Woman and Child First

The Centre Of Art - Brisbane (Raucous Laughter)

Once upon a time, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia was a laughing stock.

Now it's just so cool, you could get intimidated just by walking around that big old country town. Um sophisticated city, I mean.

Now in my day...

Brisbane was regarded as a backwater

And in my day...

Joh Bjelke-Petersen was premier of the state of Queensland, at the time unhappily referred to as "The Police State".

But in my day...

I was a uni student doing street arts and hanging with the people who were doing things. Really interesting things that southern art cultures ( Oh! Like Sydney darling!) would enjoy snickering about.

Of course, all that good stuff was kinda forced underground, because you could get arrested for certain political pursuits, even if they were (art, darling).

Hey you could get arrested for lots of pursuits. Legal was illegal lots of happy times!

But in the underground we thrived and so did the Brisbane arts scene.

30 years on, and a long 30 years, Brisbane is just now downright sexy in the arts thing. So there.

"Bugs In Love" promotional poster from current exhibition of Silly Symphonies (Walt Disney 1929 onwards). I wanna see "Practical Pig" from 1939. You know, the only one of three pigs who built a decent house that even the big bad wolf couldn't shake. That's one practical pig alrighty! Phew!

at

GoMA .

Speaking Of Autism: The Black Balloon

On my way to work this morn, I heard a couple of the actors from this film yapping on Triple J radio about their new flick.

The following is from a review of the film The Black Balloon:

(With: Rhys Wakefield, Luke Ford, Gemma Ward, Erik Thomson, Toni Collette).

By RUSSELL EDWARDS
"An autistic sibling teaches valuable life lessons in the alternately soft and intense family-friendly drama “The Black Balloon.” Yarn good-naturedly tackles the complex reality of living with a disabled person head-on, and auds are fully encouraged to experience the conflicted feelings of its sensitive teen protagonist". Link

An Australian film, it's won accolades at the Berlin Film Festival.

Photo of Gemma Ward from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Theresa Duncan - Death of an Ally

Today I learnt of Theresa L Duncan's suicide in New York on July 10. I'm assuming that if I read it in the New York Times online, then it is in fact truth. And that her lover and soulmate, Jeremy Blake reported missing, has in fact, swum out to sea off Rockaway Beach, also leaving a note.

I came to regard Theresa as a favoured female companion, though I never met her in person. Her blog became my daily fix of intellectual stimulation, artistic inspiration, humour and fabulous links. I was always honoured to find she had posted my comments. All of them. She must have liked me too. We exchanged the odd email and last week, seeing something was obviously amiss, I emailed her to check up on her.

Her blog was the first one I ever read. A fortunate fluke - it was to be the main inspiration for starting my own blog. You will notice that I have reverted back to my original page layout, as a tribute to her. You will also notice, if you visit Theresa's blog, that the similarities between the look of both hers and mine are deliberate. I just thought she was marvelous.

I feel I've lost an ally, a significant and important one.

I have no idea of where to place my grief for the loss of her. I never met this woman but I knew her and respected her greatly.

Selfishly,I don't know what I'll do without her. My brain needs that stimulation and I know many others would feel this as well. Her comments on women, art, culture and politics were always supremely interesting and intelligent. A laugh out loud response was common for me.

How do you reconcile the loss of someone you admired so much - in cyberspace?

My first response was a predictable human one, shock. After a while, I stopped myself from thinking it was unacceptable to mourn for a cyber person, a virtual companion. Then I was able to shed some tears.

The world has lost one of it's greatest female thinkers. At the age of 40. And damn it, I've lost a friend.

So what will I do? I will keep blogging, that's what.

My sympathy and condolences go out to all her loved ones, her real life companions. But also to those like me: her "children and sisters" of the Staircase.

As Death Draws Closer

And you thought I was going to talk about Valentine's Day! Hmph!

A wonderful article discusses the awareness, visions, dreams and final actions of patients in hospice environments.

It's reported that an estimated 98% of patients will accurately predict the time of their own death, using the awareness to state love, get in touch with long-lost relatives but also to die peacefully. The implications are important here and the article calls for more openness and discussion on the topic of death, in order for people to be given more chances to leave with a content and satisfied heart. Not to mention the benefits for those left to mourn.

My own experience of losing people is coloured by the fact that some of the deaths were sudden and tragic. Further, when my father died, he was unconscious for the whole week beforehand...so I guess in those situations such a resigned and conscious departure is harder, if not impossible to organise? Those left in these cases have a different slant on their grieving. There are many types of death.

The article calls for more acceptance of this inevitable rite of passage."When people begin to accept that death is not a fairy tale, that they are about to die, something new opens up," says Tom Hutchinson, a palliative care physician.

The article has reminded me of one of my favourite movies : Antonia's Line (1996) in which the first scene shows Antonia waking on the day she knows she will die. Can't recommend it enough: strong, poetic and female.

Article via Wit via Professor Hex

Untalkative Bunny Greets the New Year

Cynics may have thought I'd forgotten my deep and abiding love for UB.

Not so.

Here he is again. Please enjoy this masterful enactment of Animal Music.   Get your kids and git yer chicken dancin' shoes on sister. This clip rocks. Look at his ears. They say everything you need to know.

This is rare footage and once again, we must thank Canadians for their delightful and groovesville slant of life itself.

Dancing Stick Figures

I'm a sucker for a good stick figure. Ben, my son, has directed me to a very cool stick figure activity, where you can send dancing figures to your friends, with music and sound effects too.

The link is an offshoot of a Disney production High School Musical. My kids really enjoyed this movie whilst I cringed a lot with the sugary-ness of it. That's probably because I'm cynical and jaded, and they simply relate to an innocent story about teenagers.

So here's where to find some groovy stick figures:

  http://www.disney.com.au/DisneyChannel/danceoff/

Send it to yourself first, so you can see what you've created.

Poetry As Advice

One Art by Elizabeth Bishop The art of losing isn't hard to master; so many things seem filled with the intent to be lost that their loss is no disaster. Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn't hard to master. Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or next-to-last, of three loved houses went. The art of losing isn't hard to master. I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. --Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture I love) I shan't have lied.  It's evident the art of losing's not too hard to master though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

It's lovely isn't it? It is a poem featured in the movie In Her Shoes. This poem is read by the dyslexic Maggie, in what turns out to be her first reading "lesson" with a dying professor.

The image is one of the poet herself, Elizabeth Bishop.

Click here to link to the Academy of American Poet's site.

The Prof's Reading Lesson

The film In Her Shoes (see last post)  has a delightful scene where an elderly and blind professor gives the wayward Maggie a reading lesson. He asks her when she starts to make up excuses why she can't read to him, "Is it dyslexia?" He then instructs, something along the lines of:

Listen to the word before you say it. 9 times out of 10, you'll correct it before you say it...Otherwise, you'll just make an ass out of yourself.

He goes onto asking her questions about the poem she has read (again, not word for word):

Prof: What's it about?

Maggie: (defiantly) I don't know!

Prof: YES YOU DO! NOW TELL ME - What is the poem about!

And at the end of the scene, he gives her an "A+".

I'd suspect this method of instruction ( 'listening' to the word before it's said)  would only be relevant to a reader who already has some basic skills. But I'd love any feedback on it.

In Her Shoes

This is such a great movie. The story is about the relationship between two sisters, but it explores so many important subjects.

The character that has intrigued me the most as it turns out, is the one that is absent. Caroline. She is the mother of the two girls and died many years before. She suffered a mental illness and her death was a tragic one. This character forms the central axis around which the other character's become real. There is a deep impact on family when mental illness is present and this movie handles it beautifully.

Cameron Diaz plays Maggie, a young woman who is virtually unemployable but is pretty and sexy and uses her looks to get by. Thus, she's always in trouble. (That's a great message I think). But it turns out she has a deeper and more historical problem than promiscuity. She's dyslexic. The relationship she forms with a dying professor is very moving and incorporates a lesson on how to teach reading to dyslexic people. (The definition of someone who is 'dyslexic' or 'learning disabled' changes, but as a rule of thumb, it is someone of average to above average intelligence who has a reading age 2 years+ behind their chronological age. Delays in maths/numbers are also common, as is ADHD).

There's also, in this film, one of the most dropdead and weep your heart out poems I've ever heard, by ee cummings.

Link to info on the movie. Link to Sane Australia. Link to info on Learning Disabilities.

Candy

A film directed by Australian Neil Armfield has just been released here. It stars Heath Ledger, Abbie Cornish, Garry McDonald, Noni Hazelhurst, and Geoffrey Rush. That's a hell of a cast already.

Candy, explores youthful love which expresses and shares great dreaming, passion and then addiction (heroin in this case) takes over.

I'm seeing it as soon as I can. It looks to be one of those Oz films that, whilst speaking of themes already well explored, has it's own unique take on it. Sublime and moving. Hope I'm not disappointed! More later...