zen and the art of laundry & a shoot today. (Patreon)

hello my loves!

greetings from waiheke island, where the laundry is drying on the line.

i used to only use washers and dryers. for the last year, since locking down in new zealand, i use the clothes line. even though there's sometimes been a dryer in the rental. it's become a matter of personal pride. but i am still not the kind of person who will neatly carress and fold and clip each item with loving carefulness. when i hang up laundry, it's like a war of speed. it's like HOW FAST CAN I GET ALL THESE PIECES OF CLOTHING SOMEWHERE SOMEHOW WHERE THEY WILL ACHIVE SUNLIGHT WITH THE LEAST AMOUNT OF EFFORT POSSIBLE WHILE ENSURING THAT THEY WILL PROBABLY NOT FALL ON THE GROUND? it is my new zen practice to either become the sort of person who carefully affixes two clothing pins to each of my underwears, or to achieve FULL ZEN by giving no more shits in any direction about how the laundry is attached to the line or whether or not it falls on the ground. i have found, in my life, that this binary thinking (I AM AM BAD LAUNDRY HANGER AND I MUST DO BETTER AND MY BAD LAUNDRY HANGING IS OBVIOUSLY A REFLECTION OF MY GENERAL FAILINGS vs TODAY I TOOK MY TIME AND HIUNG THE LAUNDRY NEATLY (not that i've ever done that, but we are into the theoretical here) AND BECAUSE I DID THAT I AM CLEARLY A GOOD GROWN-UP UPSTANDING GOOD PERSON WORTHY OF GOOD THINGS AND I AM NOT FAILING AT LIFE) is really the root of all evil. 

the truth is that neither of these things are true. 

the truth is that fuck it, sometimes you don't give a fuck about how badly the laundry is hung and that's just fucking fine, hey. stop being so goddamn mean to yourself all the time, okay?

anyway. there was a lot of laundry. my 11-day road trip with ash (i said in the last post it was 8 days, i'd forgotten/lost three days somewhere in there) is now almost completed. i still haven't vacuumed all the crumbs from the car. i'll get to that tomorrow.

tomorrow, by the by, i have an epic PHOTOSHOOT for the first time since this epic PHOTOSHOOT with V Hoy down in Hawkes Bay....that would have been in may, and resulted in these shots, which i've been using for press and internet and recycling all over the place....though i've been sloppy as fuck as usual and haven't posted the majority of them online. there's enough good ones to make a goddamn book, i tell ya...

and there was this one....

....

so now it's not tomorrow anymore, because i started this post yesterday, and now it's today. last night i got slightly drunk and played musical theater requests live on instagram on a whim, which is a good sign. once i get the discord going, i'll hopefully just flip on the switch over there. but it's the first time i've have fun on the internet for a while. it also means i'm slightly hungover for my photoshoot today, so i just dunked myself in the ocean. now i am wet.

i don't talk very much about the nitty gritty of my shoots, but you're my patrons, and you pay for this shit, so i'm going to give you a little peek inside.

i am about to be in a newspaper. it's a big new zealand paper, and it's basically a profile about my upcoming appearance at the writers' festival. (which, if you're gonna be in auckland, is may 16, info HERE.)

when a newspaper comes to you to do a piece, you have options when it come dso the photos used, and it's a negotiation with the paper. if it's a tabloid, they PAY you. this, i have never done. and probably never would do. or: sometimes they want exclusive photos that will not be used anywhere else. in that case, you have to provide the exclusive photos, or they provide a photographer. that second option can suck, for two reasons: either they send a terrible photographer, and the photos suck and you just have to live with it because it's their paper and their choice and up to them, OR the photos are great...but tough noogies if you ever want to use them for anything else, because the newspaper then owns the images and you've gotten all gussied up and spent the day on a photoshoot that you can't use for fuck all else.

i get around this by often hiring my own photographers. i figure i'll get a load of photos that i may be able to use for other stuff - books, album artwork, instagram, essays, website....other articles....who knows. and I WILL OWN THE PHOTOS. 

then it comes down to hiring a photographer. i came across this book on my first juant to waiheke, and the photography blew me away. 

it's a compilation benefit book that a bunch of waihekeans contributed to during the lockdown to make money for underprivileged kids on the island....and the photographer was some dude, duncan innes. i googled him. i wrote to him. i asked if he would do the shoot. he said yes. it's fucking expensive. a day-long shoot with him and rights to all the images is PRICAY. but....he's a pro. so here we go. he and i had a long meeting the other day, we walked around the island, i told him, what i was trying to capture. i told him about my tour, my covid year, my show about abortion and miscarriage, how my interviuew with the paper went. i told him i wanted to curl up fetal inside a rock. he didn't flinch. 

so, wish me luck today. and this is also why i have a patreon. this is the sort of weird background stuff your money goes to. 

i love making art in this life.

i'll try to get some shots of the shoot and post them today on instrgram and i'll pop some up here.

xxx

AFP

p.s. if you happen to be on waiheke island this sunday, both neil and i will be performing at ash's school harvest fayre. it's free. from 10-3pm, sunday april 11, at the fossil bay school and kindergarten. neil may or may not be wearing a disguise moustache. come! hug me.