"I think i will go home after i've seen Paris." When was it, when did that final abhorrant thought crystalise in the smoke? It doesn't really matter, i suppose. But if i could have taken that dry and detached voice of reason by the lips and tugged them till the teeth were forced to cry - what a smile to behold! Into the mountains we fled - and found the solitude of hawks and ibex.
And now it has been some months since my return and the delicate quivering smoke-wreathed notion that it would be okay to return to Melbourne because that is where i am in touch with artists and musicians and an income and opportunities and good coffee - then i could work and create and swim out to an idea bobbing as a buoy and drown in the luscious giddy ecstatic of creation. And it would have been all singing and shows and writing and swimming and diving and blissful deeper and deeper - where the gentle nudge of rays would please the flesh and the delicate glow of anenome may delight the eye. And what presents when the event steps from behind the smiling frame of horizon?
Just a great brooding existential mess laden with junk and wrecked potentialities. For so long nothing has happened and then the full moon in Aries brought fire and frenzy and maybe i have it whittled down to three strong possibilities: but they keep changing and that's just because i do.
Should i tow this life direction line a little further, or no? Suffice to say a decision is on the agenda and buggered if i know which one to "make".
But i recently watched a documentary about Scott Walker. For those who are unfamiliar, he was a member of the 60s pop group, the Walker Brothers, who was in it for the rush and whirl or creativity. So he did a whole lot of stuff and got away from pop music and has since become one of the most compelling sound makers of the past 40 years. The writing is tight, brimming with existential surface tension, entwined with darkly poetic atmospheres that alienate and terrify. But that is only one or two of his many recordings. What stayed with me, however, was his insight on the creative process: for he is a man who will live in the forest someplace and write absolutely nothing, nor even look at a guitar, for 5 6 7 years - as long as it takes, until that voice comes to him. Inspiration can never be forced - and we have no way of knowing when it will come, if it will come. For Walker, it has to find him - he just has to be ready.
As usual, i think about everything in terms of my own experience, and this revelation was of great comfort. The challenge then becomes to nurture a bit of yin, be patient and stop trying.
Last night i went to see My Disco at the Tote. My ears are still singing with the hexagonal hypoxia that can only follow a thunderous encounter with noise rock music. Having seen My Disco support Battles last year, I was familiar with their reductive, minimal and mechanical assemblage of basic instrumentation. But unlike so much "minimal" and forgettable electronica or "art" rock, My Disco display the thought, attention to detail and passion that perhaps define good performance. While watching them, i was struck by the marriage of tight, intricately arranged music with an electrifying stage presence. It would seem a mistake, however, to assume that the two things are mutually exclusive in this case. Rather, My Disco embody a particular performative atmosphere through which they become agents or vessels of their own sound. Through absolute immersion in the execution of their craft, My Disco achieve the ritualistic air of a Buddhist monk attending to his rock garden. And their devotion to form makes them extraordinary to look at. Refined, focused and meditative, My Disco do not gently invite the listener to ponder the space between carefully placed movements - rather, they invoke a charged corridor of violent imaginative equations. By stripping music back to ultra simple two-note structures, these artists have excavated the ruins of a labyrinth. The ears twist with relentless inquiry - walls of sound emerge and dissolve - the minotaur, forever brooding at its center. Who knows - this math rock stuff might be the key we've all been searching for. Inspired and reassured, i wandered off into the night.
The last few gigs i'd been to were bitterly disappointing. Which is perhaps why i haven't been writing for a while - i was just too depressed. The Lucky Dragons and Mount Eerie at the Triple RRR space... hmmm. It might have been great if i'd been sitting on the electronic carpet that made instruments of the audiencee - just for the novel fluff. But i thought they were rubbish. They don't really make any of the music live; they just sort of flop and flarn about like a couple of sick and startled greyhounds. Ah! And the last piece of music involved two parts: the dancing bit, which they executed like wok tossed severed noses, and the second bit, which involved members of the audience disclosing a compliment to one of their neighbours at predetermined moments. What condescending tripe! The quasi-religious atmosphere of their hippy love circle seemed little more than a comic cartoon redraw of the psychedelic pituitary stretches of that hazy time none of us can remember. Is it fashionable to be limp and lope like the geeks might have a clue? Has hip become a victim of some strange muscular dystrophy, decayed and destitute? The kids love "noise" cos you don't have to break a sweat - but i find this celebration of the meek a pathetic alternative to the sadisfactions of television couch life.What really hurt (like the $25 door charge wasn't enough) was the myriad of voices feigning amazement in the doldrum week that followed. Doldrums! Because such a farce would not tear a wake upon the sea! It is disturbing to hear musicians and performers harping on about how "amazing" the Lucky Dragons and Mount Eerie were. Yeah, look i'll make a concession here: Eerie was ok - his songs are nice and he writes well - but he picks his flowers with a self deprecating air. If you're going to sing about the agony of mortality and rage at death, then do it like your life depends on it. I felt little passion from his songs - as i felt no passion in that sterile crowd of children with mouths gaping wide. But the Dragons? The only energy i could detect was the rage inside of me as their condescending hippy cultisms wafted about the room. And don't be thinking it was the sound or some nuance pushing me out of my comfort zone. I have their album and i like it. But i was deluded to think they might actually create some of those sprawling percussive environments, and electrify the room with an engaging presence.
And then all these local artists sing praise to them - and i sit and wonder if maybe the problem is me, that i just don't get it. I mean, some of the celebrants are signed musicians who tour nationally and get big crowds along to their events - they are "creatively successful" according to the criterion and boxes ticked.
But i think i have figured it out: These people are in a scene - they embody constituent members of a world that depends on its parts in order to justify its own existence. Art has always struggled to be important. The same can be said for academia. And because they're all in this weird little boat together, it is in their interest to portray the other as "amazing", for by extension they make wonder of their own work. You are, there for i am. Decartes ol boy, didn't they have pop music in your day?
And i just stand here with a broken glass in my hand waiting for someone to smirk so we can all just piss ourselves laughing at this big ridiculous joke. Like any of this means anything! But then i go and see something like Zond and My Disco and it is well thought out, rehearsed, powerful and affecting - and my hands began to shake as the words rushed to the finger tips.
Oh creative force! You may not come today - but i shall be waiting here, always ready to rush upon the fire, and find my god, dancing on the smoke.
