Great Southern Expedition ~ Part 4 ~
we're beyond the tipping point of the trip now, so everything has a sadness to it as i watch lived reality petrify into memory. driving to the airport i will look back and see all the world crystallize into salt, while i arch my back and sigh, sliding back into liquid life.
Explosions in the Sky - Greet Death
we went to a smattering of north hobart venues today to absorb the hot august jazz festival. so much living culture there that the vibrancy shone out the slightly blustery day which was prelude to the cold front landing (to deliver steady rain late this evening, snow above 500 metres the crackling wireless informs me {lies! oh the liberties he takes ladies and gentlem(a)n}). one gig was from a wonderful gypsy duo, Serenation, in a fish and chip shop. it was satisfying to have the lunchtime crowd break out in applause over their gelati and deepfry. a purely capitalist space penetrated by culture, gypsy standards in accordion and violin yarn-bombing boutique counter lunches. jazz people are wonderfully unpretentious, possessed as they are of a musical culture and tradition that reaches far, far back into our post-colonial history... which brings me to what i was grasping to remember last night - overlayed reality. something in the landscape of tasmania shows you the teeth of our land, where the maw of existence still slathers.
so much of australia feels impermanent and scrabbling that i can't balance it against the incredibly heavy counterweight of our black history; our overlayed reality a thin film of terra-nullus mythology. No matter what i read about the beginning of the colony, the first fleet, Nue Hollandia, our industrialisation and centuries of politic/art/behaviour, i always feel i am waiting for some fulcrum moment wherein the coiled rainbow kraken of our continent's living history blazes out our shallow set cityscapes, an iridescent fire gorging itself on the vestiges of our vain, frantic desperation. the omition from history burns with all that guilt and entitlment we have built into our power structures, and informs my deep and abiding inability to empathise with the mundane complaints of civilization in the face of our terrifying, ancient continent and our impotent, inherited contentment.
i really, truly feel as though at any moment our whole modern australia could turn sideways, thin as a sliver, and fold into another passing dream, while the slumbering island asserts another dream-form as simply as a fart in your sleep.
where is this 'real' world, this mainstream australia? this supposed consensus reality no one is happy with yet accedes & subscribes to, like rubberneckers unable to drive on without turning to glimpse the pornography of carnage? take it with you, leave me my atomised, dissenting humanism. messy and fertile from centuries of mistakes and love, the compost of the soul.
---------
on a lighter note i think you can say a place is home when you start repeating behaviours there, which is much of what today was. pleasant, living ritual filled our morning and evening. more tea and soup and rumpole, more avocado toast and building fires from a single ember. i wonder if this is how life would be here, shackled to animal husbandry and piles of unopened cd's. avoiding praise like so many men and their sons of those generations before me? what's that all about baby boomers? sheesh.
i am so very glad i made the choice to take this trip, the obscene amounts of de ja vu would seem to indicate it was a good one.
Explosions in the Sky - Greet Death
we went to a smattering of north hobart venues today to absorb the hot august jazz festival. so much living culture there that the vibrancy shone out the slightly blustery day which was prelude to the cold front landing (to deliver steady rain late this evening, snow above 500 metres the crackling wireless informs me {lies! oh the liberties he takes ladies and gentlem(a)n}). one gig was from a wonderful gypsy duo, Serenation, in a fish and chip shop. it was satisfying to have the lunchtime crowd break out in applause over their gelati and deepfry. a purely capitalist space penetrated by culture, gypsy standards in accordion and violin yarn-bombing boutique counter lunches. jazz people are wonderfully unpretentious, possessed as they are of a musical culture and tradition that reaches far, far back into our post-colonial history... which brings me to what i was grasping to remember last night - overlayed reality. something in the landscape of tasmania shows you the teeth of our land, where the maw of existence still slathers.
so much of australia feels impermanent and scrabbling that i can't balance it against the incredibly heavy counterweight of our black history; our overlayed reality a thin film of terra-nullus mythology. No matter what i read about the beginning of the colony, the first fleet, Nue Hollandia, our industrialisation and centuries of politic/art/behaviour, i always feel i am waiting for some fulcrum moment wherein the coiled rainbow kraken of our continent's living history blazes out our shallow set cityscapes, an iridescent fire gorging itself on the vestiges of our vain, frantic desperation. the omition from history burns with all that guilt and entitlment we have built into our power structures, and informs my deep and abiding inability to empathise with the mundane complaints of civilization in the face of our terrifying, ancient continent and our impotent, inherited contentment.
i really, truly feel as though at any moment our whole modern australia could turn sideways, thin as a sliver, and fold into another passing dream, while the slumbering island asserts another dream-form as simply as a fart in your sleep.
where is this 'real' world, this mainstream australia? this supposed consensus reality no one is happy with yet accedes & subscribes to, like rubberneckers unable to drive on without turning to glimpse the pornography of carnage? take it with you, leave me my atomised, dissenting humanism. messy and fertile from centuries of mistakes and love, the compost of the soul.
---------
on a lighter note i think you can say a place is home when you start repeating behaviours there, which is much of what today was. pleasant, living ritual filled our morning and evening. more tea and soup and rumpole, more avocado toast and building fires from a single ember. i wonder if this is how life would be here, shackled to animal husbandry and piles of unopened cd's. avoiding praise like so many men and their sons of those generations before me? what's that all about baby boomers? sheesh.
i am so very glad i made the choice to take this trip, the obscene amounts of de ja vu would seem to indicate it was a good one.
Labels: avocado, coiled rainbow kraken, death, explosions in the sky, hobart, hot august jazz, humanism, living history, living ritual, pornography of carnage, rumpole, serenation
posted by Zip Durango | 6:41 AM
2 Comments:
this is such an amazing post - I had to disassemble it just to look at the verbs! "petrify crystallize arch sigh sliding absorb shone break out penetrated grasping slathers scrabbling balance blazes gorging burns turn fold asserts glimpse repeating wonder shackled"
"Wonder" seems particularly apt - a connection between wondering and feeling a sense of wonderment. There's so much to wonder at and to wonder about... there's a jazz quality to these insights, too: highly trained but highly playful.
I love these insights about Australia - they really articulate that feeling of unease and expectation which I feel everywhere. And yet, underneath the patina, a deeper and more ancient continent, all red rocks, eucalyptus oil, reptile scales and marsupial claws.
I guess we're not Europeans any more.
*
There's a crackling fire soundtrack to these posts. It's incredibly relaxing, for some reason.
Love, Chris
6th of September, still in the waiting room for my next appointment with literary happiness. Where is Part 5?
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