Creativity is like El Nino and La Nina \u2013 interplay of idea drought and flood. Framing visions to a personal, political or spiritual context.<\/p>\n
We all have a number of moments in our lives where we feel and are moved by another\u2019s originality of creativity. It always speaks to you personally. The other\u2019s soul becomes mine.<\/p>\n
Raised on a dairy farm, this climate imperative underpinned our family\u2019s sustainability. You could see it in every blade of grass and in the hide of every cow. In every young buck\u2019s car was a cassette of Harvest, a collection of folk songs from Canada\u2019s Neil Young. It was a huge hit. It was rural.<\/p>\n
Within the cow shed stood a polished stainless steel vat that captured the milk from the 90 cows that gave it up twice a day. Each morning, the vat was emptied into a giant tanker. It had to be meticulously washed ready for the next intake. The job took half an hour if done right and you had learnt early to ensure you did all chores around the farm right the first time.<\/p>\n
But oh was a dull job it was, scrubbing, reaching, rinsing and drying the cube. Every day, every year. I\u2019d take my cassette player there to relieve the task of some of its monotony. On a whim, at 15, I had bought a cassette of Neil Young\u2019s Decade anthology encouraged that he had moved \u201cinto the ditch\u201d.<\/p>\n
Awash in a sea of glitter rock and at the vat face again, I am stopped by words that fight for space with Neil\u2019s persistent feedback gluttoned guitar.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are like a Hurricane<\/em> Lyrically the song is spent in two minutes. Emotionally it\u2019s stretches over 8 glorious minutes as Neil\u2019s sonic infused guitar mirrors lends weight to the words before finishing on a series of droning descending notes full stopped by a massive power chord. Or two, or three.\u00a0 I saw a concept for the first time \u2013 theoretically at least – the duality of love. Mastering that would take a lifetime at least. All wrapped up in those 8 minutes.<\/p>\n 6 years later, Neil\u2019s Powderfinger seems to chronicle my own experiences of the past year. Father died, farm finished, dropped out of uni, uncertain where\u2019s next, no discernible future.<\/p>\n \u201cDaddy\u2019s gone,<\/em> Those feelings help me escape to Europe where I discover Neil is in Germany touring on the basis of his computer concept album \u201cTrans\u201d.\u00a0 He\u2019s wearing wrap around shades, and a pink lurex jacket. It\u2019s a long way from \u201cHarvest\u201d. The futurist \u201cComputer Age\u201d doesn\u2019t cut it with the booing hippies who want their Neil Young, my Neil Young, the Needle and the Damage Done Neil Young! The gig is in Dortmund, a grey harbour town on the north Rhine. Later, we criss cross the night on 5 different trains to avoid the Deutsch Mark liberating excess of the Dortmund Hotel Industry. I can still feel the shock of hard sunlight when the Hamburg commuters rip up the carriage blind on our last leg.<\/p>\n Every gig is full of various hopes. To hear the hit(s), that love song, our song. Then there are the fans that\u2019ve been on board the journey through every highway and byway.<\/p>\n 30 years later and just this Friday gone, we\u2019re at Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne to see Neil Young – Folk Rocker, Folk Laureate, Electronicist, Rocker, Grunger, Rockabillist, Ballader. Pushing 70, his band \u2013 Crazy Horse pushing 70.<\/p>\n This is no nostalgic act. He\u2019s touring a new album \u2013 Psychedelic Pill from which we drink 3 times, plus 2 new unreleased songs. The rest of the evening takes from his raucous outputs from the 60\u2019s, 70\u2019s, 80\u2019s, 90\u2019s and 00\u2019s. It\u2019s a rollicking 3 hour assault. Neil traverses the stage Gibson in hand; a crazed amplified somnambulist.<\/p>\n That guitar keeps hitting spots that scratch memories healed long ago.<\/p>\n Long may he run.<\/p>\n Photo Credit: yle.fi\/pop<\/a> via Compfight<\/a> cc<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Creativity is like El Nino and La Nina \u2013 interplay of idea drought and flood. Framing visions to a personal, political or spiritual context. We all have a number of moments in our lives where we feel and are moved by another\u2019s originality of creativity. It always speaks to you personally. The other\u2019s soul becomes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23,25],"tags":[99,55,100],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4273"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7278,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4273\/revisions\/7278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/yumcreative.yumstudio.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThere\u2019s calm in your eyes<\/em>
\nAnd I\u2019m getting blown away<\/em>
\nTo somewhere sacred where the feeling stays<\/em>
\nI wanna love you but I\u2019m getting blown away\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\nMy brothers out huntin in the mountains<\/em>
\nBig John\u2019s been drinking since the river took Emy Lou<\/em>
\nSo the powers that be left me here to do the thinking<\/em>
\nAnd I \u2018ve just turned 22<\/em>
\nI was wondering what to do<\/em>
\nAnd the closer they got, the more those feelings grew\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n