time to think

trying on fragility this Christmas

2010-12-22T15:37:00.000-08:00

My colleague, Andy Calder, hosted the brilliant Lorna Hallahan in Melbourne a while ago. (She has a wonderful essay 'On Being Odd' in the recently released Best Australian Essays 2010. I can't recommend it enough.) On the day she was with us she spoke a sentence I've been thinking about ever since:

"our obsession with perfection has inoculated us to the fragility of humanity."

I am grateful to have that sentence to sit with this Christmas.

I am also grateful that yesterday Cheryl reminded me of Tim Minchin's song "White Wine in the Sun". I listened to it three times in a row.

And most of all, I am grateful to be heading for Adelaide tomorrow to spend time with my beautiful family. I want to remember to be thankful for them more often.

the precariousness of home

2010-10-26T20:45:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of my house taken by my friend Ben who visited our farm for the first time on the weekend. He said while he was sitting on our lawn drinking a glass of wine: “You guys own all this. The grass, the garden, it’s all yours. You won’t ever have a landlord come over and inspect your house again.” It’s a weird feeling to come to terms with, owning a home, and I don’t think it has become any less weird in the past nine months. This is the first time I’ve ever lived in a house that’s been owned by me or any member of my family. I was always hesitant about the idea of “home ownership” and have never really able to articulate my unease around questions of place and belonging.

I spent time with a group of Chaplains yesterday as part of my work with schools. One Chaplain spoke of her interest in the sacred within Australian literature and this encouraged me to do some thinking today about notions of a spiritual home within the Australian context.

A few years ago I did part of a Graduate Certificate in English at Melbourne Uni and took a subject with Jennifer Rutherford called: “The Uncanny in Australian Literature”. She completely broke my brain- in a good way- and it has changed the way I relate to Australian film and literature. The course explored the haunting of the Australian landscape found in much colonial fiction and poetry and questioned this country’s sense of the sacred, of home, of place, of identity….

I came across this essay today by Lyn McCredden from Deakin University entitled 'It's a hungry home': postcolonial displacements, popular music and the sacred. It is continuing to provoke my understanding of home and strangerhood being in constant negotiation with each other. I wanted to share some of the essay here:

“Is this oscillation between home and homelessness – experienced differently by colonisers and colonised - able to be seen as dialectical, or are we dealing here simply with contradictory and necessarily antagonistic motions? Can the human desire for home, belonging, land, place – so powerfully voiced by Indigenous and diasporic peoples, and differently by colonisers – hold at its heart, in reasoned, social human practices, its opposite, a significant acknowledgement of homelessness, rootlessness, journeying, and the exclusions, expulsions, barriers caused by defending home? What can this dialectical epistemology of home promise to achieve? And what distinctions need to be maintained in regard to colonisers and colonised when thinking about this doubleness?....

…what is the particular dynamic that needs to be acknowledged and worked through for white Australians, now? Is it possible for white Australia, looking into the distorted mirror of Australia’s history, to see both the ongoing Aboriginal dispossession and to see its own face reflected, but differently, transformatively? The argument of this essay is that to do so, and to continue the processes of renewal and justice, it is necessary for non-Indigenous Australians to learn to think and practice “home” and “dislodgement” together…”

McCredden later goes on to reference my brain breaking lecturer:

“…Australian critic Jennifer Rutherford is interested in intervening in monolithic understandings of home and nation…. she seeks to disrupt unified mythologies that paper thinly over deeper, psychic struggles for home. In her cultural and literary analysis of Australia, The Gauche Intruder, she focuses on “the way that fantasies of the good provide a camouflage for aggression at both a national and local level: an aggression directed both to an external and an internal Other.” (10). For Rutherford, following novelist Patrick White’s infamous 1950s description of Australia as “the Great Australian Emptiness”, she argues that the good, homey, egalitarian nation of Australia needs to recognise the spiritual dimension of its emptiness, an emptiness which is…

'an aggression towards the Other that has been endemic in white Australian history; the fantasy of the good neighbour and the good nation that has sustained this aggression; and a certain experience of emptiness, of a symbolic fragility or inequality to the task of representing this nothingness, that fantasy has never been able to occlude. (12).'

The Gauche Intruder is alive to the power of national myths, and of the rhetorical and political mechanisms actively constructing such myths. Rutherford places in linguistic, literary and psychoanalytic terms what happens when we buy our own rhetoric, when home becomes the monolithic, protected, expulsive refusal of others, even as it dresses itself up in the very terms of protection of the nation, home, kith and kin; in other words, when home is mandated as this “splitting of humanity into natives and strangers,” (Levinas 232), rather than the double, dialectic sense, for post-colonial citizens, of homelessness within all understandings of home.”

References:
Levinas, Emmanuel. Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism. Trans. Seán Hand. Johns Hopkins Jewish Studies. Eds. Sander Gilman and Steven T. Katz. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990.

Rutherford, Jennifer. The Gauche Intruder: Freud, Lacan and the White Australian Fantasy, Melbourne: MUP, 2000.

when there's too much to say...

2010-10-03T20:49:00.000-07:00

I got home from the UK almost three weeks ago, and I haven't been able to write anything down in coherent sentences since then. I blamed jet lag for a while, but that excuse is getting a bit old, so I might just write down some partially formed thoughts...

I was in England on Cheryl's oxygen tour. And it really was oxygen for me: it came at a time when I really needed to breathe some fresh air. I can't express how privileged I feel to have been given the time and space to listen, learn and explore with an insightful group of people. Our group spent time observing the role art plays in public spaces and had the opportunity to meet with some incredibly generous artists and thinkers. We spent time in Liverpool, Leeds and London and reflected on the contexts we were visiting by asking:

"Which spaces leave room for the possibility of transformation?

"What spaces do we find transformative and what do we mean by transformative?"

"Which spaces are invitational and why?"

These questions have complex and multiple answers but I will try to give some personal reflections and examples from some particular places. I think, for me, the most transformative spaces allowed me to experience a different way of knowing. I find safety in thinking with words and mulling ideas over in my mind. For the first part of the trip, I found myself distilling an experience into a single word. Our time at a beautiful sculpture exhibition at the Gloucester cathedral was summarised in my mind as "holy", after sitting with an Antony Gormley piece in the same exhibition I was left with the word "surrender". I was moved by these works, and I was blown away by the quality and the curation and the space. But it wasn't until a week later, when we had been at the Hayward Gallery in London, that I realised the power of a space that can leave you with no words at all.

We were very lucky to be at the Hayward on the last day of the Ernesto Neto exhibition The Edges of the World. Cheryl wrote about the space beautifully on her blog, and I will add some personal thoughts below.

This sentence still sends shivers down my spine: "Be gentle with the edges of the world". The space embodied the word gentle. The installation was immersive and invited experiential knowing. We were allowed to touch, to smell, to live into the space. Everyone changed when they were in this place: people were smiling at strangers. It was only later that I could describe this exhibition using words...Neto's work spilled out of the walls of the gallery and into my world. I felt invited to be my whole self- all of my senses were engaged. The space lingered in me, and encouraged me to think in unfamiliar ways. My body knew that something had changed in me, but it took a while for my body to tell my brain about that shift.

It was only after a day that I started thinking about the violent language we usually use to describe our attempts at pioneering new ways of being. We talk about "cutting edge", "forging ahead", "pushing forward", "breaking new ground". We try to force others into new places...and then we are confused when these violent approaches are not embraced by the people in our worlds. Neto's work shifted something in me, and helped me to acknowledge the violence in my own approach to change. Being in this space, I was able to feel, see, smell, taste and try on a gentler world.

Neto encourages us to:

"...breathe through our pores,

close our eyes to see,

smell to listen,

dance to levitate..."

After four weeks I can still feel the softness of the space, evoke the calm smells, the vibrant colours. It takes a poetic moment to remove us from rhetoric, from cerebral understanding, and to allow a space to transform not just our thought patterns, but to challenge our entire being to live differently.

As I move between strangerhood and welcome

sister and friend,

wife and daughter,

colleague and mentor,

I must not forget the edges of these worlds

I must try to be gentle

monday morning wake up call

2010-10-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

where strangerhood and welcome meet

2010-09-28T22:30:00.000-07:00

Below are some images I used for an installation space at Scots School in Albury last week. We spent time wondering about notions of strangerhood and welcome. The phrase "where strangerhood and welcome meet" was shamelessly stolen from the beautiful artist (beautiful work and beautiful person) Shaeron Caton-Rose. We were very lucky to meet with Shaeron in her home in a village near Leeds while in the UK. Her phrase prompted some questions about home, longing and belonging. I sat with a group of the boarding students and some questions for an evening:

Where do you feel like a stranger?

Where do you feel welcome? 

there was a chance to spend time with some stations:

travel
as we travel through life
people stop and welcome us in
take a seed
and a piece of paper
make a prayer/hope/wish for someone who has welcomed you
and plant your prayer and seed so they can grow

strangerhood
what does it feel like to be a stranger?
when are you a guest?
where has strangerhood given you comfort?

rest
where do you feel comfort?
what do you long for?

welcome
who do you welcome into your life or home?
what would you like to give a stranger or friend?
take a metal tag
write your answer with a pin
attach it to a gift
we welcome the stranger

the students were incredibly generous in joining me in these explorations and made some beautiful contributions to the space. One of my favourite moments was when one of the students went around "labelling students with love":

the boarding students at Scots are a really special group of people and I will really miss the group in year 12 leaving at the end of this year. They have allowed me into their space, their home, on a number of occassions this year and I'm really grateful for the welcome I receive from the Chaplain, students and staff. I am incredibly lucky to be working with such a gracious school.

thanks to Scott and Frontiers in Photography for making beautiful music for me to play in the space. It worked perfectly.

maps and power

2010-09-27T23:08:00.000-07:00

I have recently returned from the UK, and am still finding words to describe my experiences there. Today it seems appropriate to post some reflections I had after I saw an exhibition at the British Library: ‘Magnificent Maps: Power, Propaganda and Art’. It was an incredible exhibition, made up of historical maps from across the globe. This one was my favourite, Fra Mauro World Map c.1450 by William Frazer, 1804, considered by many to be the first 'modern' world map:

I wrote after I had visited the library:

“Maps have largely been used for the power and influence of rulers throughout history. They depicted actual and aspirational dominions of the ruler….The actual power they held, and the power they hoped for…"

This exhibition made me think a lot about my own spheres of influence. I wrote:
"What propaganda does the map of my world hold? Where are the new edges for me to draw? What hopes can I portray in the map of my world?”

These questions continually surface, as I consider the power I hold, and the powerlessness I often feel. I need to respect and recognise both my power and my powerlessness to be truly human today.

what is it we are doing here?

2010-09-27T19:09:00.000-07:00

After twighlight,
At her desk,
She ponders the implications of signing in crayon.

(I saw this poem on a train the other morning as part of Melbourne's Moving Galleries. And I liked it a lot.)

Hiroshima

2010-08-07T20:43:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was the 65th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I was asked to give a reflection at the Educating for a Purposeful Life Conference at Kingswood College on this important historical event, and how it might have ongoing meaning in our lives today. Greg Beck reminded us of the atrocities of the bombing, and showed excerpts from a powerful movie called: White Light Black Rain. I then went on to speak about how the shadows left on the pavement of the city of Hiroshima can act as a reminder of the personal shadows we carry with us everyday. A few people asked for the text from this presentation and I have made it available below:

“The city of Hiroshima was reduced to ashes”

“A person who sat on the step evaporated, leaving only a shadow.”

A shadow, permanently etched on the steps of the city of Hiroshima, reminding us of these painful memories.

When I see these photos, I feel a deep sense of dread. A fear that I can’t really explain. How do we get our heads around the fact that humanity is capable of such atrocity.

I am terrified,
I look away,
I avert my eyes.
What are we capable of?
What am I capable of?

I know I’m capable of many things, both good and bad. My personal story contains pain and joy. Helen McGrath and Julie Perrin both reminded us yesterday that grief and pain are part of each of our stories. My story has made me afraid of things. Some of these things seem small and inconsequential:

1/ I’m scared of heights.
2/ I’m absolutely terrified that my husband will beat me at board games.

These concerns are indicative of some of my larger fears:

1/ I am scared of my pride being hurt.
2/ I have a fear of abandonment
3/ I fear the damage I could do to those close to me. I worry about what happens when I act in my own self interest. There are small examples of this – (eating the last bit of chocolate) to large examples (like finding myself letting down those close to me or skewing the truth of a story to paint myself in the best light)

“Everyone carries a shadow…and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the bigger and darker it is.”
Carl Jung

We rarely share our fears. It’s not the most popular opener in the staff room or at a café:

“What’s your deepest darkest fear about yourself?”...
"I'll tell you about my shadow if you'll tell me about yours"

We are terrified.
Are we bad?
We stop ourselves from speaking our own inner truths
We fear our own feelings
We push down our struggles, but they don’t go away
We can’t run from our own shadow

I came across an artist recently who makes large scale murals in which he lists his fears. These pieces are part of an exhibition called "Visions and Fears", currently found at a gallery in Barcelona. The artist, Brian Rea says that he had realised that his fears had started to define his behaviour. His fears fill up a 7-meter-by-3.5-meter chalkboard. He says the time it took to write all these words made the process particularly rhythmic and reflective.

“What seems bad to you within yourself will grow pure by the very fact of you observing it.”
Dostoevsky.

We must discover our shadow as well as our gifts in order to become effective and whole. Our fear is interconnected with our deepest longing.

When we stop to consider our shadows, our fears, we start to better understand ourselves, our capacities and our limitations, our longing, and can live the lives that we are called to live.

“If we are to live our lives fully and well, we must learn to embrace the opposites, to live in a creative tension between our limits and our potentials.”
Parker Palmer.

And then:

As educators, we can encourage fragility as well as success in those we teach. We can allow the spaces we create to encourage vulnerability as well as zest and passion for life.

“What happens if I do not welcome some aspects of myself and banish them to a life outside? How can I find wholeness if some of the pieces are missing?”
Michael Lindfield (Psychologist)

“I’d rather be whole than good”
Carl Jung

It is only when I come to terms with my own shadow, my grief, my fears, my mistakes that I can even try to understand others. My shadow loses its power over me. Compassion for others only comes when we find compassion for ourselves.
we join our grief, our pain, to the larger story.
to each others’ stories.
we yearn for wholeness, for peace, for meaning, for home.

today we stop.
we acknowledge the shadows left at Hiroshima.
we remember the people who were ripped from this world.
we turn around and face our shadows.
the shadows found in all humanity.

The reflection ended with a piece of spoken word and a song by Pádraig Ó Tuama . His CD can be purchased for download here. A huge thank you to Cheryl for giving me his CD a few months ago. It is earth shattering.

Please feel free to email me if you would like a copy of the power point that I used with this presentation. More than happy to send it on...

A brittle life (in haiku)

2010-07-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

this strange existence
in order to shift, change, shape
I must surrender

I had lunch with the very wise John Allison again last week. We spent a lot of time discussing the scary notion of surrendering into our own lives. John continues to leave lasting impressions on me; his reflections on story-telling sparked this blog entry on our Drop Bear Theatre blog last year.

Embrace a chaotic world

2010-07-08T18:23:00.000-07:00

Social commentator Douglas Rushkoff wrote these words 11 years ago but they spoke loudly to me this morning as I read them in the snug cabin of my country Vline train:

"Our children, ironically, have already made their move. They are leading us in our evolution past linear thinking, duality, mechanism, heirarchy, metaphor and God himself towards a dynamic, animistic, weightless and recapitulated culture. Chaos is their actual environment."

Right blog, right time

2010-06-29T23:02:00.000-07:00

Today seems to be one of those days when people send me links to blogs that make me simultaneously happy and weepy.

Two of them are: Daily Poetics (thank you Cheryl) and Before I die I want to... (thanks Eddie and Bri). I am also addicted to thxthxthx which makes me smile nearly every morning.

I'm not sure if it's the blogs or the cold and flu tablets, but I'm feeling calm and warm right now.

One Hundred Languages

2010-06-28T20:18:00.000-07:00

The Reggio Emilia Approach is inspiring me in my work today. It strengthens my belief that the arts is not a subject area, but a means by which children can create and communicate meaning across all learning areas. It also reminds me why we need to encourage all kinds of spiritual exploration with young people. The hundred languages poem says this much better than I could ever hope to:

The Hundred Languages

No way. The hundred is there.
The child
is made of one hundred.
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
of playing, of speaking.

A hundred always a hundred
ways of listening
of marveling, of loving
a hundred joys
for singing and understanding
a hundred worlds
to discover
a hundred worlds
to invent
a hundred worlds
to dream.

The child has
a hundred languages
(and a hundred hundred hundred more)
but they steal ninety-nine.
The school and the culture
separate the head from the body.
They tell the child:
to think without hands
to do without head
to listen and not to speak
to understand without joy
to love and to marvel
only at Easter and at Christmas.

They tell the child:
to discover the world already there
and of the hundred
they steal ninety-nine.

They tell the child:
that work and play
reality and fantasy
science and imagination
sky and earth
reason and dream
are things
that do not belong together.

And thus they tell the child
that the hundred is not there.
The child says:
No way. The hundred is there.

-Loris Malaguzzi (translated by Lella Gandini)
Founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach

Advance Australia

2010-04-28T17:38:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to see an art exhibition curated by a friend of mine called "The Australia Project". Many artists were invited to respond to questions about the Australian identity and I was overwhelmed by the diversity of the artwork. People from across Australia are now invited to answer the question, "what makes you Australian?" and send in their postcards. You can download your postcards or order some here:

Some of these postcards were hung up around the gallery last night. One 12 year old student had answered:

"What makes me Australian is cultural diversity...My mum's parents moved to Australia in the early 60s, to have a better future and quality of life than they would've in Southern Greece....My dad moved here (from France) in 1970 when he was 22. My friend came up with the term "Freek" (half French, half Greek) for me, and I'm Australian too, so for fun I'm a Freekalian. So watching Japanese TV, and American Movies, while eating Indian takeaway is why I'm proud to be 100% Aussie."

another 11 year old student wrote:

"To live in Australia means a lot to me because it is a kind of country that doesn't kick out people from other countries and cultures. I am thankful for that because my family comes from a different country and I have a different culture."

Contrast these hopeful messages with Pauline Hanson's comments yesterday, saying she would not sell her house to Muslims because they are "not compatible with our culture". Click here to put in $100 to collectively buy Pauline's house for a group of Muslim refugees. Let's embrace diversity and be the Australia that the school children believe we are.

my husband is a cartographer

2010-03-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

I think I might be the only person in the world who gets into bed next to someone reading an atlas. I find novels relaxing, or perhaps a spot of poetry before goodnights, but not Tadhgh. Nope. He is- well- he's a cartographer. When I first met Tadhgh I had no idea what that was. "OOOHHhhhhh....." I eventually realised: "you make MAPS...how cool!"

"Well, not really", is his standard reply. Tadhgh also thought working with maps would be "cool" back when he started studying Geomatics. Surely map making involved adventure, risk taking and sailing through dangerous, unchartered waters. But it wasn't long before ideas of wild seas and impenatrable terrain were replaced by a clicking mouse, a quiet office and too many hours in front of the computer screen. Tadhgh loves maps: the possibilities and the information, but the realities of map creation aren't quite like they would have been in the 18th century.

Maps intrigue many of us (I mean, I don't take them to bed with me, but they are pretty amazing.) So much information fits on such a little page...and WE ARE STANDING ON THE BIG VERSION! Woah. It answers so many questions about the space we inhabit, while also opening up conversations about that very space. Maps have a part to play in a variety of spheres, from the political, the geographical, the historical, the metaphorical...

Years ago I was driving with friends to a rehearsal in an outer suburb of Adelaide, over an hour from where I lived at the time. We pulled up at some traffic lights and looked over to the next car to see my brother and one of his friends sitting in the car next to us. Never surprised to learn about the antics of my brother and his friends, we heard that they were heading to- "end of map"- the last page of the Adelaide street directory in the northern direction. What would they find there? What happened after "the end"? These guys are truly the Burke and Wills of our age. Turns out that when they got to the northern edge of the UBD and stopped the car, there was a mobile phone lying on the ground. Weird. But good for my mum because she used that phone for a couple of years. I love that these guys went on this adventure. It illustrates to me that we are all exploring the prescribed boundaries of our world, blending the metaphor and the physical in our own delightfully strange ways. (I think they did south and east 'end of maps' at later times too)

Cheryl Lawrie wrote a blog post a while ago that explores some of these ideas in a style that goes more for the poetic and less for the absurd. She writes of the space beyond the map;

as it turns out
every map has an artificial edge
prescribed by those
who define its scope
who draw the thick black line,
however arbitrarily,
around the edges of the world.

Beautifully said.

Thanks Tadhgh, for increasing my appreciation of mapping life. I look forward to learning more...

garden eating

2010-02-02T00:04:00.000-08:00

On the tram tonight I was reading an article in Dumbo Feather (a “mook” published four times a year about inspiring people- and lovely to the touch). The article is about a Sydney-based chef, Holly Davis, who encourages us to consider the origins of our food and how our ancestors might have eaten. I was thinking about going to the shops when I got home, but was reminded to step into Tadhgh's magnificent garden and harvest this:

Our first tomato! How lucky am I? and stuffed zuchinni flowers and garden salad: delicious...and the corn is on its way...

taking risks

2010-01-29T23:55:00.000-08:00

Alicia sent me this quote last week. Jess and I are thinking about using it as the basis for the interfaith film festival we have started organising together with students from schools in Victoria and Tasmania:
"Filmmaking is a matter of asking questions and holding yourself tenderly open, ready to come across new questions at any moment… It is not about moving from confusion to clarity - for the actor, director or the viewer. Getting lost is the goal - being forced to break old habits and understandings, giving up your old forms of complacency. The way to wisdom is through not knowing".
-John Cassavetes

friends

2010-01-05T15:40:00.000-08:00

Many things confuse me in life, but my need for friendship has always been a given. And I'm incredibly lucky to have extraordinary people continually bounce into my life. Until recently, I have been terrified about the impending move away from my community of friends in Melbourne. But in the past few days I have started to get excited about moving to Kyneton (it's only one month away!). The "leaving Brunswick grief" is easing a bit and I have the "happy butterflies in pit of tummy" setting in. Today I am looking forward to:

1. having the space to host large dinners around our new table

2. time to sip tea in the sun on our new front porch with friends

Friends. They rock my world. Sometimes they even make me a musical documentary. Hilarious bliss.

space to imagine

2009-12-23T15:18:00.000-08:00

I saw Real TV's production of Children of the Black Skirt on 14th August at The Sacred Heart Chapel in the Abbotsford Convent. I wrote a review for December's Lowdown Youth Arts Magazine, which is changing to an online only publication in the new year. It was sort of sad to see this last edition in print...I think I really am a print newspaper girl at heart. Maybe it's the ink in my veins*. Here's what I had to say:

On a wintry Melbourne night a large crowd gathered to catch one of only two return showings of Real TV’s successful production, Children of the Black Skirt. First performed in 2003, this show has been revised and reworked after extensive touring and critical feedback from teachers, students and artistic colleagues. I’m so glad that Real TV has persisted in showing this work. It is a deeply haunting and carefully constructed piece of theatre written by award winning writer Angela Betzien.
The play opens with the sound of laughing kookaburras, and immediately we are in hot, rural Australia. Three girls run onto the stage playing and giggling together. Although it is a lovely scene, the audience is unsettled by an eerie echo; our first hint of the haunting that underlies this new world. The children decide to play dress ups, and when one of the girls zips up her black dress, we are immediately transported to a nightmarish space.
Black Skirt, played by Jodie Le Vesconte, is the haunting figure of this story-book world. She floats around the stage snapping huge black scissors straight from a gothic fairy tale. An enchanting musical score written by Pete Goodwin is filled with spirit voices and chilling sounds. Director Leticia Caceres also uses the silent figure of Black Skirt to insert moments of stillness and heightened suspense.
Towards the end of the play Vesconte plays Harold Horrocks, the grotesque orphanage inspector. This stylised character transformation is highly visible and provides one of many beautiful theatrical moments. Caceres uses this Brechtian technique and multiple characters to continually remind the audience that stories of displacement are prevalent throughout Australian history and are not unique to any one time or place.
We are introduced to many characters in this outback Australian orphanage. Day to day orphanage routines, washing and cleaning rituals and punishments are explored through snapshots and impressions. In one scene a girl is made to keep scrubbing until she has scrubbed off her colour. “I’m Aboriginal” she protests. Through children’s games and role plays we learn of stories which haunt the Australian landscape. Tragic stories of new arrivals are acted out and include tales of murder, transportation and retribution. Transitions between scenes are seamless. It’s almost as if the haunted souls are floating within the landscape, and they come to rest on the actors for a while. Despite the heavy subject matter, scenes are often incredibly funny due to exceptional character acting by Vesconte, Louise Brehmer and Melodie Reynolds. The young adult audience clearly enjoyed the skilled comic timing of the three performers.
Real TV’s production is a wonderful example of good storytelling. It manages to be playful, scary, hilarious and thought provoking. We don’t know everything about the characters we meet: who they are, where they came from. What makes this play really successful is that it provides the bones of a story. It draws from historical events but is not prescriptive. It allows the audience to bring their own fears and imagination to the story while also leaving space for creativity and conversation to continue beyond the walls of the theatre.
Children of the Black Skirt is an eerie reminder of our complex colonial history. The variety of voices heard in the play move the audience outside of a linear history, into a space that is able to be flexible and inclusive. In this play Real TV are exploring a new space in which to begin the possibility of negotiating colonial trauma. It is my sincere hope that this important and exploratory work tours for years to come.

*"Ink in His Veins" is the title of the book my Grandfather wrote about his father. They were both owners and editors of the Wimmera Mail Times in regional Victoria. I have inherited the Lockwood love for the smell of a fresh newspaper, a good old fashioned story and, of course, correct grammar [but please don't judge mine].

faith on film

2009-11-24T16:45:00.000-08:00

I recently saw a short film online called 'A Land Called Paradise'. Apparently it's had millions of hits on youtube but I saw it on the website for Campfire Film Festival. The film description reads: "Over 2,000 American Muslims were asked what they would wish to say to the world. This is what they said."

No words are spoken in the film; people hold up signs which hold their messages. Makes me wonder why we always overcomplicate our thoughts and ideas- simplicity is so powerful...

It's only 5 minutes long and I reckon it's worth those minutes...it's heaps more worthwhile than watching, for example, "Deep Impact". I'm still bitter about never getting those 2 hours of my life back and that movie was released in 1998.

no words

2009-11-15T21:58:00.000-08:00

I watched Rudd's apology this morning to the Forgotten Australians and former child migrants. It is interesting that amongst all of his big politician-type words, it was the absence of words that moved me. Rudd quoted Garry, a man who was seperated from his family at the age of four or five, and was asked to tell his story.

This was his reply:

“what am I going to write down?... you can't put tears on paper.”

time to celebrate

2009-11-12T16:01:00.000-08:00

I felt really privileged recently to be invited to a school in Albury to speak at their student leadership day. I came away excited and invigorated by the energy and creativity of these year 11 students who created the space to discuss what leadership meant to them, their school and their community. I was struck by the wisdom and thoughtfulness present in all discussions. There were many occasions when I heard a desire to understand others in their community. At one point the group was asked how they would respond to a simple situation as a leader: what would they do if a student arrived at school and wasn’t wearing their uniform properly. The answers given were not reactive or interested in exerting power. One student said “I would ask how their morning was. There could be something really bad going on for them” These students constantly showed a deep understanding of the whole person. I look forward to spending more time with this group of young adults. I think they are going to teach me a lot about respect, creative thinking and wholeness.

These reflections of inspiring young adults are not the pictures we often see painted in our mainstream media. I always get upset at this time of year, as the media gets stuck in to school leavers, calling them everything from “unruly” to “unethical”. People everywhere seem to sigh “oh, the youth of today, they are so (insert derogatory adjective)…blah blah blah. ..” Little space is given to reflect or ask questions of the education system or the wider community. Every year, it seems, another fear campaign is launched against young people. This article in the Age tipped me over the edge and I had to respond:

I find it fascinating that the press continues to portray school leavers as one narcissistic, heaving mass. There are countless stories of young people from across the country planning creative and sustainable experiences to celebrate the end of their schooling. Last year a group of school leavers volunteered in East Timor during Schoolies and next year, in 2010, school leavers from across the state will participate in Schoolies With a Cause, an alternative schoolies program which will take young people on exposure trips to Indonesia, Cape York or Grampians National Park. Volunteers across the state also support school leavers in their local communities by driving shuttle buses, hosting free bbqs and making sure people get home safely.

Why this constant shallow reporting on end of year celebration stories? It is clear that this is an important time for young adults. We all need rituals and celebrations to mark out milestones in our lives, to grieve what has gone and welcome what is to come. Many year 12 students are celebrating this particular milestone in respectful and caring ways. And we can join them. What are we afraid of finding out if we were to get to know the school leavers in our community and ask some deeper questions? I am excited that our community has the opportunity to join with these young adults in celebrating their 13 years of schooling.

(This post is only partly to plug the Schoolies with a Cause program that we are working on for next year and mostly born out of a desire to celebrate stories of young people)

thankfulness

2009-11-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

Jess and I visited a school in Launceston last week for work and met some Year 10 students who recently attended a Round Square Conference in India. One young woman wrote the prayer that the school contributed to the conference prayer book, made up of prayers from across the world. I was deeply moved by her evocative writing and wanted to share it here:

We give thanks…We give thanks for the dark, for the night time,
for standing in a room with the lights turned off,
for standing in a shadow of something beautiful,
for floating on our boards, watching ripples become waves;
and not surfing them,
for standing with our eyes closed.

We give thanks for the quiet and calm,
of sleeping and dreaming,
of the chance to feel other senses, to learn
Then, we give a hand, or take a hand
fasten a leggie, share some words, throw out a rope.

Be led or be a leader
to flick on the switch, in our minds, in the minds of others,
into the surf, to ride the waves,
from the shadow- to spy something beautiful,
to open our eyes in readiness for the day.

We give thanks.
Amen

By Aisling Hinchley

my favourite bookshelf

2009-11-09T19:27:00.000-08:00

how i love berlin...Alicia and I found this tree on our last morning in Berlin together.
books sitting in a tree waiting for the right person to come and take them...
it's almost as magical as Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree...

I find it really hard to reconcile that this is the same Berlin in which a wall came down 20 years ago. As an almost 10 year old, I remember that night really clearly. We watched these strange images on tv from a land I had never visited, but one I had heard many stories about... Grandparent's parents who came from there on boats, awful dictators who killed millions of innocent people, Kings who lived in fairytale castles. We lived in the States at that time and I have a vivid memory of an East German friend of mum and dad's crying as he watched. I didn't understand any of the implications, but I knew that history was happening in my presence.

eat the streets

2009-11-08T02:41:00.000-08:00

I just got really excited to see that Canadian company Mamallian Diving Reflex have been back in Australia. They were in Launceston doing a new project called Eat the Streets:

"4 weeks, 12 restaurants. A jury of children deciding what they love, hate and which washroom is the worst."

Last year they brought the ‘Children’s Choice Awards’ to the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Primary school students from Footscray were given a chance to walk the red carpet and voice their opinions on shows they had seen during the Festival. It was pretty piss your pants funny. I was in stitches listening to rave reviews and some pretty harsh judgements. It was amazing to be in a space where children took the stage as the experts and reinvented the rules. The young people invented their own award categories which meant that the framework for the ceremony wasn't structured by adults with adult agendas. The event asked: what happens when adults and their important artistic agendas aren't the ones measuring the art? I was tickled pink by the award ceremony and left with many more questions than answers. And this is the sort of company I'd like to be asking questions with...

Darren and Natalie from the company are pretty awesome. They spoke at Artplay last year and it was really exciting to hear them talk about their work- much of which focuses on moments of connection (and much of their work in the past has been with young people- another favourite project is haircuts by children - where adults let young people cut their hair!) It's also very very cool that Lenine Bourke from YPAA is involved with their next project- it will be great to have more and more of this influence in our own youth arts sector.

On their website MDR talk about wanting to create work which:

‘dismantles the barriers between individuals, fostering a dialogue between audience members, between the audience and the material and between the performers and the audience.’

Brilliant.

laugh for laugh's sake

2009-10-28T21:23:00.000-07:00

I was asked to speak at a couple of chapel services on Monday and naturally, the idea terrified me. After a fair amount of anxious deliberating, I decided to speak about something I knew about...my friends. Thanks to those friends who continually inspire me...and give me something to talk about to secondary students across the state! This is what I came up with:

love and laugh with your neighbour...

lemons

The other night I went to see an orchestra playing at Hamer Hall in Melbourne. I had flown in from Sydney that morning and was carrying a lot of bags (one of which was pink and floral), so I decided to go and check in my coat and bags at the cloak room. My friend Phil and I went over to do this, and after I had handed over all of my stuff, I looked over at Phil who was not giving the staff member his jacket or bag, but calmly and seriously handing over a single lemon. I had to turn away to hide my laughter, but I could hear the staff member saying “thank you sir, I will be sure to look after that carefully for you” through what sounded like a large grin.

Now, this type of event is not that unusual when hanging out with Phil. Every year Phil undertakes a new experiment, and this year it is called: “2009: A year with lemons”. Every day he engages in one lemon related activity. It may be leaving a lemon instead of a tip at a restaurant, giving a lemon a tattoo or last week he was in Malaysia and fed a lemon to a monkey....In 2006 Phil gave a flower to a different person each day. He called it “2006: A year of giving flowers to people”. He lived in England, France and Australia during that year with a mission to give a stranger a flower every day. He then blogs about what happens- with reactions ranging from delight, to confusion, to annoyance, to tears of joy.

I once asked him why he does these quirky things with his life. “Because I’m a human and I want to interact with other humans” I was a bit surprised by this answer. Wasn’t he hoping to say something profound by giving a flower to someone every day? Or by leaving a lemon as a tip in a restaurant? Isn’t he trying to be provocative… or… kind? But he is doing these things, not to make a statement or to cause a scene. He is simply creating frameworks in which people can interact with each other in a way they maybe wouldn’t have done otherwise. He puts himself in places where he is asking people to see life in a different way, even for a moment. He doesn’t have an agenda that he is running- he isn’t hoping to get something in particular out of these interactions...he just wants to see what happens when strangers start talking to each other.

presence in public spaces

I find it very easy to slip into a routine and not notice all the people or places around me. Every day I catch the tram to work in the city and sometimes I get to my destination and realise I’ve been sitting with other people for 40 minutes and haven’t even noticed them. I’ve been in my own little “Sarah bubble.” Recently, when there was a big storm, the whole of the Melbourne CBD was advised to leave work at 4pm. I found myself sitting on my tram next to an older man who started talking to me about the storm. Usually no one even makes eye contact on my tram, so this was a big step. We spoke for the entire journey- he worked for the Melbourne City Council and had helped to plan the city’s tram routes. He was so passionate about city planning and his excitement was contagious. He made me look out the window and appreciate my city- not bury my head in a book. This stranger opened up my eyes to the moment I was living in.

“interrupt the ordinary, inspire the extraordinary.” Peggy Holman

I’m sure we all have stories like this- when a conversation makes us see life through a different lense and we realise that we are sharing life with lots of people all around us. My ordinary, everyday tram ride was changed forever. It made me realise that in every moment there is the possibility for the ordinary to become extraordinary- in a moment of connection.

facebook

I asked friends recently on my facebook site if they could tell me the favourite thing about their neighbourhood. Over 30 friends replied, and many of them said that the favourite thing in their neighbourhood was a person. Sometimes this was a person they knew, sometimes it was a local celebrity- like the guy in Prahran who rollerblades down chapel St being pulled along by two little dogs, or the old Italian man who gives everyone tomatoes when they walk past.

People are examining their neighbourhoods all over the world and asking what makes them special. Improv Everywhere are a professional group of actors working in New York who create surprise performances in very ordinary locations. Charlie Todd formed the company in 2001 with no fixed agenda other than to make comedy for comedy’s sake. He wants to create opportunities in his neighbourhood to “make someone laugh, smile, or stop to notice the world around them.” One of my favourite examples of their work is their Grand Central Freeze. The company also completed a mission recently where 2000 new Yorkers took their invisible dog out for a walk. Another favourite activity of this company is to break into musical in ordinary unpredictable places. Recently they staged a musical in the fruit and vegetable section of a supermarket: Grocery Store Musical. Another mission that got a lot of views on youtube was their food court musical, where workers broke out in song much to the surprise of people eating their lunch.

These experiments are unpredictable; anything can happen. The company has made many people laugh and many friendships grow. They recognise that people carry a strong desire for love and hope and they create opportunities for them to share this joy with the world. There is also a recognition that we are all in this world together, and that we need to imagine new ways of interacting with other people.

Improv Everywhere and my friend Phil both recognise it isn’t outcomes or achievements that matter. This is a hard idea for us humans to get our heads around. We live in a competitive world. Movies like Mean Girls show us how easy it is to fall into the trap of becoming competitive and jealous. But rather than competition what we need is space to be creative- time and places to connect with other people in interesting, fun and unique ways. When we give ourselves time to imagine, we are more fully ourselves, and give ourselves the space to love others.

People and relationships matter. Our local community, our school community and our global community matter. As the writer and thinker Margaret Wheatley says, "If we free ourselves (from competing with our friends and colleagues) we discover that it becomes easier to love them...We realize that we truly are in this together, and that’s all that matters."¹

This week I urge you to give yourself some space. Look at the world through a different lense. Love for loves sake, laugh for laughter’s sake, and maybe even give someone a flower.

______________________________________________________________________________
¹Wheatley, Margaret; The Place Beyond Fear and Hope; Shambhala Sun, March 2009

the now in forever

2009-10-04T23:49:00.000-07:00

sometimes i try to describe what i'm feeling and thinking about and then something comes along that describes it far better than words would have. This time the thing that came along to explain the jumble in my brain is an artwork by one of my most clever friends Tom. He has used some words from a piece of prose by Richard Jefferies.
I feel really drawn to the young person in this picture. There is something so assured about their gaze; a complete comfort in this captured moment.

my vice {in haiku}

2009-09-20T03:11:00.000-07:00

sweet juicy bacon
how will I ever become
vegetarian

painting rainbows

2009-09-18T22:49:00.001-07:00

So, I thought I'd start a blog... I have always been quite nervous about making my thoughts so public, but have decided I'll ease into it for a while and see how I go. It might be nice to have my thoughts written in one place, Currently my thoughts are written on little scraps of paper all over my office and bedroom, in the margins of books I'm reading or in a dozen half finished notebooks and journals. It's time to consolidate.

I just wrote this piece for a youth arts magazine I contribute to called Lowdown and thought I'd put it here too:

I always make my husband tell me a story about him and a friend from Kindergarten days. Every morning they would fill up cans of paint, run over to the Kindergarten cubby house and paint it an array of bright and fabulous colours. The next day they would return and the cubby would miraculously be back to its dull brown. “Great!” they would shout, “this means we get to paint it all over again!” I love the way he tells this story: with a continuing sense of awe at the “rainbow coloured paint” that the teachers allowed them to use for their task. It has only been since he has been older and reflected on these occasions that his adult logic has kicked in and explained away the magic: the cans must have been filled with water, not magical rainbow paint. But in his memory he sees the cubby in all of its fabulous multi coloured glory. I am so inspired by this story of imagination and wonder.

I get concerned that in many settings we don’t give ourselves the opportunity to maintain a sense of wonder and open up a whole spectrum of creative responses to life’s twists and turns. When I was in a creative development last weekend, walking around with a cardboard box on my head, (we were robots-of course) I was reminded once again not to take the rehearsal room for granted. I felt really lucky to be in a space with friends and colleagues, having a chance to wonder and explore. I hope that in the midst of the busyness of life, you get some time to play and imagine. Personally, I think it’s the best bit.