Tuesday, December 23, 2008
The Chotto Matte myspace page is up and has a couple of samples from our last rehearsal at GM studios. All recorded on my trusty zoom H4 so the quality is good but totaled like a car crash on a country road as the sun chases away the night. if you wanna take a look then go to:
http://www.myspace.com/chottomattemusic
I wrote some poetry on the train today and no one wanted to hear it when i dropped in to work so i'll post it here and if you hate it you can keep your stupid opinion to yourself.
it clicks and it clucks, the echo of a thousand brooding ducks,
He wore a long short wasn't she waving when they were,
Pickles eaten pixies poke and play amongst my fur,
the sun is gone the moon is grey a finger finds the crux,
yet i still hear the echo, of a thousand brooding ducks.
There. Whatever. Maybe i'll use it as song lyrics one time. Write your own and tell the world you pigs!
I think Chotto Matte will be playing again on the 22nd of January at the Glasshouse (51 Gipps St Collingwood) so i'd love it if you could trot on over and sniff the flowers. It will be weird to play again after a month rest... but i think it will be good to sit aside and return to the place we found before and make our broken toys do talking.
Have a safe and happy Christmas or whatever you celebrate. I don't buy gifts since i hate shopping for other people. I guess it is a good excuse to get together and have a lot of food and drink and forget about other stuff if you can. For some it is a cruel reminder. My cd burner is broken and there are some important people i wont see tomorrow. The distance and the tides keep us apart. I weep for that.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
You make me wanna take drugs.
Aside from enjoying being a part of the who's who of local noise and experimental shit - i think we took a few lessons home with us. For starters, and perhaps this is my theatre background talking, it is very easy for musicians of any type to loose sight of the fact that people have come along - in this case paid - to see them do what they love doing. Some of the artists looked like they loved what they were doing. There was a girl in a white dress writhing away as she provided vocals. She looked like she was into it - at least. And then there was a pretty hardcore display of drumming from Rob Mayson (who i was friends with in primary school). But something was lacking and i'm not sure what it is. Anti-everything punk derivatives can make a point of being disrespectful and i am glad that there is music that does that... but i found it difficult to maintain my attention while the musicians were "playing" last night.
I used to think that the brain might shut off when accosted with overwhelming and brutal sound. That, as a self defence measure, the mind would put up barriers - as one goes into denial during or after traumatic violence. But i am not so sure. I was watching and listening and trying to focus and i kept thinking of things to say to my friend. There was no real impulse to leave... i just wasn't that interested in what was happening on stage. I don't know why some music seizes my attention immediately, any more than i know why some paintings demand one's full attention the moment they present themselves. Certain sculptures, photographs and performers immerse you in their form and offer no release. After witnessing the profound presence of Goya, Velasquez and Picasso, i can honestly say that great works have haunted me for days after the experience of their intimacy. In contemporary music, Ben Frost held me by the frontal lobe for a sustained 45 minutes this time a year ago. Ollie Olsen has made me want to dance when i thought my brain was leaking out through my nose. Eye from the Boredoms is always full of suprises and when i feel like relaxing Thomas Koner and DJ Olive lull my imagination in before painting delicate images and nudging my soul.
But the stuff last night... didn't really affect me so much. Some nice ideas and some nice sounds. But it all sort of seemed like that naked plinth at a 1st year VCA exhibition, inviting the observer to make what they can of an empty packet of crisps in an art gallery. Here is a sound, or a whole bunch of sounds - all at once - you do the math. Yeah... nah... To get on stage, whether you want to challenge the conventions of that stage or not, demands a genuine gesture of communication. It demands an honest moment of giving. Little was offered to me last night. Little was taken. As i walked down Lt Lonsdale Street, a young dude in tight black jeans swaggering with the poise of disabled pigeon asked/declared "that was great music right?" Right... it might have been the constriction on his abdomen, or his insecurity hiding like a vesuvian zit behind three strands of hair. When i said i wasn't convinced, he loped off into the night. Even the determined consumer seeks, desires in fact, affirmation.
The night before was the final group rehearsal for Chotto Matte. David goes north to be with family for Christmas, while Alex and i will spend the season with our respective tribes in Melbourne. We all continue to lay the foundations for our new baby. The next performance will most likely be on a Thursday in mid/late January. The 22nd i think... I have provided the last recording we made at the head of this entry. It starts kinda glitch electronica before building and droning and descending into a flat out rock jam at the end. You may notice that the bass is really dominant and that the vocals kind of disappear a bit. This was unintentional and something we will keep in mind for the next time we are adjusting our levels.
If i don't see you before, have a great Christmas and New Year. I look forward to whatever correspondence we may have in the near future.
Regards,
Benjamin
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The beginning of Chotto Matte
We would all agree that at points the music became thin, or lost its momentum, and due to some quirks and misdeliveries in the playing. Friends who came said that there were some issues with the music that were probably due to our approach, stature and occasions of insecurity. I hope that these issues will be overcome as we continue to work and experiment together. But one fact was made blistering clear - this is perhaps more of a personal than a group observation - that we not a band playing songs - we are a group engaged in a ritualistic performance of shamanistic proportions. As Dave built layer upon layer of thick tribal drumming and Alex drove that gattling gun bass, the sound rocketed further and further in its wild and heady ascensions, and i felt my body would explode or burst into flame - that some divine presence had seized my limbs and wanted to make every molecule of my being scream with terror. The pure liveness of the event - the intensity of improvised performance - houses a strange and ephemeral display of intimacy and discovery between three very different artists. The collision of expressed emotions and colours within the whirring miasm of the moment often seemed to teeter on self annihilation. With each decay crumble and fall it seemed we had taken a small step back from the brink of insanity. Performing a meditation on psychosis, we conjured unconscious and uncanny spirits, inviting all present to become consumed in the frenzy.
A further and astute observation was the length of the piece. We performed for exactly one hour - which is a long time when the performance is so full on and violent. Many punters had to leave early because the spasmodic paroxysms and attempted self harming was just too much. I guess it is better to leave people wanting more than to burn them out and leave them exhausted.
What else can be said? It was great fun and if i can do more of that and less of everything else i will be a very happy man. I started reading Pauline Oliveros on improvisation, sound art and philosophy, and an article on multi-tonal singing. I want to immerse myself yet deeper in this thick and wonderful theatre of sound and movement. I started emailing festival coordinators and friends in the music industry - i need to do this on stage and so much more often than every now and then. If there is self destruction lurking in the viscous burning of candles, then i crave that extinction - if it offers a means of self overcoming - then i want that extinction.
Since Thursday i have been full of joy until today when i feel like my legs are brittle water soaked twisties and my head is full of pop corn. If i could sleep a little better i think tomorrow will be great. I look to Alex and David, hoping that in our dialogue, our friendship some minute, detectable essence of the experience may be felt. We debrief, but we know that moment is gone. We can only shift our gaze to the passing time. And weep for that.
I have a recent memory of ecstasy - now i must grieve for its passing. But with all the fibres and vicissitudes of my body - i thirst for more.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
rehearsal for loss
It is a Saturday night and i sit on my room listening to Leonard Cohen, that insatiable Buddhist, Suicide and Scott Walker. These friends inspire a dumb reflection of heavy voicelessness - why bother? why set to the stone when these most profound and insightful brothers of the overman have held, caressed, indeed, set to flame the very soil i wish to see drifting under foot - today we listened to Godspeed at a minor place and i realised that i am not even a pawn on the chessboard of creativity - perhaps a checker, unfortunately displaced upon the oak face where i am only strange and a stranger - lost and outcast - one who cannot move, only sit befuddled, impotent as the majestic royalty perform their grand manouver, graceful and sublime. Were i a knight, i would steal so many glances and wash your souls with my own tears. But i am not the mouth for your ears - how can i begin to sing when i cannot yet hear with my eyes?!
These thoughts and feelings come cascading like the waves of a migraine - i would speak further of my thirst for inspiration - i look around and see so many of the same 26 - 35 tide and i sink aside and wonder what have i to show for my time? And my answer is the same as all others - "nothing". For no further can i carry my debaucherous bacchant cries than the other can tug his own house - this treacherous screaming dancing is the earth cracking to swallow bricks and mortar. And so i think about what i have done and would i do it different and the answer is the same again and again for was what it was as what is now is what i will and will forever will it. There are things i might have done and been but could never suspend my disbelief because what was the only true path - i let them scatter, as burnt ash and the dust of moth wings.
Oh my heart, it was you i followed into the sea, and held my breath and swallowed the sun. Diving deep and drinking my fill, you held up my head and i knew my god dancing on the shimmering tide. Oh my heart, it was you that led me by the hand through gorge and gully, to the frozen ridge and wind swept peak; your gentle grasp, unyielding on my shoulder. Your mountain will, with clear precision, gave my stride to ground. Oh my heart, it was you i let persuade me to the forest, where the wild cries of maenads made my terror shriek and shudder. We lost ourselves and danced on, deeper and deeper, until the nectar oozed from the quivering flesh - until the clutching branches tore the silver sky and stars moons planets rushed out, a vortex of light and limbs. It was you, oh my heart, when i fell upon my knee and wept to know myself, you showed me darker nights and burning passion, the demonic whirl of ecstasy. I could not raise a finger in protest when we fell upon ourselves, lost in laneways and terrified of traffic lights. I followed you and did not doubt, oh my heart - these labors of love, these trials tests and the teeming frenzy of obsession. Thoughts, dreams, ideas - all frolicked for my fancy, delicate and beautiful as the flames consumed them. Oh my heart, it was you compelled me towards the stage that i might dance and scream and find myself splinter footed stomping on rickety wooden boards. It was you, oh my heart, that has held my head and arm and always led me on. I shall follow you, oh my heart, into the dead of night once more, again and again, onward and onward. Oh my aching heart.
Chotto Matte will be performing with affiliated rock lords, Forms of Fiction, at the Glasshouse, 51 Gipps St, Collingwood this Thursday the 11th of December - it is a free gig and we have no idea what to expect. It is all improvised so the songs will be brand new. I am terrified. I can't wait. Things sort of kick off from 9pm but i doubt we'll be playing before 10ish. Come down and stroke a beard with us.
Ben
Saturday, October 18, 2008
my god dances on smoke
"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.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Two old men in a tower
The last week has been a bit strange. Odd encounters, chance meetings, an apathetic atmosphere. Twas to be expected after such a great weekend. Outdoor sorts talk of a natural high... they rarely mention the natural low.
Last Sunday i went to Maximum Arousal at the Toff in Town to see DJ Olive play an ambient set. Olive was right to suggest that his delicate tapestries of sparse, melancholic spaces, populated by rich and luscious drones may induce sleep. Some audience members lay down on the floor, to allow the gentle waves to wash over them - as we sat there in the darkness, most eyes closed, i thought a tiny flower pierced the flesh and found it blooming on the forehead. Sequences of audible light slowly spiraled outward as digital fireflies - as insectoid beings powering their flight with liquid screens upon their backs. So was the aggregate of images in this quantum of perception. Each arrangement of colour wriggling hence from the cocoon, pushing upward, fluttering upon the air, sizzling and smoluldering, becoming vapour, sinking on the screen. The set was deeply engaging, deeply relaxing - a sedative without sedating. The dreamy disassocia of a ketaminous sea - a tide letting the floor closer, now further away. At a moment somebody coughed, and i thought my foot had met the sand. My eyes flickered open and all the sky and the stars rushed in - then i was back below the water - now closer, now further away.
When it was over i looked at my friends and said that was great. We were all smiling and amazed by the beauty of an artist who understands the value of restraint. There were two other acts, but i shall not discuss them here.
Since then it has been a week of strange errors - nothing "bad" has happened... but the optimism that accompanies the first promises of Spring has passed (so soon), and now we oscillate between cold night and the heady warmth of jasmine and cherry blossoms. People go crazy at this time of year - Winter is finally over and we all put on shorts and get excited because Summer is coming. Spring promises beaches and beers, surfing and psychedelia, parties and playmates. Yet summer rarely delivers. Did we all have one really amazing summer? Do we fall under the delusion that the warmer weather shall come baring the same idyllic memories, again and again, floating over the ocean, wreathed in ecstasy, pulsing with irresistible music? Or do we somehow collapse all the moments of wonder from all our summers in to one big super amazing summer and momentarily imagine they were all like that and that there is no reason the next one won't be? How did one little moment, when we fell in love and kissed the sun and danced till we fell over and over and over, expand into a season?
Other pessimists have expressed their wariness about Spring and her promises... so perhaps this year we will be pleasantly surprised. We can only hope.
To get in the mood, i've been listening to the Boredoms a lot. They were a huge presence in my summer of 2000/2001, and have sort of always been in my head ever since. I met EYE once, at a Sonic Geometry party (nostalgic sigh). He offered to take me to Disneyland when i went to Japan the following year - "Mickey Mouse is very psychedelic."
Which may have had some influece on the recording i've posted this time around. Alex rang me while in the park - i went to his place and we set up a bunch of junk around the microphone. Listening to it now, it sounds like Statler and Waldorf (from the Muppet Show) took some acid and went on a string animated rampage - the chef desperately trying to slow the carnage by throwing utensils into the fray... of course, that only accounts for a few moments in the piece. A lot of the time it is just a sparse arrangement of weird percussion, chimes, a recorder and some voice. It was a lot of fun, as usual. I hope you enjoy it.
Regards,
Ben
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Don't look back
To enrich the experiment, i played with some "garageband" loops, a field recording from Rishikesh, and also contributed live effects with some glass and a vial of Chinese herbal tablets. It runs for 13 minutes and consists of three distinct chapters. It was one of those things - i just kept doing and laying down stuff and then pushing 'record' again and in an hour i had this piece and it is the first thing like it i have ever done and so it seemed like a good idea to post it here. So one day when i'm still looking up at the night sky i will know that i climbed these stairs and hundreds of others on the way.
Keep your mind sharp and your heart open. Now... write just one true thing -
Saturday, September 6, 2008
After the end of Landscapes Within, the last piece of theatre i performed in, i didn't ever want to perform or direct ever again. I think some of my friends were disappointed, but i would have been happy to have burnt down the black boxes in my head. Everyone starts doing their own things again - holes are dug up and the rain fills them in. Again and again. So then it was singing and computer music for a while - but after came travelling, which seemed to wither and die in memory, but has returned thick and lush. I remember sitting in the Ganesh cafe on Om Beach and gazing out at the Arabian sea. We wrote so much poetry and it was easy because we were living it - the inspiration was in the tides - drawing us out, happily drowning, again waking, again walking, our footsteps swallowed by the sand. I remember crying because i could not think of ever feeling such joy. Each night the voices of the rainforest giving chorus to the dying of the light - and we begged the sun to stay, to keep doing the sun for us, more sun, forever. Just so long as you don't mess with our nights.
I woke with sand in my hair and distortion on my tongue. It was mountains that had popped up out of the ocean and the trees had laid down for snow. We were so warm and the words dripped like honey oozing from a crumpet. Two mouths floated on the surface of my tea - a train tore a fissure, the all knowing, the sleeping rocks, the nearness of the Friend. I was still crying my, the delicious sea salt, and i hoped i'd never stop.
I got up because i needed water, and after walking around and doing a head stand and looking at the morning i played with a disc and noticed the glasses and remembered i was thirsty! I sent out a text message and got replies from nearly everyone and so in a week or so we are going to get back on the floor and workshop and play with the space and see what comes up. I haven't got a script in mind. I don't have a performance in my head. I just think i have the strength to tell a room how to move and to help the white walls crack, spew, and bleed. But maybe not... maybe i never will ever do performance ever again. But if i don't act on this impulse then i will not know if i could have, as i would not have written this if i had not just felt like i might.
If you are reading this and you haven't listened to any of the chotto matte rehearsals, then you should. They're pretty funny. I like them now that i don't hate myself so much. I know these words are a bit melodramatic - but isn't that how we feel sometimes? Perhaps the tide is not yet out, but only another wave has struck, disdain and weed sucking between my knees. But i know that another shall soon build, roll, collapse and cry upon my shore. And i should love to remember the salt beneath my nails, the footprints, sinking in the sand.
And we are imagination as the earth is sun in all its manifestations - see me sitting, writing, weeping. See me standing, upon the shore, see me waving.
Ben
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
some words in my head and some tea
Okay so the last little while i have been slack with recordings and writing - i guess sometimes it has been a bit hard to focus. But it is finally Spring for real this time and the sun is out everyone has got that optimism that feeds on the promise of an encroaching summer. In two recent conversations i shared my conviction that the promise is more valuable than the season delivered. It is the fantasy of parties, swimming in the ocean and being able to go out with less clothes on... the idea that certain types of music will sound better because it is hot and we can feel the sun on our shoulders. Summer, in my experience, doesn't often live up to the fun filled sand sprinkled fantasy. I think maybe we all had one really great summer at one point and that when the jasmine blooms we all delve into the future with a smile on our face cos we think of that glimmering, delicious time. Maybe we pick and choose from a highlight reel of memories, piecing together a perfect summer and then imagining that they're all like that and that there is no reason why the next one shouldn't be. Winter has been a long time, and i guess the cold will do strange things to the dreamer's mind.
In anticipation of the new heat, i've been revisiting some old friends - the Boredoms, ooioo, Brian Eno - and some new friends - Deerhunter and Boris. Lots of great Japanese stuff. I am really very much in love with music at the moment - and without giving much time given to dreaming of being a rock star one day, my focus has been on my singing.
The recordings are just of me singing some stuff, one old Tom Waits song, while doing mundane stuff in the kitchen. You can tell when i sort of lose focus, but its all there.
I was a bit self conscious about singing while my folks are home - as i used to be scared of singing when my housemates were home when i lived in North Fitz. But with the early mornings to myself, it has been easier to make time. And i'm not so worried about other people hearing me anymore. With a bit of confidence in my ability now, i have started listening to certain musicians and trying to identify what it is that they do and what it is that i do or don't quite do and how the gaps can be bridged. With so many recorded voices being treated (and i am thankful for this as i revel in the soup of halucinatory spaces a treated voice can muster) it can be a bit hard sometimes. I keep going back to classic singers like Elvis, Gil Scott-Heron, Sinatra, Cash, Waits, etc. They're all kind of completely diferent, but most of this indy rock contemprary stuff (which i like a lot of) relies heavily on a droning, detached vocal that sort of peeps and slides between the guitars. I guess i just gotta learn where it all fits and what it sounds like, and keep exploring and trying different stuff.
Am i repeating myself? Even thought is a drone.
Ben
Friday, August 29, 2008
this compost
But i am bored. There needs to be more music, or something. More poetry. More noise! Whatever it is - more. Boredom gives way to awareness of finitude and fear and anxiety and we all know we're only dancing in the music - that we are the music... as long as the music lasts.
But thats not all. Last weekend i went to an indy pop festival - "Winter tones". There was a lot of nice music playing - but i gotta say that the "kids" who dag about at these festivals are not exactly engaged on all cylinders. The boys and girls seem to be erring about in clothes that don't fit and all fogged up and confused - all you'd have to do is say boo! and their poor posture would paroxysm and the lunchbox would hit the floor - such thankless, joyless food would scatter here and there, and then lunch would be over. Like the little fantasies that seem to stand in for the experience - has the age of virtual engagement, stimulation and transcendence brought about a de-evolution of spirit? These bodies seem so frail - so lost and... disembodied. The music... some of it was nice. But it was TOO "nice". Music serves a myriad of purposes to different ears, but it should express and emotion, create emotion, allow the imagination to transcend, go beyond, to soar with the eagles. Music should push us to the extremities of feeling, break us down, and be all that holds us together. As long as the music lasts. Perhaps apathy is hip these days - the emos, in tandem with the idiots, are winning. The scene is about being seen. Everyone wearing skinny jeans and sweaters and scarves and shit - big rim glasses all the better for not seeing you with. Occasional moments of recognition which would spark social ignition (in another world) seemed only to startle, make role and scatter, like frozen peas from the plate.
Sorry.
I don't wanna come over to play with lego and read Grug and listen to limp wristed glitch pop. Any candidates for driving out to the desert, tearing open the sky with a cardboard key and entwining ourselves in fleshy fluid ecstasy on the bonnet of the kingswood?
I thought not.
Then there was some accupuncture and i was depressed most of the week. Been dreaming like a seer suspended between worlds, my ear arched just right to let the whispering owl, the river and sunset breathe their scallop'd secrets. But now i'm thinking about going back to uni and getting qualified and then getting the hell out of Melbourne again and seeing some more of this planet but this time with cash on my ipod and money in my pocket.
The above recording! Holy shit. It is another sample from the Chotto Matte rehearsal last week. My favourite bits are when we don't know what we're doing and it sort of sounds like we're trying to stare each other down, taunting each other... i dare you to make a sound. It won't break you down and tear you to pieces like maybe oneday we will... but it is honest and in its moment.
You and I,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small.
You furnish your parts toward eternity,
Great or small, you furnish your parts toward the soul.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Two moons spinning in silence
Last week Chotto Matte got together for a first bashing of cymbals after not knowing the rehearsal chamber since last November. Things were radically different. Things were remarkably the same. Adding to the spice blend, we'd asked Cameron Toll (my sister's musical husband) to join us - adding depth to the rhythm section and some well placed backing vocals. We were all feeling excited and anxious and probably a bit insecure, but some pretty weird places were found in this session. The first recording is short and excessive - a dust unsettling rant and raging at the stars. The second piece creeps along, rolling and weaving through a percussive storm.
I wont write anymore today. Not here anyway.
You'd have to catch me in a corner,
tame the biting and the bark,
then with definite precision
force my acid tongue to wag.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
A couple of things
Last week on the same day that was stuffed with songs and sung to the sky - the day that was Thursday - i made several recordings of several events while walking about and sitting about and thinking and reading. Some very beautiful things happened and i don't think i would have even heard or seen them had i not been looking through the hard gauze that protects the tiny probes of my zoom H2. I stopped and sat on a stool at Jungle Juice and just for fun turned on the microphone and listened to everything as it was happening. I've got that bad boy set at highest gain possible, so when i monitor what its scribbling on its SD everything comes through loud and clear and its like the whole street was running through my head, between the curves of the cortex and under the hypothalamus and outward into the cold wet sky again.
Here is the recording:
While you are listening, i thought it might be fun if you could read what i was reading at the time, which is pretty weird because it was a scene set in a cafe in Jean Genet's Our Lady of the Flowers:Divine appeared in Paris to lead her public life about twenty years before her death. She was then thin and vivacious and will remain so until the end of her life, though growing angular. At about two a.m. she entered Graff's Cafe in Montmartre. The customers were a muddy, still shapeless clay. Divine was limpid water. In the big cafe with the closed windows and the curtains drawn on their hollow rods, overcrowded and foundering in smoke, she wafted the coolness of scandal, which is the coolness of a morning breeze, the astonishing sweetness of a breath of scandal on the stone of the temple, and just as the wind turns leaves, so she turned heads, heads which all at once became light (giddy heads), heads of bankers, shopkeepers, gigolos for ladies, waiters, managers, colonels, scarecrows.
She sat down alone at a table and asked for tea.
"Specially fine China tea my good man," she said to the waiter.
With a smile. For the customers she had an irritatingly jaunty smile. Hence, the "you-know-what" in the wagging of the heads. For the poet and the reader, her smile will be enigmatic...
... She drank her tea before thirty pairs of eyes which belied what the contemptuous, spiteful, sorrowful, wilting mouths were saying...
... The cafe disappeared, and Divine was metamorphosed into one of those monsters that are painted on walls - chimeras or griffins - for a customer, in spite of himself, murmured a magic word as he thought of her:
Jean Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers
And so that is that and now this is this. I think i will post more of these field recordings for the time being. When i listen to these files that i make available, it strikes me that the most compelling pieces are the ones made in the field. Stimulating, dangerous and deliciously uncontrollable - the environment seems to fold the many strings, depress the keys and gently hold the pipe upon her lips. When we play in these field jams we are only agents - the world takes control - we can only dance between the logs and life rafts of this accidental stream.
As for the studio sessions. There are some things that i like but there are more that i don't. It is all just experimentation and getting to know what we can do and what its gonna sound like. For the moment. But without the world to sing along we put ourselves up the front and then get to performing and it sort of seems to lose its thin seeds of honesty. And so that is the challenge i set for myself: to drop the bullshit and just let the vital force (elan vital) just happen. In the studio before the microphone. As it does when we sit back and listen, on bated breath, daring the world to make a sound.
But as a sort of special present i thought i might post for you to hear this lovely little recording of an improvised session i was fortunate enough to attend (and quietly bootleg) in Fort Cochin, Kerala, South India. Here we have two exceptional musicians playing sitar and tabla and i think you'll agree it is a very beautiful event. Later.
Friday, August 15, 2008
a head buried in the sand
Ok. This is the recording Alex and I made at the Jam Hut last night. I'm glad we got to do this as it was a healthy opportunity for us to see what came up immediately and work through some stuff and try a few different things completely on the fly. Just a quick not of personal reflection - one thing i must try to be aware of is how i sort of play it safe and keep doing the same thing and then play a strange kind of role. Like a tough rock star punk role or something. This is the recording of our first session with a PA and Alex doing some crazy instrumentation and some rock bass and just getting down with a microphone. There are some pretty wild bits and a whole bunch of stuff i will try to avoid in later sessions. Be warned - there is some explicit language. Don't listen if you think you might find this a bit hard to bare.
Ben vs Alex.mp3
Oh well... i guess i wanted to put it all out there.
See ya.
Rafael - the troubled turtle.
When i sit to write i want it to come out like the sudden assault of perfume when a vial is shattered on a black stone floor. I thirst for it to come out and with such furious burning passion that i can feel the gushing torrents of existence and ecstasy and see the twisted face of one who leaps defiantly into the void, flickering between the flames. And rarely will it come. Instead it gets stuck in my throat and i can taste the embers and the ash as it settles on my tongue and between my teeth and there the skin sizzles and boils and opens like the mouth of some newborn mammal, blindly sucking for the tit. I find myself tucked up inside myself, like Rafael who could never reconcile the terrible gulf that separated the world as it was with the world in his heart, a world that would satisfy his heady, romantic idealism. The nausea, it would seem, does not spare even a hero in a half shell.
Yesterday i decided to ignore the pain in my mouth and go and get another lesson with my singing teacher. She pushes me because she has terrible worries of her own but somehow we keep it real and i find that line that runs taught like a guitar string from behind my top front teeth and the chakra that winks just above my head. She belts that piano and the string is quickening as i hold that line through each ascending scale and into the falls as we plunge deeper and deeper. My guts push and my collar is stiff and that chakra is winking like a vector on the screen. I was so exhausted but feeling all the life inside i knew i had to go back into the city and make those new recordings. Flinders Street Station. Degraves St. Trains and trams and coffees and car radios. It all seemed to be happening at once and i realised that it always is but we just shut it all out so we can deal with one thing at a time. We find this phenomenon in philosophy: Bergson and Huxley knew that the role of consciousness is not simply to perceive the world and enable action/thought within it. The first role of perception is to reduce, to siphon, to minimise. The brain, as an organ of sense, is a huge station for processing information as it manifests to the nervous system. In the moment, it catalogs and arranges this information according to the needs and interests of the body as it exists in temporality. That is, the utilitarian function of the brain is to sort stimuli according to the present interests of the subject. From within the whir of this stimuli, some is seized, much is discarded. I guess it just depends on whether you're listening to an announcement, walking someplace, or looking for a toilet.
So many sounds are going on and it was like i didn't really pay much attention to them until i started to listen through the headphones of my microphone - then i started to hear the voices, the rhythm of traffic, the shuffling trams and the always breathing wind. It all seemed to make one deafening symphony and my skin tingled when the seagulls sang overhead just as the ticking of a crossing slowed. It got me thinking about how our brains sort and reduce perceived information so we can manage ourselves in the world. How we spend so much of our lives thinking about something else, not here, not now. But it was suddenly all of interest when i clicked that mic "on". Is there a zen of field recording?
And so i have uploaded another recording for your ears to hear and this comes from the streets of Melbourne as i was walking from Federation Square to Missing Link Records. For the first bit i was just walking along, letting it all happen and swell around me. But after a bit i realised i could alter the content of the recording by stopping to capture a truck parking, or following the pins of high heels pricking the pavement... until the walker noticed my device pointed at her shoes. It is sort of like a divine child got this toy city for an instrument and he is just twangin away here and there like the haphazard fall of an avalanche making sound.
Later that day Alex and i met up and had some coffee and then talked about playing music and on a whim decided to go to a rehearsal space and set up the bass and the mic and just have a bit of a jam. I cant wait for the whole of Chotto Matte to be back in the studio and we'll weave our way through sunsetting stations and the call to and fro of fields and forests. It gives me a shiver and i cant help but smile. But we're still in the ideas phase and probably will be for a while even when we've got heaps of stuff on file and maybe do a show for whoever wants to come. It is a strange and stringy embrace this making and doing - a lot of the time i feel like i don't have a clue and it is all rubbish and i should just stop and let creative people do it. And then i thin k about how much fun we're having and how all the noise seems to stop hurting when we forget ourselves and just let go. And even though the ulcers burn and bite and i still struggle with this furious anger inside my chest - maybe one day i'll be able to sing it all into something i am proud of and makes me glad and not so pissed off i'm here in this strange, deafening symphony of so many objects, just wanting to be heard.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Requiem for Rajasthan
It seemed wrong to not post a sound piece and make you read my words and not hear nice things. This recording was made in the Bhundi Palace in South Eastern Rajasthan, mid Feb, 2008. Noises are made by Jasjeet Singh and me. That palace had its own voice. Enjoy.
Bhundi palace session.mp3
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Still. I go to my singing lessons and practice jazz and opera. Unless i change my mind i will buy a cello sometime in the next week or so. I think that strings will sound very nice in a drain or under a building. And so we have perhaps loosened the soil and know that something will grow but we know not what fruit it shall bear nor when shall be the time for harvest. It is interesting and exciting and as i talk more and more about the work with more and more people the more and more lines of flight seem to open up. A plant room. An emergency access tunnel. Sewers and ports. Seaside and drought stricken. I have only been back in the country for five weeks and already so much has happened. I put off making decisions about moving to a new address (my parents turn out to be very agreeable house mates), and making coffee is an ideal floor upon which to make my meditative dance. So much is new and i don't know what yet but i shall keep looking and thinking and reading and writing and making those noises when the time seems opportune.
What else? The other night i went to see a performance of Don Nigro's The Scarecrow, billed together with Imp of the Perverse, a twining to Poe's dark threads. After being disappointed by my recent attendance to the professional stage, it was a delight to discover some deliciously focused performances by young actors on a stage that was uncluttered and thoughtfully composed. Though, i must admit a twang of reluctance emanated from my forehead when i heard those put on American accents. I hate accents in the theatre. And there was the odd moment when the picture became little more than a mantle arrangement of talking heads... but never for too long. And, given the hypnotic beauty of the words, it was perhaps appropriate for those bodies to remain so still, hovering in the dark. Certain Cowells would do well to take note of the inherent power of a poised and restrained presence.
Of course. I have spoken with others who admit enjoying the latest Bell Shakespeare mockery of Hamlet. I find such admissions difficult to comprehend. The production only whithers, becoming less and less of a disappointment, as it sinks slowly from memory. Some even told me i should give the High God People another chance. But i gave them two already. It is interesting that they choose to present their work as theatre at events geared towards sound art and experimental music. A sly suggestion slips between the sentences. But the emperor is left naked on the steps. The designer cackling among the pigs and swine.
I just finished reading Sartre's Age of Reason and must say that i have no idea what to read next. He is very good and perhaps i will have more to say about it later. But for now i must slink away and prepare for my next singing lesson. That is enough words for this time. But if i may offer a recommendation, then make sure you go and get a listen to J.P Shilo's album, Happy as sad is blue. John Brooks of the former Hungry Ghosts weaves a haunting and emotive web of wonderful meditas and crescendos.
Until next time.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Under the tracks into the river
This morning i woke from troubled sleep to hear the irritating voice of my alarm at 4.20am. I wouldst not rise without agenda for such an hour and assure you it was for a noble cause. But why the restlessness? The reason is unclear. Alas, there has been little time for despair and angst, no quiet longing for those distant shores that inspired my fancy but three weeks ago. It has been weird being back in Melbourne. I miss India and the mountains, and i really loved wandering about the streets of Paris - flannuring is the appropriate term i believe. But it is very good to be back and there are lots of wonderful things happening - some of which i have written about here and shall continue to do so. Other things which are not in the spirit of the blog and so shall go unmentioned.
In the wake of my travels, new and exciting ideas have rushed to ease the transition from movement to station, and i am feeling INSPIRED. But not in ways i ever would have anticipated. My mind fizzes about the novelty of my H2 microphone and the possibilities it presents. Being back in rehearsal with musicians and doing the singing lessons and getting up early to do a field recording. It's all full of vivacity and life and the cool winter breath on my tongue and my cheek. And yet it could not have been without the travels i have had. It was then that i discovered the joy of making sounds in strange environments. A palace in Bhundi. A storm water drain in Kew. By the Yarra under a bridge beside the Melbourne Arts Centre. What ghosts would whisper between our random acts?
After our (very enjoyable) experiment in the drain last week, Alex and i were keen to have another crack. Originally we had planned to make noise on the platform of the Parliament train station. I arrived early and it seemed an opportune moment to sneak a preview of those subterranean sounds. Paid ticket in hand, i entered the station to discover drabness and disappointment. Metros and loop station designs tend to be as lifeless, austere and conformity inducing as possible. I recorded the escalator. Twice. But then decided that the commercial background music would prove... distasteful to our exercise. And so when Alex arrived i said let's try by the river under a bridge or something. And so we went there and discovered that there was much more life by the Yarra than there is in a storm water drain under Kew. Indeed, there is more life under a river than there is under Parliament. And so we nabbed a morning jogger and shoved him in a large chest and proceeded to record ourselves taunting him with sticks, tools and devices from the outside.
Okay... that is not strictly true. But if you listen closely, you may find that that is what it sort of kind of sounds like. Or maybe i am just a twisted egg. As a cheap alternative, we placed the microphone on a bin with the cavernous underpass on one side and the river on the other, allowing the recording to oscillate between claustrophobic and wide open spaces. For noise we utilised the walls and metal fences for scratching, a guitar, a snare drum, bits of paper, plastic, vocals and leather gloves. Accidental sounds included birds, joggers and the familiar rumble of trams above. The sample lasts nearly 25 minutes and is a much more agreeable listening experience than the sky gashed open sonic torture column of the other day. I have already listened to it a few times and must say i find it highly agreeable. I hope you will too.
That is sort of all for this time. No cutting asides about offensively bad theatre. We have some good ideas about prospective venues for future field jams. I will be sure to post them here when they eventuate.
Thanks for listening... and reading.
Benjamin
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Calibrating the LK-540
The past week has been full of things. Mostly things i have enjoyed. Some things which have been less than satisfactory. Irregular sleep and strange dietary cravings. Last Wednesday i had the unpleasant experience of attending the latest Bell Shakespeare production of Hamlet. For anyone who is not aware of the production currently in performance, Hamlet is played by an emoesque Brendan Cowell with quiffy rock star hair. Failing to embody the existential tension of the role, Cowell deftly substitutes the philosophical reflectivity of Shakespeare's anti-hero with the ridiculous leap-froggisms of a performer who has an extraordinarily inflated opinion of himself. That said, there are some very strong actors in the cast who do what they can with the very little they have been offered. It is the first time in my time as a spectator that i have sided with Claudius. I have no doubt that this result was unintentional. The staging was sloppy and the design was meaningless. So let us move on and discuss more important things.
The following night i attended Liquid Architecture 9 at the North Melbourne Arts House. Liquid Architecture is an event concerned with bringing the most progressive and challenging artists in sound and audio technologies, local and international, to Melbourne audiences. Suitably, the venue situates the artist at the center of the space with the spectators seated in a spiral leading outward. At the periphery, the speakers of a 5.1 surround rig stand like sentinels guarding a portal to another dimension. The first, Melbourne based artist, Nat, produced many beautiful sounds but was a tad underwhelming. His role as MC implied that his set was intended to get everybody "in the mood." Following, Alex White from Sydney generated an incredible and intense vortex of ascending forces with distinct crescendos and falls. The piece was composed from a relatively limited palate of tones and textures, and was skillfully managed within a twenty minute time frame that left me aching for more. As i sat there in the dark with my eyes closed, i felt the room hurtling through space, digitized. A thousand tiny machines were screaming in the air, like magnetic cogs holding the universe together, making time go.
Marcus Schmickler from Koln, while incredibly powerful, was not as successful, in my opinion, with his 45 minute movement. Indeed, the rushing use of infinity scales and terrifying drones generated an overwhelming visceral landscape. At times I felt myself consumed by the piece and soon memory and thought gave way to the collision and collapse of colour and force in an internal, visual realm. For the first 20 minutes i was completely engaged, engulfed and at the mercy of the German. However, i soon found that the audio textures were moving in too many different directions to be managed, and by 30 minutes he seemed to be running out of fabric. I could not say that he had too little material for the piece. Rather, when the narrative structure had exhausted itself, he was still trying to include new sounds. Sounds that might have wanted to initiate a new movement or narrative, but were suddenly swallowed and forgotten in the mess of noise. Finding an ending was a struggle, but he got me back when he finally did.
Then for some reason the good curators of the festival had decided to allow the High God People to close the night. This unconvincing, self indulgent circus of disparate idiocy seems to have a percentage of the arts community fooled with a contemporary exhibition of the Emperor's new clothes. Of course, there are some interesting components to the High God People's stuff: their costumes offer some potentially interesting bodies 'as symbols', and, once built, i thought the bamboo structures that housed the musicians were very cute. But...
But.
The work is completely disrespectful to the audience. It is clear that no one in the group has considered how it will look from the outside - how the narrative and its symbols can be interpreted. Antonin Artaud observes in No more Masterpieces that art that fails to engage and speak to its audience cannot hide behind the pretense that the failure is on the part of the observer. Art that fails to connect with and communicate is simply art that fails. Further, the performers seem to have no respect for the various objects they surround themselves with or attempt to manipulate. Their movements are sloppy and their engagement with the space is without focus. As a result, every aspect of the stage image appears lifeless and unimportant. This is bad performance art, ridiculous and deliberately confusing in order to conceal its superficiality. In the gesture of crowd confusion they are most successful, as the departing audience is peppered with insecure murmurs of interest. They could perhaps be equated more closely, however, with the production team for Everybody Loves Raymond, rather than the most compelling and progressive artists of their time. At least they were at the end, which i can only assume was to ensure that nobody left without seeing the other artists first.
And after that scathing review i shall now turn to my own self indulgent gestures of disrespect. Last night i got together with members of hard rock locals, TOY, for an improvised jam session. Sadly, the drummer was unable to attend, which may account for the sprawling and chaotic nature of the piece. The first section is driven by grinding minimal techno and layers of oscillating distortion. After about 17 minutes the gloves come off and we descend into ferocious noise and audio torment. I will be the first to acknowledge that this is not necessarily the most listener friendly session - but it marks my first rehearsal with musicians for a long time and may be an interesting moment in the development of our work. Noise enthusiasts and other concerned parties may hear the recording (made in 24 bit quad channel on my Zoom H2) by hitting play on the doodad at the top of this entry.
It is still impossible to get the audio through itunes, but i am working on it. If you know how and can see where i might be going wrong, then please shoot me an email and offer any advice you have so i can submit my noisy experiments to the podcast community. And it may be completely self indulgent to want to put these things on the internet and to reach a wider audience and i am as aware of that as anybody. Still... this has been a fun project for me. Making recordings and being interested in how music happens and the strange and beautiful feelings i get when i listen and get all swallowed by it. And i guess having fun is a social thing and i hope some of you understand why, self indulgent or no, i will keep doing this anyway.
My warmest regards,
Benjamin
Friday, July 18, 2008
Once back in Melbourne
It was often noted in conversation that everyone in India is "looking for something," and it would be false to pretend that i just went and saw and had a laugh and now i am back and that i have not been asking myself questions. Of course i was looking for something. But that doesn't mean i know what it was or is or why i don't know and probably never will. Someone asked me if i found what i was looking for and i said yes because i wanted to find some very delicious subji (curries) and on that account i was successful on many occasions. But if we are talking about philosophy, as many people travelling in India do, then that is a different question and not one i am able to answer with ease. It is certainly true that i feel very good and that things are exciting and fresh and all i really want to do is travel again and see more amazing things and meet more amazing people. It is good fun and i guess that having fun is really the only thing that makes all this living stuff worthwhile.
And in the name of good fun, i have decided to start podcasting, even though i still don't really know what that means or how it is done. This is my first try at publishing an independent audio file on the blog and fingers crossed it works.
Okay. It worked. It took me a few hours but now it is up and if you have some minutes handy then please take a listen. The file is a recording that was made yesterday, which was Thursday. Alexander Clutterbuck and I got together to make some noise and while we were playing with my H2 microphone in his studio he had a very good idea that we should go and record sounds in a nearby storm water drain. We didn't really discuss what we were going to do once we got there, but what followed can only be described as an eerie dialogue of effects both instrumental and bodily, set within a murky subterranean atmosphere. Part jam session part field recording, two guys trying to scare each other in a drain. And if we do what we say we will do then in coming weeks there will be many more audio recordings posted here and i certainly hope that is the case. I hope that i can get my head around this sound art business and computers and start to make sounds that i like listening to. And I really hope you like it too.
Friday, June 27, 2008
a plesiosaur in paris
And community is a very important thing to a lone wanderer who feels that he is no longer a lone traveller and has become transformed into something else by the particularities of circumstance. Yes. It may sound strange, but i think that my travelling came to an awkward halt when i decided to stay with a friend in Paris. Then i was, in a sense, "living" in Paris, albeit for a very short period of time. And to live in a place for a while, semi dependant on the generosity of one's host(s), is very different to travelling independently. Travelling when you have to locate accommodation and you are surrounded by other travellers who don't know anyone else either and go hungry for fear of language barriers and precarious gastronomic experiences. But it isn't quite "living" in the place either, because once you've gone and been a tourist at a few famous landmarks and visited the art galleries and museums, you have to find something to sustain your sanity. Work doesn't exist in this ontological space, and study of any kind is structureless and sprawling at best. Social exchange becomes a matter of luck and routine. I had to go to the same cafe three times before i got chatting with the staff.
That said, the evenings are well accounted for. Last night i joined Morvarid and Suzanne to get reacquainted with an old friend (of theirs) from 1998, rediscovered in the logs of facebook. I found myself suddenly surrounded by the pallid tones of computer geeks and music nerds and knew that i had been travelling for some time because i was the least white and the most blonde at the table. Everyone spoke english to varying degrees which was very considerate and some of us were able to speak the universal language of musical elitism.
Otherwise the days seem to float by as lanterns in the periphery of a tree lined boulevard in the quiet prelude to dawn. And so i invent little routines for myself, filling my mornings with yoga and croissants and books and country music. Then i would visit a friend or decide i shall walk so far there and so far back so as i can see a cathedral or walk in the Luxembourg gardens like Hemingway and Joyce and Stein did back in "the old days." It is easy to get a little bit lost in Paris, as the strange winding streets seem to reflect the coiling corridors of the subconscious rather than the rationale of a grid. Occasionally stopping to cast one's eyes over delicate displays of ornate tools for opening letters in the window of some boutique, or catching a glimpse of some well hidden court yard as an opened door lingers at the outer range of its hinges. The imagination swoops in and fills those sudden images with memories old and recent and i am suddenly aware of where i am and where i was and where i haven't yet been.
And as a personal marker of time i have made a gift of some tiny plastic dinosaurs to my host and to my friend Alice with whom i enjoyed a fantastic lunch yesterday and who i shall see perform in a production staged by Philippe Genty tonight. The dinosaur may seem ridiculous at first, but in a place of high culture i think it has a multilayered complexity about it. For when i make a gift of a tiny plesiosaur as a reminder of a time spent together, i think it is good to recognise that there has been a whole heap of time before now, including a time when the world was inhabited by gigantic prehistoric lizards. So maybe there is a whole heap more time that hasn't happened yet. And who knows what is going to happen in that time. It'd be fun if the lizards came back. No?
And now it is Saturday and it my last morning of "living" in Paris for tomorrow morning i will be getting on that Kuwait airlines flight. I hardly slept last night and i cant recall any dreams, which is only significant because i have been dreaming a lot since i came to Europe. Strange deserts with laughing heads, old friends in white rooms with red carpet and the end of the world on a mountain that is home to everyone. Funnily, last night Mo and i went to see Philippe Genty and Co.'s production, Boliloc. I knew about and wanted to attend the show because my friend Alice was in it and also because in the latter months of 2006 i was involved in a Genty piece made in Melbourne, which is where i met Alice in the first place. Like all of Genty's work, the lush visual piece was a comedic and surrealist meditation on the corridors of the subconscious. A myseterious dreamscape where the relationship between human and object, manipulator and manipulated, gets a thorough inverting. It was a beautiful piece, and i got a real kick out of seeing a friend perform familiar gestures on the professional stage. But, although i thoroughly enjoyed the show, the experience and its associative resonances has taken its toll.
Just because you go and see a production that harnesses the subconscious and the world of dreams as its favoured playground, does not mean that you can then go without sleep for a night. In the wake of the show, i have felt riddled with a strange anxiety - a nausea that still lingers and seems impossible to shake. In part, this may be due to my impending departure. It may also be because i have been IN a Genty production in Melbourne and so seeing one in Paris teased out a whole heap of emotions and memories connected to my past, and with my sense of home. Indeed, seeing the show seems to have provoked an excavation of all the personal reasons for my leaving Melbourne 6 months ago. More information may be required for this to make any real sense. Suffice to say, the period prior to, during and after the Genty workshop in 2006 was, for me, one of most intense periods of self questioning, frustration and eventual destruction. By the end of it all i felt like i had undergone a sort of subjective death. Over the following 18 months, a lot has happened and things are better and i fell like i have been sort of reborn. But i'm still getting my legs to work and my hands to hold stuff and talking is more like blowing bubbles. 18 months sounds like a long time to be in an existential crisis, but not really that long, and especially when you think of giant prehistoric lizards.
Seeing Boliloc, with its myriad compounding associations, seems to have brought home the reality of my actually really gonna happen nearly now return home. That and the fact that i have been away for 6 months and i still have no idea who i am or what the hell i'm doing on this great big ridiculous blue planet. Walking down the Boulevard Sebastopol, reading James Joyce and sipping coffee at the Soluna, sitting here typing at an indifferent computer screen; i feel that strange tremor you get in your throat when you need to cry and nearly do but hold it in because the boss is looking. It is slow and it feels heavy in my stomach. A major case of the "holy shits!" have taken hold. But i still have 22 hours left in Paris and a beautiful woman is cooking a Persian lunch and then there is something on tonight and then some air travel tomorrow and then home... Home. And then my mother and my father, waiting for me. And i'm sure to hell that i wont give a toss if the boss is looking or not. Holy shit.