22 Dreams

I've been to the theatre for a couple of nights this past week. The directing students have put on their showcases within two separate programs that run concurrently in different spaces. At the same time I'm responsible for making sure all leaving students are 'clear' as far as matters pertaining to my department are concerned - I can't say I'm entirely free from stress at the moment.. We were treated to two Tennessee Williams pieces. I must say I was impressed by the quality of his writing, it's fresh, fragrant, easy to understand. There is a vibrancy to his work too, he instinctively understands theatrical dialogue, his narratives are captivating and enjoyable, perhaps this is why he's known as one of America's greatest playwrights? The two pieces, 'And tell sad stories of the deaths of Queens' and 'This Property is condemned', were quite contrasting in direction, story and flavour. It was the zinginess of the language that u...

It's said you learn something new everyday. Well, sure as hell I learnt something new last week, and that's all about the ins-&-outs of bullfighting. I always turned a blind-eye to this thing called "bull-fighting" (an ultimate form of bullshit it is, really), taking in more of its general comic aspects such as the matador and his red cape, with the bull charging through while the matador lifts the cape just the bull is charging toward the cape and about to rip shreds off it with his horns. That's the sort of thing I'd seen of TV, etc, and I kind of thought that was all there was to it. I had no idea of the carnage and brutality involved with this event until I read Steve Kilbey's post titled the horror show last Monday morning. The short of it is that Steve was performing at the Adelaide Vegan Festival last weekend and in between sets he sat down at a video room to watch a load of rather upsetting and disturbing footage, his blog is a recount o...

I went along to the Balmain Ukulele Club tonight, at the Gladstone Bowling Club in central Balmain. It's my second visit to the club, my inaugural steps to ukuleledom were taken in April, some seven months ago. Club meetings are held on the first "teen" Monday of every month except January. The photo above is my uke, the Cole Clark Ukulele handmade from solid Australian Blackwood. Blackwood is very similar to Hawaian Koa of which traditional Hawaian ukes are made. The Gladstone Bowling Club is an anachronism in time and that of course accounts for its many charms. Vintage, unassailable fun! Ok, up to about 7pm we strum along with the band who are calling out the chord changes from the microphone. From 7pm-8pm we play along to songs with the chord charts having had been emailed to us the week beforehand. Tonight we had a reggae theme. We strummed along to 'I shot the Sheriff' and various others. Tony Larwood conducts the session and gives out pointers through...

OzMusic day at Darling Harbour, Saturday 15 November. A day featuring two-stages of grassroots songwriters, one stage for the solos and the other for bands. I played bass in one band and took photos here and there. I stayed back at the end to help with packing up the backline, and, possessing an overworked sense of responsibility I offered to help out with reviews for my friend's magazine. The looks on people's faces when I said I'd do so was the same for everyone, that crumpled mouth look of "ok" that masked a flicker of pleasure and relief for being absolved of responsibility. It was a cool & cloudy day thankfully, the heat can become uncomfortable if you're staying out all day in this weather. I suppose the clould cover put a damper on things, I certainly felt like it was all business-as-usual and not particularly zingy or bouyant with that. I like the blue balloon in the above photo. Walkway. CAROUSEL!!! The bands performed at the Palm Grove stage a...

all of my life i have known Stuggle & Strain a pair of curmudgeon ole timers as olde as time itself when dawn first cracked the psychic membrane of ancient man who dreamt up this here moment and the scrambled rush of four years hence in the incredible fury of global stuggle & strain i see my own killjoy couple stuggle & strain chained to rb 1970- but they're loosened off right now they don't quite have the same hold as they may have held at many divergent points in my (One) life my cobblestone career of multiple recurrences including that of cross-carrying zealot religionist over the past few thousand years i may have died in many wars i may have died in pain i may have died on many lands i may have drowned in rain i may have owned a hundred castles i may have owed the mans i may have been a pauper's polish i may have staked a-claim the sun has risen in the East and set in the West since time began ...

I came across a most appealing article recently, thanks to a link on survival acres blog, titled The Machine in our Heads by Glenn Patron. The article was first published in 'Green Anarchist' in 1997 and more recently links to a blog entry in Tierra y Vida . Although there's little presented within this article that’s particularly new to me I do find the overriding premise of it to be quite impactful. The gist is as thus: civilisation, as we've known it for 10,000 years, is traumatic to the true, ‘tribal’ self of an individual baby, or child. It is utterly foreign to our way of being and living. And so for that matter, are concepts of property, hierachy, and the State. The writer speaks of this as the "trauma of civilisation". He blames the trauma or terror of civilisation for the loss or derangement of reason, and the loss of deep thinking, ie, the free flow of natural ideas that are shut down through traumatic socialisation. He writes, "...tribal ideas...

(The following is an article I wrote up some 3 years ago for a friend's magazine. I haven't rechecked for typos, there are likely to be many. Nor have I checked for obtuse expressions and grammatical anomolies of which I'm the master... Nevertheless, John Lennon has always been one of my greatest heroes.) 25 years on from the death of John Lennon finds his light shining as strong as ever. His impact as a songwriter remains untarnished and continues to grow in stature with each passing decade, along with his persona that has taken on iconic, legendary status. There is no doubt that Lennon is one of the greats of the modern era, but the question is, what was that which made him so particularly great?? For about 15 or so years after Lennon’s passing in 1980 at the age of 40, Paul McCartney has had to suffer the ignominy of being seen as the tawdry, wimpy Beatle in contrast to the deceased Lennon, who in turn was deified as the true creative genius of the Beatles. Perhaps it wa...

I've been hit with a bug over these past couple of days. But I'm riding through it fine. I felt pretty ordinary getting up outta bed this morning (at 9am). Upon waking I mixed a half glass of sparkling mineral water with Noni juice. I added a teaspoon of calcium ascorbate, one of wheatgrass, and another of bitter melon. It's amazing how restoring a herbal concoction in beverage form can be for you; within two minutes I was zinging from the inside out, feeling that all that more refreshed and invigorated, and not so sick. However I need to get to bed soon, I'm very tired and I need to sleep off this virusy thingy. I'm also moving out of here by the weekend. Perhaps the thought of that is also tiring me out a bit. I need to back up my computer in the not-unlikely event that it will fail me in transit (she's a delicate old beast is my 'puter). There's a lot I wish to write about, blog about, but I think I'm just gonna have to curb my addiction for a few...

This is kinda cool; this new-ish phonus mobilus I have in my possession and rarely use (and was glad to have kept in the repair shop for 3 weeks), well, it takes photos like most phones, only to discover to my amazement that I can publish these photos onto a "blog"! Well, the blog is a 'mobile blog' and I've claimed that as a second blog, called 'Cellphone Camera Photo Dumpsite', to remain anonymous! ;) It's incredibly handy as I don't have to sport my camera everywhere I go; so when I'm moved to, I snap a photo on the mobile phone, and send it immediately to the b(l)og. At which point, on my computer, I save the photos onto my hard drive, and resurrect them if I wish to publish them, such as the photo above. The pixilation is fairly basic, but it's good enough for a technology semi-luddite like me. Yep, the wonders of modern technology... The photo was taken on the footbridge over Anzac Parade Maroubra at 7:30pm tonight, facing westwar...

One of my favourite bloggers is a guy who runs a storable food business in the USA, Survival Acres . His blog is flatly recognised to be the most doom-related blog on the net. I don't find him to be so much of a doomer myself, in fact I find his occassional steaminess & over-zealousness almost endearing, human. Sure he's uncompromising, but ultimately I reckon he's a great guy, a straight-shooter with a love of the planet and I immensely enjoy reading his rants, it makes me want to get out there and do something to save the planet. But I often lose my zeal until the next time I visit the man's site. The arguments, his blogs, tend to linger with me though. Here are some quotes from yesterday's post : "McIsane is not only a stupid old man, he’s a dangerously stupid old man, and so is Sarah Palin, who has demonstrated a complete lack of intelligence and integrity that bears careful consideration. A vote for McInsane is one step closer to a fundamentalist junt...