death up close

...from my 32nd floor window. roppongi hills. tokyo.

high tea by candlelight

contrary to popular perception high tea does not bear aristocratic roots. the poor working class of yesteryear could only afford one solid meal per day which was lunch. after crawling back home late at night from the coal mines, factories etc they were obviously hungry.

the kettle would go on, tea would be brewed and what scraps could be gathered and assembled into a snack of sorts supplemented by never-ending cups of tea. it would seem that the institution of english drinking copious amounts of tea is a many headed beast. in far flung colonial outposts the aristocracy would be drinking tea under the mobile shade of their coolies as a symbol of class superiority whilst back home the comfort it provided the poor industrialised peasants was arguably equivalent if not greater. emotional, physical and psychological sustenance is hard to beat.

as standards of living gradually increased then so did the quality and quantity of accompanying tea foodstuffs until eventually the now antiquated english expression "tea" was born. and still they incessantly drink the vile stuff in delicately patterned porcelain cups. i mean even lady gaga does it [this makes me think of my south australian friend dave].

cut to every other thursday. in a semblage of eclectic worlde bric a brac & dark sombre tulle walls surrounded by the odd what not, a wonderful underground movement has been born sprung from the humble building which gave us the original [recently relocated] 505. this is high tea.

last visit we [claire & yours truly] were delighted to find ourselves in a small world filled with strangers punctuated by friends. the wonderful kent eastwood [who was my 13th hour live pianist for my "explorations into the sound mind" installation at the successful punk monk collaborative "multiple personalities exhibition"] was a special guest performer. with renny field. a delightful & unexpected treat. fine company indeed.

high tea is a pseudo secret movement for artisans & lovers of intimacy where unplugged sets are experienced up close with a cup of tea in hand or a bottle of bagged wine. i'm not that traditional & nor is claire, so we float on the periphery of the caste system with lips stained red not black or blue. no china required here.

but RSVP quick.

floating flower

spice temple's green tea keeps friday insanity at bay.

the scales do not lie!

so... i got on the scales earlier today after dusting them off from their lost spot under the pink couch at the corner shop. i don't know what exactly the motivation was but i did start training again this week after an enormously long hiatus. it has been hell.

on the first day i threw up two thirds of the way in. and then continued to work out. that is what you do. today was day two: i hallucinated for a chunk of it, lost vision for a time & my legs became oversized rabbit vibrators. learning to swim by being thrown straight into the deep end. from experience the first three weeks is always the worst.

maybe the weigh-in inspiration was "the biggest loser" the runaway US reality TV franchise produced here by channel ten which is now airing for something like it's 5th successive season in australia. a country obsessed by food [master chef et al] and then how to purge it shows. i sneakily watched two episodes earlier instead of preparing for a video interview. which is still have to do today.

people were losing phenomenal & arguably unhealthily large amounts of weight. like 16 kilos in a week etc... and the cool thing was i was fast tracking even more efficiently than television punters by skimming straight to the weigh-ins. have another tim tam. i'm all over this.

that was my mistake. whilst the cheese and tomato toastie was happily making soft crackling noises from the nearby "hello kitty" appliance in the kitchen i located my inner scan body composition monitor ie. scales & faced a reality served up in a digital interface i wasn't prepared for. being overweight is what happens to other people right? disempowered people with no idea. is this middle-aged spread? domestic bliss? suddenly the whole world spirals...

now those pie in the sky figures & back breasts viewed at 1024 x 768 res don't seem so far flung at all. i am by far the heaviest i've ever been in my life. even more than when nine months pregnant. suddenly all those stories these people are saying on TV whilst half a nation jeers at them for cheap entertainment, strikes a resonating cord. empathy.

all efforts must be doubled. but first let me finish this packet of tim tams & feel a little bit sorrier for myself before facing the rest of the day... and then i remember that the camera adds ten pounds. perhaps we can film this segment after dark?

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...