Use a tissue, Doctor or the Queen of Hearts reads Lewis Carroll
I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Workplace Training and RnB at the King St Wharf Polytechnic. My research strengths are Kanye West’s linguistic, belief and visual habits. My doctoral thesis was called “Touch the Sky: coitus interruptus and screwing everyone along the way.”
I have a very capable and vibrant colleague called Dr Patricia Dee. She lectures in Marketing and Corporate Citizenry.
During my days as junior lecturer I shared an office with Dr Dee and our administrative assistant Dr Jim Beaver (remarkable, an admin guy with a PhD!) We three shared many research challenges and breakthrough accidents – which is how most promotions get made, but that, my kind reader, is another story.
Dr Dee is an aware and feisty interlocutor. As we quietly pursued our separate lines of enquiry, Dr Dee, or as I call her, Patricia, noticed that Dr Beaver – our admin assistant – had a habit of snorting mucus through his nose and down his gullet. He sounded like a vomit-inducing nightingale with a toothache.
Dr Beaver also had the habit of blowing raspberries – as you would to a baby, or if you were a baby – very loudly, as he mumbled to himself about the vague intricacies of e-learning codes and networks. This habit disconcerted me. I had my suspicions that some other substance was afoot in this erratic behaviour.
This kind of echolalic onamatopeia was an idiolect akin to intellectual disturbance. I agreed with Dr Dee’s learned diagnosis but I also respected the fact that Dr Beaver did his work thoroughly and diligently. I wanted our work environment to be calm and serene, especially as Patricia’s research was developing well and she had a history of excellent results.
My breakthrough came through in my elegant solution of the Sierpienski’s Sponge paradox to which I was awarded a Fellowship to the Royal Society of Gangster Rappers. The Head of our Department, Prof. Wood E. Pecker promoted me to Senior Lecturer and my office is now right next to his. We at King St Wharf Polytechnic are in competition with our rival tech, the Ulladulla Advanced College of Education – Faculty of Cricket, Rugby League & Sheep Husbandry.
I looked forward to my move. And as my colleagues can corroborate, I was left waiting by our tech staff. Our tech staff manage to weasel their way out of core hours because of how they dazzled our administrative managers with their communications skills, which were great, but only after lunch.
So, I waited the whole day, and Dr Dee and I laughed and bickered and made up and sent out positive messages to each other.
The chief IT guy, Wrongway Peachfuzz, explained later that he was tardy because some RnB student put Tarzan Grip on a toilet seat he was sitting on. Wrongway had to be liberally doused in WD 40 and after an hour of struggle was freed from this very embarrassing ordeal. Nevertheless he had to be airlifted to Taronga Zoo emergency bum burns unit. I believe he is now making a stable recovery.
But, But! I digress, kind reader. Dr Dee was at her wit’s end with Dr Jim’s snorting, dribbling, self talk, his increasing collection of scissors which he told us he was going to float and put on the Australian Stock Exchange. I was particularly concerned about his queer habit of interrogating our office’s pot plants on the nature of M-Theory. I, along with Dr Dee, became a bit agitated and frankly annoyed.
Now,
who I perceive to be the most diligent IT guy in our Department, Mr Quigley Woo, came the next day to usher me to my new office and he would set me up on the network, printers and email. After a few hitches, it worked well.
It was now the perfect time to tell Dr Beaver how to behave in front of a respected colleague - who has a track record of achievement – and was on the verge of some revealing research results and that a serene environment is conducive to everyone’s work. We all deserve it.
I looked in our stationery cupboard and found a treasure trove of Kleenex Aloe Vera tissues. I then got one of my old business cards and wrote on the back of it:
“Dear Dr Beaver,
You might recognize this as a box of tissues. Please use as sparingly and wisely as you can, for your own health and as well, your constant phlegmatic, stentorious snorting and general cacophony coming from both your noxious orifices is giving me the shits!!!
Many thanks,
Dr Bob Frapples.”
As I now had a little time to spare before my move, I found a deck of cards that were no longer useful. People know I have no interest in gambling and I feel that it is one of our social maladies afflicting individuals and families on struggle street in the city and country.
Yet I thought of a kind gesture I could offer my well respected colleague (is it ok that I call you Patti, or Trish!)…
My best woman friend is Alexandra. We have known each other from the crèche when our parents first came to Australia from Patagonia. She is married to my ex-cousin-in-law. This is true but it sounds like a live patch from Days of our Lives.
Alex likes my book collection very much and pulled out “Alice in Wonderland” and read a random page:
“ And Alice said ‘no, I shan’t believe it, I shan’t believe impossible things. It is very, very silly indeed!’ The Queen of Hearts retorted in a kind yet imploring way “When I was your age, Alice, I would imagine six impossible things before breakfast! And look at me now: I am now the Queen of Hearts in the Land of the Looking Glass!”
Alex, Luis (my ex-cousin-in-law, yeah I know, enough already!) and I laughed and thought the passage to be a great gift to literature.
I looked at the deck of cards, I put the two jokers in my breast pocket should I ever need them. I then extracted the Queen of Hearts card and hid it under Dr. Dee’s keyboard.
I wonder if she’s found it yet?
By Ariel Riveros
Marking his last day of sharing an office Trish Di Masi and dirty Dr Tim Lever and observing Remembrance Day, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in 1918 to end the Great War. Lest we forget, everyone.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Monday, November 9, 2009
Ariel's Farewell to Facebook
Hi Everybody,
I explain.
When I worked at research at ABC Radio about 3 years ago, a quirky little story about a website which started gaining rapid momentum came through on the wires. My colleagues at the time Max, Rebecca, Lucy and Anna gave me the story to research and subedit. All of my colleagues joined the website. I believe they are still present on it.
I have had happiness, joy, sexy flirtation, exploration, so many events and adventures into bizarre, strange and close to lethal territories.
Faecebook has a friends limit. I have reached my limit of facebook friends! (Hasta la corona, hueon!)
So, I conclude on this. Free love is easy when you’re attractive AND “appealing”. If this is you, have a jot of compassion for the rest of us work-a-day moes.
Here are a list of groups I identify with:
Facebook Friends Forum for Ecology, Environmentalism and Economics
Rob Toddler
Fixtheblueprint
Jazzgroove and Jazzville
2SER FM
Waldo Fabian, Samba Mundi, Victor Fabio (if you’re a Chilean)
At The Vanishing Point Art Gallery
If you or your organization require a great proofreader: www.helenodlin.com
Donna Sgro Fashion
School of Transmogrification
Art Posse (aka Art Pussy)
Jai Guru Dev
--
As for me, you can catch my flow http://arielsbooks.blogspot.com/ and www.flickr.com (account is called Hunterwolf2009) and youtube (account is called vonaerial)
Keep doing great and remember this important lesson from our sponsor!!! Revolution is only a facebook group away………….
Cheerio,
Ariel
I explain.
When I worked at research at ABC Radio about 3 years ago, a quirky little story about a website which started gaining rapid momentum came through on the wires. My colleagues at the time Max, Rebecca, Lucy and Anna gave me the story to research and subedit. All of my colleagues joined the website. I believe they are still present on it.
I have had happiness, joy, sexy flirtation, exploration, so many events and adventures into bizarre, strange and close to lethal territories.
Faecebook has a friends limit. I have reached my limit of facebook friends! (Hasta la corona, hueon!)
So, I conclude on this. Free love is easy when you’re attractive AND “appealing”. If this is you, have a jot of compassion for the rest of us work-a-day moes.
Here are a list of groups I identify with:
Facebook Friends Forum for Ecology, Environmentalism and Economics
Rob Toddler
Fixtheblueprint
Jazzgroove and Jazzville
2SER FM
Waldo Fabian, Samba Mundi, Victor Fabio (if you’re a Chilean)
At The Vanishing Point Art Gallery
If you or your organization require a great proofreader: www.helenodlin.com
Donna Sgro Fashion
School of Transmogrification
Art Posse (aka Art Pussy)
Jai Guru Dev
--
As for me, you can catch my flow http://arielsbooks.blogspot.com/ and www.flickr.com (account is called Hunterwolf2009) and youtube (account is called vonaerial)
Keep doing great and remember this important lesson from our sponsor!!! Revolution is only a facebook group away………….
Cheerio,
Ariel
Sunday, November 8, 2009
I ken a poet...
I knew a poet who drank whisky and wore leather-elbowed patched tweed jackets. He wrote punk poetry which was not quite a 2/2 rhythm...How punk can the word "lacustrine" be? I am reminded of the Government department of parks and wildlife, his department. He imagines working in estuary protection and management.
This poet, who was a bush poet, yet wore tweed and inhabited the shores of lakes, was motivated to shave language, to it's skin. Language so lean and economic it was nouveau poor. Sad stories like malone dies by samuel beckett and ee cummings would drink to america and bushy bearded poets who inhabited lakes and loafed about on the grass.
Poets whose pants look smaller on than off. Poets who have paid the price of debts, to cry bingo in houses awaiting demolition.
I choose not to remember absurdist questions such as
Do our thoughts construct the paradigm of choice
Or do I choose to lead an examined, thought out life.
As strategy would have it i would choose happiness and blue trees are blue trees if i think of them if i choose to.
I permit happy states to enter my core. Fused like a transponder...somewhere in my youth i had a disaster with a potentiometer...a lovely electronic component, functional and nonfunctional circuits....attempts at connection...can i get a light? Turn on the lights! In the right light i look alright. clear to me as a mumblebee has nothome but a raft of wind currents, a waft of orange rind and blossom where the beesuck their suck I...on the back of bats I fly to a place where owls do cry...ariel becomes prospero, prospero becomes ariel, as the bee and flower unite in the play the tempest.
the algebra of flowers, i leave irises in my eyes which i keep in my head. Where ever the wind may blow, the wind will not blow away all the numbers off my skin and the layers of nappy cloth which holds a 3 kilogram heart. Who would hold a heart like a flower as if magical, glorious, smacking of daybreak and as beautiful as open eyes in the morning. looking at flowers.
I will buy an unopened flower to witness it usurped blossoming. Paper petals made from a calculus textbook. How many mayflowers does it take to explain gravity and velocity of falling petals and their earthward meteoric falls, papyrus and all.
a rest in a bed of palimpsest that between the sheets numbers falling like leaves. Is that right? I have been murdered for less. They said "he was only 50, this lacustrine poet of the bushy beard and platelets in his lungs. A huckster for pub visits and french philosophy."
I question and write to sow rocks and grow paper narcissi cut down by sisters. I harvest and rest between the straw and the palimpsest, the leaves and nectar of ink.
Tea and ham sandwiches and no barbeque sauce. Then to sleep project dream. projected trajectory, present pressing, manifest destiny, vellum and palimpsests.
This poet, who was a bush poet, yet wore tweed and inhabited the shores of lakes, was motivated to shave language, to it's skin. Language so lean and economic it was nouveau poor. Sad stories like malone dies by samuel beckett and ee cummings would drink to america and bushy bearded poets who inhabited lakes and loafed about on the grass.
Poets whose pants look smaller on than off. Poets who have paid the price of debts, to cry bingo in houses awaiting demolition.
I choose not to remember absurdist questions such as
Do our thoughts construct the paradigm of choice
Or do I choose to lead an examined, thought out life.
As strategy would have it i would choose happiness and blue trees are blue trees if i think of them if i choose to.
I permit happy states to enter my core. Fused like a transponder...somewhere in my youth i had a disaster with a potentiometer...a lovely electronic component, functional and nonfunctional circuits....attempts at connection...can i get a light? Turn on the lights! In the right light i look alright. clear to me as a mumblebee has nothome but a raft of wind currents, a waft of orange rind and blossom where the beesuck their suck I...on the back of bats I fly to a place where owls do cry...ariel becomes prospero, prospero becomes ariel, as the bee and flower unite in the play the tempest.
the algebra of flowers, i leave irises in my eyes which i keep in my head. Where ever the wind may blow, the wind will not blow away all the numbers off my skin and the layers of nappy cloth which holds a 3 kilogram heart. Who would hold a heart like a flower as if magical, glorious, smacking of daybreak and as beautiful as open eyes in the morning. looking at flowers.
I will buy an unopened flower to witness it usurped blossoming. Paper petals made from a calculus textbook. How many mayflowers does it take to explain gravity and velocity of falling petals and their earthward meteoric falls, papyrus and all.
a rest in a bed of palimpsest that between the sheets numbers falling like leaves. Is that right? I have been murdered for less. They said "he was only 50, this lacustrine poet of the bushy beard and platelets in his lungs. A huckster for pub visits and french philosophy."
I question and write to sow rocks and grow paper narcissi cut down by sisters. I harvest and rest between the straw and the palimpsest, the leaves and nectar of ink.
Tea and ham sandwiches and no barbeque sauce. Then to sleep project dream. projected trajectory, present pressing, manifest destiny, vellum and palimpsests.
Acid Theatrical Flashbacks
Flashes of Theatrical Images.
Informal preface: I think that Freud’s theory of the unconscious in terms of the law of the father, 19th century Viennese bedwetting oedipal complex, and primal scenes etc etc are incredibly gothic in terms of the unconscious as theatre.
I want to express my unconscious theatre in terms of the experiences I and others have had, words I have heard and that my friends remember, and of course, poetics.
I present text and describe images so that you get an idea of my day’s peregrination living in the breath of creativity. Organisms, horizons, constraints and surrealist intent I present.
“The way is not the way – to find the miraculous one must stop looking.” – aerial
DIALOGUES:
Image 1: Autophagia
A blindfolded man in a loincloth walks centre stage, sweating profusely. Golden glitter falls from the above stage.
(sound of early morning bird call suffuses stage,)
BLINDFOLDED MAN: I can’t see anything….but gold.
(Blackout. Small light to illuminate golden man whirling off stage.)
------------------
Image 2: Toxic base
Left stage. A man is hooked up to a machine which is bubbling and spluttering venom.
MAN CONNECTED TO MACHINE: This machine is killing me, slowly.
(pause)
I am dying.
VOICEOVER: You have never been pure, the toxic machine pre-dates you. Your family is a labyrinthine coalmine. The terrible has already happened. BUT, you can be reasonable about it…
MAN CONNECTED TO MACHINE: The fix cannot be fixed.
VOICEOVER: Surrender to death. That is the joy of your life.
MAN CONNECTED TO MACHINE (laughs): I hear radio free cosmos. Light waves intersect me like swords. I am skewered by opening sunshine…
(Man seems drowsy, drugged.)
VOICEOVER(soporific): Sleep. Sleep under this electric moon.
----
Image 3 – The hot, burning trial.
(Right stage. A car hulk is burning.
Man and woman walk on stage)
MAN: I am on fire. The sky is a fiery trapeze, the trees are on fire, the street is on fire.
WOMAN: My kisses explode. My hands are of lava.
(They join a group of people who are collecting kindling and Spinifex placing around a man at a stake.)
CHORUS: Kill the sick man. Burn him till he grows wings!
(cue sound of deep kodo drums and a sample of a motorcycle blaring at high speed – to the point of uncomfortability.)
WOMAN: The terrible of drums.
I combust birds in the sulphurous sky.
The happy wind slaughters butterflies.
There is a cloud with your name on it. This is my song of love to you. Your body is the sky.
(end man - woman embrace)
------
Image 4: Harpies.
Women in sexy party outfits are drunk. They congregate.
WOMAN 1: Who is that lickspittle? (points to someone in the audience)
WOMAN 2: Come here!
WOMAN 3: Come on! Get here, you have something to say to us?
WOMAN 4: (leering) You are something, aren’t you!
WOMAN 2: Aren’t you?
(The person in the audience they are talking to is an actor.)
WOMAN 4: Come up here! You’re wanted.
(audience member walks to women, stands with a stunned but defiant look. Becoming a little nervous
WOMAN 1 pulls out a 4 ended length of rope.
The 4 WOMEN take an end each and bind the audience member's body in its entirety.
WOMAN 4 rubs herself lasciviously over the bound, upstanding body and hisses at the audience.)
WOMAN 4: Hsssssssssssssssssss.
-------
IMAGE 5: Black water.
Centre stage is a pool of black water.
YOUNG MAN is next to the pool looking in.
YOUNG MAN: Come out! I can see your eyes! (Away) This water is black as night! (puts his hand in) Come out!
(Young man pulls out stones from his pockets and starts juggling them and throws them in the water at different speeds.)
(The stones are thrown from the black water back at the young man.)
YOUNG MAN: Come out. You have been watching me and everything around me. Just tell me what you think…Black water, hiding an amorphous, nocturnal smiling executioner. Let me sleep as if I were a cipher, zeroes zedding from my bed. Zut, zzzzzzz, zzzz.
(Light is amplified as if morning.)
(end with music)
------
IMAGE 6: The card game.
(A group of people are playing a card game, seated in a circle. Suddenly one of the players gets up quickly, produces a pistol, and shoots the player in front of him.)
PISTOL PACKING PLAYER: There! I enjoyed playing with you. I learnt something. (produces money from his wallet and throws it at the dead player) …And there’s your money, son!
------------
IMAGE 7: The menagerie.
Stuffed animals festoon the stage.
two shakespearean clowns enter.
CLOWN 2: Ah , yes. The pussycat is the dragon, the dragon is the pussycat...
CLOWN 1: That's the cycle! (pauses) hey...what are all these animals doing here?
CLOWN 2: Impersonating each other I guess.
CLOWN 1: What?
CLOWN 2: Well. Well, I have seen ants impersonating birdlife...Have you..?
CLOWN 1: That's unreasonable.
CLOWN 2: Just yesterday I saw a twig doing a convincing impression of the NSW chamber of commerce!
CLOWN 1: Argghh. Yer talking shit!.
CLOWN 2: That's a weak metaphor...
CLOWN 1: What is?
CLOWN 2: Shit, shit qua metaphor!
CLOWN 1: How about this...ahem...Your futile emanations of the irrational bore me...what would impress me would be your autoevisceration!
CLOWN 2: You mean?... hari-kari, seppuku... for what reason?
CLOWN 1: So I can see the gleaming, serene jewels from your sailor's stomach. Now that's reasonable!
CLOWN 2: God some people are demanding!
(blackout - finis)
VIGNETTE 8:
A graveyard of windows
(scene: right stage has a pair of iron gates. Centre stage has a maze of opened and closed windows and window panes, some suspended, some at hurdler’s height. Near one of the windows is a sack with the word ‘miracles’ written on it.)
Enter three confused people, Gregor, Helene and Jack.
GREGOR (to Helene): Your life has come to an end now.
HELENE (to Jack): To the presence of death you are setting out.
JACK (to Gregor): No halting place is there for you by the way.
GREGOR (to Jack): There are, as well, no provisions for you.
(the players climb through windows, different ones, same ones, any order, the players decide this)
HELENE (to others): Look! I have found a bag. (picks up miracle bag)
GREGOR: The miracle would be food…I would eat three magic beans…
(Helene opens bag and light streams out.)
HELENE (in feign awe): Whoaw!
(slowly turns bag upside down. Broken bones fall to the floor.)
JACK: A bag of broken bones, there was light but no miracle.
(Players still entering and exiting the maze of windows)
GREGOR: I recall the bunny rabbits playing in my papa’s garden (as if in a reverie). I pissed my pants with joy! A good dose of cod liver oil and walloping is what I got for my joy…(reverie broken)…How do we get out of here…
HELENE: I know an old trick. (produces twine) Here.
(Gregor and Jack take the twine and go through windows, creating a chaotic geometry of string)
GREGOR: There’s no getting out of here.
JACK (consoles Gregor): It’s not bad. Just think of it as another day in the dirt. (walking through a window pane) more rabbits arrive. It’s inevitability.
(All sit)
lights dim. Music plays something scratchy from the 1910’s, 20’s or 30’s.
---
RADIO MONOLOGUE: RIVERS
In Spanglish
ACTOR: El rio calle-calle de Valdivia. [trans. The river calle-calle of Valdivia]. A continent of rivers. I lie on a raft on top of a river of words, languages, anachronisms.
I see ahead but I go downstream, skimming, whizzing on the currents.
Los cisnes del rio calle calle. Pajaro pareja por la vida, regresan al sitio del nacer para morir. [trans. The swan of river calle calle. Bird pair for life, returning to their birthplace to die]
Twin birds, in a curlicue. Universal trajectories. Mas pajaros, mas Conejos, mas nubes de azucar. Procreation is rhizomatic imagination, burgeoning deltas of eruption, tears, wounds and scars.
As if the birth of a star.
(Background Music – la moldau (Smetana) flute introduction)
-------
Informal preface: I think that Freud’s theory of the unconscious in terms of the law of the father, 19th century Viennese bedwetting oedipal complex, and primal scenes etc etc are incredibly gothic in terms of the unconscious as theatre.
I want to express my unconscious theatre in terms of the experiences I and others have had, words I have heard and that my friends remember, and of course, poetics.
I present text and describe images so that you get an idea of my day’s peregrination living in the breath of creativity. Organisms, horizons, constraints and surrealist intent I present.
“The way is not the way – to find the miraculous one must stop looking.” – aerial
DIALOGUES:
Image 1: Autophagia
A blindfolded man in a loincloth walks centre stage, sweating profusely. Golden glitter falls from the above stage.
(sound of early morning bird call suffuses stage,)
BLINDFOLDED MAN: I can’t see anything….but gold.
(Blackout. Small light to illuminate golden man whirling off stage.)
------------------
Image 2: Toxic base
Left stage. A man is hooked up to a machine which is bubbling and spluttering venom.
MAN CONNECTED TO MACHINE: This machine is killing me, slowly.
(pause)
I am dying.
VOICEOVER: You have never been pure, the toxic machine pre-dates you. Your family is a labyrinthine coalmine. The terrible has already happened. BUT, you can be reasonable about it…
MAN CONNECTED TO MACHINE: The fix cannot be fixed.
VOICEOVER: Surrender to death. That is the joy of your life.
MAN CONNECTED TO MACHINE (laughs): I hear radio free cosmos. Light waves intersect me like swords. I am skewered by opening sunshine…
(Man seems drowsy, drugged.)
VOICEOVER(soporific): Sleep. Sleep under this electric moon.
----
Image 3 – The hot, burning trial.
(Right stage. A car hulk is burning.
Man and woman walk on stage)
MAN: I am on fire. The sky is a fiery trapeze, the trees are on fire, the street is on fire.
WOMAN: My kisses explode. My hands are of lava.
(They join a group of people who are collecting kindling and Spinifex placing around a man at a stake.)
CHORUS: Kill the sick man. Burn him till he grows wings!
(cue sound of deep kodo drums and a sample of a motorcycle blaring at high speed – to the point of uncomfortability.)
WOMAN: The terrible of drums.
I combust birds in the sulphurous sky.
The happy wind slaughters butterflies.
There is a cloud with your name on it. This is my song of love to you. Your body is the sky.
(end man - woman embrace)
------
Image 4: Harpies.
Women in sexy party outfits are drunk. They congregate.
WOMAN 1: Who is that lickspittle? (points to someone in the audience)
WOMAN 2: Come here!
WOMAN 3: Come on! Get here, you have something to say to us?
WOMAN 4: (leering) You are something, aren’t you!
WOMAN 2: Aren’t you?
(The person in the audience they are talking to is an actor.)
WOMAN 4: Come up here! You’re wanted.
(audience member walks to women, stands with a stunned but defiant look. Becoming a little nervous
WOMAN 1 pulls out a 4 ended length of rope.
The 4 WOMEN take an end each and bind the audience member's body in its entirety.
WOMAN 4 rubs herself lasciviously over the bound, upstanding body and hisses at the audience.)
WOMAN 4: Hsssssssssssssssssss.
-------
IMAGE 5: Black water.
Centre stage is a pool of black water.
YOUNG MAN is next to the pool looking in.
YOUNG MAN: Come out! I can see your eyes! (Away) This water is black as night! (puts his hand in) Come out!
(Young man pulls out stones from his pockets and starts juggling them and throws them in the water at different speeds.)
(The stones are thrown from the black water back at the young man.)
YOUNG MAN: Come out. You have been watching me and everything around me. Just tell me what you think…Black water, hiding an amorphous, nocturnal smiling executioner. Let me sleep as if I were a cipher, zeroes zedding from my bed. Zut, zzzzzzz, zzzz.
(Light is amplified as if morning.)
(end with music)
------
IMAGE 6: The card game.
(A group of people are playing a card game, seated in a circle. Suddenly one of the players gets up quickly, produces a pistol, and shoots the player in front of him.)
PISTOL PACKING PLAYER: There! I enjoyed playing with you. I learnt something. (produces money from his wallet and throws it at the dead player) …And there’s your money, son!
------------
IMAGE 7: The menagerie.
Stuffed animals festoon the stage.
two shakespearean clowns enter.
CLOWN 2: Ah , yes. The pussycat is the dragon, the dragon is the pussycat...
CLOWN 1: That's the cycle! (pauses) hey...what are all these animals doing here?
CLOWN 2: Impersonating each other I guess.
CLOWN 1: What?
CLOWN 2: Well. Well, I have seen ants impersonating birdlife...Have you..?
CLOWN 1: That's unreasonable.
CLOWN 2: Just yesterday I saw a twig doing a convincing impression of the NSW chamber of commerce!
CLOWN 1: Argghh. Yer talking shit!.
CLOWN 2: That's a weak metaphor...
CLOWN 1: What is?
CLOWN 2: Shit, shit qua metaphor!
CLOWN 1: How about this...ahem...Your futile emanations of the irrational bore me...what would impress me would be your autoevisceration!
CLOWN 2: You mean?... hari-kari, seppuku... for what reason?
CLOWN 1: So I can see the gleaming, serene jewels from your sailor's stomach. Now that's reasonable!
CLOWN 2: God some people are demanding!
(blackout - finis)
VIGNETTE 8:
A graveyard of windows
(scene: right stage has a pair of iron gates. Centre stage has a maze of opened and closed windows and window panes, some suspended, some at hurdler’s height. Near one of the windows is a sack with the word ‘miracles’ written on it.)
Enter three confused people, Gregor, Helene and Jack.
GREGOR (to Helene): Your life has come to an end now.
HELENE (to Jack): To the presence of death you are setting out.
JACK (to Gregor): No halting place is there for you by the way.
GREGOR (to Jack): There are, as well, no provisions for you.
(the players climb through windows, different ones, same ones, any order, the players decide this)
HELENE (to others): Look! I have found a bag. (picks up miracle bag)
GREGOR: The miracle would be food…I would eat three magic beans…
(Helene opens bag and light streams out.)
HELENE (in feign awe): Whoaw!
(slowly turns bag upside down. Broken bones fall to the floor.)
JACK: A bag of broken bones, there was light but no miracle.
(Players still entering and exiting the maze of windows)
GREGOR: I recall the bunny rabbits playing in my papa’s garden (as if in a reverie). I pissed my pants with joy! A good dose of cod liver oil and walloping is what I got for my joy…(reverie broken)…How do we get out of here…
HELENE: I know an old trick. (produces twine) Here.
(Gregor and Jack take the twine and go through windows, creating a chaotic geometry of string)
GREGOR: There’s no getting out of here.
JACK (consoles Gregor): It’s not bad. Just think of it as another day in the dirt. (walking through a window pane) more rabbits arrive. It’s inevitability.
(All sit)
lights dim. Music plays something scratchy from the 1910’s, 20’s or 30’s.
---
RADIO MONOLOGUE: RIVERS
In Spanglish
ACTOR: El rio calle-calle de Valdivia. [trans. The river calle-calle of Valdivia]. A continent of rivers. I lie on a raft on top of a river of words, languages, anachronisms.
I see ahead but I go downstream, skimming, whizzing on the currents.
Los cisnes del rio calle calle. Pajaro pareja por la vida, regresan al sitio del nacer para morir. [trans. The swan of river calle calle. Bird pair for life, returning to their birthplace to die]
Twin birds, in a curlicue. Universal trajectories. Mas pajaros, mas Conejos, mas nubes de azucar. Procreation is rhizomatic imagination, burgeoning deltas of eruption, tears, wounds and scars.
As if the birth of a star.
(Background Music – la moldau (Smetana) flute introduction)
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The Phantasm of Work
The Phantasm of Work: the waltz of Wisser and Pollard
I find an ecological waltz between the works of Alex Wisser and Georgina Pollard, two artists that inhabit a special place, in Petersham.
I feel this ecological waltz to circle, like the New Years Eve waltzers from Vienna looking regal dancing to Strauss’s Blue Danube, ever getting closer – like Xeno’s Arrow – to draw away like dancers do when they flourish and to embrace once again, yet the lead keeps changing, which for a hybrid latino-australian man, is inspires a happy curiousity.
I have been privileged to have seen these artists work grow and mature, defy, dazzle, stall, frustrate, and open windows hitherto unimagined by myself.
When I lived with Alex and Georgina had her studio in the same building I witness the activation and engagement of two minds and sensualities. It was a good place to be for myself at the time.
I remember Georgina’s early paintings she exhibited at a café in Newtown. Surprising indeed for someone who originally thought they had no talent. She has traversed many territories in painting and concept: an able traveler in art.
The original paintings, if my memory serves me correct, were of suburban landscapes inhabited by telegraph wire and clothesline wire. Obviously sensing a communication from the world of infrastructural industry to the cottage industry of domestic dimensions. Georgina, in connective synthesis, merged industry and domesticity soon after with paintings I recall of clothes hanging of telegraph wire on pegs. Maybe there was one of an telecommunications electrician folding shirts and skirts. As my friends that know me know, I have a shocking memory, fading to someone ready to pick up the phone for me, telling me about the pretty dress she’s wearing.
Pollard’s work then mutates into metaphor that cements the merge: the grid. Soon after, the grid became ubiquitous in Pollard’s work, still with the double dynamic of industry and domesticity. I surmise that a full integration of both these forces would’ve brought another metaphor of a different order of magnitude. That is for the artist to consider.
What inspired me further was Georgina’s momentum. From the grid, encapsulating industry and domesticity, landscape is introduced. A habitus is being formed with lines crossing and coursing with energy: wave, particle, pegs. The painting of the Pipeline at the Bay incorporating the infrastructural grid was a real milestone in my perception of Pollard’s work. The line of consistency being the energy of domestic work, industrial work and the forces of nature, the step that maps out this artistic territory.
As for Alex Wisser, who I have known just a little longer than Georgina Pollard, I drew great pleasure, curiousity and wonder from his poetry. Especially (Towards the ill dry vagina…I forget that poems name, if it had one)
“chicken wire pulsing with espionage….”
“a gas works crawling with stars….”
“drunk with the fantasy of work…”
Thus to make a connection in both their works:
Chicken wire/ grid
Gasworks/industry
Stars/landscape (the natural world/kosmos)
Wisser’s words can be plumbed out to suggest that the unnamed flight of that organism that seeks a line of escape from the capture of the chickenwire, through espionage even, pulsing like human blood or industrial electricity, is like a Foghorn Leghorn becoming James Bond, or Don Knotts joining the CIA as a field operative
Wisser’s photographic work showcases his flexibility and nuance. Again I connect the capturing of the immediacy of subject and flight, throught the eye of the camera (whatever that is – an issue for someone else to discuss), in the image I recall of the elderly gentleman in Belmore Park feeding the pigeons and in an instant Wisser captures the pigeons flight en masse.
I see the poetic espionage engaging with the workaday immediacy of the world, pulsing energy of a woman who has dropped a lot of business papers on her way to work. Alex Wisser captures the rupturing of energy in immediacy and accident dispassionately to capture what he can capture in the image. A type of trap to lure our corporate friends out of their states of commuter detachment.
Mamadada – a Dadaist family group formed by artists Wendy Morrison, Georgina Pollard etc is a rendezvous point of espionage and communiqués namely a Brechtian exposition of the absurdity of postcapitalism. The bewildering image of the ladder in the middle of a Sydney CBD street propped up by two women, with a third climbing the ladder, with an absent wall of industry – or is it now commerce? – buttressing the artwork. I would pay to see that at Sydney Festival.
Pollard’s later work sees the grid becoming subtle like a nikita within an abstract expressionist environment. The works show a mastery of colour and form in this milieu. :P
The return of nature/landscape savages the audience again in a breathtaking trompe l’oeil of the blue trees that are the design for the Marrickville Art Lab. An experiment, that for me, is a resounding success in buggering Baudrillard. For me, the blue trees are an amorous simulacra and homage of sorts to abstract expression: I cannot help but be reminded of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles. The magic in this is that nature is now the simulacra to abstraction –Plato would be standing on his head in his watery atlantean grave – if he saw this. The originary becomes simulacra of the simulacra. Way.
In Wisser’s most recent series of the starspangled heroine Wonder Woman, the figure of Wonder Woman is being domestic, whorish with other Wonder Women, and kosmically displaced from the locus of the domestic. The actual picture – Wonder Woman – where Wonder Woman is carrying the groceries (what a heroine!) and a suburban onlooker from a window of a house looks on – yes folks, that wasn’t staged – captures the kosmic absurdity of work, be it in industry or domesticity. Nature or the simulacra of the simulacra is now the energy pulsing through the network of domestic and industrial work in the photography of Wisser. I wonder if Alex Wisser considers his own artistic photography in the same light as 9 to 5 work. Is photography the originary, or is the camera the device that captures the metasimulacra (LOL!). Oh, the art industry!
And the author of this work was also captured in his business suit, swinging a hefty hammer, breaking up the surface of an abandoned petrol station – the gasworks crawling with stars, the fantasy of work swinging a hammer breaking the concrete – capitalism’s trajectory, in this image, will destroy itself by a hammer, of the intoxicated fantasy of it’s own work.
The last time I spoke to Georgie she told me that she was in a rut. This essay is one of admiration for the phantasmogrical work of both artists – espionage – a Viennese Waltz with dancers dressed in camouflage. Work, work but above all, work.
-
I was happy to see Alex Wisser receive his Honours in Photography at National Art School. The suit he wore was one of the coolest suits I’ve seen, like a dandy dressed like an art capitalist. I was envious. A homage to the absurdity of capitalist, wonderfully plaid, a clownlike insult to the Armani art capitalist.
Indeed, Alex looked like a million bucks in counterfeit notes. Will the real Alex Wisser please materialize from the kosmos – a whitmanesque wolf…
Georgina Pollard at a standstill still?
This essay is an exercise in ecology for all involved.
http://www.atthevanishingpoint.com.au/index.php?p=1_69
A sketch for The Rosemary Trail
Sketch for the Rosemary Trail.
As you may know, I live in the so-called “rabbit warren” of newtown consisting of many gridded and latticed streets, lanes, narrow, both one ways and two ways – a veritable rabbit warren as the locals so aptly name it.
I woke up today at 7am after a good night’s sleep and went out to buy some soy milk for breakfast. As I had some time on my hands I went for a leisurely jog about the rabbit warren. Not only did I feel good and discovered some interesting graffiti and architecture, as well, I saw that there was an “exercise” centre very close to my place at the Athena School.
During this jog, I also saw a shopping bag which had a label on it “This is fresh. Take as much as you want.” I opened the bag and saw some twigs and smelt the wonderful aroma of fresh garden grown rosemary – a whole bag! So, of course, I took the bag. I thought that by taking it not only do I get the choice rosemary but if there is some left over, I then get to charitably distribute a bag of not-so-fresh rosemary but still excellent (I believe rosemary dries well).
As I near home, I buy my soy milk at the corner store. John, the owner, is friendly. I wish him good luck in business and to take it easy.
I walk back to my studio to get ready for work.
As I leave the studio, I choose to walk down Carrillon Avenue on my way to work and feel challenging sensations, to name, a pain in my lower jaw.
As I enter to University precinct, where I work, I walk past the glass hothouses near the old darlington school and newly created Cadigal lawns.
Almost imperceptibly, a surprising smell of rosemary fills my nostril, and for a moment – just a quick moment – my whole being is transported back to my comfortable studio, smelling the fresh rosemary I discovered this morning.
As you may know, I live in the so-called “rabbit warren” of newtown consisting of many gridded and latticed streets, lanes, narrow, both one ways and two ways – a veritable rabbit warren as the locals so aptly name it.
I woke up today at 7am after a good night’s sleep and went out to buy some soy milk for breakfast. As I had some time on my hands I went for a leisurely jog about the rabbit warren. Not only did I feel good and discovered some interesting graffiti and architecture, as well, I saw that there was an “exercise” centre very close to my place at the Athena School.
During this jog, I also saw a shopping bag which had a label on it “This is fresh. Take as much as you want.” I opened the bag and saw some twigs and smelt the wonderful aroma of fresh garden grown rosemary – a whole bag! So, of course, I took the bag. I thought that by taking it not only do I get the choice rosemary but if there is some left over, I then get to charitably distribute a bag of not-so-fresh rosemary but still excellent (I believe rosemary dries well).
As I near home, I buy my soy milk at the corner store. John, the owner, is friendly. I wish him good luck in business and to take it easy.
I walk back to my studio to get ready for work.
As I leave the studio, I choose to walk down Carrillon Avenue on my way to work and feel challenging sensations, to name, a pain in my lower jaw.
As I enter to University precinct, where I work, I walk past the glass hothouses near the old darlington school and newly created Cadigal lawns.
Almost imperceptibly, a surprising smell of rosemary fills my nostril, and for a moment – just a quick moment – my whole being is transported back to my comfortable studio, smelling the fresh rosemary I discovered this morning.
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Red Riding Hood
Red Riding Hood
For Liz P
“It’s cool baby and I’m not even there” – Miles Davis
“It” said the wolf “is I”.
Grandma trembled in fear knowing the inevitable. Red Riding Hood, cowering in the corner, crawled out slowly, seemingly without the wolf sensing her at all. Red Riding Hood ran as fast as she could, straining her legs in long, swift strides until she found the brave, good hunter. After quickly telling the hunter what was happening, they both ran with urgency back to Grandma’s House.
“Wait outside” said the hunter as he strode in bravely, steely ey’d and muscles twitching in immediate preparation. He looked in the room: grandma and the wolf were gone. The hunter saw a faint trail of blood on the dusty wooden floor and followed it out to the front door step. The hunter shook his head in disappointment.
Red Riding Hood, in disbelief, continued to examine the leaves of grass slowly in the front yard but the trail finished after a few metres.
The old matriarch and the wolf were nowhere to be seen. Red Riding Hood wept deep sobs for her grandma. The forest around grandma’s house was clear and green in the sweet tender twilight.
The hunter gently consoled Red Riding Hood and escorted her back to her place under the cool moonlight. Red Riding Hood entered her house, shoulders slumped and bereft of tears. She slept deeply.
The hunter continued his trail back to his sturdy wooden cabin, fatigued and rueing the fact that he didn’t arrive in time to slay the wolf. As he opened the door to his cabin he took a deep breath of relief. Then, in the distance, the hunter heard the cry of a pack of wolves in the forest.
For Liz P
“It’s cool baby and I’m not even there” – Miles Davis
“It” said the wolf “is I”.
Grandma trembled in fear knowing the inevitable. Red Riding Hood, cowering in the corner, crawled out slowly, seemingly without the wolf sensing her at all. Red Riding Hood ran as fast as she could, straining her legs in long, swift strides until she found the brave, good hunter. After quickly telling the hunter what was happening, they both ran with urgency back to Grandma’s House.
“Wait outside” said the hunter as he strode in bravely, steely ey’d and muscles twitching in immediate preparation. He looked in the room: grandma and the wolf were gone. The hunter saw a faint trail of blood on the dusty wooden floor and followed it out to the front door step. The hunter shook his head in disappointment.
Red Riding Hood, in disbelief, continued to examine the leaves of grass slowly in the front yard but the trail finished after a few metres.
The old matriarch and the wolf were nowhere to be seen. Red Riding Hood wept deep sobs for her grandma. The forest around grandma’s house was clear and green in the sweet tender twilight.
The hunter gently consoled Red Riding Hood and escorted her back to her place under the cool moonlight. Red Riding Hood entered her house, shoulders slumped and bereft of tears. She slept deeply.
The hunter continued his trail back to his sturdy wooden cabin, fatigued and rueing the fact that he didn’t arrive in time to slay the wolf. As he opened the door to his cabin he took a deep breath of relief. Then, in the distance, the hunter heard the cry of a pack of wolves in the forest.
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