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Murray was one of my very best friends for such a long time.

He died around five years ago. He had some kind of aneurysm at a traffic light in Melbourne. He was working delivering Heroin for one of the gangs. They didn’t offer health insurance as part of the plan.

I called Murray up in the hospital. He was semi-conscious but recognised me straight away even though we hadn’t talked for more than a decade.

He spoke in the soothing way he always did: “James…..”

He asked me if I knew when the nurses would be bringing him his Methadone.

It was touch and go.

His wife arrived from the middle east where she had been nursing within a couple of days. Murray pointed her in the direction of the Heroin in his flat.

She overdosed and died.

Murray died too.

Sadness, grief and loss is part of the daily diet of a drug addict, as is ecstasy and joy.

No one really knows what particular bundle will arrive and at what time. Nothing is secure.

Last week in the papers it was reported that a 61 year old psychiatrist was seeking to have a driving conviction pardoned after 40 years or so. He was a notable sort of bloke and had spent time motivating the All Blacks.

But the gig was that every time he travelled to the USA he had to have a “waiver of ineligibility” to enter and when he travelled to Australia he had to declare his conviction which, no doubt, held him up in the line.

“When I do right no one remembers, when I do wrong no one forgets.”

-Paparua Prison Tattoo.

When you have been painted black by part of the government apparatus then you stay black and life becomes difficult at the oddest of times.

The psychiatrist’s appeal for a pardon was not allowed.

We are living in the time of the Orange Jesus where if you have political ‘clout’ you can get away with anything. The old saying is true, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

I don’t expect to be pardoned for my sins. I have a waiver of ineligibility to enter the USA but everytime I go there I am referred to “Secondary” (a second interview) and I must wait sometimes hours to face a grim faced officer who is usually in a sour mood and who watches Clint Eastwood movies over and over in his downtime.

I always get the feeling that what the officer really wants is for me to lose my temper. I feel prodded and pushed and spoken down to. I feel taunted and harassed. It doesn’t matter how old my convictions are (my last one was more than thirty years ago) or how kind I’ve been, nor how successful I have been in business.

I am a bad guy.  I don’t know Joe Biden nor Donald Trump. I am just a bad guy.

But I have people who love me even if the bureaucrats don’t. Junkies often love each other in a very deep way. They face common enemies. Sometimes they laugh and they cry together. Murray and I did that. We loved each other.

Merry Xmas! 

In light of the fact that The Little Street Art Festival is happening RIGHT NOW, we caught up with Reuben Woods, creative mastermind behind the festy to share some golden insight into the creative scene in Christchurch and just what makes The Little Street Art Festival so epic.

Dive right in.

So, we’re here to talk about the Little Street Art Festival, but for those of us who don’t know, why don’t you give us a bit of background about yourself?

I am the creative director of Watch This Space, we are an Ōtautahi-based urban arts trust – our mission is to champion and celebrate the impact of art on streets by connecting artists and audiences with opportunities to make and experience street art. Personally, I am also a writer and curator, specialising in urban art – in 2023 I curated SHIFT: Urban Art Takeover at Canterbury Museum, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience!

And where does Little Street Art fit into that / Where did the idea come from?

I love large-scale murals and they have transformed the landscape in cities around the world, but they are also only one aspect of street art’s lineage – many artists add colour to the streets at smaller scales and using different approaches. The Little Street Art Festival is a way to platform those types of expressions – a great accompaniment to mural festivals. We see the Little Street Art Festival as an invitation to look closer, to see art in different ways and to explore how it can become an embedded part of our experience – providing whimsy, wonder, humour, subversion and lots more…  

What’s the creative/arts scene feeling like in Christchurch at the moment? 

I feel it is in a good place, there is a small community, which makes collaboration and cross-pollination easier. There also seems to be a lot of initiatives to build the infrastructure around the arts, recognising the wider ecosystem. From the urban art perspective, it is really positive – the Council have invested funding into a multi-year programme for street art, which we are lucky enough to be collaborating on with the Flare Ōtautahi Street Art Festival, this is a really massive gesture that acknowledges the impact street continues to have here… 

What are you most excited about for this years festival? 

I always love getting to talk with artists about their ideas and projects – the nature of this festival means it is more low-key logistically (no scissor lifts or traffic plans), so it really is about the art projects and how to engage the audience. We have Smeagol Doesart subverting the expectations of the historical Arts Centre with his sculptural pieces, Sofiya R is creating a beautiful zine and poster installation on one of the Phantom bollards – which is a perfect synthesis! We have a public comic book by Jay ‘Daken’ Skelton, that unfolds as you follow its path along Manchester Street. Klaudia Bartos is creating some incredible sculptural pieces that will surprise people when they come face-to-face with them, and Razor Taser Laser is completing a series of paintings that playfully riff on our evolving use of language in the digital age. They each have their own unique qualities and I’m excited for them all!

What can the audience expect? 

The unexpected! We pride the Little Street Art Festival on engaging with the audience in a variety of ways, including those who don’t know anything about it! We love the way it reminds people to take in your surrounding environment and to see it as a site of potential – to that end we also have walking tours, workshops and an artist panel, as well as a heap of giveaways that will encourage people to get out and about… 

Lastly, the good people of Christchurch may have seen your posters dotted around the city, what is it about street posters that works as part of your marketing plan for Little Street?

I think the best thing about street posters is that they exist in the real world – they don’t exist in a digital vacuum – they are tactile and present in our urban landscape – which is the same as our installations – in both cases, we want people to get outside and explore! We really want to shout out the Phantom team for all the support – we see a fantastic kinship between our roots and Phantom’s!

Any final thoughts? 

Follow us on socials @thelittlestreetartfestival (Insta and Meta) for more information – all our events and activations are free and accessible (some require bookings, so head to Humanitix) – we love seeing people get inspired, so join in!

It’s raining in Motueka. It feels like it’s raining all around the world.

A few weeks ago, it was the birthday of one of my all-time best friends, Mike Jones.

I can’t remember how long ago Mike died, but it seems like a long time.

Then a day or two after that it was the birthday of my beautiful daughter, Hope. R.I.P.

Grief is a sneaky thing. It’s there, but you may not know it’s there.

I met Mike when I was 14. My parents had moved to Christchurch from Dunedin and Mike lived over the road at his mother’s dairy. Phyliss, Mike’s mother, sold lots of pies and sandwiches to the railway and cartage workers who worked just right close to the store. Trains would wake us up in the middle of the night. The gasworks were about a quarter mile away. The stench never left us.

Phyliss was a little round Pakeha woman with grey hair and some random hairs that grew off her chin. Phyliss’s eyes almost always gleamed with love. She had two pug dogs, Mickey and Minnie.

Phyllis started work at 5am when she began to make sandwiches for the shop. My favourite was always lettuce, vegemite and some crushed walnuts.

Mike was half Maori. It was said (by Phyliss) that Mike’s father fell into a vat of boiling fat at a whaling station somewhere around Picton.

Mike was a big guy with a huge personality. He had a crook hip and walked with a limp which was barely noticeable.

Me and Mike connected fast over our mutual love of music. He played bass guitar on his Fender Precision Bass. He’d practise day and night and thrust his groin away behind the guitar. He wasn’t a flashy player, but my God he was solid.

When Mike played his acoustic guitar, he’d sing away to an original song that he created called, “Wees and Poos on my little brown head.”

Life was a laugh. We had music day in and day out.

We’d sing together at night. “Have you seen my wife, Mr Jones,

do you know what it’s like on the outside?

Don’t go talking too loud you’ll cause a landslide, Mr Jones…”

I moved into the dairy (my parents lived 30 yards away on Wilson’s Road) to be close to Mike so we could talk music day and night. We shared a very small bedroom.

Each Sunday Mike’s girlfriend, Kay, would come over and stay in bed with him all day. Mike would give her a good rogering. Kay was a sweet little thing.

One day one of my girlfriends came very close to an orgasm in that room. I didn’t stop running until I got to Ferry Road.

Hope, my daughter, was a beautiful woman and all too vulnerable for this world.

Grief doesn’t allow me to say much more about all that. Grief draws a ring around your heart and draws it in real tight.

Lately on television there have been various news items about the notorious mental hospital Lake Alice.

In the Big House I met a few guys who had been sent to Lake Alice for punishment. They tried to rebel. When they returned, they were very damaged goods. There was no place for them in the whole, wide world. They never rebelled again. It just wasn’t

in them.

I was in mental institutions three times between 1974 and 1975. I was in Sunnyside twice when I tried to escape my addiction to Cocaine and Opiates. On the first night in Sunnyside another patient jumped on top of me at 3am and tried to have sex with me.

I was sentenced to the Cherry Farm Mental Hospital in 1975 for a court report. I was put into Villa One which was a treatment villa for alcoholics. I was the first drug addict in the place. Every morning at 8am a nurse would bring me my Methadone, then she would sit in front of me for an hour to make sure I didn’t die.

After a week I was elected Secretary of the Patient’s Committee.

The head shrink said that my problem was that I could not express negative feelings.

After a couple of months one of my visitors was busted for bringing drugs onto the premises. As punishment I was given a shot of some drug whereby I literally could not move. I complained and was given another shot of the same drug.

I couldn’t kick up trouble anymore.

But that’s living in a democracy for you.

Needless to say, I was given a bad court report and went straight to jail.

In jail I found the book that would change my life, “Soledad Brother” by George Jackson. It allowed me to feel angry and that got me through my Lag.

There are lots of things that will piss you off in the world. The new leader of the free world is one of them. The man is a sordid piece of rubbish and we must express negative feelings about him, but we are trapped. I’m sure you know this.

Every time I enter the USA, I must have a “waiver of ineligibility” because of narcotics convictions from more than 40 years ago. This waiver takes months and months to get.

So, we have a convicted felon in charge. This man is loud and belligerent. He will make your ring-gear pucker up.

There are plenty of people in New Zealand who are quiet and belligerent, who think that the world owes them a living, who rip off anyone who comes close. People who would rip the pennies off a blind man’s eyes.

Decades ago, I was in business with a man like this. He was a nightmare. And more about this in my next blog.

Kelly and I have just been downtown in the ’52 Bug. It’s pouring with rain, and ordinarily we don’t take any of my Volkswagens out in wet weather.

The bug ran out of gas, and we had to crawl to a gas station to fill it up. With a 6-volt ignition, it doesn’t pay to have the lights and wipers on as well as the fog lights. The ’52 bug doesn’t have a fuel gauge, which can be difficult at times.

I had to go to my pharmacy and pick up some Prednisone and antibiotics. I’ve not been breathing well. In fact, I have some kind of shadow on my lung, the same as I did when I was eight years old.

When I was eight, my mother told me the doctors were going to try to keep me alive until I was ten years old and then take a lung out. No one seems to know what this meant. My mother was very much in awe of doctors, so it’s possible she misinterpreted everything.

When I was ten, they put me into hospital and the shadow had gone. I never got sick again for years.

Nowadays, we often talk about “Healthy Homes.” I was brought up in a house that had rotten floorboards and a room (a second living room) that was dedicated to coal for the coal range. We lived right by the bush in Dunedin, and it was always damp.

But I’ve always been good at (if I do say so myself) overcoming obstacles in my way. I’ve always gone against the tide.

I often ask Kelly what I should write about in my next blog. This time she said “Coldplay.”

I had to change my clothing.

My chemist is a 45-year-old Mormon, and he took his daughter to see Coldplay over the weekend. This was the very first concert he had ever been to in his whole life, and he loved it.

That’s good enough for me.

Coldplay brings happiness to millions of people, and I can’t criticize that.

I’ve never seen a Mormon dance.

I often write about freedom and the importance of having one’s own views. Bob Dylan once said that no one was free and that even the birds were chained to the sky.

Mao Tse-tung, when he sent Chinese troops to help North Korea in the Korean War, said, “Without the lips the teeth are cold.”

There is nothing worse in this life than to be alone. Solitude has no friends. That is my view.

Yet it is easy enough to feel that one is on one’s own. My mother went to work when I was a kid. There I was all day, lonesome and unable to breathe properly. That is being alone.

My friend “Mad Dog” was alone. He died of a morphine overdose on Christmas Day many years ago. I have not yet stopped crying for him, for his solitude and what he could have been.

In my terror, I surround myself with people. We help each other.

Yesterday a very good friend got in touch with me after several years.

I glowed all day.

That’s what friendship does. It warms the heart.

Kelly and I have just been downtown in the ’52 Bug. It’s pouring with rain, and ordinarily we don’t take any of my Volkswagens out in wet weather.

The bug ran out of gas, and we had to crawl to a gas station to fill it up. With a 6-volt ignition, it doesn’t pay to have the lights and wipers on as well as the fog lights. The ’52 bug doesn’t have a fuel gauge, which can be difficult at times.

I had to go to my pharmacy and pick up some Prednisone and antibiotics. I’ve not been breathing well. In fact, I have some kind of shadow on my lung, the same as I did when I was eight years old.

When I was eight, my mother told me the doctors were going to try to keep me alive until I was ten years old and then take a lung out. No one seems to know what this meant. My mother was very much in awe of doctors, so it’s possible she misinterpreted everything.

When I was ten, they put me into hospital and the shadow had gone. I never got sick again for years.

Nowadays, we often talk about “Healthy Homes.” I was brought up in a house that had rotten floorboards and a room (a second living room) that was dedicated to coal for the coal range. We lived right by the bush in Dunedin, and it was always damp.

But I’ve always been good at (if I do say so myself) overcoming obstacles in my way. I’ve always gone against the tide.

I often ask Kelly what I should write about in my next blog. This time she said “Coldplay.”

I had to change my clothing.

My chemist is a 45-year-old Mormon, and he took his daughter to see Coldplay over the weekend. This was the very first concert he had ever been to in his whole life, and he loved it.

That’s good enough for me.

Coldplay brings happiness to millions of people, and I can’t criticize that.

I’ve never seen a Mormon dance.

I often write about freedom and the importance of having one’s own views. Bob Dylan once said that no one was free and that even the birds were chained to the sky.

Mao Tse-tung, when he sent Chinese troops to help North Korea in the Korean War, said, “Without the lips the teeth are cold.”

There is nothing worse in this life than to be alone. Solitude has no friends. That is my view.

Yet it is easy enough to feel that one is on one’s own. My mother went to work when I was a kid. There I was all day, lonesome and unable to breathe properly. That is being alone.

My friend “Mad Dog” was alone. He died of a morphine overdose on Christmas Day many years ago. I have not yet stopped crying for him, for his solitude and what he could have been.

In my terror, I surround myself with people. We help each other.

Yesterday a very good friend got in touch with me after several years.

I glowed all day.

That’s what friendship does. It warms the heart.