Happy Australia Day

Australians struggle to take anything seriously, even their own National Day.

The Melbourne based boys at The Juice Media have been rapping the news for a while now. They've attracted comments from The Guardian, and even managed to have Julian Assange appear in one of their videos.

Check out their take on Australia Day. Or should that be Invasion Day?

I should just add, it contains strong language, so if you like your satire clean, it might not be for you.



For those who are not easily offended, check out the extended version of "Australia Day, yeah c*nt". I particularly like the subliminal kangaroo.

Bref, j'étais à côté de cette fille

This is the final episode of series 1 of the French comedy short Bref. The kiss is good. The music is better. The graphics behind the kiss, better still. Overall, it's magnifical.

Bref. J'étais à côté de cette fille. - Episode du 18/01

Over the hill, I met the sea

Last weekend whilst in Berry, I managed to find time to do part of the Kiama Coast Walk from Werri Lagoon to Kiama.  Unlike in the UK, Australian farmers don't usually allow 'ramblers' to walk across their land. However, the local council has managed to come to an arrangement with local farmers and landowners to allow public access to the coastline.

I was almost the only person on the trail that day. The sight of the swell rolling in from the horizon, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below, the smell of sea salt rising up over the cliffs and the rustle of the wind as it flew over the long grass that coated the hills: there was absolutely nothing man made to be seen. I felt like a privileged intruder in this foreign landscape. As if I was being allowed to experience it as it would be when no one was looking, when it was alone. The rocks wore the marks of a million year old conversation between the land and the sea. It was a stark reminder of the unerring endurance of this place, and of my own transience in it.  But for the high-pitched chatter of the sea-gulls that hung only metres above the ocean, I could have believed that no one had noticed me. But the sea saw me on the hill.

Jamison... present!

As Death Cab for Cutie once sang: "So this is the new year. But I don't feel any different."

Well, it may be a new year, but just to prove that nothing has changed too drastically, here's my new favourite Buechner quote:

"What I had not found, I could not name. And for the most part, knew only through my sense of its precious, and puzzling and haunting absence. And maybe we can never name it by its finale, true and holy name. And maybe its largely through its absence that this side of paradise, we will ever know it."

So what had he not found?

Connecting you now...

It has, I guess, always been my secret hope that my random musings on this blog would spark some sort of sense of connection with others as they go about the task of reflecting on their own lives.

About six months ago, I received an email from a girl completely out of the blue, saying that she had followed this blog for about a year; that the writing on here resonated with her; and that it gave her some comfort to know that there was someone else out there "wondering about these things".

Wondering about things can sometimes be a lonely business. Sometimes it feels like the world has little time for people who wonder. Sometimes it's just nice to know that other people are out wondering too. 

Well Bronwyn and I have kept in touch, (and in a strange twist of fate, actually ended up working together for a little while), and I have finally, after much coaxing, convinced her to post some of her own musings here. Stay tuned...

Goodbye 2011

Well, it's been a big year. A year of change. It started with a bang. Dan Ilic and I wrote a film about gay marriage which made it into Tropfest. The first six months saw me teaching law at Sydney and Macquarie Universities. I owned a scooter in Sydney. Silver Cinder played at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and at The Vanguard before it came to its end. I worked at the Lowy Institute. And finally, I moved to a new home in Canberra to work for the Government in human rights. Along the way I fell in love with the writing of Frederick Buechner... and there's more to do there. I bought a piano and set up a home studio... and there's more to do there as well.

There'll be more musing and whining next year, but for now, thank you to those random selection of people around the world who continue to read this blog. I hope it serves some purpose for you, as I know it does for me. For now though, have a great New Year.

In the words of my old friend Eric Demay: Don't settle. Stay young. Stay foolish.

Men Who Swim

I recently saw this beautiful little documentary about a group of middle-aged men/misfits in Stockholm look for meaning in their lives by joining a synchronised swimming team. The documentary follows the lives of the team-members as they train for the inaugural All-male Synchronised Swimming World Championships.

This film snuck up on me. At first it seems like a fairly eccentric look at the life of an ex-pat (Welshman and Director Dylan Williams) in Sweden who is seeking to make sense of everything around him as he arrives at middle-age disappointed and frustrated at his hitherto lack of success/fulfilment. However, as the the documentary rolled on, I found myself drawn into the lives of these men - ordinary men, all seeking something extra-ordinary.

The beauty of this film lies in its celebration of the small everyday struggles and victories that life offers up to each of us. The loss of a job. The rueing of youth past. The unexpectedly expensive vet bill. The finding of love. The film holds up these little moments as having one incredibly special thing in common - they are present moments. Through synchronised swimming, this group of men - men who up until now have either looked expectedly to the future, or ruefully to the past for meaning - learn to find meaning in the present moments of their lives.

The trailer doesn't do the film justice at all and the film's distribution is a little sketchy, but if you manage to catch Men Who Swim on a shelf in a dvd store, it's well worth a watch.

Reminiscing...

Have just been looking over this blog and some of the posts that I've put up here over the last 5 years. I feel like I haven't written anything meaningful for weeks now. I don't know what it is. I just don't feel like posting. Don't feel like commenting. Don't feel like listening to my life.

I even had a draft post about Paul Keating's leadership capabilities ready to go... but I can't bring myself to finish it.

Ah - where is the muse?

Braidwood

Photos from the recent day-trip to Braidwood, a little gold-mining town just outside of Canberra. Old antique shops, crazy bush ranging ancestors, boiled lolly shops, a well populated Gallipoli monument, three churches and - my favourite - the local town cultural hub, the "national" theatre.

Nord-tastic.

I've been looking at buying a keyboard for about 3 years. I've tried acoustic uprights, grand pianos, electric pianos - the lot. I finally pulled the trigger on the Nord Stage 2 last weekend. It has been mind-blowingly awesome. If you've ever played one, or have heard of what they offer, you'll know what I mean. My little studio is coming together.

The immediate plan is to record a few songs that have been kicking around in my head and see what happens from there. Stay tuned...

Australian Summer Sky

Road to Braidwood from Canberra

Global Financial Crisis?

The Australian Dollar is now below parity with the US.

The front page of the Sydney Morning Herald reads : GFC II on its way

The Economist has published an article looking at the world in 2012 which basically says, "Don't expect much."

Two articles in today's Le Monde are titled: "Laughing in the face of unemployment" and "Sharehousing: A way of life".

Going down.

Husky

How do you find new music that you love?

For me, I feel like you can't really choose to find music that you love. It doesn't work like that. Sure, you can go off the recommendations of your friends, or trawl through your favourite record shop. But really beautiful music, music that marks you, music that curls up, inextricably, inside your happiest memories; there's a sense in which you don't find that type of music. It finds you. It comes to you, I believe, as a gift. [And it need not be music! The same can be said for the experience of finding love, or more accurately, being found by love. How many times do we dress up and put on our best smiles in the hope of finding the one, only to be found when we least expect it?]

I'll never forget sitting in the living room of my apartment in Paris when Stephane plugged his iPod into our system. "You 'ave to listen to zees guys", he said. I was instantly blown away. Two weeks later, I bought tickets to see "zees guys" play at La Cigale in Montmartre. They were supported by the then-unknown-to-me St Vincent. During their set, they casually brought out Feist to help sing that song that Stephane had played me two weeks earlier. It was a concert by which all other concerts that I attend are now measured. "zees guys" were, of course, Grizzly Bear. Their music touched me then, and I cannot listen it now without thinking of the very first time I heard them in that Paris living room all those years ago.

Well... I first heard of Melbourne band Husky through Triple J. So accustomed to filtering out the bad teenie-rock, heavily-synthed-pop and over-friendly dj banter that plague that radio station, Husky's music cut through. It was transporting. I had to know more about them.

It turns out Husky have just released their first album. The below clip is a video posted on their website which documents the making of the album in their make-shift home studio. The video is set to the final track on that album, a song called "Farewell (In 3 parts)". I have listened to it pretty much non-stop for the last week. It is achingly beautiful.

The nervous admission of, "There's a lot we didn't say, wasn't there, Josephine?"

And the devastating truth of the final line: "If you sleep to long the world might wake up without you."

Can't wait to hear more from these guys.

Enjoy.
 

Shut down. Fit in.

Hey cuz. Hey bro.

New Zealand's anti drink driving advertisements have come a long way over the years.

Not sure if any of you remember the "Drunk Uncle" ad, but it certainly seemed to break through just about every shock barrier in an attempt to get people's attention. It certainly begged the question, if they have to show a small child being thrown against a wall and then slumping lifeless to the floor in order to get people's attention, how bad is New Zealand's drinking problem?

Well, if this latest anti drinking advertisement is anything to go by, it appears things have improved a little in the land of the long white cloud. It's practically a short film festival entry.

Check it out.

Ps. Is it just me, or does it sound like they are taking the piss with their accents? Deadset, he sounds like Rangi from Footrot Flats.
Pps. I resisted the temptation to write "taking the puss" above... which is commendable.
Ppps. But then I gave in.

First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar

Loving this song by Swedish sister-duo First Aid Kit. (There's something in the water in Sweden at the moment. Some sort of musical elixir).

I had a quick look around at their other stuff. It seems like they are making the transition from acoustic guitar to full band. Good on 'em. I have to say, I sort of feel like these guys would be a bit disappointing live. That's not a very nice thing to say, I know. There's just something summery, epic and very "studio'd" about this song. I'm not sure they'd be able to capture it live. Anyway, if you're interested, they're going to be out in Australia in 2012, playing Golden Plains Festival and Womad, along with a bunch of side shows. Maybe they'll prove me wrong.

Enjoy.

Bref

This is so good.

Great acting. Great writing. And a style all of its own.

Best of all, in under 2 minutes, it manages to tell a genuine story with 3-dimensional characters that you actually care about, something most films fail to achieve in 2 hours.

The very matter of fact description of their relationship: "On couche ensemble, épuis elle s'en va..." is beautifully juxtaposed against the ever-so-slightly rueful line at the cat's funeral: "J'avais jamais demandé si elle avait d'autres amis."

Nice one.

You can check out other videos in this series at the Canal + website.

Bref. On a enterré Croquette. - Episode du 20/10

The last Silver Cinder burns out

It's with some sadness that I must report the end of a significant chapter in my life.

Last night, Tamara and I decided to put our little musical project Silver Cinder to bed. It's been quite a journey. From our first performance in small café in Nowra, with an overly loud and slightly out-of-tune acoustic guitar, to the addition of violins and bass and performances at The Basement and The Vanguard in Sydney. It's been a wild ride.

In many ways, much of who I am and what I'm about has been tied up in Silver Cinder over the last two years. I was so invested in it. So it's a strange feeling to now let it go. It feels a bit like something important has slipped away. The memories can never be taken away - sure - but they have also now moved into a past that can never be recreated. Those memories are at there most vivid now. But from this point onwards, their only journey is to become progressively distant. And there's something sad in that. That said, it's also exciting. Who knows what may come out of the ashes (sorry!).

So much energy goes into being in a band. You deliberate over every lyric, every chord, every venue, every crowd reaction, every seeming open door, and you mourn every missed opportunity, every bung note, every regret and every set back. It's perhaps for this reason that it's both the most rewarding and the most frustrating thing that I've ever done in my life.

Anyway, I had so much fun playing. Our goal was to make beautiful music that moved people. And I think that more often than not, we managed to do that.  Thank you to every one of you who ever came to see us, or gave us encouragement. You helped to keep us going!

In his Letters To A Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke writes:

"This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple “I must,” then build your life in accordance with this necessity."

For me, I know that when it comes to music, I must. The only question now, is "what". Time to live those questions into answers.

Frederick Buechner is not a religious writer

"The term gives me the creeps," the novelist-essayist-poet-theologian said this week from his home in Vermont. "It means to me obvious, preachy, unrealistic. I don't think I'm a religious writer at all in that sense." Instead, he has aimed in a six-decade writing career "to see the world as it is, to be as honest as possible with the representation of life as I've known it all these years."

For Buechner, the world is all flesh and spirit, humanness and holiness he has richly portrayed in an assortment of characters. There's Leo Bebb, an unctuous preacher who turns out to be something of a redeeming figure, a surprising stage on which God performs. There's Godric, a pirate turned priest from the 11th century, a real-life monk who was eventually named a saint. As imagined by Buechner in a novel nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, Godric is racked with lust and doubts, but no less longing for God.

"In everything I write, I try to give a doubt a voice," Buechner said. "There's always a question mark, a shadow. I never pretended faith was easy. It's not so much a conscious effort to decide whether it's true or not, but the task of living in this world raises the question." Saints and sinners are not opposites in Buechner's stories, essays and memoirs. They are the same people. They are like real humans, that is, and Buechner is comfortable being human.

"Lucky is he who is flawed and recognizes he's flawed," he said. "There's a better chance to see things the way things really are, including themselves. They're not living on automatic pilot."

Buechner, now 85, grew up in a family "without any religious sensibility," but came to belief just as his writing star was rising in 1950s New York. He earned a degree from Union Theological Seminary and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. He never held a pulpit, but he taught religion at Philips Exeter Academy of New Hampshire before returning to full-time writing in the early 1960s.

"Words are my ministry," he has said.

Among his literary parishioners is Dale Brown, a professor of English at King College in Bristol, Tenn. Before moving there last year, Brown taught at Calvin College in Michigan for 20 years, where he directed the annual Festival of Faith and Writing. He had struck up a long-distance friendship with Buechner, and had come to regard Buechner as a mentor.

Three years ago, Brown visited King College for a sabbatical, researching and writing a book about Buechner. Along the way, he planted a seed for what is now called the Buechner Institute. The institute will be inaugurated on Monday at the college, with a program that includes three seminars, a concert by Christian singer-songwriter Michael Card, and an evening interview featuring Buechner and theologian Walter Brueggemann.

"I admire (Buechner's) work not just because he's a really great artist, but has a deep understanding of faith," Brown said this week. "He kind of fills the space between secularism and sectarianism. In our area, I hope the institute can be a place that invites people from a lot of different perspectives. We want to encourage a conversation that does not involve setting up walls." Brown is planning monthly events and a future research center where scholars and artists can explore "the intersection of faith and culture," to echo Buechner's work.

"I'm touched by the honor they do me," Buechner said. This is his first contact with the college. "I'd love to see (the institute) explore other writers who work the same territory I do," the author said, naming the late Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy, author of "No Country for Old Men," among them. This territory, as he calls it, "pays attention to the thin places," those moments when the boundaries between heaven and earth, between physical and spiritual almost evaporate, when "an event that seems very unimportant becomes transparent to mystery, to holiness."

Paying attention: that's not only Buechner's calling card. That's his advice. "Henry James said writers are those on whom nothing is lost," he said. "Try to be someone on whom nothing is lost. Watch where you go, watch what memories see you through."