eureka!

it might be New York uphere the way the buildings arc and follow the river

hugging the muddy water down to the harbour yawning in the rain

where bow legged cranes stack containers and nothing human moves

up towards the stadium a ferris wheel breaks the repeating vertical lines

neon signs stutter out a message indecipherable even from here

I might swing from the buildings (Batman) or drape myself from these facades

from inside this room with its canapés its waiters its drinks and chatter

I watch a plastic bag picked up by the wind perform a pirouette

far below the streets pulse with evening traffic along arterial roads

the building unravels quickly down to street level to the noise

and the cold eureka! I am as large as the city I am larger than you

-Amanda Surrey (2008)

Sydney and the 14th Dalai Lama

All roads lead to Sydney lately.  I love Sydney in winter, taking an early morning flight out of Melbourne, away from the great southern bi(gh)te and all that grey-making rain.  My compass resets, I'm pulled north.  It's more than the weather, it’s the girl from the Sydney suburbs, and three days last month listening to His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, teach the Buddhist concept of Bodhicitta.  Simply put Bodhicitta is the determination to become enlightened for the sake of others.   The text which formed the centre piece of the three day talk was Vast as the Heavens Deep as the Sea, a collection of searingly and deceptively simple verse, from the Tibetan scholar and monk, Khunu Rinpoche Tenzin Gyaltsen from whom the Dalai Lama received a direct oral transmission of the teaching.  Its a beautiful piece of poetry, Khunu Rinpoche penned each of the 356 verses as a thought for the day in his 1959 diary, the very same year the Chinese suppressed a Tibetan national uprising in Lhasa, forcing the Dalai Lama into exile.

When I'm asked about Buddhism one of the first things that springs to mind is a point the Dalai Lama made repeatedly over the three days of teaching - Buddhism asks you to test all its precepts, not to take the instructions as a given from a higher authority, or from the learned ones ensconced in their sacred places.  'Buddha said you should not accept my teaching out of faith, Buddhism believes there is no independent soul or self, these are creations of the mind.'  Listening to the Dalai Lama I'm reminded he is a man of science and enquiry more than a man of the spiritual realm, he relies on empirical proof, not the leap of faith so many of us stumble over.  Buddhism asks us to take everything apart - to ask, to challenge, to seek, and ultimately not to find and that not finding is emptiness, the last and hardest Buddhist teaching to understand.  Buddha was a teacher, not a creator, the Dalai Lama is firm on this point.

For the Tibetan people the prospect that the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama may not be found by monks in a Chinese dominated and controlled Tibet is a deep sadness.  China's crackdown on Tibetan Buddhism ejected the Dalai Lama from his own land and brought these ancient Buddhist teachings to a wider western audience already looking east after the social upheavals of the 60's and 70's.  As I looked around the predominantly white, affluent and female audience in Sydney I reflected on the pollinations that political and economic ambitions unwittingly unleash.

Verse 294

In general, a virtuous thought arises only with difficulty;

even more difficult than that is the beginning of the Buddhist path;

yet more difficult is the arising of precious bodhicitta; 

nevertheless, one generates it by making an effort.

Graphic novels! Melbourne!

Wednesday night, Anzac eve, I found myself reclining on a deck chair in the State Library of Victoria's out-side-in Experimedia (the outside walls of the old library form the inside of this more recent wing).  I was there to watch Graphic novels! Melbourne! and self styled 'mad maestro' Bernard Caleo introduce the movie he directed with Daniel Hayward, a documentary about the burgeoning graphic novel scene in Melbourne, of local artists pitching themselves against a form at a distance from the country which has so roundly defined it these last many years, the United States.  Bernard himself is an integral part of the scene in Melbourne, both as an artist in his own right (Mongrel, among others) and as mentor and editor of the collection Tango, his passion has brought many of these talented artists into the orbit documented here.

Graphic novels! Melbourne! is very much a who's who of talent in the genre and Shaun Tan is identified as the author of the first published graphic novel in Australia, The Arrival.  I remember attending a Wheeler Centre afternoon session several years ago when Shaun Tan interviewed Nicki Greenberg on her recently published Hamlet, the friendship between the two and the passion they shared for graphic novels was infectious and indicative of the camaraderie and low key egos prevalent in this group.  Two of the many things I like about the comic book scene are the a) unabashed geekiness of artists and fans; and b) the enthusiasm the artists have for each others work and their willingness to share.

Bruce Mutard is one of my favourite draftsman, his clean lines and shading recall an earlier era of comics, and his stories are well thought out and precisely executed, the narrative is central to the work.  The Sacrifice is the first of a trilogy set in Melbourne during World War II and is well worth reading, it deals with war, politcis, family and love, and it is beautifully rendered.

[fine lines, Bruce Mutard]

Mandy Ord is next up, Bernard the roving reporter visits each artist in their homes or at work, it feels very much like he has popped round for a cup of tea and a chat (he has), and this gifts the documentary with an easy intimacy - Bruce Mutard's mum makes an appearance and shares a few thoughts.  Mandy began writing letters as a kid to her pen pals and the drawings began to form from there, she uses thick lines and plenty of ink.  Pat Grant is an artist I hadn't met before on paper, his themes as a Sydney sider are naturally different from the Melbourne set - surfing and the race riots in Sydney, his new book Blue addresses racism and  immigration in Australia.

Nicki Greenberg, artist, lawyer and mother has produced one of my favourite graphic novels - The Great Gatsby, an inspired retelling of the classic - forget Baz, this is brilliant.  Like the later rendition of Shakespeare's Hamlet Nickie reproduces these tales from her own visual lexicon, you can tell she has imbibed the books, remembered them by heart and filtered them - a very talented artist - Buy! Read! Enjoy!

[crazy love, Gatsby, Nicki Greenberg]

Other interviewees include Oslo Davis the cartoonist, and Erica Wagner from Allen & Unwin who have published many of these titles and created a space on bookstore shelves for a form once shunned by the 'literary types'.  To reinforce the point an academic at the University of Melbourne comments, 'comics are another stream to the creative writing bow'.

Bernard Caleo ends the documentary on Ruckers Hill in Northcote with the city outlined in the near distance, he tells us, 'What a great time to be in Melbourne and reading comics'. Indeed! Graphic novels! Melbourne!

Gaiman and Bacon (Part 1)

Early last Friday morning I flew up to Sydney to attend a Neil Gaiman performance that evening at the City Recital Hall in Angel Place.  I had missed out on tickets in Melbourne and was determined to see the Sandman.  Neil was to read chapters from his new novel which he described as a 'short story that had got away' from him, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.  Not only that, but groupies like myself, and I might add there is a sizeable army of us, would all receive an advance sample copy of the first three chapters from that novel.

I describe Neil Gaiman's evening as a performance, which for a writer is high praise in deed, not many have the eloquence, the stage presence (somehow he fills up a theatre, and its not just his clear well annunciated words delivered in a very particular English country accent) and the talent to take his audience, laughing and enthralled, all the way with him.  Neil traverses mediums with ease, his relationship with Amanda Palmer, his equally talented wife, has seduced the musical side of Neil the performer out on to stage.  A month ago at a New Years gig in New York Neil stepped out from the wings and joined Amanda front stage with her band accompanying him as he sang the theme tune to Gerry Anderson‘s Fireball XL5, something of a dare between the two.  On Friday night backed by the string quartet, FourPlay, Neil sang the same song with the pace and authority of a Brat Pack era crooner, albeit more shaggy in appearance.

Neil has been a 'friend' to me via the pages of his writing over many years.  I discovered him back in the late 1980's when I had the good fortune to access a collection of comic books by an astute collector.  The Sandman comic Neil authored served up story arcs of fantasy and horror, plundering but not butchering the classics of English literature and old ancient fables, weaving in and out of modern day via the imaginings of the Sandman and his band of brothers and sisters, most notably Death.  Death featured in her own 'mini series', a popular character, the traditional  bone and rattle skeleton of the Grimm Reaper usurped by an attractive young Goth, who gently, with compassion and kind words despatched the dying to the other side.  It was many years later and after the Sandman had published its last that I picked up American Gods, published in 2001, and sunk back into a world where old gods are dying in a new and disinterested world, in an America that had assigned them to the scrap heap, an America, without the gods and reminiscent of Thomas Pynchon's surreal nightmare.  Neil could write good novels, why that surprised me I don't know.

As an Englishman who now lives in America Neil's sense of place and what may be wrong with it is well honed and links in with a view that he is forming, or has formed of Australia.  Neil ended the evening with a poem he wrote two years ago to coincide with a performance Amanda Palmer was making at the Sydney Opera House on Australia Day.  Acknowledging the traditional owners and elders of the land, Neil began reading his poem with FourPlay winding out and curling their strings around him.  The poem begins, 'We killed them all, when we came here' and he spoke of a land where 'nightmares loped', and 'night falls down' to 'swallow up Australia Day'.  These few words lingered, and as Friday night would soon tick over into Saturday, Australia Day (26th January), we filed out of the Recital Hall, this poem from the Sandman ringing in our ears, a storyteller who understands the value and wisdom of the very old stories, and the horror we run from in the new.

East Coast Road Trip, March 2013 (Part 1)

I began this Blog last year inspired by a conference held in Boston and my first visit to the city.  I was swept up.  This poem isn’t about Boston, but it is about place, absence and longing, and in that spirit I dedicate it to the people and the city of Boston this week.

(Friday)


'we are now starting our descent, cabin crew ...... '

from my window seat New Zealand appears

I see land-

fall

the long black strip of beach, green hills rolling, 

but my heart doesn't lift,  it used to

perhaps I'm done with you? 

from the airport we drive down state highway 1, left on to 2

Karangahake gorge appears, years since I've been here

we pass through

Waihi

with its palm tree welcome and scudded clouds

I remember you now and my heart lifts,

we were here, and happy

Mark

once, many times


(Saturday)


Opotiki

an old Toyota ute parked at the supermarket, thick with mud, someone's written:

'wish my missus was this dirty'

we stop at the lady's restroom

everything closed but 3 pharmacists and a cafe tucked away.

I wander into a museum,

of artefacts lovingly displayed

we hug the coast on 35 and pull up at Raukokore

an historic church built on a piece of land juts out into the harbour

bride-in-white,

a gaggle of peach bridesmaids wait outside


at Waihau Bay we stop and eat toasted sandwiches, drink beer

while locals play pool, watch us,

3.00PM the tide turns and the boats return

the curve here-

of the bay

turn left, leave 35 late in the afternoon,

find Lottin Point Motel at the end of a long gravel road,

greeted with a key and a jug of milk

on the balcony we sit and watch people climb up,

and down,

the rocks below

6.36PM-

cider

(Sunday)

dash-don't-dash-

the rain Alison predicted yesterday is here, today

I sit astride the balcony, facing the sea

and recall you, deep blue

the road to Waihi

the way, you go.

the rain returns, harder than before

35 where we left it,

pine trees and tended farms hug the coast,

i imagine living here in winter, isolated, cold

we turn inland, as the rain sets in

find Hick's Bay, a caravan park old, dilapidated,

coffee and manuka honey slice-

swoon

Te Puia Springs,

an old hotel and a shack out the back

Annabel laughs as I wearily navigate an obese 'bulldog',

too fat to chase anything

an old bloke appears and opens the shed for us,

thick sulphur fumes

he lets the hot spring water flow into the pool,

we stand there until the heat and smell drive us out,

and that smell lasts on our skins for days.

Gaiman and Bacon (Part 2)

flight

tiger airways sits on the runway beside us

rex thunders past, lifts, banks to the right, and is swallowed in the clouds

we follow

the turbulence knocks these words around

(don't forget the pills)

we lift at last, up, through the weather and the smog from the fires

- -

bondi

town hall to bondi junction, bus to the beach

crammed with young backpackers.  tanned / t shirts / thongs

up and over, slope down the famous scoop of the beach

the baths, cold salt water

gold sand sweeps the floor of the pool

read, on the return train, drink a small white tea

the harbour bridge in the distance:

sentinel, flags waving, remembrance

(tomorrow is australia day)

- -

fright (i)

neil gaiman, the city recital hall, angel place

where the birds sing in empty cages, we shuffle past and enter

he reads from the ocean at the end of the lane

of witches, a dead cat, suicide in a small white car

found down a country lane, mud caked around the exhaust and hose

of an ordinary blue blanket draped over the corpse

I panic, sitting on the mezzanine floor,

the rail,

the drop makes me dizzy

the closeness - and - the distance

a string quartet joins him on stage, a beautiful rendition of a black day

(Australia Day)

- -

fright (ii)

frances bacon, 5 decades at the castle on the hill

photos of his studio, 1988

an attractive woman next to me laughs

'he didn't tidy his desk up did he? it's amazing!'

bacon on the wall:

'I feel at home here in this chaos because chaos suggests images'

(and art, nails me to life)

what frightened me when I was younger,

breathes life into me now

detail: