Transit of Venus

Dear Diary.

It’s two days since the Auckland show, and a week out from the first Wellington show.

I watched the video of the show, I was really pleased with how it went.  A very different show from the last one (2009), and everyone who’d seen both preferred this one so I think that’s a good forward step.

We started sometime between 8am and 9am, going to pick up all our gear from the studio.  Then we were at the venue at 9, a group of us moving all the seating and rostra around for just over an hour.  We were really grateful to our team of volunteers who came to help with the heavy lifting, it would have been a much longer job without them.  Next thing to do was to set up the sound system, the projector screen, and the projector.  I think this took us through lunch, I remember there was sushi brought by our fantastic photographer, which we ate as we worked.  There was a last minute file delivery from our video-wrangler, saving the day and enabling us to show a good quality projection of the movie.  Then we had lights, instruments, microphones, set pieces to sort out.  Our soundie arrived mid afternoon and we ran through the show to make sure everything technical was going to go smoothly.  Everything did, and by then it was time to brief the ushers, down a kebab, have a cold shower and wash my face with shampoo (because I forgot to bring soap or face-wash)  and then get into costume.

In costume, back stage, peeking as the audience comes in… we are waiting for our cue to come out, suddenly a cast members nose starts bleeding.  ’Stall the show’. We stall. We wait. The audience is looking at their phones, fidgeting in their seats, we are panicking, tissues and toilet paper, worried there might be fainting on stage if we go on…  Wondering if we should call a doctor… we wait and wait… the bleeding doesn’t stop, the brave cast member says he is ok to go on, and so we do.  Toilet paper up the nose, swallowing blood, he still does an amazing job!

After the show we chat with friends, have a drink, relax finally.  The feedback is fantastic, the compliments make me blush and feel a little uncomfortable but I try to accept them. We’ve worked hard and we deserve them.

10:30 is our scheduled pack-down time.  We change out of costume, close the doors to the theatre and start packing everything up and loading the cars. Luckily we don’t have to move all of the seats and rostra around again.  As it is, I think it’s midnight before we leave.  And then home, and then the unloading of the cars, the avocado on toast, and the picking apart of the show and watching the video to spot any mistakes.

Next morning we make pancakes and waffles for cast and crew.  Half of the cast can’t make it, but some of our helpers are there, and it’s nice to relax, drink tea, eat brunch.  And then later it’s back to real life, work, all of that.

Now preparing for the Wellington show.  It’s going to be fun!

Yours sincerely,

Kristie

It’s August again, this happens every year apparently.  I’ve been back in New Zealand for almost a year…  Except when I popped over to Malaysia for a couple of weeks in May.  While I was there my friends Moe and Sashi had the idea of recording a music video for a song I played session guitar on last year, Bintang.  This weekend the video was released online, so here it is…

I also have some pictures to share with you from last months trip to Napier where we played at The Cabana. Pictures are by Melissa Thorburn

We have a gig coming up in Auckland, on August 19th we’re playing for Miss Plum Green to celebrate a digital download release. This is happening at Whammy Bar on K’rd (downstairs in St Kevins Arcade). Keep an eye on our gigs page for details of upcoming shows  http://transitofvenusproject.com/gigs/

In other news, slowly chipping away at recordings.  I have a habit of trying to complete numerous projects at once, which sometimes makes things take forever. But I’d like to think I never really abandon ideas, I just stretch them out over the years. Speaking of which, I’ve been doing more work on my Guitar of Doom… Have a look here http://transitofvenusproject.com/building-a-guitar-of-doom/

I’m sure I have more to report… I mean, I know I do. But some of it I can’t blog about yet…  So I hope that’s enough news for you at the moment.  Those of you who read this, thanks a ton for your support. It means a lot to me

Take care,

<3 K xxx

As you may or may not know, a Transit of Venus is one of the rarest predictable astronomical phenomena. It is when the planet Venus passes directly inline between the earth and the sun, and can be seen silhouetted against the sun as it passes in front of it. This doesn’t happen often, it happened in 2004 and will again in 2012 for the last time during our foreseeable lifetimes. Transits of Venus previous to these were in 1882 and 1874, 1769 and 1761 etc.

The transits that occurred in the 1700′s were of great scientific interest at the time, as it had been proposed that by measuring these transits from different points on the earth and throwing a bunch of trigonometry at the parallax, the distance from the earth to the sun could be calculated accurately.

Guillaume Le Gentil was a french astronomer, one of many adventurers who set off around the world to observe the transit of Venus and take the necessary measurements. He began his journey heading towards a french colony in India, but on his way war broke out between England and France, eventuating in the English occupation of the colony he was headed for and the boat he was on doing a u-turn. He was at sea when the transit occurred and the rocking of the boat made it impossible for him to take the measurements with any degree of accuracy.

So Le Gentil decided since he had already come so far (I think he was somewhere in the southwest indian ocean) he may as well stay and observe the next Transit eight years later. He kept himself busy mapping the coast of Madagascar and decided he would go to the Philippines to for the next transit. However when he got to the Philippines he had trouble with the Spanish, so decided to return to the colony he had originally planned on watching the first transit from in India, Pondicherry. Which by this time was again occupied by the french. Arriving more than a year in advance he built himself an observatory in preparation for the big day.

On the eagerly anticipated day of the second transit, the day he’d been waiting for eight years for… the sky was overcast. Le Gentil couldn’t see a thing. He had failed.

But his bad luck didn’t end there, between dysentery and his ship being driven off course in a massive storm it took him two years to get home to paris. And when he did get home after an absence of eleven years in total, it was only to discover he’d been declared LEGALLY DEAD, his estate divided between his relatives, his wife married to someone else.

It’s a sad story, a play has been written about it, and an opera. And the other day I wrote lyrics about it from the perspective of his poor wife. Can you imagine what it must have been like for her? Husband decides not to stay out a few hours after work for drinks without saying anything, but to stay out 8 or so years after work without a word! Maybe he’d tried to write, I can’t imagine it being easy to get letters across the world in those days. But a letter than doesn’t reach you is as good as no letter at all.

I will give you some news about the band soon! I do actually have news, I’m just… waiting.

Talk soon <3 K xxx

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p.s. Here are some pictures that I like, totally stole off Julians facebook because I forgot my camera and my phone was practically dead.

Left to Right: Julian Lee, Me, Moe Nasrul and Iz.