C'mon Aussie, C'mon!

Australia's current political state is something which I try to avoid dwelling too much on, because of its ability to initiate descent into a quagmire of hopelessness. Living in a right-wing country, watching the environment getting trashed at an ever-increasing rate in the name of a bandaid solution-based, unsustainable economic infrastructure, watching people not only withstand this state of things but fervently support it, for what? At the moment, for the sake of some imaginary form of psychic security provided to them by the federal government (the imaginings that is, not the security). This is probably the same reason the Australian public kept re-electing Menzies ("Reds under the bed"). The desperate attempts to preserve the Tarkine wilderness, met by a ‘provisional election promise’ (as opposed to a promise he will keep) on Howard’s part that if he wins, he will ensure that an extra three thousand hectares are preserved, bringing it up to a whopping thirteen thousand hectares. And that was a generous flourish from Howard! The truth of the matter is that most people in Australia, being either removed city-dwellers or rural farmers, don’t give a shit about the environment, especially if it means job loss, or tax increases, or anything else which might have an effect on their own personal finances. Australia, since settlement, has been at odds with the landscape. Howard's environmental policy amounts to 'we'll just keep using what we've got and sell some of it at cut-price rates, and by the time we've completely used up all non-renewable energy sources, someone will have figured out a solution'. This massive continent, where there are so many unique, complex, beautiful environments and eco-systems, is so far from being occupied by a people who will collectively acknowledge the need for sustainability. No, instead our government will let out large tracts to such noble endeavours as Pine Gap.
Australia is in an awful political situation now. The left is impotent, the far left is ineffectual, the right is completely self-serving, the far right is gaining a stronger foothold. The Australian collective unconscious has not been around long enough to set into a solid. We don’t like to remember its initial basis because it is centered around genocide and assorted other social, cultural and physical atrocities inflicted on the native population which understood this land in deep ways, large portions of which are now lost forever.
The Australian public has so little control over the state of things here. Watching the protests in the Ukraine actually having an EFFECT; that is unforeseen here. When protests and rallies occur here they go for a few hours, they march down Swanston Street, they go have a drink, they go home to watch the news and if one of the commercial stations shows ten seconds of the protest from its weakest angle they feel as though they have achieved something. I think of the appallingly unjust dismissal of Gough Whitlam, the impotency of Harold Holt, the pandering to the US during Vietnam contrary to the wishes of the Australian public, the pandering to the US during Iraq contrary to the wishes of the Australian public. The past 100 years of Australian political history reminds me of a bunch of kids playing a board game which they have been playing for an hour and a half and are getting sort of sick of it and are beginning to take liberties to expedite their own benefit, they don’t even give a shit about the game anymore.

Sorrowful, tragic waste and destruction through selfishness and ignorance.

Today's screenplay character

is a fourteen-year-old boy lying comatose in a small private hospital after eating several raw daytura lilies with some friends down the back of someone's garden in a wealthy inner Eastern suburb.

Cobra Killer at Revolter last night.

It was a good show, they are entertaining, charismatic, mysterious, drug-addled, gorgeous women. Anneka is the best hula hoop-er I have ever seen or could ever imagine.
I am running with the herd in agreeing that it's a disappointment to see their music head towards more of a chicks-on-speed format, conventional structure usurping their earlier brutal sound, but granted they both have other outlets for that sound and probably need the extra cash which comes from paddling in the mainstream.
Unpleasant, boorish girl hurling herself against us for the duration like a stranded puffer-fish. Screaming 'I love you, I love you!', tyring to grab the killers' legs and mash her mouth against their flesh. Not seeming to consider that being closer to people whom you admire starts with like thinking and henceforth like creation of things which are good, it's not a matter of aligning your flesh with theirs in the front row of a concert, making sure they know that you know all their lyrics.

Today's screenplay character

is a typical cosmopolitan consumer, who shops at GPO and QV and dresses accordingly. Cut to scene in her apartment, where a new friend is browsing among the various contemporary features and objects. 'Ooh, what's this?' he asks, referring to a glass jar filled with small clear discs, which appears strangely tantalising. 'Oh, they're lenses from birds' eyes. Every time I see a dead bird I pick the lenses out of its eyes, since I was a kid.'

drug addict choir

2214941_29ed78b4c9, originally uploaded by Triangular Sun.

Today's screenplay character

is a seventeen-year-old, female conceptual artist who works with small, freshwater fish.

Possbility, energy

There are so many good things to be done. So many excursions down so many avenues. This is when issues of positivism and negativism are rendered impotent - such considerations serving as obstacles to wonderful production, development, collaboration, excitement, observation, progression.
Remember this.

Today's screenplay character

is a long-distance truck driver who is filthy, but has straight white teeth and can't close his mouth properly, and smells strongly of iron.

Happy Saturnalia

1928hl, originally uploaded by Triangular Sun.

December 17, the day of the Saturnalia.

The Saturnalia was originally celebrated in Ancient Rome for only a day, but it was so popular it soon lasted a week, despite Augustus' efforts to reduce it to three days, and Caligula's, to five. This important holy day (feriae publicae) was for more than fun and games. Saturnalia was a time to honor the god of sowing, Saturn. But again, like our Christmas, it was also a festival day (dies festus) on which a public banquet was prepared.
It was a time of celebration, visits to friends, and gift-giving, particularly of wax candles (cerei), and earthenware figurines (sigillaria). The best part of the Saturnalia (for slaves) was the temporary reversal of roles. Masters served meals to their slaves who were permitted the unaccustomed luxuries of leisure and gambling. Clothing was relaxed and included the peaked woollen cap that symbolized the freed slave. A member of the familia (family plus slaves) was appointed Saturnalicius princeps, roughly, Lord of Misrule.

Yesterday I was

thinking about the flooding in the Phillipines as a result of deforestation, and considering that cynicism towards society almost seems like a default attitude to meet with an awareness that there are so many grossly destructive, unsustainable, wasteful, damaging, ugly, selfish sorts of behaviour being wrought upon the earth, as though the fact that it sustains our existence is too big to comprehend, or our brains are not capable of compiling the impact of billions of individuals' existences. I think this makes it all the more important to value the things which are good, as a means of preserving the positive things about the human race, in the hope that we won't all ooze down the declined plane of capitalism and forget what it is, or what it should be, to be alive. And that the best thing to do is live an existence which is good to your environment as well as yourself.
And here's to the Hilltop Youths.

THANKYOU, originally uploaded by Triangular Sun.

Norge

hus%20vetur%20204x178, originally uploaded by Triangular Sun.

Where Maath and I will be residing later next year.

Today's screenplay character

is a white middle-class cultural theorist whose work focuses on hip hop and the recontextualisation of 'bling'.

Perhaps I will try to delineate a new screenplay character every day, although this project might end up being confined to the days when I am locked on to my work computer, giant electromagnet-style.

checklist1, originally uploaded by Triangular Sun.

I never knew that Art Spiegelman had a hand in the production of the Garbage Pail Kids. Not that I knew who Art Spiegelman was when I was in grade five.

Rats in the walls, rats in the bed

I was roused from a dream at maybe 3am this morning in what seemed like a logical progression to the dream's narrative, my brain swimming thickly and groggily, the cat restless and chirrupy right next to my head, and slowly my eyes pulling into focus a form which accompanies the cat and which turns out to be a D E A D _ R A T. Oh my god. Matthew scooping it up with a Fortean Times and catapulting it out the door. Puss chirping excitedly all the while, fishing for accolades. Well, you can imagine the sort of sleep I had, contaminated dead rat territory next to my head on the wall side, and the horror thought that the cat's usual trajectory between the door and that part of the bed is through the narrow space between our heads and the wall - did I have dead rat-tail dragged across my delicate rose-like cheek as I slept? Only Puss will ever know.

Art

For how long, I wonder, has it been the case that the most important quality of a successful artist is his/her ability to integrate his/her influences as a means of synthesizing work? I know many a successful artist for whom this is the basis of their art production. Some of whom have amazing minds and are worthy of high level respect. But it’s an interesting phenomenon; it is a true sort of death of the avant-garde, but one which is borne of ever trying to remain ‘cutting edge’. Maybe this is more symptomatic of Melbourne than most places. But then I look at people like Matthew Barney and say, the core of his success is his ability to draw from, and reconfigure. The same goes for bjork. But then I suppose Matthew Barney gets some extra credit for synthesizing these new structures and then carefully saturating them in the syrup of his own outlook, black forest cake-style.
But many’s the artist who gets away with this synthesis without putting in much cerebral effort at all. I can see why it irks people of Fiona Macdonald’s era (Fiona Macdonald in this context being imaged as banner-toting Liberty a’la ‘Liberty leading the people’, forefronting the argument on behalf of the mostly silent brothers and sisters.) I mean those late eighties-early nineties conceptual/abject artists working in Sydney/Melbourne, sure they were deriving from Mike Kelley USW but I think the difference is, they were deriving principles and ideas, and developing them, and then translating them into their own work. These days it seems to be undertaken on more of an aesthetic level.