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tumbleon · 7 years

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Another birthday, same place

What does getting older mean?

When you are young, change comes at lightning speed. Milestones are mere months apart, from learning to walk, talk, read, vote and everything in between—the nature of the sun, geography, the heartburn of love unrequited, how to drive, the right to open credit cards, rent a car, buy porn and cigarettes. In comparison, milestones in your late twenties and thirties are far fewer and farther between.

Before moving to Christchurch five years ago, I had changed cities, neighbourhoods or just flats about every six months. Now I have lived not only in the same town, but the same flat for five years. I got a dog. My life is now filled with familiar beats and routines. What makes a year, then, when everything looks roughly the same from the one before?

Jarvis cools off in the South Pacific Ocean during a springtime trip to North New Brighton in Christchurch, New Zealand, October 2013.

Taken earlier that day? Nope, same location one year later, November 2014.

One of the risks of getting older is that your tolerance for being bad at something declines. This can be seen as a good thing; it suggests an appreciation of quality. Your taste is developing; your behaviour aligns with your evolving aesthetic preferences.

On the other hand, it can become a crutch that can encourage leaning too much on your strengths. The willingness to risk failure recedes. Your ego takes over. You fear the frustration of going back to square one and starting again.

That was what I admired about my best friend Mary. Although Mary and I are both American, we first crossed paths in Christchurch four years ago through TradeMe when Mary responded to our flatmate listing.

We killed a lot of time together.

Mary and I find Flat Man at a roller derby game in Christchurch, New Zealand, October 2013

Flat outing to watch the All Blacks smash France in Christchurch, New Zealand, November 2013

Mary and I in our best op shop threads headed off to a dance thrown by the Avon City Rock and Roll Club. Outfit coordinated to match Jarvis, who seems more impressed with Mary. Christchurch, New Zealand, September 2014

A few years back, Mary became inspired by her mother’s foray into guitar back in Pennsylvania and signed up for lessons in Christchurch. I watched as she sat in the lounge of our flat and struggled until her fingers formed habits. She was willing to be bad at something again, like a kid. Her comfort with her own vulnerability inspired me to pick up a guitar again, no longer frozen from having barely touched it for the last 10 years. I didn’t critique myself for being bad as I played with Mary. It reminded me that music is the most fun thing that two friends can do. I even relaxed enough to remember and show her the few things that I knew.

Hanging out with sisters, dogs, and guitars in Diamond Harbour, Christchurch, New Zealand, November 2014.

“You lost your inhibitions,” our flatmate Winston mused.

Mary and I wouldn’t necessarily play every week, but we would always meet up. That element of the ritual was religious. We poured glasses of hot water with lemon, red wine, or whiskey, depending on how we were feeling. We talked about life and love and loss and wrote down the bits that seemed to have a nice cadence. Sometimes we held our guitars, sometimes we forgot and just got drunk instead. We wrote dozens of pieces of songs and melodies, which gave us a glowing, happy buzz. We never bothered to finish any of them.

At times it seems like the only meaning of life on an island is to enjoy and take pleasure in the moment. Spontaneous meetings and deep friendships can look the same at first sight, so you never quite know whether a novel chance encounter might dissipate that day or become one of the longest threads of your life. Timing matters. It can make the difference between crossing paths and entering lives.

Back in August, I only knew our bandmate Ray through some workmates. We planned to get a coffee when I came down to Wanaka with Mary for our annual ski holiday.

Mary and I at Treble Cone in Wanaka, New Zealand, a year my car didn’t break down.

We had made it to the top of the Treble Cone car park and shut off the car when steam began pouring out of the hood.

“Well,” I chirped. “Anyone got AA?”

A promise to catch up with Ray for a coffee turned into a plea for my dog and I to stay with her family until my car got fixed. They took me in with open arms. Jarvis and I stayed for five days. Ray and I found a quiet peace in each other’s presence, and often embarked on thoughtful conversations.

Ray stared into the distance after hearing that Mary and I played together. “That’s cool,” she said, unwrapping her lips from her vape. “I’d love to get back into playing music.” Music had been her first love in childhood; long instilled by her music teacher mother. She too had left it behind in her twenties to pursue other things. Now, she was reconsidering. A soft glow came over her face. “You know that feeling when you are playing with people, and all of a sudden the music starts going somewhere on its own, and you don’t have to think about it anymore, and everyone is on the same level?”

My face dropped. What Mary and I did could be best described as melodic analysis, which often involved little to no playing. I wanted to slowly pass a hand in front of Ray’s face like Obi-Wan Kenobi and say in a low voice, “These are not the droids you are looking for.”

Ray was keen on moving back to Christchurch. There was a room going in our flat when Ray moved back to Christchurch a few months later. She took it.

Jenny and I had met five years before, though it took us four hours in a car together to remember that. Our boyfriends’ bands played a gig together; I went to her house for a barbecue. Although we met, both of us walked away relatively unchanged. It was only when our paths crossed again in Dunedin as flatmates that we started to spend long stretches of time together.

Jarvis chilling on the front porch of the flat where Jenny and I met (again), North East Valley in Dunedin, New Zealand, June 2017.

The night of the Pixies concert I drove Jenny back up to Christchurch and asked if she played music, too.

“Not really,” she said. She played drums once or twice, but she was pretty bad. “Although,” she conceded, “after four or five times of being really bad at it, once I sat down at the drums and it just started coming out of me. My limbs were moving without me even thinking. I was like, ‘Oh my god! I can do it!”

“My band is looking for a drummer,” I said.

“I’m not a very good drummer though,” she conceded. “I don’t keep in time.”

“Neither can we,” I replied. “Sounds like you would be perfect.”

Two weeks later Brenda asked whether I knew any bands that could open for her band when they came down two months later for a gig at the darkroom, in June. None of us had ever played a set of original music live before. We measured the length of the songs that were near finished. In theory, we could do it. Mary and Ray were living in Christchurch; Jenny and I in Dunedin. Occasionally we came together in Christchurch to practice.

Band poster for The Biscuits’ Christchurch show for their Rise 7″ release tour, with support acts Les Baxters, Instant Fantasy, and us! June 2017

The week before the gig, I was still in a panic. Things as simple as standing, holding a guitar, playing a guitar and singing into a microphone proved difficult to coordinate. Before I had wondered why microphone stands had two halves and bent. It makes sense as soon as you are standing behind one that doesn’t. I had to stand so close to it my guitar knocked into the stand. It was so distracting, not a single note I sang was in tune.

A few days before the show we threw in a melody I had come up with a few weeks earlier while riding mopeds around Hawaii with Geof. When I found on the piano back in Christchurch, Ray and Mary loved it and asked if it could be put somewhere in the set as an interlude. I wasn’t nailing the solo every time that I played.

“Guys,” I pleaded. “What are we doing playing live on Friday night?”

“It will be fine,” Ray said in her zen way. “We can do this. We just need to run through them a few times. Look how far we have come.”

We ran through our first song again. “That time sounded better,” Brian said.

The night before the show I was a bit more relaxed. “This is so cool,” I said, looking around the room at my friends. “We’re all taking each other somewhere none of us have been before.”

“Thank you for doing this,” I said to Ray as we mingled in the kitchen the morning of the show.

“It is really cool,” Ray agreed. “It’s been so good getting back into music again. Playing with you guys has changed my journey. Even my mom was saying, ‘It’s so good that you are playing again!’ And now I may study it…”

I smiled. “It’s wonderful to be a part of that return for you.”

In New Zealand, the passing of time can seem like one long endless day.

Floating the Avon with friends in Christchurch, New Zealand, 2015

Taken the same day? No, two years later in February 2017, the year we decided to float the Heathcote – a far worse idea.

What is the meaning of time when life can at times feel like Groundhog Day on an island?

It reminds me of a Maori saying my little sister fell in love with when she came over for a year.

My little sister and absolute favourite person in the world Holleigh out on a walk in the Port Hills with Jarvis and her students, Christchurch, New Zealand, August 2015 – the only year she was in New Zealand.

“He aha te mea nui o te ao. He tāngata, he tāngata, he tāngata.”

What is the most important thing in the world?

It is people, it is people, it is people.

#christchurch #newzealand #music #everydaylife #friends #family

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