In 2007, on a plane home from Europe to Sydney, I saw
Frida, a film portraying the life of Mexican artist
Frida Kahlo (1907 - 1954). Frida was married to a famous Mexican artist and relentless womanizer, Diego Rivera. Their relationship together, as is depicted in the film, was as notorious for its passion as it was for its affairs (both illicit and open). I remember being traumatized by the fact that this woman seemed to have suffered so much, both in terms of her health (she contracted polio at a young age, was in a bus accident that almost prevented her from being able to walk and left her with spinal injuries, and later in her life she had to have her leg amputated due to gangrene), but mostly in terms of her love life.
This was a woman who didn't know how to be anything but passionate... even at the expense of her own health, dignity, and happiness. I always thought that passion was a great quality. I unquestioningly put it in a basket marked "things that lead to a life of fulfillment". Here was a person who's life posed a tangeable challenge to the (over)simplicity of my hypothesis. Here was someone who had given everything of herself to every situation, someone who had laid out her soul, who had made herself vulnerable, someone who engaged in and was irrepressibly engaged by life. However, looking at her art, and reading her letters, it's easy to see this was someone who often found herself submerged in deep and all-pervasive physical and emotional pain.
After watching the film I was left with an overwhelming feeling of having misunderstood something very fundamental about love. I remember thinking that somehow Frida maybe understood something about love that I didn't. Most important of all, I remember feeling that I wasn't sure whether I
wanted to understand or not. I felt that understanding would not necessarily lead to my being happy, as was the case in Frida's life, but I was also aware that not seeking to understand left me feeling shortchanged, as if I was stopping short of experiencing fully and completely what life, love, people, relationships are all about. There was something incredibly seductive about Frida's carelessness, her recklessness, her unrepentant, uncompromising search for the zenith of human emotion. At the same time, just as her recklessness seemed seductive, so did it seem perilous and fraught with risk... Je voulais aller jusqu'au bout, mais j'étais à la fois conscient que d'y arriver ne serait pas nécessairement aussi épanouissant que peut-être j'attendais. Au contraire, je pensais que le fait de comprendre ne répondrait pas nécessairement à toutes mes questions.
I was recently browsing in a book shop on St Laurent in Montréal and I came across
Frida by Frida a book that gathers together and publishes a selection of letters, texts and notes written by Frida throughout her lifetime. The truth is, Frida's story still haunted me and I jumped at this chance to get inside her brain. I want to share one letter she wrote with you all. It will appear long on this already long and unusually verbose post, but it's revealing in its frankness and its poignancy, and I think it really gets at what I've tried to explain above. So if you're thinking,
"What the hell is the point of this post. I don't understand a f&%king thing this guy's saying!": read on.
To set the scene, it's 1935. Frida is 28. In the last two years she has suffered a miscarriage; had an abortion; has undergone foot surgery; dealt with the death of her mother; and suffered from appendicitis. To add insult ot injury, in October 1934 Kahlo separated from her husband Diego Rivera after she found out he was having an affair, this time with, of all people, her little sister Christina Kahlo.
On the 23 July 1935, nine months after separating from him, she writes the following to Rivera:
(extract taken from pg 158 of Frida by Frida by Raquel Tibol [translated by Gregory Dechant])"... a certain letter that I saw by chance in a certain jacket of a certain gentleman, and which came from a certain miss of distant and goddamned Germany, and who I imagine must be the lady Willi Valentiner was kind enough to send here to amuse herself with "scientific", "artistic" and "archaeological" intentions... made me very angry and to tell you the truth
jealous.
Why must I be so stubborn and dense as not to understand that the letters, the skirt-chasing, the 'English' professors, the gypsy models, the 'good will' assistants, the disciples interested in the 'art of painting', and the 'plenipotentiary envoys from distant parts', only signify amusements and that at bottom you and I love each other very much, and even if we go through countless affairs, splintered doors, insults and international claims, we shall always love each other. I think what it is, is that I'm a little stupid and just a bit of a dissembler, because all these things have happened and happened again for the seven years we've lived together and all of the rages I've gone into have only led me to understand better that
I love you more than my own skin, and though you don't love me in the same way, in any case you love me somewhat, no? Or if that's not true, I'll always have the hope that it may be, and that's enough for me... [my emphasis]
Love me just a little. I adore you
Frida"
I am intrigued by what it takes to write a letter like this one, a letter which so openly admits to the fallacy of monogamous love, a letter which challenges the supposed link between love, the type so intense it almost manifests itself in physical pain, and fidelity. Are we capable of loving someone more than our own skin, whilst at the same time acting in a way that seems to betray that very feeling?
True to her word, Frida walks through a number of "splintered doors" throughout the remainder of her life. A month after sending the above letter, Frida falls in love with Ignacio Aguirre and writes him a letter exclaiming,
"how marvelous it is to be able to love you". The following year she has an affair with Japanese sculptor, Isamu Noguchi. The year after that it's Leon Trotsky. Then American photographer Nickolas Muray. Then Heinz Berggruen. Finally, in 1940, she remarries Rivera, the man she loves more than her own skin. Barely a year after her death in 1954, Rivera marries his art dealer Emma Hurtado.
What to say about this Concert? It was clinical. Death Cab charge out on stage, launch into a 50 minute set, duck out the back for 3 minutes, probably to fold the sheets back and put the electric blanket on, drag themselves back on stage to knock out an encore, then it's good night and a rather affected "Drive home safely Paris" from the guitarist.
I saw this superb movie yesterday. Spurred by the story of a recurring nightmare told to him by one of his close friends Ari goes in search of the source of one of his recurring images from his time as a 19 year old in the Israeli army during the war in Lebanon in 1982.
I went and saw this movie with Lauren on the weekend and was pleasantly entertained. If there's a criticism of the film it's that it maybe tries to cover too many topics in one film. You have the emotionally damaged (verging on autistic) professor who is unlocked by the strangest of friends, two illegal immigrants, who he discovers are staying in his abandoned New York apartment. Then the film takes a right hand turn as it delves into the injustice of US immigration policy, before doing a u-turn and getting back on the road to Hollywood with Professor Broken-Soul daring to find love after years without his wife. It's like watching Dead Poets' Society and Good Will Hunting and Rabbit Proof Fence and "any film where a guy gets over his wife's death by falling in love again with an exotic woman" all rolled into one... sort of.
Last Saturday was the Fête de la musique which sees every amateur band in Europe take to the streets with their guitars and amplifiers to knock out a couple of tunes. It's a great idea, and packed streets of Paris are testament to how much people enjoyed the day.
Another installment from the vault of Clarke and Dawe
That's the description of our last and final gig at Le Boul Noir in Montréal. Here are some photos. Thanks to those who came down. We had lots of fun.
He may have been looking for friends, who knows, but a guy came up to me after we had played and presented me with a business card and said, "I'm a producer, call me, I love your sound, I'll get you gigs in Toronto". I thought about telling him I was about to leave Montréal for Paris the following week, and the band would subsequently unceremoniously disband, but thought better of it and instead just nodded politely and said, "Thanks so much." What a career. It was over before it even began.
This is the result of one of our late night games.
The Winner overwhelmed by all the emotion, falls to his knees, clutching his hard won 1991 swimming trophy!
Eric: The Master of Ceremonies says, "Hey you! You're about to take a ph- [click]!"
Posing with the Winner. There was no way I could compete with tin foil underpants, a visionary move... almost Andy Warholesque.
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my team for all their hard yards. They put in 110% every single one of them. Some of them put in more. 120%. 140%. Some of them were putting in around 180% i reckon. Even 230%. They never gave up and went right to the final siren. Full credit to the opposition though, who fought hard all night and deserved a win. Can I just give a big shout out to the Tuggeranong Rabbits who are struggling a bit at the moment. Hope you pull through boys. And to me old man John. Luv ya big fella.
The plan is to start the afternoon in the park next to our place, play some football, boccé, maybe even the odd egg tossing competition (a game I learnt at the many Scottish Highland Games I went to at Bundanoon as a kid). After we're all sufficiently sported out, it'll be back to the apartment for an Aussie-style BBQ and a couple of beerios.
April 25th is ANZAC day in Australia and represents our national day of remembrance of those who fought in the various conflicts to which Australia has committed troops.
The date chosen commemorates the landing of Australian troops at Gallipoli in Turkey in 1915 . The Gallipoli campaign is infamous for its poor planning and execution, which saw Australian troops land on a beach only to be faced with towering cliffs which they had to scale under heavy machine gun fire from entrenched Turkish forces. After approximately nine months of throwing men "over the top", heavy casualties on both sides, and very little territorial gain, the Allied forces conceded defeat and retreated in what was perhaps ironically the greatest tactical manoeuvre of the whole campaign. Given the terrain, and weather conditions, large causalities were expected in the evacuation. However, through the using of self-firing rifles, (which worked by dripping water into a tin connected to the trigger so that rifles would fire sporadically and give the impression that the Allied troops were still in their trenches) the evacutation was carried out without the loss of a single life.
This slide show recently appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and shows another side to the war we usually commemorate. Click on the above image to check it out.
The Sydney Morning Herald is celebrating 100 years of herald photography. To see a collection of photos of Australians at work and play over the last 100 years, click the above image.
The Australian Government is currently hosting the Australia 2020 summit in Canberra, a conference bringing together 1000 prominent Australians in various fields to debate and develop long term options to the challenges facing Australia's future. The idea is to "throw open the windows of our democracy to let a little bit of fresh air in", by turning to the people of Australia, "indigenous and non-indigenous, early settler families and those recently arrived, city and country, industry and labour, academics and non-academics, women and men, our youth and let's face it our not so youthful" to identify new ideas and directions for Australia's future as well as insights into possible ways of governing Australia as a nation.
Being exams, my world pretty much consists of these two places, my bed and my desk, and the one metre space between them.
Look how nice it is outside!
However, unfortunately, I have to admit I feel more like this:
And quite frankly would rather be doing this:
"I suppose I do have one unembarrassed passion. I want to know how it feels to care about something passionately."
Favourite line is:
Cubans are crazy about their baseball. Here some kids improvise a game in a park in the middle of Havana.
Revolution Square in Cuba, the day after Raoul Castro was announced as the first new President in Cuba in 50 years. Safe to say that not much was happening.
The book recounts the story of a 90 year old man who falls in love with a prostitute. This excerpt (pg 65) was particularly honest in its description of the giddy all-enveloping catalytic nature of new love or as the NY Times review described it, "a profoundly immature and not especially healthy emotion: the painful, idealizing, narcissistic romanticism of adolescence."
Click the above image to view an audio slide show
According to Bringing them Home, the 1997 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission report that blew the top off the policy, over 100,000 children were forcibly removed and made wards of the state between 1910 and 1970. These children became known as the Stolen Generation. Forced to work on isolated outback farms, or to live in State boarding houses, where physical and sexual abuse was reportedly rife, the Stolen Generation's legacy is largely said to be one of the reasons behind widespread social dysfunctionality and disharmony amongst aboriginal communities in Australia today.
The struggle to recognise the Stolen Generation has been a long one. Australia's previous government, led by John Howard, controversially refused to apologise for the the Australian government's role in the Stolen Generation, claiming that his government could not be held accountable for actions of past Australian governments.
The refusal to apologise was indicative of the Howard government's obstinate "if I don't have to I won't" style of leadership (see previous post "A crack in the shell and it all fell apart..."). As such, tomorrow's gesture will mark a clean break from the policy of previous governments toward the Stolen Generation issue and will represent a significant step in the process of reconciliation that is currently taking place in my country.
This was a woman who didn't know how to be anything but passionate... even at the expense of her own health, dignity, and happiness. I always thought that passion was a great quality. I unquestioningly put it in a basket marked "things that lead to a life of fulfillment". Here was a person who's life posed a tangeable challenge to the (over)simplicity of my hypothesis. Here was someone who had given everything of herself to every situation, someone who had laid out her soul, who had made herself vulnerable, someone who engaged in and was irrepressibly engaged by life. However, looking at her art, and reading her letters, it's easy to see this was someone who often found herself submerged in deep and all-pervasive physical and emotional pain.
After watching the film I was left with an overwhelming feeling of having misunderstood something very fundamental about love. I remember thinking that somehow Frida maybe understood something about love that I didn't. Most important of all, I remember feeling that I wasn't sure whether I wanted to understand or not. I felt that understanding would not necessarily lead to my being happy, as was the case in Frida's life, but I was also aware that not seeking to understand left me feeling shortchanged, as if I was stopping short of experiencing fully and completely what life, love, people, relationships are all about. There was something incredibly seductive about Frida's carelessness, her recklessness, her unrepentant, uncompromising search for the zenith of human emotion. At the same time, just as her recklessness seemed seductive, so did it seem perilous and fraught with risk... Je voulais aller jusqu'au bout, mais j'étais à la fois conscient que d'y arriver ne serait pas nécessairement aussi épanouissant que peut-être j'attendais. Au contraire, je pensais que le fait de comprendre ne répondrait pas nécessairement à toutes mes questions.
I was recently browsing in a book shop on St Laurent in Montréal and I came across Frida by Frida a book that gathers together and publishes a selection of letters, texts and notes written by Frida throughout her lifetime. The truth is, Frida's story still haunted me and I jumped at this chance to get inside her brain. I want to share one letter she wrote with you all. It will appear long on this already long and unusually verbose post, but it's revealing in its frankness and its poignancy, and I think it really gets at what I've tried to explain above. So if you're thinking, "What the hell is the point of this post. I don't understand a f&%king thing this guy's saying!": read on.
To set the scene, it's 1935. Frida is 28. In the last two years she has suffered a miscarriage; had an abortion; has undergone foot surgery; dealt with the death of her mother; and suffered from appendicitis. To add insult ot injury, in October 1934 Kahlo separated from her husband Diego Rivera after she found out he was having an affair, this time with, of all people, her little sister Christina Kahlo.
