I recently read another of Frederick Buechner’s books,
called The Yellow Leaves. This is the forward that the 82 year old Buechner launches the book with. I thought it
was rather beautiful. Full of longing and acceptance. Side by side.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those bough which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang
-William Shakespeare
I can still write sentences and paragraphs, but for some
five or six years now I haven’t been able to write books. Maybe after more than
thirty of them the well has at last run dry. Maybe, age eighty, I no longer
have the right kind of energy. Maybe the time has simply come to stop. Whatever
the reason, at least for the moment the sweet birds no longer sing.
On the other hand, during this unproductive time I started a
number of things which for one reason or another I decided to leave unfinished
but which, on rereading, I decided maybe had enough life in them to warrant
inclusion in a volume like this. A story, some reminiscences, a handful of
poems about my family, a scene form a novel – they are the yell leaves that
hang upon these boughs that are not so bare and ruined but that they still
dream from time to time of the sweet birds’ return."
Stories. I've been thinking a lot about stories recently. Personal stories. Family stories. National stories. Stories of hope. Stories of love. Stories of connection. Stories of language. Stories of loss. Untold stories. Forgotten stories. Stories in time, and stories beyond time.
The art of telling out our stories, or story telling, is something I would like to get better at. Because telling our stories seems to me the most basic way that we, each of us, can communicate to each other who we are and where we have travelled so far. And to me, that seems an important task. It seems important because I believe that it's out of the weaving of our individual stories that we perhaps get a glimpse, each of us, into who we want to be.
'At my back I always here, time's winged chariot hurrying near', wrote Alexander Pope. As another year rolls around,
and with it another birthday, I realise the pages of my story are swiftly turning. They're banking up. The pages left to write seem thinner today than the pages already written. And there's a sense in which the main character of my story should by now be fully formed. Fully fleshed out in words and deeds. And with that sense, there's a stricken fear that I am not at all any of those things. And there's excitement in that too.
So we journey on. And the story continues.
My dad sent me a piece of writing yesterday. It was a piece he had written about his father for a biography course he's currently studying. It began like this:
'I don't have friends, I only have acquaintances', he said of himself.
This was one of a number of relationship defining criteria for John L Pender, my father.
'Don’t
expect praise, do expect criticism and advice.'
There is another.
What follows is a snap shot of a man who rose from storeman to national executive for warehousing of the largest retail
chain in Australasia. A deeply conflicted man. Full of love. But hardened with... what? Fear? A man who was always the last to suggest a family gathering, but also the last to leave and the first to accuse you of piking if you tried to before he was ready. He's also the same man who fed me alcohol for the first time. Gin and icecream. I was thirteen. 'If
you revealed you voted Labour he would argue as a Liberal. On the other hand if
you presented for the Liberal cause he would be the party paid up Labour
member', my Dad wrote in his piece. He was a gifted artist too, but only on one occasion did he consent to it being made public.
When an exhibition of his paintings was arranged by a son, he attended and quietly
soaked up the admiration of the viewers, but never thanked the son for coaxing him out of his garage full of paints, or spoke of the event again. He was true to his word I guess. Don't expect praise. Do expect criticism and advice.
There were so many unexplored windows in my Dad's writing. It was such a factual remembering. A stone thrown across the span of a lifetime, briefly kissing the raw emotion of a memory without exploring what lay below, before quickly moving on the the next. It made me wonder many things about this man, my grandfather. How did he carry the burden of his work in warehousing and his yearning to be an artist? What scared him so much about letting the people who loved him know that he loved them back? Was it something he learnt from his father?
And out of this brief story of my grandfather's life, I gleaned so much more meaningfully an intense sense of admiration for the story my own father has carved out for himself: a life driven at all times and in every way by three things. Compassion. Hope. And Love.
And I wondered if I could live up to his example.
And so the story continues.
Last night I watched a documentary on the life of Paul Kelly called Stories of Me. Here is a man who's lived a story. Dux of his school. A childhood sporting champion. A dead father at 10. A twenty five year heroin addiction. Poverty. A single-minded bullish commitment to write music with integrity. And a constant sense, at the expense of two marriages, of not having achieved that goal.
This song (below) ends the documentary. It's the story of a man in jail at Christmas time, writing a letter home to his family. As Kelly explains, the song is about being in one place, and longing to be in another. As you'll see, it's something that people can easily relate to. I surely can.
Funnily enough, this mashed-up-clip of How To Make Gravy is also playing as part of the National Portrait Gallery's 'Portraits of Paul Kelly' exhibition, which I recently found myself wandering through one lunchtime here in Canberra. I did not know then that the most striking thing in that exhibition, this song, would lead me to watch the documentary. Or that that documentary would cause me to question what I am doing with my life.
So you see. The exhibition. The documentary. My father's writing. This song. They're already working together.
Came across this wonderful blog entry by David Walsh, creator and founder of Tasmania's seriously impressive Museum of Old and New Art. Check it out here.
Below, an excerpt to whet your appetite:
"Grace is now excitedly shaving the head of Jemma’s boyfriend, Matt (who is agreeing to be shorn out of solidarity, since Grace has had some hair removed). Thus the world revolves. And as I already knew but now my knowing is renewed, my world revolves around my children. Through Grace’s misfortune, and through her fortune, I feel pain and I feel joy. And I feel her travails and triumphs more bitterly, and more exultantly, than I feel my own. That’s what love is."
Here's some music that found me this week. First up, Australian Bon Iver lover Dustin Tebbutt is from New England New South Wales. How he managed to maintain this sound growing up in country music, er, country is beyond me. But this song gets an overly-reverbed falsetto 'Hell's yeah!' from me.
Next up - and changing the mood slightly - is Pro Era hip hop collective member and 18-year-old Brookly-nite Joey Bada$$ (even his name be blinging) with some very laid back loops overlaid with some swearing.
Well, things have
moved very fast this week in politics. Sometimes as a journalist, it can be
hard to keep up with the Labor Party. Australian journalist Brian Dunstan had managed to secure an interview with Kevin Rudd the
morning after the leadership coup. It appears poor old Brian might have gone to bed early the night before and missed the whole leadership tilt. Here's the amazing transcript from Brian's interview with the newly elected PM the morning after.
Brian Dunstan: Mr Rudd, thank you
for joining us on 2AHfm breakfast.
Rudd: Prime Minister Rudd, yes.
Brian Dunstan: Prime Minster Rudd?…
ha, yeah. Mr Rudd, there have been rumours all this week that you’re
going to run against Julia Gillard. Can you confirm here and now for us that Julia Gillard will lead Labor to the next election?
Rudd: Well… um. No, I don’t
think that's going to happen now.
Brian Dunstan: Well, will you– …
No?! Ha! You probably
shouldn’t be telling me that Kevin! Ok. Well, I’ll ask you this. Will you
challenge the Prime Minister for leadership of the labor party before the election?
Rudd: Ah… yes. Brian, not sure if you heard what happened last night.
Brian Dunstan: What?
Rudd: Yeah, I sort of got made PM already.
Brian Dunstan: When?
Rudd: Last night. It was kind
of a big deal. I'm surprised you didn't hear about it.
Brian Dunstan: Right… well, to be
honest with you, that sort of fingerbangs this interview for me.
Rudd: ... I’m sorry about that.
Brian Dunstan: I had a bunch of
questions written down here, which were essentially five different ways of
asking you if you were going to challenge Julia Gillard? I was going to
machine gun them at you, like a hard hitting journalist. It would have made me
look really good! The senior management guys here at 2AH would have loved it. But you’ve
sort of buggered that now, haven’t you Kevin?
Rudd: It appears so. I'm sorry.
Brian Dunstan: Yeah... well... Look, maybe we should just go through the questions quickly anyway and
then call it a day?
Rudd: Sure.
Brian Dunstan: Ok. Kevin let me ask you directly, do you want your old job back?
Rudd: Um-
Brian Dunstan: -I’ll just put ‘Yes’ to that one. Ok… Second question. Are there any circumstances under which
you will return to the leadership of the Labor party?
Rudd: …Yes.
Brian Dunstan: Yep. 'Yes' for that one too. Are you destabilising Julia Gillard's Government by leaking information to the press?
Rudd: Well-
Brian Dunstan: Let's say 'yes'… Although you failed to give me a heads up on this one, didn’t you Kev?!
Rudd: ...
Brian Dunstan: Ok, finally, do you still harbour any ill-feelings towards Julia
Gillard for the way in which she deposed you as Prime Minister in 2010?
Rudd: None at all Brian. Julia
Gillard is an exceptional-
Brian Dunstan:
-yeah, don't. Just, don't do that... Alright that's it. Kevin Rudd thanks for your time…
There’s been a positive twist to comments made by Howard Sattler last week inferring that Prime Minister’s husband is gay because he is hairdresser, with hairdressers all over the country finally getting the courage to question their own sexuality. James Pender reports.
David Weeks has been cutting hair for thirty years. Up until he listened to Howard Sattler’s interview with the PM, he was happily married to his wife of 15 years, Jennifer. Together, they have two small children, Tom and Lucy. David describes how listening to Sattler’s interview changed his life.
"Howard really opened my eyes to how gay I am. I remember the exact moment Howard said, ‘He’s a hairdresser, he must be gay’ and I thought… you know what? Never was a bloody truer word spoken. Cutting someone’s hair, sweeping it up and putting it in the bin and then charging the person for that service is incredibly gay. In fact, there's nothing gayer. I’m just ashamed it’s taken me so long to realise."
David is just one of many Australians who this week has heeded Howard Sattler’s call to action. Sydney hairdresser Simon Denstal broke up with his boyfriend when he discovered that he was moonlighting as a builder.
"I always suspected he wasn’t really a hairdresser. He used to come home at night covered in dirt. Or you know, I’d find work gloves in the back of his car. So I finally confronted him. I said, ‘are you even a hairdresser or not?’ And he broke down. He said he loved me but that he just really enjoyed building."
And what did you do?
"WWHD. What would Howard do! I broke up with him on the spot."
While Sattler’s comments have been liberating for some, it hasn’t been good news for everyone. Melbourne man Brian Dunston’s love of hairdressing led him to break up with his wife of twenty-two years.
"When I heard Howard’s interview with the PM, I was in the salon at the time. As soon as the interview finished, I knew there was only one thing for it. I called up the missus, and told her, you know, that I was a hairdresser, and she said, ‘yeah I know that,’ and I said, ‘no, love, I mean... I’m a hairdresser. I like to cut hair and have sex with men.’"
And what did she say?
"She said, ‘No, that’s flawless logic. Thanks for letting me know.’ And she hung up."
And how did that make you feel?
"Sad obviously, because I love her a lot."
Brian says while he’s relieved to no longer be living a lie, being a hairdresser is not always easy.
"Yeah, sometimes I wish I wasn’t a hairdresser. I wish I could be, you know, maybe an accountant or something, just for the sake of the kids. But deep down, I know I’m a hairdresser. And Howard has really helped me to realise that dressing hair comes with certain responsibilities."
And what are they?
"Well, be gay."
Inspiring stuff. This is James Pender reporting for Jamison Inc
I've decided that I like music that breaks into a bit of background conversation noise. This is a good example - from about 3:45 onwards.
Without getting too over-analytical (What? You james?! Over-analytical) it's like the musician puts himself in the destination of his music. ie - where will people be when they hear this? What will they be doing? How will they be feeling? And in so doing, the musician brings the destination of his/her music into the studio. It can make the music sounds so much more alive. What can I call it? Synthetic live listening? Musical time travel? Emotional projection?
This week, the leader of our nation had to sit through media interviews about her 'small breasts', 'huge thighs' and 'red box'. She then had to answer repeated questioning about her 'gay hairdressing husband'. Meanwhile, the Defence Force discovered that its officers were demeaning women... Again.
A few weeks back, Adam Goodes had to explain to Australians why being called 'an ape' was hurtful. Eddie McGuire needed it explained twice. Some people still didn't see what the fuss was about.
Meanwhile, Beale, Warner and Gallen set the example for our next generation of young men by punching their way to sporting success.
And tonight on The Project, Steve Price said that we needed to stop talking about these side issues and get back to the issues people care about: border security and asylum seekers.
Somewhere in the middle of all this, Australia was found by the OECD to be the happiest nation on Earth.
“Remember too that life is very good,
And that to live is better than to die,”
And all in all I’d say so still, though sixty-
Six is not so sure as sweet sixteen
What life and death are all about.
Suppose
We lose less, dying, than we find.
Who knows?
Life’s good, for sure, but would we choose to live
Forever if we could? Or might that seem
Like twilight never deepening into dark,
Like never calling it a day, and letting
Go, and lying down to sleep.
“Life should
Be wondered at,” I said, “not understood,”
As if I thought there was a choice, then said,
“Remember love,” as if we might forget.
You never know what may cause tears. The sight of the Atlantic ocean can do it
sometimes: or a piece of music; or a face you’ve never even seen before; a pair
of somebody’s old shoes can do it; almost any movie made before the great
sadness that came over the world after the second world war; a horse cantering
across a meadow; the high school basketball team running out onto the gym floor
at the start of a game.
You can never be sure, but of this you can be sure: whenever you find tears in your eyes, especially unexpected
tears, it is well to pay the closest attention.
They are not only telling you something about the secret of
who you are, but more often than not, God* is speaking to you through them of
the mystery of where you’ve come from, and is summoning to where, if your soul
is to be saved, you should perhaps go to next.
- Frederick Buechner
*For the record, I don't believe in God in the sense of a man (or woman) in the sky. I think that throughout history, humans have used religion to explain the seemingly unexplainable. River gods make the water run. Sun Gods make the crops grow. And finally, a God that gives us hope of life after death to take away our fear that this life of ours has no meaning beyond the years that we live it. But I am open to God as a symbol of the concept of the mystery we yearn to understand.
Jamison Inc just entered the club, tooth pick in mouth, cocktail in hand, fur coat and sunglasses on. If you need me, I'll be up the back near the dance floor, slouched in my booth, nodding along.
The National performed another of the songs off their new album on Jimmy Fallon.
i'm under the gun again
i know i was a 45 percenter then i know i was a lot of things but i am good and i am grounded davy says that i look taller i can't get my head around it i keep feeling smaller and smaller
This is what happens when a society chooses to put love first, and fear second. Absolutely awesome. A real reminder of what we have the potential to be when we choose not to let our decisions be ruled by fear, hate and insecurity.
Thanks New Zealand.
And here's one of the speeches that got them there.
According to Wikipedia, Max Cooper is a London-based electronica and techno producer, but from a quick listen to his music on soundcloud he is so much more than that. It seems to me he's as much a soundscaper as he is a doof doof man.
In any event, have a listen to his hour long mix entitled Synesthetes Museum. Cooper was asked by Magnetic Magazine to make a mix to reflect an architectural space. Cooper chose the British Museum. In Cooper's own words:
When I was doing my Post-Doc at UCL I used to go to the British Museum to relax, and work in the beautiful library there, so I chose the space for the mix. I wanted to capture the ambient atmosphere in the central courtyard, so I did some binaural recording to include in the mix. I also wanted to make the mix something of an exploration through history and ideas in line with the contents of the museum, so I brought in lots of disparate music spanning the centuries and continents. I also mixed it in a way to be like a journey though the museum, turning corners and regularly coming across something totally different and unexpected, with each track being like a different exhibit. Hence the name of the mix, in that, each piece of music almost has a visual content.
I encourage you to check out more about the project here. It's fascinating.
What's that? He's playing in Canberra soon? Oh, ok, don't go on about it James.
Check out this little video of Phoenix talking about their new album 'Bankrupt!'
Love the little story about how in choosing the album title, they fell in love with the sound of the word 'Bankrupt' and how the exclamation mark made all the difference. Also love the description of the album art (which is a Warhol-esque illustration of a peach) as being 'under art' and having 'a beauty, but with no artistic purpose'.
New song by The National. Thoughts?
When I think of you in the city, The sight of you among the sites. I get this sudden sinking feeling,Of a man about to fly.Never kept me up before,Now I’ve been awake for days.I can’t fight it anymore,I’m going through an awkward phase.I am secretly in love with,Everyone that I grew up with.Do my crying underwater,I can’t get down any farther.All my drowning friends can see,Now there is no running from it.It’s become the crux of me,I wish that I could rise above it.
But I stay down,With my demons.But I stay down,With my demons
Passing buzzards in the sky,Alligators in the sewers.I don’t even wonder why,Hide among the under views.Huddle with them all night long,The worried talk to god goes on.I sincerely tried to love it,Wish that I could rise above it.
But I stay down,With my demons.I stay down,With my demonsI stay down,With my demons.I stay down,With my demonsI stay down,With my demons
Can I stay here? I can sleepon the floorpaint the blood and hang the palms,On the door.Do not think I’m going places anymore,Wanna see the sun come up above New York.Oh, everyday I start so great,Then the sunlight dips.Less I’ve learned,The more I see the pythons and the limbs.Do not know what’s wrong with me,Sours in the cup.When I walk into a room,I do not light it up.Fuck.
So I stay down,With my demonsI stay down,With my demonsI stay down,With my demonsI stay down,With my demons
Last Thursday I managed to get in
to see Ben Quilty's exhibition After Afghanistan. Housed in Sydney's old Darlinghurst gaol,
(operational from 1841 - 1921 and at one stage home to Australian poet Henry Lawson),
the exhibition is a result of Quilty's experience as the official war artist,
commissioned by the Australian War Memorial and attached to the Australian
Defence Force. In October 2011, Quilty spent a month with Australian soldiers
in Afghanistan. His task was to record and interpret the experiences of
Australians deployed as part of Operation Slipper in Kabul, Kandahar, and Tarin
Kot in Afghanistan and at Al Minhad Airbase in the United Arab Emirates. For his official war artist
commission, Quilty has created large-scale portraits that focus on the intense
physicality of these soldiers and on the emotional and psychological
consequences of their service. Part of the exhibition includes a looping video
of the episode of Australian Story
that covered Quilty's trip to Afghanistan. The episode includes
interviews with many of the subjects of Quilty's portraits. Seeing these men
and women speak about their experiences in Afghanistan and about the process of visiting Quilty's art studio to pose for paintings increases the sense of both connection and familiarity
that one feels with the portraits when you go through the exhibition.
As the name of the exhibition
suggests, Quilty's portraits focus on the human consequences of Australia's
military engagement in Afghanistan. In doing so, he does not shy away from
suggesting that the major consequence is one of confusion, doubt, loss and
brokenness. There is no glorification of the modern soldier, or even any
concessionary nod to the necessity of war. The major theme I found myself looking at
was one of 'damage'. And upon reflection, the fact that the Australian
Government or Defence Force has not sought to bury these images is refreshing -
and should be applauded. (In the exhibition, Quilty himself reveals his concern that, in showing these soldiers as he sees them, he might be putting the
'official war artist' position at risk). Far from being buried however, Quilty's
paintings are on public display, and are free of charge. What's more, they will travel around
the country as part of a national tour. One wonders whether such honest
depictions of men returning from Lone Pine would have been so readily (and officially) championed.
- [If the suspense generated by that last rhetorical statement is just too much for you to handle, a quick scan of the work of the official war artists for the First World War on the Australian War Memorial's website reveals that the answer is most probably 'no'. In contrast to Quilty's work, there is a distinct focus on 'duty' and 'sacrifice' rather than 'damage' and 'futility'.] -
Not sure if anyone is familiar with Footrot Flats.... I used to love it and read the books as a kid. My Aunty had a selection the books at her place, and I remember I could spend hours thumbing through their pages whenever I visited. Somehow I ended up with those books, and I came across them whilst cleaning up the storage room the other day. These two in particular stuck vividly in my memory. I can remember exactly where and how I was when I first read these.
This is the definition of late night lights down earphones listening.
Perfect for that late night drive home through the rain where you look through the droplets on your car windscreen at the people wandering about your city and wonder whether they are as lonely as you are. That's about the time you decide that you are going to paint more.
Some pretty sweet wah-wah-infused noodling in that guitar solo.
“Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes.”
Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said, “one can’t believe impossible things.”
"I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”
I recently decided to set up an itunes alarm on my computer and set it to random so that every morning I wake to a different song. It's always something of a lottery. Some mornings, it's The National. Others, it's John Denver. Once, it was 'Learn to speak spanish: lesson 1'.
This morning I woke up to this gentle melancholy number. 'There's no Such Place' by Australian band Augie March. What a nostalgic little gem.
I lay in bed, watching the last droplets of early morning rain slip and slide their way down my bedroom window, a final dance to their resting place. Through the window, clouds of fog hugged the Canberra mountains. And below them, the absence of traffic marked the sound of a city still asleep.
There is no such place, o yes I have seen it too
Just a little different from how you do,
A river winding blue among the dunes and a marble bed
A sun that doesn't set but settles.
There is no such place.
If I lower mine to yours would you kiss me on the face?
If you're looking for an unmarked place,
There is no such place -
Blasted in appearance and a composite of fearful minutes
Frozen in the waking instant
Longing, things I long for,
Peaceful nights, strangers at the door,
O come in, come in,
You've been here before.
Impossible not to wake up feeling a little pensive.
It being Tropfest season, I found myself looking through some of the past winners and came across this one from 2010. A great concept piece. One of those short film ideas that is so simple you can practically teack the film back through the creative process to the point of conception. As in: "I reckon shock jocks must just spend every moment they are not on air crying." Yep. There's your Tropfest winning film right there.
For the Moody Christmas fans you might recognise a young Patrick Brammall.
I'm confused about Ryan Adams. I can't tell whether he's really good, or just a really mediocre song writer with an awesome band. Sometimes his writing is incredibly lazy ('Waiting outside for you to find your keys / Like bags of trash in the blackening snow' - why the?). Other times I think, this is a man who just writes from the heart, without the need to overstate anything. ('So buy a pretty dress / Wear it out tonight / For all the boys you think could outdo me')
This is the man who wrote Sylvia Plath, Easy Plateau, Magnolia Mountain, My Winding Wheel, and Shadowlands. Worthy, beautiful music. But he's also got a sizeable catalogue of really average music, a lot of which has the stench of a man desperate to fulfill his record label contract. One could say, Mayeresque?
Sometimes he manages to fit awesome and mediocre into the same song. Take his latest single 'Lucky Now', which essentially comprises a drunken ramble during the verses, only to smash out an incredibly listenable chorus and an even better guitar solo (see earlier comments about him perhaps being saved by his band?).
I imagine turning up to band rehearsal must be quite the roller coaster. "Wow! Ryan! That was awesome. Love it! What else have you got?... Oh... Uh huh.... ok. what else? .... hmmmm.... Well... Um... yeah.... we can work with that...Yeah, that'll be ok once we whack a few guitar solos on ... What else?... Um. Ok... Lets take a break."
Some more photos from my trip to Europe last year. These ones of Passau, in southern Germany. Home to Till, Kiki and (future emperor of the EU) Paul Zimmermann.
So - I'm a little obsessed with this singer. I'm sorry, but any song that starts with...
'My mother gave a mighty shout
opened her legs and let me out...'
...And then ends with...
'Make me want what i want Another wayward son Waiting on oblivion Waiting on the kingdom come To meet me in my sin Waiting to be born again Mother kiss me cheek or chin Mmm, a little medecine Mmm, and then I shed my skin Mmm, and lemme climb back in the bed you made me in.'
... has my vote.
The album version of Young Man in America is here, but I've chosen a live version performed for NPR Music. The set starts with the Shepherd Song, which I've posted previously. For those short of time, Young Man in America starts at 7:40.
'WHEN you are old and gray and full of sleep
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.'
Little Dragon are a Swedish electronic music/downtempo band from Gothenburg, formed in 1996. Yep, 1996, and still going. Sticking at it much?
Beautiful, haunting, worthy music.
And here she is, Yukimi Nagano, born and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden to a Japanese father and a Swedish-American mother. Probably couldn't be much cooler.
In something of a Pender/Carew tradition, Boxing Day afternoon usually involves a trundle down to Kirribilli, a football, a walk around the water, and fish and chips under the bridge. It was one of those summer afternoons when the sun just seems to lean back in the sky and go on forever. Good times.
"That’s why adults are confused a lot of the time. Adults are terribly confused, messed up people. That’s because they forget, really, that they don’t have to pretend all the time. Really, the fact is that you’re not an adult at all - you’re just a tall child holding a beer, having conversations you don’t understand… 'The Middle East? Yeah, I know it was really bad. I wouldn’t have done that. A hysterectomy? Yeah, very painful, the shoulder is a very painful area.'"
In Canberra there is a room that is safe. It's a small room, with walls hospital white, and only three chairs, always empty. But despite its emptiness, or maybe because of it, it's a room that is filled with music, and film, and big ideas. It's safe. Separate from everything. And at lunchtime I sometimes go there, alone, so that I can be separate too.
The room I'm talking about is at the National Portrait Gallery. The film, which runs for about fifteen minutes, is called 'Portrait of Cate Blanchett' and is by video portrait artist, David Rosetzky. On one level, the film explores what it is to be an actress, but it's also about what it is to be layered, to have pointy edges to our personalities, and the idea of adaptation and manipulation of identity.
The opening of the film is mesmerising. The camera opens, locked tight on a pair of hands. One hand is inanimate, lifeless. As the camera slowly draws back, the person's other hand applies bursts of pressure to the inanimate hand in a gentle, steady rhythm. The bursts of pressure cause the inanimate hand to move, now this way, now that. Folding fingers, and then unfolding them again. Twisting a wrist, and turning the hand round on itself. One gesture after the other.
As the camera continues to pull back gradually, it reveals that the hands, the inanimate and the leader, both belong to Cate Blanchett. At first she doesn't acknowledge the camera. Her eyes are focussed downwards on the movement of her hands. Then, as the camera shot locks to a stop, Blanchett takes her inanimate hand, breaking the illusion that it cannot move on its own, slides it into her pocket, as if putting away some toy, and then raises her eyes to look straight down the camera, defiant.
It is a moment.
This short excerpt won't do the whole film justice. But that's ok. Maybe you're just going to have to find that room one day, all for yourself.
Sometimes, something happens, something so fortuitous, that you can't help but think about the existence of fate, or God, or angels - you can't help but think there's something out there looking after you.
I visited Paris recently, mainly to see old friends. That was the purpose. Days were spent wandering the city, visiting old haunts, and generally waiting for my friends to finish their work (real life - so inconvenient!). One particular night over a glass of red, an old friend dropped a bombshell.
"Did you know Glen Hansard is playing a secret gig in Paris tomorrow?", she said.
"Sorry what!", my 'when-in-france' cigarette dropping from my mouth.
"Yeah. It's on at a bookshop at lunchtime. You should go."
For those of you who know me, you'll know of my mild obsession with Glen Hansard and his music. It's raw, there's no veneer, no show biz filter. There's a desperation in his performance. A sense of fierce urgency. As if he's aware he only has a short amount of time to convince you of the importance of his secrets. As if he's spent a long time struggling to sing in a room without doors or windows, and that in that hour he has with you on stage, someone has punched a hole in one of the walls and allowed him to let his soul spill out.
I last saw him perform at the Sydney Opera House. The Swell Season were brought to Australia to perform as part of the Sydney Festival. The three thousand odd seats of the main concert hall sold out months in advance. About $150 a ticket. I saw Gough Whitlam there. Glen and Marketa - supported by The Frames - performed for about two hours, including a soaring desperate performance of "Say it to me now" as well as a rendition of "The Parting Glass" that I'm sure approached something resembling the religious for those that were there ("no regrets - no jealousy - no anger").
"Yeah. You should go", she said.
In the shadows of Notre Dame, the English book shop Shakespeare & Co, an expat institution in Paris, can best be described as... a fire hazard. A maze of prison-cell-sized rooms, walls thick with books, wooden beams protruding menacingly from the ceiling. The doors - which still stand at a dwarfish 18th century height - and the narrow pathways leading from one pile of books to another, double parked with relieved English speaking tourists and wannabe writers on sabbatical from this country or that ("Just staying in a little apartment in the marais... on a scholarship you know... Are you going to Rudolf's party?") give the shop an impression of impenetrability. It almost seems purposefully dysfunctional - maybe to guard the many secrets within from being uncovered too easily. Maybe to ensure that only the most worthy make it to their rightful destination.
The secret I sought was at the top of a stooped stair case, sitting in a room in front of a small window that backed onto the Seine. As he set up, a line of people anxiously jostled for pole position at the door. The room fit about twenty people. About fifty were lined up. As we filed in silently, anxiously, elbows high, finding what space we could on the floor, knees drawn up, pealed against the walls, shoulders awkwardly concertina'd, Glen sat, casually jotting down notes on what looked like an impromptu set list. I was third last into the room, and squeezed myself down between a couple of Americans who risked knee dislocation to enable a bit of space for me.
"I've got an afternoon voice on me" he apologised. "Lots of travelling takes a toll on the flesh, but not the soul. The voice may be broken but it's singing its heart out."
And it did, in a rendition of 'Bird of Sorrow'. It did, in 'Low Rising' (which I managed to record - apologies for some attempted singing. He made it sound deceptively easy).
For about forty-five minutes, Glen played and talked, like he was playing in his bedroom to a couple of mates, mucking around with a few odd chords on the guitar, trying out a few new harmonies, even singing one song a cappella. Just him and his old Takamine guitar - the one with the hole punched through it to let the sound spill out.
During my time working in Paris, I used to look forward to Thursday lunchtimes - the day when a group of french and expatriate rugbyphiles would gather in the shadows of the eiffel tower to play a bit of touch rugby.
At the time it seemed so normal. Just a bunch of guys passing a ball around to work out some of the stress of the working week. It didn't matter that it was in the middle of paris, or that the touch lines were practically marked out by the seine on one side, the australian embassy on the other, the eiffel tower, and an 18th century Haussmannian building.
On my recent trip to Paris I trundled down to the park on a Thursday at lunchtime, half expecting it to be empty, half expecting to have to trundle back home to Max's house, now dealing with the shame of having hoped so ludicrously to be able to relive a past now three years gone.
But no, as I rounded the corner of the oval, it fast became apparent that absolutely nothing had changed - the same faces and short-shorts graced the field, the same people passing the ball forward, the same people arguing about whether the pass was forward, the same people laughing at those arguing, the same people throwing 30 metre hero passes to no one, the same blokes treating it as an international championship match between the wallabies and the all blacks. And there was the french bloke who had once tried to fly kick someone for threatening to disallow his try, and the new zealander was also there, the one who, three years ago, I was sure I was friends with, only to realise that we'd never really said anything to each other, other than 'see you at touch on thursday'.
Three years on, I have to admit, it still felt normal. Unexceptional even. And I couldn't help but love it.
