Louise Evans

Well -skipped on the Keruoac effect and went instead to Zig Zag, Len Lye inspired music. magic! Then the Arrival on Saturday and French Markets and the beach on Sunday. Weekends are best.

The rain doesn’t want to stop talking us, following us, embracing us whenever we step outside to meet it. That’s fine by me.

Have been working and working away and scurrying into homely corners at night, with the storms lashing outside, or the winter chill tickling its chilly fingers over my nose as I lay in bed. Oooooo winter. I am surrounded by instruments! I have been given two guitars, a set of uillean pipes, and most wonderfully, a BANJO from my papa. I do love my ole dad. Shall only hope to do him proud…he traveled all the way down from the Hokianga for our Noblewoman launch, played his washboard on Railroad Bill, then sped off northward again. What a Legend….

June is here in full flight and gorgeous!
Wow, life is tricky and full of challenges, but when I think of this time this moment, I’m pretty amazed at this persons ability to get on with it and forge a bright new world. Thinking of the depth of grey of this time last year, everything just seems sunnier in every single way.

Here are some new things for you all, places to visit my work online:
www.noblewoman.co.nz : started last week, it’s an online community for female folk musicians. It’s my baby, and I’m so happy to have it online at last, with many thanks to my indispensable brother Rhys.

www.morphmagazine.co.nz : I write for this arts culture magazine…go have a browse through the articles online

www.jamradio.co.nz : the radio station I manage three days a week, it’s now just turned 1! The website will be undergoing a massive overhaul in the next couple of weeks.

www.lamppost.co.nz : my folk music booking agency. It’s nice and busy, full of tasty musicians. Next year is going to be a cracker for Lamppost tours….

Ok- phew. This site will be revamped sometime soon too. Thanks to all those distant people who write and send their thoughts from afar. I do not, and will not, forget you.

X

The day seems in cluttered synchronisity….

People on the bus this morning lacking in coordination, like thimbles rattling in a jar. Schoolkids leaning far out over the prow of the ferry, windswept and exhilirated by the weather…

Cars slinking and quiet along the roads, no noise enough to enter this head.

Proofreading all morning, and watching words slide and be gulped up by the delete key.

Then listening to Vasen on Myspace, the strains of nyckelharpa and the spinetingling joy of polska percussion.

Anzac Day. Claire and I traveled throughout the night yesterday, to get home here up at the Treehouse. Claire was driving Elvis, her new white station wagon that had a whole lotta shakin goin on. Mmmm….nice to be sucked North into the stillness and quiet. This morn I rose and drove into town to see the Anzac service, but alas there was none! The town was deserted so I picked little pieces of foliage to lay upon the memorial stone, thought a little of Pa and Ma and their epic wartime journey. It seems more poignant these days. The water on the harbour was like glass and you could hear the morning lowing of cattle across the other shore.

So i flew, with wings not mine, hopped and skipped over the tasman on a jolly, turbulent flight.

SO it was, So it is,

The queues at Sydney were unbelievable, waitin’ for customs, and my shoulders alternated between feeling numb and

feeling twisted and agonised. Arghhhh.

In the wait, it was quite the thing to see all the kids band together to cheer one another up, when babies were

crying, other children ran up and waved finger puppets or toys or just poked out their tongues. The wee baby boy in

front of me realised he actually had a tongue, and proceeded to hang upside down, cross-eyed and blue in the face,

holding on to it with grim determination. was highly amusing, and when he saw i was entertained he grinned widely,

but still holding on, so this length of dribble descended toward the floor.

Have been staying at Rod and Lee’s, and good gosh, I feel Very Spoiled. One thing that happens when you are

flatting, flat-out busy, and flat-out cycling, is that you don’t get many opportunities for someone to take care of

you. It’s been delicious. I love it. Lee and I went out to all the Paramatta historic places today, me saving a

grand total of money because of my Historic Places membership….and absorbed the convict/colonial atmosphere, as

well as a tour of my dad’s schooling years at James Ruse. Funny funny. Lee’s a mine of family information, and great

for a cackle. We raided the garden afterward for sage to ease my aching throat…

Frolicked around the botantic gardens and a random Yum Cha place with Mr Andy-pants Smith, twas spiffing. We took

exceedingly scenic routes throughout the gardens and were fascinated by the lack of any plants in the ‘Endagered

Plants’ section (perhaps they were gardening metaphorically)….stared at the hanging flying foxes fanning

themselves in the heat.

Now I’m up in the mounts, chugged up here on a choo-choo, which sure beats sticking it out on the traffic ridden

roads. Have been seeing Grandma and visiting all the spring gardens full of tulips and daffodils. Marvellous! But I

heard that one guy used half a tonne of blood and bone on his tulips, erkkk.

Right. Check out the gallery for photos, otherwise, I’m off to write postcards…

Signed, Louise on Holiday.

Jeeeez Louise. Get your act together. You may have guessed, by the dog years that have passed since the last entry, that I’ve been a little taken up with other things. You would be so right! Congratulations.
On this tempest of a spring morning, I’m taking my lunch break, from writing articles and organising radio programme people and listening to some massive guitar distortion coming from the recording studio. What a vibrant place to work!!! Work is good. Work is fantastic. Work keeps me grounded, keeps me smiling, keeps me in a state of self recognition and appreciation, which in it’s pure form is absolutely vital!
The Spring flutters into my heart and drops small seeds of hope, which are growing and reaching toward the sun. Oooo Delicious. I have had frights as well, but with steady reflection and guidance from friends, I have transformed that intensity and am using it to water those little hope plants….

Two of my good friends have both had babies which is astonishing. Marcia put little day-old Niamh on the phone to me, and the sound of her little snorty breath almost made my cry with it’s freshness and vitality.
Keiran and Mayana have had their sproglet too, which I haven’t met, but I saw her older sister Arwen who was bursting with new fangled older sister pride.

A night of meddlesome dreams, laboured commuting by bike, a head full of fuzz. On Friday I go North once more, to see Ben and Fleecie, my home in the Bay of Islands. It will be the best, to go to sleep in the loft, to wake and have coffee and Ben’s precocious porridge, to laugh and to be ridiculous with them. And then it’s to Martha-Louise’s concert, and pizza oven antics with Mark and Tanya, amongst the subtropicals.
Idyllic

Ho-ho-ho, twas Winter Solstice. This year I refrained from attending any massive celebrations, like I normally would have up North. Instead I made things for myself, and gave thanks for the halfyear that has been, with all its immense trials and tribulations. Ate sun-fruit (persimmons, mandarins, etc) and had a moment with my beautiful grandfather oak in the backyard.
Last week I finally got the tattoo of the Scythian stag on my shoulder, and I feel positively enpowered. The stag (in a symbolic sense) stands on the earth, and his horns bear the cosmos. Essentially, he is the living, breathing being between earth and sky, which is something that resonates for me, achieving that balance in life. And now he sits on me! Slippin’ and slidin’ over my shoulder.