Monthly Archive

Perhaps I’m getting old, and paranoia, senility and general foolishness is setting in, but I find myself scrambling for something to hang my hat on.  While I pretty much always considered myself a ’slashy’, ie, dancer/artist/nerd/ne’er do well, now that I have had to take a sabbatical from dance, and thereby reducing my number of slashes to a number which barely warrents membership in the slashy club, I feel somehow imcomplete, and cast adrift.
Which is just me being a total wanker of course, as I am much more than the sum of my slashes. At least I damn well hope so.  But I do miss it already.  Which is fucking typical.

I also miss my stomach. I had to go back for a chest X-Ray, which of course involves the removal of ones shirt. In days gone by, it was never a great chore exposing the chiseled perfection that is me to the glare of an X-Ray and the appreciative gaze of nubile young nurses, however, after 3 weeks of wheezing, hot chocolate, croissants, chocolate croissants, hot chocolate, confits, tartes and chocolate, I now resemble not much more than pasty weisswurst of roughly the same squidy consistency.

Bah humbug

Melbourne 2005

Holy hell kids. Big daddy doesn’t reccomend stuff often. But if you want to read your text on the reverse side of your laptop screen cause its buiging out at you so that your nose can touch it, then get some of the above into you. I think a bine to wash it down helps.

Enjoy responsibly and Beware the succubi.

SchonenNacht!!!!!!

Muahahhahahahahahaha

Brian: Who risks it by having a novelty fire extinguisher?
Peter: I’ll tell you who! someone who loves phyisical comedy so much he’s willing to risk his families life!

ha brilliant. shit the letters are like squishing and sliding around. wish they’d stay in place otherwise this wont make much sense.

fuc

Upon reading Francis’ post on supernaut.info regarding the Victorian Liberals proposed Arts Funding overhaul (et ici), I got to thinking - a rare occurance, but one which does occur, at around the same frequency as showering.

What should our arts funding policy be? Is it important - how important, and whats the best way to spend limited funds? (note I am discussing the wider issues, not individual Liberal and Labour policies)

Now I am an elitist arts snob, I will be the first to admit that, and in days gone by, my reaction would have been much the same as Francis’. However, after reading John Carey’s ‘What good art the arts?’ a provocative book, I’m not so sure. The arguements he puts forwards (nicely sumerised here and here) are quite confronting for someone who has always believed in the inherent ‘value’ in the arts.
He argues, convincingly and somewhat distressingly, that the hugely subsidised public art institutions - galleries, the opera, ballet, etc, which are funded under the arguement that art has a beneficial and civilising effect on society, is totally unfounded. As Carey asks

“How does this person’s love of art affect his, or her, attitude to human beings?”

He gives an example during the world war where art was put into bunkers - but people weren’t, and of course Herr Hitler, who fancied himself an artist above all, and J Paul Getty who amassed a monstrous amount of art, but was a saloon fascist in personal politic. He argues, rather convincingly that

The religion of art makes people worse, because it encourages contempt for those considered inartistic.

It becomes merely a club that one can belong to, by virtue of refined taste and aesthetic.
While some of his arguements are a bit over the top, it is thought provoking - he offers as consolation that while art consumption may do nothing for society, perhaps through the act of making art, there is benefit and value. What matters is the making of art, the process and bollocks to the end result. He cites cases of art empowering people in disadvantaged communities and prison schemes.
The last half of the book is his own personal arguement for the supremecy of literature but I’ll leave that for you read if you are so interested. I’m not sold.

So where does this leave me? I would love to see Australia (not neccessarily just Victoria) ‘return to the forefront of arts excellence’, but in wider terms, what does that mean, other than an arbitary, self congratulatory judgement? What on earth is ‘arts excellence’? And, cosmically speaking, what is the point?

Perhaps, that contrary to Frances’ point that regional eisteddoffods promote passive consumption - it is a step in a irection in promoting and providing means for people to actively engage in the making of art. Eisteddfodds are not for the audience - they are for the participants. How many people actually watch the bleeding things if not a doting relative, or that somewhat dodgy neighbour who keeps appearing at thos ballet receitals….  They are a big deal for kids, families and their community.

The alternative, a push for greater funding for capital city dominant art? Well, I’d perhaps enjoy that immensely,but then, I tend to enjoy money, the question is what it achieves in a wider context, and other than making pretentious gits like me tremendously happy?  It does provide employment for the legion of Sydney critics to practice their tongue lashing and an excuse for the upper crust of the aestheticaly refined to exercise their ball gowns and drink champagne - but perhaps not so much otherwise.  Despite the funding the festivals and companies attract, the pricing structures generally prohibit anyone, ‘different’ attending.  Last I checked Chunky Move was going for $55 for a 45 minute show, Sydney Festivals Robert Wilson was going for nearly $200, Cloud Gate was $50 +.  So all in all its potential effect is limited - to the performers themselves, and i’m not saying that its not valuable to provide oppurtunities for growth in our artists, casse it obviously is,  but to the community - becuase only those wtih the means, and who are already interested are likely to attend.

After working in a regional dance company, I can quite confidently say that on our regional regional tours (I’m talking regional Tasmania) the audience was greater, more appreciative, our workshops were enthusiastically received and we really got the feeling that it actually made a difference in the community. In fact, people would come up and thank us and say just that. Which is a trifle embarrassing, as a dreadfully important, International Artist, I am not so used to, well actually talking to fans, just stamping my autograph while gracing them with a supercilious smile as I make my way to my chaffeur driven limosine to take me to my exclusive hotel for a rendevous with the Hilton sisters.

It wasn’t ground shaking work, and we aren’t the ABT, ABC or NDT, ADT, or any company with a TLA (Three Letter Acronym) for a name, and I doubt we live up to ‘the forefront of arts excellence’, but I would argue it was important to do, and worthwhile.
I’ve done work in the centres, it might even be considered ‘experimental’, pushing the boundaries of art etc, but hardly anyone saw it, the works tended to die in the arse, never to be seen again. Certainly I can probably name the people (Person) who came up and told me it changed their life, but then again, I was sleeping with them, and I’m not sure if they meant it in a good way.

This being said - the 1 day closed thing is a non-issue, every major gallery and museum in Europe is closed one day a week, and no one sees that as a shocking blight on the arts.

And I think we should make up our minds what we want for the arts - its sitting on the fence - demanding accontability, but also excellence in all fronts.  I’m no economist, but that seems rather impossible to me.  This will probably start off my next rant about the lack of research culture….

So thank you if you have followed me this far;

So whats the best to spend the precious few dollars we have for the arts?
Penny for your thoughts*

*pennies will not, nor ever be forthcoming

schonentag!

They say a blog is like a baby penguin (insert small fluffy cute animal of choice; walrus, marmot, kitten), the first few days is like love. You lavish attention on your blog/penguin, but soon the novelty wears off and it is abandoned like so many other blogs/penguins.

- the joy of bouncing. Tuileries, Paris

- Mann, Hund und Fahrrad in Berlin. (Me trying to be Cartier-Bresson)

the Glarner Alps from Mollis, Switzerland

Sunset from Zurich

Merry Go Round at the Tuileries Jardin, Paris

La Tour Eiffel Nuit

Word of the day : Oleaginous.

1. Of or relating to oil.
2. Falsely or smugly earnest; unctuous: oleaginous flattery.

Top 3 Occupations

Superspy. Possibly related to my excitement with a new James Bond adventure - this one even featuring my new favourite sport of pakour. Gadgets, women, imminent but never realised death. Brilliant
Liklihood : Well I have had a rendevous at Cafe Adler, so thats one step closer isn’t it?

Opera Singer whilst working with Opera Australia I met Richard, who was, much to my great annoyance, irritatingly handsome, but more than that, he had a voice of molten chocolate. (The swiss kind, which can only be made by absurdly content cows in stupid picture postcard swiss alp type places with blonde pigtailed milchmaids caressing their teats)
Men, women, small children and assorted air borne bacteria all went weak at the knees (or flagella) whenever he said anything, let alone sang. I want to be able to say ‘Where is the toilet’ and have people swoon.
Likliehood : As my singing voice sounds like a sick cat being dragged across a violin I doubt it.

Absurdly Content Swiss Cow for the above reason of milchmaids…
Likelihood : due to a disgraceful life, poor karma bank balance and a non-belief in reincarnation, not very.

So have been reading up about a few surgical options to reduce the chance of another spontaneous pneumothorax happening. Doesn’t sound like fun. The new methods at least are keyhole - they dig 2 holes in your chest, 1 for the tool and 1 for a video camera. They then rub gauze all over your lung which makes the lung very angry and it responds by forming adhesions onto the pleura. This will reduce the chance of another pneumothorax down to 3% which is a darn sight better than 10 - 50%.
Another option, is about the same, but theys spray talc (as far as I can tell, yes, the stuff you sprinkle inside your swimming cap) all over your lung, again, pissing it right off and forming adhesions.

The old method involved going from your sternum to your spine like a can opener…

So possible solution, however, over one blebdisease, the support group for this sort of thing (Hehe. blebs) some people have experienced chronic pain after the procedure and have had nerves removed and lidocaine daily… hmm doesn’ t sound like buckets of fun.

So to recruit the enormous power of the interweb, if you are, or know a, pulmonologist, send em over my way.

Listening to : Bjork and John Tavener avec the Brodsky Quartet : A prayer for the heart. Spectacularly beautiful, get your mits on it.

Cranky about :

• New draconian copyright laws for all!
• the new centre for American Cultural Studies. I dunno, I’d be quite fond of seeing some more money for Australian culture…
• paying 13 Euro for 10 blank cds

Managed to get out an about around St Germain de Pres today, had some hot chocolate at Les Deux Magots in the steps of Hemmingway, Satre, Picasso, Breton and the like. Loads of pretentious fun.

Must be feeling better as I got that irrational panic I often get travelling; that there is too much to see and experience and too little time.

Spontaneous Pneumothorax would make a great name for a band. Bit hard to spell is all.

He lived at a little distance from his body
- ‘Dubliners’ by James Joyce

Just a wonderful phrase for what I see as a struggle for us in this highly cerebral age - our engagement with the corpreal is reduced as we head more and more towards a virtual existence.  I remember debates I had back in university, where there was the hypothetic that a virtual existence is the same as an embodied existence.  This is currently being raged over on kurzweil.net where Mitch Kapor and Kurzweil are betting whether the Turing Test will be passed by 2029.   (its a great read)
I argued on the side that our conciousness is inherently embodied, it is messy, liquid and chemical and to seperate from that would be result in something quite different.  Kapor also argues this as to why a computer will not be able to beat the Turing Test.  After reading Kurzweil’s response I have to say I’m back at the drawing board.  It’s a serious conceit of my ego, that I want to be unique, that there is something irreproducible in human conciousness.

The reason I came to this, was that a friend is doing a Yoga course currently, and was telling me of the large emphasis of that is on body, mind, spirit engagement - each is incomplete without the others.  We can’t be fully present or living to our full potential until we achieve that.
However, increasingly we need less and less of the corpreal to exist - there are people living almost exclusively on virtual worlds like second life.  Perhaps its my inner luddite, but that makes me sad.  I like to think, and I do believe, that a cartwheel is a very important part of existence.  Much like snow angels, hot chocolate, hugs, the peculiar exhileration of falling, and all those sensations of life.

More on this to come…

So. Thats it then. I have officially resigned, withdrawn, pulled out, retired from dancing.
The thing I have fought tooth and nail for, worked for 10 years towards, and blah blah blah <insert angst & cliche here>
Melodramatic I know, but I hope you can indulge me for just a little while.

I was thinking of gradually phasing out dance for other pastures in the next few years in any case- my interest in filmmaking, choreographing, visual art, medicine… But I am severely pissed off that the decision was removed from me.
Don’t get me wrong, I will admit to enjoying a bit of a rail against fate, a bit of (gentle) chest beating, anguish and angst. Its good for the soul.

So what is frightening now, is the uncertainty. Those of you who know me, know that lately I have developped an unhealthy compulsion to make plans. Lots of plans. This wasn’t in the plan.
Now I’m not one for actually following through with most of my plans, they’re just a security blanket, but I didn’t have a contingency for this one. Its ruined the elegant simplicity of my life. And most vexing of all, is that it has shaken the quite neccessary belief in my invincibility, or even just the belief that all that squishy stuff inside the fleshbag we call a body (albeit a impressively god-like body), will keep on doing its stuff to keep us alive.
I’m not going to let this cramp my style, I can deal with another week in hospital with Mr Pleur-Evac, and hope for a better rotation of nurses. But with performing - will a company take the risk? Can I live with the responsibility, when I have no control over it whatsoever? Will my partners trust me? It is all rather unfair.

So, in an effort to stave off insanity, I have embarked on an early New Years resolution set

• becoming a cool blogger type person (that seems to be the thing to do these days),
• working on my new media art,
• directing guaranteed Oscar/Sundance/Annecy winning films and animations,
• study chemistry -> study medicine -> become doctor -> chicks, money, power and chicks
• obtain generous patroness who will appreciate my genius and support my lavish lifestyle.

But yes, it is quite frightening, its one of those points in life where, in 5 years, I will look back and go ‘Corr blimey gov, who’d have thought eh?’

So, onto a brave new world.

 I like words.  Language, turns of phrase are endlessly interesting for me.

Courtesy of German.

Schadenfreude - the pleasure we get when a friend fails.

Heimweh - the longing for ones home

Treibwerk -  A work of passion.

_________________________

‘It was clear that his sense of his own worth had ballooned since they had seen him last.  His movements were slower and more rounded, and there was a new quality of ripeness in his way of speaking, as if he were listening to himself through headphones.  He was trying on the part of the distinguished man’

- from ‘Breakable You’ by Brian Morton.

_____________________________

Well, I managed to heroically resist scratchin off the scab, and it finally fell off by itself et voila! So no more hole!

Wandered around Rue Mouftard today, which was great, there was an antiques street market and I managed to purchase this -

A completely useless, giant old school padlock. Its going straight onto the nearest door.

And just to make this particular post completely incoherant, here’s a link to the best hubble images. Just simply extraordinary images. I believe the old girl is going to get an optical upgrade next year which is great, but then it will be decomissioned 2013.

Continuing the theme, my friend, Sascha, aka Aevoc has just released a few new tracks. check it out.

Wow.

I managed to find a dvd of ‘Ryan’, Chris Landreth’s Oscar Winning short animated documentary, and in a word, wow. The work of Chris’ is spectacular, bold, unique and just plain beautiful.
The story it tells of Canadian animator Ryan Larkin is even more astonishing, and the dvd contains the orignal animations he did some 30 years ago - ‘walking’ in particular is pure genius.

I watched it at 5 am after struggling with my own animation problems, and was just blown away by the vibrancy of them. For me ‘walking’ is the standout, deceptively simple, but conveyed such joy in the simple act of walking, the simple wonder of movement.
It was one of the few times I’ve seen the way I feel when I dance.
I’m going to stop drivelling on now.

colourful knobs on a antique street market

The Pantheon

Heh. There is a Kleine Hamburger Strasse too. (Small Hamburger Street)

Oh. Obviously this isn’t in Paris, this that whole, I’m going to dig up shit from ages ago to make myself seem interesting, thing.  This was in Berlin.

I wish I had started this blog earlier, and I know this is just my inherent paranoia setting in, but I can’t help but feel that the last few years have been really amazing with adventures and mischief, and now its all going to slow down a bit.

So, in an effort to make my life seem far more interesting, I’m going to randomly throw in pictures and annecdotes from the past to brighten up this blog.

Oh and the reason that I’m so into it right now, other than being feeble, is that I have to compress a 6:25min film into 5mb and make it look good. Its taking forever to encode. On the plus side h.264 - its magic.

Bit dissapointing, tasted like, well, prawn.

French accents are outrageously sexy.

They are also incredibly dangerous, bypassing all normal cognitive processing

Examples can be seen right around the bottom of Sacre Coeur, masses of French Africans selling ‘Traditional African Bracelets’ and normally sane people (myself included) for some reason succumb to this and fork out between 10Euro (if you are lucky) up to 20Euro (if you are american) for a piece of braided cotten thread. Like I said, dangerous.

In a remarkable derail of thought, I have this bad habit, and Freudian psychologists will no doubt claim it is some latent Oedipus thingy, but when waking up after general anaesthetic or ungodly doses of pain killers, I will try to hold hands with my girlfriend, even if she is not in fact there, and even in the case that I don’t actually have one.
I remember once, a couple of years ago, being quite upset because I kept trying to hold hands my lovely girlfriend (I actually had one at this point. I think…) but she kept slapping my hand away, which of course, only made me more determined. About 5 minutes later after I had given up and was feeling dreadfully sorry for myeslf, I realised that I had been groping the hand of a rather large, hirsuite, mannish nurse who had been trying to take my pulse.

I need to reasses my pick up skills.

I have to regain trust in my body.
Its strange, ‘ve had plenty of injuries, but they’re external, they’re managable. I can strap it, ice it, limit the use of that limb, but with this, I can’t do anything, I can’t not use my right lung, I can’t protect it in any way but it can go at any time.

I’ve never had to think about my lungs, its a part of my body I pay very little attention to - it generally just works. I mean I have mild asthma, but never a grave concern. Now I am super aware of the insides of my chest, strange phantom pains, sensations. Nothing like a collapse, but disconcerting nonetheless.
I’m going to try put it out of my mind - there is nothing I can do about it, if it goes, it goes, I might as well continue much as I was before, and if I’m lucky, it’ll stay fully inflated.

Currently I’m frustrated by my extreme, Mr Burns-like feebleness.  A bottle of wine in one hand, 10 euro worth of chocolate in the other, and a 10 minute walk is enough to warrant consierable exertion now.

The wine and chocolate was totally worth it though.

So our tale begins with the obligatory, experience-of-a-lifetime, Europe backpacking trip. A series of arts-funding related snafus had left me sans work for a period, my film was accepted to the Zebra Film Awards (and hence a handy excuse to live it up on the red carpet), so it was decided to hop on a plane.

So fast-forwarding through Berlin, Prague, Geneva, The Swiss Alps, Luzern, Zurich and the Glarner Alps and onto Paris. Wonderful Paris. City of a million clichés which are annoyingly fairly accurate.

This is a repost from my mass email, so if you’ve read that, well don’t worry about it.

—————————–
I’d been happily wandering around Paris for a few days, enjoying this beautiful city. And on Monday, I had designated my Lourve day.
So anyways, to cut a very long story short(ish) (this is me after all and I can’t keep anything brief) I got a intense pain in my chest, shortness of breath, raised heart rate, but me being convinced of invicibility, continued to wander around for 12 hours before deciding (on the advice of a Dr friend.) to go to a hospital.
In hindsight, this was rather stupid as I couldn’t walk for more than 25meters before having to have a breather and preferably a sit down.

I went to the British hospital which wasn’t interested as I wasn’t a pregnant woman and turfed me to the American hospital who assured me that it was probably nothing serious and I couldn’t afford them in any case, and then finally onto a local French hospital. It was apparently a 2minute walk, which turned out closer to a 35min one wheeze and stumble.

So into the French ‘urgences’, where no one spoke English and when they did, they promptly demanded to know if I “believed in French”. To this rather confusing question I was quite prepared to say oui and if they asked if I believed in xenu the evil alien dictator who was affecting my thetan levels, I would have said yes as I was thoroughly fucked off, short of breath and generally uncomfortable.

But to their credit I was on an EKG within 10 minutes which came back abnormal, got blood taken (they were considering infection) and then a chest x-ray which revealed a ‘complete spontaneous pneumothorax’ as the radiologist cheerfully told me.

This is, in common terms, a collapsed lung. It comes in various degrees, but being hyper competitive, I managed to collapse the entire goddam thing. The x-ray is gnarly; usually a chest x-ray is more or less symmetrical, and mine had a big black gaping hole where the lung usually as. Wicked.
So I was promptly bundled off to a step-down ward (one down from ICU) and a French doctor was to ‘drain’ my chest.

A note on the French, they have a wonderful way of understatement. He was quite adamant that there was nothing to be impressed about as these are very common and not very dangerous (though occasionally life threatening), and that if I had both lung collapsed then it might be slightly more complicated. (These are referred to as a fatal bilateral pneumothorax).
But anyways, treatment consists of morphine (not as exciting as I had hoped) and a scalpel, big fucking needle and a tube. They slice under the armpit, punch a needle in, and then thread a tube in. I was under the impression it’s a small tube, but it turns out its nearly 30 centimeters of polymer fun inside your chest. Which would explain why it is so goddam uncomfortable. This tube is stuck to you, and connected to my friend the pleur-evac; a water seal which bubbles cheerfully as it removes the air from your chest cavity.

So that’s the procedure.

The next few days were marked by boredom. I was on bed rest; being hooked up to Mr. Drip and Mr. pleur-evac meant no moving around.
In fact I was so goddam bored, that the highlights of the day was

• The incredibly bad food. It makes airline food seem like 3 star Michelin fare. You don’t actually eat the stuff, but it’s the event which is important.
• My top of up pain killers…
• Pissing in my pistolet (like a funky teapot you piss in) because then someone would have to come in an empty it.

Now this is quite a loss of dignity, but after a few days, even having someone come in to empty your piss was preferable to the insanity that creeps in when you’ve been lying in your own funk for a few days with only yourself to keep company.

I did have my super wonderful friend who I was staying with in Paris who came in and brought me lovely French pastries and snackies (which I totally lived off), her ipod (greatest thingy ever) and reading materials so huge thanks and hugs!

Nurses - presumably the upside to the whole situation. I unfortunately drew the short straw and missed out on hot French nurses for the first few days. I did better for the last day and a half, where I managed to score a sponge bath. Highly recommended)
But for the first few days I got a trainee nurse, who also had her final examination and was nervous as hell. Her hands were shaking and she arsed up my drip causing a lovely burning in my left arm (and an awesome yellow bruise which is still there). She also was insisting to write down that I was feeling fine (when I was anything but) and didn’t want to give me drugs until after her examination.

But all in all, I was very well looked after by my doctors and medical staff.

I can’t fly for 3 weeks, and am supposed to take it easy for 3 weeks.

I will say I am more than a little concerned as I have a 10 - 50% chance of reoccurrence. If it happens contra laterally I have a good chance of that slightly more complicated problem of a fatal bilateral pneumothorax. I also have an even better chance of one happening when lifting stuff, a slight problem being a dancer, no scuba diving, no parachuting, trumpet playing and even long haul flights are a risk.

But I am out of hospital now, have the fun of fighting it out with insurance. Am still short of breath, my lung capacity isn’t back to where it was, and it still hurts a bit, and I guess the worst is the fear that it will happen again.

Mum had a freak and came over, which was nice of her, and now have an enforced 3weeks in Paris, which I guess, could be much much worse.
I am very glad that I got it in Paris and not while tootling around in china.