classmates. Any chance for a bit of fun and I'd be in. Fun loving. That sums it up. And I find it hard to imagine that Brother Robert was not well aware of this.

So when it came time for drama tryouts I was keen as mustard - knowing that there was to be a comedy piece (I forget now what it was) in the mix. I recall running to the notice board to see who had been cast in what and was deeply perplexed to see my name as the lead in..... 'The Winslow Boy'. Huh? This is a very heavy, somber play by Terence Rattigan set in the Edwardian era - about a young lad being accused of and interrogated about a petty theft at the Royal Naval College. It had no laughs in it at all! And no death! 

It made no sense to me. So many lines to learn! (Not my forte - not then, not now.) So much seriousness and angst and drama! This was not me. But sadly, by the time I realised what was happening I could not pull out. The boss would not allow it. It was the miscasting of the century and a most mystifying occurrence. I hated every moment of the whole experience - from rehearsals to performance. I was so afraid of making a mistake during the live show that I had a full out-of-body experience for most of it.

The pressure on me was intense because during dress rehearsals I ad libbed and got the other actor to laugh uncontrollably. This made me start laughing and throwing in more funny lines. Soon everybody around us, viewing, behind the scenes and in the flanks joined in with laughter. For a brief moment I was in heaven - making more and more mischievous asides and cracking up the crowd. 

But then - BOOM, BOOM, BOOM! - Brother Robert, in a wild rampage, had made his way down from the bleechers and had crashed his way onto the stage. His face was red and sweaty and full of rage. He was foaming at the mouth. 

"If you screw up my show, you foolish little punk, you will be MUD! MUD!" His voice was booming. It quashed any remaining giggles and only amplified more by the surrounding silence of fear and astonishment from the thirty of forty people present. Bar none, I guarantee you that every soul in that room was thinking - 'I am sure glad I am not him right now!' I was him - and it wasn't good.

Scripko dug his index finger hard into my solar plexus more than once to accentuate his threat and magnify his horrifying presence. I was determined not to cry, not there, not in front of everyone and I didn't. But I was literally shaking in my shoes. I was very afraid. Not just in that moment but until I muttered the last word of the last line on the final day of performance. It was the most intensely unpleasant experience I had had since the near deaths.

Like I said at the beginning of this piece - sometimes this forum enables me to revisit and recall moments from my development that have been filed far up the back of the internal cabinet. This was one of them. I've never been able to work out why it happened - why I was even put in that position in the first place. Just weird.

Fucking Winslow Boy bullshit! I was Neil Simon material, dammnit. I just wanted to laugh. And make others laugh. Oh, and write about death. Is that so hard to understand?!

I was driving in my car today, on the way to the beach, when a small cluster of thoughts swirled around my head, pushed hither and thither by the blasting air conditioning. It was one of those hot summer arvos when sweat pools in the tiny cave at the base of your back.

I was considering what I write about in these blogs - and why. If there really is no point to something, then why do it. I certainly am one who tries to streamline my life as much as possible in order to have maximum chill time / creative time. 

I realise that in the long run - in the bigger picture - that any little personal recordings like this are of such infinitesimally small consequence that they are almost completely futile. However, we all have to do something with our lives - you know - to fill in the time - so as long as an activity like this brings some measure of reward - to myself/and others - then it's not a bad thing.

Then I thought about how I love reading memoirs and autobiographies. I pick up a couple each week from the library and usually finish at least one of them. Not only of major achievers and persons of note - but equally of those who have chosen interesting paths or experienced unique situations. Often the more obscure ones are even more enjoyable. There's something to reading an honest, untrained voice that feels immediately comfortable and accessible.

So, I thought; these notes, these artist recordings - perhaps they are a bit like those. For the reader the relaxed and easy presentation of the inner workings of my mind and psyche may work in a similar way that those books do for me. They don't have to be slick or snazzy - or really even have something momentous occur - it's just pleasurable to inhabit another's headspace sometimes. Just to take a break from your own.

So, yeah, I thought to myself. That's enough of a good reason to keep these small rambles tumbling out. I know how much I like to temporarily inhabit other head spaces for let. I can continue to make the effort and allow at least partial entry into aspects of mine. It's not really mine after all. It's just a particular twist and flavour of the same thing we all experience - this collection of experiences, challenges and small awakenings that jostle and mould us - this funny old thing called life.

In some ways this here is my way of sharing - of giving back. Offering temporary respite to whoever has somehow - by design or happenstance - stumbled upon them.

Tonight I made a simple video recording of myself reading my poem 'As An Artist'. It was a fun, one-take job, with a slapped on bookend titles. I've watched it five or six times and have thought about it.

I've also been watching some mid season episodes of SO3 of the HBO series 'Girls' by Lena Dunham in sequence. Man, it's excellent stuff. Drama. It's about NYC mid twenty year olds; relationships, work, daily life stuff. It's quality. 

I love watching great quality stuff like that. Mad Men is another favourite. Beats any movie by miles.

What I got to thinking is about my own relationship with writing (the main character, Hannah is a writer in the show) and life. On rewatching my poem I realise that it is pretty me-centric. There's a scene in one episode of Girls where a med student cousin of Hannah's complains about writers and how self centred they are and how everything is about them. Made me think. I guess it is true in some ways, but at least in my case, it's not an ego thing. It's more about observing and commenting on the species in general - and what better way than having complete access to the internal workings of an actual specimen.

What I mean is that what I find fascinating about being a person is how complex and unpredictable it is to be one. I could write about what I observe in others, but I would never know any one else as completely as I do myself. And what I try to do is to observe, consider, then report on the machinations of that person who I happen to inhabit. It's not showing off. It's revealing. It's not even really a choice. It's a compulsion. Not a bad one. A good one. It's an attempt to peel back the layers, to discover and uncover truths. Universal truths. 

That is what this artist's blog/journal is about. Recording stuff as it happens, around me and in my head. I do it for fun, but also to learn and to grow. I also do it because I have always enjoyed reading auto biographies: people sharing their stories. This is me sharing mine. As it happens/occurs to me. With whoever stumbles upon it. 

Welcome to a modern day stream of consciousness mix of Jack Kerouac, Anne Frank, Salvador Dali, Raymond Carver and Dr Seuss. (For starters!)