Fremantle Harbour: Perth

The strangest thing about Perth for someone who has grown up on the east coast of Australia is that you get to see the sun set over the ocean, which, in Sydney, we're not used to. Everyone warned me about how cool it was, however I still wasn't quite ready for how strange it felt to see the sun kissing the sea in the afternoon in a way I was so used to seeing at sunrise. Go nature go!

Stars - Dead Hearts

Continuing the "songs that make me smile" series, this latest offering off the new album by Canadian act Stars is a great example of sparkling pop at its best. I particularly love the sweet piano at 1:26.

"It's hard to know they're out there, it's hard to know that you still care... Dead hearts are everywhere." And who said pop can't be poignant.

The Bridge

That home

Following on from the last post, I press you to listen to the below video of To build a home.



It is the first track on The Cinematic Orchestra's fifth album entitled Ma Fleur. I've been a big fan of it for a while now (it came out in 2007). I recently listened to the whole album again. The second last track features a one and a half minute reprise of To build a home which is entitled That Home. Its juxtaposition with To build a home is hauntingly beautiful.

To build a home tells a mournful story of loss culminating in the final lines:
"And I built a home
For you
For me
Until it disappeared
From me
From you
And now, it's time to leave and turn to dust"

In contrast, the lyrics and music of That home, while still somewhat mournful, are strangely uplifting. When I'm sitting quietly with That home playing firm through my headphones, I feel like I've arrived in a place that I never want to leave. It is a feeling of intense belonging and comfort. The lyrics couldn't be more spot on, for this is a place where I don't feel alone. This is a place that I call my home.

For me, a combined listening of To build a home and That home epitomises Rilke's observation that music has the capacity to make "the innermost point in us stand outside". And the beautiful thing is, we have no control over it. It happens against our will. Yummy.

When the innermost point in us stands outside

Rilke has a way of navigating his way to your most sensitive heartstrings, and flicking at them. I love these two poems:

Music

Take me by the hand;
it's so easy for you, Angel,
for you are the road
even while being immobile.

You see, I'm scared no one
here will look for me again;
I couldn't make use of
whatever was given,

so they abandoned me.
At first the solitude
charmed me like a prelude,
but so much music wounded me.

To music

Music: breathing of statues. Perhaps:
silence of paintings. You language where all language
ends. You time
standing vertically on the motion of mortal hearts.

Feelings for whom? O you the transformation
of feelings into what?--: into audible landscape.
You stranger: music. You heart-space
grown out of us. The deepest space in us,
which, rising above us, forces its way out,--
holy departure:
when the innermost point in us stands
outside, as the most practiced distance, as the other
side of the air:
pure,
boundless,
no longer habitable.

Clarke and Dawe

OK. I'm really sorry. I didn't want to blog about Clarke and Dawe again this week but John Clarke's face in the below video at 1:37 is just priceless. I love the idea of Rudd being faced with a graph of how unpopular he is and his response being to just sit there and cry.

Check it out here or click on the below image to watch.

I promise that after this one, I'll stop. I'm off to Clarke and Dawe rehab.

Clarke and Dawe: Watch in Awe - It's necessary viewing

They're back. Australia's social barometer. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Clarke and Dawe, with yet another surgical dissection of Australian politics.

The insights in this sketch, particularly those aimed at Tony Abbott, are so timely.

I especially love the line, "Does Tony Abbott tell the truth... or is he just a dinkum aussie bloke who says what he thinks".

I'd like to think that most Australian's are capable of dismantling Tony Abbott's manoeuvring and doublespeak by themselves. I'd like to think that. So thank god we have Clarke and Dawe there to help us all out... just in case we missed something.

Check it out here or click on the below image to watch. Necessary viewing.