It’s Monday night/Tuesday morning and it’s a regular school night for me, watching the best Australian television has to offer: John Saffran, Media Watch, Queer As Folk and now Ricki Lake.
Yesterday, I had lunch with Damien and visited the exhibition, ‘Reporting the World: John Pilger’s Great Eyewitness Photographers’, an exhibition of about 200 photographs at Sydney’s Museum Of Contemporary Art. Although I’ve been a long-time fan of Pilger’s work, I’ve found it a little bit predictable. And there were aspects of predictability in this exhibition.
It was interesting, however, to consider some of the issues of modern day Anglo-American capitalism – the civil rights struggle, the miner’s strike etc – in the light of other civil rights breaches. As I said to Damien, “the miner’s strike seems pretty insignificant compared with what happened in Bangladesh”. Some of the photographs were too distressing to look at. Others, like the American and English ones, seemed so minor in comparison. As important as those struggles were, they don’t really compare, in my view, to the thousands of people shot dead or tortured. It was a wonderful wakeup call.
Judy, Greg, Cotton and I went to see an amateur production of the musical “Chess”, performed by the Eastwood Uniting Church Musical Society at West Ryde this afternoon.
As far as amateur productions go, it was pretty good, with the musical direction being absolutely terrific. Greg said the guitar solo at the end of “Pity The Child” was the best he’s ever heard… and apparently, he knows about these things.
The singing and acting were both a little patchy, although there were some very good performances in the midst of it all. The guy playing Anatoly had a sensational voice – lots of comparisons with Tommy Korberg – although his acting was sometimes a little overdramatic.
Judy, Greg, Cotton and I went to see an amateur production of the musical Chess performed by the Eastwood Uniting Church Musical Society at West Ryde.
The chorus was excellent, especially in those moments without musical backing. They harmonised very well.
The one disappointment was “One Night In Bangkok” which, unfortunately, they failed to cut the mustard on, perhaps due to technical issues… or maybe because it was just too complex for an amateur production to stage.
It occurred to me the reason why “Chess” has had only limited success is that it spends too much time early in the piece talking about the game, the history, the politics when actually it’s the love story and the personal motivations that are the most interesting. If I was doing a production I’d chop out most of the first half and begin with “1956 Budapest Is Rising” as it’s from then onwards that you understand so many of the motivations – both personal and political – that govern the action of the characters.
Curiously enough, the director, Penny Wilson wrote in her notes, “From the earliest days of conceptualising this production, it has clearly been a ‘problem play’. For me as a believer in Christ, and for EUCMS as a Church-based organisation, the problems it poses were the aspects we wanted to emphasise rather than avoid.” She was obviously talking about the selfishness of the characters and that there were no happy endings, leading her to conclude that it could be read “as a sort of anti-parable”. Who would have thought…
Overall a good production and well worth the trip to West Ryde.
To be honest, I’m feeling a little frazzled (is that a word?) about the spiderman incident. I don’t feel violated or anything, but I do feel a little uncomfortable. As well as the comments, I’ve received quite a few emails from people either offering sympathy or relating similar stories of having slept through similar incidents. And last night, I also had a few phone calls from people just to say “are you okay?”, which was really lovely.
Otherwise it’s been a nice day. I went out for lunch today with a former colleague who has also spent a few months travelling overseas. “We went to Mykonos and I thought of you”, he told me. We laughed when be both realised it was for different reasons. I thought it was the poof thing, whereas he meant it was for “Mamma Mia” (the movie).
And then tonight, I caught up with John and Graeme, as per usual for Wednesday night drinks.
My physio cheered me on with a simple ‘Yeah, you can do it!’ as we aced our second pass at the Mardi Gras parade route after my right-leg amputation last year.
We did the entire 1.7km route in about 30 minutes – faster than the stop-and-go reality of the night.
There’s a few dodgy potholes along the way, which I’ll be writing to Clove Moore about :)
Oh, and I now have experience with the rain, just in case. I’ve just got to combine the walking with the dance moves
I went to see singer, actress and dancer, Chloe Dallimore do her first “cabaret” show last night at Sydney’s Statement Bar, and I guess, in all honesty, I was a little disappointed.
She’s has a beautiful voice, she can dance, and she’s gorgeously leggy in that Rhonda Burchmore kind of way, but there was a “certain something” missing from last night’s show.
There were a couple of funny stories, there were a couple of moving songs, but I can honestly say I never really laughed and I never really cried. I guess the closest I came to real emotion was her performance of “My Colouring Book”, a song made famous by both Dusty Springfield and Barbra Streisand. There was also an occasion when she spoke about her late father.
Underlying her performance, I suspect there was a degree of nervousness. I also got the impression she had rehearsed the show to within an inch of its life. The result of this was a technically brilliant show that lacked a degree of sincerity.
That said, she’s so talented that you know she can only get better. Think Rhonda Burchmore in a few years time!
As I sat at the bar and listened closely to the pre-recorded music playing softly in the background, I recognised the tune instantly. It was Two Little Boys” made famous by Rolf Harris, except this version was in Danish.
Having arrived from Reykjavik an hour or so earlier, I was sitting quietly by myself, enjoying a beer at what I’ve previously described as possibly the best bar in the whole world. The reason I like it so much is that it has “character”. Located straight across the road from the main Copenhagen train station, the bar is decorated with lots of colourful memorabilia.
Jernbanecafeen
The crowd is colourful too. The last time I visited was also a Sunday. On that occasion, a Sunday afternoon, Sue and I witnessed some very drunk patrons, and the way in which the bar manager dealt swiftly and decisively with some illicit drug-taking. This time around, the crowd was a little more sedate. Like me, they were there mostly to enjoy the music.
“Two Little Boys” was playing during a break by the main musical attraction of the night. Seated at the far end of the bar, an older man (probably in his 70s) was playing old-time favourites on a keyboard. Occasionally, someone from the audience would get up and sing along to tunes like “Strangers In The Night”, “Volare” and others. I can’t be sure if it was karaoke or if they were regulars, but deep inside I also wanted to get up and sing along too.
With just thirty-six hours in Copenhagen, and having experienced an awful lot over the last few weeks, I thought it was time for a bit of simple relaxation. You’ve got to do that when you travel, particularly if you travel to explore new things, and not just sit on the beach. You’ve got to set aside a day here and there for just sitting on the couch and doing nothing much at all. And that’s how I’ve spent most of my time here.
Other highlights of my time here have been a visit to the swimming pool (just around the corner) and to a nearby Chinese restaurant. One of the great things I love about Sydney (which I haven’t experienced much in Europe) is our access to Asian cuisine. It’s one of the things I miss when I travel. So when I realised the area I was staying in had an abudance of Asian restaurants, I decided to try my luck with some fried dumplings and some BBQ pork. Unfortunately, the food was pretty average, but I did have a nice chat with the owner of the restaurant. When I responded with a “xie xie”, he smiled and asked where I was from. I don’t think it’s a phrase he hears often from “Western” customers. He told me he was from Western China, not far from the border with Vietnam, and that he had been living in Denmark for thirty years.
I’m heading back to Stockholm tomorrow for a few days, which will be fun, and next Monday I’m heading to Turkey. Can’t wait.
One of many things of childhood I’ve never grown out of is the ability to sleep. I’m one of those people who can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I can do a micro-nap on a bus from the City to Surry Hills. A couple of years ago, I even had a brief nap during a work-related conference call. It was an afternoon conference call on a day where I’d been at work since about four o’clock in the morning. I took the call at home and napped briefly during the call, I’m ashamed to say. I reckon if I lived in Japan, I could easily be one of those commuters who could sleep standing up.
While sometimes the cause of these mini-sleeps is not having enough sleep the night before, and other times it’s physical exhaustion (the result of a hard day’s work), tonight it was a case of thinking too much. I walked in the door, made a quick phone call, checked some personal email, and fell asleep on the couch.
I’m working reasonably hard at the moment, with quite a few major projects taking up a lot of time and energy. And on top of that, we’re in the midst of an election, for which I have a couple of important roles to play.
I’ve been espousing my theory the last few days to whoever will listen that Labor will be returned next weekend not because of anything either side of politics has done, or hasn’t done, but because of sense of the “inevitability” of infrequent change in Australian political history.
If you look at the list of election results on Wikipedia, a reasonably consistent trend emerges. If you exclude the first twenty years or so after Federation (on the basis of the extraordinary factor of the First World War, and as our democracy began to settle down into a pattern of consistency), you see very few changes of government.
The longest period of consistent government was, of course, between 1949 and 1972 when the Coalition was returned consistently.
And since then, we’ve only had governments change in 1972, 1975, 1983, 1996 and 2007.
What’s interesting, though, is when you look at the results of the first election after that change of government. Consistently there’s a swing away from the government, but not enough for them to actually lose the election. In 1974, Whitlam lost one seat and in 1977 Fraser lost one seat. 1984 is a little different because the house was increased from 125 seats to 148 seats, but still there was a swing away from Hawke, but not enough for him to lose government, and then in 1998, Howard lost nine seats, but never lost government.
This slowness to change could be a factor of the two-party system, or perhaps it’s part of the Australian electoral psyche that everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how good or bad they are?
