My mum found this old slide from my first year at school.
New moon
Been a while between blue moons. Well, a while since I posted about my song 'Blue Moon' anyway. The version above was recorded in my backyard the other week.
Oscar sings Phoenix Wright
Oscar sang another video game theme on the weekend. This is his take on the Pursuit theme from Phoenix Wright.
I'm hoping he'll try something from Luigi or Mario next.
My dad by Neve
Love how the reality in this picture is less accurately represented than the representation.
Gossamer Park in Leeton
Gossamer Park is in Leeton's outer suburb of Wattle Hill and was one of the last to be recorded in 2012 for the For 100 Years album.
Schmewound remixed it as a percussive workout.
Now another fantastic playground remix from Belgian producer KlanKman, who has previously reworked Dinosaur Park.
Hear the original Gossamer Park track here
Below is a track I made when I returned to the material in 2013 with my partner Jo.
Assembling an album
There might be enough new material for an album. I think it's almost there, a couple of tracks need another draft though.
There's a lot of variety on here, from orchestra arrangements to an electro-metal hybrid and a pop song.
I dream of Stephanie
Last night I awoke feeling guilty and panicked.
The ghost of Stephanie Scott was in my dreams and I knew I wasn’t the only person in Leeton thinking of her.
It’s hard to escape the conversations about her online, let alone on the street. The frustrating aspect is that, aside from it being a tragedy, there is little resolution to be found yet.
Every one has a desire to talk about it, which is good because everyone is grieving her for various reasons. Talking about it helps make sense of it and today my partner observed that, despite the anger of some sentiments being potentially provocative, the conversation on I Live In Leeton has been comparatively restrained. Even when people are calling for extreme violence, there has been space for people to vent their frustration with events.
Before I talk about Stephanie I need to declare that I can’t remember meeting her. She looked familiar in the photos I’ve seen, and I think I would’ve noticed her. She was a beautiful young woman and I must confess that I have a wandering eye at times.
My sense of guilt about Stephanie isn’t libidinous, it was from writing on social media. Thankfully I hadn’t stirred a flamewar with anyone overnight but I did wonder if the blog post I’d written didn’t say more about my desire to talk than anything particularly insightful.
The arguments I’d made about the jokey tone of the bridal headlines had troubled me. When my partner, again astutely, observed that the reason why she was shown as a bride was because that was probably the most recent photo of her.
Suddenly the callous nature of tabloid headlines became apparent. It wasn’t a slight on all women that a dead young professional woman had been described as a runaway bride. It was the nature of news narratives that they had to explain why this attractive woman was on the front page when she wasn’t one of the usual celebrity archetypes.
Stephanie was a complex archetype though. She was a bride, non-judgmentally I add symbolically at least, a virgin. And she had been denied one of the most basic dreams that a young woman can have in life when she was killed just a week before her wedding day.
Here it dawns on me that as a symbol for me, this attractive young woman could’ve been an advertisement for modern Australian life. Living in Leeton, this bride was one that I thought looked great. If I were younger and times were different, who knows?
And here is where Stephanie’s ghost enters my story. Last night as I was lying in bed next to my astute partner Jo and told her about my fright with blogging, she made an interesting observation.
Stephanie died at Easter and her story had resembled another famous Easter story. It was interesting for me once she observed, for only a week before Easter had I read Elizabeth Farrelly ask if Jesus wasn’t a woman.
Easter is a time of sacrifice stories and it seems remarkable that Anzac Day is held around the same time of year, because both are stories with sacrificial symbolism. I’m not suggesting Stephanie was sacrificed, only that her story resonates with me because her death seems to resonate at a time when other death stories are being told.
My partner said to me, as I lay in bed wondering if I could calm down and stop worrying about Stephanie, that there was a parallel between her and Jesus. And it occurred to me that many of the stories that people were telling about Stephanie would conclude that she was now with Jesus.
And, I glibly suggest, that Jesus and her would be happy together — because being a pan-atheist I also only know Jesus as a symbol. Most of what I know of Jesus, like Stephanie comes from what I’ve read and seen on TV.
Jesus and Stephanie were both seen by people after their deaths, said my partner. “Remember the story when she was first missing?” she asked. “That’s like Jesus being for gone from his tomb, because she was seen on the missing messages after she’d died — just like Jesus was seen by people around Jerusalem after he died.”
The ghost of Stephanie travels around town. In our conversations, our Facebook messages, and in dreams. The recent discovery of Stephanie’s burnt body was deeply disturbing. She will not get an open casket funeral and, from the little I know about funerals I gather this is a troubling thing too.
When the news helicopter was circling Leeton on the day of memorial picnic, I thought how great it was that the town was joining together to remember Stephanie and hoped it would provide some resolution for their thoughts of her.
I also wished I’d shown my support for everyone else in town and shown how much I appreciate their support. Just like I feel like attending Anzac Day to honour my dead, I felt I should’ve honoured her. The helicopter hovering over town days earlier had been one searching for Stephanie but now it was a model with a camera mounted on the outside to film the grief and share the story with the nation.
An image of the iconic Roxy Theatre appeared in my Facebook feed this morning. It has been moving to see the tributes for her, from the memorial outside the high school crime scene to the streamers and balloons which have appeared on buildings.
The sense of grief is palpable in town as well as being unavoidable in day-to-day conversations. I am grateful my children are not at Leeton High because when school returns there will be a strong response from people.
We’ve all been touched by her death and my sense of guilt made me realise the sense of entitlement I felt I had to her story. She was in my town. While Jesus died for our sins, I do not think Stephanie died for mine but I have learned an important lesson about social media.
Writing about Stephanie and feeling regret for doing so made me consider the practice of sharing an opinion in conversations but it also made me aware of how important these conversations are for people.
The archetypes we talk about, drawing on media particularly, offer us a way of discussing our fears and feelings. I wondered if my indignation wasn’t the result of misplaced guilt over thinking sexy thoughts about an attractive young woman who died horribly.
And in sharing these thoughts, in this blog post, I would appreciate if you will let this vent sit while I work through the symbolism of my words.
The ghost of Stephanie Scott was in my dreams and I knew I wasn’t the only person in Leeton thinking of her.
It’s hard to escape the conversations about her online, let alone on the street. The frustrating aspect is that, aside from it being a tragedy, there is little resolution to be found yet.
Every one has a desire to talk about it, which is good because everyone is grieving her for various reasons. Talking about it helps make sense of it and today my partner observed that, despite the anger of some sentiments being potentially provocative, the conversation on I Live In Leeton has been comparatively restrained. Even when people are calling for extreme violence, there has been space for people to vent their frustration with events.
Before I talk about Stephanie I need to declare that I can’t remember meeting her. She looked familiar in the photos I’ve seen, and I think I would’ve noticed her. She was a beautiful young woman and I must confess that I have a wandering eye at times.
My sense of guilt about Stephanie isn’t libidinous, it was from writing on social media. Thankfully I hadn’t stirred a flamewar with anyone overnight but I did wonder if the blog post I’d written didn’t say more about my desire to talk than anything particularly insightful.
The arguments I’d made about the jokey tone of the bridal headlines had troubled me. When my partner, again astutely, observed that the reason why she was shown as a bride was because that was probably the most recent photo of her.
Suddenly the callous nature of tabloid headlines became apparent. It wasn’t a slight on all women that a dead young professional woman had been described as a runaway bride. It was the nature of news narratives that they had to explain why this attractive woman was on the front page when she wasn’t one of the usual celebrity archetypes.
Stephanie was a complex archetype though. She was a bride, non-judgmentally I add symbolically at least, a virgin. And she had been denied one of the most basic dreams that a young woman can have in life when she was killed just a week before her wedding day.
Here it dawns on me that as a symbol for me, this attractive young woman could’ve been an advertisement for modern Australian life. Living in Leeton, this bride was one that I thought looked great. If I were younger and times were different, who knows?
And here is where Stephanie’s ghost enters my story. Last night as I was lying in bed next to my astute partner Jo and told her about my fright with blogging, she made an interesting observation.
Stephanie died at Easter and her story had resembled another famous Easter story. It was interesting for me once she observed, for only a week before Easter had I read Elizabeth Farrelly ask if Jesus wasn’t a woman.
Easter is a time of sacrifice stories and it seems remarkable that Anzac Day is held around the same time of year, because both are stories with sacrificial symbolism. I’m not suggesting Stephanie was sacrificed, only that her story resonates with me because her death seems to resonate at a time when other death stories are being told.
My partner said to me, as I lay in bed wondering if I could calm down and stop worrying about Stephanie, that there was a parallel between her and Jesus. And it occurred to me that many of the stories that people were telling about Stephanie would conclude that she was now with Jesus.
And, I glibly suggest, that Jesus and her would be happy together — because being a pan-atheist I also only know Jesus as a symbol. Most of what I know of Jesus, like Stephanie comes from what I’ve read and seen on TV.
Jesus and Stephanie were both seen by people after their deaths, said my partner. “Remember the story when she was first missing?” she asked. “That’s like Jesus being for gone from his tomb, because she was seen on the missing messages after she’d died — just like Jesus was seen by people around Jerusalem after he died.”
The ghost of Stephanie travels around town. In our conversations, our Facebook messages, and in dreams. The recent discovery of Stephanie’s burnt body was deeply disturbing. She will not get an open casket funeral and, from the little I know about funerals I gather this is a troubling thing too.
When the news helicopter was circling Leeton on the day of memorial picnic, I thought how great it was that the town was joining together to remember Stephanie and hoped it would provide some resolution for their thoughts of her.
I also wished I’d shown my support for everyone else in town and shown how much I appreciate their support. Just like I feel like attending Anzac Day to honour my dead, I felt I should’ve honoured her. The helicopter hovering over town days earlier had been one searching for Stephanie but now it was a model with a camera mounted on the outside to film the grief and share the story with the nation.
An image of the iconic Roxy Theatre appeared in my Facebook feed this morning. It has been moving to see the tributes for her, from the memorial outside the high school crime scene to the streamers and balloons which have appeared on buildings.
The sense of grief is palpable in town as well as being unavoidable in day-to-day conversations. I am grateful my children are not at Leeton High because when school returns there will be a strong response from people.
We’ve all been touched by her death and my sense of guilt made me realise the sense of entitlement I felt I had to her story. She was in my town. While Jesus died for our sins, I do not think Stephanie died for mine but I have learned an important lesson about social media.
Writing about Stephanie and feeling regret for doing so made me consider the practice of sharing an opinion in conversations but it also made me aware of how important these conversations are for people.
The archetypes we talk about, drawing on media particularly, offer us a way of discussing our fears and feelings. I wondered if my indignation wasn’t the result of misplaced guilt over thinking sexy thoughts about an attractive young woman who died horribly.
And in sharing these thoughts, in this blog post, I would appreciate if you will let this vent sit while I work through the symbolism of my words.
Remembering Stephanie Scott
Over Easter weekend I watched The Fall, an excellent BBC crime thriller. When news came of missing Leeton woman Stephanie Scott on Sunday, I immediately thought the worst but pushed the idea away as the conversations began about what might have happened.
The stories in the media over following days speculated she may have had 'cold feet' about her marriage planned for the following weekend. Such reports used the image of a runaway bride to frame the discussion of her disappearance.
The issue is as much about journalists needing new cliches as it is about inherent sexism. Rather than describe Scott as a teacher or a professional, she is presented as in a relationship. I understand the commercial imperative to make a story accessible to a wide audience but in doing so they are perpetuating dated gender ideas that make women appear to be the property of men.
On Facebook's I Live In Leeton page I wrote that "The best thing that could come from this is for Leeton Shire to declare that it will not tolerate any violence against women." Stephanie Scott's death has shaken the town and it's remarkable to see the number of yellow balloons, ribbons and streamers around Leeton, but the sexism in the telling of her story has shown to me that there is a way to go for equality between the genders.
Maybe this is sexist or even opportunistic but it is shameful that domestic violence is often overlooked or ignored while women are being attacked by people they know -- just as Scott would've known her own attacker. Obviously all violence should be addressed but the issue of domestic violence needs more attention to encourage people to report incidents and discourage it within our communities.
And, finally, as much as the Scott family and her fiancee deserve condolences, my partner observed that the murderer's family have also lost someone this week and they will receive much less support.
Aeropress
Now, I'm not writing this to promote addiction. I prefer coffee as a recreational drug.
I was looking for a review to share when I was promoting Aeropress to a coffee f(r)iend, when I found that Choice magazine weren't as impressed with the radical interpretation of plunger coffee. (Radical because the plunger works more like a hypodermic.)
Choice wrote:
A panel of five CHOICE staff sampled the resulting espresso, rating it poor overall. For comparison purposes, we prepared the same coffee in a plunger, which the panel rated OK overall.Four of the five said the Aeropress espresso was watery, while our lab expert Peter Horvath even had to make a "proper" coffee later to get rid of the acidic and unpleasant aftertaste.
At first I thought the magazine had missed that Aeropress produces an espresso-type coffee rather than a plunger-type, but they go on to acknowledge that "technically" the device fits the definition of an espresso.
So I wondered if they hadn't read the instructions, which focus on using water "80°C for dark roasts, 85°C for light" to avoid a bitter flavour. Then again, that quote in the previous sentence comes from Choice.
Now it occurs to me that maybe they did follow the Aeropress instructions, because they lead a first-time user to make a double shot espresso. So it's stronger than usual. This seems a strange decision to me but I've read that inventor Alan Adler drinks his brew this way, so maybe that explains it.
I've been experimenting with Aeropress and plunger coffee, giving both devices the same amount of the same ground beans and the same amount of the same temperature water. My results are that the plunger coffee tastes more bitter but that'd be because it steeps for longer, I guess.
I like my Aeropress but maybe the novelty will wear off.
Torchlight at night
Couple of pics from recent nights. I've been enjoying painting with light via time-lapse photography.
Cyclonic Whiz
Recorded a short video to share my favourite piece of playground technology with Playgroundology.
I think it's called a Cyclonic Whiz and it appeals to me because it's aimed at older kids, as you can see from the height you need to be to use it. As well as letting you spin around, it rewards users for their upper body strength by increasing the centrifugal motion.
March into the archives
This is a mix of seven videos recorded between November 2006 and April 2008. That coincided with many happy hours listening to the landscape, as I took a self-funded sabbatical with the birth of my daughter in June 2007. A year later I started working with the Murrumbidgee CMA.
I've been reflecting on that time a bit recently, as you can hear in this video I produced for ABC Open.
Naviar Haiku
I was introduced to Naviar Records via the Disquiet Junto. They're similar projects in setting weekly prompts for musical responses.
Naviar use haiku to stimulate tracks and intermittently release collections of the material. Above is a playlist of the tracks I've submitted.
This is sensational
I mean, if you play video games it is a sensational comment but, this guy's laugh is truly remarkable and infectious.
P.S. Okay, I get that it's a parody. Also just got that my friend Bernie has made a version that's a parody of the current Coalition government in Australia.
Almost an embrace
I was reading Realtime's review of Vic McEwan's installation at Wagga Art Gallery and thought I'd write down some thoughts I'd had while attending. The image shown comes from there, a pic of the installation credited to McEwan.
Shortly before I left Canberra earlier this century, there was a weird sort of arms race among the increasingly upmarket bars in the suburban shopping centres. They seemed to be outspending each other on bathroom renovations.
One near the house where I was leaving exceeded my expectations and transformed their humble pissoir into something approaching a liminal experience for me. It seemed as though patrons were required to piss on the walls of the bathroom itself, although it was more obvious when sober that only one wall had a glass layer and then a drain below. Subtleties are often lost on me.
Anyway, I still remember the magic of approaching the dimly lit toilet and feeling the luxury of beer flowing out of me in what appeared to be lavish surroundings. It was a moment I remembered when visiting Vic McEwan's Almost An Embrace installation at the Wagga Art Gallery.
The square-shaped trough sits in the middle of a darkened room. On the walls are projections of water twinkling as they descend in streams. Above the trough hoses hang and streams of water descend. Your eyes slowly adjust to the subdued lighting but not enough to feel as though you can see everything. There isn't much to see, aside from a ramp to avoid tripping on hoses and a hum from the behind the movable wall lining one side of the gallery that suggests a computer.
My kids aren't particularly accustomed to art galleries and had little resistance to getting wet. They didn't have much luck triggering the work though. I had a better understanding of the circuit that needed completing, showing them the trick. They explored it a little more, finding the changes in the key of the audiovisual content but not making the leap to playing the trough like an instrument.
By coincidence, after we left the exhibit we met Vic McEwan on the stairs. I shared my observation that the kids hadn't been encouraged to engage with his work and he replied to the effect that a good instrument doesn't give up it's secrets easily. It led me to think about the inevitability of art being misunderstood by an audience in all but the most commercial of mediums.
Downstairs, in the main part of the Wagga Art Gallery's viewing areas, was another exhibition that used similar technology to trigger audiovisual content. The Wired Lab worked with students from the Karabar Distance Education Centre during their quarterly program that provides positive face-to-face social interactions and collaborative learning opportunities between students and specialist teachers.
This exhibition presented the outcomes of these workshops which explored the nexus of art, science and sound. The colourful panels had triggers for audiovisual content embedded within them. It took me a few minutes to make the connection between the technology mounted on the wall and the wires hidden in the artworks, but once I showed my kids they raced around looking for all the triggers.
While both Vic McEwan and The Wired Lab's installations used similar technology and had triggers that weren't immediately obvious to the audience of one adult and a few kids, it was interesting to see that the kids lost interest in the content once it started playing. For them it was enough to find the trigger, before racing on to the next one. It made me think the content in both installations could be more engaging.
Which leads me to the idea I have to repurpose Vic's infrastructure. The running water reminds me of a urinal but it also leads me to consider how all water is recycled and how there's a similar process that happens with music. As there are only a limited combination of notes that sound pleasing, music is a limited system that recycles itself. I'd like to see Vic's fountain trigger music from a variety of musicians, as a way of commenting on how music flows like water through us all.
My eyes look back
There’s a photograph of my father’s mother as a girl. It’s a sepia-toned picture of her immediate family out the front of their house. In it you can see her broad brown eyes looking back. Her mother also has brown eyes and they’re like my eyes. My sister has them and our sons too.
These brown eyes are a dominant trait in my family. My daughter has the same chocolate-brown irises. They’re eyes like my grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s in the photograph. The sepia adds a richness to the brown tones and underscores our family trait.
The photograph also shows my grandmother’s father, my great-grandfather. Something about him reminds me of the man she would marry. The roundness of the head maybe? Definitely the beard, which is funny because my partner likes me to wear a beard too. I have a head more like my mother’s though, I think.
My bearded great-grandfather is remembered by my father as a grumpy and distant figure, which seems apt. My kids probably remember their grandfather as a distant but lavish figure. He wears a beard too. His brown eyes are framed by grey hair but they have that crinkle around them that darkens when smiling. My aunt has that too and my uncle did though I can’t think of seeing him smile.
My grandmother died when I was young, so I can’t remember her eyes. Photography is a technology that allows me to reflect on my family history across decades. In a similar way social media reflects my family from across the world. When I visit Facebook I see my family from across the world. It reminds me of that line ‘A friends’ eye is a good mirror’.
The old photograph also shows my grandmother’s brother, who has written a book on his research into the family tree. It’s quite fascinating to read about the interests of my forebears and achievements and consider the shapes of our lives. To look over history and to select moments from their lives that resonate with me, or share something of my own experience. It’s a form of ego-centric curation of facts that supports the story of me.
At university an anthropology lecturer said that kinship is a social construct. I’d guess that family history is too. In a way we collect our families by choosing who we recognise as part of our own history. I like this idea because my family has given me siblings after the divorce of my parents. Although relationships between our parents aren’t recognised, my brother and sisters and I share brown eyes.
My siblings and I may not have eyes like my grandmother and great-grandmother in the photograph but the colour is a common feature we share, like our history of growing up together. As time passes I appreciate more and more this history as it is a pleasure to understand ourselves through each other and continue to share our family ties largely via technology in the present.
The photograph also shows my grandmother’s father, my great-grandfather. Something about him reminds me of the man she would marry. The roundness of the head maybe? Definitely the beard, which is funny because my partner likes me to wear a beard too. I have a head more like my mother’s though, I think.
My bearded great-grandfather is remembered by my father as a grumpy and distant figure, which seems apt. My kids probably remember their grandfather as a distant but lavish figure. He wears a beard too. His brown eyes are framed by grey hair but they have that crinkle around them that darkens when smiling. My aunt has that too and my uncle did though I can’t think of seeing him smile.
My grandmother died when I was young, so I can’t remember her eyes. Photography is a technology that allows me to reflect on my family history across decades. In a similar way social media reflects my family from across the world. When I visit Facebook I see my family from across the world. It reminds me of that line ‘A friends’ eye is a good mirror’.
The old photograph also shows my grandmother’s brother, who has written a book on his research into the family tree. It’s quite fascinating to read about the interests of my forebears and achievements and consider the shapes of our lives. To look over history and to select moments from their lives that resonate with me, or share something of my own experience. It’s a form of ego-centric curation of facts that supports the story of me.
At university an anthropology lecturer said that kinship is a social construct. I’d guess that family history is too. In a way we collect our families by choosing who we recognise as part of our own history. I like this idea because my family has given me siblings after the divorce of my parents. Although relationships between our parents aren’t recognised, my brother and sisters and I share brown eyes.
My siblings and I may not have eyes like my grandmother and great-grandmother in the photograph but the colour is a common feature we share, like our history of growing up together. As time passes I appreciate more and more this history as it is a pleasure to understand ourselves through each other and continue to share our family ties largely via technology in the present.
Riverina Fresh Gold Promo
Below is my photograph that won me the bounty shown right.
Knights stock my favourite Arcadia Farm salt bush lamb, so the voucher won't last much longer than the Knights Own chocolate-dipped oranges and toffee-dripped dried apple pieces. Their Moroccan-style nuts are quite amazing.
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