...aand Sydney part 3.

I took Dave a big scrapbook with the Brand name MontMarte,
With the quieter tempo, I was pleased to see that he was not so subdued by the nursing home environment that he couldn't muster up a bit of repartée.  We hung out I wrote some pages of stuff in the book for him, and he waved his hand at me, 'come on hand it over...'  When I did hand it over "Wow" and Mont-marte!!"   Well it was lovely and sad.  I told him I'd return again before too long with Finn, and I told him I'd get everyone to write to him.

  c/- Philip House
321 Bronte Rd
Waverley
NSW 2024
Sydney   if you're reading this and you want to write to him.  But I'll make a Dave blog specially and put it there too.  Visit again for the link to that one, it will be the ongoing Blog of all things Dave.

Bob Orr is going to write regularly which is pretty cool.  It's letter and news and visitors he most needs, run the gamut of strung out nurses trying to have a morning tea ... hmm yes,  for more on the nurses you should hear it from Dave himself in his recent poems from the house at Bronte Beach which have just gone up on the EPC site Digital Bridge         http://www.nzepc.auckland.ac.nz/features/home&away/bridge.asp

There you will find pictures of Dave and his recent poems, and all sorts.

It was a race to the finish line after sleeping.  Sara and I had a plan to film her on the steps of the Darling school (both meanings) where she tells me Dave used to teach for a while.  It's one of those Sydney buildings which looks as though it's been made directly from the ground...  but we took too long at breakfast importantly!  Because we had to talk a lot about and then I had to pack, So I made her run to the ferry and then filmed her on the harbour telling the story of Dave arriving in Sydney. Which is Quite a story.

Caught up with Dirk for a coffee en route to the Aeroport, and he presented me most wonderfully with copied pages from a journal that I'd mostly remembered (I like the story as a film idea, so I'd asked him to copy it, but had definitely forgotten that I'd illustrated it with some funny little pen dot pictures. . .
Treasure! and a good way in to making the hand-made book that I'd promised all the fabulous people who sponsored me over there.  One more time, A BIG thankyou, your books will be in the post in the next few days.  It was cool. And did I mention the Jacaranda?

And so since I've been home, (watched Romulus my Father, and cried much to entertainment of fellow passengers), I've been in my office book-making, and doing various production jobs for These Four Walls and editing for Ayrlies, and planning an event for

February 11th at Time Out Bookshop to show case my work from the Decade.  

Please join us for that

Book it in I'll make a facebook event.

Yes it's been a Decade of Fat Blossom.  I can't upload any pics at the moment because we used up our broadband quota being a gadgety family.
   I've also just edited a short piece of Michele Leggott's off the page class chalking George Raft Hat on the footpath, and sent it off to Dave.

  Azure to zee you zoon.

Sydney part 2...

Look I didn't take a stills camera, I was busy enough with movie making, so I can't post pics up right at the moment.  But clearly I was long overdue for the Sydney Epiphany, It must've been Pott's point, the weather, and the differences...
   Bob Orr and John Pule Martin Edmond and Nigel Roberts all sat around and yakked, and Dave fingered his new books -gifts from John and Bob, like treasure, and signed copies of his book for Bob, and wrote in John's notebook too, it took him a while.  It was momentously slow, and the filming went well everyone!  Whew!  Dave seemed extremely reluctant to finally put the date on his last signing, I believe he was making a stand because he didn't want us to leave.  Aieee! it was really very special.

  I was in the mode of observance so that's what I did, and it occurred to me that when you find somewhere hilly to look down on water around Sydney, it feels a little bit like the Cote d'azur, I guess coming from NZ at 30º it suddenly does seem a little equatorial... I bought flimsy things from a stall that I feel a little bit too shy to wear in Auckland, funny that assimilating thing we do.
  And so it was that I found myself(always good) walking up to Observatory hill for the opening event of Euan Mcleod at the Ervin Gallery.  Of course this just enhanced an australian appreciation too.  And it was hot in the evening, and great to meet Jenny Neligan after having known Neil Rowe through the Dave connection.
  Dinner at Nigel's was a hilarious affair much thanks Nigel for putting sup, putting and us up and out fine dining, and putting up with us.  Not to be undone by my invented poems, Bob sat down and wrote a brilliant piece off the cuff. . .  crashed and exhausted rose, hooked up with Sara, and Sara, that place where you're living is so gorgeously Australian.  It's Balmain we're in now, and there's something about it I hadn't really had a sense of ever. . . . a timelessness.   a sense that a horse and cart is making the clop clopping noise behind you,  and for me, a poignant feeling not only of my own McClean heritage which dwelt several generations in NSW but also that my greek and arabic background was so very not unusual in this place.  Lovely.
   Darling street took me along in the heat and as I've told everyone I was totally blown away by the Jacaranda and Frangipani.  Sara was working on a multi-media live performance soundscape piece for uni, called Ze Black Dog Opera so I hung out with her in the studio at school for a bit and then went to visit Dave.

Sydney November 2010

Good morning,

as unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I'm going to take the floor, strange expression.
Also despite all evidence to the contrary, I'm very much looking forward to thanking my sponsors...  I tell you, it was a funny thing to be sitting in the department of internal affairs at 9 at night before leaving the country, taxi-ing my internal state into a bit of a spin of coffee and sleeplessness, with a security guard sitting next to me 23 Punjabi, Civil Engineer, we talked about our lives, it was like a contemporary play but no-one was shot in the end, and the emergency passport call out team,( who refused to let me pull up the transaction on my internet banking page so they could cross reference the transaction number, preferring instead to phone me from upstairs, interrupting my lesson on the antiquities of Northern India ...  "but before 1896...    hang on" to say, "Hello again Genevieve thanks for your patience, do you remember who served you on Monday, Do you remember what she looked like?" )  Earlier that evening various staff members had paved the way for my callout team to get in touch on the grounds that Internal Affairs had lost my passport application, muttering things into the phone on my behalf to ease the suspicion of the process like, " I don't know, it never got made. . . .Yes it was an error on our part, Yes I just don't know, maybe Gary's department. . ."
      I tried very hard to feel a surge of Bourne Supremacy coming on, and looked around for foothold on the walls security cameras to block, and balconies to jump to through the glass, didn't much like my chances off pulling off my parkeur moves however and the high energy pursuit fantasy effect was subdued largely by the fact that the senior officers "Ok hi Genevieve I'm a senior officer", were all women younger than me shuffling around the passport office in their their polyester slippers and dressing gowns.

       You see previously by four days, Bob Orr and John Pule, rang me to say they were off to visit Dave in Sydney and did I want them to take a message.  In two days they were going.  I slept on it and the next morning I rang them back take me too I said I need to film you guys, sorry to totally crash the party, but you can't go without me, and I have no money but I'll raise the funds.  So as I put it to Martin, touched by the kind philanthropies of my friends and poets and poet friends, I had my air-fare all sorted out.  Then I realised my pasport needed refreshing.  So I raced around a bit, and now I have a new passport with a picture of a harrassed middle aged mania on the face of a woman in it. ( I am secretly pleased when customs officers do a careful double take).
        I raced into Poetry Live all excited and crashed the party there, most happily and strangely they didn't have a guest poet and so kindly they let me take the koha, and encouraged people to buy some pieces of paper from me with writing and pictures and my book Mine sold a few copies, so I left the country at 4am on two hours sleep, with enough to cope and manage, and a plan, and a camera with senheiser shot gun microphone, and stupidly in my socks and shoes and coat.

        four and a half hours later I considered throwing the coat across a Sydney rubbish bin but figured no one would want it unless they were leaving.  Really a second hand goods exchange at the airport would be a good idea.  I fought my way through blindness caused by the temperature and the QVB once I worked out What the QVB Was, and that I was in it; got lost then in a 5 storey high Supré store after buying a giant $5 dollar singlet to live in, exasperated a few locals and arrived in Balmain.  Balmain looks like Spain, downed two excellent coffees (good Australia), and befriended local real estate Agent with easy flattery to get a sense of my spatial surroundings, and rang Nigel from under a Jacaranda tree.  Who picked me up as I was just getting camera ready, and we drove straight over to Bronte Beach to see Dave.

        Wonder, I got quite hot around then, partly because it was 29 degrees in the breeze, and I was all camera operator and not very Australian.  You may have guessed that I haven't visited Australia very often, couple of times in transit, a couple of times to see Dave and Sara, once pregnant once with family, I'd never had more than a day to observe Sydney before, What was that I asked Nigel?  That's the native birdlife he replied. Between us we organized to ambush Dave with the Camera, and up on the balcony of the hospice where he's living.  Dave halted when he saw me out the corner of his eye and wouldn't sit till we had a big hug,

Next Gig

http://www.lopdell.org.nz/events/details/rhythm_verse2.html


  Thanks Ila for inviting me to read up at Lopdell House.
All my thoughts are with Lopdell house at the moment because of plans for These Four Walls, a sound based theatre initiative for the Auckland Fringe Festival next year.
I've been pouring over old photos and interviewing my nana.

Very lovely to pop over to Titirangi on the 28th to do some poems, and soak up a bit more site specific history!

Little Bonfire: Anna Kaye's EP release last night. Support by Jesse Sheehan

Missed out? you can download Back on Board for free from  Anna's Myspace page

Every now and then I am moved,
 on a cold winter  / early spring morning
  to make a bonfire, but it's very wet here in Auckland thanks to rain.
What I meant to say was every now and then I am moved to render forth a review of a gig, because the gig was so cool.   I am about as interested in reviewing something that didn't blow me away, as I am in going out and trying to set fire to a pile of jungle greenery in the mud of my back yard..  Last night was such a nice bright warming kind of show it couldn't stray into the realm of any other kind of fire. Little Bonfire is the perfect EP for August or perhaps September..

I already love Anna's performances, and I'd only seen a few over the last seven years or so... describing the bolt of persuasive vocalizing that comes unexpectedly to friends who hadn't. Anna you see, is demure and she giggles; sometimes she has a look about her that could be described as wistful or patient if you catch her off guard,  but on stage her self-assuredness is rock solid and her musicianship exquisite.  Her voice is wonderful.  Up at the Gin room at the Queen's Ferry, it felt a bit like a birthday party packed with a small and select crowd of friends and admirers, and Anna,  giggled, and punkrocked pogo'd and sang through a high energy set.  "This one's intense... and then "see I told you it was intense"   And she Sang. No I think she SANG. Sanguine, Gamine, but as usual incredibly strong on stage, as well as chatty.   Anna seems uncertain about this playing around with pretence, and takes a laidback path to avoid pretension altogether.  "If anyone tells you to get Back on Board, Go the other way" she tells us and laughs.  Which is what she does with any interpretation or expectation of her music. She is still laughing when she comes in on the first line of the next song, transitioning like a pirate in the rigging with consummate ease.  "Bones are over-rated"- a lyric in her song Girl with No Bones is a purposefully unacceptable line, a throwaway odd comment that she's caught up again, and favoured recording it to perfection in the studio as part of the eerily balanced oddness of the whole song.
     The engineers, played with heart and delivered a beautifully poised counterpart to Anna, both pushing the music and containing the spirit of these well formed songs. B.O.B.  got a little lost in exuberance, although fun, and whichever engineer did the vocals I thought that was a hit.
   I'm still getting these songs, and not playing them over and over too much.  They're a showcase for a band that could go anywhere do anything.  Making her E.P. both articulate and articulated.  There's a Pop option too, and Back on Board would break your heart if it wasn't for the Girl's Army Chorus line riff that will not let us wallow, I love that foghorn...
    All in all the Queen runs an excellent Ferry.


I will not go without mentioning Jesse Sheehan, who sang both originals and some Leonard Cohen classics too.  His amazing performance will draw you in as it did me.  Check out his music video:

I am also looking forward to the tour.  ?

Laydees and gennlemen.....

I am going to review two films.... at the Same Time!!

On one side Avatar.... and on the otherside: Land of the long white cloud.

....Similar in themes but not in tone.

....Similar in philosophies but not in budget.

...Aligned in their commentary on topics of spiritual inclinations of a colonized peoples,

and yet reaching widely varied audiences around the world...

One thing these films clearly have in common are the feelings induced by a set of prehistoric looking gnashers. James Cameron and Florian Habicht both clearly know a thing or two about symbolism and the psyche, and the sex drugs & rock and roll equivalent in telling a good yarn in the language of film. Well sex remains the same, (for drugs think Aiwaa, warfare, or fishing; any addiction really) but replace Rock n Roll with a good set of fangs of the 'About to eat you variety' and you have the contemporary version of absorbing image based story telling.

Immersed in the 3D effects of Avatar one could be excused for finding a connection with Habicht's 'place in the food-chain' sensibility. The film if you don't know, documents a five day fishing contest on 90 mile beach. Soon to be renowned for referential and self referential archetype in documentary;( bicycles in the water suggest the references of some of his earlier work), and a treasure to find in verité and clever heart winning vulnerable direction

Blast from the past

GENEVIEVEMCCLEAN

TEMPO: FUNNY BEATS-WING 4/MORE LETTERS IN PERFORMANCE: WORDS, NOMADIC ID: ENTITY PERFUMANCE PLAY - FLIGHT

MONDAY, MAY 09, 2005

New York was cold

New York was Cold and I liked where I was living. There was music everywhere in Brooklyn and everything was full of potential. It was Spring and all the Brownstones in Park Slope had Magnolia blossoming.. but the main flowers in Bloom in the South were Azaelea, and Oleander.

Auckland, is ripe with Autumn. Some people have died. Some people have become pregnant, some people have married, all in three weeks. The sun is waning, and I'm happy to be home. Which doesn't mean I wasn't happy to be heading up the West Coast toward Portland either.

Just let you know, America is full of clever thoughtful people. I always suspected. Even in Texas! In amongst the Cacti there. Atlanta worries me a little, but I hope to return to Austin and Albuquerque, and Orange before TOO Long. I'd also like to go to Toolong, but that's might be a different kettle of fish.

So I'm still thinking about those big signs that said CRAWFISH!, along the Cajun coast, in bewtween the mansions in the sunshine. Cat fish. Alligators. All those displays of Law enforcement in New Orleans. Black cops waving us through. A row of eye white's in the dark. Arrow of Injuns. Boots. Navajo Casino tycoons. The Pentagon and Washington DC with all it's low flying Copter's. A Million trucks and then some Carrion.

My friend the Crow on the lip of the Grand Canyon. I'm so jealous, about flying. You gotta git those things in perspective though. The Watchdog at the Kara-ok- Corale Motel, who Watched me.

The Grand Canyon was very much like a large Natural Cavity in the Ground.

Yeah we drove up around the Natural Cavity. Went to see the big Cavernous hole. Gaping example of vast natural erosion. I guess we all sometimes feel that way.

Orange

Auckland is cold. and I have a lot to say. I'll just go and make a coffee. Welcome to the Genblog.