Sitting Under A Tree with Aidan Jones

Ep 378 - I Don't Know How To Read The Ocean

I recorded this podcast last night in the back of a hire car parked in the carpark at Point Addis near Anglesea. I love coming down the coast and getting out into the ocean in the morning, how lucky are we in Australia that this is something we can just go and do whenever we want!
 
I'm stressing about getting an offer from a venue for the Edinburgh Fringe this year. Whatever happens, I'm going and I'll get the show somewhere, but right now not knowing where that will be, and knowing that it's out of my control, is very frustrating. Having said that though, tickets are moving for Adelaide, and Melbourne has started to tick over as well.
 
With all the time/money/emotional investment I've put into this show, I guess it is inevitable that I will continue to stress about the future and worry that things won't work out, even as the very same things I worried about three months ago are falling into place before me. Getting out in the ocean for a couple of hours this morning was a great way of taking my mind off all of that.

Ep 377 - Birthday Week

It's my birthday on Wednesday! I haven't planned a party or anything, I figure I'm moving away in July so I'll have a going-away party then, but now I'm still kind of in the midst of doing all this stuff with the show and it just doesn't feel like the right time for a party. And it's my birthday, so I should get to choose when the party is, right? RIGHT?!!
 
On the day I'm going to go to South Melbourne Markets for breakfast, then go with my mate to the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the NGV, then in the evening I'm having dinner with another friend. That sounds perfect to be honest.

Ep 376 - Advance Australia Fair

Australia Day this week, always high emotion on both sides. When I was doing my bus tours, I would always explain the situation in Australia with regards to indigenous people by saying that it's a very emotional issue for everyone. Some people think we should talk about it more, and that we need to move towards greater recognition for indigenous people. Some people think we talk about it too much and we should stop spending time and money on it.
 
Personally I think the ideal future for our country is one where every person who is born here or chooses to come here and make it their home, should feel equally as though they have a stake in our society. I don't think that will ever be possible until we address this thing that sits at the heart of our country. The shameful harm that was done to the people who lived here for tens of thousands of years before the British established a colony here in 1788.
 
There are countless stories that serve as examples of this shameful secret, and the more of them we tell, the more we, as a society, can familiarise ourselves with what happened, and maybe work up the collective courage to confront it together. One of those stories was told to me by my grandpa in an email recently, and so I plan to tell it in a video, with a piano version of Advance Australia Fair that I just worked out as the backing track. I'm excited to make the video tomorrow, I think it's going to be great.

Ep 375 - Beach Day

I went to the beach today with a bunch of friends. What a wonderful sentence to be able to say! It was 42 degrees, but down by the water it was much cooler, the waves were big and scary and I got thrown around a bunch, it was awesome.
 
I have been worrying about ticket sales a bit, but what makes me feel better is the amount of nice stuff that other comedians have been saying to me after my spots this week. I've had so many people who I love and respect tell me that what I'm doing on stage is really unique and exciting. I've also found a bunch of places in the show where I can change things and add stuff to make it funnier and better, and that's incredibly exciting too!
 
I only have 8 tickets for tomorrow's show, and two of them are a reviewer, so obviously not idea, but Iearned something in Edinburgh this year, and it's time now to put it into practice. Whoever is at the show tomorrow, I am going to welcome them in to the room, put them at ease, and get them around me as I sit at the piano. Then I'm going to give them the best fucking show they've ever seen, and they're going to love it.
 
The beach has completely fried my brain man.

Ep 374 - Little Cunts

Yesterday at my removals job we worked for a customer who was sending some of their furniture to an auction house to be sold - that is to say, this person was extremely well-off. They had two children there with them, both around 5 years old, and these kids were, as it transpired, two of the most entitled, horrible little bastards I've ever met. They were both rude to us and clearly thought themselves better than anyone who would come to do work for their family.
 
I landed in Perth today and just checked in to the room above a pub where I'll be staying for the next 19 nights. It's gross in here, there's shared bathrooms, the kitchen has no utensils and smells like musty, old grease, and the laundry is in the basement and was, I am informed by one of the local characters, without power last night. Truly exhilarating stuff!
 
I think I've reached a point in my life and my career where I am no longer happy to accept this kind of grotty living situation. When I was younger, even as recently as 5 years ago, I probably would have been okay with this, but I've grown up, and I'm not now. Thing is, I'm also not in a financial position where I can afford to stay somewhere that might be, how can I put it, "more to my taste". So here I am. I'll buy some candles and incense and flowers and make the room nice, and I'll do my shows and keep working, but also I'm going to be grateful for this time.
 
If I've learned anything in the last few years, it is that there is dignity in the struggle and not getting what you want. There is pride to be taken in doing a job, and working for someone else, and we should always respect those who happen, in any given moment, to be doing their work for us. Staying in this awful room is a good reminder that no matter where I go or what I do in my life, any success I have is a blessing, not a right. Remember to be grateful, if only so as not to become one of those awful, little cunts.

Ep 373 - New Years Skinny Dip

Lately I've noticed I get anxious when I find myself with nothing to do. I guess that's why I am so enamoured of the Edinburgh Fringe - a month where every moment of every day is relentlessly full of people and places and things and stuff and you NEVER get a break. You NEVER have to stop!! You can just keep going for ever - heaven.
 
The way I've always coped with the anxiety is by just filling my time up with stuff, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad way of coping, but it becomes a problem when I make commitments and then put undue amounts of pressure on myself to fulfil those commitments. That's funny isn't it! I do feel anxiety when I'm still, so to avoid that anxiety, I fill my days up with activities and commitments, sometimes to the point that there are too many things for me to do, which gives me anxiety. It really never ends.
 
I think what I'd like to remember is that while I do like to always be doing lots of things - seeing friends, doing stand up, working on projects etc. - if I ever find myself rushing through my days because I've given myself too many of these therapeutic *things* to do, it's okay to leave some of those commitments unfulfilled. I am allowed to prioritise my commitments however I see fit, and then if there isn't time for something, I can just apologise and say that I'm not going to make it. I'm about to go to Perth for three weeks, and I'm going to have heaps of time to myself, so I'll see how all this goes I guess.

Ep 372 - 2024

At this time last year my goals were to put my head down at work and make as much money as I could, while spending all my creative energy working on the new show. It was the first year since I started doing solo stand-up shows that I'd planned to not do a show at the Australian festivals, and my only hope for the end of the year was that I'd be in a position where I would be confident with my new show and ready to tour it myself.
 
That is exactly where I'm at right now! In the last year I worked hard on my show, took it to Edinburgh and had a very successful first season there, worked with a designer to create a visual branding language for the show and have started to use that brand to promote it. I also went to New York for the first time, which is something that I've wanted to do for the best part of ten years! I also worked as a tour guide and discovered that I don't want to pursue that as a career, which is something that I thought I might be interested in at the start of the year.
 
In the next twelve months I will be crossing two more things off of my list of long-term goals: 'Record A Great Special' and 'Live In Another City'. On Saturday night I went to a party and a friend did a tarot reading for me, and the thing that I chose to focus on was my planned move to London. I'm nervous about it, specifically leaving my close friends and family in Australia, and everything that I'm going to miss in their lives, but I'm also confident that this is what I need to do for myself and my career. Happy New Year everyone, we did it.

Ep 371 - Happy Holidays

Last night I saw a movie called 'The Substance', it was great! Go look it up if you don't know what it's about because their copy will explain the premise much better than I can here, but the premise of the film is an ageing Hollywood star takes an experimental drug to create a younger, "more perfect" version of herself. It's all about female beauty standards in society and the way we treat people - especially women - as disposable once their youth and beauty have faded.
 
I got the impression from the outset that whoever had made this film was very angry about the subject, and wanted us to feel the pain and discomfort that they feel when they think about it. I figured it was probably a woman and I was correct - bully for me! I really enjoyed the way the shocking visuals and sound in the movie made me feel uncomfortable, which is odd to say, because at the time I was.. well, uncomfortable. But immediately I'm like, okay if I feel uncomfortable now, imagine how uncomfortable it must be to actually BE a woman and be subject to these kinds of pressures and standards! Provoking the audience into such considerations is the sign of great art.
 
In a way, this is what I'm trying to do in my show - I want people to recognise the feeling that I find in the music, and then relate it to their own lives so they can actually feel it themselves, and in doing so, connect with the experience of the person who wrote the music I'm playing. The feeling I'm working with isn't anger or anything close to it, but rather hope, which comes with it's own fears and anxieties. Despite the differences, it was inspiring to see a film - a piece of art - where each element is so clearly chosen with an overall effect in mind, and everything is working in concert to achieve a clear goal. It wasn't at all subtle, but what's the big whoop about subtlety anyway?

Ep 370 - Dad I Want To Hear Your Story

Yesterday I got an ad for this garbage book called 'Dad I Want To Hear Your Story'. It's not even a book that you read, it's a book that you give to your Dad that he writes his life story in. There are all these questions about your first kiss or your school years or whatever the fuck stupid bullshit these people put in there to try and seduce people into thinking that you can skip the years of work it takes to build up a good relationship with your loved ones and all you need to do is BUY THIS BOOK!! THIS ONE WEIRD TRICK MADE MY DAD LOVE ME AGAIN!! 
 
The ad creeped me out for that reason, but also even more so because the Instagram page that was hosting it was full of the same guy saying the same words to a camera, but with all different intonations, different music, and wearing different hats and sunglasses on his face. It feels as if whoever is selling this thing is doing A/B market testing on their own face, trying to find the optimal combination of sounds and images required to sell these cynical, loveless items.
 
As I wade into the world of advertising and marketing ahead of the festival season (the show opens a month from the 17th!!!) I am more and more aware of this kind of stuff. I'm even using some of it to sell my tickets, but I am also very conscious of trying to keep it at arm's length, because throughout the world of marketing there exists this idea that you can sell anything with the right ad campaign. There are people all over online message boards and social media apps talking about how they can increase your Lead Generation and Sales Performance and ROI without ever talking about what products anyone might actually be selling, and that kind of mindset is liable to destroy a person if it gets a hold of you.
 
And boy has it gotten a hold of these book-selling losers on Instagram.

Ep 369 - Eugen Cicero

The modern world of classical piano seems to be split into two groups:
 
First there are the people who play the classics, they go through the music from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and play the same pieces over and over again in search of the "composer's intention", while attempting to also bring some aspect of their own personality to it. Each year there are dozens of recordings of the most famous pieces of the classical repertoire, and the people in this world have opinions on all of them.
 
Then there are the people who go in the complete opposite direction - they are sick of playing the same pieces and so they rebel in the extreme by creating music with completely outlandish instruments and sounds. It's conceptual, it's cerebral, and it might actually be nonsense? We're talking music with teapots, we're talking music determined by the roll of the dice, stuff that seems like it's more about the idea of the thing, rather than the actual thing itself.
 
Both groups of people have interesting ideas and I wouldn't go so far as to say that they're creating cynical work at all! I'm not trying to denigrate either of them, except to say that I think they both, to some extent, have their heads completely stuck up their own asses.
 
I say all of that to say - with absolute joy!! - that this week I discovered a new pianist named Eugen Cicero who seems to embody a third, completely exciting and inspired path. He plays the classical repertoire - music that was created to sound beautiful - but rather than sticking dogmatically to the text, he brings it to life with his own improvisations and modern musical ideas. I love it, and now you can too as some of his music is hidden at the end of my ramblings on this week's podcast. Enjoy!