In one of my favourite songs by Sally Timms, she sings:
If my life lasted only one day,
I'd still be drunk by noon.
The whole song's a treat. Cheers to the writer, Rennie Sparks, who has the steel to put lines like this in a song.
Sometimes I flap my arms like a hummingbird
Just to remind myself I'll never fly.
Sometimes I burn my arms with cigarettes
Just to pretend I won't scream when I die.
You think that's raw? Try the next verse. These past few months, a dismally large number of friends and family have had cancer encounters, some slight, some anything but, with outcomes ranging from blessed to bleak.
One phrase echoes in my mind, and it was told to me by the friend of another who is raising money for surgery in Australia. Your purchase of a fundraising ticket for a showing of Little Miss Sunshine at the Bridgeway on Monday 11 in Northcote at 8.00 pm would be warmly received, and if you can possibly be there, please consider it. What she said was: "If I die, who else will love my babies the way I love them?" She is 35. Her eldest is 5 and her youngest is ten months.
I couldn't say with certainty that morbidity or fatalism or personal experience has a lot do with it, but over here in the alt.country section we do like the drinkin' songs, and the tilting at mortality, and we don't always say no to a drink before lunchtime. So notwithstanding - and perhaps because of - other people's ineffable anguish I still like this verse.
Sometimes I can't wait to come down with cancer.
At least then I'll get to watch TV all day.
And on my deathbed I'll get all the answers
Even if all my questions are taken away.
And back to the chorus…
If my life was as long as the moon's,
I'd still be jealous of the sun.
If my life lasted only one day,
I'd still be drunk by noon.
Over here, barkeep.
And cheers to Wammo at Kiwi FM for inviting a cocktail mixer to join us this week in the studio while I'm there for our Friday morning chat. They promise us the guy makes a mean Mojito.
And there's more. An international theme. With giveaways. I turn now to the blurb:
Wammo (weekdays 10am-2pm on Kiwi) will be running a competition from Tuesday to Friday this week via text/phone/email to ask which Kiwi artists should pair up with international artists next! Is it Kirsten Morelle with David Bowie? Savage with Celine Dion? The Tutts with Pavarotti? Barnaby Weir with Nickleback?
I just heard a reader in Pt Chev wail.
Well, you decide. Make a good enough suggestion, and there could be loot involved. Again from the blurb:
Wammo will draw his winners on Friday and each one will receive a ticket to OE: Brazil's Auckland show at the St James, a copy of the OE: Brazil CD and a great big bottle of Bacardi Superior Original Premium Rum.
Have at it! Truly - your suggestions are warmly invited. What's a genuinely good match of indigenous and international talent? Who'd you like to hear? Stick your suggestions in the discussion thread and I'll get you entered in the draw.
Personally, I'm going for a mash-up of Leonard Cohen with Shihad, but then I listen to songs about cancer.