The Azure Kingfisher01.09.2024 Miica Balint and photography Jill Bontempo
Watch birds, volunteer your time, go to therapy.
I write this as I sit at my new (to me) dining table, in my new (to me) home, on one of my set of seven vinyl, swivel chairs which I deem to be from the era of societal norm collapse, psychedelics and protests. In this new home of mine, and Kate’s, these chairs of rebellion were the priority purchase as I continue to sleep on a swag on the floor. It seems we are a household of symbolism.
It is the evening after the evening that thirty-or-so of us took to the carpet of a record store to gawk, chirp and share joy with Andrew, who sat before us in a small plume of smoke. He sat on an amp, with a guitar in his lap, and a tea by his bare feet. Behind him, on a sheet fitting flush to the ceiling and the floor, archival footage–that I guessed to be of the same rebellious time period as my chairs–was projected. I’m sure I am not alone in my gratitude that these mesmerising scenes of earlier days played on a loop, as it was difficult to avert my attention from the comedic allure, talent and playfulness of our performer.
On this evening, the fifteenth of August, our performer, Andrew Fraser of Bodalla and Pasiflorez, was sitting in front of us to release his new extended play (EP) Instrumentals For Surf Clips. Bodalla is Andrew’s solo project, and release he did. Five songs for five surfboards he rides. The tunes electrified the room, and the surf clip he premiered for us, which shows this nimble water person surfing each of the boards–made by friend’s Josh and Angie–received hoots, hollers, applause, and many ‘meow’s’.
A few days prior to all this hootin’-and-hollering, Jill, Andrew and I sat, each with a Tulsi tea, in the coastal bush of Brunswick Heads. As we spoke, our eyes watched the ocean transition from glass to chop, and our fiddly fingers busied themselves with leaves and sticks, pilling, arranging, throwing. This conversation ran deeper than Andrew’s music, illustrations, or poetry (poems to the sum of eight-hundred or so), and writing of it comes at a time for me that feels especially significant.
I went into the interview anticipating querying Andrew on philosophy, though I had no idea what queries, nor did I know if my new acquaintance Andrew would take to speaking of philosophy. In fact, other than knowing that Andrew is an enchanting performer, a good gardener, and has just moved back to the Northern Rivers after a stint in Melbourne, I didn’t know much at all.
Come time to bid our ‘see you soons’ we had spoken of altruism, a mutual-aid social movement, hierarchy, death, individualism, the practice of presence through bird-watching, mental hardship, creative obsession, and how a conversation with a bushranger at eight in the morning on a Wednesday could change the course of a life. Let’s start at the beginning.
"My experience with music has been quite late. I started as a disc jockey when I was fifteen. I was a drunken ah, house-party disc jockey. I loved house, disco and techno. I was twenty-two or twenty-three when I started the guitar journey, but I have been doing it most days for that period of time. I’m in a very intimate relationship with my music. It kisses me to bed and slaps me in the face in the morning when I wake up. It’s this ridiculous obsession and sometimes it can be to the detriment of my mental health and sometimes it can be the most positive thing in the world. I haven’t really thought of it like that, but yeah that’s what it is really.”
What does the personal project give you in terms of creative expression that is different from the band?
“I love both of them for exactly what they are. With the personal project, I can create without expectation, judgement, rules or ears. This is for me. No one besides me can listen to this, or have an opinion on it. I can go to any sphere I want. You can be so in the zone and fucking hell you can transcend to some crazy levels. Sometimes you don’t. But that’s what makes it so exciting when you do. It’s another world.”
“If I have made a big chunk of a song, I will do what I call a performance review. In my performance review, I’ll sit on my bed, with my headphones, close my eyes and just listen. If it evokes something then I know it’s good. If it doesn’t make me feel anything then I have work to do.”
A creative’s performance review, so corporate. And what a vision that is. Scarf covering eyes, headphones on, psychedelic music telling a story of their maker. And Pasiflorez?
“I love creating with others. Having this intricate dialect with your friends who you play music with. That’s what it is, you’re speaking a language to each other. The synergy and chemistry. You’re conversing via sonic soundwaves. The coolest thing about playing music with Pasi is that we can be in a jam and no one’s looked at each other for ten minutes, but somehow we’ve gone from here to there. Just existing. Harmoniously.”
Existing. A notion I have been stewing on lately. Not meeting deadlines. Not working for the ‘man’. Industry. Not trying to see the world but losing sight of yourself. Not putting your life into box after box, rubricizing your success, and then you catch yourself at seventy and you can’t remember the last sunrise you sat with.
This bone I am picking is not coming from a place of mar to hard-work, dedication, or ambition. More-so a thought on how easily hard-work, dedication, and ambition can landslide into an all-consuming calamity in your nervous-system. The modern world can be too quick, and if you’re always trying to beat it you might just miss all the important bits. Can you tell what kind of week I have had?
“When the rivers run dry and all the fish have been eaten, and we have no drinkable water, then money will be of no use. And that’s coming man.”
What was your full-time job in Melbourne?
“I was working in an autism school. Super rewarding. Really cool. I was also doing some volunteering with Food Not Bombs which is an anti-capitalist, anti-hierarchy mutual-aid community kitchen in one of the housing commissions in Richmond. We would cook up organic produce from the market each Tuesday, and share a meal with the less-privileged and people who are dealing with drug addiction. I met some very interesting cats. I think a lot of them just want to be heard.”
I did not need to read far into the history of Food Not Bombs to quell my fanaticism for a good story. A mutual-aid–meaning we all experience life together, and we are all on the same level–set up in the early eighties in Massachusetts, first as a form of protest to banks investing in nuclear power. The founders, already distributing produce that couldn’t be sold to people in need, decided to dress in homeless garb, prepare soup from some of this recovered food, and set up a soup kitchen outside the stockholders meeting of the Federal Reserve Bank. Their message was that their policies were similar to those of the banks that caused the Great Depression.
In the hope of recreating the soup lines of that starved time, they told the Pine Street Inn homeless shelter of their protest taking place the next day. To their surprise, almost seventy of these people-of-the-street arrived, and by lunchtime flocks of business people were sharing a conversation and a meal with homeless people. From there the invitation was extended to the world. Share, hear each other out, offer food to the hungry.
“It was my first solid punt of showing up each week and realising how fulfilling it is to be of aid to anyone–in all walks of life–and realising that we are all experiencing such different spectrums of trauma, or happiness or sadness. Help each other out. In any way possible.”
Capitalism. Is that the bone I am picking? Are we unjustly measuring worth?
“Also hierarchy, I never really thought about it prior but there’s hierarchy in everything we do. It can be so belittling. You are here, I am here. You need to work to get there, and if you don’t get there you’re not of worth. It would be nice to break that down.”
Getting somewhere. We spoke of ADHD and the feeling of always needing to be somewhere. For Andrew, mindfulness, music and surfing are the three things that help. And bird-watching.
“Well okay, twitching. Wow. You are so present. Walking slowly in the bush. Have you ever locked onto a really beautiful bird in binoculars? It’s a special feeling. I remember the first time I did it was with a Crimson Rosella in Jindabyne. Psycho.”
As we spoke of birds something flew on to the nearby branch. A little rotund bird, with a bright orange belly, a beak and eyes that resemble that of a kookaburra, bright red feet and a deep blue outer body. An azure Kingfisher. A non-migratory, patient bird with fishing prowess. An omen.
“They’re fricken rare and beautiful. They’re tuned in. They knew! I’ve never seen a kingfisher here. Oh my goodness. These birds are putting on a fricken show dude. How cool is that, there’s so many different species right in this little pocket. Red wattle birds, willy wag tails, kingfisher. I’m sorry but that is just ridonky. That’s a bluebird.”
Is it called twitching because we are looking at birds like birds are looking at life? Through investigation I learnt that, in fact, there is a world of difference between being a birdwatcher and being a twitcher. A birdwatcher makes careful note of the birds one sees–even the most common– and these noted observations contribute to our knowledge of bird species. They go slow, minimising disturbance, maximising the occurrence of natural behaviour from their muses. The word ‘twitcher’ (in this sense) relates to ticking boxes. Twitchers will travel long distances at the drop of a hat to see a rare bird, to tick it off. They compete for the longest list, the rarest bird. Do you see what I see?
To take a moment to sit, to watch, to just be. I would like to work towards more of those. Or should I say, to unwork.
“Eventually you are going to find what is important to you. But that can take time. I think of it as planting seeds, and watching them germinate and grow in your mind. A ranger in the bush said something to me at a very interesting point in my life. I was at a very low-point, and he said; ‘if you do what you love, everything else will just fall into place’. And that’s true. And it’s not easy, with any of the processes we are all trying to go through” (Andrew: musician, Jill: photographer, Miica: writer).
“You have to experience troughs to experience the highs. Everyone experiences mental hardship. The best thing to do is just sit in it. It’s temporary. And go to therapy. Therapy is fucking amazing. It changed my life.
The end… What is your guys’ perspective on death?”
The one certainty, and the greatest unknown.
“Yes it is imminent. I don’t think it is something to be scared of. I do believe if it is my time to go it’s my time to go. I think it’s beautiful. I also think that it’s dark. I think it is everything in the middle. The spectrum of life.”
“We are all just caterpillars, and the evolution is the butterfly. And that is death.”
I’m happy to be the worm.