You could fry an egg out here

It's so fucking humid today, I've come over all Slash.
Regarding the coiffeur, of course. This happy little fellow might also prove instructional.

Live and Learn

I was given this book for my birthday (among other thoughtful presents):


I haven't started reading it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. I'd like to be like Joan Didion. She seems so collected, so smart. I feel that I will be smarter, happier, more focused and engaged when I am reading this book. Those qualities will transfer themselves to me.

Lying to George

George is a little bit freaky in this scene, but his passion is magnificent.

Liable for something

I left my bike locked up on Abercrombie St for two nights and it had the wheels stolen off it.

I drank a lot of different kinds of alcohol and suffered a terrible hangover.

I feel all right about these things, because I'm willing to be responsible for the consequences of my actions. Just gotta wear 'em.

What I don't feel so great about is my lack of willpower in getting things done. Doing what needs doing. I don't feel great taking responsibility for the consequences of my inaction. I"m trying to think of an example ... not doing or going to something I said I would and hence feeling empty or guilty.

On the upside, I do a mean lamb roast and potatoes that are to die for.

It's raining, it's raining again.

Well, it's pelting down. I'm going to pour meself a whiskey and go fire up the Weber nonetheless. Fuck it, eh.

Guess what?

This is the third post this month with that title.

*sigh*

Wherefore imagination?

[today was a Good Day]

Guess what?

Yes, it's true. I'm a cake-scoffing age-pluserer.

Oh here's a story - I was at a birthday party once, and I overheard a conversation about capricorns so I cut into it. We talked about what capricorns are meant to be like (as one does). She says, wouldn't it be weird to just bump into someone who has the same birthday as you. I say, yeah, if I ever met Martin Luther King Jr, I would find that strange. She laughs and says she'll probably never meet Elvis, so it might never happen. That rings a bell - what date is your birthday, I say? January 15th, she says. Huh, me too, I say.

And then we fell into a big hole that had been created in the space-time continuum, and - oh, but that's another story.

Lyrics I like IV (okay so it's the whole song)

Go without,
Til the need seeps in,
You low animal,
Collect your novel petals for the stem,

And glow,
Glow,
Melt and flow,
Eviscerate your fragile frame,
And spill it out on the ragged floor,
A thousand different versions of yourself,

And if the old guard still offend,
They got nothing left on which you depend,
So enlist every ounce,
Of your bright blood,
And off with their heads,

Jump from the hook,
You're not obliged to swallow anything you despise,
See, those unrepenting buzzards want your life,
And they got no right,
As sure as you have eyes,
They got no right,

Just put yourself in my shoes,
And see that I do what I do,
Because the old guard still offend,
(Their pudgy hearts and slimy hands)
We got nothing left on which we depend,
So we waste every ounce,
Of your bright blood,
And off with their heads,

Jump from the hook,
And you're not obliged,
To swallow anything that you despise

Lyrics I like III

Honey I'm a prize
and you're a catch
and we're a perfect match.

Lyrics I like II

You won't be happy with me
But give me one more chance
You won't be happy anyway

Why do we still live here
In this repulsive town?
All our friends are in New York

Lyrics I like I

I know
that girl you found
keeps that kind of window closed

Huh what right uh

I think I am too self-centred for music. How eye-openingly ... I don't know. Lyrics make me overstimulated.

I am listening to a mix CD I made recently to give to a friend. It's really good. Right now I can only listen to Led Zeppelin or the Beatles or the Velvet Underground. Or quite a lot of other things. Hmm.

When I started blogging, it was this kind of free diaristic kind of thing. Now I have all these phantom audiences of readers (you know who you are! ha. I even know who you are, mostly. probably) that I consider when I 'blog'. I like having readers. My ego likes it. But now I think of the diferent audiences and self-inhibit. Not that this was ever a tell-all deep thing anyway. But maybe it might have been.

I feel that I've blandified.

Anyway. I've got to work on that.

I am moving furniture. I've been all over the shop today. Up, down, up. Unreleased energy, then tired, then antsy, then happy. Now moving drawers and shelves. At 12.30 am. Ah! Peaches is on. Must dash.

I've got a short little span of attention and oh, my nights are so long /Paul Simon

No spoilers

No Country For Old Men was a lot like Blood Simple meets Fargo. That's all I have to say about it.

Oh my gawd

I just ate an entire packet of Green and Black's milk chocolate.

If I had my time all over again, I would change nothing. Maybe I'd leave a bit for later so I could still be eating it now.

I'm all high now. I wish I lived in Switzerland. Think of all the fine quality confectionery. I'd be fat as a mountain.

2008

Welcome to previously unacknowledged readers.

Life in 2008 is going to be interesting. It is interesting already. I have felt like I have a new life with greater frequency of late. I mean, lately I have more frequently experienced the feeling that my life has taken an interesting new turn. That's what I mean.

I like it: it's good. I also know the most amazing people, for which I consider myself very fortunate. I also have a strong feeling of my own autonomy that I don't always feel. Instead of the guilty feeling that it's all about me. [Which it still, of course, is.] I'm feeling perspectival clarity instead of the regularly programmed perspectival distortion. Or maybe I'm just distorting things positively for a change, who knows. I believe it's perspectival accuracy.

Just got to kick this fucked up sleeping pattern.

And eat something.

I'm going to watch No Country For Old Men tonight.

Guess what?

After 18 months of sitting on it, I have finally made the amendments to my Masters paper.

I am going to get it printed now and start the next round of administrative blah so I can graduate in April.

Yes, I am a powerful, self-actualised and in-control human [now], since you asked.

Post title

My blog has got heaps suckier lately. It's not specific enough. Gotta work on that.

Must. Push. Envelope.

I had this great idea for an exhibition today as I was walking down Cleveland St on my dinner break. Well, I thought it was great at the time, I still think it's very fine. In about 24 hours I'll think it's really banal. In about two weeks I'll know if it's stupid. If I still want to do it in six months it might get done. So entrenched is the procrastination; so essential is the forward planning.

Anyway. My idea. [Oh - it's been all built up now.] I would hire a visual merchandiser to install the works for me in the best way that they could. In a window space, of course. They could use whatever fancy techniques they have. I would give them a bunch of Fimo objects and off they could go. And I could, like, audition different people by asking them to describe on the phone what it is they do. I could record what they're saying and then make a wowie zowie superficial and graphic animation that would illustrate what they're saying. This video would show all by itself inside the gallery.

I think I'm going to pitch this to someone. I like it.

My art ideas are like dreams and my dreams are like art ideas. I suppose that's because both happen in my head.

Ho hum.

I have been thinking a lot about Adrian Mole lately, the TV show specifically. I really think it was very good.

Tonight

I tried to go to a christmas party, but I had on thongs so the fascists wouldn't let me in, even though I was on the guest list (a whole other pointless story). I have done a LOT of walking tonight, which is OK because it's stopped raining every ten minutes. My allergic sister has stopped sleeping on my floor, I'm gonna get a WHOPPING tax return (sayonara, debt!), and I ... I ... I don't know what else.

Life is OK. I blew off my work christmas party because it was all too hard and I was a bit low energy after my two-hour afternoon nap. Is it any wonder I can't get any work done?

Meh. Life is good, anyway. Things are moving and changing. Gonna go to work, go to work, go to work. Be less poor, be less busy. Go to the beach and remember how to cook. Try to remember how to cook.

/stream of consciousness resolutions-ing

Sometimes I even amaze myself

I am such a procrastinator

I get so distracted. I can't concentrate on writing.

Any excuse to not do it.

I'm writing about Kelis right now. It's in context.

Life is pretty good.

The other night

I made an artwork for a fundraiser that I really like.

If you wanna buy it, it's here, and it's cheap. Or, you could not buy it and then it will be returned to me, which I would like. But then maybe someone random would buy it and I'd never see it again, which I wouldn't like either.

I'm tempted to go buy it myself. What's the upchuck factor on that?

American Psycho has won

I finally feel sick and dirty. Previously I was just compulsively reading, fascinated and even relating. I suppose I could be glad that morally appropriate emotions have returned, but instead I just feel dark and empty now.

I killed a tiny cupboard moth and felt guilt and dismay, an experience I've never had before.

I just need Bateman to get caught now. I fear he won't. But at least it will end. Not much longer ... I am going to finish it, so I'm clearly not that disgusted.

I have begun skimming over some of the more disturbing passages, very long conversations about types of mineral water carbonation, for example.

Today

I was walking home from work through the park and there was a young couple talking about and looking at something sitting between them.
"...outlaw,"
I heard as I approached them.
"He's a good boy," she responded
"Not too good; he's got a twinkle in his eye," he said.

I looked, discreetly, and was surprised to see not a baby or a puppy, but a 1L water bottle on the bench as the subject of their discussion.

I was a bit like 'huh'?

Then I remembered this scene, from whence I believe this dialogue was drawn:



I cannot imagine a play of Raising Arizona, and I suppose I shall never really understand.

Brief political interlude: How Should One Vote?

What a good tool. GetUp have revived my hope in hope. That, and the fact that my father, who I would certainly vote for if I could, is volunteering for the Greens. That revives my hope in hope too, people I trust doing things that they believe will help others. I like idealism. I wish there were more idealists active out there.

I am also digging the Colbert Report. Truthiness for all!

And making lots of things. Just wait! They're so good, my new things I've made/I'm making.

NITBTPM

November is "too busy to post" month.

Another day nothing done.

All the disadvantages of being frozen, but none of the benefits.

I need to get past some crap work I don't want to do (and haven't been able to make myself do) so I'm able to do my own thing.

I'm sitting on two chairs (or whatever that German phrase is). Can't do new thing until old thing I won't do is done.

Meantime, my life trickles away quietly.

I am reading

This:

It's really, really good.

This sentence is a link to a short but good Self interview that's characteristically cut-to-the-chase-y

Not that I'm a graphics nerd

... because I'm totally not at all. But this conversion of quirky-yet-ordinary indie film still to grabby awesome poster image is pretty good.


Shazam!


Basically I just like how they've souped up the sleeping bags.

Five More Weeks

Man, I wish they'd hurry up and have this election already. I can't stand the suspense.

some stay dry and others feel the pain

Man, we just held the nicest dinner party. Sam and Felicity and Chris came. They are all new friends, and the nicest/bestest.

I made salmon with kaffir limes leaves and ginger, a rocket and parmesan salad and roast vegies with garlic and rosemary. We had baba ganoosh and yummy cheese first. We used the lovely embroidered green tablecloth. Maddy made chocolate mousse with cinnamon/honey yoghurt and bluberries for dessert.

It was good!

We drank three bottles of wine and half a bottle of rose.

Life good etc.

Work Two

Fimo. Fishing line. Existential crisis.

Together at last!

Here is where the sky is blue

I am staying at my parents' house while I prepare work for a show in their city.

They have the most beautiful garden, which my mother in particular obsessively works on. It's tasteful and alive and not fussy, and there are secret places and different levels to discover all around the perimeter of the house.

My mum has a great sense of colour and design, but is loose enough with the garden that it has an energy and a sense of a life of its own.


My dad used to grow a lot of vegetables, but because of the lack of any rain, ever, he's sworn off it. My mother has invented all sorts of crazy water recycling systems involving drip systems made out of pipes, hoses, plastic bottles and a customised wheelie bin. They've ripped up all the dead brown lawns and put in brown, I dunno, woody stuff. Chips. You know, it gets stuck all over your feet. Because it doesn't rain where they live any more. Ever.



Visiting them in spring makes me want to move to a country acreage and make compost. Unfortunately, I have no money for that and would probably find it too lonely by myself.

Signs

This stuff is from a show called Metadrawing. It's Fimo and cotton thread. No paper. Poor quality images. But you can see that. Work's good, but. That is all.

I Can't Sleep

Stupid self-sabotaging brain.

Seasonally adjusted

I was offline

now I am back online

me me me

back back back

yay etc

Anyway, what I wanted to say was that it's getting more summery and today I even went for a swim. I love the energy you get when the seasons change.

Last night I watched that new Joe Strummer movie. I have scary lust after circa'80 Joe Strummer. I mean, look (Joe on left, ahem):


And of course:


I like this one too:


Look, I just like him that's all.

Don't worry, regular art-related programming will return shortly.

other bits of work

This is interesting

It's about a ruling to do with artist's intentions.

work one

Um ...

You know when you go to the kitchen or wherever to get something, but by the time you get there you've forgotten what you wanted, but when you go back to where you were when you wanted it you remember what it was again?* That's me on this blog. What the hell was I gonna say?

Cripes.

*NB could be just me. I hope not

! Help!

What should I call my show/video? It is a video of my working desk, like, a horizonatal pan of it. Then there's another horizontal pan (I mean a tracking shot, I guess) from a higher angle. Then one from a higher angle still. The desk has on it the fake objects I make out of Fimo along with the real objects and a bunch of normal working crap like pens and shit. Some things that you can see from the front you can't see from the top, and vice versa. Then the camera does a continuous aerial shot of the desk, stopping to 'look' at various things and framing them into compositions based on similarities between objects. All the while there are subtitles that get sillier and sillier as you go along, telling you how to look at the objects, and what to think about while you look at them.

It's fairly obscure.

You've got 10 hours to make suggestions.

Throw me a line here!

Have you ever seen this?

odd feeling in belly shock

I feel WEIRD.

What's that they say, I feel peculiar I think I should go outside or something?

I have all these projects still to be done. Yesterday I told my supervisor who is working full time and finishing his law degree on the weekends that the only way out is through.

Why can't I take my own advice?

Take it already! Jeez.

I made this

And then somebody bought it off me and put it in their dining room and sent me a picture of it on Facebook.

Teasing out step three

Teasing out step two

Teasing out step one

NLAANETMCAT (after What)

"But they don't say if you have too much, what will happen."

What kind of person, really? This guy could be fixing your roof. Watch out.

I am going to blog more.

Inhibitions, schminhibitions.

That is all.

I'm going through chan-ges

I looked at my keys yesterday and realised that the whole bunch has entirely changed from like four months ago. I have new studio keys, house keys, gallery keys and I've got rid of old house keys and work keys. I don't know my own keys. I have to examine them carefully every time I want to unlock something. Yes, this is a not veiled at all metaphor.

There are a lot of people leaving town/having left of late, and I haven't been very happy about it. I've been all, oh poor me, all my friends are abandoning me, wah wah wah. But I've got it together now. It makes space for all those new friends not yet known well enough and the old friends currently being neglected.

As you can see, everything is always all right and exactly as it would be in the best of all possible worlds. Or whatever the man says.

Loose End

I am not sure what to do with myself. So many big productions (shows x 2, new job begun, moving whole house, parental visit) just completed. So many big productions yet to be mounted. I am not sure where to start.

Perhaps I should do my tax. Or write my Asialink application. Or proposals for shows. Or go to the studio and do some work.

I am not sure. All of these things need doing.

Of course, I haven't seen the Simpsons movie yet ... is it any good?

The Other Show

This is the other show.

Go on, wish me luck!

But if you're in Fremantle, try this one instead. The bottom one with the great picture of Sam's work.

SMTD, SLT

I've acronymed the post title as it's faster.

Well, in the last two weeks I've installed two exhibitions, started a new job, and moved an entire house to a new house. It was heavy, too.

Good things are coming out of my show ... I've got group shows coming out of my ears now, studio visits. Fame and fortune to follow, fer shere. Any minute now.

*crickets*

Etc etc.

AAaaanyway.

I'm starting a book on who will win the 40,000-big-ones travelling scholarship I'm a finalist for. There are 24 of us and my money is on a top four that I've carefully assessed to be the most likely to win. It's abstract money, of course. I don't know how to run gambling so that it's risk-avoidant. Or whatever it's called. That would be something it'd be good to learn about.

My new house is also my old house. I lived here a year and a half ago, for a year. I must be growing up - now I only move house every 18 months instead of every year.

What Emma Did Next

She came down, that's what.

DIY DYK

Did You Know that you can get iron-on wood? It's veneer that comes in a strip with glue on the back and you just iron it onto another piece of board.

Iron-on carpentry, who'd'a thunk it? Mr Gorbachev, tear down those walls (between masculine and feminine expressions of the domestic, of course).

In other news, I am all underslept. So I had a nap this afternoon and I'm all whacked out now. Also, I made a clock out of Fimo that really tells time!

I've got cabin fever, a bit. So I'm off to be mildly social for a bit.

Ooh, I. Ooh, I. Ooh, I. Ooh, I (just know that something good is gonna happen)

So I decided tonight that I am, big-picture-wise, on track for my upcoming show, and that even if it's not as good as I wanted or not as much work made as I had planned, it is only to the degree that it is always like that and therefore normal.

I will still have to work my 'ass' off all week but that's OK, I'm in the zone now and it finally feels OK. Unsolved problems notwithstanding.

In other news, I saw Mitch at a party the other night and told him about the dream that starred him in the lead role. It totally freaked him out - I barely know him. Now I think he's scared of me. I am the weird inappropriate chick. I thought it was just going to be an unusually good icebreaker at the party... but I don't regret my candidness. If he can't handle starring in the dreams of random strangers ... Naw, bless 'im, e's all right.

See, nothing can taint the good mood this moment.

It's passage of time, Neil

I have become a scrabulous freak. It's the best method of procrastination I've found in ages.

I'm not very good though. I might make a Fimo scrabble tile. A high scoring one, mwa ha ha.

Friendship requires honesty

If I were this blog's friend, its true friend, I'd take it aside and confront it.

"You've changed," I'd say. "Take a long hard look at yourself and see what you've become."

I'd only be telling it because I loved it.

Dream 25/7/2007

Mitch Cairns has a series of huge shows as an immensely successful artist. I attend an artists' talk at his National Gallery of Australia survey show in Canberra. He is clumsy and inarticulate and utterly charms everyone, including me. His works keep breaking and falling off the wall but somehow this seems to be part of what they're supposed to be like. He stresses out and takes off - I try to follow/find him through all that labyrinthine concrete architecture. No-one else is around. I realise the gallery is a space station, which strangely relaxes me because at least the art scene has disappeared.

Sorry Mitch, I don't know that this has anything to do with you. I can only claim the license of unconsciousness.

It should be this easy

You know, just pay your 5S, read your magazine, and get on with your octagonal painting.



*NB: 'S' denotes hours of sweat (quantity in tonnes).

I don't know what to believe any more

Publicly embarrassment

See what can happen? See??

Good things are happening. I feel good about them today. A couple of days ago I felt like shit and everything was horrible.

That's how you know you are alive, you see.

The joy
!

The suffering
!

I have so much work to do I'm frankly unsure that it's all going to get done. Am I subjecting myself to a humiliating publicly embarrassment? ('humiliating embarrassment' - that's tautological, you know).

I'm freaking out a little bit. Not today though. La di da.

Dream 30/6/07: Portrait of my father as a blue budgie

I am in a travelling prize exhibition where the work is about birds, specifically budgies. I have proposed a certain work and my proposal has been accepted but I haven't made the work yet. We travel together to the location of the show; somewhere distant, tropical? Luke Shelley and others from the gosford emerging show are there. I am making four budgies (out of fimo) who will sit on a single perch inside of a white, round fimo cage. It will be some kind of metaphor for a family. Other people are installing the work in an atmosphere of friendly camaraderie and i am sitting on the floor making mine. I start with a yellow bird but soon realise that a canary is not the same as a budgie and have to start again. The next one I make is blue, and I find it hard to make a realistic shape of the bird's body; also, i keep finding real wings and feathers in my work, which annoys me ... it's supposed to be fimo. I get stuck into it and am amazed at the forms I can construct. Then I realise the bird I've made is much too large and I have to make it smaller. Then I realise it can be the 'father' bird so it's ok.

I have fimoed my own handwriting

Yes. Yes, I have.

In contrast to my previous mood of late

Teigan has been up from Melbourne to visit. As a going away present he is getting me some cold and flu tablets. Isn't that nice? It shows he really cares. Right now the sun is coming through the window onto the back of my head and neck in such a way; I can't tell you. You would just have to feel it to understand.

The Particular Pleasures of Posting

I mean, there just aren't the opportunities for alliteration on Facebook, are there? Blogging better because it is infinitely influencabler.

Somebody call the meta-police! Metapuh-lease!

I'm going to regret this [later on] in the morning.

What I Did In My Holidays I Mean Life Lately

Went to Melbourne for exhibition stop sold a little work stop no its true I wouldn't shit ya stop it was very cheap stop had fun hanging out with teigan drinking a lot and inhaling secondhand smoke but this has all come to an end now ha stop bought a great table on ebay for my new studio no this is back in sydney now stop yes new studio for me to be productive in stop i told you i was going to get one stop also a good chair stop photos soon stop maybe stop went climbing for the first time in two months stop couldnt hack it for long stop must stop get stop fit stop

yeah yeah i know its more tiring to read than it is to write

stop

just hadda sneak that in

stop [etc etc etc]

Regrets, I've had a few ...

I'm going to go out on a cliche limb here and state the bleedingly obvious. I have been neglecting my lil la di da world lately. We used to be so close, and now - well, I don't know if this Facebook thing is going to last but I just feel that it's what I want to explore right now. It's like, I want to take the opportunity I lost with Myspace and do it right this time ... I don't want to miss this opportunity, you know? This feeling might not come again in a hurry. It's just what feels right, right now. I mean, the blog and I have had some good times, and I know we'll always have more ...

Oh for pete's sake. I've just been lazy and inhibited, alright?

OK, newsy post coming right up.

Teaser

I will be posting again soon.

I didn't know

I didn't know Spalding Gray had killed himself! I didn't even know he had been dead for the last three years. I'm glad I didn't find out until I finished reading Swimming to Cambodia. I was wondering what he was up to these days while I read it. I guess you could tell he was kind of troubled, in a perky, functional, engaged sort of way. Still, though. It's disappointing.

Waking up late dreams 10/6/07

First, some of my friends picked me up, held me aloft and dance-carried me upstairs in a huge abandoned warehouse. They put me in front of a window from where I could see a bunch of boys who were a geeky crew in my primary school were dancing, totally kitsch Broadway jazz-style, fantastically choreographed, in relay up the road, performing just for my benefit. I was happy and laughing.

Then, I was on holiday in Bavarian summertime when everyone realised that the planet had just been invaded. Large Vogon-like creatures appeared and made an announcement that from now on we were all going to be rounded up and controlled and spied on and that was that. They made everyone get out of the swimming pool and line up, like squashed flat against one another, and to march towards some particular destination. Shinmi was crying and I held her hand to comfort her. I said "I think we have to do what they say" and we all started filing towards whatever place they wanted, probably some kind of work camp. We kept stepping on each others' feet as there was no space between us. We marched past some old industrial buildings that had been converted into a film set and we could see people inside still talking to each other and not marching; resisting? I jumped out of my line and snuck inside; they had been having some party so everyone had wine. Rachel and Holly were there on a shoot and we all hugged. The film people were trying to work out what to do. I felt very strongly that it was the end of everything.

Just for Fun - Totally Random

Having previously been told to stop whining (my life is pretty good, apparently [tone clarification: rampantly sarcastic]), I would like to post the last thing that made me laugh out loud (and there have been a few today; I guess it's a Good Day).

First I should mention that I was perusing the groups on Facebook to which a certain friend of mine named Bobbi-Jo belongs. Apologies in advance for any context-deprivation-induced lack of humorousness that may be experienced.



Note the related groups. Who are these Bobbi-Jo's? My one isn't like that ...

Also: will this love affair I'm having with Facebook ever end?

Who and why

So I'm trying to work out which internationally acclaimed artist I would most want to study with if I had the choice. It's for an application. You know what? I think no-one. Maybe Bruce Nauman. As if. Anyway, I just read an [old] interview with him where he explains why he doesn't have an assistant. He says something like that would mean he would have to have so much of the work thought out in advance already, in order to hand the work over to someone else to do, that he wouldn't be able to do the thinking out and working out of the problems that to him is the work. Of course I'm hyper-mega-paraphrasing. So I'd like to work with him. That is, the only club I want to be a member of isn't taking applications, which is why I'd like to join.

Art and travel plans can be very inhibiting, and explaining things can be a feeling-of-discovery-killer. Sometimes you just need to make/go. Or is this just an excuse for procrastinating on that stupid application. What do I want to do with all that money in the unlikely event that someone gives it to me? Whatever sounds good that comes up that I can get into, alright?

*sigh*

Oh Facebook, how quickly we've got to know each other ...

Long-awaited residency post

So I've just been on this artist residency? They give you a huge studio (and apartment) in the country, full of light and 20 minutes drive on a windy dirt road to the nearest crap town to encourage you to do lots of work.

When I arrived I was all 'what am I going to do with all this space?'


As much fun as it was skipping around while listening to loud music, I did feel that I should do some work. And much as I love naycha, I don't really wanna make art about this:

So I did some things like this:

this,

um, and this,

you know, and some other stuff ... some videos ... can't post 'em, they're not finished.

I felt like I got a lot done but now when I think about it I'm not so sure ...

Anyway. A month in the country is pretty good. Sorry this post is so anticlimactic but at least now we can all get on with our lives.

I gots to learn how to customise properly

Hey, what part of this post title didn't you understand? How many times I have to type it?

Huh? Oh, sorry, did you mean me?

Um, yes, it's true, I'm back home. I've been busy wasting time with Facebook.

I know, I know, but at least it aint Myspace.


They're all fucken snobs.

Prodctive and ennobling poverty Days Five and Six

Blah blah procrastinated watched a movie caught up with peeps, packed, made lists, had meetings about stuff, made phone calls, paid some bills. Slept badly. Took all the drawings stuck up on my wall off my wall and put them in a box. Time to make some new drawings. Note to self: remember to draw triangles, cubes, scissors, cylinders, arrows, letters, clouds, rainbows, pins, blah blah etc blah. Went to pub full of hillbilly chic and porkpie hats. So hot right now. Were given birthday cake by strangers. Touched. Tomorrow driving to the bush to focus and be productive properly. Also opshop and make May of the Dead costume. No further excuses to be accepted.

Productive and ennobling poverty Day Four

Wake feeling stressed out and overwhelmed. No time, no time, no time. Call J to try and postpone planned collaborative work for weekend. Make lists. Rush off only just on time to mind gallery for entire afternoon. Arrive at gallery. Stare out of window vapidly, accidentally driving away those passersby whose eyes I momentarily catch. Make more lists; realise I am duplicating lists produced earlier in day. Day saved by chatty friends who drop by to visit. Talk art all day.

Finish up. Curse yesterday's laziness while struggling to fit bicycle in back of two door hatchback. Pizza for dinner. Calm down slightly. More talk about art. Let flatmate down via lack of supportive gig attendance.

Nothing produced today but lists!

Productive and ennobling poverty Day Three

Spend inordinate amount of time writing simple letter to get new studio (in which to be productive, natch). Feel warm community-friendly feeling due to proximity of desired studio to house. Still running late so must drive letter up road. Holly's opening. Ride bike into city in accordance with new healthy intentions. Feel slack as didn't help Holly install show as promised. Drown sorrows with three beers. Accept lift home, leave bike in town.

Productive and ennobling poverty Day Two:

Awake early in accordance with First Day of Rest Of Life mentality. Look at clothes on ebay. Halfhearted attempt to clean room. Watch adults dressed up a wizard and fairies on commercial TV for a good fifteen minutes before snapping out of it. Yum cha with the ladies and first band meeting. Realise we need instruments. Committed to this for next meeting, which may more fairly be labelled practice, hopefully. Am ahead on this as already have instrument, behind as can't play it yet.

Quiet night at home. Eat fresh salmon. Lots of email and music. Feel warm and good. Decide need more music due to being out of touch. Work on room cleaning project. Sister comes over to tell me all her gossip. Also complains about Gmail and leeches off my internet. Going to sleep with Slaughterhouse 5.

Productive and ennobling poverty Day One:

Awoke hungover. Too ill to live. Cancel morning activities. Back to bed.

Afternoon movie. Companion wants to smoke dope so watch movie wet due to all discreet places at Circular Quay being rainy. Movie all right (Paris Je T'aime). Too much jumping around but quite good bits. Meet J re collaborative work planned for weekend. Drink Diet Coke during meeting, perk up, feel creative.

Home to sleep early.

uuurggh

I am so TIRED

I have been burning the proverbial at both ends.

One more day of work! Then - ennobling and productive poverty!

Should I try to get the dole while I'm away on my residency? Did I tell you about that?

A fuckin' hothouse flower!

I feel like I'm disappearing. I can't tell if it's existential or social anxiety.

Apparently change of any kind triggers feelings of grief. Even positive changes.

I just had this memory of when I finished high school and i was moving away to go to university, as were a few other people that I knew. There was a party for Calum and a party for someone else, in honour of their leaving. I got a bit sad because no-one was throwing a party for me. My boyfriend at the time (the sweetie) desperately started gathering together my friends to have a small thing, and when I found out about the five people who were coming I felt even sadder and made him cancel it. Because I felt that, after 18 years living in one place, if there weren't enough people interested to make a proper party, what was the point?

I still feel like this, all the time. Trying to gather together some lame party. I can't believe that I still have these same adolescent insecurities. Stupid desire for the approval of, like, everyone. Just the approval of the people I love is not enough. I don't know what I'm trying to prove.

While reading I want to be a writer

The reason I said that loving a writer’s work can be lonely is that in order to read (or be read to) you give yourself up/over while the words are being read. You can connect those words to yourself and feel alive while reading, but when you put the book down, it’s like you don’t live in that world any more. You can still take pleasure from the memory of it (especially when there’s still more of that world to experience, ie you haven’t finished the book), and enjoy that sort of secret knowledge that you carry with you while the feeling lasts, but it’s ultimately not the same world that everyone around you inhabits. It's too private. Even when you share the experience of reading, like discussing a favourite writer with someone else, there’s something cold about it; it’s so different to that experience of reading, of living in that other world. Because it’s happening inside your head, and we all know the bitter truth about how accessible our heads are to other people (not very).

It’s a little weird, I suppose, to find loneliness in something pleasurable and life-affirming, simply because the experience can’t be sustained. Glass half empty etc.

And lo, thusly it was become truth

At the stinky pub tonight Brennan made me repeat the following affirmations:
"I have the passion"
"I have the passion and I'm going to build it back up again" (don't question the contradictions, it's a direct quote)

Then I volunteered the following;
"I believe in love"
"I have freedom and financial independence" (he liked that one)

Now, quietly (just between you and me, eh?), I'd just like to add;
"I am the kind of person I'd be happy to know, goddamnit, and people who can't appreciate that are just idiots"

La di da

I am listening to the Animal Collective. They make me feel great. Or maybe it's the sun, or the fact that I'm solving this icky video problem.

My video was going to be bits like this




But now it's gonna look more like this (below - damn! how to fix this?).


Plus some other ways. You have to picture it moving yourself. I can't give the ending away.

Expression of indignant incredulity

Blogger won't let me tag posts with exclamation marks. I mean, what up!!

In other news, I still have NO INTERNET at home.

See how we suffer?

Kurt Vonnegut Up In Heaven Now Shock

Kurt Vonnegut died. I have been feeling uneasy about his health for a while now, well, just knowing that he was pretty old, knowing that we don’t last forever etc etc. I knew he’d go soonish. It breaks my heart, a little bit.

I’m reading Jailbird, coincidentally, at the moment. It’s a really good one. I always found his world and his voice so utterly faithful. So direct, so honest, such clear vision (by which I mean I related to his perspective, I suppose. I get that that’s subjective). He’s pretty much my favourite.

There’s something lonely about loving a writer's work, ain't there?

What can you say, really *sigh*. If we could only conquer time and space!

Presumptions of ethnicity

I just ordered some goulash at a soup place for lunch, and the guy serving it looked at me like I had said the secret password. "Where are you from?" he asks (I'm assuming he was Croatian, as the soup in question was in fact called Croatian goulash). "Canberra," I answer, disingenuously. He looks slightly disappointed. I take pity and elaborate. "I know that's not what you mean, but there's nothing to tell," I say. At a loss, he wanders off to serve someone else.

This is something that happens to me all the time. People think I've got something where there's nothing. Examples from the last seven days:
1. Greek people at the election speaking to me in Greek and being confused when I can't understand them. Their first words to me in English are "you're not Greek". "Sorry!" I say.
2. I told this story to ****, and he said "mmm, what IS your, you know ..." "Ethnic background?" "Nothing," I supply.
"Well it can't be nothing ..." he says, fairly enough. I sigh. "Anglo-Welsh mongrel." End of conversation, confirming my suspicions that he was, in fact, looking for a more interesting answer. Like, my parents were refugees from the Armenian genocide, and I grew up in a small weatherboard house in Marrickville, where my Yaya sang me to sleep with traditional lullabies.
3. Last week, a girlfriend (as my aunties down the south coast charmingly call their female friends) made some allusion to my Jewishness. "Huh?" I counter. "But I'm not Jewish" "Oh!" she says, taken aback. "For some reason I assumed, because [insert ex-boyfriend's name here] is ...," trailing off into a pit of illogicality.

Etc etc etc. A normal week.

I have a vague exotic [read: woggy] look, apparently. According to peoples' visual assessments, I should be either Greek, Italian, Croatian, Hungarian (but that's silly), Jewish or I dunno what. Those are the ones I get the most.

So I think I should come up with an ethnicity for myself that doesn't leave people so let-down. Suggestions below, please.

I don't mind blogging into the void, actually

It makes one less inhibited.

Let's rephrase; it would make one less inhibited. In the blog, natch.

Another 'post not posted' post

I was going to post the most ugly invite in the world but I've decided that it would be churlish.

You'll just have to be content with a mental image of me shaking my head sadly.

Also: note to electoral commissioner - next time make voters mark their ballots in red pen. This will save electoral officers a significant amount of back pain/eye strain. Also, any voter who picks the ballot up and says 'is this the liberal paper?' as though we hand out one ballot for libs and one for labs, should have the ballot snatched back off them and not be allowed to vote.

I wish I spoke Greek. And some other languages. let's say ... Japanese, Arabic, French, Spanish, Hungarian.

People. I just don't understand 'em. (Maybe once I get on top of all those languages ...)

A man falls into a hole ...

I've been hanging out with a bunch of new friends lately. We've been spending SO MUCH time together. It's starting to take over my life! They're a great bunch, super-smart, motivated, committed, witty ... I have to be pretty alert to stay on top of the repartee (I know ... me!). They make me feel smart too. But they're all (to a one) TOTAL workaholics, so it's kind of predictable when I see them that it's all going to be about them and their jobs. Or their hopeless love-lives that never go anywhere. Sometimes it's a bit much and I have to take a break. But I always come back for more. And they're all there for me.

I know that the relationship can't last forever, it's too intense. I'd say I'm about ... seven twelfths through the friendship. I suppose you can't put an end point on these things, though. But you know, sometimes they drag out a bit long and the quality suffers, and you realise you've outgrown it.

But you know? Those days I don't see them, I miss 'em. I wonder what CJ and Josh and Donna are all up to. I'm sure they don't miss me. But I love them anyway.

Cross and ranting

Our rent goes up $20 a week ($10 each) in six weeks. Is this the dealbreaker? Should I move out/to Melbourne?

I have a sick feeling in my stomach about this ... it's shit that your rent goes up the same month you stop working. I blame the freakin media, feeding landlords full of stories like this all the goddamn time. That's the roof over my head they're toying with for their petty 'news'!

!!

Trash

It's hard to see what this is. do you want me to explain it, or will that remove the all-too-essential mystique of the art object? Ahem.

Speaking of WTF

WTF etc.

Upgrade

Hey! We're not out of beta yet, so thanks for your patience; here are some of the changes you can expect to see coming up.

-- Job quitted. This will take effect in a couple of months. We sure do appreciate your standing by.
-- Positive influence on life of new computer. Just got a few teething problems to sort out. Rosetta whosa? Intel whatza?
-- Implementation of New Year's resolution* (made in December). Stats on progess so far are as follows: three applications written, two deadlines missed, two applications successful (jury still out on number 3). Looks like I should start applying for something bigger!! (My head?)
-- International rock climbing championship in bag. Workin on it. However, my new climbing shoes are not foot-bindingly tight enough. I can wiggle my toes slightly in them. This could slow my climbing career down. Also not anorexic.
-- New entry in Macquarie Dictionary for past tense verbs; "quitted". Stop the presses! Influence of blogs on modern English etc etc.
-- Interstate travel! Berlin, Hill End, Berlin, Hill End [insert 'weighing' hand gestures here). I know where I'D rather go!!
-- Studio. Am gettin one. A good one. Cheap. In which to make MASTERPIECES. Quibblers refer point number three.
-- Ennobling poverty scheduled for initial implementation around end of April.
-- Love. Room for that in maybe ... early 2008? Apologies for the inconvenience.
-- There's some other stuff. Art etc. Fine print. Supplement to the terms and conditions on its way in the post. If I have your address. And you registered for updates.

Everything I said to everyone about 2007 is true, so far. I'm not even scared of jinxing it. I'm practically like Mystical Medusarer! (Vague Wortwut? Not to self; get better thesaurus. Also new dictionary.) Some of these changes might appear to be subtle, but we insiders know that there is a paradigm shift a-sailing in the open seas.

I so don't know ANYTHING about blogging. La di da.

*Resolution was: apply for everything. Yep, there's pretty much NO reference to absinthe parties in this post.

Dream 31/12/2006

I went to see the Blake Prize for Religious Art exhibition. There were about 150 works on show. Adrian Hobbs had made a kind of karaoke video with Chris Hanrahan and other artists lipsynching to a Christmas song. The production values were unbelievably high but all the singing was out of synch. I realised that most artworks could be seen as having spiritual or religious content and began planning my own entry for next year; a large-scale cartoony Breughel-esque (Paul Noble-y in scale) drawing of bricks dressed as people undertaking their everyday activities in a series of fenced, conjoined circular areas about the size of above-ground swimming pools. The brick-people would have faces, arms and legs, and would be doing things that happen in the lives of ordinary suburban people. Two would be getting married; a teenage one would be cutting herself; stuff like that.

attention to detail

I was supposed to have an early night but I'm just so damn alert! What up?

I have the strongest urge to make stuff or do my website or write applications for things I want and could maybe get or start a band or find a studio or ... that's about it actually. But I promised myself an early night! Something has to give, lifestyle-wise. I need to develop some discipline. Make sacrifices, what! Rome seems like it's never going to get built.

I need to work out a good project that someone in the Northern Territory could support me to do. I don't have any Northern Territory-centric ideas. I want to do a residency at the National Library. That would be so great. They don't exist. Maybe I could get them to create one just for me. I've heard they have little boxes that shoop the books around, like those little train things you imagine they have in coalmines.

I went to Brisbane and it was really good. I like Michael Parekowhai. He make good things um.

Words of more than two syllables in this post that aren't proper nouns:
applications
studio
actually
develop
discipline
sacrifices
residency
national
library
syllables

You know that feeling when you get excited and you go and buy, like, notebooks and sharp pencils or a kayak or whatever, like, purchases that signal your intention to undertake a particular activity? Instead of doing the thing itself you go and buy something that flags your 'productive' feeling? Well, if the shops were open that's what I'd be doing. Instead I'm doing this.

So, in answer to your email, reader, I draw the line at MySpace. Life is Too Short. la di da.