Northern Lights

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

the sixth or seventh huon album

Until about five or six years ago Mia and I, with Andrew and Ellen, played in a band called Huon. Tonight Mia and I mastered what is quite likely to be the last Huon album (the sixth or the seventh? I can't remember) for a vinyl/iTunes release. Mia had really done a lot of work on the record - she added all this extra instrumentation, etc over time so even though the tracks were recorded in 2002 or so, it would be wrong to say it was recorded then. There are a lot of great songs of Mia's particularly on there, including one called 'Falling' which I think is one of her best ever (though they are all grand of course). Also Ellen's well-known classic 'Paula' and a great tune of Andrew's known as 'Old Tree'. It was a great privilege to work with them and I think we did a lot of really good work. The vinyl will be an edition of a hundred, and the iTunes limited to four billion. Also Mia mastered her birdsong record which is another long-time-in-the-making epic which will turn a lot of heads. It will be three albums at least for Mia this year as the New Estate album will be out on July 7.

john morrison

I really enjoyed reading John Morrison's The Creeping City, originally published in the late 1940s. Set in a hypothetical town in the Dandenongs (to Melbourne's east), the novel examines the pressures felt by a rural community which suddenly finds itself an object of desire by middle and upper class holiday makers - that is, it is undergoing gentrification. The process is outlined in detail suggesting that Morrison had some experience in this. Transport options play a major role, as do land prices of course and the attitude of shopkeepers, etc to the newcomers. Some residents fiercely resist the change; the children, by and large, are fiercely excited about it.

As a writer Morrison, who died last decade, is a fine example of a bridge between the old polemical style (he was a communist for much of his life apparently, and he does sometimes seem to be resisting having his characters launch into a tract) and a freer, observational one which at the same time - because he so often wrote short stories - comes close to that of the parable.

The Creeping City is of its age, I suppose, and (warning: spoiler) while the murder mentioned on the back cover blurb of the early 70s edition I was reading doesn't actually occur until about ten pages from the end, some of the relationships are too stilted and others too unproblematic (i.e., stock) it nevertheless paints a very effective portrait of a town without telephone or town power, based largely on berry farming, dependent on private 'cars' (taxis, I suppose) for transport, and yet with a view of the city lights at night. As people throughout the book are constantly observing, it's a way of life that's about to end. The surprise to me is it lasted as long as it did.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

mooroopna station monday afternoon just before 4

It was what it was

ambush mentality

Since I have started riding a bicycle to and from work on a fairly regular basis I have had a number of incidents allowing me to muse on my ancestors' contributions to my instincts.

Because I had a worse education than anyone I know, my understanding of this comes almost entirely from a book I read about ten years ago called How the Mind Works by an American called Steven Pinker; one of those pop science books by someone who is clearly groovy and who is also working a little outside their field of expertise but doing a better job of it probably for that very reason (I always teach better outside areas I am totally immersed in because apart from anything else I don't get bogged down in the detail). If I remember correctly Pinker claims in that book that the western cultural preference for a lawn with trees as a backdrop is innately satisfying to humans as evoking the daily existence of the prehistoric people of the savannah from which you and I and everyone else have evolved. The open space means we can see if anything is coming towards us to attack us; the trees mean if something does come towards us to attack us we have somewhere to run and hide. I may have got Pinker a bit wrong here but the gist is right.

If these ancient tropes are hard wired into us (don't you love those kinds of cliches; I have never heard the term 'hard wired' used any other way, is it really a process? In computers or what?) then I have another one. Numerous times, and it happened again this morning, I have had to fight the sense that I am riding into ambush. I know this sounds silly but it's a true sense. Riding on the bike path along Moonee Ponds Creek at Strathmore, for instance, one comes across a scenario of the creek to the right, and the major wall of the Tullamarine Freeway to the left. Here there is a wall of about waist height and then level ground of probably a metre across alongside the freeway wall. Here plants are growing with leaves and branches that hang off the wall toward the bike path. Most of the time at this time of year I approach these in the half-light, and my immediate response is to regard them as people standing by the pathway in a suspicious manner. The proportion is right - they look in an abstract sense to be people-sized - but the idea that people would stand at regular intervals along a fairly secluded bike path for any reason is absurd. Nevertheless I think you see what I'm saying. It's a primal impulse to be on guard against people-sized things in the distance, on your projected route, as they may actually be people.

This morning, the same thing happened again where I was only dimly aware of my intended course - I was travelling across the large park at the west of the Melbourne General Cemetery - and then somewhere in my ancient mind there was a distant alarm bell. I actually had to think about what the problem might be, and came to apreciate that it was an avenue of trees in the distance, with two people (walking away from me) in the middle of them. Allowing for perspective of the furthest trees, and comparison between the two people and those far trees, something in my head was telling me there was something that needed to be considered up ahead, potentially dangerous.

The really silly part of this is that, when for instance I'm driving and another driver does something wreckless or bizarre, I react calmly before I even think about it (most people are like this - it's a different kind of innate reaction, one that virtually bypasses the 'hmm, is that an avenue of trees or a death squad?' decision making process). So being prepared, while an advantage, is not the most commonly used advantage humans have. Also, if a group of people - unless it was those darned neanderthals maybe - wanted to ambush me, wouldn't they do it from some concealed position, rather than somewhere very conspicuous? I would have thought so, but maybe that's the trick.

That said, I do often think about that early scene in the film Children of Men where the burning car is pushed down the hill through the forest to the valley road to stop Julianne Moore getting away, or getting somewhere, I can't remember. That really pushed my buttons, which by the way, are directly connected to my hard wiring.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

says it all

...and with a maton too

Monday, June 09, 2008

i can haz life of turgid monotony? And pancake?

Cu-ute! Asha has a hardline routine these days. She hides in the back part of the house most of the time, of course, and does not even necessarily emerge from wherever it is she is cowering when Mia or I show up. Presumably she meditates in the way cats do (they seemingly find it easy to completely empty their minds). She sleeps most of the daytime and then in the evening when the dogs come in, she's hiding from the dogs. However like me the morning is her best time. She particularly likes being hand fed scraps eg bits of breakfast pancake as seen here (she won't eat this stuff off the floor for some reason). She also lists as her likes: climbing the curtains, grabbing things off the walls, and being bitten on the lower back by that shit Bela.