Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Rant of Red Riding Hood: Once upon a time I had a name.


In years gone by I was made to wear a cape. A cape, a cloak, a cap, a hood. It was the Frenchman, Perrault, who first pinned me down, hemmed me in and clothed me. You see he saw me, out in the countryside, running through the fields with the other children, and he heard about me from the tongues of old women sitting by the fire. He took me from out of their bosom and brought me back to the city. He put me in a copper tub of water and soap suds. He scrubbed and scraped. He removed the grime, the dirt, the filth. He took me out of the tub, dried me, polished me, and there I was all clean, fresh and sparkling. Gone was my home, my history, my community, my context. And then he dressed me, most famously, in a hooded red cloak. The cloak was warm and soft and I didn’t mind at first, but in the end, it engulfed me. It erased my name and I became nothing more than that article of clothing. Before, I was a peasant, a daughter, a sewer, a weaver, grand-daughter. I was a girl, I was growing. I would be a woman. I would become an adult and I would marry and have children, and I would, of my own accord teach my girls to sew, to spin, to weave. I would, with my own words tell them to beware of the temptation of the bzou, to be smart, to be cunning. But instead I was kidnapped and trapped in my hood, always a child, always in the wrong, always a symbol of what not to be. Don’t stray from the path. Don’t take off your red cloak. Don’t stop being who Perrault made you to be. Even Ms Carter[1] clothed me in red, then stripped me naked once again, but claimed to be liberating me. But, Ms Carter, I didn’t want to sleep with the wolf. I wanted to run away. How dare you try and say ‘look what a smart lass she is, controlling the situation, seducing the wolf’ you were in control, not me. You left me with only my body to bargain with, but I'm smarter than that.

See, I never asked for my story to be about sexual deviance or assertion. I never signed the social contract that said I was forever to be a tool for passing on moral codes. I did not consent to being at the centre of four hundred years of story telling and debate. I am just a girl who learnt to sew, who learnt to contend with men and those around me, and learnt to one day take the place of the older women in the community. And I could do it, and would have done it, without the controlling hands of Perrault, the brother Grimm and Ms Carter. But you authors, you set me down on paper, you have pushed me and pulled me, dressed me and undressed me as though I were your play thing, and I object. You’ve all used me as your symbol, your sign, your code, your meme. Always I must represent something. I’m a lesson about temptation and obedience, I’m an example of “a poor child who did not know that it was dangerous to stop and listen to wolves”[2], I became “the literary standard bearer for good Christian upbringing”[3]. I’m a story of empowerment, I’m a fallen woman, I’m a seductress, I’m a metaphor, a trope, a reflection of changing ideas relating to gender equality and sexual power.

Why can’t I just be a young girl, with a mother and a grandmother; a girl with a personality who knew things and felt things, who once upon a time had a name.



[1] Carter, A (1979) ‘The Company of Wolves’, in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, Penguin: Hamondsworth

[2] Perrault, C (1999) (1697) ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, trans. Tatar, M in Tatar, M (ed) The Classic Fairy Tales, Norton Critical Editions, Norton: New York and London, pp12

[3] Zipes, J (ed) (1986) Don’t bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, Gower Publishing Company limited: Aldershot, UK, pp 229

Thursday, November 18, 2010

One Grain of Rice

I handed this in, for Cul340 : Genre Writing, at the end of Semester 1, June 2010. It was my little literary flirtation with the Avant Guard, its a short story with a dash of essay and a hint of Creative Non-Fiction.

Text: One Grain of Rice

Rosie Clare Shorter

Abstract

In assessing the links that exist between both language and identity formation, genre and gender, the following text will use a variety of foods as a metaphor for the vast and ultimately unknowable types of characters and personalities that exist both in fiction and reality, seeking to illustrate a latent gap that exists between language and cognition, suggesting that just as genre definitions can be inadequate in the reading and valuation of a text, so language is inadequate in the reading and valuation of identity.

One Grain of Rice

It makes you feel good. But only for the short term, so you wouldn’t want to indulge too often. You know how it is, the way you just really, really want it. Like how you’d really, really want me. No, not want, but need, or desire. And you’ll be some place inconvenient, snowed in at the office, or waiting for the train, and suddenly, out of nowhere you are overwhelmed by desire. You know you should just head straight home. Take no detours. No distractions. But, you can’t, not now, not now that you’ve had the thought. Not now that you’ve realised there is something missing in your life. You simply feel empty, you can’t resist. And then afterwards, you start to question your actions you think…

Is this about sex? Everything always is. But the first paragraph? unlikely. What if it is? What if…

I tell you about myself. [1]

I tell you I’m writing an essay, a prose piece, an experiment. At least trying to. Its only ideas at the moment.

I tell you, Hi I’m Annabelle, I have this crazy idea. I want to know what you’d be if you were a food, and why. You’d say, I’m nothing special. I’m boiled rice. Simple, plain, accommodating, forgotten.

Forgotten. Yes, that is exactly how Lucianne feels. Once she thought of herself as interesting and attractive. Then her friends got married young, and she didn’t, and now she felt old, but she was only twenty-four. No-one notices her. She is invisible. Of course she is not invisible, but she feels it. In the dictionary it says: invisible / in’VIZƏbƏl/ adj. 1. not visible to the eye, either characteristically or because hidden (invisible guardian angels; the stick insect was invisible on the twig). 2. artfully concealed (invisible mending)[2] . Perhaps she was invisible like the stick insect. She was nothing special or different, positively or negatively. Like everyone else, she blended in to an undifferentiated background of Luciannes and Annabelles, after all no one pays attention to any one grain of rice, but rather it exists as part of a greater whole, a base, something that fills you but doesn’t excite you.

Which is curious because, when Annabelle asked their friend Ben Doherty what kind of food he would be, he answered, potato, because it was something that filled but didn’t excite. Also because potatoes are small, irregular and often overlooked. But he didn’t say that. That would have been too much. And he was never the type of person who told you everything at once. If he did it would sound something like: my name is Ben university like theatre I wonder Lucianne writing an essay viola would she go out with me movies not really yes.

It wouldn’t work. You could never hear everything. Having everything told to you at once would probably be just as confusing as withholding a vital piece of information. Like how in the opening paragraph the object wasn’t named. Like how later and Lucianne is now twenty five and she has been going out with Ben for a while but he doesn’t tell her about this other girl. Doesn’t tell her that he doesn’t want to see her anymore, because telling her might hurt her, but invisible Lucianne knows he isn’t actually looking at her, can’t see her, even though he is seeing her. Lucianne says, Ben this isn’t going to work. He never has to tell her about the other girl.

The other, other girl, Annabelle, is not going out with anyone because she wants to prove she is self-sufficient. She is still asking people what they would be if they were a food and collecting their answers to put together a collection about how we reduce people into small bite sizes so that we can understand them better, but hasn’t written it yet. She is not at all Ben’s other girl, but merely another girl, who, tonight, is meeting up with her ex-boyfriend. She is potentially his other girl but they both assume they are no longer attracted to each other, and that the threat will remain immaterialized. They are both wrong.

In the morning Annabelle wonders if it is somehow two years ago. It is not. She shudders and sends him home. He will let his feelings of guilt, remorse and confusion simmer on low heat for approximately six weeks before he breaks the heart of a wonderful woman when he relates this event to her. Annabelle doesn’t want to think about it, instead she reads about women and the writing of women, but the words scream at her like the angry accusations of a bitter old aunt:

Why don’t you write…

(I don’t have anything to say!)

Because writing is at once too high, too great for you, its reserved for “great men”… Besides you’ve written a little, but in secret; and it wasn’t good, because it was in secret, and because you punished yourself for writing, because you didn’t go all the way…[3]

She feels ill and shuts the book.

At home Lucianne, now twenty-five, is still not married, not going out with Ben, not yet working in a real job, not a mother, not finished her uni degree, and not going to clean the bathroom today. She is reading an article by Irigaray:

Her lot is that of “lack”… and “penis envy,” the penis being the only sexual organ of recognized value. Thus she attempts by every means available to appropriate that organ for herself: through her somewhat servile love of the father-husband capable of giving her one, through her desire for a child-penis, preferably a boy, through access to the cultural values still reserved by right to males alone and therefore always masculine, and so on.[4]

She is not entirely sure what it all means. She isn’t even sure, yet, if that is Irigaray’s position on the matter or if it is her summary of the accepted reading of life and that perhaps in a page or two she will turn it all on its head. The only appropriate thing to do in this situation is make a cup of tea.

Tea is a wonderful thing. Lucianne meets Annabelle for tea and cake one afternoon and says do you know it was a year ago we were sitting here, in this café and you asked me to compare myself to a food? Annabelle mumbles something incoherent. You never told me what you would be. Annabelle is taken aback because that’s where this whole conversation started.

Lucianne if I were a food I would be the most decadent piece of chocolate cake you can imagine. Rich, dark, creamy, bad for you. The type of chocolate cake that solves all your problems and makes you feel emotionally balanced. Cake that makes you feel good, but of course, only for the short term, so you wouldn’t want to indulge in it too often.



[1] Writing the self is merely one of many ways an individual comes to understand and express their unique identity, and is itself the realisation of the desire to be valued and considered significant. Shari Benstock says “This coming-to-knowledge of the self constitutes both the desire that initiates the autobiographical act and the goal to which autobiography directs itself”. Similarly, Kavita Hayton suggests that the practice of life writing “encapsulates both the desire of the writer to express an identity and the understanding that s/he is pursuing a deliberate, self-conscious textual reconstruction of that identity”

· Benstock, S (1988) ‘Authorizing The Autobiographical’ in Warhol and Herndl (eds) (1997), Feminisms: An Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick)

· Hayton, K (2009)New Expressions of the Self: Autobiographical opportunities on the internet, Journal of Media Practice Volume 10 Numbers 2&3 © Intellect Ltd 2009)

[2] Moore, B (ed) (1993), The Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, Oxford University Press: South Melbourne

[3] Cixous, H (1975), ‘The Laugh of The Medusa’, trans. Keith Cohen and Paula Cohen, in Signs Vol. 1, No. 4 (Summer 1976), pp875 – 893, The University of Chicago Press, accessed at http://jstor.org/stable/3173239

[4] Irigaray, L (1977), The Sex Which Is Not One, trans. Cornell University (1985), Cornell University Press: New York, pp 23-24

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

to my blog

dear blog,

you may be feeling ignored right now.

don't worry it is not your fault. I'm simply trying to finish my uni degree.

i shall return to you soon and continue to spend hours ranting and lamenting about all sorts of things.

with love,
Miss Rosie Clare.

p.s. you may have noticed as i was typing that i misspelt your name as "blob". I'm very sorry about this, and apologise for any offence i may have caused.

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

a little bit of Musicophilia does a writing student a world of good...*

These last few weeks I've been reading Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks. It is truly fascinating. In this book sacks tells countless 'tales of music and the brain'. All of them amazing, some of them bizarre. All of them a testament to the remarkable thing that is the human brain, some of them inspiring jealousy (why am I not a musical savant? Why don't I see every key as a colour?) and some are deeply disturbing and heart breaking (imagine hearing noise and never melody, or being so severely struck with amnesia you forget absolutely every memory you have and can recall no single experience, except when sat in front of piano you know how to play).

Musicophilia has significantly informed my creative piece for one of my uni subjects, ENGL 390: writing portfolio. My story 'Arthur's Wife', began as not much more than the story of a man who held conversations with characters from Mozart operas rather than with is wife. It was a good idea, I think, but it was moving in all sorts of strange directions and I needed to get it into a decent shape.

While trying - without much luck - to re-write this piece tonight I was struck with a sudden urge to play 'Cara Sposa'. Its a shame my piano playing does it no justice. When I play it Handel's beautiful and magical chord progressions suddenly sound like slowed down Beethoven being badly thumped out by an over zealous twelve year old.

All the same, I really think it helped because after playing it through twice I came back to my computer and actually had a productive writing session. It was the perfect piece of music to help me tie together my awkward piece, because in essence 'Arthur's Wife' is about loss. It about the loss of love and also the loss of hearing, and therefore a loss of music. So once again music and my brain have had a little conversation and all of a sudden I saw my way to the end of the story with a bit more clarity than I had this morning.

In other news, I'm very glad that this piece now includes references to 2 of the top 4. My world would be a darker place without Handel and Mozart.


...Cara sposa, amante cara, dove sei, dove sei? deh! ritorna a'pianti mie deh! ritorna a'pianti mie ...


* http://musicophilia.com/music_links.htm

Monday, October 4, 2010

Opera like sport, Cricket like Wagner...



I saw Mother Courage in the Olivier theatre at the National. I paid ₤10. Everyone in the 1100 seat theatre paid ₤10. That is because one show in every season at the National is sponsored by Travelex. They have given their sponsorship specifically to reduce ticket price.

Perhaps this sort of scheme should be adopted by national and state theatre companies in Australia. If OA was given funding or corporate sponsorship and told it was to directly subsidise ticket price, making every seat for every show of a particular opera $20, surely this would enable more people to enjoy the art form?

I'm quite certain I fell in love with opera simply by having the opportunity to watch so much of it. In 2006, while still working at the Opera Centre, I attended something like 10 operas in 3 or 4 months over the winter season. Seeing so many in such a short space of time helped me to differentiate between different styles of composition, and become much more acquainted with opera, which has seriously enhanced my enjoyment and appreciation of subsequent productions.

In 2006 I also played soccer for a local club. I was absolutely terrible. I usually have nothing to do with sport that isn't walking or dancing. I would never voluntarily watch sport (I think prior to 2006 I could safely say I'd watched football on 4 occasions, and cricket only twice). I didn't like sport. I didn't play it or watch it. I didn't understand it. I resent(ed) the amount of time, money and energy other people spent on sport.

You may recall that 2006 was a soccer world cup year. All of a sudden I found myself not only playing soccer on Sunday mornings and watching my friends play soccer every second Saturday, I was getting up in the middle of the night to watch Australia play soccer. And I was enjoying it.

See in just a few short weeks, though my soccer playing skills were still atrocious, I had gained an understanding of what soccer was about. I understood what was happening on the field. I spoke the language. I was happy to be part of a soccer watching community. I turned into someone who sat on the edge of their seat and could hardly breathe for stress during the last minutes of that game against Italy; someone who stood on the sideline at local soccer games, jumping and screaming, like a well practised soccer mum.

And this is why I think that Opera (and theatre) is a little bit like soccer. A lot of people don't go to Opera because they think they don't like it. I would suggest that perhaps they don't know it. I spent 24 years of my life claiming to not like sport and in 4 months I had to admit that actually playing and watching soccer was lots of fun.

This is why I wish there was a way for people to see lots of opera for a relatively small price, so that they could learn to speak its language. So that they would have a chance to hear the melodies speak to them. This is why the Travelex season at the National is great because It enables people regardless of income to see brilliant and sometimes very challenging theatre (Mother Courage for goodness sake!!). This is why The Sydney Symphony's discovering concerts are a brilliant idea because it introduces audiences to how music works.

A singer once said to me that he admired Cricket because of its Wagner like properties. I hope that in this country that in general admires sport, shopping and working long hours and that doesn't have time for the arts industry at all, let alone opera, that over time people will become adventurous with the theatre and arts events they become involved with. Perhaps people will join a choir or a community theatre group and gain new musical experiences that way. Perhaps they will watch OA's production of the Marriage of Figaro when it is released in cinemas later this year. Maybe they will go to the MCA or Museum of Sydney or to an event in the Sydney Festival over summer. Hopefully whatever art from people become involved with they will begin to see that the arts industry is a little bit like sport. It creates a sense of community and is exercises the soul. It is there to be enjoyed and engaged with.

My flirtation with soccer was brief. But I think my experience of life (dare I be that dramatic!) has been enriched because of it. I'd encourage everyone to seriously consider things they think they don't like and wonder if perhaps they just don't understand it, or simply haven't given it a fair go. And if, after your adventures into new forms of entertainment, you still don't like it, that's fine. Life would be boring if we were all exactly the same.

Thursday, September 30, 2010

Theatre, opera and national arts companies… [i]

We don't go to the theatre because it is cute but because we are members of the human race...


I lived in London for a short but wonderful 3.5 months. If there was one thing London proved to me about arts and theatre it is that there is a lot of it.

I always knew in theory that there was an abundance of choice available to me when it came to entertainment; the widening of the entertainment industry is well documented. Academic Chris Anderson - who pioneered the The Long Tail Theory - sees that as production and promotion becomes less expensive niche markets become more economically viable; the result for the consumer being an abundance of choice. (Anderson: 2008). This means the entertainment industry market place is becoming more and more crowded; there are more and more companies and individuals offering hits and non-hits.

Yet never had I been so aware of it in reality as when I came to London. Compared to Sydney, London is absolutely bursting at the seams. The print advertising on any given tube station is evidence of this. In one day in London (the 20th October) I saw an English National Opera production of Britten’s The Turn of The Screw in the morning and Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic in the evening. In one week I went to Canterbury Cathedral on saturday, to the Comedy store on Sunday, to the Tate Brittain, a Turkish restaurant and the Arcola theatre on Thursday and to the Tate Modern, Borough Markets and local pub on the Friday. The amount on offer –paid or free –is extensive

For large subsidized cultural organizations such as Opera Australia in Sydney or the National Theatre in London, this can mean new opportunities as it becomes commercially viable –and sometimes necessary – to offer both hits (LaBoheme, The Pirates of Penzance at the Opera House and Warhorse The NT production which moved to the West End) and non-hits (or at least something a little more esoteric like the opera Lady Mcbeth of Mtsensk or the play Endgame), but it also means they must be active players in the market place. They can no longer rely on getting government grants, but must work to maintain cultural relevance and audience attendance. They must prove both to governments and to audiences that they are worth supporting. So here are some of the reasons why it is good to have a national company, and why it is good for those companies to be financially supported through private giving and government funding.

SO WHY HAVE A NATIONAL THEATRE?

Given that society values the production of high quality theatre which is enjoyable, entertaining and sometimes challenging, a theatre company the size of the National Theatre in London of Opera Australia is of importance because they can put on a varied season offering several productions that meet a variety of tastes and interests; employ large numbers of fulltime and permanent part-time staff and are able to gain an international reputation thus acting as an advertisement for the nation by showcasing it’s artistic and cultural potential.

BUT ISN’T THIS SORT OF THEATRE JUST FOR WEALTHY PEOPLE?

There is a significant argument against subsidy for companies like Opera Australia due to the fact that they attract small audiences from a fairly limited demographic. I would counter this firstly by suggesting that if OA received no government support and relied solely on ticket revenue for profit, they would never be able to reduce the cost of ticket prices, thus people with lower incomes would become even less likely to afford a ticket, and so the audience demographic would be narrowed even further. Secondly, by offering regional tours and schools concerts OA is able to widen its audience demographic and take opera to people who may never be able to make it to a performance at the Opera House. A recent article in the SMH illustrates the value which the Oz Opera tour adds not only to the company, but also to the towns which act as host to the touring arm of OA. Through tours like this companies like OA are able to demonstrate that they are not just for wealthy inner-city dwelling people.

OA is also beginning to film its performances for future cinema and DVD release, as other international companies (Metropolitan Opera, National Theatre) are already doing. In the National Theatre’s 2009 annual report, the Director, Nicolas Hynter wrote about new ventures the company was undertaking to extend the reach of the National Theatre into the entertainment market, such as live broadcasts in cinemas and new Sunday performances. These programs have been well received, and have become permanent features of the company. Hynter writes that:

Our determination to attract the widest and largest possible audience to a challenging repertoire found expression also in a three month season of Sunday performances which were so successful that, from July 2009 Sunday openings became a permanent part of our operation. We are now open seven days a week, we are available all over the country and much of the rest of the world. (p7)

For a company to run offer a wealth of repertoire, as do Opera Australia and the National Theatre, in mainstage performances, tours, schools, programmes and broadcasts, they require financial support from government funding, private giving and audience patronage. But in funding these ventures governments and individuals can see great return for their dollars and pounds as high quality, innovative and engaging theatre given back to the community.

DOES A NATIONAL COMPANY REALLY EMPLOY THAT MANY PEOPLE?

Because national theatre companies operate on a full-time year-round schedule they really do employ a lot of staff with expertise in a variety of areas. For instance:

Opera Australia employs a total of about 1 300 people each year – over 300 permanent and seasonal staff and up to 1 000 more on a casual basis. This staff includes singers, repetiteurs, language coaches, directors, conductors, designers, electricians, mechanists, props technicians, dressers, make-up technicians, and other production staff, stage management, stores-persons, carpentersm welders, architects, tailors, sewers, wigmakers, painters, writers, ticket sellers, and administrators.

(2007 Annual Report, p 46)

That’s a whole of artists and professionals being employed within the arts industry.[1] Opera Australia obviously has to pay these employees, which of course adds to the operational costs of the company. In the Annual report Opera Australia writes that they employ 425 full time equivalents. If these 425 members off staff were paid $40 000, that bill would come to $17 000 000. That just on wages. Not on the manufacture of props, wigs, costumes or set. It doesn’t include venue hire, marketing or publications. Opera, and theatre is expensive to do at a full time, professional global standard.

NATIONAL COMPANIES CONTRIBUTE TO THE MUSIC AND ARTS EDUCATION OF SCHOOL CHILDREN

One of the best ways national (and state) companies give back to the community is through the provision of schools concerts and tours which offer programs devised specifically for children. These programs are often developed in direct connection with the state syllabus and so they act to enhance classroom learning in very relevant way. In supporting the education programs of organisations like the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Opera Australia and in the UK the National theatre, government bodies and individuals show that they care about the education and development of the nation’s children. For children of all demographics to be exposed to music and theatre is a wonderful thing. It can inspire in children a desire to perform and a knowledge and appreciation of music and theatre they may otherwise have never witnessed. It will hopefully lead children to become adults who financially support the arts industry by becoming the audience of the future. The National Theatre in the UK is committed to providing entertainment to children and adolescents as they “want to encourage life long engagement with theatre and believe children need to actively participate”. (Annual report, 2009, p 21). They achieve this through masterclasses, schools tours and adult training programs. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra also provide specific programs for infants, primary and high school aged students, as well as the Discovery concert series for adults and pre-professional ‘training’ orchestras for tertiary music students. Likewise Opera Australia runs school tours in Victoria and New South Wales, and runs a Young Artist program which offers valuable performance and industry experience to emerging singers.

These sorts of programs can not exist through the revenue gained from ticket sales alone. (SSO school concert tickets can be as cheap as $4) In order for these types of companies to provide such valuable education programs they need to receive generous support through government funding and philanthropy.

In the movie Dead Poet Society, Prof. Keating tells his students “We do not read and write poetry because its cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race”. I agree with him, but I also think this sentiment can be extended to include classical music, opera and live theatre. These artforms are far from out dates. They are constantly being renewed with innovative re-interpretations, new compositions and new scripts and new productions. Learning and experiencing classical and traditional music and drama is a brilliant foundation for exploring other more contemporary or experimental forms. Learning the rules is essential for being able to break them. Providers of traditional cultural forms deserve the continued support of the community not because opera or symphonies are cute, but because opera and symphonies can speak to us about what it is to be human. They can teach us and educate us. They can open our minds to a wealth of creative possibilities. If we are passionate about education and creativity and the arts then we should approve of government funding to these companies which seek to provide theatre and music to the nation.



[1] This doesn’t include Sydney Opera House staff (such as ushers and box office staff) who are vital to the smooth running of any production at the house, either by one of the House’s resident companies (Opera Australia, Sydney Symphony Orchestra), as well as the other companies who hire the theatre spaces (Bell Shakespeare, Sydney Theatre, individual artists).



[i] This rambling essay of sorts contains extracts from an assignment I wrote for the course London Theatre In Performance, at the University Of Westminster.

Works cited include:

Anderson, C (2008) The Long Tail: Why the Future Of Business is Selling Less of More,

Hyperdion: New York

(2009) The Royal National Theatre Annual Report and Financial Statements 2008 – 2009, www.nationaltheatre.org.uk

(2007) Opera Australia Annual Report 2007

Monday, September 27, 2010

For the love of a dead artist…

My thought on art for the day. Don't worry there will be more.

I suppose it is both a wonderful thing and a terrible thing that art (The Arts) is so entirely subjective.

Wonderful because when we experience art that appeals to us we are filled with joy and fascination. Maybe even inspiration. When I first walked into the Turner Room at the Tate Britain I fell in love with a dead artist. Where, I wondered had JMW Turner been all my life? Why had my high school art education spent so much time talking about bicycle wheels, urinals, paintings of the Cahill Expressway, artists who suspend themselves from the ceiling by putting hooks through their flesh, appropriation (that curse to all 16 year olds who still believed in the myth of genius , originality and authenticity) and the delights of the Heidelberg School (for the record I really do quite admire Streeton, and Roberts and the rest, and I admired them with fresh eyes when I returned to sunny Sydney after a short stint in London). Turner’s work left me feeling like I needed to get painting, making, doing, composing, writing – it didn’t really matter, I merely sensed there was a creative realm of possibility out there that I had never witnessed. I’d been missing out.

On leaving the Tate Britain I was struck by the fact that Turner was in many ways much like the other dead artist I am simply enamoured with. Dear JMW, thought I, you are Mozart with a paint brush.

Loving dead artists, Mozart, Turner, Handel, Austen makes me one of those people who likes that thing called High Art, or (which I think is meant to be more insulting) Elite Art. I’m not exactly sure when being Elite, or aspiring to be Elite became such a bad thing. Why did women ever complain about not being able to go to Oxford, why did working class men ever form unions and demand fair pay or the right to be represented by a government they had elected if it was not that they wished for an enhanced quality of life, which aspired to equality with the Elite? But perhaps this is just me being blissfully (wilfully?) naïve. I’ve been to uni now, I’ve sat through lectures run by media and cultural studies departments and bit my tongue (or not), as I’ve heard people who love dead artists being ridiculed and cut down, because we lack sub-cultural capital.

And this is why it’s a terrible thing that art is so subjective. Because when we don’t like something we often fear it, and those who like it. So we call each other names, elitist and snob, oh yes, snobbery. There is an awful lot of snobbery involved, but it goes both ways, and sometimes I think the sub-cultural capitalists are bigger snobs than the historic snobs, but maybe that’s just because no-one likes to be the minority. Its very easy to get caught up in promoting what we like. I like Opera, and I think it’s a worthy cause. I don’t like some other forms of music, for instance, I don’t particularly like the music my own brother writes and plays in clubs, I don’t find it as enjoyable or intellectually stimulating as a baroque masterpiece of counterpoint, but, I respect that what my brother does is actually very time consuming, very skilled, and much enjoyed by people who spend the early hours of Sunday mornings in Kings Cross. I would never choose to play this sort of music or to buy it, and why should I? However, sometimes my brother succeeds in getting me to come sit by his computer and listen to something he has written, or he gets me out late on a Saturday night and after a while a strange thing happens and I have to dance. See my ears don’t receive the same audible pleasure they do when I hear an aria by Mozart or Handel, but by exposure and by learned experience, I dance, because I enjoy it. I see other people enjoying it and I know that this music is good for them, it is encouraging and uplifting, it is creative just the same, but entirely different to Mozart and Handel.

So I don’t really see the point in a bunch of artists who love Hip Hop or House, or Rap saying ‘you shouldn’t get funding because you think Bach is the only real composer’ or in an Opera composer saying ‘you shouldn’t get funding because you wrote that piece of music on a keyboard and couldn’t even notate a perfect cadence to save yourself’.

I don’t know how to make funding be distributed more fairly. Should it be per capita for the amount of artists involved in a project? Or perhaps as a flat percentage of the operational budget (a problem if you have no budget, obviously)? Should it be on audience size? I’m really, really not sure. I’m only just starting to poke my nose in to the world of arts policy. What I am really, really sure about is that as diverse as the cultural industries are, fighting each other really isn’t a good idea. We should be happy when an arts project receives funding, even if its not an art form we like. Because once we’re dealing with likes and dislikes we’re on very shaky ground.

I stand by my original objection to Westbury’s article, I don’t think a criticism of arts funding or the decisions of the Australia Council should be equated with a criticism of Opera Australia. But I do want to make it clear that I am passionate about the arts and theatre in general. I am passionate to see a government that cares about the arts. I am passionate to see a society that cares about the arts, all of the arts, and recognises the value and worth of the entire creative spectrum.

I love my dead artists. I do believe that Turner and Mozart were particularly and uniquely gifted. I am grateful for the curators at the Tate Britain who have kept Turners innovative and revolutionary artworks on display, and I am hugely indebted to a whole host of singers and musicians who have kept Mozart alive these 250 years, because without them I could never have this nerdy, elitist love affair.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

On Marcus Westbury's Funding Amusia

Tone Deaf in a Popularity Contest

SMH, News Review, 25-26 Sep

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/tone-deaf-in-a-popularity-contest-20100924-15qhc.html


On reading Marcus Westbury’s article Tone Deaf in a popularity contest, I find it hard to swallow all his claims. While I agree whole heartedly that on the whole arts funding in Australia is shameful and our cultural policy needs serious reform, I object to the way Westbury has made this point at the expense of Opera Australia. Westbury has presented a confused view of arts funding that distorts the activities of the Australia Council, Opera Australia and to a lesser extent the state orchestras, demonising them as institutions which are gobbling up the “finite Australian arts budget”. His final plea, “is it too much to ask that we support and value living artists as we do dead ones” slights the work of the hundreds of artists and employees of the national opera company.

In the opening paragraphs, Westbury draws attention to the $18.3 million grant Opera Australia received from the Australia Council and the fact that OA is “receiving more than the total split among 781 separate projects”, and writes with disgust at the amount of money given to OA, the state orchestras and other providers of traditional western cultural art forms. This bias which focuses on the monetary value of particular grants ignores the fact that on the Approved Grants list on the Australia Council website for 2010 to date, Opera Australia has received just two of the eight hundred and ninety approved grants, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra has received none.

Westbury also ignores the fact that Cultural institutions such as OA and the SSO do not rely solely on government support. The majority of OA’s income is from ticket sales, which “account for 55% of the company’s income and to ensure its survival, they have to grow by 5% annually”[i] .In fact in 2009, government grants only accounted for 35% of the company’s income. I’m not denying that OA received a large amount of government funding, but the funding they receive should not be viewed out of context. In 2009 the SSO received approximately 40% of its income from Australia Council and Arts NSW grants, the remainder of their income being comprised of ticket sales, sponsorship and donations. It should also be remembered that funding for OA and SSO goes not only to mainstage performances but also to regional and schools tours – tours that generate little immediate income, but widen accessibility, and are of great public and social worth.

I also object to Westbury’ implication that the work of OA and the funding they receive places living artists in second place to dead ones. In Westbury’s defence he acknowledges that supporting OA is worthwhile as the company “employs many talented people … and its practitioners are highly skilled and deserved to be paid”, yet that OA would be put to shame by activities that he and other “unpaid artists put together every day”. Westbury seems to suggest that because he and other artists go unpaid, big companies are being supported while “living artists” aren’t. Westbury seems to forget that the production of opera is more than the recital of a dead composer’s creation. Opera is a hybrid genre which is not merely a showcase of vocal expertise. Any full scale opera production relies on the hard work of many creative individuals with an entire spectrum of skills, not just singers. It is true that the composers and librettists, who give us the written text, may be dead, but it is simply insulting to suggest that financial support for Opera does not value living artists.

Having worked backstage for OA for seven years, I freely admit my own prejudices for the company and the art form. I read Westbury’s article while at work, it was pinned to a notice board in a dressing room. On stage, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was being sung to a full and responsive audience. Ok Westbury, lets think about this. Mozart is dead. DaPonte is dead. But what about the director, the conductor, the principal artists, the chorus, the orchestra, the designer, the make-up artists, dressers, prop staff, stage managers, set builders, and costume makers who make this production possible. Are we not living artists? And what about Bliss, the new Australian opera by Brett Dean and Amanda Holden, based on the novel by Peter Carey which premiered this year and recently toured to Edinburgh, is this not the work of living artists? This opera was a highly innovative piece of contemporary theatre. Its hard not to read the concluding paragraphs without thinking that perhaps Westbury is a little bitter. He compares OA productions and the money paid to employees with the projects he has worked on with “no budget to pay the artists”. While I can heartily understand the desire to be paid (I’ve been in several community theatre productions where I’ve paid the company for the privilege to perform), it is simply absurd to compare the activities of a national opera company or state orchestra with a profit share production. The fact that many artists can not make their living from their art is sad, but its also a reality. The fact that more individual artists don’t receive funding to make this possible is not the fault of OA.

The lack of arts funding is of course what is really at the heart of Westbury’s article. The fact that he chooses to bemoan the sad state of cultural policy and funding in Australia by going over an argument of who deserves the funding more detracts from the fact that all artistic endeavours deserve to be adequately funded regardless of individual taste. It simply isn’t true that arts funding in Australia values opera and orchestras at the expense of “supporting opportunity and investing in innovation”. CEO of the Australia Council, Kathy Keele describes the work of the council by saying ‘Our key focus is on the development of excellent contemporary Australian arts, and building sustainable arts organisations and artists' careers’. [ii] Westbury is right that Australia needs to seriously re-think cultural policy and arts funding. Every artist in this country dreams of living in a society which values creativity and artistic endeavour; a society which believes the arts are a public good which is beneficial to all. We’ve seen glimmers of hope in Keating’s Creative Nation, or in the findings of the Creativity stream in the Rudd government’s 2020 Summit, but little has come to fruition. Rather than turning ones nose up at opera, or at any art form that is not their own, wouldn’t it be better if prominent players in the arts community, in conjunction with a proactive government, worked together to create a cultural policy without dissonance or tone deafness, but wonderful harmony. Then, positive reform might actually happen.



[i] Berman, A (2006) The Company We Keep: An Intimate Celebration of Opera Australia, Opera Australia and Currency Press: Sydney

[ii] Keele, K, interviewed by Klaus Krischok, accessed 12th may at http://www.goethe.de/ins/au/lp/ges/pok/en5825007.htm

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

The New Post

It seems I've cooled off a bit from this darling blog.

I'm not entirely sure how that happened.
First i actually wrote some essays and made some wigs. Then I entertained my wonderful Irish guest. Then I went back to uni and wrote some more essays...

That is where I am currently at. Or not at, as it seems I'm actually back here, writing a 'new post'.

its just occurred to me (yes, just! right now, this very second... well that very second that it was a moment ago when I typed the word), how odd the phrase 'new post' is out of this blogging context. I think its because I just wrote a piece for my English class in which I ranted at length about how society was so enamoured with the concept of 'post'... as in after/against/beyond, not at in the act of sending physical mail. Which of course we have mostly forgotten.

We have the usual subjects such as post modern and post war and post impressionism (not, historically in that order). But I think other notable contemporary posts include:
Post Victorian (my current angst)
Post the boom years
Post Sub-prime mortgage lending
Post incident Depression (eg, post natal depression, post election depression, post exam depression, post holiday depression, post ordering depression [a personal favourite which refers to the cognitive dissonance felt when the food you're friends order in a cafe is undoubtedly so much better that yours])


but thankfully it seems i'm not post-blogging, evidenced by the fact that i am posting a new post.

I will now conclude this ramble of nothingness with my quote of the day, from Danahay's Gender At Work In Victorian Culture:
"Mental labor was not obviously a form of exertion in the same way as physical toil, and could thus be seen as idleness. Idleness, it was believed would lead to sin and should be repudiated through self-disciplined physical exertion. The Imperative to work was thus a counter to the threat of sexuality...while work was an antidote to temptation for men... for women to work was often represented as releasing a dangerous sexuality rather than repressing sexual desire. Therefore, while it was appropriate for men to work, for women it was seen as an inappropriate libidinal activity"

This is why I am not Post Victorian. I always knew going to work was bad for me. Bring on the baking and filling up my days on ye Olde Face Book and the writing of the New Post.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Party Like Its...

....1999!
I should have spent this evening doing just a tiny bit of light reading (you know, Beckett, Kristeva etc) so i had some theoretical backbone supporting the last 500 words i have to write in order to be done with uni for the semester.
But instead, Auntie Em, Caity and I literally* (yes, literally) rolled on the floor laughing while watching nineties video clips on youTube. It was that good.

...actually the end of semester!
I'd forgotten just how much fun such classics as the Macarena, Barbie Girl, Wannabe and If Ya Gettin Down could be. And this was at about 8.30pm on a Monday night, and all we'd had to drink was water and tea. Imagine what we'll be like when we've actually handed in all our work and had a glass of wine or 3.

...the magic solution to all your problems!
there really is something so cathartic about pulling all those bad, tacky, hip-swinging, dance steps out of the closet and putting them on loud and proud. In the approximately 3.05minutes it takes for a piece of pop to do its thing, you can really can get your heart rate going, you can laugh, you might even cry and, seriously, its as though there were no problems in your life, your uni, your federal government, Israel or the entire universe.



Which reminds me, earlier on in the evening we'd been reading from one of my favourite books, "Walking Backwards in High Heels: the Impossible Art of Being Female", and the authors had offered some valuable tips on how not to go mad. Useful advice indeed. They remind us that:
"There are going to be moments when no one gets it... the only solution to this one is to understand that sometimes there is no one in the entire world who gets it. This is the human state, and there is no pill for it. It is part of the deal. You can get furious, and tearful, and disappointed, and that is fine. You know your own remedies: red wine, plain chocolate, dancing about hysterically in the kitchen at eleven at night, with the songs of the mid-seventies' Stones very, very loud. It's a reality check, and maybe everyone, no mater how secretly romantic, needs those."

So perhaps it was worth my while to spend my night dancing to nineties pop music and literally LOLing, with real friends, engaging in what Danny Wallace calls "Face-to-facebook", rather than getting up close and personal with theories on the overlap between modernism, the historical avant garde and post-modernism, or disheartened by and the presence or lack of meaning in life, art and literature.


* seriously, have you ever really considered how much we literally overuse (and actually, often incorrectly) the words: literally, seriously, actually and really. think about it, seriously, (THIS ISN'T FUNNY) when was the last time you were actually, literally speechless or actually laughed your head (or arse) off... unless of course you were laughing so hard it constituted a work out and you did some muscle toning and lost a bit of fat, i don't think you've ever laughed your arse off, but if you have, that would seriously be an awesome effort.

Monday, May 17, 2010

He also was mad...

Today I learnt that in order to have a great, a new or revolutionary thought you also have to be mad. I learnt this at university, in a Cultural Studies class, so it has to be true.
This is a great shame because I've always wanted to be an inspirational and revolutionary kind of person.

(I've not really thought about how I would actually go about that, but meh, details)

It is also a little scary because when i was in my teens and early twenties I had this rather odd desire to be labelled clinically insane, because "it would explain alot"

(I dont think I ever really thought that one through either)

... moving right along ...
We were looking at Avant-Gardism. Yes, Avant-Gardism, its very, very cool, to just stick "ism" on the end of things in order to avoid a slightly more complicated sentence, such as: We were looking at aspects of the Avant-Garde movement in art and literature.
(As a side note, yesterday, when discussing Avant-Garde literature, linguistics and metafiction with my mother - and no, we aren't nerds at all! - she came up with the term "Hornyism", which I find highly amusing)

Anyway, we were looking at Avant-Gardism, and it turns out that every influencial Avant-Gardist (thats my word), was also mad.

First to be put on the list was Ezra Pound, "the contraversial American poet because he was a fascist .. and also insane."

Next we skipped back to de Sade, as a Forerunner of Avant-Gardism (an Avant-Garde Avant-Gardist?), we were given this introduction:
"What can we say about him? He was a late 18th century aristocrat who was also a bit of lunatic"

and then there was Nietzsche who was "hostile to the church and morality [and] he also went mad"

I actually felt kind of let down when Freud, who was the next person referred to, didn't have his sanity called into question. But that is ok, I already knew he was a madman.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

I knew this moment would come...

I knew this moment would come and that I would cave in and post a poem or other piece of my creative writing. It isn't new, I wrote it last November, and it is already posted on Facebook. But I suddenly remembered it the other day, and then remembered how much I liked it, so I why not bring it out again!

Infidelity

The taste in my mouth
Is pure filth.
It creeps up along
The back of my throat,
Coats
The roof of my mouth.
This thickness cover me,
I feel like my tongue
Is swelling.
Why did I persist
And endure two thirds
Of this dirty flirtation.
Why did I not listen,
To the infinitely wise
To the voice inside me.
I should not have done this.
Not been so weak,
Not here. Curse you,
London, Paddington.

I knew
It would be like this.
I knew
I didn’t want it.
Just habit,
Just something to do.
Should have said no.
Then there would be
No dry mouth.
No creeping, crawling
Remorse.
No scratchiness, no bitterness.
Should have known
It would be a let down.
Should have waited
Till tomorrow
Waited to be satisfied
With real coffee in Soho.

9:29am, Wednesday
4th November 2009

On the 9:00 train from Paddington to Bristol Temple Meads,
Somewhere near West Drayton.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

These last few days I've been thinking over the concept of forgiveness. Yesterday I was walking home from the hairdresser and I just knew that when I got home I had to read Hosea. I had this overwhelming feeling that there were things I needed to be reminded of and lessons I needed to relearn and that Hosea would be the starting point.
I've been struck once again at just how vast, and amazing the love and forgiveness of God is, and of how much I want to emulate those characteristics.
That is all.

from Hosea 11...
When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went way; they kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up in my arms, but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.
They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.
The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels.
My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, he shall not raise them up at all.
How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my burning anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

you'll find there are many who'll wed for a penny...

...who'll wed for a penny, there are lots of good fish in the sea, there are lots of good fish in the sea...

repeat, one time with feeling and with chorus: you'll find there are many... etc
repeat in the sea, in the sea, in the sea (ad nausem).

Oh no, more G&S, and direct quoting at that, and its only post 3. This is terrible, truly terrible. Somebody let those men out of my head.

But seriously, tonight I come home from Mikado rehearsals (and singing the above lines)and find myself ranting about the economics of weddings. There was no real need for this. I was sitting down calmly eating a corn thin covered with butter AND peanut butter and drinking a small glass of Muscat (actually quite a good combination), and something was said that was somehow connected to weddings and who should foot the bill, and well... that just got everything going.

Its a curious feminist double standard that even the most forward thinking girls expect their parents to pay for the wedding. Do we expect parents to pay when their son gets married? And what if one lot of parents think they should pay 50-50 regardless of if its their girl or boy child getting married, but the other lot don't want to pay a cent? And lets, for a moment, consider if the couple in question are not 21, but are in their late twenties, or their thirties and have jobs, and perhaps earn more than their parents, do mum and dad still pay? Goodness, so much theorising could be done...

I of course launched into plans for my hypothetical wedding, and I am very good at planning hypothetical events, I am well on the way to holding a degree in Hypothetical Event Creation, thanks to MQ (no, i'm not bitter).
I explained how my hypthetical wedding would not fall victim to ridiculous wedding politics, but would be low-level fuss at low-level cost, (somebody quote me on this if I ever have to plan said hypothetical wedding) not only because this seems the most rational option, it also seems to be the option least likely to prevent post-wedding-depression.

However, as it is, i do not have to do any such planning, and so have no need to worry about crazy diets and fitting into multi-thousand dollar dresses, so I caved into my overwhelming desire to eat fatty food and loaded up another corn thin with an even thicker lyer of butter and peanut butter than before, and all was well with the world.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

G&S jeans


27 years ago I was on stage in The Mikado before I was born.
(the woman in question -naturally- was Pitti-Sing and the man was Ko-Ko... )

20 years ago my brother was on stage in The Mikado before he was born.
(He again was Ko-Ko, She was now Yum-Yum...)

9 years ago, this pattern changed, as my mother embodied the miracle of lovliness that is Katisha and I made a less-than-memorable (except for my act 2 pigtails/antennae) appearance as Peep-Bo.

[ there were no babies. ]

and now after a rather diverse selection of outfits last year, from the red floosey heels of Hedy LaRou, to a 1960s Sicilian who has never heard of sleepwalking, to a rather angry Helena in pink tights and a short denim (authentically Essex) skirt, its time to get back into my G&S jeans (perhaps my G&S genes?).

Although, i'm thinking that perhaps as Pitti-Sing, I should probably trade in the jeans for the denim skirt... the Essex girl skirt. I think She'd like that sort of look.

Friday, April 30, 2010

So I Caved in to The Narcissism of Blogging

So i caved in to the narcissism of blogging.
the amount of lines i have written and deleted suggest to me that perhaps i didnt have anything to blog about afterall.
Its just that i'm worried. What have i done here? (really not much) Why did i choose such a drippy title? (Its all about Freud and Lacan. Everything always is) What if I think of a better one next week? (I suppose I'll change it)  What if I decide not to post random ranmblings but poems or novel chapters? What if in the search to write something truly world shattering, I write nothing at all, except metafictive garbage? (well, that would be a wonderful illustration of how life is)

I never realised a blog could be so stressful.