Suki or Lhasa?

Posted on October 8, 2015 by Rod's World

Who are Suki and Lhasa, my sister’s beloved cat and dog, I’m not allowed to have pets in my flat.

Pets? Cats or Dogs, Rats or Mice, Budgies or Parrots. We all have our personal choice. I am more of a Dog person than those life controlling moggies who know they are the owner not the other way around.Wikipedia has an interesting definition of what an animal lover is, Check out number three –

The terms animal love or animal lover can have several meanings:

affectional relationships between humans and companion animals, see human-animal bonding
wider concern about the well-being of all animals, see animal welfare
sexual relationships between humans and animals, see zoophilia
affectional bonding between animals, see pair bond
the possibility of emotions such as love in animals, see emotion in animals
Animal Love, a 1996 documentary filmDIRECTED by Ulrich Seidl

I have chosen 15 quotes , some famous , some from just your standard neighborhood cat or dog lover. Here we go –

1. I’ve decided to start my quotes on a less that serious note. I can’t imagine Paul my 50’s something psychiatrist using licking as part of his treatment but I might suggest it on my next three monthly catch up.

2. Suki normally is giving that look when he wants a pat, once you start the cut off point is never.

3. Mark Twain was known for his quirky and insightful quotes as much as his fame for his novels. His summation of the output of dogs vs. Cats is pretty close to the bone in my opinion.

4. Love the even when you don’t share the People Food line, Yes most dogs believe they are human.

5. The one dog I had was poisoned, my parents disappeared him very quickly. I switched to guinea pigs because they couldn’t run away because they were in a cage.

6. Jean Maurice Eugene Clement Cocteau, French poet and film maker always had at least one cat in his home. He came out with this well known cat loving quote as testament to the love he felt for them.

7. I have several friends who judge a persons character on the reaction their pets have to them. I remember visiting my friends house in Bendigo. They had 13 animals, 6 cats. Four went for my lap at once.

8. How a dog and children come into the world. Treated right they will continue to do so until we place that wooden cross next to the back fence, the pets I mean not the children.

9. Dogs know something when they choose trees as their place of going to the toilet. Starlight attracts them to the beauty, that’s a little left field.

10. Unconditional Love, if we followed this set of ideals for loving I think the world would be a better place all around.

11. Especially when it from a young kitten rubbing themselves against your leg at dinner time, and believe me they know when it is their dinnertime, don’t be late or there will be consequences.

12. We all have seen that look if we have ever been graciously allowed to share a premises with a cat. I am plotting to take over the world look and you are going to be my first conquests.

13. Had to get in one about my true addiction Music, I have 24,000 songs on my Itunes. My friend La Rola organised a dance party to pay for her beloved car Kevin’s surgery. How could you not go.

George Mikes, Hungarian Born British author came up with this beauty, about the real chain of command in our homes.

15. Aaw, isn’t it cute when two cats clean each other, they do it from the smallest moggie to the largest lions. No one has worked it out. Which one of the three scenario’s above do you think it is.

I am jealous at times of the love my sister and her family have received from Suki and Lhasa, Lhasa is a bit old these days to show much, He just lies around and sleeps, but remember after all he is a cat.

Its time to say adieu, so once again Namaste until next time , my dear friends.

The one Life we Know we Have

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Rod's World

I am doing a personal development course Sunday run by two of my friends called NOW – The Art of having it All. They start the event blurb with the following line – Do you sometimes feel like a 40, 000 year old sage in some areas…And a shit scared 4 year old in others?.

A fantastic question. How would it be to live life full out in all areas. Here’s an explanation of what living life full out means for one person, Nancy Solari, life coach , radio host and best selling author who happens to be legally blind. Here’s the link to her webpage Living Full Out

Living Full Out is a way of viewing your world – your circumstances, your goals, your life story – as a springboard to success. When you live life full out, you not only embrace change, but also look for opportunities to create change. You never settle for stuck, never run from a challenge, never rest on your laurels. People are access to reaching your goals, not obstacles to get around. “Making a difference” becomes a mantra not a slogan. You wake up each day excited to greet what will happen next – the good, the bad and the frustrating. No area of your life is too small to bring passion to.

I have been part of a group of runners who had the main street of Leningrad, Nevsky Prospekt interrupted on a Friday Afternoon for us to run down with the mayor of Leningrad and other dignitaries to support Ending World Hunger. I have also been hospitalized for major depression five times. Is this having it all. I couldn’t keep up the commitment that saw me run down that promenade and make a huge difference to world relations, I also ran the Moscow peace Marathon when I was there and after a few years my knees told me that they didn’t like me running 100 kilometres a week anymore.

here are the fifteen quotes I have chosen on the subject, some from the famous, others quite unknown.

1. We have an official retirement age, in out country it is 65. People live to their 80’s in retirement. Wayne Dyer tells a story where a passenger on an airplane asked him how long he had been retired when he was about 70 years old. Wayne replied why do you think I am retired. I will retire the day they put me in a box. He lived up to this touring Australia the week before he recently passed away.

2. Leonardo Da Vinci left many a great gift to the planet. One of his obsessions was flight, he created designs for helicopters and gliders centuries before they came into being. This quote has also survived from his time. This link is to some other amazing things he did Why the sky is blue.

3. I have found that I feel the most full and content when I am doing good deeds that assist people and the planet. Focusing on myself takes me down a path that is not a great place to be.

4. How often my mind has said to me that you can’t do that, or no one will listen to you is uncountable. When I have achieved my greatest triumphs is when I have said thank you for sharing and ignored it allowing for me to breakthrough and get it done.

5. The joy and imagination of youth where nothing is impossible. Oh but if we could bottle this and drink its essence when the naysayers said to behave ourselves as we got older.

6. The story we tell our-self about how we are travelling in life is what makes possible apathy or success. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King had stories just like us. Change yours if you want to live life more fully.

7. Popes and dying. The Eastern philosophies teach that you cannot really live until you realize that you are going to die one day. Our whole society in the west is focused on denying this until the moment it happens.

8. I love these 4 things. The lines that you can barely read say like no one is watching you, like you have never been hurt, like no one can hear you and as though heaven was on earth. 4 prescriptions to live full out without excuses.

9. Postscript , you cannot change that which has gone before, write your dreams down and go at it full bore, the past won’t care.

10. Ever had those days were you laugh and smile uncontrollably. They are the special ones. Replicate them as often as possible and you will live a fantastic life.

11. My friend Emeli has a saying, Get real, Get it Done. It is a fantastic way to look at life, because living it through another’s ideals or wishes is fake as it can be, your heart will shatter into a million pieces eventually.

12. We actually are living our lives full out moment to moment. Just that a lot of the time we know we could do better. Seek out resources to help you break through when you become blocked in your creativity.

13. We all have this silly assumption that we will wake up tomorrow, some people don’t and really we never know when it will be our turn. Big dreams full out, action like we only have this moment to fulfill them

14. I had a friend at high school who I wrote The Boston Gobbler, a satirical look at our life in a rural Victorian town. it lasted three episodes because the thrusting horses in the letters to the editor offended our conservative Christian head master. I gave up having my words in print for 40 years because i let the opinion of someone else define who I became. I love writing with a passion.

15. Whoever and whatever you believe about being brought to this mortal plane, it was for a purpose or it would not be your turn. make it a brilliant one.

I am looking forward to Sunday, Jules and Clare are brilliant facilitators and live their lives full of purpose more than most.

until next time Namaste my dear friends.

How to Kill a Cat, Not really!

Posted on September 21, 2015 by Rod's World

Curiosity starts with the itch to explore, the greatest explorers are the newborn. A 1964 study showed that babies as young as two months old, when presented with different patterns , will show a marked preference for the unfamiliar ones This attraction to everything knew and novel is known as diversive curiosity.

In adults diversive curiosity manifests itself as a restless desire for the new and the next. The modern world seems designed to fulfill our desire for this type of curiosity. Diversive curiosity is essential to an exploring mind; it opens our eyes to the new and the undiscovered, encouraging us to seek out new experiences and meet new people. But unless it’s allowed to deepen it can become a futile waste of time Unfettered curiosity is wonderful, unchannelled curiosity is not. When diversive curiosity is entrained – when it is transformed into a quest for knowledge and understanding – it nourishes us. This deeper, more disciplined and effortful type of curiosity is called epistemic curiosity.

Which type of curiosity do you mainly dwell in. Here are the 15 quotes I have chosen to have a look at this area of life which creates interest for us.

1. I have hair similar to Albert at the moment , slightly wild and woolly. No specialtalents that I have a piece of paper for, although people say I am a great wordsmith. I am definitely passionately curious about all areas of life as I hope you are too.

2. Walt Disney, creator of the iconic Mickey Mouse series of cartoons came up with this slice of wisdom when asked how did he keep on coming up with such new and exciting concepts. He did not accept that it could not be done in an era before the Internet, Facebook and PC graphic software.

3. My friend Michele’s company is called Within Without. She is a curious creator who inspires people to live the life they love. This quote reminds me of her passion for breaking through that which is accepted to be the norm, here is a link to her webpage : Within Without

4. Curiosity, the incurable dis ease that we receive when we enter this journey called life. That is slowly treated as an illness that much be put in its place so that you can grow up. I shout out to it being incurable just squashed by a mundane education system.

5. I went to The U.S.S.R. the year before the Berlin Wall came down to run the Moscow Peace Marathon. We also went to Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. We did not know that the sun fell from the sky and darkness prevailed immediately at 5 p.m. We were stuck on the other side of the city from where we were staying so we could have panicked. Instead our curiosity took us into the place we recognized, Bar – it sold coffee and Ice-cream as there were not establishments for locals to go and have a drink. We meet two students home on holidays from Uni and they became life long friends and showed us the underground club scene which was thriving.

6. Modern day best selling Author Nancy B. Brewer remindsus that curiosity can take us to places that we need to be careful in. There are rumors of dead cats in some locations.

7. Good to Great, how does one get there. Unleashing your curiosity is one way James C. Collins, the American business analyst and lecturer suggests that control won’t cut it.

8. More and more people are catching in on the Secret, someone even wrote a book about it that being curious has to offer. Your creativity will blossom the more you let your curiosity out to play.

9. What do we put on our gravestones, I like this cut at it. A bit more inspiring than love from the children.

10. How we live our lives is what people remember about us not what we owned or what we did, but how we made them feel. A noble death is said to have been had when people only have good things to say.

11. Thomas Stearns Eliott, or T.S. to his friends and the rest of the world, died in the swinging 60’s. he penned two of my favourite quotes, the one above and You are the Music while the Music lasts. its never to far and keep the music playing is my motto.

12. Author of a Top ten business blog Edgy Conversations Dan Waldschmidt is pursued widely for his outlook on running businesses , he said the above about what part curiosity plays in being successful.

13. Back to the dead cats, it isn’t always Roses and Champagne when you let your curiosity run free. There may be a modicum of trouble as well, but what sort of life is a life without a little of it now and then.

14. The 1982 Nobel Prize winner for Chemistry also said some pretty cool things about how we relate to nature. That we should not think it is our playground to do what we want with it without thinking about the consequences was one of them, to always remain curious as to the effect we were having on it.

15. Eleanor Roosevelt does not hold her role as First lady to be her greatest achievement. This lies with helping write the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights when she was appointed chair of the Human Rights Commission after her husbands death. Eleanor was a fine example of some one who lived a life of curiosity and achieved much from doing this.

Here’s to the curious and the discoveries they have given us that have improved our lives.

Namaste until next time my dear friends.

Whatever gets you through the Night.

Posted on September 14, 2015 by Rod's World

Tonight my friend Emeli Paulo is leading a RAW session on Addiction : What’s Yours. I have been thinking about this and I think my friends may feel it is posting positivity on my Facebook page Positivity HQ, but I believe this to be a sacred calling to counter the evil mainstream media is spreading across the planet.

So I thought long and hard, not Sex, not Alcohol , I gave up drinking on my 40th Anniversary of doing that, not gambling, I see that as a waste and came across Music. I have 23,000 songs and lectures on my Itunes library, I am subscribed to both My Music and Spotify and have Mixcloud, Souncloud and Bandcamp accounts. 23,000 songs is 77.6 days of music to put it in perspective.

So what do we get from our love of Music. Here are the 15 thoughts I have put together that our sages, musicians and people of note have contributed to the matter.

1. What does this truly mean. To me it is in those moments when a chill goes up your spine. Years ago I worked on the door for my friend Kerri Simpson and I knew when she was on, She always sang Summertime and when it sent chills up my spine the effect would last for hours.

2. When first contact is made they will bring many new and exciting things with them. But one thing they will certainly bring is their music. Even Klingon’s had music in Star trek, admittedly it was hard to appreciate but they loved it as we do our favourite style.

3. Billy Thorpe’s Somewhere over the Rainbow doesn’t make me think what a great song, there are many finer versions. But what it does make me remember is the night at the Myer Music Bowl that I and 200,000 other people sang it along with him.

4. Among my 23,000 tracks I have quite a bit of meditation music. I listen to it primarily when I am travelling on public transport. I lowered my Carbon Footprint to an Electric Bike, a pushbike and Public transport several years ago. It takes me to a place of genuine bliss while journeying through the chaos of a major cities thoroughfares.

5. There are so many styles of music that one can listen to, It seems there are new ones being developed every year. I am not a huge fan of Death metal, Pagan Rock and such genres. More for me tunes that have a positive message.

6. We Live on our own part of the World, so in the other parts of the world our indigenous music is captured by the title World Music. This gives you many opportunities to learn and listen to the magic of other cultures as these year Five students did.

7. Here’s an image you will find hard to get out of your head. A naked 61 year old man bopping around his apartment’s kitchen to GodsKitchen doof.

8. Back to ancient Greece. Plato and his mates sitting around listening to an inspired bouzouki performance. He turns to them and says …….

9. Another cute memory, A hot 40 degree Celsius day in St. Arnaud primary school. Our class is singing the Yellow Rose of Texas, half way through we hear the class next door joining in. The power of music is irrepressible.

10. It is often said by people that a particular song touches their heart. In doing so these words give you access to precious moments of healing that enliven your human experience.

11. Nature plays music to us all the time, sometimes it is powerful in the form of destructive winds, sometimes almost silent like an early morning sunrise over the mountains. We cannot write such superb songs, just give it our best shot.

12. Eckhart Tolle speak of the inner stillness that music can conquer. I have seen this many times in my music listening career. The most memorable being when I went to my friend Alicia’s Melancholia event two years ago. A young musician named Dan Parsons did one of his original songs and you could have heard a pin drop. It was outstanding music.

13. What came first, the horse or the cart. Darwin one of the great naturalists discovered that music came before speech. I believe this to be true because Nature has always provided it from the beginning of time.

14. I had to get the comment of one musician in the list. Levon Helm from The Band points to the healing side of music. It has been used in shamanic ceremonies for thousands of years, It has never been seen to fail.

15. And for our last insight, we cross to one of history’s greatest minds. The best way to crack a case of the Sad’s is to go inner and drench it with the music that inspires you.

I am including links to some of my favourite inspiring music so that you can appreciate them as well The Voice of an Angel, Goddess Songs, Indigenous Bliss, Ben sings of Love, Australia’s Heart and Soul, The Outlaw Women from Down Under, Lilith – Wild and Alive

Here’s to our love of music, Namaste until next time my dear friends

Do you Mean to Kill Them?

Posted on October 21, 2014 by Rod's World

My carbon footprint in getting around is fairly low, Walking , Pushbike and Public Transport. I used to ride a motor bike for a few years but had an accident whilst drunk driving and lost my license for two years and never got it back.

On my journey around our fair city of Melbourne I cannot but notice the laziness of the general public in disposing of rubbish. It is discarded everywhere but in the receptacles provided it would seem. Cigarette packets and cigarette butts , junk food containers and alcohol bottles seem to make up the majority of it pointing towards a certain kind of person being the main contributor to this malaise.

And what does this have to do with the cutie in the picture above, she is an albatross who lives on Midway Island. Fleetwood Mac in the 60’s wrote a magnificent instrumental about these birds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dAefTj7GXwQ, they have survived happily on the Island for many years or have they. Where is Midway Island you ask, heres a map to give you an idea.

It s in the middle of the pacific island thousand and thousands of kilometres from the nearest land but this cute picture does not tell the harrowing tale of what is occurring on Midway Island these days. I attended the Sustainable Living Festival last year with my friend Kavisha and happened to be in BMW edge when there was a speaker by the name of Chris Jordan set down to speak. I forget the name of his talk but after being transfixed by the content not the subject matter. Chris is an American photographer with an interest in Environmental issues and had been producing a documentary about the albatrosses on Midway Island for the past few years.

Why he has been doing this is because we have been killing them with plastic. Adult albatrosses have been feeding their young with plastic gleaned from the ocean all those kilometres away and they are dying in their thousands. Here is a link to Chris sharing about the documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-M9t2fm__K0. The only way the plastic gets in the ocean is because we as a race are too lazy to carry our rubbish with us to the nearest bin or to our homes to dispose of it in our own bins and it is washed into the ocean. Next time you are tempted to throw something away because there is no where to put it think of this image.

On my way walking to work or the market I have begun picking up rubbish as I come to it on the footpath knowing it will always be there because we are unthinking when it comes to the costs of dropping rubbish. I hope this little rant makes a few of you think.

Namaste until next time, my friends

You can Dance if you want to!!

Posted on October 16, 2014 by Rod's World

We have come to be danced.
Not the pretty dance.
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance.
But the claw our way back into the belly.
Of the sacred, sensual animal dance.
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance.
The holding the precious moment in the palms.
Of our hands and feet dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance.
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance.
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance.
One two dance like you.
One two three, dance like me dance but the grave robber, tomb stalker.
Tearing scabs and scars open dance.
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle.
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama.
Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance.
The strip us from our casings, return our wings.
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance.
The shed dead cells and slip into.
The luminous skin of love dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance.
But the meeting of the trinity, the body breath and beat dance.
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance.
The mother may I? Yes you may take 10 giant leaps dance.
The olly olly oxen free free free dance.
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.
We have come to be danced.
Where the kingdom’s collide.
In the cathedral of flesh.
To burn back into the light.
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray.
To root in skin sanctuary
We have come to be danced.
We have come.

Jewel Mathieson is a 5 Rhythms teacher and an award winning performance poet who lives in the United states, she would like you to link to her on https://www.facebook.com/jeweldancerpoet or obtain her poetry from her webpage www,jewelm.net. Jewel has two books of poetry dedicated to dance.

There is a thriving expressive dance scene in Melbourne, Australia. On many different nights of the week you can go to a dance and shake off your daily worries and enter the space mentioned in the poem above. The largest of these groups is definitely the 5 Rhythms dance practice created by Gabrielle Roth in the states over 20 years ago https://www.facebook.com/groups/5Rhythmsmelbourne/ Led by Woodend couple Meredith Davies & David Juriansz in the north and country Victoria and in the southern suburbs by Madhuma Thompson, http://www.5rhythms.com/teachers/Madhuma+Thompson . On Tuesday nights David gets between 150 to 200 dancers and on every second Sunday Madhuma gets well over 100 who generate an amazing vibe and shift many of their issues through the wave that is danced , here is a youtube clip of Gabrielle herself explaining the wave –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cYYzcTzm6Y.

Smaller gathering are Dancing Freedom from the ground Up https://www.facebook.com/events/968650966484666/?ref_dashboard_filter=calendar run by Lydia Marolda one of the convenors of Synergy IDE a fantastic all night drug and alcohol free dance experience held approximately every three months https://www.facebook.com/synergy.ide.australia?fref=ts. Another freeing dance practice is Mojo Trance Dance run by Jules Sutherland, one of many things this powerful shaman offers one to open your heart space, https://www.facebook.com/events/1495720137342784/?ref_dashboard_filter=calendar, these events normally have about 50 people so are a little bit more manageable if you require your private space not to be in your face.

Theres theres No Lights, No Lycra https://www.facebook.com/pages/No-Lights-No-Lycra-Melbourne/474387869320625?fref=ts, a concept where you dance with the lights dimmed, they say people do not crash into each other because your senses are heightened, I haven’t been but the concept fascinates me..

Then we come to my personal favourite, a lot smaller than the other but the most powerful I believe, Kundalini dance, developed by Leyolah Antara from Byron Shire, you dance focusing on your chakras and use Kundalini breath practices to open them up, i had my most profound heart opening on the night I did the Heart Chakra with Nemone Sloane https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecstaticbeings/?fref=ts Theres no classes at the moment but if you moved to the shire Leyolah runs regular classes.

I feel like a list so here are what I see as the benefits of dancing expressive dance in Melbourne, Australia

1. Community – This inspired group of people have one of the strongest senses of community that I have come across. Welcoming all newcomers it doesn’t matter what your skill or experience level is, you are a part of their tribe as soon as you pay your first entry fee.

2. Fitness – Attend a couple of sessions a week and its probably the best aerobic work out available, and much more enjoyable that pumping weights.

3. Educational – If your music collection is getting stale you certainly will hear new and funky music you can add to it and you can do the Wave at home.

4. Spiritual – The Wave is the entry to listening from your heart not your head, as you dance more and more you release endorphins that unstick your stuck bits and give you access to your heart space.

5. Sensual – As you free yourself up through the dance, you realise that all bodies are beautiful and have the right to be loved. Many a soulmate are discovered on the dance floor even though that is not the focus.

Well, Namaste my friends until next time

Live More Awesome, Jamgrass Music Festival, People Matter.

Posted on October 2, 2014 by Rod's World

What do these three statements have in common? They are the stickers on my music folder that contains the songs I sing at the Moons a Balloon, the community choir that I am a member of led by the inspirational Kavisha Mazzella. We are a Mental Fellowship of Victoria initiative so a lot of our members are in different stage of recovery from the dark times we have had in our lives.

When I was recently in The Melbourne Clinic for 28 days my friends in the choir offered to come and sing me some songs, I was nowhere near being in the space for them to do it but the offer made my heart shudder, that they would consider giving up their time to come and care for me was illuminating to say the least.

What songs do we sing? We have several standards, Tell Me Why by the ever awesome Neil Young, Somewhere over the Rainbow because its a beautiful song, The Moons A Balloon written by the choir when the chirpy Alicia Egan replaced Kavisha for a few weeks while she was off learning a new Tai Chi movement, but thats another story. My Island Home, a song by Christine Anu that should be Australia’s national anthem and Geckoe Song , one of Kavisha’s tunes, by the way did I mention that I have followed Kavisha and Her musical journey for over 20 years and once paid her $50 to sing my favourite song at a benefit at CERES environmental park in Brunswick. She is to me the worlds greatest singer songwriter and has the voice of an angel because Kaviisha is one.

But my favourite moments are when we sing the rounds Like Eagle Flying, another tune by Kavisha, Here are the words, when this song is sung in different harmonies you are moved to tears by its simplicity and power:

As I walk this Country, As I walk this land, I feel you watching over me

As I walk this Country, As I walk this land, I feel your spirit healing me

Eagle flying , Eagle Flying, Keeper of our Dreams

Another favourite is There is so much Magnificence by Peter Maken, simple words, awesome beauty.

Thers is so much magnificence here beside the ocean, waves are rolling in…Waves are rolling in…

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia,

Ahhh Lehhh Luhhhh Yaaaaaa

Often Basil brings his nieces along and its OK to have a cry if its tough out there on the roads of life because we are a family and we love each other, Thanks Kavisha for making our lives more worthwhile by having the choir be on fire.

Namaste till next time my friends

How big is your iTunes?

Posted on September 18, 2014 by Rod's World

Most of the people I know use iTunes, i recently sold 500 CD’s to my brother in laws mate for $50 – he has a son with Down’s syndrome and they go to markets and sell vinyl and CD’s as a father/son thing as the son really enjoys it. They were sitting in my garage gathering dust as I listen to my music on iTunes.

How do we as music fans source our music these days? I have over 300 musician friends on my Facebook page, My friends Kavisha Mazzella calls me a patron of the Arts as I sponsor many crowd funding campaigns and have many an obscure Australian CD through this practice. I even have a Haitian folk singer Leyla McCalla album Vari-Coloured Songs through this practice, Its beautiful but would never had sourced it except for having seen it on Kickstarter. Her name called to me so I sponsored her on a whim.

Another method I use is Op Shopping, You pay between $1.00 to $3.25 a CD which gives you the opportunity to buy several and if one of them doesn’t work out I recycle them back to the opshop after putting them on my iTunes anyway. I recently got the best of Crowded House for a dollar using this method, I gave it to my sister Ruth to listen to in the car as I know she likes the Finn brothers music, cheap presents and much appreciated.

Another site I like is Bandcamp because musicians get more money than from iTunes and being played on Spotify. I have 83 albums in my collection courtesy of quite a few Disturbed Earth CD’s. My friend Dean Richards composes under the name Disturbed Earth and sells his wide range for $3.00 an album, I have eleven at the moment, some more listenable than others, I think I’ll buy another two after writing this. I became a friend with a musician called Yesod through band camp who lives in Missouri as he contacted me and asked me why I was buying his music, I had to tell him I had got onto it because I liked the name of his band and album covers.

My brother Hugo is an announcer on http://www.3RRR.org – his show is called Frank and is on Friday mornings from midnight to 2 a.m. He is my older brother and I must give him credit for my wide music tastes and I do have quite a few CD’s he has burnt me in my collection. I try not to access music through burnt albums although I copy CD’s from the local library but never copy them for other people.

How much music do I have on my iTunes, 16 days, 7 hours and I always listen on shuffle so I am pleasantly surprised track by track. Namaste my friends, until next time.