I was conceived on a tiny tropical island with palm trees and coconut palm. Nine months later upon my birth the wind was howling, waves crashing violently upon the shore. My mother was stricken with dengue fever, a terrible terrible disease, but she managed to endure the hours of labour, the sweat dripping from every pore to allow me to emerge. Quickly I was whisked away, isolated from my mothers embrace and her deadly sickness to the confines of a sterile room. She named me Natalie Jane. A nice name.
Years later we left the island and returned to New Zealand, the country my parents and my elder siblings called home. We moved into a little house in the growing city, the North Shore where I met kids who came from middle class 2.5 kid families. Kindergarten and Primary School were the places where I made friends, developed an interest in writing, drawing, skating and performing. I spent hours building huts in the bush behind my house, coming up with skating routines on our verandah and avoiding the mood swings of my teenage brothers and sisters. I envied the smaller families of my friends, their quiet spotless homes, their new clothes, the energy and support of their parents.
After Primary and Intermediate I headed to a single sex school across the bridge closer to the big city. It was my choice to go there. I wanted a better education, better opportunities than my brothers and sisters had had. Big decision for a twelve year old to have made. And for the next four years I regretted the decision. Being surrounded by thousands of catty and competitive teenage girls for eight hours a day, five days a week made me bitter and angry. Although I hated it, I loved Film Studies and became a monitor for the editing and film suites borrowing the video cameras regularly to make little films of my friends crazy nights out as we terrorized the city and met up with boys. I also got the lead role in my first big play. Romeo and Juliet. Over two hundred hopefuls auditioned for the combined production and although I knew nothing about Shakespeare I understood poetry and rythym, and I found I had an uncanny ability to be able to perform from truth. Love is not such a difficult motivation to understand. After all performances were through, the speeches made, roses given, I didn't really understand why I needed to continue at high school. I made life difficult for my parents, gave up on most of my classes and spent a lot of time thinking about boyfriends and misbehaving. The compromise came in sending me away on a student exchange programme for my final year of high school. I had already travelled extensively with my family but this was an amazing opportunity to get the hell out of dodge at age sixteen. I chose Bolivia in South America and I was delivered to a town on the altiplano, a barren wasteland with a rich culture and history where I passed the time learning the language, making friends with gypsies, metal musicians and communists. They were the poets, the performers, the activists, the atheists, the thinkers, the lovers and also, the people that took drugs.

People, acting, love, experience, change, culture, nature.

Nancy Sinatra, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Ray Charles, Nick Cave, Gillian Welsh, The White Stripes, The Dears, David Holmes, Amon Tobin, Death In Vegas, Atmosphere... the endless list.

Closer for f*cked up love, The Notebook for love in the fifties.

The Mighty Boosh, Little Britain, CSI (the original).

The Oracle by Dave de Cleene ( the most important book in NZ history), The Outsiders, American Psycho, The Dice Man.