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Do not do this. Photo: Cesar Okada / Getty
Do not do this. Photo: Cesar Okada / Getty

Pop CultureDecember 25, 2021

Please stop ruining summer and turn off that godforsaken music

Do not do this. Photo: Cesar Okada / Getty
Do not do this. Photo: Cesar Okada / Getty

Summer read: We are drowning out the natural world with synthetic sounds, and it’s getting worse, writes Michelle Langstone.

First published on January 23, 2021

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It used to be quiet once. Remember that? Remember the hush that settled over the cities like the silence that comes down in a snowstorm? It’s less than a year since Aotearoa first locked down, and the unexpected and wonderful side-effect of a terrible pandemic was peace and quiet. The whole country turned its volume down for weeks, and there was beautiful, pristine quiet, broken only by the chatter of birds. Perhaps that’s why I’ve become overly sensitive to noise; those months of quiet lured me into a false sense of peace, and they could not last. Now, I have no tolerance for noise at all. Now, according to one online commentator, the mere fact I am complaining about the noise makes me a Karen. I’m nearly 42, and had hoped to stave off the title for at least another decade, but it appears I’ve prematurely Karen-ed and I’m fine with it. I’m sure all of the 137 people who responded to my complaint about noise on Twitter are fine with being Karens as well, if it means they might get some hush.

Here’s the problem: we are drowning out the natural world with synthetic sounds, and we are doing it without consideration of our fellow human beings. This summer it’s been particularly bad. This summer I spoke tersely to strangers who were carting UE Booms to the beach and blaring their playlists so that the sound of the waves was lost, the squeak of your feet in soft sand was drowned out, and you couldn’t even hear if the Mr Whippy van pulled up. Just for a start that’s an ice cream crime, but aside from that, when did people start making the assumption that we’re all keen to hear their Spotify Top 100 playlist? Why has the beach turned into a 21st century equivalent of Dueling Banjos, but with speakers and really average soft rock?

I love music. I listen to music all the time. I love that other people love music, any kind of music, hooray for music and for our individual tastes. I just don’t want to listen to other people’s music when I’m trying to have a nice time and appreciate the beautiful environment we live in. Before the hellfire of 2020 I walked the Tongariro Crossing. It was autumn, and very beautiful, the walk was like being on the moon — all rubble and strange-coloured pools. It could have been terrific, except early on in the walk, stuck in a queue of hundreds ascending a staircase, I got trapped behind a guy blasting Shaggy’s greatest hits on a portable stereo attached to his backpack by a carabiner. I would hope the first thing you feel as you read that sentence is outrage at the disruption to the peace, but I accept you might instead be wondering just how many hits Shaggy actually had. The answer is very few, friends. Stuck behind this chump for the better part of an hour, unable to wriggle out of line, myself and several dozen other people faced a steep climb to the sound of ‘Boombastic’ and it was so horrible I will not discuss it further, except to say when it moved on to the next song, I wondered if there might be a murder in broad daylight in a national park. And that was before we listened to every one of Shaggy’s songs three times. And yes, I did think about asking him to turn it down, and so did my fellow travellers, but as Kiwis, we’re not always good at confrontation, and prefer to glower like rain clouds around the subject of distaste, and hope they’ll get the message.

This is not an isolated incident. This is happening on all our beautiful walks across the country. My friend nearly threw someone off a cliff in the Abel Tasman National Park for playing loud music constantly on the trail. The Kepler Track has been similarly afflicted this summer. Someone on Twitter had a trip to Cathedral Cove ruined by people with sound systems. I do understand that you might need music as motivation for exercise – I know I sometimes do – and that’s why I employ the use of miraculous devices called headphones. I guess my question is why you need it on a hike you’ve paid a lot of money to be on, in environments you may never visit again in your life, where you might be lucky enough to hear some of our more remarkable birdlife, and the shimmer of insects calls through the air.

What has happened to us? Why do we find noise a necessity? Why do we create soundtracks for our every move? Why does a lady walk past my house at 10.30pm every other night with her phone on speaker, tuned into the radio? Why, twice a week, does a guy wander past around midnight, shouting into his phone, his voice ringing out through the dark as he does circuits of the streets around my home? Why can’t we just be with the world, and listen to the music being made around us every day by the natural inhabitants of the earth?

I don’t know why we can’t face ourselves in the quiet. Perhaps it’s self loathing, or self importance. Either way, it’s miserable. I wish music could be for parties and pools and concerts and sports games and gyms and houses and cars, and not for nature. DOC has a page on its website called Leave No Trace, about ways to minimise your impact when you engage with the environment. One of the points is to be considerate of others, and another is respecting wildlife and farm animals. I can’t help but think that beyond the irritation of sound to our ears, we are doing broader damage to the species in our ecosystems.We all saw in lockdown how the birds came back, venturing into backyards and onto balconies, splendid in the silence. It’s sad to think we have forgotten about them, and about other people, in our efforts to have a good time.

Keep going!
Go South this Christmas (Photo: Prime)
Go South this Christmas (Photo: Prime)

Pop CultureDecember 25, 2021

What happened when I watched all 12 hours of Go South

Go South this Christmas (Photo: Prime)
Go South this Christmas (Photo: Prime)

This Christmas Day from 5.30am, Prime is re-airing the slow television gold that is Go South. Why not watch along with Tara Ward?

First published on 23 April 2019

It was five and a half hours into an epic 12 hour journey through New Zealand when I saw it: a giant cat, randomly standing on the platform of the Christchurch train station.

Was I delirious? Quite possibly. Was Go South New Zealand’s greatest gift to television? Most definitely.

Writers to the TV Guide – aka the Boomer Bible – went batshit crazy over Go South when it first screened early in 2019. It was a show so visually impressive, it made viewers forget to bitch about whatever Coro scheduling stuff up had happened that week. Judy from Dunedin called Go South “amazing”, 90 year old Val said it was “blissful”, while Armchair Traveller from Christchurch reckoned it was “mesmirising”[sic]  and “captivating”.

Does Armchair Traveller also own an adult-sized cat costume? The mystery deepens.

I had to find out for myself. My CV lists my hobbies as ‘television’ and ‘travel’, so I hoped Go South would be a career highlight. I had the choice of watching a three hour or a 12 hour version, but no way was I taking a shortcut. Did Hillary take a gondola to the top of Everest? Did Kate Sheppard forge all those signatures with her left hand? I was committed. I was in this like an adult trapped inside a giant cat suit.

“I’m taking this bloody train to Milford Sound!” I screamed at nobody. I mean, what else was I supposed to do at Easter, enjoy the sunshine? Please. Fresh air is for wankers.  I was here for every tree, every bridge, every second of our breathtakingly beautiful country that Go South could throw at me through the magic of television.

Hamilton, I am in you.

We departed Auckland in the soft dawn light. It was a grim start, because shit, New Zealand, when did we get so blasé about our train track aesthetic? I saw more scrap yards and arse ends of Noel Leeming Megastores in those first 15 minutes than I’ve ever dreamed of. It was bleak as hell and I found myself thinking, are we there yet? We hadn’t even got to Papakura.

But by hour two, I felt my soul lift. We cleared the metropolis and chugged through the mighty Waikato, a magical land filled with blossom trees and rolling green hills, and as the third and fourth hours passed, the meditative power of Go South began to take hold. The only noise was the steady, low hum of the train on the tracks. I felt calm and rested. This must be what it’s like in the womb.

The low winter sun bounced off effluent ponds and overhead wires. My eyes grew heavy and my sight grew dim, but it was just the Raurimu tunnel. We crossed the Rangiteki Viaduct. Bridges are amazing.

I fell asleep somewhere along the Kapiti Coast and woke up on the Interislander, to fun on-screen facts about shipwrecks and whales having loud sex. As we hit the South Island, I discovered my enthusiasm had peaked at the fancy sprinklers at the Palmerston North train station. Hours four and five passed slowly. We were quietly travelling south, possibly through the paddocks where Tellytubbies live, but time and place had become irrelevant.

Go South had me hypnotised. The tracks stretched out to eternity as if the journey would ever end. I was The Gambler, on a train bound for nowhere. I was clueless, disoriented, hungry.

Just when I lost faith, there he was.

It was a sign from the TV gods, an Easter egg at literal Easter. Christchurch’s giant cat resurrected me, and as the Alpine Express climbed into the heavens, I found my second wind. While the train stopped at Arthur’s Pass, I was so happy I inhaled an entire chocolate bunny. The hills were alive! I was alive! This was Aotearoa in all its stunning glory, and I got to lie on the couch in a sugar coma and soak it all in.

The sun shone in Greymouth as we ditched the train for a Landrover. Why are we all not living in Greymouth? It looked spectacular. ‘Trees’ was all I wrote in my notes for hour 8, ‘cloud’ for hour 9. It was pretty, but I was losing the plot. I wondered what the cat was doing.

We climbed over Haast and down into Central Otago. I was coming home, even though I’d never left my house. We passed Hawea, Wanaka, Cardrona, the Crown Range. This summer I nearly shat myself driving up to the Crown Range lookout, and all along, I could have just stayed home and watched someone else do it for me. Better living, everyone.

By the 11th hour, I could taste victory, and by the 12th I wanted to open a bottle of Lindauer and rant to an empty room about “knocking the bastard off”. We arrived at Milford Sound to full sunshine, and my spirits lifted again, exhaustion replaced with ecstasy. I’d just travelled the length and breadth of the country, without putting my pants on. What a time to be alive.

We sailed out to sea to watch the sun set on our dreams, and I wished this journey would never end. I was a (chocolate bunny) shell of the person I was 12 hours earlier, but oh, the things Go South had shown me. The most beautiful effluent ponds, a boat under a waterfall, and best of all, an unexpected giant cat. Go South was the gift that kept of giving, and Armchair Traveller was right all along.  New Zealand, I think I love you.