Passau

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.

Anais Mitchell - Young Man in America

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.

Daaaaawniel!

'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.'

 

Flight Facilities - Clair de Lune

Loving this at the moment.  Debussy - still kicking goals all over the place.

Little Dragon - Twice

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.

Boxing day under the bridge

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.
 

Flaws - Bombay Bicycle Club

Leunig : a time to hate

Bandages - Hey Rosetta!

A brilliant film clip!

You're just a tall child holding a beer

"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.'"

                                                                                                Dylan Moran - Like, Totally 2006

Melody's Echo Chamber - I will follow

Loving this at the moment.

Sorry Darren.

the winter list - stranger

Safe places

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.

Eli Jenkins' Sunset Poem (from under milk wood)

Every morning, when I wake,
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
On all poor creatures born to die.

And every evening at sun-down
I ask the blessing on the town, 
For whether we last the night or no
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.

We are not wholly bad or good
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
To see our best side, not our worst.

O let us see another day!
Bless us this holy night, I pray,
And to the sun we all will bow
And say goodbye - but just for now!

In a room with Glen Hansard

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.

Rugby a touche, Paris

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.
 

La tour eiffel, vue de la place du Trocadero

Standing on the place du trocadero, with the light bouncing off the puddles that formed on the mosaic tiled floor, you could be forgiven for thinking that the place was built as a giant platform for photographers wishing to take the perfect snap of la tour eiffel.

Gard du nord, Paris

Hey Rosetta!

What do you do when you wake up jet lagged at 3am in Kuala Lumpor and can't get back to sleep? 

Well, you start searching music blogs for new music, of course. And once you have listened to every rendition of a Bon Iver song recorded by a non-proscription-rayban-wearing hipster film-editor who has a penchant for HD and soft focus, you stumble across something that causes you to spend the early hours of a muggy Malaysian Monday searching the background of the band and going through their music catalogue. 

Yep - that's what happened. 

Here's the culprit: Young Glass by Canadian band Hey Rosetta! Check out the live performance recorded in Melbourne when the band was out in Australia touring with The Jezebels.

Love this first stanza:

from under your sheets out into the hall
you sleepwalk through the rooms where you grew up
out through the porch and the old front doors
carried by words that you learned when you were small

Your words - Battleships

Lovely song from Sydney-based band Battleships. Have a listen to the words. Some cracking lines in there. This is probably my favourite.

Can't you feel there's more than this? 
More than just what you now see, 
Ignorance is not quite bliss 
After this eternity