...because there is no room for peace and quiet in your life any more. There must be music on a big screen screaming at you while in the supermarket like you are at a concert venue instead of just quietly going about your business shopping for groceries; there must be music at your place of work repeating the exact same songs every day twice a day for the entirety of your working week for three months on end; there must be music blasting from a loud speaker at your job site annoying every co-worker and neighbour who doesn't like your music choices; there must be your own choice of music blasting at a volume to drown out somebody else's music; there must be music interrupting your ability to read in the bookshop you are trying to find a book to buy at; there must be music, there must be music, and it must keep playing so you can avoid that god-awful thing called silence, or peace and quiet, that you experienced once in your life and you were so traumatised by that you swore never to be subjected to that peace and quiet ever again. 

I walked into the New World supermarket at 279 Wakefield Street, Te Aro, Wellington, and was subjected to John Farnham on, not just one, but two big screens, as though I was invited to join in and chant "You're the voice, try and understand it, make a noise and make it cleaaaa-earrr-earrr..." when all I was there for was to buy groceries. 

• Dear New World: "Is there not already enough noise with the beeping of checkout counters, the clanging of trolleys, the voice on the loudspeaker?" 

Now every place I patronise has decided that it wants to create an atmosphere of noise, produced by music that does not suit my tastes, and often doesn't suit the actual decor of the retail outlet that plays it. Not music gently playing in the background, subtle, and soothing, but music loud and obnoxious without any care about how I feel as a paying customer. 

I get that the Customer Service Representatives want to be able to enjoy their work environment, but my question is: How can they enjoy having the exact same songs played over and over without getting insanely sick of it? The other question, is if they work with people who have different music tastes, is it acceptable that one person be allowed to enjoy their work environment while the other suffers? 

We all have different music tastes, and to be honest, even I wouldn't want to be subjected to the bands I love day in and day out on an eternal repeat mode. An experience I had last year subjected me to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath in a Wellington cafe. Great! I thought, Music I love. But it was so loud that I couldn't hear my own mother talking to me. This is what I don't get. How does loud music encourage customers to walk into a store? 

• Is it just me that has overly sensitive hearing? 
• Is it just me that doesn't want loud music interrupting every moment?
• Is it just me that finds conversation difficult with loud music overlapping every sentence? 
• Is this just a generational thing? 
• Is this a consequence of growing up on farms vs. growing up in cities?
• Is this the result of children being subjected to an external noise source, like a TV, or music, being played all day in their home environment? 

In Wellington city, it is very hard, if not impossible, to find a retail outlet that doesn't play obnoxiously noisy music. Even libraries, those once-upon-a-time havens of peace and quiet, have become obsessively noisy in recent years. All I want is cafe to sit in and drink my cappuccino in peace. But no such luck.

The city is all just noise, noise, noise, and more noise. When it tries to add music as a contrast to the noise, as a way of creating a sound environment that attempts to relax or bring joy to the citizens lives, it only creates more noise. Because now the music is competing to rise above the noise, and it all joins together in a cacophony of irritating, trauma-inducing, pain. 
 
That is what I am left experiencing in the city: Pain.

Look, I may be anti-advertising, but every person has their limits: 

(Please contact me if you need me to promote this product! :-D )

My perfect cafe doesn't play easy-listening jazz endlessly like a malfunctioning public toilet. It allows a piece of music to be played, to end, and then to let the silences breathe and become a functioning part of the atmosphere.

And then, the customer might suddenly notice some strings playing out a tune, before an orchestral tutti bounces a response, and the Presto from Mozart's Linz Symphony brings a new dimension to the cafe experience.

Seven minutes later we sit with the sounds of the shop again: the customers coming and going, the patrons in gentle chatter, the barista banging, and perhaps some clanking from the kitchen. All normal and 'natural' sounds of the environment we have created. 

When life without background music starts to feel a little too weird, a little 'too' quiet, the opening brushes of Take Five breaks the perceived silence. Five minutes later, and for five minutes afterwards, we sit with the memory of Jazz's all-time biggest selling single caressing our minds.

Time passes, and you and the attendants are left with a clean slate to think through some thoughts, to not be aggravated by music you don't like, or don't want to hear. And you may go now, knowing that you can always come back and sit without music, and maybe hear some music along the path of sitting and sipping.

Maybe then, you might hear quietly in the background the opening buzz of 'Pushit' by Tool, or the electronic pulse of 'Electric Dream' by Shapeshifter, maybe Avril Lavigne, or even The Beach Boys.

The music does sit in the background, but it also does not intrude, and it doesn't niggle and upset continuously like an earworm in the back of your brain. The point is never to override the calm spaces, but to momentarily relieve the quiet and provide alternative listening, maybe a temporary mood resetting; but to always return to the quiet space that brings calm and relaxation that musical sounds can never do.

Cafes are already noisy. And the world we have created adds to all that noise. Music in the background, whether easy-listening or hard-listening just adds up to more noise. Sound on top of sound doesn't improve, or cancel out noise. Sound layered on top of sounds create noise.

There is never any true quiet, but non-musical moments help to cleanse the palette.

As I got to know my partner’s reading habits, I began to realise there was a massive gap in her reading of science fiction. So I decided to make amends to this with the idea of recommending all the great classics, or the ones that I think still hold up, such as The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester) and Gateway (Frederick Pohl).

I began compiling my list pretty quickly, but as soon as I declared my intentions, she quickly quipped “I don’t want to be reading a bunch of ‘lonely men in space’ books.”

I was nothing short of horrified at her shallow judgement of such great past literature.

But then I had a little think.

And much like the trope of damsel in distress, or women in refrigerator, I did realise there was some truth to her perception of the genre. After all, it had been dominated mainly by heterosexual white men, and even authors like Arthur C. Clarke, who was by all accounts gay, did little for the plight of women in space. Of course, there were women writers all along, like C.L. Moore, Andre Norton, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Kate Wilhelm, but by and large SF was written for males and featured male characters with little input from female characters. And the story of James Tiptree Jr., if you don't know, begins with a woman, Alice Sheldon, writing under a male name to avoid attention for being a woman writer.

When I looked at the books that I was recommending, I realised that many of them could be distilled down to a simple 'lonely man in space' blurb. So, here’s my list of great, and maybe not so great, books from the fields of Science-Fiction and Fantasy distilled down to the most simplistic of blurbs.

~//~

The Stars My Destination (Alfred Bester)
    • Lonely man in cold space seeks hot revenge.


Star King (Jack Vance)
    • Lonely man in space starts pogrom of revenge on interstellar crime bosses.


Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
    • Lonely boy in space commits genocide.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Philip K. Dick)
    • Lonely cop commits android genocide.


Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
    • Lonely fireman commits book-genocide.


Dune (Frank Herbert)
    • Lonely man on desert planet becomes messiah. Later he commits genocide.


Dune: House Atreides (Brian Herbert)
    • Lonely son commits patricide.


Gateway (Frederik Pohl)
    • Lonely man on earth recounts lonely time in space to robot psychologist.


Beyond Apollo (Barry N. Malzberg)
    • Lonely man on earth writes autobiography about being a lonely man in space.


The Voyage of the Space Beagle (A.E. van Vogt)
    • Lonely man at typewriter sues 20th Century Fox for plagiarism.


Harlan Ellison (Harlan Ellison)
    • Lonely man at typewriter sues everyone for plagiarism.


A Time of Changes (Robert Silverberg)
    • Lonely man on planet takes drugs to avoid loneliness.


Solaris (Stanisław Lem)
    • Lonely man on earth visits lonely planet in space to escape lonely memories of dead wife.


The World of Null-A (A.E. van Vogt)
    • Lonely man with big brain tests big brained leaders to prove his big brain is even bigger than their big brains.


Elric of Melniboné (Michael Moorcock)
    • Lonely weak albino emperor discovers lonely talking sword that turns him into lonely strong albino emperor.


Rendezvous with Rama (Arthur C. Clarke)
    • Lonely men in space explore lonely cylinder in space.


Steel Beach (John Varley)
    • Lonely and bored man (later woman) on moon colony.


I am Legend (Richard Matheson)
    • Lonely last man on earth invents zombie genre.


The Day of the Triffids (John Wyndham)
    • Lonely man runs away from man-eating plants. (I sense some kind of metaphor growing out of this one...)


Neuromancer (William Gibson)
    • Lonely keyboard-warrior hacks computers.


Foundation (Isaac Asimov)
    • Lonely man combines science and psychology to predict the downfall of the first galactic empire.


Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein)
    • Lonely martian-man returns to earth and freaks even the hippies out.


Way Station (Clifford D. Simak)
    • Lonely man in space station has tea and biscuits with alien visitors.


Hospital Station (James White)
    • Lonely man doctor in space hospital unable to relate to human female seeks solace in alien patients.


More than Human (Theodore Sturgeon)
    • Lonely young man discovers how to not be lonely by talking to other people.


~//~

It is interesting that there is a certain preponderance for men to write about men in a singular sense, especially across the genre of Science Fiction. More so in the pulp category which relies on the male fantasy of conquering aliens, planets, and winning the affections of females. When women wrote in the same setting, they often followed the same rules and guidelines, even with female leads. The rise of the 60s counter-culture and the writings of James Tiptree Jr., Ursula Le Guin, and Joanna Russ, saw a change in how women's roles in SF should be perceived.

But still, the men wrote about men. As it were.
And space is a lonely environment. There aren't exactly a multitude of space party books...

For most who are aware and critical of gender roles, it is relatively common knowledge that men have been taught by a culture of masculinity to be ashamed of their feelings, and as a consequence there is a tendency to recoil into oneself, or take the opposite route and put on a façade of extravagance or extrovert behaviour (often in the form of machismo). There is loneliness in a physical space, as well as loneliness in a crowd, and when men reach out they aren't aligning themselves with the human experience, but the male experience of being lonely. In Science Fiction their dreams of freedom could be realised. In Science Fiction their dreams of connecting with fellow men could be realised.

This sounds belittling of the genre as an exercise in thought. There is a great intellectual pursuit in Science Fiction that can be found in some of the best male writers like Olaf Stapledon, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Stanisław Lem, and Frank Herbert; while others, like Jack Vance, who would garden worlds, populated their planets with love and care. But for what reason was that intellectual pursuit, that love and care, not extended out to the female characters?

It's impossible to believe that male writers can't empathise. Even after the year 2000, I still see reviews of males writing one-dimensional women. Are they still so out of touch with their own feelings?

My partner suggests a way to look at one aspect of male fragility: "There's a difference between being able to express feelings and working with someone to cure loneliness. When these particular men get lonely they try to define the social norm on their own terms and expect others to fit in with that. And if they can't fit in, well it's exclusion and rejection for that person - my way or the highway." I still see these attitudes existing in men of my own generation, which I find disappointing.

Anyway, some of these authors are disappointing too, but the books as ideas and concepts are almost always interesting.

I really value studies like this. Even if it's a personal science experiment, the reason for doing it is a symptom of the world that has been created around us. It is my view that we have created a society of noise, and we pile music on top of the noise to try to hide, or obfuscate, it. But if the music isn't sound you want to hear, then it too becomes extra noise on top of the noise. Music used to be listened to as entertainment, as well as an art-form. Although that still exists, music is available at any time, and anywhere, and often in the spaces we might not want to hear it (the beach, or a forest walk, for example). We become accustomed to hearing music all the time, and then we become unable to separate ourselves from being able to listen to music - not being able to deal with silence, for example, because it's a strange and unknown environment.

Recently I was asked to write a 1000 word article about living in my car as an author. For publication, the article was edited down to 868 words, cutting out one of the best sections of the original piece for two basic sentences:

• 'Oh and I gew a beard. I began to look like someone who lived in their car.' [sic]

Regardless, thank you to the editor for accepting and publishing - the article generated much interest and I received online booksales as a result. Truly grateful.

You can read the published version in the link below.

Here is the full piece as I submitted with editing help from my publicist acting as a pre-submission editor:

This Wasn’t a Lifestyle Choice

Earlier this year I attended a music gig at the Ruby Bay Theatre in Mapua and struck up a conversation with someone during the intermission. When I told them that I live in my car because I can’t afford rent or power costs, their candid response took me a little by surprise: “You don’t look like someone who lives in their car.”
       What is someone who lives in their car supposed to look like?
       Perhaps a born-again hippy with retro ‘60s bell-bottoms and groovy peace signs all over their denim jacket, or maybe of a ragged-clothed homeless person.
       For me, deciding to live in my car was not a lifestyle choice. It was born out of necessity. I had two options: Take a room that was more expensive than my current income could afford and hope my job hours would increase, or move into my car and dispense with the struggle to pay rent completely. The year was 2018 and I was at a point in my life where the renting treadmill was beginning to creak very loudly. I no longer wanted to repeat the experience of the last 20 years: moving from house to house, getting frustrated with flatmates, getting kicked out of my paid residence because the owner didn’t want me on the property during the daytime. None of these flats, rooms, or sleep-outs, ever felt like a home.
       I made a snap decision. “I’m going to start living in my car.”
       There are people who choose this lifestyle because it represents a throwback to a simpler life; others who have been made homeless out of rising rental costs that outstrip their wages; some through retirement dreams of travelling. Others, like me, who just find it cost-effective and are finally able to save money.
       I made my new home on the side of The Motueka River, 10km out of town, where the initial struggles to stay warm during winter were overcome with many layers of blankets and clothing (there were mornings I actually woke up sweating). I did not have a house-bus, a motorhome, or a van: I had a Nissan Cefiro 4-door sedan. Initially, I could only put the passenger seat partway down to sleep on because my belongings took up so much space in the back seat.
       One of my first goals was to get valuable items like my stereo, computer, and PlayStation out of the car – anything that would tempt thieves to break in. I managed to palm these off to friends. Once that was achieved, I began organising the car (honestly, like any kind of housework, something that never ends) and got a basic setup in the back seats and boot worked out with an op-shop fry pan (still going strong), cooking equipment, and clothing tucked into their own space.
       I didn’t know camping gas-cookers even existed, so was forced into doing something I had never done before: build a campfire (if only to get me started with a morning coffee). It took experimentation and lots of failures to get something capable of frying up potatoes, broccoli, and kumara over a fire.
       For the next six months, I walked and walked, wrote and wrote, talked to locals who came down to the river, bought food from foodstalls at the end of driveways – experienced life like I had never imagined I would. This was something completely different and unexpected, and proved just how capable I could be when plans are thrown out the window.

Having said all that, once I was on the riverside without a job to maintain a respectable appearance for, I did make one other snap decision: With a click of the fingers and a determined swing of a balled up fist, I said out loud to the swallows and fantails “I’m gonna grow me a beard!”
       And I did! A big bushy, unkempt bed that managed to attract only the most true-hearted of women. And thus, the adventures of W.F. Stubbs and Miss Sherlock began...
       So, at least for a while there, maybe I did look like someone who lived in their car.

Since 2018, I have upgraded to a stationwagon and can lie down in the back with my legs stretched out. I have a reading-light above me with two or three books at my side to choose as nightly reading, or a laptop for watching films on. I have enough storage space sectioned off alongside my bedding for two plastic clothes boxes, and at the end of these are the fry pans and cooking equipment. I cook over a hand-built campfire made from river rocks, and if it is wet or raining and I have shelter, I cook from the back of my car with a gas-cooker. If there is no shelter, then I will happily book a room in a motel or hostel (and do look for house-sitting options as well).
       Every night when I snuggle into my duvet and blankets with layers of soft bedding beneath me, I feel pleasantly satisfied and filled with emotional warmth that I have finally created a home that is my own. It may not be a house with room to stand or roam around in, but that is what outside is for. This is what I love the most about my living arrangement: that when I need to stand up, I am outside. And I have never spent so much time outside in the beauty of the natural world since I was a child growing up on farms.

Has this style of living, after six years of committing to it, finally become a lifestyle choice? Would I choose a house if I could? I have wrestled with these questions, and I can honestly say that yes, when those months of cold weather arrive each year, I would choose a house. But once Spring and Summer return to the lands, I welcome this life of living in a car I have created.


    • 07th August, 2024; Richmond

The Nelson Mail featured a profile and interview of myself and my choice to live in my car as a front page article in the local Nelson Mail Newspaper, and the same article featured with a video interview can be seen online:

Read the full article and watch the video here:
www.stuff.co.nz/home-property/350368941/i-was-over-renting-author-who-chooses-live-his-car