Vinyl Diaries XXVIII: the hermit awakens

A small milestone passed quietly this week.... three months since attending my last gig.

Now by gig, I should clarify by pointing out that I did not consider the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, any performances at the Sydney Conservatorium (where I saw an inspiring rendition of Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time last Sunday), various jazz and improvisational shows and their ilk to count as gigs. By gigs I meant bands playing songs that the ordinary man or woman in the street would say was a band playing a song at a gig.

One of the main reasons for the three months was to see if I could do it, the other was a slight case of simply going out too much and not having much time left to do my own things. In a ridiculous six or so weeks from late January into March, I seemed to end up at gigs by fourplay, tunng, low, mice parade, joanna newsom, sufjan stevens, arcade fire and bjork (all in less than a fortnight), iron & wine, broken social scene, okkervill river, feist, beirut, pj harvey, sonic youth... and more. After the joy that was Múm I decided to take a bit of a break, and here we are three months on.

It's possibly a coincidence, but during the break I've enjoyed the orchestral concerts more than I have in a long time. But I think that might be more interesting programing and better seats than in the past few years - the ACO's show last week with guest director John Storgards on lead violin was outstanding, particularly Lutoslawski's vivacious Preludes and Fugue for 13 Solo Strings.

Certain wags may argue (have argued, continue to argue) that my three month moratorium was made simpler by the paucity of touring acts through the period and my tendency to talk my way out of most of the performances I actually went to as being gigs as such.

All I know is I made it. I've now got a Sigur Ros ticket for their August show, but that's far too far away - I think I might have to go see Grand Salvo next Friday, but even that seems a long time away.

Vinyl Diaries XXVII: dj museum

When last we were away Peter and Angela were kind enough to water our plants and bring in the mail... while they're away it seems to be our turn to repay the favour by hijacking Peter's splendid radio show, Utility Fog, which features, if i remember correctly, postfolkrocktronica, from granular pop to orchestral breakcore and beyond...

I think I know who got the better deal, but given they're off gallivanting around Europe and off to see My Bloody Valentine in Glasgow maybe they're coping somehow. Oh well.

While I've been doing bits and pieces of production, it's been a while since I've done any programming or on-air presenting. I'm rather looking forward to it and it's been fun auditioning tracks that might get a spin - the idea being to try and keep to the flavour of the show while lending it a benjamin and serena sprinkle.

Thanks to the wonders of the interweb, apparently it will be streaming from hereabouts from 10pm Sunday to 1am Monday, Sydney time.

So thank you to Peter for letting us play with your shiny show and enjoy the rest of your trip - we'll try not to break it while you're gone ;-)

outing

She stares out of her window, sitting straight-backed behind the empty passenger seat. The passenger door is open, nobody is sitting there. It must be for her mother – the father would be driving, a car like this. The years on her face outweigh her size, the muscles drawing her brow in, like she’s squinting against the glare of existence, or as if she's seen it all before. Seen all there is before her, already. She seems to be wearing make-up, but isn’t. She seems to be looking past wherever her eye appears to be resting. Though it isn’t resting at all, it’s working, always working. What she’s seeing is not necessarily there.

She’s lost in thought. Not imagination, but reflection, not possibilities for the future, but ruminations on the past. She’s all in black, a crushed velvet, lace trimmed. Real lace. Her hair is a shock of white spilling over its gentle, scalloped neckline, preternaturally blonde, prematurely straightened before it could find its natural curl.

She stares at the spot her mother’s heel last trod, before the glossy green door closed. She’s gone back for something – a scarf, a glove, something they forgot to pack as they went to the car. She forgot it knowingly, aching for the moment to herself. She left it on the dressing table well aware she would have to go back, timing it so they were all in the car but the key hadn’t turned. She knew he would be annoyed, knew he would spend the time tapping on the dashboard and looking every ten seconds at its clock, choking with silent rage, as if that would somehow make her any faster.

She walks up the stairs, not fast not slow. Her breath is so tight, her chest so locked, you could hold up a mirror to her mouth and no mist would appear. She wants to go faster because that’s how she does things, slower because she needs that moment to stretch on as long as it can, as far as it can go before snapping.

He drums his fingers on the dashboard. He looks at the clock again, then checks his wristwatch. Its heavy, gold body gleams against his tanned arm, black hairs curling over its band. The cuffs of his starched white shirt peek out past his coat, the gold cuff-link flashing like toothache.

She looks down at her shoes, their tiny buckles, the rough scuff on the end of the left one where she dragged it over the gutter getting into the car. ‘Mother will not be pleased’, she thinks, not sure whether she herself cares. Not sure of anything. She looks at the freckle just below the third knuckle on her middle finger. She scratches at it, as she always does while waiting for something, anything, to happen, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It never goes anywhere. The skin beneath it whitens and the freckle slides back towards her wrist, but then returns to exactly where it had been.

She is too cold, or too hot, but not quite sure which. Her father drums on the centre of the steering wheel, sucking his back teeth.

She is close to the window, so close her forehead almost touches the glass, yet no mist of breath appears.

She closes her eyes.

Vinyl Diaries XXVI: Mike Cooper & Chris Abrahams

Mike Cooper & Chris Abrahams
+AustraLYSIS Electroband
April 4, 2008

I've been tinkering on a few things lately, but here's another piece put together for resonate magazine.

Back soon...

Vinyl Diaries XXV: Sydney Symphony Orchestra

Dimitri Shostakovich & Georges Lentz
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
March 26, 2008

A little something I put together that's now popped up over at resonate magazine.

back from bundanon

It’s been less than a fortnight since I left Bundanon, but already it’s feeling like a fairly pivotal turning point in my creative life.

Having moved fairly smoothly from school to university to the workplace, finding myself in jobs (journalism/newspaper editor) that offer plenty of challenges and require a substantial amount of attention from my mind, I’ve never really had the opportunity to spend any great stretch of time on creative projects.

Those that I have pursued have been, invariably, either spontaneous or reactive. My two novel length works-in progress both began as short stories that simply got out of hand, taking on a life of their own. On the photography front, I’ve been very much of the verité school, shooting what I see, the world ‘as it is’ without my interference. I acknowledge, of course, the choices I make in subject selection, framing, composition and the like, but have rarely been active in setting up or directing a scene or an image. I’d figured this was a stylistic choice, a philosophical consideration of photography as documentation and momentary, but am now wondering whether it was simply a lack of time.

On the writing side, the hope entering the fortnight had been to finish a few projects, in any spare time that may have emerged around our main major life between buildings project. Yet after two weeks these never even made it out of the suitcase – this was a place and a time for thinking afresh, for inventing/crafting not polishing; opening doors not closing them.

So instead of wrapping up existing projects, I seem to have started more than I can keep track of. Central is the life between buildings song cycle, to which I intend to co-contribute text along with Rhiannon and Danielle, and work on more visual ideas that will hopefully augment its final presentation.

‘The Last Supper’ is to be a 12-song song-cycle, co-created by the life between buildings team of Serena Armstrong, Danielle Carey, Rhiannon Cook, Julian Day, and, in there as well, me.

The cycle will build upon written texts exploring the last meals of condemned death row prisoners, combining the irresistible motifs of Food and Death.

The idea is to create a work that can stand alone in a traditional performative sense, incorporating visual elements , but there is also strong interest in looking at the ‘event’ possibilities the idea holds, to explore its potential in installation or even ‘happening’ terms, such as incorporating the work into an actual meal with audience interaction, a blurring of the active performer/ passive audience lines.

This idea developed throughout Bundanon and grew richer each day, particularly in the second week. We would share our thoughts and ideas for it, discussing its difficulties and problematic aspects as well as what intrigued us.

Once the idea had developed to a point where we could all see where it might be heading, we were each able to work on bringing our various strengths to it, working on potential texts and some basic musical possibilities.

Amidst all this, as I was being drawn further and further into the surrounds, I also found some windows to experiment with some visual ideas. With a fortnight to spend free of daily concerns (cooking and grooming matters notwithstanding), my early ideas for some photographic series developed, expanded and then shifted quite substantially. For reasons I expect I’ll explore at greater length down the line, I’ve developed a fascination bordering on obsession with red. Red in all its forms, but particularly red as a thread – in this case wool.

‘Threads’ are a theme I’ve begun to quietly follow, but the red is quite recent and appeared quite suddenly, almost violently. Apart from its symbolic elements, which I’ll discuss down the track, I’m quite taken by the difficulties cameras appear to have in processing reds of this intensity.

My early red interventions at Bundanon were quite rushed and quickly executed. I wasn’t sure if the idea even had any lasting worth, and hadn’t fully understood what it was I was trying to say. Spending more and more time wrapping objects, winding the wool around the man-made or natural items that drew me, that seemed to be asking for a red challenge, or echo, I found the time and space to think more about what it was I was trying to do, and say.

I had gone into Bundanon thinking I would look at spending more time on photo manipulation – working with layers to get my photos to look at the relationship between the ‘observed world’, text and music. But instead of post-production and scanning, layering disparate images for a common cause, I found I was more and more drawn towards creating these layers in real-time and real-space.

The poetics of the bush and its musicality was utterly enthralling. I couldn’t face sitting at my computer trying to recreate when here was a chance to create directly, to interact with the natural surroundings and enter into a type of direct dialogue.

Hence the paperbark/paperback project, the Byron rock, the Haydn gum, and variations on the ‘poe-tree’ project. Many more ideas have also been sifting through since my return, with the urge to create kicked along again after seeing Jeanette Winterson, a favourite author, speak at the Sydney Opera House to open the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Tuesday.

While perhaps seemingly like a fairly haphazard hotchpotch of concepts and threads, each, in their way, has been spawned by the Bundanon and life between buildings collaboration. In the past I’ve tended to work fairly individually, drawing upon my own ideas and bouncing them up against, well, myself.

I think what I’ve taken from this experience is not just the amazing time I had working closely with such creative, inspiring artists (and good friends!), but I have learned how ideas bounced around can grow and develop and take on a life of their own, thanks to the enthusiasm and input of others.

So while we have a common cause in our central project, we all each have other strands to follow, other threads to explore, that each developed, to some extent out, of the collaborative process. The actual ‘practice’ part, the writing or the photography is, for me, still a fairly personal path. I tend to process ideas over a longer period than some, then quietly chip away at them, channelling through my work things I can’t always explain in discussion. I think my strength in working with others is more likely to be a piece of text or a photo that tells a story, rather than ‘discussed’ input as such – that may change, but my work seems to come from a part of me I don’t necessarily have access to in conversation form.

To spend two weeks immersed in this, in such a deeply inspiring place as Bundanon, has been an experience that will ripple through my life for some time.

This was an inspiring group of artists to spend time with, and I like to think we’ll be able to keep working together, even if loosely, under the life between buildings umbrella.