my friar tuck

sometimes the universe just doesn't want me to go back to the city. and that's OK. then someone irrevocably intervenes... um, thanks.

i am the fly

so i got bitten by a spider week before last whilst playing in my garden off the grid... it may have been a funnel web. possibly a fiddleback. we don't really know. whatever it was, it hurt. initially.

whilst trying to positively ID the spider after an instantaneous short scream of "motherfucker" complete with dance & a nano visual flash of multiple legs & eyes wedged between my finger and the brick i'd moved [just after removing my garden gloves. doh!] in the waning light my arm started to go numb so after applying a pressure bandage, it was decided to face the hour or so drive to the nearest rural hospital. goulburn is lovely at this time of year.

a funnel web spider bite can kill a child in only a few minutes. adult response is a lot more variable & it can take hours if it happens at all. whilst experiencing the hypnotic pleasantness of the half loss of the use of my arms & a soft humming pins & needle sensation through my legs, i have to report after the initial wave of nausea as my body did battle with the toxin it was very very relaxing.

it really seems now that the whole dangerous spider thing is a bit of a misnomer. spiders are being terribly maligned in this country. three days later when i got bitten by another spider, i barely budged & continued to throw rocks into my shiny red wheelbarrow unphased whilst enjoying the slow tingling sensation. my feral bush woman initiation complete.

in fact i'm thinking about patenting spider venom as some new street drug. deliciously creamy. after first bite i was all ready to bequeath with love my juices to the nearest over-sized spider. now i kind of know what it feels like to be a paralysed fly. that movie was all wrong. don't help me, help yourself.

arachnophobes have got it all wrong. love thy spider.

september 11 generation...

matthieu rossat AKA matto is a member of the september 11 generation. his definitive breakfast television was the collapse of the twin towers. hence the expletive.. "FUCK"

like many of us he's concerned about art being blindsided & no longer pushing barriers due to lack of broad commerical appeal/profile.

last week i went to his exhibition opening at a little gallery i occasionally frequent quayside. gallery eight is an intimate but politically aware environment which often houses art with significant social commentary whilst delivering an aesthetic edge.

as usual neither the gallery or matthieu [who has played an active role in previous punk monk propaganda art events] disappointed. in fact i rather liked what i recognised/saw conveniently packaged for my viewing pleasure in a politicised nouveaux tribute to the pop characterisation popularised by banksy meets warhol. no standardised beauty facism here.

tristran mendès france had this to say as a preface to the exhibition. let his words mirror mine.

you can feel ill at ease, have an unpleasant feeling, even feel sick, that’s the objective.

the mechanism rests on some unlikely analogies, you may vaguely feel they are not politically correct, though you can’t actually grasp this.

the familiar pictures deal with our time.

you can recognize its tones, its aesthetics at once. the motives one claims are about our nowadays. they reveal something about the revolution of the media-related order that is taking place. the icons, the screens, which have always had a set place, their own logic, their social or political status can be found here, bare and without a hierarchy. the tsunami of post-modernity has just flown away.

the analogies you are confronted with have lost their structure, they are hybrid, regurgitated, and they question you like an insult.
you would like to know who it is aiming at and what it conveys.
you would like to be offended, to refuse. but it would only mean that you are staring at the finger pointing out to the moon. because these figures, however disturbing they are, convey nothing but vertigo, really. exactly the one you feel when the structure of history collapses.

the vivid picture is facing you. you answer it, but you are stunned. it swallows you up along with your own indignations.

the serigraphy posters can now be purchased online. AND there are these awesome pics which complete the series on matthieu's blog. if you're afraid of naked women you might not want to venture down the rabbit hole... red pill or blue pill? as matthieu says "everything's political."

as tears go by

fresh or perhaps more appropriately somewhat jaded from her rogue escapades for sydney festival after more than a few publicized hitches, marianne faithfull can be found tonight back behind the great curtain of oz up the opera house stairs. i'm so there.

hopefully it won't be the anticlimax i experienced when seeing a very smacced-up washed-out nico back in 1987. it remains to be seen whether or not marianne has already exited stage left with lucy jordan.

under blue moon i saw you

technically it's not the start of the year, but for all intensive purposes according to certain AWOL monks & blog party time it is. anyway i'm BACK! happy new year one and all. january was a false start punctuated by bush & bollywood. february is much more focussed. more internet time. so soon you'll take me up in your arms.

what better way to commence 2010 than a piece of tortured nostalgia whilst tenderly nursing a morning after KINO hangover? unwillingly mine.

last night was KINO #33 [with an appearance by my pseudo 24 hour flick "not beautiful enough" now sublimely edited/sound designed by the wonderful star germans, felix and michael & starring the ever lovely muse catherine davies]. the fat32 myth finally debunked... fate up against your will.

heads up to oliver dickens, dan rossi & dave cheng for shooting, sound recording & capturing awesome stills whilst we illegally ran amok amongst the loading containers adjacent to sydney airport before security threw us out as the sun rose and heralded in the day. we were in and out almost within the hour. except we had to break back in in the dead of night to look for missing make-up & head torches. under blue moon i saw you.

anyway that was yesterday. today is echo and the bunnymen. in sydney. if this is what george orwell's 1984 looked like i could easily move in. and stay. forever. your lips a magic world...

message in a bottle

regardless of the unlikelihood of a user specific message carefully placed in this bottle [i lost count of how many i sent off as a kid but never received], there is some kind of inherent communication with this bottle anyway.

pondering on a bevvy of related tangential manifestations on this bright gleaming day where the sun kisses the ocean makes me partially happy & sad.

one day we may not be able to see/touch the ocean for the toxic waste but for now i cling onto the nostalgic fantasy which accompanies one solitary bottle bobbing on the harbour waves...

and then place a freshly scribed piece of reflected light back into the floating vessel liberating it back into the emerald blue yonder.

life is a cabaret

...and then in an apparent overnight coup my baby duckling turned into this, erm, colorful vivacious swan.

it's so surreal that we just did her 21st birthday party. i'm still pinching myself & assume there was an alien abduction involved. there is no other reasonable explanation.

she seems to have inherited a shy retiring manner & love of dress-ups from her mother [but is much more wise/sensible]. she has incredible friends too. aint life grand?