I work for love...

I work for love. I love my work. I carry a dream like a baby...

The First Day Of The Rest Of Your Life – Film..

I found this French film from the writer/director Ŕemi Beanc̗on intriguing. The first quarter of the film initially engaged the professional me; that part that is a child and adolescent psychologist; with an impressionistic overlay of happily narcissistic and negligent parenting and spends the rest of the film unfolding the effect of this on the three children and even in a somewhat family therapy and Lacanian way showing how this bad habit of self absorption can be traced back three generations. However, I don't want to make the film sound heavy or preachy. It remains light and real and the only heaviness is the dramatically impactful incidents which evolve from these well sketched dynamics. Besides, the musical me was delighted by a perfect scene from the late 70's which had me reflecting that I had not played air guitar with quite such élan and enthusiasm since exactly that time. Also note the plot line that follows one of the male brothers frustrating failure to follow through on a truly kismetic introduced love interest. Superb, light but deep film about what carelessly inattentive parenting can do to all those (or that's the joke isn't it? – uninvolved with the result). Depths left unexplored in The Movie Show. Four stars from me. Beautiful.

Soulsong Sings Santucci’s 19th August 2010

On Thursday 19^th August 2010 our little Soulsong singers (or part thereof) made an impressive debut at Santucci's Open Mic Night which I think Richard, our Director and Teacher, would have been proud of. We sang Sister My Sister. Sang it well and with confidence. Thank you for your efforts Richard, which have got us to this point where we can go proudly to a public venue where there are other performers of quality and easily hold our own with confidence. We are grateful and appreciative. Simon and Lyndon also gave solo performances which received much applause and positive feedback.

Because you are music

Because you are music I drive carefully

Up the mountain road through forest and patches of light

Into your absence.

Her Socks -

I knew they were her socks when I picked them up

And put them with other things

Into my bag. Two small socks without dislike or suspicion.

She had thrown them off, quickly

To race out across the road

To tell the man

Whose hat had blown off

Where he could find it.

She's like that.

And when she came back

Laughing and breathless

The huge blue sky her whole canvas

She was like an explosion at a jam session

Between Picasso and Van Gogh

And Michelangelo

Teaching Dante

To write poetry

The wind blowing hair across her face

Leaping at me

Like a silver fish from a stream of pure joy

I lifted the camera I had been playing with

And gave thanks.

Apollo Bay - 5am, 7th August 2010

The ocean was with us all night

Thunderous and heavy

Rolling over in its sleep

And further out, deep

Full of whales and coldness.

Your tiny sounds as you slept

My creeping through the house so as not to wake you

To write this.

Outside

Barely breathing

The dark, unwoken, world.

European Masters Exhibition Party, National Gallery of Victoria, 31st Jul 2010...

A slightly strange experience at the National Gallery of Victoria last night to officially launch the European Masters Exhibition imported from the Städel Museum while it is undergoing renovation and expansion of display space for its collection. The event was a kind of members' party and combined viewing of the exhibition which I found slightly disappointing. I think disappointing in comparison with other similar exhibitions. I saw the Impressionists exhibition in the Australian National Gallery in Canberra early in the new year (ironically also made available in this country because its home, The Musée d'orsay, was undergoing renovation) and in my mind the French have it all over the Germans in this game. I'm interested in my own prejudice and its relation to the perception and representation of light in which I think the Impressionists triumph. I also suspect that when I travel I am invigorated by an experience of light similar to that I experience in my own country, its bright, stark and vital effrontery, and that I have only experienced in such a startling way in two other cities; New York and Paris.

So in this exhibition I felt majorly enlivened by the works of Monet and Degas ; and to a lesser extent, Renoir and Redon whereas the Germans seemed to be hamstrung, especially in the representation of the human body (see Hans Thoma, In The Hammock; Ferdinand Hodler, Childhood and Max Beckmann's famous Double Portrait) all dominated by a stiffness, an overwhelming unnaturalism. The cumulative effect I found was what looked like mass constipation in the portrayed population.

To be fair, there were exceptions to this characterisation, especially in the work of Fritz von Uhde, At The Window and Max Klinger – yes exactly as in MASH.

None of this was helped by being forced to stand around with other overdressed patrons for over an hour (admittedly while being plied with a much better class of nibbles than is standard fare) before being let loose to view the exhibition itself.

Final score: French 10, Germans 2, NGV 5. The Catalogue was beautiful. The Food too. Hmmm, Am I love?