It's not the years - it's the mileage

Hello blogland!

Well you’ll have to forgive my lack of posts over the past week, but its back to busy times in my world. Amongst all of the filled days there is many an exciting tidbit to report on. I’m seconds away from hitting the road to start researching Cycling New Zealand for Lonely Planet. It’s going to be a great book for all sorts of reasons – both personal and professional. It’s a great excuse to get out and amongst my adopted home of NZ and scratch under the surface of some top destinations. Add onto that the prospect of getting to spend a good stack of time on the bike and it starts to verge on the “I can’t believe I get paid for this” territory. but before you start cursing me with the jealous rage you reserve for celebrity look-alikes and pro hockey players, remember that I do have to write the longest ever “what I did on my summer vacation” essay in history – 160,000 words is a lot, no matter how you spin it…

Also creeping up into the subconscious is the next trip over the sea – in just 3 short weeks I’m off to Japan! I wish I could say that I’m staying for a lengthy adventure, but this is a fleeting in-transit visit. I’ve got a week in country to eat sushi, ride bullet trains, look at big temples, feel really tall, sing karaoke and get lost amongst some pretty other worldly culture. Should be tops – and fear not I’ll be sure to spill the details on my cultural shocking experience – I may keep the karaoke to myself, but we’ll just have to see…

Japan is a stop off on the way to Canada – I’ll be in the great white north for the month of July – checking out the Stampede, visiting the fam and getting a second helping of summer (actually, it’s about my 4th in the past year, but who’s counting!).

With all this on the radar you’d think that I’d be running like a headless chicken around the show – but I’ve actually had the go-slows for the past few days. On Saturday I competed in a fantastic adventure race with my frequent adventure co-conspirator, Christian Martin. The race was a 12hour Rogaine event – for those not in the know, a Rogaine is a cross between orienteering and a scavenger hunt. You are given a topographical map with checkpoints marked on it. To help you find the checkpoints you are given a cryptic-crossword style clue to help you zero in on the exact location. All that’s left to do is cover the ground on foot and find the checkpoints, recording the codeword that’s printed at each stop along the way. Although it sounds easy, it’s the mileage and more accurately the elevation between the points that really adds up. The race lasts 12 hours and you can choose what checkpoints you go to, what route you take and how fast you travel. There is no way that a single team could possibly get to all the points, so there is a certain amount of strategy involved.

We gave it a good nudge and ran, climbed, huffed and puffed for the full 12 hours and were more then a bit excited for the clock to strike 9pm and call it done. Great day out in the mountains – despite the near zero temperature at night (yes, half the race was in the pitch dark) and the seemingly endless array of hills that we had to climb. We’re already looking forward to the NZ Rogaine championships in November, the Kepler Challenge Ultra-off-road-Marathon in December and some other long term goals that I’m not going to reveal just yet – watch this space!

Take it easy out there and remember these rather fitting words…

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did...So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain

Cheers
Scott

A Pipeline Under the Ocean

Every now and again I hear a story that makes me stop in my tracks, reverse and read again. Today was one of those days. This morning I was reading through a bunch of news reports on the web and stumbled across something that was just brilliant.

An British conceptual artist has built something that he calls a “telectroscope”, which put quite simply is a tunnel under the ocean connecting New York to London. At either end is a large portal where you can look through the tunnel and by using a series of mirrors you can see all the way across the Atlantic to the other side. The distance is far too great for audio to travel, but you can communicate with signs, waves and via mobile phone. The design of the portal reflects its aged origins, ornate, intricate and overbuilt. First conceived over 100 years ago – and with construction started shortly after, it has been the artist’s life work to bring the Verne’ian concept into reality. And luckily for the next few weeks people can go down to these locations an ocean apart and communicate under the ocean – using the technology of old...

Hold on a second. 100 year old tunnels? Mirrors? Portals? What the fuck? Ok, so there isn’t really a tunnel – and despite the fact that the artist won’t publicly admit it, the two ends are connected with a broadband connection and HD cameras. So it’s a fake – but what a glorious fake it is. This is where art and travel meet. Both are about communication, connection and a pinch of wonder thrown in the mix. Ordinary people are going down to the portal and making a connection with complete strangers from the other side of the world. They’re enchanted by the idea of the fantastic and sharing in something that brings us closer together. At its essence that is exactly what travel is – it’s a portal that brings us all closer together. Who cares about technology, it’s that face to face contact that reminds us that we are all connected by a pipeline that runs under the ocean.



http://www.tiscali.co.uk/telectroscope/home.php

Cheers,
Scott

Birds of a Feather – Fly Together

And just to prove that my wife and I are pretty similar sort of folks – here's Sophie’s video of her Canyon Swing. Pay special attention to when the jump-master (now is that a cool job title or what!?) almost “falls off” – the comedic value is priceless. You also have to love the name of the jump that she did – upside down and backwards is naturally called, “The Gimp Boy Goes to Hollywood”



Have fun out there,
Scott

The Reality of Risk - Caught on Tape

Risk is such a fascinating concept. There is an inner complexity to the idea that makes for some very interesting philosophical thinking, especially when you begin to integrate the element of fear. It does begin to sound like psycho-babble, dreamed up by some risk management student trying to eek out a theses topic while hoping to go climbing for a year. But the reality is something that most of us encounter more then you might at first think.

When defining risk, you really have to draw a line through the middle of the concept and divide it into either real or perceived risk. Real risk is walking a tightrope across the Grand Canyon with no safety net. The consequences for a mistake are enormous. Perceived risk is an activity where it “feel” like you are risking your life, but in fact you are safe the whole time (now I’m not going to venture into the concept of safety here – yes in the Buddhist sense we are all dying and you could just as easily cark-it falling off a chair in the kitchen. That is all a given and will be treated as so. Give up, move on) Perceived risk is riding a roller-coaster, going top-rope climbing or going bungy jumping.

Often times these two concepts get blurred by either the participants or more likely the proprietors of the business selling the experience. Deep in our primeval brain is the inane desire to risk our lives. Maybe it is a throwback to chasing sabre-tooth tigers for a meal or going “over-the-top” in battle. This is a concept that I’ll leave to the neuroscientists, evolutionary biologists and anthropologists amongst us. What I’m more interested in is the social side of this concept. There is a certain social status that is gained from participating in risk activities. Odd as it sounds, if you have the courage to go tandem skydiving (a very safe activity in reality) you are seen to be brave, cool and showered with envy. But if you do something that has a high degree of real risk, like perhaps jumping the fountains in front of Cesar’s Palace on a motor bike – people look at you like you’re crazy. Interesting isn’t it. By pretending to do risky things you are praised, but by actually doing risky things you are looked down upon (or at least misunderstood.)

What adds an interesting dimension to this is by observing people who don’t understand the difference between real and perceived risk. These are the people who really think that they might die when they go bungy jumping – and do it anyway! If you really thought that there was a good chance you might die while going for a day of skiing at a resort and you go anyway, what does that say about you? People who are willing to really risk their lives (at least in their own mind) all for fun – that’s really scary!

Then there are the other folks out there who have no concept of real risk – they’ve seen too many Indiana Jones movies and actually think that they are indestructible. These are the guys who jump off bridges into 3 feet of water and can’t believe it when they break their necks. Again kind of scary that they have no concept that their actions might have serious consequences. Which is worse; someone who has no regard for their own life, or someone who really thinks they are putting their life on the line when they go down that steep waterslide?

What brings all this together is the concept of fear. We are all afraid of heights – I’ve been a climber and a mountaineer for most of m life and I can safely say that EVERYONE is afraid of heights. Some people can suppress that fear, some can manage it and some choose to ignore it. Most people simply avoid it – we don’t look over the edge of the railing, climb the ladder to the top or enjoy hanging up the Christmas lights. In reality, fear is what keeps us safe. Without fear we would be cavalier when faced with the chance of falling from a great height. Here is an interesting thing to try – go for a walk on the sidewalk, walk down the street, walk all day, all month and count up how many times you spontaneously fall off the sidewalk. I’m guessing most people would total up a big fat zero on that one. Now what if you had to walk at the top of a cliff? I guarantee that almost everyone would be afraid that they would somehow spontaneously fall off the cliff. Interesting isn’t it.

What spurred on this train of thought is a fun little experience that I had over the weekend. I was lucky enough to go for a ride on the Shotover Canyon Swing here in Queenstown. Imagine a kid’s swing-set – on steroids! You are harnessed in, tied to a rope that is 110meters long and standing on a platform that is at the same height as the top of the swing. So when you jump off (or fall off) you swing in an arc that is 200m plus long and reach speeds of 150kph – it’s absolutely brilliant fun. And bloody scary to be honest – it’s classic perceived risk sort of stuff. When you jump off the platform it looks like you are jumping off a bridge in the act of offing yourself. Even though it is perfectly safe, it does get the heart going. Especially when they have fun with you like my friends at the swing did with me. Check out this video and judge for yourself if you’d be keen for the ride!



Have fun out there!
Scott

a little bit of extra motivation

I thought I'd share a fun little video today, seeing as it's Friday and a bit of giggle is never a bad thing. This is a bit of extra motivation to the writers out there, after all, you don't want to end up living in a van down by the river...

enjoy,
Scott

Scott Kennedy - Reissued

Here is another blast from the past – This story originally ran in The Source Magazine a couple of years ago and I think it rides side-car nicely with my recent, “it this the end of art?” post. I always liked how this one turned out, have a read and see if you agree. As an aside, you are reading the original, un-edited version. When it went to print, they changed the title to,”Screw Your Mobile” apparently; the F-word was a no-no. Actually that brings me to a quote that I read today that I thought I’d share with you too. If anybody is the maestro of the word fuck it is Mr. David Mamet. He’s an amazing playwright and screen writer who has a swagger not to be fucked with (sorry couldn’t resist that one) check out the film, “Glengarry Glen Ross” if you haven’t seen it before, it’s brilliant.

"Y’know, I grew up in a different generation. I grew up after World War II, and boys did different things in those days. You went camping. You went hunting. You boxed. And the image of a writer, to someone starting off in those days was not some schmuck who went to graduate school. It was Jack London, Nelson Algren, Ernest Hemingway. Especially coming from Chicago–a writer was a knock-around guy. Someone who got a job as a reporter or drove a cab. I think the reason there are a lot of novels about How Mean My Mother Was to Me and all that shit is because the writers may have learned something called ‘technique,’ but they’ve neglected to have a life. What the fuck are they gonna write about?" - David Mamet

Fuck your mobile
By: Scott Kennedy

You can see it everywhere, even in our microtropolis of Queenstown. Bubbling through our pseudo urban café culture you see it every day. You’ll be sitting there enjoying your $7 trim-soy-chai-mocca-latte when you hear a sound from across the coffee house. Sounding like R2-D2 playing early 90’s German techno music, it is the unmistakable ring of a mobile phone.

Like gunslingers of the old west everyone instinctively reaches for their hip wondering if it is their call. But in the end only one lucky contestant is the winner, despite thinking to himself that the theme from Beverly Hills Cop sounded way cooler when he played it at home.

How did this all come about? When did cell phones become standard issue to every man, woman and child around? Mobiles have been around for a while now, I can still remember my Dad’s first one. It looked like a WWII field radio; cost six bucks a minute to call down the street and the reception was so bad it sounded like you were calling Bangladesh during an electrical storm.

As the years went by the phones improved and as their size decreased their popularity exploded. They quickly went from unique to cool to mandatory seemingly overnight. It would seem impossible to function in our modern world without a mobile.

Phones aren’t just phones anymore. They now come standard with video cameras, so you can take up to 5 seconds of useless home movie. Digital cameras come standard too, so you can take beautiful photographs that can be enlarged up to wallet size without distortion. Apparently some mobiles still allow you to place telephone calls to other phones as a surprise and delight feature.

What truly disturbs me is our society’s need to be in constant communication with the outside world. Are we really that important? Is there some earth shattering news that we need to be available for 24/7? I mean unless you are an expectant father or a secret agent is this really necessary? For twenty thousand years we lived without this ability and we seemed to have muddled through. What has changed?

Have we become that lacking in self-esteem that we have to have our friends reaffirm their friendship fifty times a day? What if we miss their call? They may decide not to like us anymore! Do we need that constant flow of info to somehow feel a part of the greater world?

You hear stories of people sending a thousand TXT messages in a month. My God, that’s like thirty a day! Sure the car might break down and you have to help remotely deliver a baby but that still leaves 28 messages to send. What is really that important? Maybe I need to get out more but even Fonze doesn’t have thirty cool experiences a day. Not to mention the systematic destruction of the English language that TXT speak is doing. In a few years we will be writing to each other in binary, way simpler than using all of those pesky letters.

The truth is most of the chatter and the TXT’s are completely useless wastes of time. Micro updates of our average, usual days. Before we had cell phones if we needed to talk to someone we would give them a call at home. If they weren’t there we might call back if it was important, or maybe even leave a message to have them call us, when they got home. Not anymore, we need to talk to them now, like right now. Doesn’t matter if they are in a meeting, on a date, driving their car of on the ski field, they must drop all for the almighty call.

Has the world sped up so much that we could miss something vitally important if we are unreachable for an hour or two? Or is all this communication for the sake of communications sake. Like when they first came up with movie cameras and made films about horses running and other now boring stuff. Are we simply doing it because we can?

My favourite thing that I heard recently is about this web site that teaches you how to re-program your phone. It teaches you how to program your phone to vibrate for up to an hour, or as long as the battery lasts. Why you ask? Well to turn it into a sex toy of course. I have heard of people sleeping with their phones, well now you can actually, “sleep with your phone.”

Makes perfect sense to me, the one thing in your life that you hold near and dear. The one thing that you take everywhere, the thing you hold in your hand with baited breathe. The most meaningful long-term relationship you have, the thing you love more than anything or anyone. Well now thanks to modern technology you can go all the way, you can actually consummate your mobile phone relationship.

Batting a Thousand

Scott in Zanzibar

A thousand seems like allot, well at least to me it does. Since the re-launch of my blog 6 months ago, just over a thousand people have checked it out. I think that’s pretty cool. Sure people who share the same last name as me likely account for about 850 of those, but still, I’m pretty stoked. So thanks for reading, looking at the pics and coming back for more. I’ll keep going as long as people are happy to read, and by the looks of it, I better get off my ass and keep the content flowing!

Thanks again everybody!
Cheers
Scott

Is Graffiti Art?

It’s the great debate in street art; is spray paint on concrete, brick and board; art, or is it just mischief? Does it depend upon the generation of the viewer, the subject matter or the consent of the “canvas” owner? Like all art the validity and the worth is entirely up to the viewer. There isn’t a universally recognised system assigning some sort of numeric value for art. You can’t look in a directory and see that the Mona Lisa is a 97.5, that drawing you did of a cow in the third grade a 23 and Castro stencilled onto a bus shelter a N/A. Thankfully beauty and art really is in the eye of the beholder. Where some people see vandalism, defacement and angst-fuelled youth looking for kicks – others see more, much, much more. In my mind it’s the cave drawings of the 21st century.

Scoff if you will – but remember that these artists are giving away their art, they are not selling it. They are creating art for the sake of art - all awhile commercial art is becoming more and more homogenized, these artists are truly looking outside the square and pushing the boundaries of artistic, and often politically fuelled, expression.

Two things you must know – one is a person and the other is a term. Let’s start with the terminology. Tagging – this isn’t art. This is when some guy comes and spray paints his name on some random wall, bus shelter or any space – this is the graffiti that gives all gorilla art a bad name. Tagging looks like shit, it’s the product of idiotic vandals that should be made to clean it up – this isn’t the art that I love, don’t get them confused.

The second thing you need to know is a name – Banksy. Banksy is a superstar in the world of urban art. He’s exhibited in the Louvre, The Tate and The Met. His art has transcended the medium and has validated urban art as a genre in many ways – he is the Picasso of the gorilla art world. And the pièce de résistance – nobody knows who he is…

Have a look at these pieces and see if you still think this is “graffiti”…



http://www.banksy.co.uk/menu.html

Cheers,
Scott

Three Cool Cities Three Cool Shots

A great city is like a living beast – there is something intangible, greater then the sum of parts. The city takes on a life of its own. A personality grows from within and comes to life. Love em or hate em, big cities are something to behold… Here are three pictures of three very different, very cool cities... enjoy!

Paris France - Photo by SK

New York City - Photo by SK

Dubai - unknown photographer

Have fun out there,

Scott

Scott Kennedy - Reissued

I thought I would share this blast from the past with everybody. I wrote this piece for The Source Magazine – the local hipster entertainment paper here in Queenstown (it’s the sort of paper you can say “fuck” and get away with it..) what brought it to mind recently was that the band in the piece - dDub has recently put out a new album and it’s fantastic (check out http://www.ddub.co.nz/ if you get the chance) and never pass up the chance to see them perform live… anyway this story is about 2 years old now and I was always happy with how it turned out (and so was the band apparently). There is nothing like the power of live music – that connection that you have with the band, the music and the audience can make for the best night of your life…. Enjoy!

I See a Sign
By: Scott Kennedy

Bono said it best so many years ago when he said the immortal words, “all you need is a red guitar, three chords and the truth” There is something about music that can mean so much more then the simple spoken word. And to hear that music performed live takes that communication to a whole new level. Perhaps my mind has circled around this idea lately as I have seen dDub twice in so many Saturday nights perform in Queenstown. When a band is on, when the changes are tight and they speak to you in a way where the line between the band and the audience becomes a blur, the experience changes from simply listening to music to something completely different.

Much to the collective enjoyment of everyone who shelled out for Jazz Night and those who packed into a sweaty Dux dance floor, dDub didn’t disappoint. It can be said that every live act has a reach within the crowd. By meaning that there is line within the audience that everyone within that reach is experiencing a different show then everyone beyond it. Some times it has to do with volume or the nature of the crowd. But more often then not it is a direct reflection on the band. Some groups can pull an audience in and make you feel like they are playing just for you. A good band can extend that circle maybe ten rows back, a great band fifteen and the amazing ones can bring everyone along, including the dish-pig out back.

There are moments in a great show where your heart beats to the rhythm of the kick drum. The bass line kicks in and you can’t help but move your feet, then the guitar breathes to life. Like an E-chord flavored bolt of lightning it goes through you like shock treatment. You are the music. You can’t tell where the band ends and you begin. Then the words are taken from your mouth and the singer tells the world. There is poetry to the world and a brotherhood amongst the seething mass of humanity that you belong. A brotherhood of instant karma where you know that this is a moment of your life that you have waited for.

I have seen it before, in small venues where a band with a huge stage presence can get the place rocking. I’ve seen the real pros do it too. I was there when twenty thousand people exploded to sound of the opening notes of “Even Flow” in the hay day of Pearl Jam. I sung with sixty thousand of my closest friends to “Where the Streets Have no Name” in a stadium made for football that U2 had made their own. But there is something special to be in a little place where the band blows a hole in the back wall.

All too often in this world where the DJ has taken over from the live act we are content to dance the night away to the sound of a record spinning. Now don’t get me wrong, a good DJ can rock a house and burst a dance floor. But there is something intangible about a group of people all in sync making music, right there, right now, just for us. There is that sense of danger that at any moment everything could change, they could change the song, they could fuck it up, they could play something new that nobody has ever heard before. That intimacy, where everyone is within that moment, is the missing ingredient that makes a great show somehow more grand then the sum of all its parts.

This all brings me back to dDub. There was electricity in the air at those gigs. A feeling that we were all on the edge of something great. We were seeing a band that was about to be everybody else’s favorite band. You couldn’t help but move, and be moved. They ruled the stage and for those few hours we felt like we were all living out the same life. The crowd, the band, everyone linked by music that was flowing through us all.

Then almost as quick as it started, it was over. The silence was painful and it was time to go home. Still buzzing, every moment away from the show separates us a bit more. We will have to be content with the residual buzz, the memories and the gentle hum in my ears until we gather again for the next one. Where we will become one again.

cheers,

Scott