Showing posts with label Meta. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meta. Show all posts

Pass me my hatchet

Last night Spencer was telling me about the lyrics to How do you sleep? * by John Lennon, we agreed that sometimes John Lennon was a small man while we drank tea and ate cup cakes fresh from the oven. Last night there was nothing above us save bats, stars and darkness but today I discovered how easy it is to be small, how anger writes my emails for me while my head thinks calmly of washing dishes. I'm listening to McCartney's Fireman album Electric Arguments online as punishment.

I prefer the false intimacy of madness to those plodding people, backyards planted thick with Sunday afternoons, this as always has been my downfall.

I had a terrible time when I went to Queensland with Superman. Early on in the trip Superman ceased all the usual modes of expressing friendship, such as acknowledging my presence or consenting to conversation and abandoned me almost entirely to his beige ** and ever present relatives who eyed me suspiciously and talked quietly about the way Superman was not talking to me. The house itself had some potential but was decorated so hideously and situated so firmly in that particular kind of Queensland suburban isolation that the building itself bred oppression. The people were not unkind but I drifted through days bored, ignored, isolated and trapped. Having lost my wallet and broken my phone I was unable to plan any kind of independent escape. I watched the heavy hours pass, unwilling or unable to talk to Superman and risk his unreasonable anger in response.

When I returned to The Peach, after twelve stretched days of extreme politeness and a constant biting of my tongue, I determined to irrevocably terminate my friendship with Superman. My friends dissuaded me, counseled me with caution, begged me to take some time to think it over, the lovely Rita being a watchful guardian against impulsive action. So I did and I was until Superman messaged me out of the blue about Bill Callahan tickets and I replied in my sleep. If I had been fully conscious I would not have gone. I sat on the train opposite Superman thinking well I might as well see what kind of a time I have, and in the end it was not bad so I invited him to my birthday dinner, eventually, as instructed by friends.

I invited him to my birthday dinner but received no reply, not even Grizelda who was in charge of booking the table received a reply to her kind text message. I received no reply until almost the night itself, I did not expect him to attend but attend he did. He attended without so much as a scrawled message of happy birthday on the back of an envelope but with a battery of narkiness, a determination not to enter into conversation with me or anybody except a baffled Grizelda and then he left, straight after dinner, leaving me shrugging my shoulders on a street corner.

I thought I might try and talk to Superman about this business and to ask him to return some albums he had borrowed, but he would not take my calls, I sent an email asking if it was me he was avoiding or just people in general, thinking I would approach the issue with an enquiry instead of an assumption. Most often I have avoided writing anything of consequence about Superman, to avoid having one of his great and petulant misunderstandings, but right about now I don't really give a damn, I am quite certain that no matter what I do or say he will alter every meaning of every syllable until it sounds like the ringing in his head and he ticks off another box on his list of always being right.

A week passed before I received any reply but such a reply I most certainly did not expect to receive. I am shocked at his arrogance, petulance, selfishness and general ability to shove his head so far up his own arse whilst still uttering audible insults. I am shocked despite my knowledge of his character and temperament, I am shocked despite all of my past tongue bitings during his interminable lectures on How Superman Sees The World And Why He Is Correct And Also Why You Would Be Stupid If You Disagreed (or dared to believe in love). I once again find myself more angry than you can imagine, or at least I was until I felt embarrassed and humiliated for allowing myself to imagine that Superman and I were friends. I feel embarrassed and humiliated for all my bendings to his will, for my silences when I disagreed, for my defence of his character to all and sundry, for holding off the official Superman Is A Prick ceremony that some others attempted to invoke some time ago and for batting away my idle wonderings that such a good man has so paltry a circle of friends, that he hardly ever has any contact with.

Hold the phone I just received an email reply, the single word "fine". So fine it is, here ends the brief but eventful friendship of Dale Slamma and Superman, during which Dale Slamma lost her job, her car, her wallet, her phone, her confidence and for a short time, her backbone. Pass me my hatchet I've some work to do.


* How do you sleep?
by John Lennon - about Paul McCartney

So Sgt. Pepper took you by surprise
You better see right through that mother's eyes
Those freaks was right when they said you was dead
The one mistake you made was in your head
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

You live with straights who tell you you was king
Jump when your momma tell you anything
The only thing you done was yesterday
And since you're gone you're just another day
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

A pretty face may last a year or two
But pretty soon they'll see what you can do
The sound you make is muzak to my ears
You must have learned something in all those years
Ah, how do you sleep?
Ah, how do you sleep at night?

** Superman's sister Ol' Mon Mon is not a beige person, she is an ideal person.

FUCKWITS

I'm freaking out, retrospectively.  I'm no Helen Razer or Charlotte Dawson but in my time there have been two people posting me death threats, a bunch of truly horrible trolls calling for me to kill myself because I am the world's worst writer, and two entire blogs, not blog posts but actual whole blogs, dedicated to writing as much horrible crap as possible about me. FUCKWITS!

Helen Razer wrote this excellent article. I advise people to read it.

Derp

I didn't know the feed was broken. Looks like it hasn't worked properly for ages. Because I am at least mildly stupid I couldn't fix the old feed but I have made a new one.

Click on the "Subscibe in a reader" orange RSS button at the top right if you would like to resubscribe with the new feed address. It works I promise.


Geoff Lemon This Should Not Be Your 15 Minutes

Everyone is talking about Geoff Lemon's Carbon Tax article, and I mean everyone. Click that link back there and have a read if you haven't read it yet (been under a rock?).  It's a fine piece of Lemonian writing but my point, and I do have one, is that it is not the first fine thing he has written.

I've been reading Lemon written things for years now, ever since I first saw him come down the outside stairs at The Hive holding a bottle of gin and a chicken sandwich. There was a group of us, all writers, sitting under the stars drinking and playing Balderdash like our lives depended on it.

I have followed Lemon's writings, corresponded with him via electronic mail, purchased his poetry, commissioned him to write for PAN, narrowly avoided arrest with him in public park and even put him up in The Peach Library for a couple of days.

The rest of my point is this. Geoff Lemon is a fine writer and I understand why everyone has gone ape shit over his carbon tax article, it has been on everybody's mind, but I hope this isn't Lemon's 15 minutes of fame because he's better than that. He's been writing well for years and he's getting better all the time. Writers, like Geoff Lemon, deserve a respected place in our society that lasts longer than 15 minutes.

Maroon Pants Man discovers the ability to cause genuine shock on the streets of Newtown

Last night I dined with Tim Train, The Baron, Mitzi G Burger and Nails . I have never met any of them before so the experience was awkward and partially surreal. I can't help but feel that a good splash of whiskey might have eased discussion along. There were several interesting points and one surprising connection. It seems Ms Burger is acquainted with Abdullah. I am always disturbed by the discovery of mutual friends.

Afterwards I was sitting in a cafe with Spencer, attempting to describe the experience, when a man in tight maroon pants and tweed jacket appeared. The crotch of his pants was alarmingly low despite the glove-like grip of the trousers on his legs. It was an odd pair of trousers but not as odd as the man himself. He was hopping about from one foot to the other or crouching down to table-level. Constantly moving, adjusting, hopping, crouching and talking yet he was calm and lyrically coherent.

Maroon Pants Man was on his way home from  Star Wars Burlesque at The Vanguard, please take a moment to think about that, when he came across an abandoned pram. If I had come across an abandoned pram nothing at all would have happened but MPM seized the handle and commenced a wild careening down the road.

Noticing the high volume of alarmed looks by pedestrians MPM took to wheeling past restaurant windows and 'accidentally' tipping the pram over with a shocked look on his face. He said the simultaneous reaction of all onlookers was consistent from restaurant to restaurant. Every person half-standing, ready to pounce to his assistance, all of them alarmed for the safety of the invisible baby.

MPM repeated the performance at several locations on the street, after each one holding up the pram to show it was empty.  MPM's impromptu pram performance was genius. There is so little left for us to do that will genuinely shock.

A small portion of two cents

Like most people I know I've been watching Go Back To Where You Came From on SBS. I have a tremendous problem with Raquel. Like Geoff Lemon said she's a 'bandsaw-voiced tracksuit mannequin whose casual racism and innate sense of privilege has made her the anti-matter star of the show'. Geoff raises some interesting points in his post but I'd like to depart from his reasoned and informed opinion and go my own way, just for a minute.


Raquel was crying because she was not able to bring herself to use the toilets in the refugee camp. I sympathise with her plight, as a woman who never mastered the art of squatting to wee without weeing on my shoes, down my legs or on my pushed down trousers I get why she was upset. What I don't understand is how she failed to understand that weeing in those circumstances might be upsetting for other people as well as for her. If there is a personal yet universal act it is surely the act of doing a wee. Everybody wees.


It seems to me there must be a malfunction with Raquel's humanity. I admire her sense of self, her sure as shit everyone else can get fucked attitude, but I don't understand how it hasn't been dented by her experiences. It seems to me that she has wound her sheltered suburban lifestyle around herself tighter than a flak jacket. 


I was waiting for her to arrive at a compassionate thought but I've given up on that now. I don't have a point, not yet. Unlike Raquel I'm trying as hard as I can to be compassionate, to attempt an understanding of her point of view and how she might have arrived there.

Backwards/forwards, its all a direction

Everyone is travelling backwards, spending their days writing piles of words about the past, or photographing the fading dying corners, digging their own little nostalgia holes to sit in. I love reading what they write, or seeing what they exhibit but I'm wondering what's going on. Is it that time already where me and my contemporaries turn to look over our shoulders and see a vast highway of rich things already attempted, experienced or felled by? Surely we have a way to go yet. This can't already be the point at which we fold up like dying spiders and take permanently to the memory pit. I'm still walking around realising things for the first time. I'm still learning the names of the flowers on my street and the birds in my trees. I only just learnt how to buy a dress and I'm trying just as hard as I can to get a media pass for my first ever Dolly Parton show. Should I be spending more time sitting still and remembering?


A cursory and incomplete clickable list of beautiful memory pits that I thought of in under two seconds:
Biblioburbia by Vanessa Berry
Dress, Memory by Lorelei Vashti
Parramatta Rd by Lyndal Irons

Another forgetting gets remembered

I've been ushered down the horrifying path of remembering that I started a project and then forgot all about it. Vanessa Berry has started a new project blog called Biblioburbia, like all of Vanessa's writings is definitely worth reading, but it is also the cause of my shameful remembrance. Best to just have a read of Vanessa's project while I go about trying to remember where I was up to with mine...

Radio gaga

I can't remember precisely what I said on the radio (ABC Radio National) but I do remember that it was largely stupid and at least partially embarrassing nonsense. I am hoping they edited me out entirely.

The other people appearing on the program were much better than and deserve a listen.  If you would like to listen to the others,  including Vanessa Berry,  click here.

FINALLY!

Yes! Someone has described me as fey! Finally! I have fervently wished, for my whole life, to be fey. In recent years I had given up hope at being called fey due to not being a willowy blonde sort of person who rambles around shoeless in floaty dresses with no bra underneath. Thank you Baron Von Harlot for not only reviving an old dream of mine but making it come true.

A most interviewed year

I hate interviews, hate interviewing people and hate being interviewed by other people so it's a little mysterious how I managed to be interviewed so much in the one year. I like mysteries so to balance out things out I will now solve the mystery of the interviews.*

Interview 1 - Cleo Magazine
At the time I agreed to this interview it seemed too ridiculous to be true. I am not a fan of this kind of magazine, broader  cultural harms and that sort of thing, but in this instance I knew the journalist to be a good one, a woman of integrity with genuine journalistic intent and also the topic was about being independent and happy despite being terribly old. Too weird a chance to pass up, almost like being an anti-girl-mag topic. Take them down from the inside. I think it was the April one, can't really remember.

Interviews 2 - 5 million - Newspapers, Blogs, Websites & Radio
These interviews were all about PAN magazine. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a magazine editor will subject themselves to multiple interviews for the good of the magazine.

It did feel a tad awkward when I had to interview myself but fortunately my friend Spencer came over and pretended to be me, the interviewer me, so that I could answer myself. None of us, not me, Spencer, Spencer pretending to me or the other way around uttered the words 'Willy Wonka' but they did somehow end up being in the title of the interview. You can read it here if you can be bothered...

Interview 5 million and 1 - ABC Radio National
I am terribly fond of the Olympia Milkbar on Parramatta Rd but that alone is insufficient to convince me to go on the radio. I am petrified of going on the radio. Every single time I go slightly odd with fear on the walk there and nearly get run over or walk into large objects like buildings and public sculptures.

There are two reasons I recently agreed to risk being run over and head down to the ABC. The first  was the radio man informing me that the 'V' in the middle of his email address was for his middle name, Vince.  The second reason was that he sounded kind and slightly amused rather than annoyed by my phone call demanding to know if this was in fact a strange prank.

I had planned to say all sorts of things about the importance of the geography of sound, my larger project of map making through public memory and the texture of this city. Instead I blurted my usual mixture of incomprehensible prattle interspersed with statements surprising to both the interviewer and myself which is one of the reasons I have decided to become sophisticated next year but more of that later.

The very best part of the interview was when Radio Man Middle Name of Vince first sat me down in one of those tiny rooms full of strange electrical equipment. He produced several pieces of paper on which he had written responses to my ponderings about why he wanted to interview me. I can now reliably inform you that he is not secretly in love with Vanessa Berry, he does not want to yell in my face, bring back the dinosaurs and is not the illegitimate love child of Milkbar Man. Nor had he heard about my imaginary submarine but he does now want to blow it up with imaginary battle ships.

It is a great shame that he does not live in Newtown. I have the feeling that if he was walking down King St I would not only nod hello but also raise a hand and wave. It is probably best if I did not attempt to speak with him because who the hell  knows what is likely to come out of my mouth, it could be anything from 'Happy Christmas' to 'Your shoes are peculiar why are you wearing them?' or even worse, of course it wouldn't be on purpose but not everybody understands that.

Despite my input I will encourage everybody to listen to the Radio National documentary about the Olympia Milkbar when it goes to air next year. You never know, they might edit me out entirely.



* I am only solving the mystery of why I was interviewed and not the mystery of why I interviewed other people. It is safe to assume I interviewed people when an editor told me to and not for any other reason, except maybe the Quaoub interview. I think I had a small urge to try and share his good music with the world. I've done my part, the rest is up to him really. Can't make people listen to a record that doesn't exist yet.

Better to befriend a Lemon than get bitter about his talent

Go read this post by Geoff Lemon because its so much better than what was in my head this evening. For those that are interested, this evening the contents of my head included wondering how to make a cake in the shape of myself, the amount of apples that Paul Simon might buy in one go and what is the most polite way to firmly refuse a man who has expressed a desire to wee either onto or inside of you.

Sometimes instant means the same as miracle

I have a coffee machine in my house, it has spider webs on it. I have a jar of instant coffee in my cupboard, it is almost empty. This information will become both more and less relevant once you read Vanessa Berry's most recent post on Vanessa Berry World.

Kate is my cool thing of the day

Not only has she mastered the art of Science she has also discovered a secondary use for cows.

Not yet an Antarctic submarine captain

I'm working on something over here. Maybe go listen to this instead of reading what I've got to say.

Dive dive dive

Most of the time I am imagining I am the captain of a submarine on an Antarctic mission. The rest of the time I am being insanely jealous of Geoff Lemon and his unimaginary Antarctic adventures, damn you to hell Geoff Lemon, all the way to hell.

Everyone needs a hero

My big wet writers' crush on Mark Mordue continues. I'd like to have a drink with this man. I'd like to pour whiskey down my throat and just listen to him for a while. Mordue's essay 'Towards Love: another vision of The Road' needs to be read, now.

Yawntastic

Oh why don't you just bore me until I am dead. The boring thing I am talking about here is a review of The Holy Soul and The Kill Devil Hills. 'Respectful applause', I mean is that really something you want to read in a gig review?

Here's the part where I start making sense. The reviewer, David Young, clearly knows how to put a sentence together. He has a fluid journalistic style but his review is boring to read. Boring. Come on David Young this music is wild, this gig was transcendent in places and raucous in others. I walked around pretending to be a gunslinger for three full days after this gig, surely you can do better than 'respectful applause'.

The reason that music journalism has gone to hell in this country is because music journalists need to lift their game, I'm not excluding myself from this. Consider this a challenge. David Young if you happen upon this post contact me. I've got a proposition for you and it goes a little something like this. Let's coordinate reviewing the same gig. I challenge you to a 'review off'.

Some days are like houses

Some projects are long term, the kind that unfold as you age and become as essential as breathing. This project, my Safe As Houses project is like that. It us unhurried but permanent. Two days ago I remembered a house I once tried to forget, except for the part where Elliot and I got a horse truck stuck on the front lawn. We climbed things holding six-foot crowbars, we were sure this would help.

Two days ago Ben Rumble had a story about this house published in THE GROUP online magazine and I remembered that it is not easy to forget.

He might just be a rascal but he sure can run on the spot

I love having seven jobs either that or I'm just overtired due to Big (stupid) Day Out and Peaches. I'm now writing for RHUM as well as Liveguide, PAN etc.


My Big (stupid) Day Out

I felt like an egg in an outdoor paint commercial, if I stood in the sun for one more second I was going to drop to the ground and fry like somebody’s breakfast. The heat made the whole day feel mediated and distant, even standing in the moshpit at The Mars Volta I felt like I was watching a band on television from the inside of an oven.

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