The doctor is inspecting the balls of my left foot. There is a lump – actually more like a ridge just raised above the surface, which he’s worried about. I ask him what the problem is. It’s not the bone, he says. The problem is in the muscle. I don’t understand. The foot isn’t causing me pain, and I’m not even aware of walking funny.
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I dream that Cristina and I are presenting slide shows in the gallery. After the gallery staff spend ages introducing the concept of the organisation etc, there’s only enough time left for ten minutes talking each. I pull out my bell in order to do one minute “lightning” accounts of my past projects, only to find it’s all rusty and it won’t “ding” at all. Most of my ten minutes is spent trying to work out how to make this bell function. I’m assisted by a local farmer in this operation. In my dream, I’m aware of how absurd this all is. In a way, it’s a quintessential presentation of my work. However, it’s not particularly informative for all the people who’ve come along to see slides…
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On the way back from Cunderdin, I asked Felena if we could stop at the Tammin op shop. It’s my Thursday arvo ritual by now, and I’d hate to disappoint Gwen, my op shop angel. The ladies jumped straight into action this time: “what does he need now?”, “what can we offer for his music workshops?” and my favourite: “what will he come up with next!?”
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Yesterday began with some general questions about “what music could be”.
Definitions of sound, noise, and music – what is noise to one person might be musical to someone else…
In the beginning, the students were reluctant to go out on a limb. When I asked what kinds of music they liked, some played it safe: “you know, all kinds.” One girl finally owned up to being really into heavy metal: she thrashes away at home with an electric guitar. Adam, (or “Mr Whatsthepoint?”) is already up to 5th grade piano.
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More and more, I have the feeling that we are getting nowhere, slowly. As the talk goes on, we are getting nowhere, and that is a pleasure. It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else… (more…)
About 2pm I went in search of Neville. I’d met Neville at the pub on Friday night during Jag the Joker, and we’d talked gardens and worms. He told me that he had discovered a big cache of worms in his garden, and I was welcome to come and get some.
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I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I think I’m getting “screen fatigue.” Does such a thing exist? Who would want to be a graphic designer / web designer / data entry clerk ? Every day facing the same flickering frame, this universal tool which enables everything we do and then traps us into a heavily dependent relationship. I’m with them Plymouth Brethren down in Cunderdin: no computers, no phones, no faxes. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I’ll give up. Return to a simpler life. But I’ve just gotta send off this one email first…
Of course, writing this blog each day is not a strain at all. In fact, it’s a pleasure to sit and think about yesterday. To give yesterday one last chance to live again before it disappears forever.
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In Kellerberrin, identical rubbish bins are spaced out at uneven intervals along the main road. (See photographic survey here). Why is this so? It is my theory that the bins reflect an asymmetrical use of urban space by the town’s inhabitants. Most probably this is due to the variation in the type of businesses located on this bustling urban strip. One hypothesis which seems likely is that the local council have allocated bins on a “most needed” basis, rather than simply making the space between bins “equidistant”.
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Josh remarked upon how many bins there were on Massingham Street. And lo! Once you look, there’s no denying it! This has got to be the highest number of garbage receptacles per capita…of any town in Australia? Yes, let us claim that title for Kellerberrin, at least until some other tidy town wannabe makes an attempt to wrest the crown from our tidy tidy head.
Since it was a beautiful Sunday, I decided to document this phenomenon for posterity. So here you have it folks:
The Kellerberrin Bin Run, 2005.
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I jokingly wrote to my friend Tony in Sydney about how I was going to find it hard to leave this place. I told him that maybe I would buy a farm and stay on. Tony wrote back: “Funny but I find it hard to imagine you running a farm or even living in all that thundering emptiness…”
I like the idea of “thundering emptiness.” Emptiness so vast it makes the cavity in my skull resonate deafeningly. A kind of sublime vacuum.
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