From Kahlila's diary, direct from 1972! just to set the stage
I was listening to Cliff Richard singing “Sing a Song of Freedom” — strange, man, that so many don’t realise they’ve got to free themselves first. Which is what I have to do.
My mind and soul are as free as they can be while I’m at home, but physically I’m not released.
~ ~ ~
I interviewed a folk singer the other day and had a great talk to her …
She really digs Pentangle, Magna Carta etc.
~ ~ ~
New Year was a bloody wash-out!
Carol’s party and so many bloody shits there. One had volunteered to go into the army.
Hard to believe how bloody thick some people are.
There was one dear wee guy there — I guess he was about 15.
His New Year resolution was to give up smoking, so I talked him into having a cigarette at 5 past 12. I am just drawn to wee guys like that.
They didn’t really dig Uriah Heep at that party and everyone ended up singing folk.
I fell asleep, then decided I better go home about 2am.
There was this wee girl next door yelling out “Happy New Peanuts”, which seemed hilariously funny.
Next day Mike phoned, insisting I go to his party, but I was buggered.
Then wee Benay rang — huge surprise. Poor wee Benay must be so lonely, he’s so helpless and just can’t dig western society.
Then he arrived when I was asleep so I had to scramble out of bed.I really can’t get through to him any more.
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Rud had a cool time at Wanaka — thought he was at Woodstock. Man I can see it too.
I was there one January (Wanaka, not Woodstock) — when I was about 14 — and met this cat in the water and we went out that night on his bike.
Bloody sick actual. First place we stopped he wanted to kiss me and I wouldn’t let him.
Ended up near enough to making it on the beach two or three hours later in the moonlight.
My workmate Jeff had a real scene at Queenstown cos Blerta were there and they sound so far out, I can’t tell you.
A big busload of musos touring round anywhere they want for the summer — from all sorts of groups with their chicks and kids.
And they do shows for kids, make films, hold poetry readings, all sorts of cool things, as well as their music — which is really good Uriah Heep rock.
At night in the pubs they had nude dancing and the cops took no notice.
A local agent rang and woke me with his big idea — to bring Blerta down here. That was a gas, man.
The Blerta guys said yea, we’ll come down if you can get us a place.
So now I’m an entrepreneur.
St John’s church grounds — now that would be the coolest place they could go. So I rang Archdeacon Harbour very gingerly.
Man, I mean this has never been done before in Invercargill and all the olds consider them dirty hippies.
But he was really cool. He’d never even heard of Blerta but his immediate reaction was “of course you can”. Man I was stoked.
Bruno Lawrence rang and he thought the church scene was really far out. He was genuine and beautifully kind and real.
I’m more one of the Blerta crowd than a bloody writer, if you can dig what I mean.
A matter of attitude, you know? Man, people can be so beautiful.
Anyway, I walked in there with my brother Murray and Corben Simpson was up there with his guitar, Bruno at the drums, Chris Seresin at the electric piano — what a gentle little hippie he is — and another guy, Alan Moon, at organ, who looked like Chris’s twin brother. And Geoff Murphy at the mike.
So they did an afternoon show, showing kids what music’s all about. They were so kind and cool to them.
As they played all the Blerta children were let loose in the hall.
They are incredible — born into music and so soulful and expressive.
Beautiful children and babies running around naked and long-haired and happy.
After the show I just talked to some of the cats, then went to work (I work a night shift at a newspaper).
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Rud and I split work about 12.30pm and flew round to the YM just as everything was being packed up.
Then that dear wee Alan Moon came up to me. I said “hi” when I saw him and he smiled like a wee boy.
Rud said he wanted to go back to work, since nothing was happening, so I said impulsively that I’d go too. But shit, it was such an anti-climax.
I read poetry to cheer myself up.
Peace, my children, these things happen.
God bless my gentle hippie guy, Alan. Let him feel my warmth, he’s very beautiful.
I feel a communication with him now. Alan, you are right there, I am rising up ………..
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A big storm brewed up at work when I was told I was to be replaced as cables sub-editor.
I know for a fact that I’ve done a bloody sight more for the paper than my replacement ever will, even though he’s twice my age.
It stinks. Some of my workmates have been abused by him and no-one likes him except his bloody poofter friends.
It’s not so much his homo crap that annoys me but his gushy manner.
Even Mum told me some women she knows play golf with him and apparently he’s the laughung stock of the club — he bends down to the ball like a woman in a mini-skirt.
~ ~ ~
If I was a guy, man, I’d fuck the life out of so many sluts and virgins and never give a bloody damn.
When guys talk like that I understand and wish to God I could do the same.
If only girls had something they could drive into bastards to make them ache.
