Music For Small Audiences

The Australian summer is here, and with it has come a series of getaways with friends and family – some just a weekend, some a few days longer. It can be hard to squeeze both fun and relaxation into the same trip, particularly when one seems to spend as much time planning and packing as on the trip itself. Thankfully, the more often we do it, the better we get.

Preparation is a funny thing. It’s easy to put off, particularly when there are more fun things to do – and whether it’s the night before heading off or the last night before heading home, the liminal energy of the moment doesn’t always lend itself to careful administrative attention. Yet taking those few extra minutes to really dial things in can make a world of difference. As the holiday period fades and the real work returns, the principle remains – preparation is easy to intend, but hard in the moment to consistently do.

We are a few days away from the first day of summer here in Australia as I write this, and while the real summer weather hasn’t arrived yet, there’s already a looseness in the air. As for me, I’m enjoying catching up with friends and family, getting a bit of fresh air, and settling back into something like normalcy after a few years of balancing study alongside everything else.

This is episode 124 of Music For Small Audiences, and as a whole it’s a fair reflection of what I’ve been playing over the past 20+ years. Recorded live on a recent Saturday night, the mix is laid back and groove-driven, and kicks off with a trio of twenty-year-old tunes. While largely instrumental, the lyrics that do appear speak to themes I return to often – impermanence, introspection, continuity, the complexity of separating thought from feeling, and the small salvation of the commitment-free weekend.

For the past eighteen months I’ve been balancing a fair bit of study alongside fulltime work and daily existence. It has been a wild, life-changing ride. With nine modules down and one to go, the finish line is now in sight. With a rush and a push I am now getting my head around the last three subjects of thirty – hoping to make the most of this last intensive session, without taking anything for granted until done is done.

As befits my current state of mind there’s plenty of energy in this extended mix. Recorded late at night just before my recent trip to Berkeley, California in support of said study, it features a number of high quality alternate remixes of time-tested tunes that some of you will surely recognise, along with plenty of great new stuff from Melbourne and beyond.

There is a saying in Germany – Man sieht sich immer zweimal im Leben – that has baked into it a delightful ambiguity. Functioning simultaneously as both wistful sentiment and subtle warning, it acknowledges that goodbyes rarely mean forever. It speaks to the interconnectedness of social relationships, and of the cyclical nature of life.

Whether you’ve enjoyed someone’s company and feel they’re leaving too soon, or you feel that they’ve wronged you (and that you might welcome a future opportunity to settle the score), this expression reminds us not to assume any departure is permanent. I must admit I’m not entirely certain how our German host meant it, but as the saying itself suggests, time will tell.

This is Episode 122 of Music For Small Audiences. As befits the title and writeup, it contains a few references to prior episodes, themes and epochs, as well as a few refreshed takes on some timeless classics. There is of course a whole bunch of groovy new stuff mixed in too. Wherever you are on the cycle of hello, goodbye, and oh hey, I hope it brings you peace, resilience and joy.

I read somewhere recently that ‘strategy is what you say no to’. We can’t be all things to all people, and we can’t take advantage of every opportunity that comes along. Time, money, and energy are all limited resources. And so it seems reasonable to not expend any of them moving in a direction we don’t want to go.

That said, it’s also too easy to slip into the habit of ‘just this once’ – and to be seduced by the power of marginal thinking that leads us to take individually justifiable actions in the short term that are in opposition to our longer term interests. After all, no single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood, right?

This is episode 121 of Music For Small Audiences. It was recorded in the leadup to a trip I’m really looking forward to – a weeklong study exchange in Germany, coming at a very interesting time for future European historians to consider. The mix has been put together as the soundtrack to that multinational voyage, which begins in a few days.