I could never be a scientist, because I'm too much of an empiricist.
That sounds nonsensical, I know. But it's the same reason my religious career never took off: I have always struggled to fathom the incredible. There are certain facts about the world in which we life that just stagger me.
Things like atoms.
Dark matter.
Supernovas.
The big bang.
The idea that the universe is infinite.
The idea that the universe is finite.
Christ, I still struggle to comprehend that the earth is round.
At the risk of sounding like a Contiki tour of an acid trip, the things that the sciences require us to believe as fundaments of their respective disciplines leave me breathless and gaping, forehead pink and wrinkled like a baby taking the in-breath before a wail. If I can't fathom the foundation stones of these temples of thought, what hope do I have of mounting the dizzying spires at the pinnacle of scientific hypothesis?
I have been thinking a lot lately about things I can't possibly understand because one of my dear, dear friends wants to die.
Or rather, she wishes she could never have existed. She longs for oblivion - she struggles through each day dogged by the seductive siren song of nothingness. And no matter how eloquently she expresses it, I cannot understand, because the prospect of an idea as huge as oblivion terrifies me. It's a concept as vast as the ocean, and my mind is a grain of salt. Whenever I try to face it, I cannot help but be consumed by it, lost, dissolved.
How can we humans grasp the enormity of nothingness? I am a conscious being. Every single thing I experience is filtered through the gates of my ego, my sense of self, my "I." The idea of not being conscious, of not existing, is fundamentally not within my capacity to grasp. And so, because I have no way of understanding it, I fear it above all things.
Eternity is just as much a source of blind terror. I remember being about eleven, and trying to explain to my bewildered parents that I was crying because I'd realised that, according to conventional beliefs, the afterlife was either eternity or oblivion, and both options drove me into a fit of complete panic.
Perhaps I'm being immature or churlish. After all, birth and death are the only things we all share. There's a great Laura Marling song that goes 'Til I'm laid into my final resting place/Just like the rest of human race who've done it/Without complaining all the way.' So perhaps this is just another symptom of a bourgeois youthful mind clinging to a fin de siècle intellectualist tumult. But damnit, I like being alive. Right now, I have no plans to go gentle into that good night.
So though it sometimes feels like I'm embracing ignorance, I'll go on pressing down those unquiet waves of fear and insignificance. A good dose of wonder is good for the soul, but unless I moderate my thoughts, I'll never get anything done. For now, at least, I'll content myself with the little sneaking moments of vast epiphany that pounce on me on occasion, grasp me by the ears and scream 'Do you even realise how outrageously incomprehensible your own existence is?!'
We all need that now and then. But I sure couldn't do it for a living.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 23, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Hipster Youth
My friends and I play this game when we're out. We keep our eyes peeled for disaffected youth, clad in tight jeans and waistcoats, overbearded and bespectacled, or pairing heavy boots with tiny skirts. And when we sight one, we lean in conspiratorially close and whisper gleefully: 'Look at dat hipster!'
The phrase carries none of the snorting animosity of the internet tag LATFH - rather, it's a cry of muffled delight, mixed with, admittedly, a touch of superiority, but never bile.
The cafe I'm writing this in, incidentally, is ideal for hipster-spotting. The wait staff have asymmetrical haircuts and adorable fedoras. The customers ooze lower-Chapel Street cool, and congregate under the central courtyard sculpture constructed from gas bottles. And it began here, a few weeks ago, a fateful game of Look At Dat Hipster, when suddenly, four of us caught sight of ourselves in a mirrored shopfront, and with a start, realised that the hipsters were us. I appraised my reflection - wearing Doc Martens, an indian scarf, a leather jacket with Mickey Mouse emblazoned on the back from a Sunday market and an ink-stained bag because I never got around to buying another, and anyway, the ink made me look artistic - and the realisation slapped me lightly across the face.
The evidence rolled inexorably in. I work in a secondhand bookshop. I'm in a fringe theatre company. I own dozens of Popular Penguins. The last book I read was by Camus. The last film I saw was by Hitchcock. I mean, god, I'm a photographer who's procrastinating from her thesis in globalised puppetry by sitting in a cool cafe (so cool that you're still allowed to smoke in it), scrawling in a Moleskine an entry to post in my blog.
I think I'm a hipster.
I've been noticing the word a lot recently, usually finding it used in a derogatory sense. Because I'm a child of my generation, I wikipedia-ed the term, and found an article from Time Out New York by Christian Lorentzen, arrestingly titled 'Why the hipster must die.' It's essentially a rant decrying the Hipster Youth (ha) for being alarmingly uncool, but it had a neat little line in it: 'hipsterism fetishizes the authentic and regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity.'
Ah, authentic. It's a word endlessly evoked in Arts scholarhip (half my thesis is based on it), but when push comes to shove, it doesn't actually mean anything. Neither does 'cool.' They're both ideas, or states of being which, as soon as they are examined, are destroyed. They're mirages that seem solid until you step close enough to realise that they're ideas without a core. Cool people are always completely uninterested in the cultural cues that make them cool - take Tom Waits. He is at his coolest when he is drunk out of his mind, chuckling at the panicked confusion of an interviewer. Genuine cool never (or rarely enough, at least), arises from the desire to be cool. If you have to ask whether you're being cool, you're not.
So too with authenticity. The authentic doesn't fret over whether it is true, or natural, or organic, it just is.
So hipsterdom starts life with a profound disadvantage, inasmuch as the greater the fervour with which authenticity and 'coolness' are pursued, the further and faster they slip from reach.
But please don't think I'm merely pontificating on this issue without any subjective insight. I get it. God, I get it. If I could pick a subculture to belong to, it'd be the Beatniks. I long to wear dark glasses, a beret and a bob, snap my fingers at poetry slams and call everyone 'cat' and 'daddy-o.' I would love to be surrounded by people discovering Kerouac and Ginsberg for the first time, and realising that literature can be raw and painful, and can wrench parts of you which you'd 'til then considered forever private. I itch to speak a patois designed to designate inclusion, intellectual breadth and artistic sensibility.
But I can't. Because the moment I'd cross my legs nonchalantly, and rhyme a few too many words in a sentence, I'd draw eye-rolls and sneering glances like moths to the flame of my affectation.
It's a pity, really, that our contemporary youth culture is so accepting of purposeful aberration. Part of me wishes for the 50s, with its clearly defined mainstream, where all it took to shock and rebel was a haircut and some slightly too tight pants. Our youth culture now is a panoply of mainstreams, and we're running out of behemoths to rage against.
We are so saturated with culture that we feel like heathen. It's like those moments when it gets so loud that it's almost like silence. And the millions of middle-class youngsters who've replaced anarchy with apathy, whose feet have lost the pull of the undertow that anchors them to the drive, passion and flash-paper energy they imagine their forebears to have possessed - it's hardly surprising that they launch themselves so desperately on the books, the records, the ideas that last longer than they can. A novel weighs much more than its pages - it carries the gravity of generations who knew more, thought deeper and spoke more beautifully than we ever could.
That's where the constantly backward (and bookward) referencing of hipster culture comes from, I think - the vests, the winklepickers, the thoughtful moustaches and the hoarding of classic literature - it's not just a reaching for the physical stylings of the scholars of old, it's a longing for an age of something solid and true, and what greater constant is there than thought? In this age of sound-bites, where unfathomable tonnes of text are spewed at and from the internet, we are showered constantly with words, and it renders us strangely inarticulate. So there is a great comfort in turning a page in a book and discovering there, clean, succinct, and piercing, the words we cannot find.
Plus, daddy-o, it makes us look really, like, real.
The phrase carries none of the snorting animosity of the internet tag LATFH - rather, it's a cry of muffled delight, mixed with, admittedly, a touch of superiority, but never bile.
The cafe I'm writing this in, incidentally, is ideal for hipster-spotting. The wait staff have asymmetrical haircuts and adorable fedoras. The customers ooze lower-Chapel Street cool, and congregate under the central courtyard sculpture constructed from gas bottles. And it began here, a few weeks ago, a fateful game of Look At Dat Hipster, when suddenly, four of us caught sight of ourselves in a mirrored shopfront, and with a start, realised that the hipsters were us. I appraised my reflection - wearing Doc Martens, an indian scarf, a leather jacket with Mickey Mouse emblazoned on the back from a Sunday market and an ink-stained bag because I never got around to buying another, and anyway, the ink made me look artistic - and the realisation slapped me lightly across the face.
The evidence rolled inexorably in. I work in a secondhand bookshop. I'm in a fringe theatre company. I own dozens of Popular Penguins. The last book I read was by Camus. The last film I saw was by Hitchcock. I mean, god, I'm a photographer who's procrastinating from her thesis in globalised puppetry by sitting in a cool cafe (so cool that you're still allowed to smoke in it), scrawling in a Moleskine an entry to post in my blog.
I think I'm a hipster.
I've been noticing the word a lot recently, usually finding it used in a derogatory sense. Because I'm a child of my generation, I wikipedia-ed the term, and found an article from Time Out New York by Christian Lorentzen, arrestingly titled 'Why the hipster must die.' It's essentially a rant decrying the Hipster Youth (ha) for being alarmingly uncool, but it had a neat little line in it: 'hipsterism fetishizes the authentic and regurgitates it with a winking inauthenticity.'
Ah, authentic. It's a word endlessly evoked in Arts scholarhip (half my thesis is based on it), but when push comes to shove, it doesn't actually mean anything. Neither does 'cool.' They're both ideas, or states of being which, as soon as they are examined, are destroyed. They're mirages that seem solid until you step close enough to realise that they're ideas without a core. Cool people are always completely uninterested in the cultural cues that make them cool - take Tom Waits. He is at his coolest when he is drunk out of his mind, chuckling at the panicked confusion of an interviewer. Genuine cool never (or rarely enough, at least), arises from the desire to be cool. If you have to ask whether you're being cool, you're not.
So too with authenticity. The authentic doesn't fret over whether it is true, or natural, or organic, it just is.
So hipsterdom starts life with a profound disadvantage, inasmuch as the greater the fervour with which authenticity and 'coolness' are pursued, the further and faster they slip from reach.
But please don't think I'm merely pontificating on this issue without any subjective insight. I get it. God, I get it. If I could pick a subculture to belong to, it'd be the Beatniks. I long to wear dark glasses, a beret and a bob, snap my fingers at poetry slams and call everyone 'cat' and 'daddy-o.' I would love to be surrounded by people discovering Kerouac and Ginsberg for the first time, and realising that literature can be raw and painful, and can wrench parts of you which you'd 'til then considered forever private. I itch to speak a patois designed to designate inclusion, intellectual breadth and artistic sensibility.
But I can't. Because the moment I'd cross my legs nonchalantly, and rhyme a few too many words in a sentence, I'd draw eye-rolls and sneering glances like moths to the flame of my affectation.
It's a pity, really, that our contemporary youth culture is so accepting of purposeful aberration. Part of me wishes for the 50s, with its clearly defined mainstream, where all it took to shock and rebel was a haircut and some slightly too tight pants. Our youth culture now is a panoply of mainstreams, and we're running out of behemoths to rage against.
We are so saturated with culture that we feel like heathen. It's like those moments when it gets so loud that it's almost like silence. And the millions of middle-class youngsters who've replaced anarchy with apathy, whose feet have lost the pull of the undertow that anchors them to the drive, passion and flash-paper energy they imagine their forebears to have possessed - it's hardly surprising that they launch themselves so desperately on the books, the records, the ideas that last longer than they can. A novel weighs much more than its pages - it carries the gravity of generations who knew more, thought deeper and spoke more beautifully than we ever could.
That's where the constantly backward (and bookward) referencing of hipster culture comes from, I think - the vests, the winklepickers, the thoughtful moustaches and the hoarding of classic literature - it's not just a reaching for the physical stylings of the scholars of old, it's a longing for an age of something solid and true, and what greater constant is there than thought? In this age of sound-bites, where unfathomable tonnes of text are spewed at and from the internet, we are showered constantly with words, and it renders us strangely inarticulate. So there is a great comfort in turning a page in a book and discovering there, clean, succinct, and piercing, the words we cannot find.
Plus, daddy-o, it makes us look really, like, real.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Little Things Everywhere
I had a strange day last week.
I work at a second-hand bookshop and stationery store at uni, and we've just refurbished the shop, so I've recently been spending whole days culling old books and organising them for returns to dealers and price alterations. Because we stamp the inside covers of the books, to keep a track of them, I often come across inscriptions wishing love and luck to the previous owners.
Over the last year, my eyes kept being drawn to a copy of Gormenghast by Mervin Peake. Something about the name struck me. I suppose I'd heard of it somewhere. I kept meaning to buy it, but never got around to it. On Thursday, it turned up in my culls pile, and when I opened it up to stamp it, I found this:
It says:
'This book was bought by Mike George at LHR London prior to embarking on his world travels on 9.10.89. He finished reading it in Y.H.A. Pemberton WA on 28.11.89.
It is one hell of a book. Peake creates images as clear as crystal due to his unsurpassed command of the English language.
(Signed) Mike George 28.11.89
Favourite passages: Para 7 p 408
Para 2 p 108
last Para 56 + all 57
Oh soddit! The whole book!'
Is that not the most wonderful thing ever? I couldn't stop grinning. I love book recommendations, I love people who love books, and I love listening to people try to articulate how a book moved them, how the characters felt like they were watching over their shoulders, how the atmosphere stayed with them for days. To have those kinds of things in the book itself, from an unknown reader a decade ago? That is just profoundly wonderful.
I found a few other inscriptions that day, though none as in depth, pledging love, friendship, hope and goodwill. I wondered what had happened to the recipients. Had they loved the book as much as the giver had hoped? Had they re-read beautiful passages, folded down corners, and then felt a little pang when it eventually wandered out of their lives via a garage sale or op shop? Or had they shelved it, meaning to get around to reading it, but never quite managed it? Had they scoffed and set it aside? I love that books have the ability to conjure up stories like that.
Later, as I walked to my car, I wandered past what appeared to be a huge wooden cubby house, around a 5 metre cube, on a grassy knoll near the tennis courts at uni. I swore I'd never seen it before, but it couldn't have been constructed so quickly. Nobody else seemed to be paying it any attention. Puzzled, I walked over and climbed the stairs and found a curiously laid out interior indeed. It looked like something from an Escher painting. I took a photo of it on my phone, which fails entirely to do it justice because the lens isn't wide enough, but still:
I still have no idea what it is. But I pottered around, happily bewildered, breathing in the smell of damp, fresh cut wood, pledged to do a photoshoot there, and left, chuckling at the sweet little secrets the world seemed to be hiding just for me.
I work at a second-hand bookshop and stationery store at uni, and we've just refurbished the shop, so I've recently been spending whole days culling old books and organising them for returns to dealers and price alterations. Because we stamp the inside covers of the books, to keep a track of them, I often come across inscriptions wishing love and luck to the previous owners.
Over the last year, my eyes kept being drawn to a copy of Gormenghast by Mervin Peake. Something about the name struck me. I suppose I'd heard of it somewhere. I kept meaning to buy it, but never got around to it. On Thursday, it turned up in my culls pile, and when I opened it up to stamp it, I found this:
It says:
'This book was bought by Mike George at LHR London prior to embarking on his world travels on 9.10.89. He finished reading it in Y.H.A. Pemberton WA on 28.11.89.
It is one hell of a book. Peake creates images as clear as crystal due to his unsurpassed command of the English language.
(Signed) Mike George 28.11.89
Favourite passages: Para 7 p 408
Para 2 p 108
last Para 56 + all 57
Oh soddit! The whole book!'
Is that not the most wonderful thing ever? I couldn't stop grinning. I love book recommendations, I love people who love books, and I love listening to people try to articulate how a book moved them, how the characters felt like they were watching over their shoulders, how the atmosphere stayed with them for days. To have those kinds of things in the book itself, from an unknown reader a decade ago? That is just profoundly wonderful.
I found a few other inscriptions that day, though none as in depth, pledging love, friendship, hope and goodwill. I wondered what had happened to the recipients. Had they loved the book as much as the giver had hoped? Had they re-read beautiful passages, folded down corners, and then felt a little pang when it eventually wandered out of their lives via a garage sale or op shop? Or had they shelved it, meaning to get around to reading it, but never quite managed it? Had they scoffed and set it aside? I love that books have the ability to conjure up stories like that.
Later, as I walked to my car, I wandered past what appeared to be a huge wooden cubby house, around a 5 metre cube, on a grassy knoll near the tennis courts at uni. I swore I'd never seen it before, but it couldn't have been constructed so quickly. Nobody else seemed to be paying it any attention. Puzzled, I walked over and climbed the stairs and found a curiously laid out interior indeed. It looked like something from an Escher painting. I took a photo of it on my phone, which fails entirely to do it justice because the lens isn't wide enough, but still:
I still have no idea what it is. But I pottered around, happily bewildered, breathing in the smell of damp, fresh cut wood, pledged to do a photoshoot there, and left, chuckling at the sweet little secrets the world seemed to be hiding just for me.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Blog after an evening tumble
Tonight, after a long day at work, I walked the 15 minutes back to my car in bitterly cold weather, shivering and stamping all the way. I got to my car, misty-windowed in the empty carpark, but I found that I wasn't yet ready for the noise and bustle of driving back home again. So I walked to a nearby patch of grass, already dew-damp, and I lay on there, listening to Joanna Newsom, and stared at the stars. I found the Southern Cross, and the Pointers, and made faces at the moon. I sang along to the music, laughing at the idea that someone might hear me, or might think I'd fallen over and hurt myself. I wasn't sure how I'd tell them that sometimes, I just needed to fall over and stare at the night sky.
It was only about ten minutes, but I found that the cold was no longer biting, and I felt clear and free and full of wonder.
Incidentally, that brings me neatly to Joanna Newsom. She and I have had a tempestuous relationship. My first exposure to her was at a party at The House, the famous residence of years of student theatre students. Years later, I was to move in myself, but at the time, the place, and the people who frequented it, were strange and new to me. Two people I'd never met, both called Nick, had come home early from overseas and surprised all of my friends. I had felt shy and naive in the face of the laughter and squealing and hugging. The night developed into an impromptu party, and I found myself very late at night with my head on one of the Nick's knees, listening to the music that had just been put on, chosen as appropriate going-to-sleep-music.
I found it very odd. A women who sounded like a cross between a three year old and a very displeased cat was wailing all maudlin and high-pitched over a confused muddle of harp music. I frowned slightly and fell asleep. The album had been put on loop, and so I woke up four hours later, having had dream-skeins constantly torn by some dim awareness of that woman screeching away, I desperately lunged at the sound system and silenced it, and determined to never, ever listen to Joanna Newsom again.
Four years later, I'd expressed my undying hatred for her at some party or other, when I got an email from Tom Doman, who I'd known for years, but never really spoken to at length. He was working a job that afforded him a fair bit of free time, which he was spending trawling the internet for entertainment, and sending regular emails to people he knew. This particular message had the distinct air of one of those emails that has been brewing for some time, and has just been finally dashed out during a work break. I'll paste it nearly in full because it's entertaining:
'Swalker. Giving me your email was the worst move ever because now like everyone else I have the email of I can hassle you during my mundane working hours. THE PURPOSE OF MY EMAIL IS SUCH:
Not liking Joanna Newsom is a bizarre stance for someone who likes indie / martin martini-esque bizarre music. I have recently come to the speculation that this might be because you’ve started listening to the wrong Newsom songs. The acquired taste ones. Therefore I’m programming a remote play list you can plug into your itunes to give her a second chance.
Emily
Sprout and the Bean
Monkey and Bear
Peach, Plum, Pear
The Book of Right-On
I’m never going to bring this up again and certainly don’t want to force you to like music but I guess it struck me as odd that you don’t like her. I mean after all she’s really just a mix of Deerhoof, Lykkie Li, a muppet, Malvina Reynolds and Regina Spektor (if she played a harp). I can totally relate to why you wouldn’t like her as I didn’t at first until I heard Peach, Plum, Pear.'
And so I begrudgingly listened to all the songs he'd suggested, and suddenly remembered particular parts where I was trying to kill her with my mind ('Oh...my...love!' in 'Bridges and Balloons', especially), but also had to admit that the girl had skillz. I quite liked 'This Side of the Blue', and some of her others songs I found entertaining, but she was still hardly my idea of a good time.
I found her voice baffling. I really couldn't see how such a brilliant musician could have so little control over her tone. Over the next few months, I put her on now and then for kicks, but that voice still got in the way. And then, suddenly, I stopped listening to how she sounded, and started paying attention to what she was singing. And fuck, can that woman write lyrics. Holy shit.
In 'Bridges and Balloons', she rhymes caravel with Cair Paravel, for god's sake, and makes it sound entirely reasonable.
In 'The Book of Right On', she sings 'I killed my dinner with karate, kick 'em in the face', and I burst out laughing every time.
The entirety of 'Sadie' gives me goosebumps.
The last verse of 'Cassiopeia' is just glorious.
'Peach, Plum, Pear' says 'You were knocking me down with the palm of your eye,' which makes no sense and perfect sense simultaneously.
The image of freight trains pawing at the night in 'Swansea' is so damn evocative.
Literally every one of her songs has a line that just blows me away. That she can compose such succinct, poignant, hilarious lines of poetry itself is amazing. That she can have them sit nonchalant among rhythm and harmony is just astounding.
I read a review of her recently by a woman who said that she couldn't get over the honesty in her voice, and suddenly everything fell into place for me. The childishness I'd previously found churlish suddenly attained this wonderful grace. Her voice comes out without measurement or confines, and it allows the emotion of her words full reign. Her songs are full of such unbridled life that everything else I hear seems dull and forced.
I'd had a similar epiphany with Colin Meloy a year or so earlier. I'd heard a few of his songs, but found his singing voice raw and grating, until suddenly I found myself listening to Decemberists albums on repeat for weeks on end, and getting goosebumps at regular intervals, until I couldn't bear the idea of those loaded, passionate lyrics being delivered by any voice other than his. He has the same spontaneous element in his singing (as well as a similarly disarming gift with words) that beguiles me endlessly.
And so Tom is now calling me a dirty Newsom lover, and I have a new reason to fall on the grass and be filled up with the world.
It's good.
It was only about ten minutes, but I found that the cold was no longer biting, and I felt clear and free and full of wonder.
Incidentally, that brings me neatly to Joanna Newsom. She and I have had a tempestuous relationship. My first exposure to her was at a party at The House, the famous residence of years of student theatre students. Years later, I was to move in myself, but at the time, the place, and the people who frequented it, were strange and new to me. Two people I'd never met, both called Nick, had come home early from overseas and surprised all of my friends. I had felt shy and naive in the face of the laughter and squealing and hugging. The night developed into an impromptu party, and I found myself very late at night with my head on one of the Nick's knees, listening to the music that had just been put on, chosen as appropriate going-to-sleep-music.
I found it very odd. A women who sounded like a cross between a three year old and a very displeased cat was wailing all maudlin and high-pitched over a confused muddle of harp music. I frowned slightly and fell asleep. The album had been put on loop, and so I woke up four hours later, having had dream-skeins constantly torn by some dim awareness of that woman screeching away, I desperately lunged at the sound system and silenced it, and determined to never, ever listen to Joanna Newsom again.
Four years later, I'd expressed my undying hatred for her at some party or other, when I got an email from Tom Doman, who I'd known for years, but never really spoken to at length. He was working a job that afforded him a fair bit of free time, which he was spending trawling the internet for entertainment, and sending regular emails to people he knew. This particular message had the distinct air of one of those emails that has been brewing for some time, and has just been finally dashed out during a work break. I'll paste it nearly in full because it's entertaining:
'Swalker. Giving me your email was the worst move ever because now like everyone else I have the email of I can hassle you during my mundane working hours. THE PURPOSE OF MY EMAIL IS SUCH:
Not liking Joanna Newsom is a bizarre stance for someone who likes indie / martin martini-esque bizarre music. I have recently come to the speculation that this might be because you’ve started listening to the wrong Newsom songs. The acquired taste ones. Therefore I’m programming a remote play list you can plug into your itunes to give her a second chance.
Emily
Sprout and the Bean
Monkey and Bear
Peach, Plum, Pear
The Book of Right-On
I’m never going to bring this up again and certainly don’t want to force you to like music but I guess it struck me as odd that you don’t like her. I mean after all she’s really just a mix of Deerhoof, Lykkie Li, a muppet, Malvina Reynolds and Regina Spektor (if she played a harp). I can totally relate to why you wouldn’t like her as I didn’t at first until I heard Peach, Plum, Pear.'
And so I begrudgingly listened to all the songs he'd suggested, and suddenly remembered particular parts where I was trying to kill her with my mind ('Oh...my...love!' in 'Bridges and Balloons', especially), but also had to admit that the girl had skillz. I quite liked 'This Side of the Blue', and some of her others songs I found entertaining, but she was still hardly my idea of a good time.
I found her voice baffling. I really couldn't see how such a brilliant musician could have so little control over her tone. Over the next few months, I put her on now and then for kicks, but that voice still got in the way. And then, suddenly, I stopped listening to how she sounded, and started paying attention to what she was singing. And fuck, can that woman write lyrics. Holy shit.
In 'Bridges and Balloons', she rhymes caravel with Cair Paravel, for god's sake, and makes it sound entirely reasonable.
In 'The Book of Right On', she sings 'I killed my dinner with karate, kick 'em in the face', and I burst out laughing every time.
The entirety of 'Sadie' gives me goosebumps.
The last verse of 'Cassiopeia' is just glorious.
'Peach, Plum, Pear' says 'You were knocking me down with the palm of your eye,' which makes no sense and perfect sense simultaneously.
The image of freight trains pawing at the night in 'Swansea' is so damn evocative.
Literally every one of her songs has a line that just blows me away. That she can compose such succinct, poignant, hilarious lines of poetry itself is amazing. That she can have them sit nonchalant among rhythm and harmony is just astounding.
I read a review of her recently by a woman who said that she couldn't get over the honesty in her voice, and suddenly everything fell into place for me. The childishness I'd previously found churlish suddenly attained this wonderful grace. Her voice comes out without measurement or confines, and it allows the emotion of her words full reign. Her songs are full of such unbridled life that everything else I hear seems dull and forced.
I'd had a similar epiphany with Colin Meloy a year or so earlier. I'd heard a few of his songs, but found his singing voice raw and grating, until suddenly I found myself listening to Decemberists albums on repeat for weeks on end, and getting goosebumps at regular intervals, until I couldn't bear the idea of those loaded, passionate lyrics being delivered by any voice other than his. He has the same spontaneous element in his singing (as well as a similarly disarming gift with words) that beguiles me endlessly.
And so Tom is now calling me a dirty Newsom lover, and I have a new reason to fall on the grass and be filled up with the world.
It's good.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
A thing I wrote, and some photos I took
I'm working as a visual designer for a devised show called 'Where We Fall', directed by Lucy Hotchin and Oliver Coleman. At a recent rehearsal, Lucy had everyone go away for fifteen minutes and write something to show to the group. I wandered off, and came back with this. I'm not quite sure what it is. It's not quite a monologue, not quite poetry, or prose. Anyway. It's here:
'Hey little dreamer, dervish in denim, singing to Sycorax, open your eyes.
Knocking at locked doors, sweat pours out of blocked pores, don't stop, never pause!
Heart a-hopping behind your teeth, straining for a peek outside.
Lips parted, lungs blossom like blood in a bathtub.
Tossed, tousled, torn.
The wind bears newspaper scraps of laughter and crushed Coke can sighs.
Whistles over you like breath on empty beer bottles, plays your space, makes you sing.
Running with your arms out, eyes shut.
Running with your mind off.
Gravel grumbles underfoot, ghost scrub, salt-flayed, lashes at your knees, all bruise-flecked and colt-splayed.
Hey little dreamer, open your eyes.
Icarus wings won't hold you long.'
Mmmm.
Have some photos.
'Hey little dreamer, dervish in denim, singing to Sycorax, open your eyes.
Knocking at locked doors, sweat pours out of blocked pores, don't stop, never pause!
Heart a-hopping behind your teeth, straining for a peek outside.
Lips parted, lungs blossom like blood in a bathtub.
Tossed, tousled, torn.
The wind bears newspaper scraps of laughter and crushed Coke can sighs.
Whistles over you like breath on empty beer bottles, plays your space, makes you sing.
Running with your arms out, eyes shut.
Running with your mind off.
Gravel grumbles underfoot, ghost scrub, salt-flayed, lashes at your knees, all bruise-flecked and colt-splayed.
Hey little dreamer, open your eyes.
Icarus wings won't hold you long.'
Mmmm.
Have some photos.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
Carson Ellis and Sarah Really Does Take Photos
If you've ever seen a Decemberists album, you've seen a Carson Ellis illustration. She's a beautiful, beautiful artist who I hate because a) she's got talent coming out of her ears, and b) she's married to Colin Meloy. And because I still haven't gotten over the Decemberists gig I saw in Melbourne, I've been e-stalking her.
She has a website:
which is here, but she also has a couple of no-longer-updated blogs, many of which contain a treasure trove of illustrations, paintings and sketches.
This has a few month's worth of daily illustration updates.
Examplification:
And if you feel like seeing what inspires the inspirational, she kept a blog of Inspiring Finds here at Faster Maria.
*
In other news, given the title of this blog, I've not provided much in the way of evidence for the 'takes photos' part. Well, I've started a new project. I spent 2008 shooting a self-portrait every day for a year - the 365 Days project. It was a madcap year, and although I had moments of serious self-doubt at 4 am, trying to think of something creative to do, it was a deeply satisfying thing to look back at a year's worth of work and see the improvements I'd made.
So now I'm starting a new project. 365 days, 365 photos, but instead of being limited to self-portraits, I'll be expanding the project to encompass portraits generally - whether self, friends, family, strangers - the rule is that every day, I must shoot a portrait of someone.
The first four are here, all subsequents will be accessible via my Flickr.
Over and out.
She has a website:
which is here, but she also has a couple of no-longer-updated blogs, many of which contain a treasure trove of illustrations, paintings and sketches.
This has a few month's worth of daily illustration updates.
Examplification:
And if you feel like seeing what inspires the inspirational, she kept a blog of Inspiring Finds here at Faster Maria.
*
In other news, given the title of this blog, I've not provided much in the way of evidence for the 'takes photos' part. Well, I've started a new project. I spent 2008 shooting a self-portrait every day for a year - the 365 Days project. It was a madcap year, and although I had moments of serious self-doubt at 4 am, trying to think of something creative to do, it was a deeply satisfying thing to look back at a year's worth of work and see the improvements I'd made.
So now I'm starting a new project. 365 days, 365 photos, but instead of being limited to self-portraits, I'll be expanding the project to encompass portraits generally - whether self, friends, family, strangers - the rule is that every day, I must shoot a portrait of someone.
The first four are here, all subsequents will be accessible via my Flickr.
Over and out.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Ode de Parfum
I've come to realise that I approach my search for a perfume the way that many women search for a man.
My first perfume relationship was with Estee Lauder's Beyond Paradise. I was 16, it was grown up and exotic, we stepped out together and I felt fabulous and adult. Then, after two years of passionate romance, we drifted apart and didn't see each other for some time. Recently we caught up again, but it just wasn't the same. I felt the awkward mix of sweet memories of the past, along with the understanding that we were just never going to have the same relationship.
For years I never really gave the whole thing much thought, but then, as I noticed more and more that my friends had their own special perfumes, I suddenly became aware of my own lack of a serious fragrance relationship. At first, it was just at the back of my mind, but slowly and surely I began thinking about it more and more. I am a modern, independent woman, and yet I couldn't get past the feeling that I needed a perfume partner, to support and define me, to be with me through the hard times and the good.
And then I realised. I was obsessed with the search for a signature scent.
And so I wandered into a perfume shop in Hawthorn with the vague idea of purchasing a Diptyque fragrance. Two of my dear friends wear Diptyque, which put me onto Tam Dao, which I rather enjoyed. I was almost tempted to get it, but decided that wearing her scent would be confusing and slightly embarrassing for the both of us. So I wandered in, met the whole range and, more or less on impulse, walked out with L'Eau. I was giddy. It was like nothing I'd ever had before. I was totally in love. For two weeks I was like a schoolgirl, waiting to get home so I could put it on, smiling every time I caught a whiff from my wrist...and then I went overseas. And for some reason, when I got back it was all different. It seemed a stranger to me. I wasn't sure whether I'd changed or it had, but it all felt wrong. I pushed it away. I felt betrayed.
I needed a rebound. But, chastened by my experience with L'Eau, I tried a new tact. I tried internet speed dating. Armed with a new website (theperfumedcourt.com), I wandered around, read profiles, and finally decided on some potential perfume dates. I started out with several of the Diptyque range. Surely, I thought, there would be something for me here.
It wasn't to be.
L'Autre physically repulsed me with its overwhelming smell of body odour, Oyedo was far too infantile and sycophantic, and the others - Opone, Do Son and Eau Lente, were pleasant enough, but I didn't want to see them again. Olene was quite sweet, enough to see a few times, but there was never any sparks there.
I tried a new tact. I found a perfume manufacturer called CB I Hate Perfume. The guy who founded it, Christopher Brosius, says on his website: 'People who smell like everyone else disgust me.' This, I thought, was the perfume house for me. With scents like Burning Leaves, and story perfumes like Mr Hulot's Holiday - ah yes, here, I would find my one, true scent love. It would be unusual, mysterious, and oh so right for me.
Nope. Mr Hulot's Holiday made me feel unwell, Burning Leaves failed to crackle and sing, Greenbriar 1968 smelled like dirt, as did Black March...nothing was working.
I was getting desperate. Was something wrong with me? Was there something about me that just refused to let me find a perfume relationship? Was I doomed to be perfume celibate?
I wandered into Myer and found the Chanel counter. I felt a little awkward, going to the village bicycle, but I felt that with its years of experience, Chanel No. 5 would be able to teach me something. Alas, no. The most chic perfume of all time smelled rubbish on me. So too did Caron's Tabac Blond, which I'd decided by its description (leather, tobacco), would be The One. It wasn't.
So now I've started going a bit mad. I even, to my great personal disgust, found a website suggesting perfumes by star sign, and ordered some of the ones suggested for Aries (notes of ginger, pepper and bergamot were suggested), but I'm not overly hopeful.
What do I want? God knows. I know the traits I like in a perfume - spiciness, sharpness, richness, a bit of fire, but I've never found one that puts these into practice the way their site profiles say they will. Surely it's not so hard. I know heaps of people who've fallen in love at first smell, and kept the same perfume all their lives. Is it too much to ask to find a fragrance that makes me a better person?
After all, all I want is true love.
My first perfume relationship was with Estee Lauder's Beyond Paradise. I was 16, it was grown up and exotic, we stepped out together and I felt fabulous and adult. Then, after two years of passionate romance, we drifted apart and didn't see each other for some time. Recently we caught up again, but it just wasn't the same. I felt the awkward mix of sweet memories of the past, along with the understanding that we were just never going to have the same relationship.
For years I never really gave the whole thing much thought, but then, as I noticed more and more that my friends had their own special perfumes, I suddenly became aware of my own lack of a serious fragrance relationship. At first, it was just at the back of my mind, but slowly and surely I began thinking about it more and more. I am a modern, independent woman, and yet I couldn't get past the feeling that I needed a perfume partner, to support and define me, to be with me through the hard times and the good.
And then I realised. I was obsessed with the search for a signature scent.
And so I wandered into a perfume shop in Hawthorn with the vague idea of purchasing a Diptyque fragrance. Two of my dear friends wear Diptyque, which put me onto Tam Dao, which I rather enjoyed. I was almost tempted to get it, but decided that wearing her scent would be confusing and slightly embarrassing for the both of us. So I wandered in, met the whole range and, more or less on impulse, walked out with L'Eau. I was giddy. It was like nothing I'd ever had before. I was totally in love. For two weeks I was like a schoolgirl, waiting to get home so I could put it on, smiling every time I caught a whiff from my wrist...and then I went overseas. And for some reason, when I got back it was all different. It seemed a stranger to me. I wasn't sure whether I'd changed or it had, but it all felt wrong. I pushed it away. I felt betrayed.
I needed a rebound. But, chastened by my experience with L'Eau, I tried a new tact. I tried internet speed dating. Armed with a new website (theperfumedcourt.com), I wandered around, read profiles, and finally decided on some potential perfume dates. I started out with several of the Diptyque range. Surely, I thought, there would be something for me here.
It wasn't to be.
L'Autre physically repulsed me with its overwhelming smell of body odour, Oyedo was far too infantile and sycophantic, and the others - Opone, Do Son and Eau Lente, were pleasant enough, but I didn't want to see them again. Olene was quite sweet, enough to see a few times, but there was never any sparks there.
I tried a new tact. I found a perfume manufacturer called CB I Hate Perfume. The guy who founded it, Christopher Brosius, says on his website: 'People who smell like everyone else disgust me.' This, I thought, was the perfume house for me. With scents like Burning Leaves, and story perfumes like Mr Hulot's Holiday - ah yes, here, I would find my one, true scent love. It would be unusual, mysterious, and oh so right for me.
Nope. Mr Hulot's Holiday made me feel unwell, Burning Leaves failed to crackle and sing, Greenbriar 1968 smelled like dirt, as did Black March...nothing was working.
I was getting desperate. Was something wrong with me? Was there something about me that just refused to let me find a perfume relationship? Was I doomed to be perfume celibate?
I wandered into Myer and found the Chanel counter. I felt a little awkward, going to the village bicycle, but I felt that with its years of experience, Chanel No. 5 would be able to teach me something. Alas, no. The most chic perfume of all time smelled rubbish on me. So too did Caron's Tabac Blond, which I'd decided by its description (leather, tobacco), would be The One. It wasn't.
So now I've started going a bit mad. I even, to my great personal disgust, found a website suggesting perfumes by star sign, and ordered some of the ones suggested for Aries (notes of ginger, pepper and bergamot were suggested), but I'm not overly hopeful.
What do I want? God knows. I know the traits I like in a perfume - spiciness, sharpness, richness, a bit of fire, but I've never found one that puts these into practice the way their site profiles say they will. Surely it's not so hard. I know heaps of people who've fallen in love at first smell, and kept the same perfume all their lives. Is it too much to ask to find a fragrance that makes me a better person?
After all, all I want is true love.
Friday, January 1, 2010
Curiouser and Curiouser
A friend of mine recently, when confronted with yet another conversation beginning with 'Hey, what if we did a version of Alice where...', responded by wailing 'Why can't anyone just do a traditional version?!' (He's on a personal mission to prove that Lewis Carroll wasn't out of his mind on drugs, or trying to rail against modern mathematics (thanks New Scientist for that particular theory), but merely writing a clever, absurb story with memorable characters and witty wordplay).
Which got me thinking. I've never seen so many versions of anything as I have of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' What is it about that book? A law lecturer (back in my wayward days of studying something useful...ha) once told me that Alice was the most-quoted book in the world (excluding, apparently, the Bible and Shakespeare), and that writers of law textbooks had a bizarre obsession with starting paragraphs with wrenched sentences akin to: 'Like Alice, the new law student can feel baffled by the hurrying rabbits, the smiling Cheshire Cats and the shrieking queens of the Wonderland that is contract law'.
I personally have been involved in a theatre production called 'Alice: Nightmares in Wonderland', whereby Alice fell into a criminal underworld, where the Cheshire Cat was a sultry hooker, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee became a corrupt politician with multiple-personality disorder, the Caterpillar a pot-smoking hippie, and all the references to cakes, flamingos and bottles became drug references. (I was Alice. Back in my young, innocent, law-studying days).
A brief wander through the internet reveals version after version:
An 'Alice in Waterland' series from DA user Sugarock99 (view more at her gallery here).
Annie Leibovitz's designer Alice series.
Harmony Nicholas' 'Jabberwocky' series (see more here)
DA user Auriethepixie's fashion-inspired shoot (Original link here).
Charles Blackman's version.
American McGee's Alice (the computer game - Alice is in a mental hospital, has to defeat the evil queen to save her sanity).
And this amazing series, which I can't find on the net any more, to my great irritation - it's this amazing futuristic, steampunk version of Alice. The Cheshire Cat is a huge industrial blimp, with a red LED readout saying HELLO ALICE. Amazing.
So what is it about Alice that makes it such a popular choice for interpretations? I think the answer is complex.
Firstly, humans seem to be especially attracted to reasonably linear, journey-format stories which parallel our own lives - where a character finds themselves somewhere new and strange (birth), is confronted with a series of challenging situations, meets a host of characters, some of whom are determined to aid them, some determined to cause their downfall, and eventually leave, a little older, a little wiser (death).
Secondly, humans like to Find Meaning In Things. The eons-old 'What does it all mean?' question leads us to search for God, for love, for tradition, and ritual, and all those other things which allow us to feel like we're doing something positive and goal-oriented in the maelstrom of our existence. Alice, because it is quite surreal, lends itself ideally to the Search for Meaning, precisely because, on its face, it seems to have so little. It's the ultimate dream made text. One could readily say 'Well, really, what on earth is this? A girl falls down a hole, has an extended trip, talks to animals and then wakes up again. What the hell is that about?' To which the reply might be: 'Well, if you consider the Rabbit as a metaphor for the marching on of time, and the human desperation to use it efficiently, and for the Industrial Revolution and how machinery has enslaved us...' - it's really no wonder Alice is so popular - because its events and characters are so surreal and absurd, it's practically got a big glowing sign over it saying 'Analyse me! Make me meaning! Find some deeper truth in my words!'
Thirdly, because it is SO well known, it practically presents a blank slate for artists to tell us a new story. Because we know all the characters and plot so well, the potential for surprise is extreme. Wonder is easier to evoke when you are subverting expectations, and because Alice is so laden with these, they are easier to manipulate. It's like a child at a parade, waiting for Santa to come by on the float - we get ready to point and say 'There it is! There is the March Hare!'. So when we see a version of Alice set in a new place, we get our pointing fingers out, reading to find the characters we know and love hiding in other disguises. The moment when we discover that the White Rabbit is masquerading as a speed-addled junkie in white lycra, who can't sit down because she's too jittery (another element from the show I did), we experience an 'aha!' moment of revelation - we have caught the character despite their disguise, and we feel as though we have solved a little puzzle.
Perhaps I'm over-analysing. Either way, Alice, it seems, is here to stay (forgive the awful rhyme).
Now, I'm off to consider in my own mind whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies.
S
Which got me thinking. I've never seen so many versions of anything as I have of 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.' What is it about that book? A law lecturer (back in my wayward days of studying something useful...ha) once told me that Alice was the most-quoted book in the world (excluding, apparently, the Bible and Shakespeare), and that writers of law textbooks had a bizarre obsession with starting paragraphs with wrenched sentences akin to: 'Like Alice, the new law student can feel baffled by the hurrying rabbits, the smiling Cheshire Cats and the shrieking queens of the Wonderland that is contract law'.
I personally have been involved in a theatre production called 'Alice: Nightmares in Wonderland', whereby Alice fell into a criminal underworld, where the Cheshire Cat was a sultry hooker, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee became a corrupt politician with multiple-personality disorder, the Caterpillar a pot-smoking hippie, and all the references to cakes, flamingos and bottles became drug references. (I was Alice. Back in my young, innocent, law-studying days).
A brief wander through the internet reveals version after version:
An 'Alice in Waterland' series from DA user Sugarock99 (view more at her gallery here).
Annie Leibovitz's designer Alice series.
Harmony Nicholas' 'Jabberwocky' series (see more here)
DA user Auriethepixie's fashion-inspired shoot (Original link here).
Charles Blackman's version.
American McGee's Alice (the computer game - Alice is in a mental hospital, has to defeat the evil queen to save her sanity).
And this amazing series, which I can't find on the net any more, to my great irritation - it's this amazing futuristic, steampunk version of Alice. The Cheshire Cat is a huge industrial blimp, with a red LED readout saying HELLO ALICE. Amazing.
So what is it about Alice that makes it such a popular choice for interpretations? I think the answer is complex.
Firstly, humans seem to be especially attracted to reasonably linear, journey-format stories which parallel our own lives - where a character finds themselves somewhere new and strange (birth), is confronted with a series of challenging situations, meets a host of characters, some of whom are determined to aid them, some determined to cause their downfall, and eventually leave, a little older, a little wiser (death).
Secondly, humans like to Find Meaning In Things. The eons-old 'What does it all mean?' question leads us to search for God, for love, for tradition, and ritual, and all those other things which allow us to feel like we're doing something positive and goal-oriented in the maelstrom of our existence. Alice, because it is quite surreal, lends itself ideally to the Search for Meaning, precisely because, on its face, it seems to have so little. It's the ultimate dream made text. One could readily say 'Well, really, what on earth is this? A girl falls down a hole, has an extended trip, talks to animals and then wakes up again. What the hell is that about?' To which the reply might be: 'Well, if you consider the Rabbit as a metaphor for the marching on of time, and the human desperation to use it efficiently, and for the Industrial Revolution and how machinery has enslaved us...' - it's really no wonder Alice is so popular - because its events and characters are so surreal and absurd, it's practically got a big glowing sign over it saying 'Analyse me! Make me meaning! Find some deeper truth in my words!'
Thirdly, because it is SO well known, it practically presents a blank slate for artists to tell us a new story. Because we know all the characters and plot so well, the potential for surprise is extreme. Wonder is easier to evoke when you are subverting expectations, and because Alice is so laden with these, they are easier to manipulate. It's like a child at a parade, waiting for Santa to come by on the float - we get ready to point and say 'There it is! There is the March Hare!'. So when we see a version of Alice set in a new place, we get our pointing fingers out, reading to find the characters we know and love hiding in other disguises. The moment when we discover that the White Rabbit is masquerading as a speed-addled junkie in white lycra, who can't sit down because she's too jittery (another element from the show I did), we experience an 'aha!' moment of revelation - we have caught the character despite their disguise, and we feel as though we have solved a little puzzle.
Perhaps I'm over-analysing. Either way, Alice, it seems, is here to stay (forgive the awful rhyme).
Now, I'm off to consider in my own mind whether the pleasure of making a daisy-chain would be worth the trouble of getting up and picking the daisies.
S
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)