Tag: blogging

Smugglers of Earth – 2

(Note: This post follows on from “Smugglers of Earth – 1“)

Immediately the card leapt from Marlon’s hands and flew like a bullet down the Tor. Marlon jumped to his feet and peered out into the rain to watch the card fly through the stormy night. Seeing the arc of its flight, the hairs on Marlon’s neck stood on end. He loved the cards most of all.

As it neared the bottom of the hill the card turned smoothly and climbed straight upwards through the rain, leaving a trail of light in its wake. On a direct collision course with the clouds above, the storm roared and thundered anew. The card was completely unaffected by the tempest and held its course. It sped up, flying higher and higher aiming straight at the lightening and the thunder and the angry clouds. From the top of the hill it looked like a tiny missile heading towards an enormous alien mothership. This made Marlon scream as loud as he could, “Go you good thing! Go! Go! Go! Yeeehhaaaaaaaaa!!!!!” The card issued a deafening crack as it broke the sound barrier right before it hit the clouds. After that, all was silence. No more lightening, no more wind, no more rain. Only a single voice on top of the Tor. Marlon was still yelling with excitement.

Marlon kept whooping and shouting and cheering as he turned his head straight up towards the sky. He was so excited each time he threw a card, all he could do was shout like a chimp. Up above, the clouds dissolved before his eyes. The storm of the century had been neutralised by the card, as if someone threw a bucket of water on a camp fire. Looking up Marlon saw clear skies and the sight of the heavens took the scream from his mouth. Completely silent, he fell. The smuggler saw a perfect night sky. Like thick, creamy velvet he felt he could almost scoop up the blackness in between the stars. Dark galactic ice cream, he thought it would probably taste like licourice.

The Milky Way stretched out and twinkled forever. There were shooting stars blazing all around, and far to the east the rainbow colours of a nebula cloud glistened against the darkness. To the North, on the horizon a faint aurora pulsated.

Marlon kept his eyes on the skies for as long as he dared, a big smile stretched on his face. He knew that if he looked for too long after throwing a card, he risked going crazy, bewitched by the beauty. He had heard stories of men turning into skeletons, their skulls pointed up to the sky, smiling even as they starved to death just to stare at the beauty above. With effort, he pulled his head down, wiped away the water from his face and turned his eyes back to where he had been searching, at the bottom of the Tor on the plains.

With the help of the stars, Marlon could now see close to the horizon the place he was looking for. It was a slight rise in the plains, and at the base of the rise a small fire was burning. From the top of the Tor this was nothing more than a dot of light. It looked like another tiny star on the ground, except it was noticeably green in colour and flickering on the plains. Eyes straight ahead, the smuggler blew a kiss to the velvet sky above and started his descent of Nea Tor. Shooting stars rained all around him but the night remained silent. Silent that is, except for the old rain water which squelched in his boots with every step.

Focus on the future

A fundamental part of achieving anything you want to achieve = the work is up front, and the reward is way off in the future. Unseen. We plan for success rather than guarantee it. This is frightening.

Satisfaction and success is mostly unseen and unfelt for the whole time you are working hard. This makes it very hard to keep working if you don’t enjoy what you are doing, or if you don’t believe that something good will come of it down the line. Faith is required. Faith in yourself, in the process and in the work resulting in something good.

For creative writing (and most art I suppose) this is especially important to recognise. It takes a lot of consistency and regular work to create something, and a lot of unknowns weigh down on you before you reach any kind of destination with a piece of writing.

Like a character in a Fantasy story – rather than being lured by sirens to shipwreck on the rocky coast, we need to keep our heads turned toward the horizon and our course true.

Chip away at the stone.

On Seth’s words – Chimpwithcans as an audio project

Seth Godin is a huge inspiration for this blog. One of his most enduring messages is the project vs. job idea.

I love the idea of accountable projects vs. jobs that encourage deniability. Seth just riffed on this in his latest post: Your job vs. your project — Seth Godin’s Blog on marketing, tribes and respect

For Chimpswithcans, I have chosen to write my own blog and to deal with material that I love (audiophilia, music….and occasionally chimps perhaps). It means that there are no rules other than the ones I create for myself. No boss. A whole new world.

This blog is about audiophile culture, music, and technology surrounding this. It is my project and it will get better and better, day by day. There is a growing audiophile community in my hometown (Cape Town) that I hope to serve.

I will give reviews, opinions, thoughts, desires, facts, beliefs on audio and I look forward to it every day.