Hey my loves. While I was thrice-weekly taking photographs for Australian food, fashion and culture website UHH, that little project has ceased to exist. The editor has jetted off to take a job in West Africa of all places. Fabulous opportunity for him; I asked him to pet a lioness for me, in all due safety. In the meantime, I would like to share an interview I did for the editor, pre-Africa, which was about to become part of a new literary section on the site, composed of writers interviewing other writers. My good friend Australian food, fashion and culture website UHH, that little project has ceased to exist. The editor has jetted off to take a job in West Africa of all places. Fabulous opportunity for him; I asked him to pet a lioness for me, in all due safety. In the meantime, I would like to share an interview I did for the editor, pre-Africa, which was about to become part of a new literary section on the site, composed of writers interviewing other writers. My good friend Dan Krige, the writer and director of gritty Aussie film WEST agreed to the challenge of my questioning quest to get beneath the skin and veins of writerly minds.
1. How are you Dan?
I’M WELL. PLEASURE TO BE TALKING TO YOU MS WARD.
2. Where did you grow up?
I GREW UP IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS, WHICH IS ABOUT 100 KMS (80 MILES) WEST OF SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA. GREAT PART OF THE PLANET. IT’S ALSO A WORLD HERITAGE AREA.
3. Tell me a bit about the landscape, the environment? What did you love about it?
I LOVED THE WILDERNESS. THE PLACE I GREW UP IN BACKED ONTO THE NATIONAL PARK, SO I SPENT A LOT OF TIME EXPLORING THE BUSHLAND, THE CREEKS AND VALLEYS, CAVES AND HIDDEN TRACKS. IT WAS A SPECIAL PLACE. MY GRANDFATHER ALSO HAD A LARGE PROPERTY I SPENT A LOT OF TIME ON. LOOKING BACK, IT WAS A FAIRLY MAGICAL PLACE TO SPEND A CHILDHOOD.
4. At what point in your life did you become aware of writing as a profession?
I BECAME A WRITER BY ACCIDENT. I WAS A TEENAGER, AND I WANTED TO BE AN ACTOR, SO I WROTE A SCRIPT, WITH THE INTENTION OF PLAYING THE MAIN PART. I CALLED UP SOME PRODUCTION COMPANIES WHO HARDLY EVEN HUMOURED ME. THEN I CAME ACROSS A GUY CALLED TONY MORPHETT WHO IS ONE OF AUSTRALIA’S MOST ACCOMPLISHED FILM AND TV WRITERS – COINCIDENTALLY HE LIVED NEAR ME. HE WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO READ MY SCRIPT, AND EVIDENTLY SAW SOME TALENT. BEFORE I KNEW IT WAS WAS WRITING PROFESSIONAL FOR TV. TONY BECAME MY MENTOR, AND IS STILL A GOOD FRIEND. INCIDENTALLY, THAT FIRST SCRIPT I WROTE WENT ON TO BECOME THE FIRST FEATURE I DIRECTED, “WEST”. BUT I WAS A LITTLE TOO OLD TO PLAY THE LEAD BY THE TIME IT GOT MADE!
5. Who were your favourite writers/ directors/ creatives/ influences as a young person?
I DIDN’T REALLY HAVE ANY CLEAR FAVOURITES. I WAS AN AVID READER AS A KID AND I REMEMBER ONE OF THE FIRST BOOKS THAT REALLY GRIPPED ME WAS CALLED “SKELETON CAVE” BY CORA (CHENEY) PARTRIDGE. I HAVEN’T READ IT SINCE I WAS ABOUT 8 YEARS OLD, SO I DON’T KNOW HOW IT STACKS UP TODAY. BUT I REMEMBER IT REALLY SPIKED MY IMAGINATION. FILMS THAT STAND OUT FOR ME AS A KID AND YOUNG TEENAGER ARE “E.T”, “AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON” AND PARTICULARLY “MIDNIGHT EXPRESS”. “MIDNIGHT EXPRESS” FASCINATED ME BECAUSE IT MADE A HERO OUT OF A DRUG COURIER. I THINK IT WAS THE FIRST TIME I HAD EXPERIENCED IDENTIFYING WITH A KIND OF ANTI-HERO.
6. You were in a band, right? What did you play? What was the highlight of your musical life?
I PLAYED BASS IN A THREE-PIECE BAND CALLED “GYVE”. A VERY GRUNGE-INFLUENCED OUTFIT. WE WERE TOGETHER FOR ABOUT 8 YEARS OR SO AND PLAYED AROUND 400 GIGS IN THAT TIME. WE ALSO RELEASED TWO CDS. THE HIGHLIGHT OF THAT TIME WAS GETTING RADIO PLAY, AND BEING NAMED AS THE “BEST INDEPENDENT RELEASE” ON 2MMM’S “HOME GROWN” SHOW. 2MMM IS ONE OF THE MAJOR ROCK STATIONS HERE IN AUSTRALIA.
7. One of the things I’m very proud of you for, is the fact that you wrote and directed a feature film called WEST. How was that experience?
IT WAS A VERY CATHARTIC EXPERIENCE ON MANY LEVELS. AS I MENTIONED EARLIER, “WEST” WAS THE FIRST THING I EVER WROTE AND IT TOOK ALMOST 20 YEARS TO SEE IT REALISED AS A FILM. IT TAUGHT ME ABOUT PATIENCE AND PERSISTENCE. MY YOUNGEST BROTHER PASSED AWAY IN TRAGIC CIRCUMSTANCES ABOUT TWO YEARS BEFORE I MADE “WEST”, SO IT ALSO BECAME MY TRIBUTE TO HIM. THE FILM IS DEDICATED TO HIM.
8. I’ve always felt that artists put chapters of their lives and their past into their art, and think that is a very important segment of maturing as an artist. Would you say that WEST was like that for you, or was it more of a reflection, a documentation?
“WEST” WAS ALL OF THE ABOVE. I WROTE IT BEFORE I REALLY KNEW HOW TO WRITE, SO IT WAS A VERY INSTINCTUAL PROCESS. IT WAS A REFLECTION, A DOCUMENTATION, AND A I GUESS IN SOME WAYS A STATEMENT ON THE LIFE I WAS LIVING AT THE TIME. I’M NOT SURE I COULD WRITE IT NOW THAT I’VE LEARNED ALL “THE RULES”.
9. What are you working on now?
I’M IN DEVELOPMENT ON A NUMBER OF PROJECTS – ALL IN VARYING STAGES OF COMPLETION. MY PRODUCER AND I ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF FINANCING ONE, AND WORKING ON THE SCRIPTS FOR THE OTHERS. I’M A BIG BELIEVER IN THE OLD ADAGE: “IF IT AIN’T ON THE PAGE, IT AIN’T ON THE STAGE”. SO I BASICALLY WRITE AND REWRITE UNTIL IT’S HARD TO PICK A FAULT. HOPEFULLY!
10. Any tips for keeping motivated?
I FIND THIS ONE OF THE BIGGEST CHALLENGES, ESPECIALLY WHEN ONE HAS BEEN IN DEVELOPMENT FOR A TIME. IT SEEMS LIKE YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SHOW FOR ALL THE WORK AND YET THE SUN STILL RISES ON ANOTHER DAY, AND THE COMPUTER BECKONS. I START THE DAY WITH A LONG WALK IN NATURE, A COFFEE, AND SOME THINKING TIME OF WHAT I’M WRITING, AND THEN I HEAD HOME AND JUST GET STARTED. I THINK IT’S ALSO IMPORTANT TO WRITE ON COMPUTER THAT IT NOT CONNECTED TO THE INTERNET. THE FEWER DISTRACTIONS THE BETTER.
11. How do you deal with writer’s block?
KEEP WRITING. EVEN IF WHAT YOU’RE WRITING IS CRAP. JUST KEEP AT IT. BUT ALSO KNOW WHEN TO GIVE SPACE. THAT’S WHY I START MY DAYS WITH A LONG WALK. KEEPING PERSPECTIVE IS AN IMPORTANT THING WHEN DEALING WITH A CREATIVE BLOCKAGE. AS THEY SAY, “THE HARDEST THING ABOUT WRITING IS KNOWING WHAT TO WRITE”.
12. Last but not least, what’s your favourite way to spend an Australian weekend?
I LIVE BY THE BEACH, SO THAT’S PRETTY MUCH NEAR THE TOP OF THE LIST. I ALSO HAVE THREE NEPHEWS AND A NIECE WHO LEND VALUABLE PERSPECTIVE TO WHAT IS SOMETIMES ARE FAIRLY INSULAR EXISTENCE. THE IMPORTANCE OF FAMILY CAN NEVER BE UNDERESTIMATED.
Thank you Dan for answering my questions. You’re a special soul and I will treasure our Ikea cabinet-making Twister fueled dress-up parties for eternity.
Sometimes the only thing that can describe the vibes I’m feeling, are a few photos.
Let me just say,
1. Book design finished and sent to printers for pre-press preview.*
2. I am intoxicatingly in love with New York City.
3. Overwhelmingly in love with morning meditations, as well as enamoured by the new discovery of sitting in the sun to eat delicious lunches in the windowsill, feeling the rush of nutrients and fresh sunshine flood through my skin and stomach.
6. Watching Planet Earth whilst sitting between my sister and Mama; who is staying with Gem, whilst visiting our neighboring nests in NYC.
7. Road trips to Hudson, upstate, with sister and Mama. Cloud capped sunset over roadside snowy forests, empty of leaves.
8. The blessing I am living with, whose name is Jon Ramos: The little things – his music, his records, the things he researches, the way he cooks and cleans, as well as every.single.touch.and.caress. I soak up each molecule.
9. Corners still surprising, plans still unfolding, life still inexplicable. Absolutely unpredictable. No matter how hard I try, the guiding hand beyond my life is determined to keep me in awe, in love, inspired, and on unbelievably exciting edges. What is this cosmic edge, hand? The ultimate tease, the ultimate joy in keeping curious. Thank you, whoever you are. I am a blissful effervescence.
I recently worked with Australian clothing label, LOVER, on a short film called “The Harvest,” starring Aussie actress Sophie Lowe, now in cinemas everywhere, I mean – on their website, and above! I am so very very proud!! Thank you so much Alice Wesley-Smith and Kasia Werstak at The Aeon for contacting me, as well as Susien Chong and Nic Briand of LOVER. This has been such an honour, and I am so proud of everyone who assisted in the creation of this work. It is glorious, gorgeous, as I always suspected it would irreversibly be.
This is what I’ve learnt about Lover: Susien and Nic started their label as a small Sydney market stall during the weekends of 2001, and have since taken the brand to the rockets in the skies: “garnering praise from Vogue to Vice magazine,” plus coverage in UK Vogue, Teen Vogue, Nylon, Jane, Dazed & Confused, WWD, Harpers Bazaar, Rolling Stone, Yen, Pavement and Lula.
International fans include Australian actress Sophie Lowe – who stars and narrates Sophie-Ward-Words in The Harvest, above – as well as Joanna Newsom, Alexa Chung, Kirsten Dunst, Kiera Knightley and Michelle Williams.
Thank you guys, this is a supremely delightful experience to have witnessed during my lifetime. I am deeply honoured.
So I wanted to tell this story, before I share other, immense, joyous happpenstances which bound like kittens through my life (sickening, isn’t it?) This peculiar occurrence however, was quite foreboding and traumatic, and it took me a good few days to get over it. It’s quite funny too, I guess, especially for those people who enjoy the devourance of other creatures, (”meat – eaters”) and who guffaw at pescetarians like myself and my co-conspirative creator in life, Jon Ramos. I suspect those who guffaw may not even know what a pescetarian is? Tis one who consumes sea creatures and vegetables!
I feel myself most aligned with sea creatures, with the fish of the ocean, for I feel we are fish of the air, of the ether. I watch fish swim in my minds eye and imagination, and I see how they move, find new currents to swim on, and experience JOY in the moving, in the swimming, in the FLOWING of the water through their gills and their every cell of fishy body! As well, I admire the way fish use the sea as the entire fabric of their needs: they swim with the gush of the water flowing through them, along currents, and they must gain a taste of something delightful, and move towards that, in the hopes that there might be more of that over there.
I aspire to be fishlike, every day, up here as an evolved fish, who once climbed out of the ocean, and grew lungs, because I decided it was awesome up here. Quite awesome really! Awe-MUCH, to be more precise!
Back to the story. It involves octopus, and as I’m sure a few of you are aware, I am quite fond of octopus, (as in, the live versions of them.) I indeed actually have a favourite image of an octopus named Squirt, who is very intelligently deciphering the ways in which to enter a glass box, submerged in his ocean, which holds a small crab, a tasty delight. The octopus named Squirt did in fact figure out how to open the glass cube, and the image shows his beautiful long, soft, and strong tentacles, wrapping the hard, sharp and alien glass box. It is a stunning image. Again, I aspire to be more fish like, as well as octopus like, in my day to day physical experience as an evolved fish.
So. About two weeks ago, I adopted a whole frozen (semi-frozen) octopus from Gemma’s apartment, after having saged her space with sacred smoke, and coming home with the gifts she did not desire any longer. At home, it was apparently my duty to make use of this gift-that-is-octopus; which in a kitchen, away from the ocean, means to cook her. While I have in the past eaten octopus and truly enjoyed it, (importantly, when someone else cooked it for me . . . ) I did not in any way look forward to the task that was presenting itself to me as an experience to experience, and thereafter expand from.
I unbagged the octopus corpse from its plastic body bag, on the yellow stretcher it was being sold upon. I held it’s crusted, frozen body in my hands, and ran it tenderly under the warm water gushing from my faucet. As it unfurled and decoiled and relaxed from its cryogenic frozen sleep, I was quite emotional. Meanwhile, Jon walks into the kitchen to see what I am doing, and turns up his nose at the alien creature I am now cradling in my bare hands above a stainless steel sink. I stretch out its long, elegant, ever so finely tipped tentacles, run my fingers over its slimy body, its muscular, dense cartilaginous head, and its soft, almost ribbed, suction-cupped legs like moveable veins which once held animated life.
I was at this stage, wholly aware of what I was about to do. However, I could not simply throw this sacred creature in the garbage. I wanted to make use of her; to honour what her killing was intended for; to eat her; to cook her. At least it would be more sacred than sacrilegiously discarding the body as waste. So, with a lot of inexplicable emotion, and heightened senses, I lay the body along my wooden chopping board in my small kitchen in the North East of Northern America, in the South East tip of an icy island, surrounded by cold ocean, and breathable atmosphere, on a planet called Earth.
The alien creature surrendered its body, and my large knife began to methodically bear my weight into her tentacles. I kept saying to myself, let me assimilate the energy of the octopus into my body, let me take her energy and carry it on. The tentacles began to get shorter, as the small sections of her dissected body lay across my board. I only got about three quarters of the way up the body, closer to the head, the eyes, when I stopped. I decided this was enough. I could never, ever, ever bring myself to slice into the head of this octopus. The head of the octopus.
At this stage, I did what cooks do, and heated a skillet. I have no idea how to properly cook octopus, and suspect I was going about it all wrong. Hence the trauma. I covered the dissected body parts in olive oil, and asked that the oil protect the octopus from more pain. Not the physical part of her, because I understand that oil makes something cook faster and hotter, but the spiritual part of her, which had perhaps long gone, but which I symbolically still felt. I placed a piece on the grill, and it immediately coiled up in a wince. Oh the pain and torment I felt upon seeing that! I was horrified! So, what did I do? I put all of them in. What else could one do but get it over and done with?
I stood there for some time, watching them coil and wince and sometimes squeal with murderous, suffering recriminations, which they were helpless to retire from, and which I was helpless to cease. I thought if I was going to EAT the poor thing, I may as well enjoy it? Trust me, I attempted to eat some of it early on in the cooking process, and it was not specifically enjoyable at all. It was rather a lot like eating the appendage of an alien baby, and I felt rather horrificaly messed up inside after putting that thing in my mouth. (I will deal with that later in therapy.)
I waited until the excructiations were over, and until the alien appendages were tiny, shriveled, chewy, and as blackened as I (and Jon – because the smoke was insufferable too) could manage. Meanwhile, I made a salad. Because that’s what I’m very good at. I prepared the lovely (*cough splutter*) “bed” upon which the dead octopus would finally lay before meeting its maker, and/or my gastrointestinal juices. What a load of baloney! This salad bed was in fact more the phony trimmings on its coffin, before it would all be over and done, and buried in my belly.
I had been testing and tasting a few of the pieces as I was going along – but none of it was very delightful at all. I made the salad, and sat down begrudgingly with the murdered octopus on my plate, with Jon shaking his internal moral-compass (or so I felt), as I tried to eat it. I simply could not. I already felt sick to the bone, and extraordinarily troubled by what was coursing through me, spiritually, physically, gastronomically or otherwise. I’d hardly sat 2 minutes before I went to the kitchen, and, along with the head of the octopus which I had laid in a(n incubation) container in my fridge, offered the remains of this half desecrated, half incubated-post-cryogenic-sleep corpse of an octopus, to the bin.
“It will live on in the scented plastic of the bin-bag.” Baloney! I am never again eating any creature that I associate with; and by this rationale (because I believe that if society were less city-machinist-industry-centric, we would all feel associated with animals) that equals NO animal whatsoever. Except fish. Bit of a contradiction here, I know. . . ? (More therapy) I suspect I have to get familiar with a fish on my chopping board, in order to totally go off fish? They’re so tasty though. I guess it’s all those nutrients that they glide towards! Cunning fish, I see your secrets! What it boils down to (. . . ) is that while I have eaten meat and fish my whole life, this is a deeply spiritual choice for me, and one which may not make my farmer and medical-profession oriented family ancestry, pleased.
But to hell with it! Caution to the wind! It blows in new directions, new information courses through me! As I go onwards in life, I find new experiences shape me, like clay on my life-form – as if my life itself, was clay, and the ocean around me is shaping it into new and evolved forms. Just like the fish who found his gills turned to lungs, as it climbed – or was it ascended? – out of the disintegrating, deteriorating pond. Perhaps I will grow super-conscious antenna on my skull (I can feel them growing now.) Perhaps my eyes will expand into huge orbs, deepen and evolve such that I can see through dimensions, such that I can effectively move through the third dimension, into the fourth, fifth, eleventh and onwards. Into the uncategorizable, unsizeable, inexplicable, deep fathoms of this mystery that we are finding ourselves swimming within.
To cook the tentacles of that alien creature, a creature which to me represents all that we are sounfamiliarwith – down in the oceans which COVER our planet, the oceans from which we CAME FROM, the oceans which were our WOMB, which we literally were born from: that which is the amniotic fluid of our very lifespan as a body of humanity, with an existence, and even more spectacularly, a consciousness – was highly emotional and seemed to generate a very strong message coursing through my veins, which said STOP, WRONG WAY, GO BACK. Are not the tentacles of the octopus, the creatures senses? And, in the light of the octopus being a feeling creature, as it makes it’s way across the dark sea floor, do those tentacles not represent her “god”-given INTUITION?
It was in this way that I was troubled by the task that I had the opportunity to experience. And while I know I could have stopped the experience from happening at any point in time, I was called forward to perform it. I had strong emotions regarding why I must not waste her, why I must treasure her, why I must make use of her existence on this planet, by at least furthering mine. However, I felt strongly that this was not the way to do that honoring. Today, my intentions are radically and rapidly shifting, and as I’m sure you may have felt, in your own lives, or through reading the writing (as well as the absence of writing, which can be just as expressive), that there is some kind of dis-enveloping occurring. An unfolding of envelopment, a slow coming forth, a birthing of some giant thing . . . I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it looks to be a giant cosmic baby (an octopus?) being born into our dimension; perhaps a gift of heightened awareness; perhaps a responsibility (as a new baby most certainly is), a new possibility which is coming to fruition, via our collective breathing, pushing, grunting, via our CARE during this gestation, during this immense birthing (of the cosmic octopus) (the cosmic intuition) through and within and upon, this planet, our Mother.
If we were indeed evolved from fish, (which can of course be traced – proven – the world over, by the smartest scientists, and which has been a TRUTH (that is, a practiced belief) for hundreds of years, within our collective intelligence and understanding. . . ) THEN, we were once sea-dwellers. Fish, little lizards with webbed feet, slimy little wiggly things, and, way back millions of years ago, tiny tadpoley things, and before that, single celled amoebas, and before that, a microscopic speck in the ocean. The ocean which fell as rain upon a fizzing, sizzling crust of newly hardened lava, which was emitting great clouds of steam which would carry the components of what is today our atmosphere. The steam and smoke rose and matted over the cooling, hardened lava after we goo-balled ourselves together from multiple collisions with meteors, asteroids, flaming stars and other bits and pieces of cosmic junk that were careening around the fabric of space-time; after the BIG BANG of that little primordial speck of immeasurable density, so small, so vibrationally dense, that it couldn’t contain itself any longer! And had to explode!
(I get like that sometimes!)
Joyous! Bursting with energy! Unbearably contained and busting to get OUT! Let me free, the primordial atome said! I have a whole UNIVERSE of our own creation in here! I have BILLIONS, TRILLIONS, if NOT ZAGAZILLIONS of creatures to show off! Dinosaurs! Look at those! How cool is its super long neck that lets it get to those funny things called LEAVES that I made as well! Look how the leaves like to drink the CO2 which the animals create after they metabolize oxygen! Look at this funny thing called an OCTOPUS? ISN’T IT A COOL NAME!? Then we also have CATFISH, and then on land, there’s the CAT, which humans also like to called PUSS, too! Aren’t they funny? Isn’t it fantastic how it’s all a web of interlocked encoded information, this web of how the world occurs, for the creatures we made? What about that big guy, loping along, the whale? Listen to its poetry, its beautiful music.
All of this, was encrypted in that vibrations of that tiny primordial “atome primitif”, the nugget that was the seed of us, which was the seed of our sun, and our moon, (that big reflective rock poised in the sky? It’s not going anywhere. Don’t worry about it falling. It likes watching you all. It was once you) our whole reality. (There are rumours that the moon was an offshoot of debris after that first mashing together of materials that ended up being our planet. It has hung around and become nice and smooth from all that spinning.) What amazes me, is that I understand, even fractionally, the immense ENERGY that was encapsulated in that primary vibration. Perhaps this was all that needed to be, in the beginning? From what I am learning, I suspect that there could have solely been a VIBRATION, which gained so much in strength, and attracted matter towards it, so much matter, that as we all know (because THIS that we are living, is our Mother, and Mothers like telling their stories over and over and over!!) simply had to explode.
(A sort of cosmic orgasm? I wouldn’t be surprised! Look at her children!)
I absolutely love living here, exactly where I am, having evolved from whence I did, all the way back, completely traced, to that first EXPLOSIVE vibration of thought, feeling, emotion, and thereafter the un-enveloping of matter. I love where I am so much, that I KNOW I was born within that very essential, “absolutely necessary, fundamental or central” quality we like to call love. That which feels so unbelievably beautiful, that which FEELS indescribably pleasurable, the flowing of Love forward, the flowing of Love in and through you – I know you LOVE it too!! I KNOW that every single, every single, absolutely EVERY human, feels good in Love. BECAUSE IT IS WHAT WE ARE.
Do you read me? We feel inexplicable pleasure, joy, the explosion of the vibrational orgasm ofcreation, WE FEEL LOVE (the word “evolve” looks to be a play on the word love, does it not?) because, IT IS WHAT WE ARE. When we feel love towards what is also loving and loved by us, it’s because that is what we are. This is what “God” is, this is what we have intellectualized, and immortalized, and marketed, and cannibalized – because we all ADORE it and want it, and ARE IT. Love. Once you feel that, you can never incise an Octopus ever again.
Amen, Atome Primitif, I feel you. I hear you. I was you. I am you.
Hello. I have so many Flip Video clips from my time spent video-blogging for Fashion Air, so I decided to immortalise them and (on this very snowy day) upload them, to YouTube. I have a channel! The world gets more multiplicitious every day.
Splendid entropy!
Tune into my frequency to join my adventures through strange and wonderful scenarios.
“Every positive change – every jump to a higher level of energy and awareness – involves a rite of passage. Each time to ascend to a higher rung on the ladder of personal evolution, we must go through a period of discomfort, of initiation. I have never found an exception.” – Dan Millman
“The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to … action without any selfish attachment to the results.” – Eknath Easwar
“Why has time disappeared in our culture? How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left? We are a time-poor society; we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance. The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life.” – Jacob Needleman
“Probably the most obvious characteristic of a witch was the ability to cast a spell, a “spell” being the word used to signify the means employed to accomplish a magical action. A spell could consist of a set of words, a formula or verse, or a ritual action, or any combination of these.[19]” – Witchcraft
Fascinating might not be the best word for it. Perhaps scintillating is more apt. I refer to the concatenation of events that has allowed me to be here, where I am, at the nub and the helm and the root and the branch of my dreams. Yikes! I cannot express with enough vivacity and honour the excitement (is it excitement?), the enthusiasm (it is enthusiasm) with which I have found myself here. America. New York. An apartment with an exposed brick wall (two years ago, I envisioned and alchemically desired such an apartment, in New York City, “with a boyfriend, and a dog” – now, we don’t have a dog, but my sister almost got one, the exact kind that I’ve always loved, and desired, since 3 years ago, the Irish Setter) and wholly in LOVE, IN JOY and in essence, alive – at the edge, almost unreal, surreal, so real, so right, so powerful, so beautiful, so GREAT and so calm.
It is here that I have found myself, and it was sitting on the floor of said apartment, just a few minutes ago, eating a crepe with almond butter and strawberry jam, that I realized that AMERICA has been seeded into my life and my loves for as long as I can remember. If it’s true that whatever you focus your love on, your life matches, then peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (albeit mine is a homemade crepe, almond butter, and organic strawberry conserve), was something that always peaked my LOVE linker, back when I was 8. All those other things, like marmalade, and english breakfast tea, I didn’t feel so much LOVE for. If I look back, the things I have LOVED have linked my life to this point.
Let’s see what other things I have LOVED, as a child, and which all point to Americana, the enthusiasm of my desire, the way I have walked:
The Sandlot Kids & Baseball in general:
In this category I might also add denim overalls, sling shots, tree-climbing, and general “Stand By Me”/ “Dennis the Menace” vibes.
PBJ sandwiches. Last year before it got cold here, I took my weathered-by-illness boyfriend to a great lush park on Staten Island, via Staten Island Ferry. I packed a picnic, which included peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on white bread (yes WHITE bread; they still make the stuff); and a mango. We spread a picnic blanket and looked out upon the garden, the lake in the sunshine, the butterflies, and the blue sky between the high green trees, while I read passages of Eckhardt Tolles “A New Earth“. Yes, totally wanky, but totally amazing too.
Road Trips. America being the originating locus-modus operandi of Great Road Trips, of course I have found myself here. Living in Perth, with four siblings, you can’t afford to take planes everywhere, so you drive. We drove. We drove through deserts, down highways, past oceans, creeks, rivers, gaping Australian Bite/Bights, and through the swirling mass of dry dust that batters all vehicles who dryly travel through it. Sure, Australia is a great place for a road trip too, but America – now that is where you’ll find history and the embedding of cultures upon cultures, erased and rebuilt and re-erased and redesigned and revisioned, revolved. It’s a mine-field of revelations here, made all the more potent because it’s all new to me.
It’s all new to me. It’s all inconceivably new and yet incomparably old. I do not know where I came from, and from whence I came, into this life, but it was deep and dark and blue but also high and gold and new. Where was I during the 70s, the 40s, the Byzantine eras? “I” was not around, of course, but we still were, I think. There is a force I like to call the “Universal You” and it seems THAT is where I was before I was born. I was the Universal You. Then I became me. And that was that.
Totally Wanky "Kosmic Music: Treasured Moments"
And that was GREAT!!!!!!!!!!! Ridiculously great, beautiful, wonderously great. How did I get here? By loving what I love and being who I want and going towards what I like. First I fell in love with life, then with a man, and now with the ability I have discovered to be of contribution to others. And so, the life I live, the man I love, and the work I do, are blessed and joyful and of my own creation. It hasn’t been easy, it will continue to expand, to crack and melt outwards like icebergs, but I feel supremely loved, loving, and full of love. However I got here, I’m damn glad I did.
It is always my pleasure to share the passionate fashion information that my lovely friend Scott Stephenson absorbs with such ease and joy. In the spirit of being amidst New York Fashion Week, 2010, I present Scott Stephenson (fellow traveling Australian, currently in London, and loving it):
“Glance at any major newspaper (online or otherwise) the day following Apple’s unleashing of the iPad, and it’s not difficult to see the robotic, electronically charged grip technology has over modern life.
Such widespread interest is testimony to not only our fascination with technology that simplifies and expands our access to information, but also the importance of good design. Apple seems to continually blend the two, almost seamlessly.
Designers in all fields, from automobiles to high fashion are taking note.
In the past we have seen clusters of kids emerge on the fashion scene and tap into something extraordinary in terms of relevant design, which shakes and shifts the establishment permanently. The arrival in Paris of designers like Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garcons, saw the entire vocabulary of what Parisian fashion is, dramatically alter. Suddenly, high fashion was less about polished, gleaming, perfection and more about self-expression, stemming unashamedly from various cultural references. In a similar, and just as influential way, the emergence of Belgian fashion design, particularly under the cast of the Antwerp Six, meant that conceptual design also became an accepted, and ongoing chapter in the story of fashion.
Yet in a now seemingly overcrowded industry that is vastly interconnected, the world over, it’s hard to tell whether one country, city or school of design will produce a new wave of influence to the effect that we have seen in the past. The answer as to where this shift may originate lies in the question of who is the most technologically advanced and culturally tuned.
London has its own important passage already written in the history of fashion. With designers like Vivienne Westwood scrawling out a lasting chapter on, youth, rebellion and music culture; and stylists like Melanie Ward, teaming up with photographers Corinne Day and David Sims to produce a lasting effect on gritty image making, grunge and jeans slung low on the hips; it’s safe to say the British, like the Japanese and Belgians have been influential. Yet in recent times, a new generation of London based greats are challenging the establishment as to what constitutes good design for the 21st century. With their argument they are bringing a truckload of electrical equipment, to computerize, digitize, stream, alter, print and augment the fashion garment.
These youngsters are the ones that, when handed a multi-faceted electronic contraption, almost instinctively know how to use it; if not to its full potential, then at least to turn it on and access Facebook. They’re savvy and inquisitive, and they are introducing technology to tradition.
Take Christopher Kane (a Scotsman, but London based and trained) for example. In-between sewing hundreds of Swarovski crystals onto and around ruffles, fan pleating and bandage strips; producing fine tailoring and technically rigorous scalloped knitwear that all stems from a mastering of tradition, he has brought highly coveted digital prints to the forefront of contemporary fashion. Using presumably computer technology to assemble memorable placements of strikingly coloured primates, and atomic explosions, young Mr. Kane is slowly infusing his enterprise with a blending of the past and the future.
What separates Kane’s use of print, and also designers like the late Alexander McQueen, Mary Katrantzou, and Erdem as just a few examples (all London associated) to the use of prints as we’ve seen in the past, is that it now has the ability and impact to inform the patternmaking and construction of a garment. A kaleidoscopic amalgamation of crystal prints in Alexander McQueen’s Spring/Summer 2009 collection saw careful configurations trace and suggest the human anatomy under a jacket, coat or leggings. Similar use of print had cropped up in many of his collections for both men and women since. With his final collection, before an untimely, sudden and tragic death, the Fall/Winter 2010 menswear show presented in January, possessing complete technical control of both print and tailoring, emphasizing McQueen’s ability to use technology to help convey his artistic imagination, Savile Row training, and singular vision.
Ms. Katrantzou used the striking lines captured and uploaded from images of perfume bottles to print onto dresses in her debut Fall/Winter 2009 collection, that seemingly straightened shoulder lines, cinched waists and framed the face, with seams that followed suit. It was a powerful and beautiful use of technology and fashion design.
The combination of a willingness to utilize technology whilst having youthful audacity and cultural awareness, which at the moment seems to come complimentary with the designers of London, means that they may be at the forefront of a shift in design. We are already seeing other designers look at digital prints with more importance and use it to greater effect. The once isolated motif of a brand name or a logo that cracks and crumbles with wash and wear has been replaced with rich pigments that can cover the cloth from selvedge to selvedge, leaving the hand of the cloth untouched. Prints can now suggest dimensional depth, whilst alluding to a lengthened silhouette, inspire the imagination, add information and enhance the cut. It can be exalting and devouring.
The digital image that we have become so accustomed to, on our many pixilated screens is now being extracted and applied to the physical existence of a neckline, a lining, a sleeve! And this is really just the beginning.”
Scott Stephenson recently won a competition to travel to Paris fashion week in March, with the buyers of an influential store in Italy called Luisa Via Roma. I am very proud, and know he will make use of every nanosecond of that rapidly approaching experience. Congratulations again Scott!
"To be a source is to be a kind of tap. I will show you water, but I am not the place where the water comes from. Where does the water come from? That is the question."
Amen, Atome Primitif, I feel you. I hear you. I was you. I am you.
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