the littlest bird

so, i went and saw the magnificent jolie holland at the spanish club the week before last.

BEST. SHOW. EVER.

she catapulted to the top of my favourite gigs with her sublime performance. and while i wasn't surprised to be completely transfixed by her languid torpidity, i was surprised by a few other things.

she is way smaller than i thought she'd be. tiny, even. barely five feet tall. yet combined with that is a certain awkward heaviness - she stumbles around on stage like it's a boat on a choppy ocean. moving between songs, or from piano to guitar or violin, it seems she has a different relationship with gravity to the rest of us. it pulls her down a little further, makes her a little more clumsy.
when she's playing though, she's the very definition of grace.

she is much prettier than any of the photos i've seen make her appear. her skin is ultra pale, her lips a darkened smudge. a broad face, rounded cheeks. hair that she hides behind. she swayed as she sang, her eyes flickering behind almost closed lids.

live she is much more rock than on the albums. she still slows time itself down somehow with that bluesy, rolling voice, but there's a toughness to her that i wasn't expecting. which is at odds with her oh-so-californian speaking voice, where every second word is 'like.' the dreamy, giggly stories she told at odds with her sharp and quick responses to the good-natured heckling from the crowd. her intonation when speaking is just as unique and varied as her singing. "sun frunciscoo". "i'll be meouving on".

i don't know if i can really capture it. so much about the way she sounds is hard to explain. her phrasing is constantly surprising - she could be from anywhere. and her whistle is an instrument in itself. like she has a bird trapped in her throat that she lets sing now and again.

if you've never heard her, check her out. my housemate squeeky finds her too mournful, but for me her music is vivid and truthful, sometimes heartbreakingly so. whether she's singing about new love or tortured love, whether she's hating herself or loving her ukelele, she cleaves right through skin to my bones and settles in. so eerie and compelling - just gorgeous, really.

i thoroughly recommend her and i'm sorry that it comes two weeks too late to actually see her. if it's any consolation the second show she did at the spanish club wasn't anywhere near as good as the first. but if anyone's in, or going to, the uk in the next month or so, i think that's where she's headed next.

my first meme

mskp over on the path tagged me with this, which has served the twofold purpose of providing me with my very first meme (which i am, perhaps sadly, very excited by) and encouraging me to post, something i've been struggling to do for days. i have at least 17 drafts* i just can't get motivated to finish and was close to despair.

until, finally, the gift of a post that didn't require independent thought.

and, believe it or not, i was almost thwarted in my attempts to follow the simple directions (grab the nearest book, turn to page 123, find the 5th sentence and reproduce the next four) by the fact that the nearest book is to me at the moment is the age good food guide (i'm at work, ok?) and on page 123 there's an ad for lavazzo coffee which doesn't even have 5 sentences.

however, just a few more centimetres away is the smh good food guide, and from page 123 comes this rather enticing description of the fare at sailors thai canteen, in the rocks.

"It's heady with lime, spiked with chilli, decadently herbaceous and invariably fresh. The curries are always made from scratch: perhaps a light version drizzled over fried prawns with crisp rice-flour-battered herbs. Whole snapper may be deep-fried, and the salads are lively and interesting. If you're after some privacy, try to get one of the tiny tables out on the deck; and if you'd like the food hotter, just ask for a dish of chillies to light your fire."

phew. it's getting a little warm in here ..


* this is a lie. there are 2.

i am confused

john howard's plans to make australia even more racist and hostile have been scrapped. rather than face a defeat in the senate, he's withdrawn the proposed legislation altogether.

now of course this is a good thing. petro georgiou, one of three backbenchers who followed their consciences (i know - who thought they had them?) and crossed the floor to oppose this legislation, described it as the most 'profoundly disturbing' he'd ever encountered.

what concerns me though is that this disunity within the Liberal party may actually end up working in howard's favour. shaun carney (the age) writes that by withdrawing the legislation before it went to the senate, the pm managed to block most of his frustration from the public view - that his authority was diminished, yes, but his 'strategic retreat' means that it happened out of sight.

so. the pm is frustrated? excellent. humiliated? even better. but the Liberal party also seems a little .. well, liberal. i mean, don't get me wrong - i'm glad that there are principled ministers within the party - even more so that they stopped this legislation from getting through. but i'm now worried that instead of remembering the content of the proposed legislation, its defeat will actually end up working for john howard by reassuring those liberal Liberals (and apparently they do exist) who have been feeling alienated by recent policy decisions, that they can still be represented by the party, and therefore Liberal support may actually increase.

or am i just being pessimistic?

the chicken that lived

i have had a rather turbulent couple of weeks.

here are the stats in a vaguely chronological order that does not in any way represent importance.

the number of:
- deaths of people close to people close to me: 2
- days spent in bed due to shivering, aching illness: 4
- miff films missed due to illness: 6
- fred and ginger films watched in bed: 3*
- times someone stroked my forehead til i fell asleep: 2
- streets in which i noticed trees that are beginning to blossom: 4
- our chickens beheaded by a fox: 2
- stunning, sunshiny days that made me believe in spring: 3
- our chickens that turned up roosting on a bike in the neighbour's shed: 1

the last is my favourite statistic of all. my household was very traumatised by the loss of our beautiful black hens, scout and jem. i now know a lot about the habits of poultry predators. go on, ask me. apparently there are 15 foxes per square km in the CBD of melbourne. i've seen foxes slipping away into the undergrowth along the merri creek, or being swallowed up by mist in inner-city parks, but they always seemed surreal. so still, even in motion - an economy of movement coupled with an instinctive shyness and grace. i just wasn't convinced they were a threat until i witnessed the oddly bloodless aftermath of their visit.

boo, the ringleader of our feathered companions, had fled the coop (heh) the day before the massacre. there was no sign of a struggle and we were baffled. after we found scout and jem, we concluded that she'd been the first victim of the fox. but it seems she just went on an adventure. and now she's on holidays while we work out how to keep the foxes away. pissing around the perimeter of the run is supposed to help, as are clumps of human hair placed at strategic intervals. they hate the way we smell apparently.

off the topic entirely is this site i came across recently. a photographer cataloguing the moments he missed on camera, but captured with words instead. a strange idea that seemed a bit gimmicky at first, but as i read through the entries i found them more and more compelling.

so i checked out his photos as well and some of them are stunning.


* i LOVE fred and ginger films. everything about them appeals to me - the dancing, the elegance, ginger's wardrobe (oh, the dresses that arrive seconds after the body wearing them does) the opulent, art-deco inspired sets, the silly humour. even the flimsy, predictable plots work for me.
i am struggling though with my newly-acquired knowledge that ginger was a staunch republican and anti-communist whose mother 'named names' to HUAC.
i still love her but i feel betrayed.

the youth of today ...

are disturbing.

the boy who hugged the prime minister with a screwdriver in his hand?

his friends decribed it as "so awesome". he said it was the most "famous thing" he's ever done. it was "one of the most exciting moments in his short life."

i hope it gets better for him.

but i fear for the future.

UPDATE: i should have done my homework - jess and davethescot covered this here and here.

in which marissa dies and i learn to play the piano

so, marissa cooper is dead. yawn. it was actually funny. i mean, who the fuck wouldn't pull over if some madman started ramming their car at top speed on a dark and windy cliffside? and ryan staggering manfully down the road, marissa in his arms, while the car exploded behind them was just silly. flashback, flashback, cue dodgy version of 'hallelujah' and we're done. still, there was a moment there when i actually felt sad. manipulated and scornful, but still a little sad. also somewhat concerned by how readily i'd accepted that it would actually impact on my life if i didn't see this episode. i barely even watch the show (i swear it's true) but i wanted to see her die.

channel ten: this is a defining moment of television history.

me: oh, ok then. thanks. i'll be there.

in other news, after years of envying my musician friends i have finally started piano lessons. until now i assumed if i was meant to play music, i would been compelled to play when i was younger. and i wasn't. i took piano lessons very reluctantly when i was 10, and learnt oboe for another couple of years in my adolescence. my teacher was cross-eyed and i used to spend my lessons trying to work out if she was looking at me. i never practiced.

i love music though. passionately. i'm always attracted to musicians because i find what they do (making harmonious sounds! jamming!) so intensely fascinating.

so what i've realised is that i suffer from wanting to be better than average at everything i do. this could be motivating, yes? well, no. not when i refuse to continue with those pursuits i don't instantly excel at. i'm struggling against this now. i can't immediately play comptine d'un autre ete (from amelie) and i want to give up.

my teacher (who is also my friend and who probably anticipated this reaction) made me pay for an entire term in advance though. he also says i should be less ambitious for now.

oh well. at least i've nailed 'when the saints go marching in'.

when did i get old?

it's happened.

i have become conservative. not a conservative of course - but i found myself in the odd and unfamiliar position of drifting around the fringes of a very decadent party on the weekend, arms folded and mouth set disapprovingly.

it was oyster's birthday. she turned 28, which is only just younger than me. she invited people for a dinner party, spontaneous performances and drinking games. squeeky spent the afternoon cooking. i was in an anti-social mood but generally happy. we built a fire in the back-yard and nursed oyster through 3 hours of pre-party anxiety.

oyster: no-one's coming. i feel sick.

me: of course people are coming.

oyster: i don't want anyone to come. oh god, i hope no-one comes. what am i going to say to them?

splat: you'll be fine. at least you're at home. you can always just go to your room

oyster: i just got another text from someone who says they're not coming. it's raining. maybe we should all just go out.

we made soothing noises. fast-forward a few hours and there were dozens of people there. it started off well. people eating. chatting. drinking. then things started to go a bit pear-shaped. it seemed everyone was suddenly a bit too drunk or a bit too high. the dog was shaking and biting people. there was dancing and lots of screaming. from where i stood it looked like everyone was determined to be the loudest and to be having the most fun. i was bored.

once i had the liberating realisation that if the party was happening anywhere else i wouldn't be there, i jumped on my bike and fled at about 2am. after a terribly exciting adventure involving broken glass and my front bicycle tire, i actually ended up having an amazing night watching these crazy serbian musicians spontaneously perform gypsy tunes in the back room of a bar in fitzroy. they were incredible. it was like being in a tony gatlif film - everyone was clapping, every conceivable object was turned into an instrument. and this gorgeous woman with the most amazing voice i've ever had the privilege to hear sang songs that suspended the entire room on the breath that linked one note to the next.

when i finally worked up the courage to go home last night i really wasn't sure what to expect. it was so much worse than i could have imagined. it was even worse than the time i was 15 and we had a party at my best friend's house while her parents were away and people threw up on her mother's bed. we had to spend 8 hours cleaning up after that party, including filing cigarette burns off the toilet and cutting them out of the carpet.

my house looked like the aftermath of a schoolies party. like a thousand drunken 16 years old had rampaged through it. at one stage they had the popcorn maker on top of the pantry and were dancing underneath it while it rained popcorn upon them. i know this because there were two massive plastic bags of popcorn on the kitchen floor and i just had to ask. every piece of crockery, every single cup, all the pots and pans were filthy. there were insects drowning in soapy, scummy water in the sinks. there were piles of food on the floor. the house stank of beer and cigarettes and unwashed bodies. and my housemates and a few stragglers were sprawled in disarray, looking like vampires, and lining up on what was probably the only clean plate in the house. the animals were starving and looked haggard.

and i found myself judging them. and i found that confronting.

when did i suddenly become this person who cares about rugs and furniture? why was i so outraged? have i made some un-noticed transition into some faux adulthood? does this mean i'm boring? and old? why should it matter to me that i didn't have or overhear one genuinely interesting conversation? was i just being anti-social? why did the words 'no respect' keep going through my head like i was some grey-haired old woman muttering to herself at the hooligans on the corner? is that my future?

these are the questions i'm asking myself today. they will probably keep me pondering for a few days yet.

still, i'm going home soon - and i hope they've cleaned up.