The Juke Box Cafe, Eversholt Street

One note, long and low; held

as the heart beat accelerates.

The chest muscles of a young man

begin to ache, yearning for the release

of tension during an age, if not

of discovery, at least of exploration;

experimentation, which some might call
youthful exuberance.

                                    Meanwhile

a saxophone player
with whom

                                   someone’s mother
almost ran away.when she was barely seventeen
...............(which was not yesterday)

looks up from a newspaper

where he’s been checking classified ads

and searching jobs vacant columns

that seem never to have changed

and in an act of recognition,

recollection maybe, he smiles fondly

but not entirely happily. 

Shine on you crazy diamond

He played the part once, on stage

in a student union bar somewhere,

north of Wolverhampton.

The band was rocking.  He was

on fire

but the moment had passed.

It was all downhill

from there.



I'd been listening to Roger Waters on BBC Radio Four's Desert Island Discs

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Assessment time

We had a take-home exercise to complete by tomorrow to round off this semester's unit on Literature and Cinema.  The questions were released on Friday.  I didn't particularly like any of them but I chose the following (Question 4, on irony).

“Irony was a fundamental feature of ancient tragedy and the view of life it inspired, yet it may be argued that some modern literary or cinematic genres – such as the mystery or the thriller – are similarly motivated by an ironic sense.”  Discuss in terms of one cinematic and one literary text.

Oedipus the King - Sun.Ergos Company, Alberta

I chose Oedipus the King and Brazil.  I finished the essay this afternoon around five o'clock.  It came in at 1,640 odd words, less than 10% over the limit so I shouldn't be marked down for that.  I think it's a decent essay.  Here's how it ends.

Gilliam’s ending to Brazil may be read as an ironic commentary on, or rejection of, the didactic certainties of Aristotelian tragedy in general and Oedipus the King in particular.  When Sam’s escape fantasy is revealed as such, Helpmann remarks “He’s got away from us Jack” to which the torturer replies “I’m afraid you’re right ... He’s gone.”  In that moment, Sam, the hero of the melodrama that is Brazil, attains the psychological oblivion, release or escape denied to the tragic hero Oedipus.




In his valedictory address to the Chorus blind Oedipus asserts that:

… had I known a way to choke the springs
Of hearing, I had never shrunk to make
A dungeon of this miserable frame,
Cut off from sight and hearing; for 'tis bliss
to bide in regions sorrow cannot reach.

Brazil - Sam Lowry escapes

Sam Lowry’s escape into the imagined paradise of his personal Brazil reaches that blissful region free from sorrow Oedipus craves.  Both texts depend on irony to lead the audience to their different conclusions.  The tragedy by Sophocles offers catharsis and the possibility of moral improvement or learning.  Gilliam resists didactic certainties and by means of ironic questioning of the ways in which genres raise expectations he de-stabilises generic conventions to reach an ambiguous, unsettling conclusion that invites us to re-read and re-appraise both the text and ourselves.

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Nuff said ...

"If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person."

Gill Scott-Heron in the short video by Jamie Byng here.
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Gill Scott-Heron died today

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the 
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

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Not-Shakespeare

Sam Jordison of The Guardian Online wrote a clever blog in Guardian Books about how "some prose styles are so powerful they can take over your own. Whose are the most potent?"  I posted the assault upon Shakespeare's Macbeth below.  Silly but fun (at least I had fun).
 
I borrow, and I borrow, and I borrow
Treats from the very place we see you see
In the vast miracle of written works,
Where all the mysteries of gifted fools
Give way to poor pastiche. Enough already!
We’re only faking talent, bloggers blogging
We strut and fret this hour upon the page
Then we are read no more: Mine is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of quote and misquote,
Signifying nothing.

With apologies to … everyone really

(but WS most of all).

GO TO BED.  You have an essay on irony to write by Tuesday!!
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Treasure Island

I'm re-reading Treasure Island by RLS (not quite sure why but then again, why not?).  Sitting in the van outside a repair shop in Hornsby Heights, waiting for a diagnosis on my broken wheelchair lift, I came to Chapter 8, At the Sign of the Spy-glass where I met, once again, one of the most charismatic baddies in literature.  Like young Hawkins, I was captivated (all over again).

Robert Newton as the LJS I grew up with

WHEN I had done breakfasting the squire gave me a note addressed to John Silver, at the sign of the Spy-glass, and told me I should easily find the place by following the line of the docks and keeping a bright lookout for a little tavern with a large brass telescope for sign. I set off, overjoyed at this opportunity to see some more of the ships and seamen, and picked my way among a great crowd of people and carts and bales, for the dock was now at its busiest, until I found the tavern in question.

It was a bright enough little place of entertainment. The sign was newly painted; the windows had neat red curtains; the floor was cleanly sanded. There was a street on each side and an open door on both, which made the large, low room pretty clear to see in, in spite of clouds of tobacco smoke.

The customers were mostly seafaring men, and they talked so loudly that I hung at the door, almost afraid to enter.

As I was waiting, a man came out of a side room, and at a glance I was sure he must be Long John. His left leg was cut off close by the hip, and under the left shoulder he carried a crutch, which he managed with wonderful dexterity, hopping about upon it like a bird. He was very tall and strong, with a face as big as a ham--plain and pale, but intelligent and smiling. Indeed, he seemed in the most cheerful spirits, whistling as he moved about among the tables, with a merry word or a slap on the shoulder for the more favoured of his guests.

Now, to tell you the truth, from the very first mention of Long John in Squire Trelawney's letter I had taken a fear in my mind that he might prove to be the very one- legged sailor whom I had watched for so long at the old Benbow. But one look at the man before me was enough. I had seen the captain, and Black Dog, and the blind man, Pew, and I thought I knew what a buccaneer was like--a very different creature, according to me, from this clean and pleasant-tempered landlord.
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Art by kids

The SIBS Art Project

26-29 May

Many children's lives are profoundly affected by living with siblings who have a disability. While the needs of children with disabilities, especially Autism Spectrum Disorders, have received considerable media and political attention, there is less awareness of the lives of their brothers and sisters.
The photographs and artworks in this exhibition will shine a light on the many young people in the Marrickville area whose siblings have disabilities. These children live with caring responsibilities, intense and ambivalent emotions, difficulties and concerns, and an awareness of diversity and difference well beyond their years.
It will provide the Marrickville community with an opportunity to learn more about the effect of disability on families and young people. The SIBS Art Project showcases the work of the many siblings involved with Pathways Early Childhood Intervention Service. It is a celebration of what it is to be a SIB.

• Opening: Thursday 26 May, 6-10pm 

I was asked by Sylvana Mahmic to give a brief address and officially open the exhibition at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery in Camperdown. The gallery was overflowing and jumping.  The fifteen artists, brothers and sisters of kids with disability, all aged between 6 and 15 were pumped up, noisy, excited, impatient.  After my short speech (which went down well, brought tears to some eyes I was told later) each artist came forward when I called their name to receive a certificate from the Chair of the Board of Pathways Early Childhood Intervention Association.  All of them seemed so proud, so pleased.  It was a true pleasure, a real delight.
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The Skinny Possum

I watched a skinny possum dart
between parked cars, aligned imperfectly
outside the University of Sydney's
English Department, where hordes
of undergraduate students roam
backwards and forwards every hour,
like herds of migrating Wildebeast
taking the same path, following
the same tracks, each hour; all day.

That skinny possum could move,
which surprised me almost as much
as the possum must have been
surprised itself, to find itself,
in broad daylight, cutting across
the well-worn paths of lumbering
English Lit. Majors, Honours
candidates in Early Anglo-Saxon
or Accountancy and Tort Law
specialists making up their credit
count with an Easy-A in Arts.

I barely caught a glimpse of it, to tell
the truth; four furry legs going helter-
skelter underneath a half-parked Ford
and a grey-black bushy tail vanishing
before my disbelieving gaze, unused
to possums, which I'd always thought
were fat, slow-moving and reddish
brown.  All of which just goes to show
that a prize-winning undergraduate
like me knows diddley-squat about
Australian marsupials; not how fast
they move or where they might appear
or disappear before uncertain eyes.
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So ... this is encouraging

We were given back our essays for the Literature and Cinema at Sydney University.  I was given a High Distinction for my essay on Adaptation.  That's good (and what I'd set out to achieve).  More encouragingly, my tutor closed his remarks by writing, "But perhaps what I liked most was the lucidity and style, which I found very winning."

Very encouraging.  Now remember this ... ditch the ego; just write.

I am flabbergasted

I received a second cheque from Sydney University, last week.  This time for $500.  I thought it might be a mistake but Spike fished-out the letter that accompanied the cheque and discovered what I hadn't bothered to read (my defence is that I claim to be a big picture person ... not so good on detail, which is a euphemism for lazy).  It turns out I've won another prize at the University; this time the 2010 Walter Reid Memorial Prize.

Walter Reid was Secretary to the Bar Association of NSW.  The letter stated:

The prize shall be awarded annually without application to students currently enrolled in any undergraduate degree course in the Faculty of Arts or the Faculty of Law on the basis of academic merit in the previous year.

This Award came / comes as such a surprise.  It has set me to thinking.  My too casual attitude won't do.  I need to get properly down to academic business ... 35 years late but better late than never.
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Well ... there's another working week I'll never get back

from this week's New Yorker

Essay Number 2 finished

This time for my course, AMST2601: American Foundations.  This question was posed:

W E B Dubois

Writing in the late nineteenth century, W.E.B. Du Bois famously coined the term “double consciousness” to describe the experience of being both black and American:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness— an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder (The Souls of Black Folk)

Does this concept capture African American experiences in the past? Does it still apply to the present?

And I started my answer with these words:

Drawing on predominantly personal narratives of African-American experience, this essay argues that the “peculiar sensation” of double consciousness has been and remains characteristic of Black history in the United States.  Questions of identity are central to understanding experiences as diverse as those of Harriet Jacobs in the 1800s and Barack Obama today. But, as their different personal histories illustrate, and the debates within the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s demonstrate, identity politics is not sufficient as a narrative through which to read African-American circumstances in past or contemporary America.  

Ended up with just under the 1,500 word limit (excluding 500 words of quotes).  I'm less than wholly confident about the outcome but we'll see.

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Reasons to be cheerful ...

A MAN was captured on CCTV trying to board a train in Wales - with a pony in tow.

The unknown man attempted to buy two tickets - one for him and one for his four-legged friend - at Wrexham train station in North Wales, for a two-hour journey to Holyhead, the North Wales Post reported today.

Shocked staff refused to serve the man, telling him horses were not allowed on the train.

Undeterred, the man said, "I know the law" and got into an elevator with the horse, and walked it across the bridge and onto a platform.

When the train arrived he boarded the service and tried to pull the pony on with him until a conductor intervened.

After a brief argument the man retreated and left the station with his pony.

A spokeswoman for Arriva Trains Wales said the company did not allow livestock to board trains.

"We do allow small animals, such as dogs and guide dogs, onboard but not large animals that could pose a risk to the general public," she said.

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