December 2006 - Eat French Bread

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Eat French Bread - December 2006

dear reader

December 28th 2006 00:02

Here are some shots I took of a sunset at the Hydro Majestic, a creepy and fabulous old hotel in the Blue Mountains. Thanks for reading.
Until next year,
ag.

“If I wasn't Bob Dylan, I'd probably think that Bob Dylan has a lot of answers myself”
(Bob Dylan)

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there’s no place like home. especially if you’re home alone watching this film.

December 24th 2006 22:59

I recently returned to Oz. More correctly, I returned to Return to Oz, an unofficial sequel to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz of 46 years prior and one of the most bestest film of my childhood. It’s greatness hasn’t weaned. Whimsical and weird with references to surrealist aesthetic, returning to oz offers a darker side to the rainbow.

Dorothy is back in Kansas and hasn’t been able to sleep since the tornado. Aunt Elm takes her to an ‘electric therapist’ to heal her insomnia and alleged delusions about a place called Oz. When therapy is about to commence they are hit by an electric storm and Dorothy escapes with the help of a little girl her age. Dorothy awakes in Oz, asleep in a chicken coop in the middle of a pond with her chook Billina who found a key that was delivered to Dorothy in a shooting star. They use stepping-stones to cross the deadly desert, and find a lunch box tree. They pick some ripe lunch boxes and eat the ham sandwiches from inside as eyes in the rocks around them watch. They yellow brick road is shattered and everyone in the Emerald City has been turned to stone. Some writing on a wall warns them to beware the wheelers. Wheelers (below, with Dorothy and Tick Tock) are the scariest things in the world. Bizarre cackling men

with squeaky wheels instead of hands and feet, frightening second faces on their helmets, bright clothes and punky hair and makeup. Dorothy finds tick tock who does everything but live and needs her to wind up his thought speech and action. Together they end up at Princess Mombie’s palace. They meet Jack Pumpkin Head who has a pumpkin for a head and wants to call Dorothy Mum. They have to steal the ruby key from Mombie to get the Powder of Life from her cabinet. Mombie has 30 heads in different cabinets and alternates between them. When Dorothy steals the Powder of Life from one of the cabinets all the heads start screaming in unison. Dorothy and co. escape on The Gump, a taxidermined moos head strapped to a couch with branches of a palm for wings, brought to life with the Powder of Life. They get to King Noam’s mountain to ask him to restore Oz and the Scarecrow, and he says they must inspect his room of ornaments and guess which object is the scarecrow. Noam lifts his robes of rock to reveal he has Dorothy’s ruby slippers. Billina finally lays the egg she has been struggling with, and they discover eggs are poison on Noam Mountain; Noam and the rock monsters crumble away, Dorothy gets her ruby slippers back and the Emerald city is restored.

The examination of the oppressive adult world on the impressionable child’s imagination loans itself well to psychoanalysis. The adult world is constantly telling Dorothy not to speak of things that don’t really exist and that the Land of Oz is of her own imagining. In the first sequence, before Dorothy finds herself returned to Oz, there are hints of what is to come: a pumpkin head, a tin lunch pale, the “head” nurse who is later princess Mombie, the pasty workers at the clinic pushing squeaky trolleys who are later the wheelers, and the mysterious blond child who rescues Dorothy, who is later Ozma the queen of Oz. Perhaps Dorothy uses these things of the ‘real’ world to conjure up the adventures in her imagination, or perhaps she really did return to Oz.

Sound as trippy and twisted as a Dalí painting? This G (!) rated film remains one of this normally nonchalant-about-fantasy blogger’s all-time favourites. Don’t expect a sing-along musical with bright colours, cardboard sets and dancing midgets, Return to Oz is much closer to L. Frank Baum’s original 14 novels which got progressively darker as the author neared his end.

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Art Versus Nature

December 21st 2006 08:15

Aristotle said “art completes what nature cannot bring to finish” almost 2.5 millennia ago, and while definitions of ‘art’ and the ‘natural’ remain elusive, the divide between the two has consistently fueled fierce philosophical debate. Perhaps never more so than during the artistic and intellectual movement of late 18th century Western Europe, known as Romanticism. The Romantics glorified nature over man; challenged aristocratic, social and political norms of the Enlightenment; and elevated emotions, imagination and passion over rationality.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the most influential political philosopher of the Enlightenment, had paved the way for much Romantic theory. Some of his attitudes were not unlike 20th century hippies – he was anti-industrialist,

Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by Caspar David Friedrich, 1817

anti-competitive, broadly idealistic, and a worshipper of nature. In Discourse on the Arts and Sciences he argued that art and science had not been beneficial to humankind. According to him art and science were not human needs, but results of pride and vanity which created opportunities for idleness and luxury that contributed to the corruption of man. In our natural states we are good and pure and at liberty but with the imposition of society and civilisation and art, we are captive and bastardised: in Rousseau's words, "man is born free but everywhere he is in chains."

Then in late Romanticism, one particular school of French poets developed a very different view of art and nature, vehemently rejecting the Romantic veneration of the natural. According to the poet Théophile Gautier, ‘Nature is stupid, without consciousness of itself, without thought or passion … art is more beautiful, more true, more powerful than nature.” He preferred not only blatant artificiality to phoney naturalness but all artifice to all nature - his famous slogan was “l’art pour l’art” or “art for art’s sake.”

The discourse carries with it interesting questions. Do we need art? Does it corrupt our ‘natural’ state? Or is it precisely what makes us humans, in the most natural sense? Is art more powerful than the natural? If the breathtaking colours and textures of an ocean or sunset or rainforest, for example, happened to be man-made and were viewed in a domestic setting or gallery, would they have the same impact? Or is their potency not intrinsic to them and dependent rather upon our knowing that they are of nature’s creation?

Quote of the day:
“What is art? Nature concentrated”
(Honore de Balzac)

Image: Wikipedia

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you are more likely to pick up if you have a book in your hand

December 20th 2006 03:09

In a New York Times Review article, Books Make You a Boring Person, Cristina Nehring said bookworms are the most self-congratulatory bunch, but are really nothing special: “you can learn anything from a book - or nothing. You can learn to be a suicide bomber, a religious fanatic or, indeed, a Bush supporter as easily as you can learn to be tolerant, peace-loving and wise. You can acquire unrealistic expectations of love as readily as, probably more readily than, realistic ones ... Most disturbing, you can train yourself to be nothing at all; you can float forever like driftwood on the current of text; you can be as passive as a person in an all-day movie theatre, as antisocial as a kid holed up with a video game, and at the same time more conceited than both.”

But according to Penguin UK, books do make you more interesting and they increase your chances of romantic interest. In a controversial promotion encouraging more reading in young males - who are proven to read less than their female counterparts - the publishing house said “What women really want is a man with a Penguin. You may not even need to read it, just bend the covers, let it stick out of your pocket and the book will do the talking!” (www.goodbooking.com). According to a survey commissioned by them, eight out of ten people polled said they believe readers “are likely to be much better in bed.”

Bookshops and libraries have long been considered good places to find love in the air, and recently “literary speed dating” has taken an already bizarre form of finding a partner, to a new level. At the State Library of Victoria twenty registered singles meet, all with a book they want to discuss, and spend 5 minutes with each person. At the end they select whether they want to pursue anyone and if there are matches, personal details are exchanged.

I wonder if it works. Is it a good idea to start a romance based on the other person’s literary preferences? Do our responses to books reveal much about who we are or what we want? Does being a reader really make you more desirable? Can books better us?

Quote of the day:
“Master books, but do not let them master you. - Read to live, not live to read.”
(Edward Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1831-1891)

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wabi-sabi

December 14th 2006 20:52

My lovely mother gave me this book, Wabi-Sabi: For Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, by Leonard Koren. Its opening lines are:

Wabi-Sabi is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent and incomplete
It is a beauty of things modest and humble
It is a beauty of things unconventional

Koren explains wabi-sabi as a traditional Japanese beauty with roots in the Japanese tea ceremony and simplicity at its core. It is a rustic aesthetic, comfortable with ambiguity and contradiction – a worldview where everything is seen as either devolving toward, or evolving from, nothingness. New things emerge from nothingness and go back to nothingness: “if we didn’t know differently we might mistake the newborn baby boy – small, wrinkled, bent, a little grotesque looking – for the very old man on the brink of death.”

Beauty is dynamic and contextual, and can be coaxed out of ugliness. Things wabi-sabi record natural processes and the vulnerability of material things to weathering and human contact. They are indifferent to conventionality and good-taste. They are unpretentious and unassuming, they do not demand attention, and coexist with their environments They have a vague, blurry, attenuated beauty – as they approach nothingness or come out of it, colours are faded, edges blurred and textures softened.

All things are impermanent and all things are imperfect. When looked at close enough, the flaws in anything are evident and as things approach their primordial state they become

Black Bamboo, by Jeffrey Dale

even more irregular. Wabi-Sabi has little to do with the western ideal of great beauty as an enduring spectacle or monument. It is about the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral, the subtle and evanescent that are invisible to vulgar eyes. The notion of completion has no basis in wabi-sabi because all things are either evolving or devolving: “is the plant complete when it flowers? When it goes to seed? When seeds sprout? When everything turns into compost?”

The book is nicely published with some thoughtful images and makes for a quick, compelling read. Koren resides in the US and Japan. He studied architecture and photography and in the 1970s created the avant-garde art magazine WET. He is the author of a number of books covering topics such as Japanese pop culture; Japanese design and aesthetics; Japanese fashion; meditation; gardening, and the Japanese bath.

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tuna with chilli garlic dressing

December 12th 2006 03:12

Be the hostess with the mostest and serve your guests this yummy fish dish. Have plenty of drinks, good music and stories to tell, and they won’t even notice how unfriendly it is on the breath. It takes just minutes to prepare: cook a few tuna steaks - either pan fried or wrapped in foil and baked in a medium-heat oven - and serve with this delicious dressing of juicy goodness:

2 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp good quality olive oil
4 tbsp finely chopped fresh oregano
4 tbsp finely chopped fresh mint
1 chopped birds-eye chilli
2 cloves finely slices garlic
Salt and pepper to taste

Quote of the day:
"You know that place between sleep and awake, the place where you can still remember dreaming? That's where I'll always love you, Peter Pan. That's where I'll be waiting."
(Tinkerbell)

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Are Success and Credibility Mutually Exclusive?

December 5th 2006 08:06

Being cool is watching films, going places, reading books and listening to music that no one has heard of. When a fringe designer or movie or novel or band is adopted by a wider public and hyped by commercial media, it instantly looses its appeal to hipsters and must necessarily be dissed. Hendrix (above) had the right idea – he retained his credibility by making an exit before turning into Clapton (below).

Is it just a tall-poppy syndrome that makes us believe that the successful should be cut down, or is it that nothing successful can be credible by definition because being successful and reaching the masses requires that something be given up, that the message be diluted, dumbed down and made more palatable?

Is it just a romantic notion we have that the credible cannot be successful because they must be struggling? That artistry and insight comes from suffering, from being outcast and misunderstood in the first place, and once an artist is successful and comfortable they can no longer produce anything of value?

Is it that we don’t want to be affiliated with the perceivably brainwashed masses who catch on too late? Or is it more that one’s relationship with the once underground band, for example, changes because it can never be as intimate when every gig they play will be full of people who can’t possibly have the same reverence for the music as those who liked it first?

Liking it first has a massive currency in the functioning of identity politics and liking it later, when everyone else does, is completely unacceptable. In this way taste has more to do with methods of identity distinction than something intrinsic to thing that is liked/disliked.

According to Stuart Hall there is within popular culture an inevitable “double movement of containment and resistance.” Culture is never stable because dissidents always move it forward, but nothing can ever go completely against what is de rigueur. Subversive youth movements of the twentieth century, such as the punks or grunges or hip-hoppers, have always identified themselves as anti-authoritarian. They developed aesthetics that went against conventions and offended polite society. But within these subcultures, conformativity has always existed. The punks looked radically different to wider society but remarkably similar to each other. They were conforming to rebellion and nothing can exist outside cultural conventions, no matter how hard it tries.

Joe Queenan, in an article entitled Does A Counterculture Exist if the Culture Doesn’t Know About It? says that dissent is just another way to be bourgeois: “cool middle-class young people do not want to be cool in the way that ordinary middle class people think of themselves as being cool, so they find other ways to be cool. And then another way. And then another way. But this does not constitute a counterculture, or even a subculture. This is more like a hobby. Only immigrants have a true counterculture. Immigrants rarely worry about being cool. Everyone else has a niche inside the mainstream.”

Coolness and cultural influence rarely intersect and the obscure, sadly, is largely irrelevant. According to Queenan, bands that only hipsters know of cannot enter the global consciousness or impact on modern existence, and paradoxically, once something is recognised by enough people to be meaningful, it can no longer be cool: “it is almost pointless to be the world’s coolest band, because the world’s coolest band must quickly and inevitable be replaced by the next supremely cool band that nobody has ever heard of.”

Carlo McCormick (in the Documentary Dig!), on Anton Newcombe, lead singer of the unsuccessful-enough-to-be-credible band, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, and why they have not achieved the recognition that their music deserves:

"He’s his own worst enemy because he thinks success and credibility are mutually exclusive terms - which is an easy baggage to inherit but a very difficult one to hold for every decision of your career because as a musician you want to reach the biggest possible audience, as an artist you want to impact culture the deepest way possible...”

Images: Wikipedia

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Prada Marfa

December 1st 2006 11:32

Following from yesterday's bio of Miuccia, check out the Prada Marfa by Berlin Artists Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, located on a desolate strip of the U.S.90 highway in west Texas.

According to the website, “As one drives toward the artwork it appears to be a large minimalist sculpture; as one gets closer it looks like a luxury boutique where a display of Fall 2005 high-heel Prada shoes and bags can be seen through the store front windows. Yet, one cannot open the door, it is a sealed time capsule and will never function as a place of commerce.”

No maintenance is to be conducted on the structure: “If someone spray-paints graffiti or a cowboy decides to use it as target practice or maybe a mouse or a muskrat makes a home in it, 50 years from now it will be a ruin that is a reflection of the time it was made." The earth-friendly biodegradable adobe building will slowly break down into the landscape - after looters have taken all the accessories no doubt.

The sculpture confuses onlookers, imposing on them questions about the idea of civilisation, the relationship between art and consumerism, the temporal relevance of fashion, contexts of the urban and the rural, and the impermanence of all things material. Miuccia Prada was of course supportive of the artists and reportedly even picked out the shoes herself.