icewhistle.com

Australia, again.

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:07:22 +0000

Awakening to the laughter of kookaburras. The chilly evenings of the Queensland winter return to the daytime heat and humidity that out-swelter the summer of my regular environment. A pile of Sunshine Coast newspapers lies beside me, all torn open to the two-way crossword and sudoku puzzles that I devour.

My partner’s gone down to Brisbane for one last night with her friends but I decided to stay back and enjoy a quiet night to myself on the Sunshine Coast. I’ve spent quite a bit of time here, in this house with a clever open-plan design and lots of screen doors overlooking the very green hillside. The in-laws; I think of the Peter Falk/Alan Arkin classic or the many cultural stereotypes but none of it applies to me. My in-laws are all about feng shui, an electric hob, a borrowed espresso machine.
And then. Hot potato scallops on the beach. Gravel crunching underfoot in Brisbane West End driveways. The thin layer of scum, probably imagined, that coats all surfaces of Fortitude Valley. The sound of The Einstein Factor bleating from ABC1 while I microwave leftover rice noodles with Panang curry base.

A night spent with a hilarious opinionated man, a tenuous connection (father of the partner of a friend of my partner) whose house I ended up in by chance. One AUS$240 bottle of wine later and I’ve been invited to see his $5,000 glass sphere purchased in China and treated to his outrage that modern women go to restaurants together and enjoy themselves without the company of men. I’m told their small town ranked #2 on a list of the most desirable places to live (right after Paris) but I suspect this ranking was in the Sunshine Coast Newspaper. This is followed by a ride home in a Mercedes amid frequent jokes/warnings about the dangerousness of the neighboring small town, in which I am staying (which is completely ridiculous, of course).

Charity shops galore! Or rather, op-shops as they are known here. I bought clothes; I bought books. Books I would never buy in Finland, books that were insanely cheap and will pose some difficulty in getting back under Qantas’s restrictive, if not fascist, weight limits.

We have not yet progressed past the dream of wanting all things in all places. This is coupled with our inherent thirftyness; thus we return with items we can’t find cheap in Helsinki: decent vegetarian furikake, a large tub of Vegemite, fluorescent magic markers, a certain kind of sore throat spray, and perhaps some organic hops if the homebrew store is open tomorrow.

Oh, the joys of pronouncing Australian place names as if they were Finnish words! Sometimes it just sounds great, better than the original (Maroochydore! Mooloolaba! Indooroopilly!) but sometimes it just doesn’t work as well as you want it to (Wooloongabba). A few visits to Maroochydore are inevitable, after all, Sunshine Plaza mall is there though the food court isn’t as magnificent as I remember; still, you can’t get falafel with satay sauce, pineapple and jalapenos in Finland (at least as far as I’m aware).

A few days each in Melbourne and Brisbane were spent continuing old habits; record stores, bookstalls, supermarkets. Tendencies I have avoided since the Departure (that time 5 years ago when I left Pittsburgh for good) but were once hallmarks of my visits to other cities such as Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit. Melbourne in particular feels a bit like all of them - an amalgamation of other cities, with flavors European and American yet a distinct Australian wrapper.

It’s the small town where I am right now that I seem to enjoy the most. Not sure if this is because it gestures towards some sort of homesickness or secret suburban envy, or because it’s incredibly comfortable here. Without anything to actually do, I can justify sitting on the couch and reading all day, drinking bottles of beer in those foam holders to keep things cool and trying to get the ridiculously slow Internet connection to stay active.

Tourism! We visit Australia Zoo, formerly run by Steve Irwin the Crocodile Hunter, now deceased, so the zoo is run by his wife. The hefty price tag and my general vegetarian unease about zoos was quickly overruled by the sheer wonders of what was inside. Wombats, otters, cassowaries, emus, kangaroos you can feed, koalas you can pet, jabirus, snakes you can be photographed with (for money). Afterwards why not hit the Ettamogah Pub? It's one of the few times I’ve had a beer inside an actual fictional place, modeled after the incomprehensible comics by Ken Maynard that every Australian grew up reading. Why not eat an overpriced steak dinner on the side of the highway? Then on the Skin Land, which is actually a place to buy leather goods and not the sleaze you’d expect. (We didn’t stop). Instead we stopped in another small town (Landsborough) and exhausted their op-shopping options (one stop; nothing bought).

Or how about the few actual cultural things I went to see; the Brisbane Gallery of Modern Art, with a stunning show of Chinese art which was mostly cherry-picked from their permanent collection of Asia-Pacific Triennial holdovers but so what, cause it was great anyway? Or the National Gallery of Victoria’s permanent collection, stunning enough (particularly the indigenous art) that I didn’t feel bad about skipping the John Brack show (which wasn’t free - more money to spend on records!) QAG had an exhibition on American Realism and Impressionism opening the following day but I didn't go back; I should be looking for Australian art anyway, right?

Now, opening a tallie of Coopers (green label), I look over the empty containers of dip that I attacked the previous night. Spinach feta and rocket; mango cashew and coconut; black olive almond and parmesan. Australian supermarkets are festivals for the senses; all manners of fusion ingredients, all packaged with attractive designs and reasonable prices (for the Euro does very, very well against the Aussie Dollar). I’ve tried Cole’s, IGA and Woolworth’s, or Woolies; all have their perks.

Multiculturalism is a lovely thing. Footscray (a suburb of Melbourne) is like being simultaneously in every place on Earth. As I float between covered market, Ethiopian restaurant bar, and a mind-blowing Moroccan restaurant I feel like I am stuck between the frames of Marker’s Sans Soleil. Which is actually interesting sort of because the last time I was in Brisbane, two years ago, there was an exhibition of Marker’s work on at some gallery that I never made it to.

”Australians tend to shorten words,” said my mom-in-law on the way from the airport. Aussie English occupies a weird tangent to my daily British-American conflict. It's eggplant, not aubergine; but both elevator and lift are acceptable and the preference is for toilet, not bathroom (though ideally ”dunny”). The St. Vincent DePaul op-shop has now been completely renamed to Vinnies (no apostrophe, I don't think, but actually I'm not sure).

Travel! It never stops with me. My lifestyle is inadvertently ridiculous. I continually travel from country to country with a frequency that I never could have imagined, yet I remain nonplussed, blasé, and occasionally annoyed by it (when the visits are for work). This trip feels more like ’visiting family’ than ’vacation’ though it’s hard to argue that it hasn’t been a festival of hedonism and leisure.

There’s nothing particularly Australian about this moment, right now, yet it feels somewhat otherwordly to me - the stillness besieged by the sounds of the house. There’s a continual buzzing from the switched-off set-top TV tuner box, an angry reminder of the evil of standby lights. The analog clock on the wall is ticking on the downbeat and the complement is the old cabinet-top clock across the room. I can hear the dryer, in the garage, whirring to a finish while a radio plays at a volume that makes it impossible for me to actually make out anything.

The sheer hell of getting here - particularly because our uber-cheap buy-one-get-one-free plane tickets were only from London, so we’ve had to start and finish this trip by flying in the wrong direction a bit — and then transporting ourselves between Gatwick and Heathrow airports — wasn’t nearly as bad as last time, perhaps because my body is more able to handle the whole jetlag thing. Or maybe because we splurged and got massages at Singapore Changi Airport halfway through the journey. 38 Singaporean dollars is a small price to pay to feel great, especially when subjecting yourself to such hardship.

And then. Pumpkin-barley rolls served at a market by a rapping Hari Krishna. ANZAC biscuits, Tim Tams - and that’s not even getting into the gourmet sweets. Watching the Pittsburgh Penguins be humiliated in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup finals from an RSL Club in Nambour, where I actually got my own membership (a nice thrill after the Nambour Library rejected me for not having proof of address). Australia. Where the Internet is practically third-world; horrendous bandwidth limitations, generally dial-up speeds, and the need to browse with images turned off for the first time since, I dunno, the 90’s?

The other night a Who Wants to Be a Millionaire contestant got the question about where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd went to high school wrong. I know because my partner went to the same school and I drove past it today. It’s probably better bragging rights than ”My Mom went to the same high school as Bill Cowher” but maybe not.

This could be regular life; an antipodean alternative to the (admittedly bizarre) regular existence I eke out in Helsinki. Australian and American culture is similar enough to make this feel like I'm glimpsing memories of the future again.

'Poetry is a game of loser-take-all' : On Pierrot le fou

Mon, 11 May 2009 03:06:17 +0000

Pierrot le fou is being screened at Orion (National Audiovisual Archive of Finland), this Wednesday, at 7 PM, and I THINK Anna Karina is going to be there in person.

Of course I’m basing this on something a friend mentioned a few weeks ago - he was getting up early to stand in a queue to get tickets. And my initial reaction, of course, was ”Oh, she’s still alive?”

I should have followed him and tried to get my own ticket, but I just watched Pierrot a few weeks ago and my French isn’t good enough to handle a film without subtitles yet (well, there will be Finnish and Swedish subtitles, but that’s no help). Though maybe that’s appropriate for a film where the two lead characters communicate with each other in a way where they might as well be speaking different languages. Yet, strangely they are in sync.

Pierrot is maybe my favorite Godard film, though don’t hold me to that because after a few beers I'll ramble on about the greatness of Masculin féminin or Le mepris or Alphaville too. I love it for many reasons: the way it rolls like a giant ball of expanding energy, the quotable lines, the humour -- and also because it seems like a connecting link between the French New Wave and 1970s American cinema.

Actually, I might only mean Badlands when I speak of this influence. I’ve never read any criticism about Pierrot le fou in particular, but it must be seen as an antecedent to Malick’s masterpiece. I recently watched an obscure and INSANE film called Deadhead Miles, which was written by Malick shortly before he made Badlands. The difference between the two is enormous (Deadhead is obscure for good reason), but both have a freewheeling anarchy, strongly connected with the motion of the road and the automobile -- as does Pierrot, exemplified by Ferdinand and Marianne.

Week-end is Godard’s much more extreme vision of automotive futurism, yet trapped in a thunderous gridlock; Pierrot is rather a film about motion itself, with cars and trains and boats ;; the destination is irrelevant.

While capturing stills for this post, I was struck by how every frame of this film is stunning and iconic. Your can take your pick, and then print full-colour posters to sell to college kids. These should be the images to line dorm room walls; the sniggering Belmondo in the bath, instead of a limp Pulp Fiction or A Clockwork Orange poster. Or maybe I’m just showing how out of touch I am with contemporary college dorm decoration...

I generally think the idea of male/female ’chemistry’ is a bullshit construct of film critics and promotional agencies, but it’s hard to deny the explosive energy of this film, driven only by its two stars. If I was going to the event here, maybe I could ask Karina if the presence of hubby Jean-Luc, unseen to us behind the camera, drove the sparks we see with her and Jean-Paul: a performance both passionate and detached.

There’s a little bit of everything Godard in here: the politics (not as strident as his later stuff, which I still have to investigate), a critique of middle-class urban life (drawn out in the brilliant party scene at the beginning), and wry smirks instead of genuine honesty.

Of course, I'm not going. Fuck it -- books are better than films.

J. G. Ballard is dead.

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 23:28:06 +0000

I’d never say that J.G. Ballard was one of my favorite writers and I don’t think you could get me to defend his prose style under any circumstances. But his influence on art, literature and film (which have in turn influenced me) is incalculable. There’s been a deluge of tributes, blog posts, and other articles since his passing last week and I don’t really have anything to share myself to really justify this post. But in grad school, through the provocations of his detractors I found myself finally connecting with his ideas.
We were assigned Crash during the second term of my Master’s course (in modern and post-modern English literature) for a seminar titled ’Postmodern Spaces’. Crash was accompanied with some readings from Lefebvre’s The Production of Space and I believe Foucault’s essay on heterotopias.

In the week leading up to the course, the online forum used for the course exploded when one student posted a complaint that they found the work offensive. I wish I had saved the forum thread because it turned into a shitstorm that really changed the way I perceived the other students. I don’t remember what the initial complaint was, but once one student voiced their displeasure, the floodgates were opened.

I couldn’t believe it - we were given a brilliant text about apocalyptic technology, paraphilia, celebrity, and a million other ideas, but instead of discussing any of these, everyone was just upset about the graphic sexual content. At first there were accusations of misogyny, which I guess I should have expected, but then one student claimed that the book contained a pro-paedophilia position. His obtuse reading of one small sentence was his reason for making this claim, which he apparently used to leverage a formal complaint with the University against the professor who assigned the text.

I stayed out of it at first, but eventually I got fed up and posted something a seething defense. I remember that I called the anti-Crash people ”reactionaries” and asking why the Brits say that Americans don’t understand irony whereas I, the only American in the course, was one of the only students who wasn’t missing the point. Eventually the professor himself posted something (though I can’t remember what he said, it was diplomatic) and discussion immediately ceased, as if the other students were terrified once they realised the professor was reading their complaints.

When everyone showed up for the seminar I expected a knife-fight but instead found a room of nervous and repressed faces. The seminar was great, looking at Lefebvre’s ideas of space and how it was infused in Crash (from the technological trap of the car to the novel’s setting near London Airport, as airports terminals are the most Ballardian of places). I had never been a Ballard fan before (having read some stories and a later novel when I was in high school) but after having been forced to defend him (on principle, really) I felt some sort of kinship.

Even after we discussed the cold, technical voice used by the narrator (and the decision to name that narrator James Ballard), no one seemed to be willing to concede that the purpose of the novel was not to arouse deviant prurient interests. I remember the phrase ”the death of affect” being used quite a bit by our professor, though I don’t think anyone was listening. The controversy over Crash permanently altered the social fabric of the class (though those relationships are situational and temporary anyway).

”He was ahead of his time” is such a cliché and it’s use is rarely justified. I don’t think it’s even right to say that about J.G.Ballard - instead, I’d say that ”he was of his time” and that most other writers are behind theirs. He is the Paul Virilio of fiction, a writer who is almost precognizant with his visions.

Some tributes from my feed reader:

Ballardian, of course, which is collecting all of the tributes and pieces
JG Ballard, our greatest living novelist, is no longer [Tomorrow Museum]
How JG Ballard cast his shadow right across the arts [The Guardian]
The Independent
Comparing Ballard to David Foster Wallace [The Valve]
JG Ballard: The Literature of Happiness [sans everything]

footnote: The other text assigned for the 'Postmodern Spaces' seminar but unassigned when no one could find it was 'Between' by Christine Brooke-Rose. I've been meaning to read this ever since and I had a copy sitting on the shelf waiting for me, but it too was lost in the move. I'll gladly accept a replacement as a gift!

The Most Amazing Musician in All History!

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 22:41:31 +0000

The most amazing musician in all history? Really, Ripley, this might be pushing my ability to Believe - I mean, haven’t you ever checked out JACO?

The quest to innovate on an instrument can lead the journeyman improviser into strange realms. Some great names (in my opinion) have written books on their art - Derek Bailey, Eddie Prévost - and these masters are certainly known for redefining the interface of person-with-instrument.

But there’s a fine line between brilliantly extending the instrument through unconventional technique and mere gimmicks. Who am I to define it? One one hand we have Roland Kirk, playing three saxophones at the same time, yet still dismissed by many of the jazzerati as a vaudeville act. On the other hand, I remember a conversation I had in the 9th grade, with an intimidating 10th grader. He had an impressive goatee (for a 15 year old) and was wearing a ratty Scorpions t-shirt, pre-’Wind of Change’, that lent his argument a certain type of cred. We were discussing who was the best bass player in music - I was probably arguing for Mike Mills of R.E.M. or Tony Lombardo of Descendents - and he was insisting that it was the bassist for Gwar. The reason, according to the 10th grader, was that he played with the bass turned around, so he was facing the fretboard and turning his hands around in a way that made it much more difficult to play.

I’m going to be a rock snob here and not even give the 10th grader the benefit of the doubt (as I’ve never listened to Gwar) - though I’m sure Beefcake the Mighty is a fine bassist, I probably wouldn’t find his records as interesting as ones by Barre Phillips, John Edwards, William Parker (or even Dee Dee Ramone). Music is subjective, sure, whatever, but I’m gonna side with my prejudices here.

Karl/Carl Hermann Unthan’s talent is probably better compared to Rick Allen of Def Leppard, whose one-armed drumming blew my mind in 1988 but now is only a source of mean-spirited humour, or a human interest story a la Indomitable Spirit. Though I’m sure it was an amazing site to behold, and I don’t wish icewhistle.com to develop a reputation for bashing the disabled.

I mentioned Dee Dee Ramone above because it doesn’t take a genius to know that great musicianship is more than just technical ability or gimmicks. I hate to dismiss Unthan as vaudeville act, particularly because I don’t think he made any recordings (as he died in 1929), but I wonder just how emotive his violin solos could be. But maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt - moreso than Gwar - because I could listen to Gwar and not Unthan; maybe I am falling victim to the same attitude that Roland Kirk’s detractors held.

To be honest, I think Kirk is really underrated, and not just for the triple-horn technique (though that is amazing in a gimmicky way, it also truly extended jazz saxophone through the way he created chords). His songwriting, particularly stuff like ’Volunteered Slavery’, stands out against the other jazz/R&B crossover experiments and his playing reveals a real intimacy at times. Ripley died before Kirk made his first record* but I wonder if he might have instead believed, through his own criteria, that Kirk was the Most Amazing Musician in All History. Regardless, I’m going to choose to Not believe this one, in protest of the very concept of all-time most amazing. (Though Marky Ramone ….)

This is the second in a series of posts inspired by panels from a giant Ripley's - Believe it Or Not! book that my aunt gave to me for Christmas in 1988.

*Footnote: Ripley obviously used the same source photograph that Wikipedia has for his drawing, though I like to Believe that Ripley had access to all future Wikipedia entries through some amazing time/reality warp.

Icewhistle travel report: Athens

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:16:27 +0000

True ”travel” - not for work, not to play a show, not to visit family - feels slightly strange to me.

Also strange is stepping into a huge city - a ”real” city if I may be a bit condescending towards where I live - after so many months in the dreamworld that is Helsinki.

I went to Paris in February for work and that was a minor jolt, but I felt it more in Athens. 12 times as many people live in Athens than in Helsinki. The city is huge.

There’s litter and it’s loud and there’s people everywhere and you can buy things after 9 PM and you can get a bottle of wine in the supermarket and there’s little old dirty shops everywhere, and the streets aren’t all perfectly paved, the sidewalk is uneven,

There’s graffiti, and many gorgeous old buildings. It’s cheap to rent an apartment that is so big, you can’t touch all four walls at once, (Which doesn’t sound so amazing til you’ve lived in Helsinki).

There’s a lively market district that’s unfortunately located close to the site of some terrifying recent machete murders.

Here you’ll find all sorts of flayed animal carcasses for sale,plus an impressive assortment of vegetables, herbs, spices, and the usual plastic junk that infects modern marketplaces like a disease.

There’s a million little cafés and tavernas, all filed with coffee-swilling elderly Greek men, such as this one. It was slightly intimidating to enter, yet provided that complicated ”authenticity” that all travelers seek.

Of course there’s the obligatory tourist stuff - the beginnings of Western Civilisation are certainly worthy of a visit (plus entrance is free for EU students).

I’m sure Alain deBotton or someone has already written on this, but the whole time I was on this holiday, I found myself thinking not about Athens but constantly about Helsinki (and a little about Pittsburgh and Glasgow and all of the other places I’ve lived). Comparisons are impossible to avoid, sure, but the differences between Athens and Helsinki really illuminated how much my everyday reality has shifted since I moved here. I’m not complaining about Helsinki - there are wonderful things about it - but the excitement of a city with a pulse is hard to deny.

Of course we visited Aegina - to get to see this - the classic image of what Greece is ”supposed” to look like.

Did I mention the food?

Or the drinks?

Additionally: Great people (hooray to Panagiotis of Phase!/Reverse Mouth for his amazing hospitality), great record stores, great food (worth saying again), and great weather. Credit where it's due: All photos were taken by Tara, pretty much.