Fringe Dwellers
I wrote this article about making independent theatre, in response to a great piece Why Art from Alison Croggon in Overland 212 Spring 2013.
Fringe Dwellers is on Overland online.
Is independent practice always a stepping stone to being fully funded and/or incorporated into the mainstream? Is it more of a conscious choice about how and why we want to make work? Or, as Croggon suggests in her article, is it also systemic, connected to the lack of public funds available to do it any other way?
Read it in full here.
At the GP
This snippet of conversation took place between me and my GP - who I have been seeing for around 6 years - yesterday, when I went in for a pap smear.
GP: Let me just check your social history.
Me: Okay.
GP: Are you married?
Me: No.
GP: Oh.
Me: I mean, de facto, I guess ...
GP: Children?
Me: No.
GP: Oh. Dog?
Me: No.
GP: Oh. Pause. I guess you have a lot of time to yourself then.
Me: Yes.
Pause.
GP: My son has two guinea pigs. They take a lot of work.
Me: Oh.
GP: I'll lock the door now and you can take your clothes off from the waist down when you're ready.
Me: Okay.
On the table, pants off ...
GP: You're a ... writer. Yes?
Me: Yes. I just did a show in the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Pause (desperate for some kind of validation). It won an award.
GP: Oh. That must be good, to get some recognition.
Me: Yes.
GP: Just put your feet together now and let your knees drop out to each side. I'll try and be gentle. (Gentle laugh).
End Scene
The Good Girl - Melbourne Fringe Festival
There’s no end to her capacity.
That’s the whole point.
She goes on, and on, and on.
We turn her off for maintenance, down time, de-fragging.
That’s it.
We turn her back on.
She goes on and on and on.
Come and meet The Good Girl, premiering at this year's Melbourne Fringe Festival. Tickets limited so we recommend booking!
A Euphemism Too Far
This poem was recently rejected by a journal on a number of grounds, one of them being that it was 'gratuitous'. A comment I've never had before about my poetry. Kind of proud, 'cause I worked hard on that list of euphemisms ...
On the question of breasts
Pressing at lumps, I let Google tell me that because
I’ve never breast fed, my chances of cancer could increase.
The woman at the front desk eyes me with suspicion:
How old are you? I agree – not mature enough.
A mammogram is for breasts: not tits or norgs,
puppies or boobs, cans, racks, fun bags, honkers or jugs.
It’s unfair that breasts have anything except
biological connotations, because it makes squishing them
between two plates of glass much weirder, like it might
be a fetish and how do mine compare?
After, I lie down in a room and a young guy
with efficient cold hands examines my recalcitrant bosoms.
I want to ask what he thinks:
Is it just our species? I mean, do bulls find udders a turn on?
But I never find the right moment.
Taster
In your St Kilda flat
we eat Rogan Josh, drink gin with lime,
licking our lips for every taste.
Sunday morning bagels, fill the bed
with crumbs, eat mangoes, sucking juice from
the skin. Nothing this good lasts forever
but while it does I learn that
green chillies are addictive and garlic lingers
on finger tips for days.
This poem was published on the wonderful online journal site: PASH capsule
Tipping point
I've been writer in residence for Pop Up Playground since late last year and have a few new stories up on their web page. It's a very cool gig. They organise immersive and interactive games of all kinds. My job is to take part, get inspired and write a story in response.
This one is called Tipping point and is a response to The Whispering Society that was part of White Night Melbourne.
The intro is here and then the link takes you to the rest of the story. Enjoy!
Tipping point
All he did was stop for a coffee.
Tuesday morning, city square. Autumn sunlight bouncing off the little canal they built into the concrete pavers. The smell of promise in the air. Autumn in Melbourne always smells like promise.
His grey suit, nice cut, looking like he forked out a bit for it. Maybe he’s on his way to an interview. He’s nervous. Low self-esteem. The shoes are worn but polished and just a bit too much after-shave scent trailing in his wake. Soapy, with undertones of cigarette smoke. Hands shaking gently as he wraps them around the cardboard cup, flicks the lid off, blows on the coffee.
It’s one of those pretty coffees. The barista has taken care, drawn a delicate swirl in the crema, shaped like a love heart. If the guy had looked closely it might have been warning enough. But only if he’d recognised the symbol. And why would he? He was a regular guy, with ordinary hopes and petty fears, feeling a bit flat on a Tuesday morning, wanting the buzz of a caffeine lift.
He wasn’t one of us.
If he’d heard anything he would have put it down to city noise, the girls chattering like gulls on the other side of the street. Did he hear anything? Or just feel a twinge in his chest, put it down to the coffee and wonder why he couldn’t shake the growing sense of anger inside him for the rest of the day. Would he have been conscious of the change? When his girlfriend or boyfriend or kids or whoever later that night asked him what was wrong, why he was acting strange, would he have seen himself through their eyes and got a creeping terror inside? Or would it have been too late by then, he was all but gone, subsumed by the Return, catapulting towards some act of destruction beyond his control.
‘Don’t stop there!’ I should have yelled out to the guy. ‘Keep moving! You’re in the middle of a Fabric Hole and your body is about to be snatched!’
Every time I see one I think that. But what can I do? Follow every person around like a frigging guard dog? Not possible. There are too many people, too many holes and too many souls seeking the Return. We were never allowed to interfere. Now the Society’s all but dead I guess I could. Some have, still do. But how the hell would I choose who to save and who to let go?
Elemental
Inside all day
Stuck in the middle of the second draft
Something's not right and I don't know what it is
Can't keep going until I figure it out
Maybe a run will shake the answer from its hiding place in my body
Looks like a big storm brewing but I go out anyway
Thunder! Lightning! Hail!
Running through the storm, being pelted by hail stones, the insight lands
Round and deep and complete
I arrive back home, drenched, small red bruises on my arm
Minutes later, the storm has passed, the sun is out
I'd created a huge plot hole unawares
And it was only by running into the storm that I was able to see it
Poem from a friend
Debbie Lee wrote this great poem partly inspired by between the cracks. It's a beauty. Check out Debbie's blog
Between the cracks
The art of letter writing has fallen between the cracks;
yet I admire the messiness of hand printing chaos
and a signature for more than eftpos or debit needs.
Sometimes, I spill ruby ink onto the pages, reclaiming
the beauty of red for more than editing adjustments,
tumbling and twirling the pen, so my ambitious letters
can form the basis of non-bill mail for friends;
replacing the barren loneliness of a blank page,
or trigger a thought or association I treasure.
I like the idea of purple graphemes voraciously
collecting together, especially superficial,
before they moan and whimper below your hand.
When reading about linguistics, I first thought
grapheme, phoneme and digraph were oppositional,
revolting, tormented by conjoined formation.
But I have since reconsidered them complementary;
symbiotic, meaningless without the imbued
connection – like misplaced hieroglyphics.
I want to understand language, rather than
change its meaning repeatedly and falsely,
to absorb letters like soil subsumes water.
Hand-written messages seem to be engraved upon
a pillaged earth, like oasis in a desert. When
complete, light and forsaken waterstains remain,
but alongside the smile I wear with each
letter I pen or receive, there is also a distant
memory of being part of a broader story that is
lost in translation.
Super moon
Watching Fame
the original movie, 1980
outside the super moon
is bright in the sky
like god left the light on
if you believe in god
on the Novia Scotia coast
tides are expected to rise
by more than 50%
I keep forgetting to buy
face products and my skin
is showing its flaws
dry and fragile
the moisture has been sucked away
something in me is raging
I weep or is it a sob –
time has beaten me
meanwhile the small stories
of ambition on the TV are the
same then as now
all that vicious hope
for what the future will bring
Ada Cambridge Poetry Award
This poem was highly commended in the recent Ada Cambridge Poetry Award as part of the Williamstown Literary Festival. It's in the anthology, along with the shortlisted and awarded biographical short stories, which you can buy at Hobsons Bay Libraries for $10 each.
Lay you down
For the funeral they calmed your yellow skin with make up
neat hair navy blazer silver buttons shining
I touched your hand thick and heavy like a slab of fish
couldn’t think of any words to say was that the day I picked you up?
seems I’ve carried you a long time now
curved shoulders those vertebrae protruding at the top of my spine
Freud says I look for you in other men
dragging you around like this head bowed it’s hard to see anything
night time is for resting but this bedroom is cluttered
too many shoes lonely earrings tax receipts swirling in pockets of dust
you slip into my dreams a puppet staring wide-eyed from a single bed
unable to move without my help effort to lift you drenches me in night sweat
once I see you happy sitting at an outdoor café
wearing the red mohair jumper she knitted smoking a cigarette
I want to leave you in this place but don’t know how we got here
silent movie on a far away screen grey dawn stirs the image flickers disappears
After a conversation with Kate
Two thoughts from people who have been through it already, about aging and dying:
Friedrich Nietzsche
"Joy in old age. The thinker or artist whose better self has fled into his works feels an almost malicious joy when he sees his body and spirit slowly broken into and destroyed by time; it is as if he werein a corner, watching a thief at work on his safe, all the while knowing that it is empty and that all his treasures have been rescued."
- Human, all too Human
Walt Whitman:
"All goes onward and outward ... and nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier."
- Leaves of Grass
What we want
The film is French and so the light
is blue and gold.
He chases after her and we want
him to catch her.
She is on the train and we want
her to forgive him.
He walks the streets at night
and we want him to chase her again.
The wife is up late reading
and we want her to suspect.
He arrives home and we want
him not to be discovered.
What we want is so simple.
We want love.
We want it to fail.
We want it to triumph.
We want to see pain that is not our own
that is our own.
We want them to make us cry so that
when we stop we will feel better.
The light is not as beautiful here
as it is in the French film
but it is enough to see by.