And all that sits is what's left between
Unused, unseen
What remains?
Just the imprint on the keys

Perfect

apologies for poor quality of camera phone picture

Today I took #1 son to the optometrists, he had said he apparently had been having difficulty seeing things at a distance. However after testing he was declared to have normal healthy sight in all regards. So I don't know how he got to thinking he couldn't see. But anyway, the good thing is my children all retain perfect function in all their senses (and limbs etc.), which is good as obviously I could not countenance any weakness or disability in them. I have no problem with the differently-abled in general (J'aime certaines dames avec des lunettes) but to have anything less than perfection in something I produced is enough to induce vomiting even at the mere thought. But I'm not a monster, I would not outright reject a child of mine that was not perfect, I would remain on civil terms with them at least up until their age of majority.
So after the good news, I took the children shopping to celebrate their continued small semblance of myself, and to their utter joy I found a nice pink t-shirt to go with my other pink clothes collection. Some children I am told are demanding of things for themselves when they go shopping, mine luckily are very content merely to be observers to my purchases.

Christmas 2008

And so Christmas is over for another year, and it was very merry indeed. Next is new years and thus resolutions time. This blog was started as this last years resolution, and has gone through various metamorphoses. Whilst I'm on the subject hello to those faithful readers that Google analytics tell me are there consistently whom I don't know and whom don't comment. For next year I think I will undertake more studies and other exciting things which if you are a continued visitor no doubt you will be appraised of.

Merry Christmas

Christmas lights in Kambah, Canberra.

ERIS vs baby Jesus

At this festive time of year, ones thoughts can quite naturally turn to G-D, now you may be swayed by the holy infant, but consider if you are going to have an invisible friend why not Eris, described thus "beheld of none, but cloaked in clouds blood-raining"

My picture here is available to purchase, the price is in blood obviously

The sound of full employment

Review: The Electric Bakery by Shammy Leather

The history of pop music now stretches beyond living memory, it is thus impossible to satisfactorily know every band, movement let alone song that has been produced within that particular sphere of the arts. However here is an album that provides a digestion of all musical styles bringing them together into a seamless and mature set of 9 singular songs that easily and deftly contains all the strands of ‘pop’.

The album is reminiscent but exceeding of so many bands and musicians that it could have come out in the 1960s tapping as it does into that English whimsical style of The Small Faces or Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd. It could also have been released in the 1970s redolent as it is of Patrick Fitzgerald or Those Naughty Lumps and into the 1980s it would easily sit alongside works by The Buggles or Robyn Hitchcock. Similarly in the 1990s it would be comparable to the likes of Pulp, but being from London this band is devoid of that particularly Northern species of angst. But all those possible influences aside it stands alone as a work at once individual and iconoclastic, but this is unsurprising when we realise that many of the band members were previously in The Beekeepers a band with a long and distinguished musical career.

This then is not a work by a band of poseur art students or unlived kids with a fatuous social message, but an assemblage of adults reporting the world as it is, not as it may be. In short a band at ease with itself, able to contemplate the experiences of a fully lived life and annunciate it from a vantage point born of and in sophistication.

The lyrics (and really there should be a lyric sheet) are beautifully constructed and whilst moving and profound have a lightness that deceives their impact. Many of the songs tell of the quotidian aspects of life such as doing the washing up (Washing Up) or shopping at a local bakery (Electric bakery) but on closer analysis they are revealed as expositions of all the intimate desires that motivate and move us. By concentrating on the simple aspects of life, we are then able to see deeper as if we look consciously at a single rain drop we are able to conceive the ocean. This is best expressed in the highlight track (Some dreams pass you by), if it is possible to single one track out, which is a gently lyrical Ben Foldesque song about letting go of youthful delusion. But the final track (Goth 2005) which immediately succeeds it brings us back again to firm reality, with its tale of finding unexpected love, to accept that however jaundiced we may become life continues if you allow it.

Funny, poetic and performed with a clear and obvious high level of technical musical ability, this is an album that will continue to grow on you.

To purchase the album or just to find out more information see: http://shammyleatherco.uk

This review has nothing to do with the fact that band member Ben just sent me this album as a present, nor his sister. I mean god its 25 years since I sat on her floor cutting my arm out of impossible infatuation :-)

Atomic Rage

From The Goon : virtue and the grim consequences thereof by Eric Powell

NPG

The new National Portrait Gallery opened a couple of weeks ago in Canberra. I took two of the children.

The car park is very fine, however it should be visited soon, or you will not get the benefit of the surface which is texture dependent. Visiting earlyish in the morning I could drive around squealing the tires (sic) merrily, it sounded just like a car chase in a US movie of the 1970s.

The building itself is not very impressive, though I think it was designed to be that way, it is reminiscent of a municipal building of a largish town, it certainly does not have the same national significance or drama as do the other buildings within its vicinity. It is nothing like the Colin Madigan designed brutalist concrete structures on either of its sides, here everything is mediated with wood.

One design feature of note were the narrow passages between galleries, so you could slip easily from one to the other (there were also normal wide openings at each end of the rooms as well) but these were a nice touch.

The paintings are unfortunately generally mediocre, and there are far too many staid pictures of the boring and now dead wealthy, politicians and lawyers. However there are a few that make the trip worthwhile. Hung together there is a group of four smallish very very fine portraits by Tom Roberts, which were beautifully painted on wood panels. There is also the portrait of Deborah Mailman painted on jute sacking.

There was a multimedia section where two videos played, in one was a short film featuring Cate Blanchett. I have never been a fan of her acting, but here in a work choreographed by Lucy Guerin she danced, and thus I have a new found respect and admiration. The film was undermined by Blanchett’s voice over, but by not listening and just watching the dance, I was most entranced.

The cafe, I saw but did not enter (small fries $5). The shop had a good range of general art books as well as some theory and philosophy. I looked through a book of Tracey Emin’s works, however unfashionable she may have become, her works remain beautiful, but the book was too expensive, and Santa had to buy daughter #2 one of those hardcover drawing/writing books that are made to look like old leather bound volumes.

Non swimming / art installation

Pace Hockney, no splash at all.



So I had the swimming lesson thing yesterday and moved the camera inside. I wanted to say something about immersion, but I have already written that water story. So didn't.

Old computer, clock thingy

Today was the rally to oppose the government’s proposed Clean Feed policy, which is intended to stop illegal pornography. Why people are demonstrating against it is not because of that (as everyone knows the illegal content is not distributed on the generally accessed web anyway) but because the Internet for everyone may be slowed and because other material may be restricted (sites which are not illegal but provide information or support for supposedly undesirable things, bomb making, file sharing, anorexia, religion etc. etc ).

The previous government spent a large amount of money on providing all Australians with free software so they could block undesirable websites on their home computers, unsurprisingly this did not catch on. The new policy takes away the choice and seeks to block content at the ISP level.


As you can see the small crowd of Interwebs devotees, inc. myself, represented many of the marginalised sectors of society that may be affected. One notable face among the crowd was the former Miss Tasmania 1998 (holding poster) representing the angry community.

My sister #2 has a new Flickr page and her art is way better than your sisters', OK you may only have a brother, but even so.

Sanitarium Vegie Delights

I just got an email from Sanitarium foods (vegetarian food company) advertising their Vegie Delights range, here is part of the text, guess the bit in which the idiot in marketing didn't get their target audience.

"Hello again!
We hope you are enjoying Vegie Delights' newsletters. With school just about to finish up for the year, this week we're looking at some cool ideas to keep your foot-lose and fancy-free kids occupied.
Weeks of holidays looming before you can seem a bit daunting – but by planning few fun activities in advance, the days will fly by.
It's a perfect time for investigating new things to do with your children, and you don't have to spend a lot of money. How about a spot of fishing? Or perhaps go for a walk? You could take a camera with you to snap anything interesting or different you see. Download the photos when you get home and create a slideshow of your day."

Greek fire (1500 years young and still being used)

and then some things bring back the fondest of memories: Brick lane, Bethnal green, Wapping, Islington, Brixton, Faslane, Molesworth, Trafalgar Square, Wood green, Liverpool - what was I thinking. Obviously I hope no one gets hurt.

England made me

England made me (and Graham Greene obviously) - the videos not the book

La Lotta Continua

The swimming lessons continue (forever it seems) and so thus does the Fourth work in the series provisionally now titled ‘La lotta continua’






previous works (in the series) here presented
though perhaps you somewhat resented
†
an abstracted piece of land
captured by camera in recording hand
†
grassland flood plain scarcely unique
injected with the abject object oblique
†
a tire for art, a trolley for love
me a replacement for the great god above
†
and now the final picture for your rapt attention
O, and such a novel invention
†
to confound your little expectation
by merely changing the camera direction
†
and for all its apparent false modesty
and I admit, my artistic integrity
†
I have still turned the world upside down
by merely moving around
†
and you now with your shattered expectations and confirmed conceits
watch, see the grass grows ever at your feet

Saturday in Young, N.S.W.

The Young Historical Museum is easily the best museum I have been in. The exhibits range from the obviously historic Roll Up flag, to a range of clothes, farming utensils, a dentists chair, gramophone players, and countless other bits of ephemera and social history. What makes it so special is that the collection is so locally compiled and thus so diffuse and randomly amazing, so many of the exhibits are gifted from the community and include such oddities as a 3 legged chicken a pig baby and magpie nest. The people working there (I presume as volunteers) are also obviously knowledgeable and caring of the place.

The other reason to go to Young was for the Cherry festival and cherry picking. We picked a good many cherries, but also played a bit with them.

At the staff xmas picnic, I met a swan





and fed it.

Grocer Jack

This video is better but can't be embedded. See also the notes attached to this version.

I have the whole album, who could not.

Library closure

I see the North Village Branch has just closed in advance of the new building being completed. But the replacing new one isn't due to open til April 2009 and I can't see that opening date staying like that either.

Australians are innately Fascist, whist I am God

The theme for this third and final ’artistic’ intervention into a now despised and over ideated environment is that of age.

The piece consists of the placement/arrangement of 3 bodies in a series of 3 staged vignettes. Faced away from the audience, the unidentified bodies may stand for the everyman, but also in their aspect as representatives of age, the young, the old, the new and the eternal.

The first image of two standing children shows outwardly the easy impost of humans on the flora and fauna of Canberra. But take away the debased utilitarian concept of a foolishly created capital and what we have is intrinsically and unmistakeably a fullsome representation of the rural youth of Emilia Romagna (1) who at Mussolini’s behest imposed an ancient ideal of youthful despoilation upon Italy in 1922. The seemingly casual innocents in (school) uniform are clearly redolent of the blackshirted (uniformed) youth of the Fascisti who marched triumphantly on Rome on October 30, 1922. That it is Australian youth who stand challenging and representing the defeat of European liberalism, the overthrow of enlightenment and the destruction of tradition is no plain device, but a telling portent. There are no Edelweiss pirates on Australian soil.

The second image is of the children fallen, or so it appears. The viewer may firstly perceive here is the collapse of nihilistic Fascism, the rejection of the power of youth, the failure of the new, the re-establishment of ancient order and precedence, but look again, this is a negotiated fall, there has been no collapse, the supposed fallen are attentive, alert, resting and ready to spring immediately back to a standing position, ready to overthrow at any moment again the ‘old’ order. They are the waiters in the wings looking for the chink in the armour of age. This thus is the threat of the new and the young, that they are ever present, ever waiting, ever ready. The past is always with us, but so is its replacement.

The final image is in some respects a Chronos manque - a looker into time, but not here looking both to the past and simultaneously the future. In this instance with eyes averted, back turned, the viewer is thus left unsure of direction and so caught between time/s so that they cannot from this vantage point tell which is present, which is future, which is past. Are we receding or arriving and if either to what point. Is this the defender of age and experience over the righteous anger of youth, or a progenitor of times collapse.

But time past and future notwithstanding, the central singular individual (or indeed singularity) at which our eyes are focussed plays another role. Is this the figure outside of time, the eternal figure that may answer the question that has been around since the idea of God was first implanted? What are you, my God? asked St Augustine(2) this image answers that question. But it also denies the possibility of access to what is revealed. For, whilst we may see the very incarnation of God, yet we cannot look into the eyes of God, through our failings we are still cast from Eden, the viewer found wanting is thus rejected, the impossibility of a true knowledge of God is returned.

(1)
“I read in the eyes of those young men the divine smile of triumph of an ideal” Benito Mussolini – Thus we took Rome from My Autobiography (1924)

(2)
Quid es ergo, dues meus?
Summe, optime
potentissime, omnipotentissime,
secretissime et praesentissime,
pulcherrime et fortissime,
stabilis et incomprehensibilis,
immutabilis mutans omnia,
numquam novus numquan vetus

What are you, my God?
Most high, most good,
most potent, most omnipotent,
most hidden and most present,
most beautiful and most strong,
stable and incomprehensible
immutable and ever changing
never new, never old. - St Augustine

John L has posted a pdf of a feminist zine he has from 1983, it is worth a look at: http://anterotesis.com/flatpress/index.php?entry=entry081201-202330

The Cost of Living