Is the lunatic in the hall?

Is it an act of surrender or retreat (at best)
to put on The Dark Side Of The Moon,
to disappear into the comfort of Us and
Them and all the rest from decades ago?

It may be.
And even now it may be too late:
perhaps it always was
and the suggestion we might meet again
on the dark side of the moon was,
then and now,
just another adolescent fantasy;

an idea one could never escape,
not even in this dismal old age
when  the  answer is only too clear.

Cloud Atlas - disturbing the suspension of disbelief

So -I'm reading Cloud Atlas.  i watched the movie and was impressed by what I would call an honourable failure - commendable but it doesn't quite pull off the very substantial challenge at the heart of the tale.

I have been enjoying the novel hugely.  I read the first two stories - found fiction - the journal of Adam Ewing and the breathtakingly accomplished letters of Robert Frobisher (an almost perfectly realised character I think).  I was totally captured - disbelief entirely suspended.

Then comes the third section.  And here is my problem ... if Louisa Rey is a fictional character in a Louisa Rey detective novel then the Rufus Sixsmith she meets in the elevator must be fictional and the Roger Frobisher who wrote the letters to Rufus forty years previously must also be fictional and the half book recounting the Pacific Ocean adventures of Adam Ewing must - likewise - be a fiction inside the fictional world of Cloud Atlas.  And that conundrum hasn't - so far - been well enough realised to allow me to maintain the suspension of disbelief.

Maybe all will be brought back home later.  Keep reading Douglas.

Today I watched ...

Independence Day ... again.

It's stupidity on a stick but Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum are fun. 

cud - two American artists talk

John Drury and Robert Miller: Chicago Museum of Art project

Spike and I attended an artist's talk organised by the Canberra Glass Works.  John Drury and Robert Miller have worked together for 25 years in what i would describe as arts-based community development work.  the art produced, it seems to me, is less important than - maybe even incidental to - the processes of connection and relationship building that leads to the art.  The talk - 20 minutes too long IMHO - was interesting enough, aided by a slide presentation that confirmed for me that it is the community engagement rather than final art work that matters.

I'm not quite sure what the group of Canberra glass makers would have thought of it all.  there's a tension, I think, between Drury / Miller's commitment to found objects and readymades as the building blocks of their community-focused arts projects on the one hand and the labour intensive, technically precise and often highly personal works crafted by the bunch of 'hands-on' artisans and artists I've been introduced to by Spike.

but we had a mostly pleasant evening with some interesting ideas floated by a couple of interesting men from America.  There are worse ways to spend a Friday evening.  The food at the Kingston Hotel was ... the kindest word was ordinary and i had a quadriplegic problem that led me to scurry away as soon as the talk was done.  But that apart, I enjoyed my evening.

Today I watched ...

Ondine, a film written and directed by Neil Jordan.  It stretches plausibility beyond my ability to suspend disbelief - especially around the organ match.  Otherwise, watchable.

Spike shared my scepticism.

Coffee anyone?

So ... it's four minutes to six in the morning. I'm in bed, a little unwell and off work. Not at my best but nothing serious. A text message arrives from the UK - a video or photograph - at 5.56 a.m. What matter of great import might be borne in this missive from home? Should one worry? Should one rise from one's sick bed in keen or fretful anticipation of news from the old country? Well ... no, it seems. My brother Joe Herd and Stephanie have arrived at their Trullo in the Itria Valley in southern Italy. Naturally, you put the coffee pot on the stove after a long journey, photograph it and send it to your brother in Australia ... at six o'clock in the morning!. Happy holidays Joe and Steph. It's minus 3 where we are. Minus effen three and still dark and I'm sick and awake, now. But other than that, lovely to hear from you Joe.

book-alanche

 

Living with a former librarian one's books and lives are always so supremely well-ordered ...

Poppies

Poppies. Bought yesterday at the fabby farmers market in north Canberra.

Climb every mountain ...

The red van goes anywhere you ask it to go.  At the lookout over Canberra on top of Mount Ainslie

Laksa for lunch.

Just for a change. $14.80 at Chinese Kitchen, Woden plaza.  Pretty average but welcome for all that.