The penitential season of Lent is upon us, and no doubt, most are considering how best to orient ourselves away from the distractions and delights of our earthy abode, to better fix our eyes upon the impending sacrifice and salvation of Calvary.

For myself, there is the obvious abnegation of rich foods and drinks. One needn’t be trapped by what can be a simplistic and reductionist fixation on avoiding sweets, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to temper the sweet tooth, as a starting point. Alcohol, naturally, might find itself relegated to the gentle easing of the Sabbath (as is my general practice when we’re not enduring a particularly brutal, Jindera summer, as we have this year). There is the prudent passing on the second serve of dinner, more often than not, and the traditional Carcarello family fast from movies that aren’t Christocentric or spiritually edifying.

More salient, in my own fast, is a custody of eye, the heart, the ear and the mind, that strips away the incessant flow and feed of music, podcasts, articles and short form media, such as YouTube. I become so reliant, and childish, in stealing moments and fragments of the day for any combination of the above. As ashamed as I am of it, I am too inclined to fill precious moments of silence and stillness with the agitation of other people’s art and ideas. Cutting away the noise is the most fruitful element of any Lenten observance, in my experience, giving rise to more prayer, more presence, time and patience.

What I’ve noted, is that almost no-one talks about a plain and obvious truth about our Lenten fasts: that more often than not, they are offer us a wondrous repose, and a sense of liberation, from the blessings that can become burdens, and the sensory siren song that becomes our shackles.

First and foremost, one must admit that abstinence can be far easier than temperance. Cutting back, or cutting down, lacks the clarity and simplicity of cutting off. Those who have ever tried a ketogenic diet may attest to the resolute, delightful, perhaps easy abandonment of carbs and sweets, once the decision is made, and the body quickly learns to find its satiety in fattier, more wholesome fare. The palate shifts, and the fickle craving and crawling to quick hits of sugars and starches passes, as a new satisfaction sets in.

As a new nourishment finds purchase and purpose, the old fades and you begin to wonder why you ever did things any differently. The secret of Lent is, I believe, that we often feel much the same, enlightened as we are by taming the world, the flesh and the devil, and buoyed by the spiritual disciplines that supplant the intemperate indulgences we now deny ourselves.

The first few days can be challenging. The gnawing, incessant desires and cravings that confront us with the attachments that we’ve fostered for the months preceding… the sense of weakness, the spirit of bondage calling us to the habitual movement of fingertips across glass screens, or a rhythm and melody to capture the ear and the heart… the silence that is pressing, incessant, even obnoxious…

It will all pass. It will bow down before the ‘peace that surpasses all understanding.’ You will revel in the spaces and the silence. You will converse with the Lord, your God, he ‘whom we know loves us.’ You will recoil at the sickly and the saccharine, revelling in the strange justice of hunger. You will read more. Talk to your wife, or your husband in greater depth, with greater devotion. You will sleep longer, and more deeply. And you will know, above all else, that God is good.

In the Letter to the Philippians, we read:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Should we be surprised that our penances, our obedience, our prayer, our humility should liberate us? Should draw us closer to God, made man? It no longer surprises me, dear reader. His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. May you take up that very yoke and burden with Him this Lent, and find that He has taken your heart of stone, and given you a heart of flesh. I would expect no less. Thanks be to God.

In the heart of Nazareth, the Holy Family were bound in the sanctified toil, prayer and unity of each playing their critical role in salvation history, mysteriously cradled in the humble wonder and beauty of the family home. It was the Christ, the Contemplative and the Craftsman, hidden and sanctified, bound and beloved in what I’m seeking to honour in Nazareth Anew.

Nazareth Anew celebrates the pursuit of contemplative endeavour and creative discipline, ever and always united to God’s Holy Church, to scripture, tradition and to the wonder of God at work in our midst. In our humble disciplines, our prayer, and our creative expression, we unite ourselves in to God’s intent for our lives, bound and inseparable from our vocation in marriage and family.

The Holy family provide an unparalleled model of this union of humble prayer, toil, and purpose.

The Craftsman: St Joseph is unmatched as protector and provider; terror of demons attuned to the will and the word of God, no less powerful for his silence in Scripture, no less admirable from the nobility of his chastity, chosen and trusted by God to nurture and protect the Theotokos and the Christ Child.

The Contemplative: Our Lady, the Blessed Mother of God, pondering the mysteries of Christ in her heart, united to Him in suffering and unity with God’s will, interceding for us then, and now. There can be no better model of prayer, contemplation, grace and humility.

The Christ: Our Lord, God made man, who humbled himself to take the form of a servant, obedient, even unto death. We must understand all of our turmoil, all of our toil in the light of His sacrifice, in light of His grace, in light of His truth. The wonder of Divinity that saw fit to occupy and sanctify family life should inspire every husband, father, wife and mother to marvel at the enormity of all we have been entrusted with, and the faith, hope, virtue and love that it takes to honour our vocations.

Similarly, God has granted us creative capacities, insights, talents and graces that we must cherish, cultivate, and return to Him, for His greater glory. Nazareth Anew honours the work and the vocation of marriage, family, creative discipline and contemplative endeavour, with a personal insight into the reality that these are inseparable… that all of our works and all of our disciplines have a place in our salvation, and no less, the salvation and sanctification of the world around us. Lived out in humility and a silence that still astounds, the Craftsman, the Contemplative and the Christ bore untold fruit in a hidden life that made use of every grace God had given them - we must do no less.

Literature, art and music can be endowed with the wondrous presence of God’s work, and His will. All beauty, elegance, eloquence and truth draw us back to the Trinity. Nazareth Anew celebrates the creative act, particularly in the midst of family life, A challenge, no doubt, but an honourable one. If the work of art and culture is left to the secular realm, we can expect a little more than the crass, derivative dross that marks the barren culture around us.

I write this as a devout Catholic; a secular Discalced Carmelite seeking the face of God in everyday life. I am a husband to one wife, and a father to eleven children, whom I adore. We fled the madness of the modern urban realm to lay down roots in a growing Catholic community in Jindera, New South Wales, where many have come to seek peace, honest, earnest community, good liturgy and a fine Catholic education that honours the Magisterium and all of Holy Mother Church’s teachings.

We’ve built a life beyond the madness, and the busyness, and the noise, the modern malaise of consumerism, distraction and dissipation. On our humble five acres, we lay close to God’s creation and find his hand at work in all things, in all ways. This is Nazareth Anew, and I thank you for joining us.

Subscribe to get full access to the newsletter and publication archives.

“I feel like I’m going to vomit,” he said, as he stumbled out, red-eyed, holding his stomach. He felt like he was going to vomit because he was too tired. And he was too tired because he felt like he was going to vomit. It was a common and familiar pattern, one that I knew well in months past. It was much worse than it is right now, but nonetheless, he needed distraction. He needed time, solace, and satisfaction.

I did my worst to fob him off. I got him to read in bed, get a glass of cold water, go to the bathroom 27 times, but none of it worked. What worked is what always works. We shuffle down the hallway to the room at the end of the house; a room that, for all intents and purposes, should have been a bedroom. But somehow we knew better. Truth be told, in its original inception, it was a guest room/music room, but when the drum kit landed, we could no longer pretend that guests would fit in there anymore.

There is a process and a ritual that grants comfort in its immediacy and its predictability. We turn on the synthesiser, an Arturia MiniFreak. We turn on the power supply to the small set of effects pedals up on the desk. We turn on the audio interface that patches the sound through to the mixer. We turn on the studio monitors. He flicks through the presets on the MiniFreak. He shows me what he likes. He shows me the sequences and the sounds that he loves most.

Slowly, I bring in the Chase Bliss pedals, manipulating knobs while he plays. He lights up and marvels at the shifting pitches, the warped sounds, time, space, and sonic textures bending around us. We both wear the same wry smile as things take interesting turns. I show him how the modifiers work. We can incrementally increase or decrease the speed of the echoes. How we can mess with the loop before we add to it, how the micro looper is always listening, ready to present us with a beautiful texture to accompany us along the way.

Behind me, the drum kit sits idle as it should, with another 10 children sleeping or falling asleep throughout the household. The MiniFreak has a computer monitor sitting behind it for when we’re using Logic, or different plugins. It’s flanked by the studio monitors, which are furthermore surrounded by a pair of identical Ibanez TSA15 amps, for the complete indulgence that is playing guitar in stereo. On the floor sits the monstrosity of a pedal board adorned with the collection that I’ve amassed and curated over the past six years.

I’ve been tired, exhausted, really. I didn’t have the time or the patience to deal with his insomnia tonight. Petulantly, I resented missing a workout, having to be around to manage the anxiety that has plagued him for so long. But in this space, in this sanctuary, there is peace, there is mirth, there is a disconnection from all that came before and all that will follow.

There is simply the movement and the pattern of fingers on keys, the guitar strings under the fingertips. And the joys and wonders of modern engineering, paired with the beautiful brute force and simplicity of gain staging, overdrives, distortions, and fuzz. The wonderfully antiquated technology of the guitar amp, which has seen little improvement for the past 100 years, juxtaposed, of course, with a home synthesiser that would have been a marvel in any professional recording studio 40 years ago.

As mentioned, for all intents and purposes, this should have been a bedroom, or it could have been a bedroom. We have 11 children sharing rooms. The most luxurious has two in it, our eldest daughters, 18 and 17. The busiest room has no less than five children in it, two bunk beds and a trundle that’s pulled out from underneath one of them. On most nights, one of us ends up crashing in there as well, my beloved or I, depending on whom the kids demand at the time.

One may argue that it makes more sense to spread them out to make use of the rooms, but the joys and the solace of the sanctuary of the home studio provides more than the seeming convenience and material comfort of less kids in a bedroom. But you cannot argue with the simple delight of the drumsticks in your hands, trying to be in the pocket, to syncopate the different aspects and elements of the beat that you’re trying to pull off, slowly drawing it together as you get closer and closer, tighter and more fluid.

I don’t know many who could capably make a case against the wonders of a spring reverb or a tape delay, or a low-fi modulator that gives the same sonic qualities of a worn-out VHS tape. The Montreal Assembly ‘Count to Five’ is a simple, baffling marvel and tool. It can be a delay pedal or a looper, depending on how you use it. And again, the manipulation of time, randomisation and the recordings is what gives it its peculiar delight.

The overdrives and the fuzzes are a simple, guiltless pleasure, to revel in an obsession with texture, tone, and sound. Eventually you find culmination and fruition in your perfect dirt pedals - a delight that many guitarists rave about online. That same satisfaction has taken root here in this sanctuary, one I half-jokingly call Studio Santa Cecilia, in honour of the patron saint of musicians.

Here is where so many of us flee, sometimes for scant minutes, other times for an hour or two, to delight in the wonder, in the whimsy of music, song, noise. In the corner sits a 700-watt Peavey bass amp beside an Ibanez bass. It’s a new addition, but it’s made so much more possible. One of my sons plays in bands, or a couple of bands, with a couple of sets of friends. To hear them clash and clang away, trying to pull it together, and slowly but surely, making progress is an utter delight to behold.

The other day, I was in there with my twin boys - one of them the rambunctious insomniac you met twelve paragraphs ago. I was on the guitar, one on bass, and the other on drums. As simple as can be. ‘Seven Nation Army,’ the three of us grinning like madmen. And the capacity to record, something, anything, is another joyous adventure in and of itself, perhaps unparalleled for its simplicity, its beauty, and its honesty. So yes, perhaps our children could sleep more comfortably or more quietly and more peacefully where they’re more spread out. But I’ll tell you now, we’ll take the home studio over the sleep any day.

The wonder, romance and delight of the purposeful space is unparalleled, and I can only encourage one and all to find a room, a corner, a nook or a nest… give it over to your craft. Drench it in purpose and as such, in peace, to give life to the works God has planted within you. When the opportunity comes, sleep, maybe. But sleep can wait. Some things cannot.

Jesus said to his disciples: ‘As it was in Noah’s day, so will it be when the Son of Man comes. For in those days before the Flood people were eating, drinking, taking wives, taking husbands, right up to the day Noah went into the ark, and they suspected nothing till the Flood came and swept all away. It will be like this when the Son of Man comes. Then of two men in the fields one is taken, one left; of two women at the millstone grinding, one is taken, one left.

‘So stay awake, because you do not know the day when your master is coming. You may be quite sure of this, that if the householder had known at what time of the night the burglar would come, he would have stayed awake and would not have allowed anyone to break through the wall of his house. Therefore, you too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.’

The Gospel reading at Sunday’s Mass got me thinking in a way that compels me to get pen to paper. I can’t keep having these moments without putting them down, because in time, it will inevitably drive me mad. I desperately need sleep, but I need this even more.

To have heard our Lord, to respond, I must write something, anything, of what I thought and felt hearing these words. Today, Christ compelled us to keep watch, to stand ready, for we did not know the day, nor the hour. Like in the days before the flood, when people carried on with distraction and indecency, completely unaware that the end was upon them.

When prophets cry aloud, there are few who care to listen. I had to get something out, to get something down before these thoughts burn me up and they find me, nothing but a pile of ashes in the morning.

The Lord warned us to be watching and waiting, and I wanted to propose that for each of us, this meant something very different. Certainly, there is the fundamental aspect of penitence and prayer. But more than that, I don’t doubt the Lord wishes to find us at work—the work to which we were called:

The painter at her easel,

The pianist, fingers upon keys,

The carpenter at his craft,

The bootmaker, cutting, shaping leather.

The poet at his eloquence,

The dancer on her feet,

The blacksmith at the anvil,

The Friar in adoration.

May He find us, each of us, at that delicate toil to which He has called us. God forbid that our Lord find you maggot brained, futilely scrolling, abandoning method for mirth, for fleeting whims, and inane distractions - mired in the meaningless, rotted muck that passes for culture these days. Should He find you enthralled by a John Ford film, there is little shame in it. Art, film, music, and song have their place, their meaning, their wonder—an aspect of His creative brilliance. But not the rot, dear reader.

The masterful bounding of the athlete has its place. The toil of the strong man beneath the bar has its place. The song of a mother bathing her child, soothing her toddler, is perhaps as beautiful as anything else upon this earth. Should our good Lord find you at the chess board with your beloved son? There’ll be no shame in it. And above all, anyone at prayer needn’t fret, for the Lord is already with them, and may their wills be united should that prayer be deep enough and true enough.

What must it be for you, dear reader? The paintbrush on the canvas? The calloused hands on the kettlebell? The embrace of your beloved, listening to the gentle whisper of their breathing as you lie awake just to hear them? The wonder of the written word: the phrase that you yourself craft, or the fine work you behold?

Either way, there’ll be no shame in it. But for the love of God, may He find you in love, at work, at prayer, and at peace with His will in all things. I need sleep. I desperately need sleep, but I need this even more.

I picture myself fashioning a calamitous, ramshackle setup with a motley collection of pots and skillets, distantly reminiscent of the ‘Saucepan Man’ from The Faraway Tree, adorning myself in them to make some kind of noise, something, anything to mark my movements and signal something to the world. The need arises from an abandonment of process, routine and habit that has saved me time and time over.

The journalling, the composition, the notes and the delicate web that weaves it all together unravels more and more, as life seems to demand more and more. So I sit here without my notes, my Rollerball pen with a medium nib, without journalling first, without Neil Young’s Dead Man soundtrack ringing out around me.

The lack of time is an illusion, of course. I don’t buy it. You shouldn’t either. Soon as you do you’ll excuse yourself all manner of crimes and abuses. I have fingers, and a keyboard, and I’m still here, and you’re still here, so what’s the problem?

I carry the toolkit with me… the guitar picks are always here. The pen. Yes, the notebooks, the planner, the index card for utterly random and impulsive ideas, scraps to be salvaged. I have browser profiles preloaded with my Substack admin pages, and Scrivener projects for the different flavours of my work. All wonderful, yes. But here, tonight, no. Unnecessary.

Here I am, with my house at slumber. There is a moment, which may last five minutes, or five hours, and for once I seize it with both hands to draw some kind of desperate confession from it, before it fades and dies. The relative peace and tumult of my life is measured and meted out in minutes, or hours. And all I have is gratitude. The kind of gratitude that sends me to my knees, and turns every work into a forlorn prayer, and an unexpected song.

I had the idea to take thirty three photos of our world, our home, our Bethlehem to use here on Wristwatches, and on Two Thieves. Snippets and glimpses into the spaces, corners, and expanses that fill my heart, and hold my beautiful family, my dream, my song. I’ll do it tomorrow when the sun is up. All to much is obscured by the blanket of night. I know that if I step outside though, the stars will be out, alive, stunning - God’s firmament, so still, but electric, in a silent harmony that fills my heart.

I never knew stars like this until we moved out here to Jindera. I remember a night, years ago, at a dear friend’s property, staring up at the majesty of the unblemished night sky, edging closer to morning as conversation came alive, given life and breathe by the grandeur above us. I never knew nights, and stars like these back in the city, where the hollow glow and glare of fickle lights bled the stars of their majesty.

But we left it all. We sold up, took off, in a leap of faith, to follow Christ to new horizons of hope, orthodoxy, community and fidelity. We abandoned all that we knew, with the innocent, trusting love of a child, and have been rewarded a thousandfold for that trust. It isn’t always easy, but little worth having is ever easy. And tonight, I set aside the trappings of creative routine, form, process, to simply create.

It may have to be like this, more and more now. And I’m ok with that. I hope you are too.

I can’t sleep, because I haven’t given life to something, breath to something as simple as a line on a page, a notion in print, and I’ve gone to bed too many nights knowing that there has been a promise broken, somewhere, to myself. It is a blessing to fall in love with something: a craft, or a medium, an instrument or a means. But that blessing comes of course, with the yearning to exercise and expend the impulse.

The yearning is healthy, life giving, if you let it breathe and take you down the path, or the passage where the notion wants to lead. Music is a wonderful medium, to balance the tension, the wait and the fulfilment of an idea, a line, a response to a call. But writing, God help me, holds little of the same wonderment.

When you can see a story through, from beginning to end, then that delicate dance has its place. But when you’re simply giving frame and form to truth, then the tension can become a burden, because it isn’t waiting for the call and the response, it’s waiting for the moment when you can set the world aside to see it as it truly is.

It’s waiting for the moment when your house is all at rest, so you can chronicle the intoxicating love you have for your wife, your children, the pattern and pace of life and all that God has granted you. You’re almost waiting to set life aside to honour it. There is the toil and labour of the day - the honest and honourable work that will feed your family and keep the lights on. Then there is the silent, sublime task of shaping word, and phrase, and memory and song.

There is the delicate task of the player, the poet, the painter, the performer, who begins a line before he knows how to end it. It is an act of faith, to set aside the utility, the convenience, the common sense of sleep and rest and good, clear thinking, to wrestle with the mystery of what may become of a given work, a concept, a musing, or an improvisation.

And as I get older, I become more and more convinced, that to let the impulse rot within you, to ignore it again and again, is a betrayal of the good God who granted you the yearning in the first place. We have been blessed with intellectual and creative capacities that reach far beyond the utility of survival and propagation of a species. The joy of poetic meter has no place in a world in which function trumps fervour. Truth, beauty and goodness are inextricably linked, and must be savoured, championed and born anew again and again.

You cannot let the impulse rot within you. You must hold the instrument in your hands and give it life, to honour the gift you’ve been given. You must be reckless, sleepless, prolific and bold. As I write this, one of my eight sons shuffled in, having woken through the night as he often does. I get to tuck him in again. I get to embrace him, and tell him that I love him, and trust that sleep will descend upon him again.

He was born with his twin brother at 27 weeks, and they both could have died the day they’d taken their first breath. But they didn’t, and what followed were years and months of heartache, and strain, and tumult and toil - protecting and nurturing the both of them to see them now, flourishing, as intelligent, capable and creative boys that we’re incredibly proud of. We could have had sleep, We could have had peace. But God called us to more. Always.

Just as He does you. There will be time to sleep, or time to do something practical, or reasonable. Maybe now is not the time.

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and put a new and right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence,

and take not thy holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of thy salvation,

and uphold me with a willing spirit.

Psalm 51: 10 -12

The wondrous, penitential season of Lent is upon us. On Ash Wednesday Catholics all over the world were marked with an ashen cross upon their forehead and told, plainly, without affectation: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Paired with a day of fasting and abstinence, one would think that it’d be a rather glum affair. But I looked about at friends, colleagues and loved ones, to see the days typical, delicate joy, the lightness of their bearing, and their hope, and was reminded of the truth of Lent.

Finally, we come face to face with an existence that is truer to our calling than at any other time of year. Asked to engage in a the sober penances of our own design for roughly forty days and forty nights seems to bring out the best of us, as we strip away the dross of a life that is unexamined, and hence, inundated with an multitude of incidental pulls, pleasures and practices. We examine our relationship with everything around us, to strip away the anything that may range from superfluous to self-indulgent - to accompany Christ in the desert where he “was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil.”

In a wonderful talk given by our parish priest, he reminded us to be earnest, unforgiving and zealous in our lenten penances - to find what we truly need to set aside, to make time and space for God in our lives. Afterwards, my beloved wife prompted me, as she does most years - you know what this means, don’t you? I love coffee. Real coffee, espresso brewed in a caffetiera on a stove top. I’ve loved it for a long time, and have even written, in jest, about my philosophy of coffee consumption. I adore the scent, the flavour, the texture, the weight of it. I love loading up the caffetiera, and waiting to hear it boil over into the top chamber. I love sharing it with loved ones. I love enjoying it short, and black, or sometimes with a dose of hot water to stretch it out. I pace out the day, punctuate it with two things: prayer, and coffee.

You know what this means, don’t you? Unfortunately, I did. She noticed me bristling at the suggestion, and before I even made it through the first line of evasion, I knew that she was right. It’s a logical penance - for the time it draws from the day - for the degree of affection I have for it - for the sense of dependence it fosters. I had to give it up, because I love it too much, and there is an ugly, weak willed dependance that needs to be killed off and offered up. Thus, I’m off coffee for this Lent, and a week in so far, I’m surviving, having attempted a strategic scaling down in the lead up to the season.

There are a number of attachments that inevitably follow, for a full, penitential suite. There will be less music, particularly when it’s playing, unassumingly in the background, without deliberately listening to it - relishing it. Playing and practicing is a different story, a different act, and discipline, that needn’t be stymied. There will be less podcasts, again, refusing to fill the space and silences of my life with futile distraction. Not that all podcasts are create equal - if something is spiritually edifying - it may well have a place in the course of my day, but generally, I tend towards silence, creating space for prayer, during Lent. The avoidance of the sweetest, the saltiest and the crunchiest of culinary delights is custom, along with an abstinence from the typical entertainment that might mark the occasional free evening.

And herein lies the discovery that feels new and old, every Lent. That this is the authentic life. That this is so much closer to the truth, to the reality of His love for us, and our proper orientation to His word and his light. Lent isn’t the aberration - but rather the restoration, cutting away the noise, the distraction, the dross, to find what lies beneath - a simple, humble, clear minded appreciation of the Blessed Trinity, and our right relationship to God and God alone.

All else becomes secondary, subservient. In Lent, we appreciate how to weigh, balance and temper our desires and designs in a more ordered approximation of His will for our lives. In Lent, we tilt, delicately, towards sanctity, and salvation, realising how much else was utterly irrelevant, or ultimately distracting, from our ultimate pursuit of Christ and Christ alone, in the midst of our daily lives.

Thus, dear reader, I pray your Lent is appropriately confronting, challenging, purgative, that you may know more of His light and His truth, as I hope to in this blessed season.

I hope that you might pray for my Lent, too.

As most people likely do, I try to imagine myself into the minds and lives of those I’ve never been. I’ve often thought, for example, that were I to be an alcoholic, I’d no doubt find myself drinking furtively when I was upset, as well as satisfying the addiction to celebrate joy and jubilation, in and of itself. There would be little to hold me back, and I could see a real commitment to making a commitment to fill in the space between the two extremes, to ensure that I was able to ride out the mundane and mediocre days with an inebriated constancy that would demonstrate a true fidelity to a terrible ideal.  

I remember years ago, the way emotional turmoil would drive me to black out my bedroom, turn up my terrible little amp, seize my guitar as it it were the only flotsam in a cold, indifferent ocean, and make all manner of noise in an adolescent, cacophonic expression of everything the world could never understand (you wouldn’t understand). Nothing could separate me from that guitar, and that amp, be it a melancholic turn as much as a manically mirthful one. 

When I turned my mind to writing some years later, it was, more often than not, anger and bitterness that spilled onto that blank page, in that sophomoric rage and lack of self awareness that likely taints most early literary endeavours. Again, negative emotions were hardly an inhibitor of creative output - but rather the opposite - they fostered and drove the creative habit. 

Now, I must admit that I’ve allowed the acceptable emotional range for any creative act to become so limited, that on most days, it could become utterly impossible to turn to the task. I’ll not discount the very real and tangible challenges of parenting eleven children, holding down a demanding full time job, fostering a vocation in marriage and Carmel… but I feel it most honest to admit that it isn’t a tangible lack of time that constrains the creative act. It’s not as if the opportunity doesn’t arise, ever, or the time simply isn’t there. It’s that the emotional preconditions don’t support it. Which is worse, a real tragedy, in the sense that the time and faculties are there. Music and writing are life giving for me, in ways I can hardly articulate, but I cannot access them when the fallout, or the wounds, or the woes of the day still linger. 

Recognising the crossroads when you’ve reached them is critical. I apply the analogy in a twofold manner, to encapsulate both the long term prospect and the immediate moment. There is a definitive crossroads when you realise, painfully, the manner in which time, pain, loss and hardship have cauterised the creative instinct, making it harder, and rarer to bring your fingers to the keys, or the fretboard for that manner. This can be accompanied, of course, by that poisonous, therapeutic materialism that fosters an obsession with the tools (ie the instruments, sounds, pedals and effects) - perhaps more prevalent with guitarists than other instrumentalists. Rather than play the guitar, you wonder what it’d be like to play the guitar through the effect pedal 

But annoyance, anger, fatigue, confusion, stress, are all enough to stop me from writing, or playing. This is of course compounded by the fiction that it would be irresponsible and insensitive to apply the creative act to a time of great emotional tumult or confusion. Isn’t creativity a luxury? An indulgence? A trivial distraction not befitting the sound and reasonable schedule of the responsible adult? This is completely and utterly wrong, and these fallacies just as applicable to prayer, no less. 

You should always pray, in thanksgiving, adoration and supplication. Well, perhaps you should always write, or paint, or compose, or sing. Our God given talents have, for millennia, been employed in our expressions of faith, hope and love. No less by the psalmist, than any of us. As scripture illustrates: I will turn my mind to a parable. With the harp I will solve my problem. I couldn’t think of a more resounding statement of support from a God who loves and knows us. A God who has impressed the creative act upon the very fibre of our being, with an intellect and insight that renders us in His image and likeness. 

But here I am, allowing the slightest annoyance, or trifling concern, stop me from writing, or playing or composing music. It is a juvenile, self indulgent wallowing in the much and mire of self pity that turns us from the lyre, and the harp. I am at a crossroads, beloved reader, and I can no longer sustain a writing life without the ruthless, dogged, maniacal obsession that has driven the brave, the bold, and the inspired for millennia. There is a force, a momentum, a machinery that churns within each and every one of us - oriented towards some goal, some end. It may be a fictitious comfort and consolation of addiction, distraction, entertainment or consumerism. It can grip us an any number of ways - unless we temper and orient it to truth, beauty and goodness, and the works that speak of these transcendental wonders - pointing us inevitably to the source of their wonderment - God himself, who saw fit to imbue these strange talents within each and every one of us. 

I hear it doesn’t go too well when one buries their talent in a field. How will you give ever more, back to God, and avoid becoming mired, unable to access all you’ve been given? Only time will tell. Time, blood, prayer, sweat and tears. 

For from the greatness and beauty of created things

comes a corresponding perception of their Creator

Wisdom 13:5

But miserable, with their hopes set on dead things, are the men

who give the name "gods" to the works of men's hands,

gold and silver fashioned with skill,

and likenesses of animals,

or a useless stone, the work of an ancient hand.

Wisdom 13:10

Sometimes a novel experience, a pivot or turn can work to affirm a notion you’ve held, no matter how long you’ve held it. Having spent two days in a bustling metropolis has affirmed, for me, that I’m not cut out for it. Not nearly. Not hardly. This is a welcome confirmation, in a way, given that we’ve laid down roots in the quietude of a rural Eden. 

The oppressive sense of isolation amidst an endless stream of faces throws me. I have a fascination with faces that probably isn’t that peculiar. Most of us are inclined to read the eyes, the tilt of the mouth, the tug of the brow. Trying to do that with an endless stream of data points drains me. There is the momentary novelty of the swarm, but once it passes, I’m at sea. Utterly at sea. It’s as though I don’t know what to do with the information, particularly when my own curious glance isn’t reciprocated. 

I’m used to eye contact. Far more eye contact. For some reason, people who don’t live in large cities look at each other, often smile, nod, or even greet each other with an economical warmth that is close enough to familiarity so as to engender the very same sense of belonging you’d get from the presence of a loved one. Eye contact in the metropolis is of course, near impossible. Particularly on buses and trains. I thought the deathly immersion into the glow was already at comical proportions a few years back. The proliferation of bluetooth headphones seems only to have exacerbated the decline. 

People once scrolled, read, texted, tapped. Now they’re bombarded with a literally endless barrage of brief, banal and hypnotic clips (they likely have a name, I don’t care, I’m calling them clips - have you heard of a clip, kids?). A quick succession of trite, colourful videos, all with their own peculiar gnosticism, seemingly created with the express intention of destroying any ability to focus on a single given concept, or text, or idea, for any worthwhile period of time. The cocoon only hardens, and once can sense that any attempt at a friendly glance, or smile, has deepening connotations of predation and disorder. It’s not you, it’s me. 

And concrete, marble, steel and glass have their uses, granted - but for every surface? Every facade? I found myself so desperate for a patch of soil, a blade of grass or a leafy tree that I threw myself down an unruly growth of weeds breaking through the concrete, just to catch up with old friends. It was weird enough until a young lady with blue hair offered me a tub of glue and gestured, knowingly, to the footpath. I ran. But I did make eye contact and smile before I ran. Promise. 

Everyone, everything seems to be hardening, closing in on itself, away from the other. Made in the image and likeness of God, I wonder what the implications are for our relationship with Him, with the Christ, God made man - who chose to enter into His own creation a couple of millennia before the maddening distraction and noise of the smartphone hit us. The manner in which he encountered the lost sheep of the tribe of Israel, embodied, present, healing, confronting, edifying. Making the blind see, the dumb speak, and the deaf hear. No thanks, we seem to say these days, eyes downcast, ears plugged, mouth curled into the sad tilt of the mildly entertained. 

There is little room for delight, or encounter, or wonder and awe. Especially amidst the concrete, the glass and the steel. I acknowledge the underlying utilitarian nature of the city. The word ‘nature’ barely survives the sentence, no? But there is a function inherent in gathering so many in one place. The metropolis, the Babel. Together, alone, they can coalesce around whatever mechanical corpse they might wish to animate. Now, I’m becoming somewhat cruel, but I am a victim, turned, I assure you, but the seeming emptiness of the place. I am lost in it, adrift, hence I lash out. 

Before I know it, I’ll be staring down a goat in a paddock, stinking, belligerent, but alive, and reminding me, with a toddler wrapped around my leg and the morning sun shining down on us all, that I’m alive too. 

Subscribe now

I make a point of starting over again and again, when it comes to creative projects. The sense of renewal and conversion is essential in both the spiritual and the creative realms, and as such, I’m open to frequent, complete and utter collapse for the greater good. Thus, I’ve not posted here on Wristwatches and Radios for some time. I have though, invested an inordinate amount of time in moving over here to Substack, from a self hosted Wordpress blog. The outrageous renewal fees for the hosting was one impetus. The Substack community was another - with a particular sense of elegance, hope, idealism and integrity. A third was the minimalism that marks the platform.

I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve invested (ie lost) in customising Wordpress templates, imagery, logos and layouts. It’s a wonderfully satisfying method of procrastination that has just the right amount of self-righteous justification about it - because of course nobody wants a site that looks tired, drab or outdated. You want to honour your work by presenting it as best you can, don’t you? Or maybe, you should just do more of the work. The writing is the work. The rest is window dressing. Substack’s simplicity drives me to honour, and prioritise the work. 

But the jump over took time. The export from Wordpress and import into Substack was remarkably easy. But I lost the images that I’d used for each post, prompting a visual renewal that was actually somewhat invigorating. For argument’s sake, I’ll assert that it wasn’t a complete waste of time, but a necessity of sorts. One simple image for each post isn’t excessive or self indulgent. But working through about sixty posts and finding the right image for each takes time. Nonetheless, now that we’re set up (and Two Thieves on a Hill, my other, more ramshackle and random personal blog has come along with us), I’m good to go. 

Hence, I’ve been mulling over two terms for a couple of weeks now: Prolificacy and prolificity. The meditation has been spurred by the renewal of a project list (a la David Allen), that was precipitated by what one may term a complete and utter collapse for the greater good. I fell in love with both, but felt I had to choose one over the other. The core principle was shared, of course. To be prolific is of course to produce much fruit, many works, a great body of such, perhaps. But that was the adjective. I needed the noun. Two presented themselves: prolificacy and prolificity (One of these has a squiggly red line under them, but I won’t ruin the moment and tell you which - it’s a simple matter of its anacronism, rather than abberation). 

Initial research suggested that the two were interchangeable, but I was already smitten with the former: Prolificacy. It was curvier, subtler, less bombastic than its outlandish sister. Prolificity was too scientific, jargonistic, medical, procedural, self important. The ending was far too busy and congested. Prolificacy had the suggestion of class, dignity, perhaps even delicacy.  

Alas, further procrastination/research lead to a startling discover. It appears (and further research may well disprove this, but I’m a busy man and I need to get words on the page while I can) that Prolificacy actually has stronger associations with fertility and child bearing, than it does good works. Prolificity is, apparently, the more apt term for creative pursuits. I was dismayed, but not surprised. What had allured me to prolificacy was not the curves, the finesse, the prudence of it all - but a recognition of my very self, dear reader. 

Stalwart regulars here at Wristwatches are aware, of course, that I have no less than eleven beautiful children. Six years ago (whilst we had only seven children born thus far), we sold our home, moved interstate and lay down roots on acreage, in a small, rural town, drawn by its thriving Catholic community, outstanding priests, the beauty of the locale, and the serene lifestyle that it offered. After we landed, we had four more children in four consecutive years, which isn’t as hard as it sounds when you’re desperately in love with the beautiful, saintly woman you married, and find an outrageous sense of joy and fulfilment in the children that result from that love.  

Thus, hence the allure of the term: prolificacy, was born of a plain and simple, stark, specificity. It was me. It was us. Hence, I once again make peace with my vocation, and a given inclination, to life, love, and at times, little writing. I didn’t choose prolificity all those years, ago, although I’ve flirted with it from time to time. I chose prolificacy, and as such, would apologise for the dearth of writing here at Wristwatches - but in truth, the only reason the project exists is because of that love, that vocation, that wondrous distraction. But alas, here I am, with a sense of renewal and conversion. 

So I sit, and I write. I’m in the same place, at about the same time I’ve always done this. As always, I’m in the same wooden chair, which isn’t uncomfortable, nor unforgiving. As always, Neil Young’s soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man is playing. As always, the same lamp throws warm light on a small print of Virgin of the Angels, by Adolphe-William Bouguereau. I drink my orange and cinnamon tea with the bag in, to allow for eternal top ups. An hour ago I was falling asleep. But now, of course, once I’ve started, it’d be madness to stop before the idea is played out. Some things don’t change, thanks be to God. 

So if you’ve found Wristwatches and Radios, here on Substack, for the first time: welcome. I pray you find it an enjoyable foray into the joys of fatherhood, fidelity, culture and creativity. Dip into the archives, find something that strikes a chord, and if you do, please take a second to subscribe. It’d mean a lot to me, and there’s plenty to share ahead of us. 

There’s nothing like a new beginning. 

So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Perhaps you’ve seen us, dear reader, ensconced within that glass tomb, not yet cast out into the cold world, but plagued by the frigid air that rushes through the open door that must remain open, for the functional parishioners that actually step out of the mass for a logical, rational reason, and are then permitted by their children to step back in. Oft times, I will be wearing one small child affixed to my face, like an alien succubus from a Ridley Scott movie, another one wailing, seemingly strapped to my left leg, and a third at the fingertips of my right hand as I barely latch on to his collar as he makes a break for it. That’s my son there, trying to baptise himself again with the little font of holy water we bless ourselves with on our ambitious, optimistic entry to our beloved little church. 

We usually make it in for a time, for a moment of silent prayer, a desperate dash to the confessional, and an opportunity to glance furtively at our beloved wives and nod, silently, knowingly, that this may be the last time we see each other til the liturgy has concluded. On the rare occasion, we make it through the old testament reading (good start), the responsorial psalm (my goodness), the epistle (could this really be happening?), even the gospel (sweet Jesus, thank you). Then, the blessed rarity, that mishap of fate, that incredible moment when you hear (gasp): the homily. The insight, the history, the etymology, the spiritual implications, the personal application - a boon, a balm, a salve, and somehow, every time, exactly what we needed to hear. 

But more often than not, it’ll be the narthex, with our beloved screamers, ranters, wailers and wanderers, seeking to preserve the reverence and sanctity of the mass by ‘taking out the trash’ as they call it - by which I mean my own rambunctious children of course. And God bless them, for a period there we had to good - perhaps too good - hearing every reading, every homily, being present for the consecration. Perhaps the risk was that we took it all for granted. But alas, no longer, dear reader. We were blessed with four little ones in the space of four years, just over four years after the birth of our twin boys. The delicate ceasefire was broken. We really can’t complain. Statistically speaking, of our eleven children, the bulk of them are remarkably civil, reverent and helpful in mass. We’ve even reached the promised land, where our oldest children and both enthusiastic and earnest in their desire to hold and help the little ones. 

But alas, time in the narthex, is a parent’s duty more than a sibling’s, and it is there that you’ll find me most Sundays. It’s still a step up from the dreaded ‘crying room,’ the pariah’s purgatory of any parish that has relegated children (and the future of Holy Mother Church) as redundant, bothersome and unwelcome quirks of a humanity we once championed better than most. But the narthex still carries its own risks. For one, there’s the constant temptation to peer in, longingly at the warm, peaceful congregation and ask yourself - what do they know that I don’t?  It must have come from the homilies you missed. What do they have that I don’t? It’s a poisonous and wretched temptation to set yourself aside from your brothers and sisters in Christ and decide that they have it all figured out, whilst you haven’t even started. It’s when a healthy humility tips into doubt, despair, shame and self-loathing. Clearly, they have a prayer life, a social dynamism, a network, a creative verve, a personal history, an insight, a strength and a unity that you’ll never know, you’ll never understand. 

And the contrary temptation of course, is to peer out in the other direction, into the street, to see the cars driving past, the amblers, the children at play, and again set yourself apart and feel a swelling sense of pride that at least you are keeping the sabbath holy - here at mass, giving to God what is God’s and (obviously) dying to self in a Christ like sacrifice that perhaps, rivals that dark day upon Calvary when you count how many Sundays you’ve spent like this. I assure you dear reader, I jest, but the temptation to spiritual pride is just as dangerous as despair, and it’s a fine line we must walk, we dwellers of the narthex. 

Just to witness the liturgy, to hear a fragment of the scripture, to make that desperate gambit for Holy Communion no matter what chaotic contribution your toddler makes to the reverent ambience, is a blessing. To be baptised, to know, to love, and to serve Christ, however poorly and humbly we can, is a great and terrible blessing for us all, carrying of course that ominous responsibility captured in the truth that: of those who have been given much, much will be expected. We must take solace in the knowing nod and smile of the beleaguered fellow father or mother in the narthex with us, grappling with their own beloved brood, knowing that we render all we can to the beautiful children our Lord has entrusted to us, in the hope that one day we won’t just make it through the mass from start to finish - but that as St Paul assures us: when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

So Lord, let love abide, even here in the narthex - nay, especially here in the narthex, that we may know and love you all the more when you see the time is fit to fold these mortal frames. I’ll be waiting, for you, Lord, above all else. Don't bother searching the pews. You'll know where to find me.

By Gaetano Carcarello

William Blake, do you know how to use this weapon? 

No. Not really. 

That weapon will replace your tongue. You will speak through it, and your poetry will now be written in blood.  

Dead Man - Jim Jarmusch

Upon the careful consideration, design and implementation of the following means to kill the creative spirit, I’ve decided to share my most effective strategies here on Wristwatches, in case, beloved reader, you too may wish to destroy the means by which your vocation and creative impulse may find fruitful union. These are presented in no logical or coherent order. 

1) Falsely conclude that your creative impulses, desires, inspirations and pursuits are selfish and self indulgent. 

2) Maintain an intensely discrete and guarded attitude to your works and processes, ensuring few are aware of them and even fewer can hold you accountable to the ideas and aspirations espoused in said works and the very act of creating them. 

3) Fail to write down salient ideas as they come to you. Ensure you are quickly distracted. 

4) Maintain the falsehood that a demanding family life and a creative life are mutually exclusive. 

5) Lie and pretend that your professional demands leave little left for what’s left of your creative projects and pursuits. 

6) Fail to set up a consistent and viable routine around placing your posterior in the timber chair that sits in the wonderful nook your beloved wife incorporated into the plan for your newly built house so you’d have a place to write etc. 

7) Maintain the pernicious lie that you weren’t somehow able to to do this every day, for a number of years. 

8) Pretend that the number of children you have is directly, inversely correlated with the time you have to write. 

9) Stop listening to Neil Young’s soundtrack to Dead Man when you sit down at the computer to write. ‘Why art thou silent and invisible?’ Indeed. 

10) Fail to journal consistently. 

11) Spend scant spare time programming your midi controller instead of actually playing music, or writing. 

12) Perceive the pursuit of music and literary endeavour as completely separate, unrelated, unknown to one another. 

13) Forget the late night euphoria of tenderly placing words upon the page. 

14) Surround yourself with utterly rational, reasonable, practical and utilitarian people for whom this is all futile and self-defeating. 

15) Remember that this is all futile and self-defeating. 

16) Forget and fail to use your diary as the repository of collected notes, ideas and ruminations to find their fullest expression in the evenings writing. 

17) Never use a Belton Brick reverb. Ever. And never play a reverb into a fuzz. Only, ever have reverb last in the chain. 

18) Refuse to listen to Jimi Hendrix’s Castles Made of Sand. 

19) Elevate the practical and political above the true and the beautiful. 

20) Stop making ‘calls’ to capture ideas. 

21) Ignore the sound advice of building a habit through the consistent repetition of minimal achievement (such as journaling a single sentence). 

22) Forget to treat everything as prayer, and an encounter with Christ.  

Having had our eleventh child three months ago gave me pause to consider Johah in the belly of the whale. It’s not that I’ve been sent to preach repentance to an errant peoples, but more so, that I can relate to the notion of being swallowed up, whole, by God’s will and His way. It’s been about six months since I’ve posted her on Wristwatches, and there’s been more than a few instances in which I’ve considered putting the entire endeavour to bed. The reasons have been legion, and varied, and fickle and on occasion, legitimate. The fact that it’s been six months since posting is probably gbraood reason alone to walk away. 

But then again, there’s a practical logic to ending it all that doesn’t gel with the ideology I’ve espoused here, over the years, as I’ve extolled those with ears to hear it to fight tooth and nail to preserve their disciplines: spiritual, creative and physical. To concede some sort of defeat and decide that I’d never do this again, despite both the commitment and the will, would be disappointing at best, and hypocrisy at worst. There may well be a time when the project, and its values, lie contrary to my way of life, or manner of seeing things. I hope to God this day never arrives, as it would indicate a breakdown, dysfunction or some sort of emotional malignancy of catastrophic proportion. 

Of course imposter syndrome whispers into the ear from time to time, particularly in time of hardship, crisis and confusion. What right have you, to extol the sorts of values and ideals which, on any given day, you struggle to embody, let alone exemplify? Well, dear reader, what right have I? In all seriousness, nonetheless, perhaps some sort of pact is in order, whereby should this project disappear, you can consider it a distress signal of sorts. It would be one thing to give up writing, and posting. But another thing entirely to repudiate the entire body of work, set it on fire and let the ashes drift away in the wind. Let’s avoid that particular approach to self-destruction, shall we? 

But indeed, the arrival of our beautiful, eleventh child ushered in a new assortment of challenges that should be typical when dealing with the magnitude, responsibility and wonder of a new life, a new soul to bring closer to Christ, as best as one can. If having a child isn’t life changing, what is? Thus, the mind drifting to Jonah, trapped in the dark, wet confinement of the leviathan. Being propelled to a fate, a responsibility he would rather have fled, as he had attempted to. And no, I haven’t attempted to flee, should you be wondering. My failings are manifold, but haven’t yet included permanent abandonment. 

Thus, there has been the wonderful, pressing toil and tumult of family life that has kept me from writing, journalling, striving to think clearly and consistently enough to bring words to the page. The caveat of course, being that my own labours have been negligible compared to my beloved bride, who is able to rise, valiantly, irrevocably, to new heights of sacrifice and self denial to meet the needs that flourish around us. In that sense, when I am humbled by her resolve, I sometimes do, in a manner of speaking, try “to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord.” Anyone who lives in the presence of formidable virtue could be tempted to inertia, when you realise how far you still have to go in your journey. 

Thus, we press on, humbled, inspired, yearning for holiness, seeking it in the tumult of the day. At my worst, I flee, though distraction, impulsivity, sloth. At my best, I light a candle in the belly of the fish and let the Lord carry me forth, joyfully, knowing that his will is as simple as it is demanding. I know that a hidden life can be holy. And when I see clearly, I know that little else matters. 

As important as it is to envision the man you're working to become - it's equally important to have a sense of the man you never want to be.

I always had a sense of who that man was. He was a man without life, without vigour. He was a man whose guitars collected dust. He was a man who stared down at his smartphone, repeatedly, dead-eyed, habitually. He was a man who seldom prayed, seldom fasted, and remembered, in a melancholic reverie, what it was like to spill words upon a page with a joyous, manic frenzy that was tempered by a reluctant commitment to order, brevity and efficiency. He was a man whose weight plates became slowly bound together by cobweb and weakness, the barbell never to be warmed by the grip of a determined fist. He was a man who drank too much and read little of note, little of value, worth discussing. He was content with the tripe and dross of an uncurated, dying culture that once celebrated truth, beauty and goodness above every other sensory or aesthetic consideration.

Nobody plans to die their slow deaths. You have to be vigilant, attentive and aware of the slow decline when it creeps in, with the reasonable excuses that make your disciplines seem burdensome and damaging. Death whispers tenderly: you're too tired; you're not well; not tonight; take a break so you can come back stronger, clearer; you need the sleep; it doesn't really matter.

It all matters. Every discipline and commitment matters. Every day matters, given as a gift by a gracious Lord and Saviour that speaks to us in the toil as much as the silence, if we let Him. A slow death creeps in through the cracks of our disciplines. When we become, lax, flaccid, indifferent to the gift of life and the virtue and vocation that defines and sustains us, we lay down our arms and invite this slow death upon ourselves.

It creeps up on me as much as anyone. I get sick and I ease up on training. I push back my internet blocker another hour so I can trawl through posts about music gear, instead of picking up my guitar and creating something new with it. I give up time restricted eating to snack on comfort food late at night. I become intemperate with coffee and give up on my journalling, neglect my writing. One failure feeds another, and day by day, I slip closer and closer to being the man I swore I'd never become.

You need to know the man. You need to recognise him, so you can see the traces of his weakness, his torpor as they creep up on you, as they seek to become you. You need to know him, to find him, to kill him swiftly, mercilessly - rather than realising he's staring back at you from the mirror, while you pretend you never saw him coming.

It is good to give thanks to the LORD,

to sing praises to thy name, O Most High;

to declare thy steadfast love in the morning,

and thy faithfulness by night,

to the music of the lute and the harp,

to the melody of the lyre.

For thou, O LORD, hast made me glad by thy work;

at the works of thy hands I sing for joy.

Psalm 92

Two years of cultural and political disarray will have a particular effect on a man, one would think. I’m certain it’s made its mark on all of us, in a range of ways. When reason and logic are seemingly abandoned for the arbitrary application of laws, regulations and protocols that seemingly do more harm than good, we can be forgiven for coming off our axis somewhat, and spinning in an altogether new and interesting way. To watch people turn on their own communities, families and institutions is unsettling to say the least. To watch them do so in the name of an unholy war against an amorphous, biological enemy is little short of absurd, to put it charitably. 

Combine this psychosocial maelstrom with the personal challenges of a rich and rambunctious family life and you’ve got yourself a surefire recipe for what could be disastrous, or what could be, oddly delightful. I’ve found myself returning, more and more over these tumultuous months, to an old love of the guitar. More than that, I must admit that it’s displaced other disciplines, such as this old blog, more than I would have anticipated. It’s not only the instrument itself, or the joy of playing it, but a somewhat misguided quest for the sonic tools that will bend and shape sound in the particular manner that brings all manner of joyous awe and wonder to a simple man’s life. I call them 'sonic mistresses,' per se, for their ability to draw me from the creative vocations I'd usually devote more time to, such as writing.

And I say misguided, in the sense that in my heart of hearts, I know that I’ve stepped away from a rational approach to this all, to relish in the incremental refinement of building a pedalboard that I may have considered foolhardy only two years ago. For the uninitiated, a pedalboard is a board of sorts, that houses one’s guitar effect pedals. These might range from simple compressors, that tighten up the range of your output to smoothen out the sound, to reverb, delay, distortion and even fuzz (ie The Beatles - Revolution) pedals, that can cause all manner of raucous delight for players of all ability. The incremental refinement is the process of finding the ‘right’ one of each of these pedals for your particular taste, style and budget, and combining then in a way that works best for the types of sounds you’re trying to accomplish. 

For example, in regards to reverb, one may go from a TC Electronic Hall of Fame II Mini pedal, to their fully fledged Hall of Fame II, before finally realising that the Boss RV6 is the fuller, richer option for the working man on a budget that doesn’t want (or need) to compromise on quality. Or if that’s hard to follow, one might, for example, work their way from an ubiquitous Ibanez Tube Screamer, to the uncompromising Proco RAT, before finally finding a highly coveted distortion/fuzz pedal that is handcrafted in Philadelphia by a sole pedal builder in his garage, who has seemingly fallen off the face of the earth and may never build a single pedal ever again. Theoretically, of course. 

One pieces together a collection of said pedals, on their pedalboard, to craft a particular set of sounds that delights the player (and hopefully the listener), with the perfect boost, shift, overdriving or modulation of the signal coming from the guitar itself. The result, and the process dear reader, has been a welcome and wonderful journey, taken in incremental pockets of time between the love and labours of a husband and father that likely has better things to do with his time. But it’s the journey of sonic exploration and experimentation that has, largely, offered a sense of liberation from the madness of the world that surrounds us. Pair that journey with a cadre of talented, good Catholic men with whom you can jam, write and cover songs with, and you know you’re in the right place, at the right time. 

The joys of family and vocation of course, abound. Along the way, in these two years of pandemic, God has blessed our family with a sixth and a seventh son. Our seven sons, and our three daughters, living out our faith together - are the lifeblood that sustains us. Sharing the little studio space here at home with them, is a peculiar joy unto itself. Our humble little collection now boasts a couple of 3/4 sized guitars, one electric and one acoustic, for them to learn on. They have all manner of fun on the family organ and synthesiser, and some have even taken to tinkering with recording and songwriting as a creative refuge from the tumult of daily life. The music is a discipline, but it’s undoubtedly an anodyne that punctuates the day, along with the rosary, the family meals, silent prayer, reading and the visits to our Lord in the tabernacle. I would argue that the music has a silence of its own - when the absence of discursive thought, of chatter, of the fickle reason of man is set aside. 

Music speaks to the dignity of the human person - granted creative faculties and an orientation to beauty that transcends any utilitarianism, any nihilism that seeks to recreate our existence into the image of its own despair. The psalmist recounts: “I will incline my ear to a proverb; I will solve my riddle to the music of the lyre.” I’ve found my way back to the lyre and harp, and these wonderful little sonic boxes have helped me work through more than one riddle over the past couple of years. May you, gentlemen, do no less with the instruments the good Lord has laid before you.  

As we continue to celebrate Christmastide, Holy Mother Church grants us a number of feasts and solemnities through which to orient our prayer and meditation. The feast of the Holy Family this week is no exception, and gives cause for reflection, reverence and great joy. 

For any father, St Joseph is a monumental figure of immense inspiration. His wondrous balance of silence, strength, nobility and attention to the word and will of God are just cause for this patriarch to be known as the ‘terror of demons.’ In a culture that has torn down masculinity, fatherhood and chivalry in the service of false and fickle idols, we must turn to St Joseph as an eternal guide and model of what our fatherhood should be. In the gospel of Matthew, we find first, Joseph’s honour and judiciousness, “being a just man, and not willing publicly to expose” his betrothed, who was of child, beyond the means and limits of his own faculties. Would that any young man of the our age be similarly temperate, beyond the vengeful lure of modern salaciousness and public exposure. 

Furthermore, he is addressed by an angel of the Lord as “Joseph, son of David,” unable to escape the honour and responsibility borne by a royal lineage, to which all husbands and fathers should feel similarly bound, as “co-heirs of the grace of life.” Joseph is told “fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is conceived in her, is of the Holy Ghost.” We must fear not indeed, lest the tumult and banality of a fractured world that has abandoned and betrayed the blessings of conjugal, traditional marriage delude us of its permanence and divine purpose. When we ponder how “Joseph rising up from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him, and took unto him his wife,” we should all sense the rousing demand, honour and responsibility inherent in the need to nurture and protect the families we have been blessed with. A fatuous, eternally distracted generation would do well to rise from the sleep of an eternal adolescence, to embrace the heroic virtue of marriage and family, rather than flee from it in the pursuit of comfort and convenience. 

Joseph, who was again told to “Arise, and take the child and his mother, and fly into Egypt,” acted with a certitude, resolve and integrity needed to thwart the evil of the despot who would “seek the child to destroy him.” It is a simple act that asserts the moral primacy of the domestic church over the whims of empires and oligarchs that claim their disingenuous intent to “come to adore” our children, whilst of course seeking to poison them with an unrelenting ideological corruption of all we hold to be true, good and beautiful in God’s institution of the family, as we’ve known and cherished it for millennia. Joseph still stands, silent, present, undaunted, as the model for us all.  

And of Our Lady - what praise and reverence could we render that would be sufficient? The Theotokos, the model of all contemplative traditions, who in the gospel of Luke “kept all these words, pondering them in her heart.” She too, just like Joseph, foreshadowing Our Lord’s repeated assertion: Be Not Afraid, was similarly assured. She was told, “Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God,” only in time to be warned by Simeon that “thy own soul a sword shall pierce, that, out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed.” The comforts, consolations and tribulations of every parent can be witnessed in Mary’s bittersweet revelation that we must surrender to suffering, as much as revel in the joyous wonders that God renders in our children. The instruction though, to both Mary and Joseph to ‘fear not,’ is a gift to us, one and all, as the blessed burdens of our own families may at times tempt us to despair. The Woman however, “clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars,” points us to a reverence in conflict with the materialism and conceit of the broader culture.

We must remember always, amidst the challenges of family, that “He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.” The poverty, servitude and humility of family life grants us a spiritual banquet, should we allow God’s grace to prepare it. Our undue frustration, anger, egotism and immaturity can render us incapable of relishing the consolations found in fatherhood and motherhood, unless we submit to the sense of awe, wonder and due reverence for life that is writ large in the Holy Family. We recall how Mary and Joseph “wrapped Him up in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger,” with God having “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men.” Without neglecting the devastating humility and servitude of the cross, we can see in the incarnation itself everything we need to truly understand service, selflessness and love in the bonds of familial life. 

That God should be made man. That Joseph and Mary should tend to their child, with a humble, silent strength and certitude. That God should remind us again and again to ‘be not afraid,’ despite the struggles, the suffering and the servitude of our roles as husbands, wives, father and mothers. All these riches, and so many more, present themselves in our reverence of the Holy Family. May we pray to truly appreciate, understand and embody all that Jesus, Mary and Joseph have for us, to better serve a world that desperately seeks to abandon all that we strive to embrace - for our own families, as well as the broader culture beyond the walls of the church domestic. 

by Gaetano Carcarello

It’s taken time to get to this, particular, blank page. It feels like months, is more likely weeks, but the truth of it is, writing over the past year or so has been difficult, haphazard and at times, pretty damn rare. It’s a multitude of factors at play that have made it so difficult, but I’m here to count my blessings and state my claim. 

First and foremost, I need to raise my glass, tip my hat to our beautiful tenth child, and seventh son: Louis. The sound of his name conjures an ineffable, radiant sense of gratitude that spills out of my heart, into my hands and fingers, and I thank our Lord and Saviour each and every day that the kid is here, with us, safe, sound, whole, beautiful and innocent as every one of his siblings was. The tenderness and vulnerability of any newborn babe must bring life and love to the most hardened of hearts, as it certainly does mine, and reminds me, shockingly, mercilessly, of God’s gratuitous love and benevolence. 

But to the writing, or the lack of, perhaps an explanation is fitting. Most mornings, I’m woken by one of our wonderful sons between 4:30 and 5:30am. The eternal question is of course, whether or not to engage, acquiesce, ignore or indulge. Whatever course of action I may take, I am awake, alive and engaged, as a husband and father. This of course, is after a standard night of repeated wake up calls that come from one child more than others, but are reliable enough to know that I don’t necessarily bound of out bed with a kettlebell in one hand and my writing notebook in the other. There is black coffee, self pity and when God grants me the grace of it, my breviary, unless it has to wait til later in the morning. 

The uncertainty and despair of the pandemic has had an impact that is both cognitive and affective. I’ve found myself agitated, angry, confused, uncertain and completely at sea with it all. At its peak, I’d be checking the news fifteen to twenty times a day, to see when and how our lives would be disrupted, disturbed, derailed, again and again. I’ve been angry about lies, distortions, coercion. I’ve had to make difficult decisions, as we all have, and continue to watch lives around me contort, conform, retaliate and revolt in a range of ways that I can usually make sense of - but sometimes not. For many, it has become a wicked and futile game. I still see enough of God’s grace in the colours of a sunrise to know that He has us in hand. 

Good habits are built in here and there, despite my worst intentions to abandon every creative ambition and intent I ever had. Whilst writing, one of my Freedom sessions kicked in, as did the night shift on my laptop. The internet is dead to me, and I know that the blue light from my screen won’t keep me up when I finally hit the hay. I’m poring over my notes from Atomic Habits to renew a range of intentions, that in truth, aren’t really priorities - but wonderful luxuries that can sneak into a sliver of a day when there’s time. Right now, being at the keyboard by 9pm is a wonderful blessing that won’t repeat itself for some time now. But right now, I am here. And here you are.

There is a guitar spending time out of its case, and I will humbly admit that much of the energy and focus that was going into writing, has been diverted into music - as a necessity no less. I find, as you well might, that the more the world is tearing itself apart with the noise of words, lies, arguments, the more I need to retreat into a melodic silence that is bereft of language, but full of life. Music has sustained me, at so many points in my life. I’m blessed to play music with good, holy and humble men of great faith, and I’ve wiled away many fantastic, futile hours crafting a sonic palette through the joy of putting together a pedal board, which may be a guilty pleasure that other breeds of instrumentalist may be unfamiliar with.  

A commitment to prayer, and in particular, the 15 Prayers of St Bridget have been a new addition to the evening routine. Complementing the breviary, reading and silent prayer of the Carmelite rule, it’s a fairly unforgiving addition, but an incredibly rich and reverent meditation on the passion of our Lord, and a petition for His mercy and grace that is as humbling as it is inspiring. At the beginning of every work day, I spend time before the tabernacle, with a handful of my children, in silence, in reverence, likely teaching them more in those five minutes than I ever could with any words that I could conjure. 

In the end, it’s this. I must pray above all else. I must tend to my wife, my children, my patch of earth before I can play with word, phrase and inflection. I love the process of writing. The toil of it. The peace of it. The clarity it brings me. But silence, prayer, and my vocation as husband and father will ever and always come first. Wristwatches and Radios is the balance of meter and melody - purpose and passion - vocation and volition. 

That’s why I’ve been gone so long. It’s also why I’m back. 

God bless you, brothers. 

I’ve spent precious little time, in the past months, facing down the page and spilling some ink in the rare moments that present themselves. We stand at the brink of some sort of cataclysm, and I keep waiting for the thunderous cacophony of death and destruction as it rains down upon us. But rather, we are subjected to a slow bleed; a delicate rot, that takes the wondrous detail of life as we knew it, and slowly draws the colour out of it. For the past eighteen months, we’ve been subjected to the strangest disturbance, manipulation and abuse known most western nations. 

Recall the admonition: Put no trust in princes. What was once, perhaps, admirable caution and prudence has become a systematic attack on so much that we hold dear. Again, we are cut off from the sacraments - the body and blood of our Lord and saviour - without which you shall not have life in you. We are conditioned to stop, stall and digitally genuflect, before crossing the threshold of every single building we seek to enter. We all wear our stinking, fetid masks as a symbol of obedience to a regime of bureaucratic demagogues that seemingly have no interest in the questionable efficacy (and related risks) of such practices. We pathologise the wonder and beauty of communion with those we love - a tender smile; an embrace; a kiss; a firm handshake; a fine whiskey shared with brothers bound by faith, fraternity and fidelity. We count kilometres, avoid friend and family, and pretend that the case numbers don’t keep rising, despite the draconian measures inflicted upon us. 

I’ve taken solace in sound and song, more than anything lately. That and reading. A lot of reading. Prayer, always. The Divine Office. Playing a lot of guitar. Stepping away from the toxic repetition of the same bad news, from the same bad sources, touting the same bad solutions. I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Or any answers, really. I do have questions - many questions. And an instinctive aversion to tyranny, coercion and deceit. Thus, it’s been a rough few months. There are glimmers of hope, here and there, but all in all, I have such little trust in princes at this point, that I can see nothing short of madness and futility in the panacea they propose to grant us the freedom and rights accorded by natural law - not legislation. 

We are made in the image and likeness of God, with a dignity and a divine purpose that renders all this mess and noise just that - sound and fury. It has been thus, in music, that I find so much solace. The kind of odd, futile obsession with tone that can plague guitarists, can be an intoxicating distraction in a plague of panic, I assure you. I always smile when I pray the psalm: Awake, my soul, Awake, O lyre and harp! I will awake the dawn! There is a wondrous logic, beauty and reason to be found in song - and it has, for me again, become a refuge from discursive thought, when it becomes plagued by frustration, tipping towards despair. 

The months ahead will offer no respite, brothers - so take respite in prayer, and the beauty of silence, that can even be found in song. It is still there, in the mischievous smile of your daughters. It is there, in the furrowed brow of your inquisitive sons. It is there, in the colour of the sunset on the distant hills. It is there, in the unmistakable warmth of the woman you love. It is there, at the foot of the cross, with Our Lady, who pondered every mystery of her beloved son in her heart. 

Keep the rhythm of a life that has purpose, predictability and prayer to mark time - but find the melody of an unspoken truth that can only be carried in silence and song, to make sense amidst the madness, and draw closer to He who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and weighed the heavens with his palm.

By Gaetano Carcarello

And behold a great tempest arose in the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was asleep. And they came to him, and awaked him, saying: Lord, save us, we perish. And Jesus saith to them: Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith? Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.

Matthew 8:17

So many months into the madness of the pandemic and new methods are rolled out to terrify the masses. I’ve no doubt that once things seem to settle, and we regain a sense of normality, an alarm goes off in the hearts and headquarters of all manner of industries. 

There are ‘explosions’ of cases, of an ‘out of control’ virus, that is sometimes, somehow, dangerously asymptomatic. We live in dread fear of ‘hotspots,’ ‘super spreaders’ and culturally homogenous, alphabetical ‘variants.’ 

Yes, there are those who become quite ill, and those who tragically, die. But the overwhelming majority do not, and those whose lives are lost are usually lost with the virus, not because of it. We know all of this, but we act as though we don’t. We treat a positive detection of an infection as a ‘case,’ which was a medical term traditionally reserved for a serious or acute instance of an illness that would usually result in hospitalisation. 

People twist themselves into knots to satisfy the narrative, proudly brandishing their mask, or their vaccine, or their devotion to crippling isolation and despotic mandates and protocols. Hashtags. T-Shirts. Bandaids. Photo filters. Do our bit. Stop the spread. Flatten the curve. Dull the senses. 

The pattern of dehumanisation in the strategies is remarkable. They promote a culture of fear, suspicion and outright animosity towards anyone who asks reasonable questions. They deny access to community, to congregation, interaction, intimacy. They moderate the joy and wonder of the human visage with a covering of negligible efficacy, which most likely does more harm than good, once wet and stashed in your pocket God knows how many times. They strip thousands of their livelihoods and render thousands of others atomised, alone, trying to make sense of the human experience, without the human experience. 

They deny the faithful the sacraments, quell the choirs, empty the classrooms and strip the town square of its lifeblood. The virtual sphere, of course, swells and rages. We watch more. Buy more. Fight more. Fear more. We become infected by so much more, giving in to the paranoia, the terror, the compulsion to the worst of our natures, turning against one another and placing far too much trust in a digital oligarchy that twists, distorts, silence and denies according to its whims. 

Their capacity to stifle discussion and dissent should trouble us more than the virus should, but then again, perhaps we need the wake up call. Perhaps we need to see the abuse of power, to see where that power lies. Perhaps we need to be amid the tempest to be reminded of how Christ ‘commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm.’

Just don’t fall asleep in the boat beside him; but watch, wait, and pray. 

by Gaetano Carcarello

My dear, long suffering wife and I recently celebrated our fifteenth anniversary, and God bless her, I don’t know how she’s done it. In order to survive living with myself, even I’ve taken to desperate measures, so the patience, grace and virtue she’s exhibited has been nothing short of miraculous, from my perspective. It does of course, beg the question: What have I actually learnt in all these years of Catholic marriage and family life? First, I’ll justify the qualification. I say Catholic family life, because I inherently believe it to be such a different species to secular family life, as requiring demarcation. 

Some context. We have nine children, so yes, we are clearly open to life and all of its joyous gifts and challenges. I am an OCDS, so my life is marked by prayer, in the Divine Office and the practice of silent prayer and the pursuit of contemplation. The liturgy is the lynchpin of our lives, in both Sunday mass and weekday masses when we can get to it. Our children are formed in the faith, and together, our daily rosary draws us closer to God, and I pray, closer to each other in a way that we may never understand. Two years ago we picked up our lives and moved 333km to a rural town to be part of a thriving community of devout families nourished by a thriving parish lead by outstanding, orthodox priests, and a school that is unapologetically faithful to the teachings of the Church. Our lives are steeped in a love and devotion to Holy Mother Church in a manner that seeks to uphold the truths of the faith in word and deed, as well, and as imperfectly as our fallen natures can manage. 

Context aside, what have I learnt in fifteen years of marriage? To be blunt: Nothing. Or perhaps, to be fair, very little. I am largely the same self-centred, easily distracted and single-minded, if genial, retrograde that I was fifteen years ago (I use the term retrograde in the Gordon sense, rather than the pejorative misnomer). I say that I’ve learnt nothing, or very little, to accept what I feel that I have definitely learnt: A man of my nature, and my flaws, needs the sacrament of marriage to escape the flaws and failings of his own particular disposition. 

Jordan Peterson articulates the point quite eloquently, when he advises young men to pursue responsibility and dignity in a life of poignant struggle, imbued with great meaning, rather than a life of convenience. Did I mention my nine children? By accepting the responsibility of marriage and fatherhood, we force ourselves to outgrow the limiting obsessions and idiosyncrasies that make us egotistical, boorish and focused on little more than our own needs and desires. In responding to the needs of my wife and children, I need to set aside the particular muses and musings that might otherwise have me hunched over a keyboard, a whiskey beside me and Art Blakey pounding through my headphones. It’s not that it never happens, but it comes second. Or third. Or fiftieth in the list of priorities - hence the somewhat (cough) infrequent nature of these posts on Wristwatches and Radios, as much as I love working on it. I recently wrote about Fatherhood and the Way of the Little Flower, exploring this very notion of how our roles as fathers and husbands can be a path to spiritual growth, tending evermore to Christ, rather than our own desires. 

The sacrament of marriage demands, really, all that you have. It doesn’t mean that you’re to leave everything else behind. There are some things that you should, or you must leave behind if your marriage is to truly flourish. The fidelity of the sacrament demands an orientation towards your spouse that speaks of a true fidelity - one that isn’t compromised or diluted by the kind of flirtation that might be more prevalent in a secular appreciation of the relationship as contractual, rather than covenantal. Hence, you need to be a better man than the one you were - but once again, this is a blessing rather than a burden, drawing you closer to the vision of life and love laid out by our Lord when He extolled: For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.

Furthermore, I can assert that I’ve learnt near to nothing, because I rely on my children to constantly correct, guide and lead me to living out my vocation as best I can. Usually, this is in the form of pertinent questions, that can include: Have you done your morning prayer yet? Can we go to mass before school? Is it a sin to do X, or how about Y? Why are you allowed to watch that if we can’t? Why is there an empty chocolate wrapper in the glove box? Where are you going and why? Rather than having an image of my guardian angel upon my right shoulder, and a tempting devil on my left, try to imagine my nine children perched on both shoulders, on my lap, atop my head and latched on to both arms and legs. This isn’t a literal description of course, but a figurative one that makes the point earnestly. 

Our wives and our children challenge and refine us I’m ways that nobody else can. Our intimacy, shared history, common identity and the blood that binds us by means beyond words and intentions, sanctified by God’s grace, gives us every opportunity to grow closer to one another, and closer to Christ in our the ground of our being. The duty, responsibility and honour of tending to my wife and children, albeit imperfectly drives me ever daily, closer to the man I seek to be - when I purposely tend my vocation. What I’ve learnt may be little, but I know without a shadow of a doubt, that I need the sacrament of marriage to inspire me to a greatness of sorts, that can only be known to husbands and fathers, and I’m learning to thank God for the opportunity every day - as we all should. 

By Gaetano Carcarello