Joyce

Page 269 of Ulysses.  506 pages to go.  Hard work but brilliant.

McArthur's Park? They DO NOT make them like this any more

I can't quite recall why I ended up here.  Ah ... yes I do.  Laurence (a Facebook friend from Sydney University) posted some line from T H White's Once And Future King.  I posted a link to Richard Harris singing the words at the end of Camelot, the 1968 movie version of the stage musical in which he also played King Arthur.  That started one of those hypertext link journeys through Youtube.

I came across Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb's song (except Richard Harris insisted on the possessive form).  It was 1968.  He had an enormous hit with a single more than twice the length of standard hit singles.  I was eleven years old.  I loved it although I had no idea what it was about.  I wasn't alone in that regard.  I remember discussion about drug-related symbolism; maybe it was an acid trip.  That reading seems so quaint now.  Lost love people.  How could anyone have thought otherwise?



Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

(BRIDGE)
There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
and never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
after all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands
and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes
and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
and my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
and wondering why.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
and I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
.

It was 40 years ago today ...

I was 12 years old, living 3,000 miles from a defining moment ... the end of the summer of love, the birth of a new consumerism. Everything changed. This is the voice; this is the song that carried a message I was too young to understand. It's still an electrifying moment.

MCA book club

Spent another enjoyable evening at the MCA for one of its "Inspired Reading" sessions. This time we looked at the art of Yayoi Kasuma in association with Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the shore. The art is a whole heap more engaging than the book.

The crowd was larger tonight; 25 in total (thanks to advertising in the SMH). It's a bit too large a group size for much of a conversation but I guess that's a problem of success. There were some Murakami fans there, which was a bit tedious: literary or cultural studies undergraduates who've recently learned what the word "trope" means and feel a need to display their understanding of its various uses over and over again. Britney must have the same kind of uncritical adulation. Hers scream and faint. Murakami's say trope a lot and look down disdainfully upon any one who isn't quite smart enough, they mistankenly believe, to recognise brilliance in anomie and detachment. Children. Thet'll learn.

Two great shows and a decent lunch at Bodhi's

First there was the excellent Wildlife Photographer Of The Year at the Australian Museum. there are some truly stunning images. Shame the book of the show gave insufficient thought to presenting the photos ... how likely is one to buy a gorgeous scene of African wildlife with a giant staple in the third oryx from the right? Correct: not very.





















Then there was the surreal, wonderful, fun of Yayoi Kusama at the Museum of Contemporary Art. No words of mine could do justice to her art. Just go see the show.

Rain ... from one's youth

The Drowned World

This month's read for the Sydney MCA 'Inspired Reading' book club was J G Ballard's first novel from 1962. It was tied to an exhibition by Simryn Gill.

So ... getting the problems out of the way first of all: it's dated; misanthropic; misogynist; has frankly unacceptable portrayals of the one female and all the black characters; its world view is, to say the least, gloomy and its psychology is a bit too Freudian for my tastes. And the story, to be honest, is a bit naff ... almost superfluous (which the author might not see as a huge problem).

Nevertheless, it is quite a compelling read. The imagery is captivating, striking at times. Surrealist painting clearly informs much of the writing and the text, only 175 pages long, is worth dipping into just for that imagery (absurd at times but, you know, it's surrealism ... which I can take or leave in many of its manifestations).

The Drowned World is sort of The Day Of The Triffids meets Heart Of Darkness meets Dante's Inferno meets Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and a Belgian painter, Pierre Delvaux, I've never heard of. I first read it when I was 14 or 15 years old; re-read it for the book club tonight and didn't think I'd wasted my time. I don't share the author's nihilistic world view but I did enjoy the rich texture of his writing. One could almost touch the mad jungle, smell the lagoon and feel the heat of that sun on your skin.

I really enjoyed the evening, joined as I was by Spike. The gallery folk are lovely, full of enthusiasm for their art and literature / cheese and wine evening and very bright.

It's ours

there is always that space there
just before they get to us
that space
that fine relaxer
the breather
while say
flopping on a bed
thinking of nothing
or say
pouring a glass of water from the
spigot
while entranced by
nothing

that
gentle pure
space

it's worth

centuries of
existence

say

just to scratch your neck
while looking out the window at
a bare branch

that space
there
before they get to us
ensures
that
when they do
they won't
get it all

ever.

Charles Bukowski


.

Gifts from a friend

"... he had picked an extremely odd time to discover his inner Drifters."
.

Not quite The Sound Of Music

The photo arrived today in an e.mail from Scotland, sent by John Murray (older brother of my great childhood friend Gordon who is standing next to me in the photo. He's wearing a blue sports shirt with a white trimmed neck line). It all took place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Who is that dorky 14 year old with the tea cosy on his head standing just in front of the cross? Ooops ... it's me.

My older brother is there, sitting fourth from the right (as one looks at the photo). Years later, the guy sitting next to him killed himself.

We were younger then. Our world was simpler; a big adventure. Still is.

Photos by Mary Ellen Mark

Kathryn Shattuck writes:

In 1968, around the time she was focusing her lens on war protesters and transvestites in New York, Mary Ellen Mark took a job as a still photographer on the set of “Alice’s Restaurant,” directed by Arthur Penn.

More than 100 films later Ms. Mark culled thousands of images, both impromptu and staged, for her latest book, “Seen behind the scene/Forty years of photographing on set/Mary Ellen Mark” (Phaidon). Some of the images will be on view at the Staley-Wise Gallery in SoHo starting Jan. 9.

Here she speaks about photos included in the book.