Blog
It’s been a weird year
“It’s been a weird year; you got that pain in your heart”
In my first year of highschool I just kept walking and walking at lunchtime so people would think I was going somewhere. I never stopped until the bell rung and I could go back to class.
This year we released our 4th album. After much deliberation, I named it after a line from an Elizabeth Strout book, ‘We lived our lives on top of this’.
“There is so much hope in a name.”
When we name something, it becomes loveable. Love in the sense of feeling so strongly that you get overwhelmed and confused. A complicated love that makes you sad and happy and joyful and scared.
“But we’re running out of wall space. Getting so close to nothing at all”.
I’d really like to see you more next year. Everyone’s busy but sometimes I just sit and flick between tabs and wait and wait and then I say I’m not waiting at all. I’d send you a voice note but it’s so hard to form a sentence when I speak. There are all these other thoughts and, does my voice sound dumb, and is my nose sunburnt, and am I starting every sentence with ‘i guess’…
“I always thought we’d have more time to get it right”
I wrote on social media that @lizkelly says “Not hitting skip on things after 2 seconds is important”. But I’ve been doing that a lot lately. It’s not that I’m bored or not into it, it’s just there’s only 20 minutes before work starts and I need to cook dinner and I haven’t replied to you and I need to be good.
I say things like, ‘it’s not meant to be a strife’ and ‘stress is needless’ but they’ve been stuck on the fridge for too long and I don’t see them anymore.
“It’s the river, alive at the center of the island”
We try to make stuff beautiful to remind ourselves that beautiful stuff can be made. We’re all perfect and broken and we have these stories beneath us and between us. We build lives upon lives, and every time we move we have more stuff to pack.
“It’s a loving with power”
Lunchtime, 2025. I’m walking around before the bell rings and I go back to class.
But holy shit, I’m not walking so people that I’m going somewhere anymore…
I just need some air.
Bellevue road (a dozen for the boys)
I think they sold it to the New World supermarket next door, but before that my grandparents lived in a 1960s brick house on Bellevue Road in Ōtūmoetai.
My granddad built roads all across the Bay of Plenty. He’d point them out to us on long drives. He said he slept in ‘ponga whares’ in the bush when he was away.
Photos replace memories and I’m not sure if we got to see his bulldozer or if I just remember the photo.
I remember the cockles in the big pot on the stove though. And those sea snails with the cat’s eyes. I remember the bowl of shortening in the fridge and the open can of sweetened condensed milk. I remember my grandad and uncle Patty laughing as they picked at a pig’s head on the table in the kitchen. I remember piles of buttered white bread and sliced tomatoes and cucumber. “You had a feed?” were the words that welcomed us when we arrived to that house.
And although the net curtains were always closed, there was a soft warm light in the lounge. And the national program was always playing.
I had my first cup of tea there. My nana assured me it was a very refreshing drink. I added 4 teaspoons of sugar and never looked back.
I was in the front yard on rubbish day one summer. My grandad got talking to the truck driver and he called me over…
‘Run and get the boys a box of beer from the fridge!’. I returned with a box of Waikato and grandad wished the boys a merry Christmas.
‘Bellevue road (a dozen for boys)’ didn’t make the ‘We lived our lives on top of this’ album but these things niggle at me if I don’t release them. Now added as a bonus track exclusively on Bandcamp at this stage.
Happy festive season! Ngā mihi o te wā ki a koutou!
We lived our lives on top of this — Bandcamp
