Letter from Fitzroy #01

The Art of Forgetting

For most Australian voters the difference between political parties and their respective factions has been effectively blurred. Debate is negotiated via rhetoric. Debate is usurped by language that does not inform and media campaigns that seek to undermine public critique and memory.

The powers that be would have us believe that we must relax, not react to the issues of our time. We are being taught to be fearful, as did the medieval religions of Europe, rather than pursue knowledge within the construct of a social economy (if we were to adhere to some of the more fundamental and original tenants of capitalism) that supports, not robs us of opportunity, wisdom, collaboration and community.

Some say humans don’t learn, that it is consciousness that does... If so, I hope this amorphous uber-self of humanity translates into tangible structures that would see the end of poverty in all its forms: physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional.

Are we to sustain a legacy of forgetting, or will history teach us that self-flagellation is that which awaits each step of our evolutionary struggle, or rather, devolutionary demise?

As a species we have won the battle for supremacy over our environment, but we are losing the skill and will to sustain that which we inherit. So it goes...

Download - Secession Propaganda 01.

SOMETHING ON THE OTHER SIDE

I was reminded of a memorable evening on Kings Farm, Northern NSW, in an enlightened state of mind with my long time buddy, David Nerlich... Was it 1989?

We penned this piece together which I subsequently wrote into early performances of Black Harlequin. Thanks Dave, for digging this one out :)

A ringed moon,
Trunks of trees carved light and shade out of the mist
solid dark
in and out of shadow and bright
some felt the earth through feet swollen with the pounding
through and through the night
the moonlightfull
brimming with dew
the foggy breath of the heart of the place
so easy to find
the cup that runneth over the hill
the nightbirds that screetch, the cows that wail,
a full moon is for lovers and practitioners of ritual alike
we don't cross the fence 'cause something on the other side roars
the grass goes untrodden
it echoes its own valley
we've got ours

As we descend into the mist a new line of shore
a halo of mystery that decieves the eye
but all eyes are decieved
until they know they are decieved
and no more are believed.

Street (e) scape

I wrote an article a few years back for the KunstRadio project, GATEways. The article, and an interview with founder of the infamous bookshop, Polyester, has been republished by Sleepy Brain. It's one of the few online mags I take time out to read.

Dark Memory

We took to the construct - raw, playful, fanciful.

Increasingly vanquished, the desire to break the wooden effigy took hold of his imagination. There, before him it stood. Staring him down, its drawn features carved out of solid rock. Arms hewn from ancient oaks and its torso, a thicket of nasty brambles replenished seasonally, for near on a millennia, by the inhabitants who adored, cared for and protected the silent menace.

Were it not for these people, their icon of resilience would have perished in the storm of history, destroyed by the hordes of barbarians that have lain to waste the lands, waters and air for the generations to come, unaware of the species they would undoubtedly awaken to endure, fine or perhaps placate.

And there it stands, an impossible construction of weed, wood and stone, a farce to the modern eye as if fashioned by children with the chafed hands of a stone mason with hearts cast from iron, its centre still aflame with the fury of its makers. But they are not children, and nor are their off-spring - the child had all but perished in the days of rape, blood and mayhem. Their idol, a sign-post, an earth-bound satellite created by primitive cartographers that the people would know who they are, and to whom they would ultimately succumb to.

It went on like this for eons - a committed cycle of myth and sorcery. Stone had become the face of these people for whom the still, charcoal black waters of the Lake had become their god - it took and spared those that would tend their defiant, stoic, single-eyed savior - its will, its weathered will and reckless construct that of its people, its servants - survivors of all that had claimed people not unlike themselves - across the harsh, frozen plains of this hardy, isolated country where thorn-like grasses share a rare hint of green, amidst the bloody leaves of the rampaging brambles the people endure in their passage to the Lake.

The Lake is the silent doorway to the hell their new born are surrendered to. Those that survive its un-holly sub-zeros will walk this land. They will not forget their icy rite of passage. Year after year they return to the Lake to test the will of their god. When they willingly enter its darkness and return safely to its shores, only then will their endurance be rewarded with a life reverent of its origins and masterful in survival - its men and women sharing equal burden the fate their forefathers and mothers had carved out of the viscous dark of histories past.

10.2000

Urban Haiku's from October

Tightly pressed
Add hidden tram
Scent of grass lingers.

Wind plots descent...
off grid navigation
Soon (re)membered.

DOODS response

This piece, from an ol' dear friend, in response to the DOODs inspired haiku deserves a space of its own. Thanks Nick, via NY.

blest screeching firetruck
across road krishna drums
a timpani of souls

DOODS Haikus

Inspired by the work of the Department of Ongoing Digital Situations (DOODS), I found the urban haiku lurking beneath my pen, drawn from the lanes of Melbourne's CBD.

Lane derive escapes
as concrete mouths hunger...
Graffiti lingers.

The haiku in me

In recent months I have revived an interest in haikus, partly through work I have been doing with the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. In Haiku Daily, I hope to maintain a record of personal, collaborative and spontaneous haikus.

The idea is to build up a record of momentary events that may build up a series of scripts to be interpreted visually. Having just completed my first video haiku, I am motivated to maintain this interest as it evolves into a passion.

Sunday morning

A collaborative haiku written on a dance floor, the middle three lines written by an unknown person who grabbed the paper and pen, adding his own stream... Thanks to Paul White for paper and pen and for the Earthdance crew for putting on a stonker of a night!

driven to,
empty drain pulse
becoming me...

feeling the revelt
and alsways pushing
to the note...???

h2o quenches...
below Bali
still the weeping.

2 haiku found in [an email] worth pasting...

Via dns@c2o.org and ag@toysatellite.org:

vaguely intriguing
using algorithms to
generate genre...

in manila. it's
monsoon season so they skies
are heavy with rain.