The Afterword

Tag: music

  • Five Apps, One Common Thread

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    Peter
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    What are your favourite 5 apps on your phone? These are the five apps that get the biggest workout on my phone: Kindle, AntennaPod, Australian Newspapers, BBC Sport and YT Music. Looking at the list, I realise they have something in common. They are not primarily endless feeds engineered to keep me there. They all…

  • Narara Music Festival

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    Peter
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    How did you meet your significant other? We really met at a music festival over forty years ago. We had crossed paths before. We were both on a beach mission team at Ulladulla on the South Coast of NSW. We had a common friend, and I remember her singing one night in a coffee shop.…

  • The Ideals We Keep

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    Peter
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    What’s a song lyric that has stuck with you forever? I was at university when Jackson Browne released The Pretender. There was a music room where people supposedly went to study, although Jackson Browne’s For Everyman and Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark seemed to be permanently playing. I often went there when I had a…

  • More or Less

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    Peter
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    What do you love now, that you hated when you were younger? When I was younger, more seemed better. I loved to read, and building a library was something I valued. Book by book, shelf by shelf, I watched the collection grow. There was satisfaction in it. A growing library felt like a sign of…

  • Boogie Wonderland

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    Peter
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    What’s a song that always puts you in a good mood? I’m a little surprised, but the first song that comes to mind is Earth, Wind & Fire’s Boogie Wonderland. It is not really my kind of music. At least, it is not the kind of song that I would play by choice, but when…

  • The Festival That Failed

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    Peter
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    What is the best concert you have been to? The best concert I have ever been to was Narara Music Festival, on the Central Coast of NSW, at the end of January 1984. It had a great line-up. INXS. Mondo Rock. Sandii & the Sunsetz. Simple Minds. The Pretenders. Talking Heads. Eurythmics. Cold Chisel. Australian…

  • Five Things That Bring Me Happiness

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    Peter
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    What are 5 everyday things that bring you happiness? What brings me happiness is not usually anything dramatic. More often, it is the ordinary things I return to again and again, the parts of life that make me feel most alive. Nature is one of them. I love bushland. Bushwalking is a great source of…

  • The Things I Come Back To

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    Peter
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    What strategies do you use to cope with negative feelings? I don’t have a toolkit for coping with negative feelings, at least not in any formal sense, but I do know what fits the way I am wired. Over time I have learned to return to a few simple things. Prayer is one of them.…

  • The Day Radio Beat Homework

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    Peter
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    You get some great, amazingly fantastic news. What’s the first thing you do? I tell the right person first. Not by email. Not by text. No social media announcements. If it’s truly great news, it deserves a voice. It deserves someone on the other end who can hear it properly — and share the moment…

  • Sharing What You Love

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    Peter
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    What was the last thing you did for play or fun? We went to the Sydney Opera House a few weeks ago to see Paul Dempsey, frontman of Something for Kate, on his Shotgun Karaoke Vol. II national tour. An acoustic concert. Just him and a guitar. At one point he was joined on stage…

  • The Komodo Dragon

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    Peter
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    What is something others do that sparks your admiration? I’ve spent enough years teaching performing artists to know that they move through the world differently. They don’t just perform something—they become it. And that has always sparked my admiration. Music was my first window into this. I’ve watched musicians touch the human soul with a…

  • Nearly 30 Years On

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    Peter
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    What’s your all-time favourite album? That’s a hard question to answer. It depends on the day, it depends on the mood, it depends on the occasion. There could have been any number of albums I might have chosen. Rather than overthink it, I went with the first album that came to mind: Loreena McKennitt’s The…

  • Ziggy’s Party

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    Peter
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    Yesterday we celebrated Ziggy’s 6th birthday. Ziggy, for those who don’t know, is a cavoodle who has left paw prints on the heart of our college since the day he arrived. His story is already legendary: at just 12 weeks old, his owner was encouraged to let him sleep outside. The fences were secure, but…

  • My Ideal Week: A Musical Passage

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    Peter
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    Monday – The Overture (Maestoso)The curtain rises, and the score begins with steady, determined chords. Monday is planning day, where the motifs of the week are laid down. Meetings cluster like brass fanfares, decisions gather like rolling timpani. It is fresh and expectant, but also weighty—anticipating all that is to come. Tuesday – The Allegro…

  • How Do I Relax? A Soundtrack

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    Peter
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    If you asked me how I relax, I wouldn’t begin with a chair or a cup of tea. I’d begin with music. My relaxation comes with a soundtrack, one that slows the pulse, deepens the breath, and makes time feel longer than it really is. Silence has its place, but music often does what silence…

  • The Difference Between Grace and Guilt

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    Peter
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    The last thing I searched for was an article called “The Broken Grace of Leonard Cohen.” I was thinking about Cohen’s views about God after a funny mix-up in conversation. Someone said that “Into My Arms”—the song about an “Interventionist God”—was Leonard Cohen’s. It isn’t. It belongs to Nick Cave. And while it mentions God,…

  • Free as a Brat

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    Peter
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    For many, the announcement of a “Word of the Year” might feel trivial, especially when the chosen word is “brat.” It’s not about war, policy, climate crisis, or scientific breakthroughs. It’s a cultural blip—mildly amusing at best, eye-roll-inducing at worst. The redefinition of “brat”—from spoiled child to a blend of chaotic confidence, hedonism, and emotional…

  • Just Passing It On

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    Peter
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    It wasn’t really my kindness, not in the way people usually mean it. Two years ago, a student from China arrived at our college.Shy, polite, still finding his feet — and his English.One Monday morning he came to see me, agitated and afraid.The story took time to piece together:he’d been caught in an online scam,forced…

  • Conversations with a Restless Library

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    Peter
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    I don’t curate.I don’t pre-select.I don’t build productivity playlists. I just hit shuffle on my entire music library and wait to see what sort of mood it’s in. Some days, it’s a model colleague — thoughtful, supportive, gently nudging me into creative flow.Other days, it behaves like a caffeinated record-store assistant with a point to…

  • What Is Your Favorite Genre of Music? It depends on the day. And sometimes, it is a surprise.

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    Peter
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    Some people have a favourite genre like they have a favourite coffee order — fixed, dependable, always the same. I’m not one of those people. For me, music is mood. It’s memory. It’s atmosphere and longing and curiosity all rolled together. My listening habits are not about allegiance to a particular genre but about what…