No great insights into cinema or gay semiotics,

I'm too dazed by the American team's routine!

After nothing but good word and various stints at the film festivals worth their salt, I gave Water Lillies a go at this year's Melbourne Queer Film Festival. It was well cast and with one or two striking scenes focusing mainly on the truly bizarre spectacle that is synchronized swimming. Otherwise and for the most part, it was fairly straight forward, methodical and as such, a wee bit over long. That is how most teen romances feel but I guess I'm one for finding a less long winded way to convey that. The synth soundtrack was dreamy in parts.

The audience was almost entirely lesbians couples that laughed themselves silly over next to nothing. I can only assume this was either a form of provocative flirtation with their partners or a reading of the film's more nuanced gay in-jokes that I'm in the dark about. 

Still undecided if it was comforting or depressing that so many of these movie goers fit the Lesbian style stereotypes to a tee. I suppose it's a proud uniform of sorts. It must make dating easier. I was probably sending out similar vibes by wearing big black Doc Martins. 

Part of me can't believe stuff is real, or at least that it has such hard core levels of competition. It's the camp of figure skating with all the elegance removed.

If there's a decent documentary about it, send a link my way!

As March draws to a close

• Finally settled on the bodycare cocktails to mark my time in Melbourne. Angelica! Danelion! Mistletoe! Avocado! Rose hip! Oh my!
• More film shoots. Such an amazing amalgamation of strange tasks, including: stringing together giant musical notes, chasing a man with a umbrella, coughing up a twig, a butterfly and a car key, in that order. Ah yes, the return to zero budgets and junk food catering... 
  
• Slowly sussing different ways home in the evening. Melbourne is expanding by the day.
• Beautiful houses that make me loath my current lodgings further. Peter Greenaway, home-made comics and the pungent smell of Dove soap. A boy making architecture models in a room full of pantings and fascination.
• The thought of spending time with someone kind and sharing things with the ease and comfort of lovers makes me wobble and dream again.
• Missing people all over the world. The dancer in London and the climber in Baltimore. The snap-happy Croatian with the beautiful mind. The boy with the remarkable mole in Washington, who gave up hope of a reunion months ago. My dear darling petite one, Sophie. Above all, I miss her.
• Thinking too much. Watching beautiful things as a distraction.
  

i want to be a forester

Directed my first movie at VCA! It's called "Blow up" but has nothing to do with Antonioni. Think instead a deadpan romantic comedy with an excessive number of balloons. There are copyright issues if I post it online but I'm thinking that once it's edited, I might host it on here for a day as a sort of internet exclusive. This should work but I'll need to be careful to remove it before word gets back to the head honchos at school. 

One night only! Watch this space! I might even make an indulgent teaser trailer.

One day, I'll make something this beautiful:

 

Otherwise, I'm eagerly contemplating my next home with like minded friends. Le Student 8 is a joke that isn't funny anymore. I get the official boot on the 6th of May but I'm itching to move now. This potential candidate is tempting me to ditch my current doldrum address, with or without the deposit. It's the doll house I never had! I need to smoke on that Balcony! I need to warm myself by that wood stove! I need to play house and cook again. I've forgotten what it's like to chop vegetables, so based in cans is my current diet. 

http://www.tudou.com/programs/view/-KznRmCWfxo/

&

http://www.myvideo.de/watch/3802562/Devo_Mongoloid

I discovered Bruce Conner and his fabulous rhythmic montage at Melbourne Cinematheque today.  His work was "clinically and deliriously" preoccupied with working found footage into kinesthetically engaging short films, celebrating narrative cinema while self-consciously deconstructing it. There's a lot to say about it but bed is beckoning. Effectively? There's much to dig.

Origin of my name

As we're talking about girls called Flo:

I think Kylie Minogue voiced Florence in the creepy CGI version. I once dressed up as the character for some primary school jaunt and won 2nd place!

So no, it's not the city, as much as I may have harped on that it was when I was there.

This week's creative writing? A juicy love/hate relationship!

(Not my finest piece of writing but I had some accompanying photos handy on my hard drive to tart it up.)

“Flora”

I’ve only ever met one other girl called Flo. She took it as a sign that we would be life long friends

This new and dominating Flo was the same age as me with a curt, Sloan Square accent, unruly cave woman hair (that she was forever sweeping from her face) and an impressive collection of multicoloured ethic skirts of the drop-out-beach-bunny variety. She had latched onto the idea that I was as dissatisfied with high school and the modern world as she was. Perversely thrilled but unsure of how to proceed, she made a large show of how we had the same uncommon bra size and insisted that we were to share underwear over the coming weeks of our arts summer school.

 Her strange admiration towards me grew. I can only assume it was because I accompanied her for countless cigarettes and entertained her stories of flirting with grown men and her fantasies of loving a Rastafarian. Her eagerness to do everything with me as a witness was flattering but it was fairly clear we had little in common beyond our names and measurements. Her strong willed denial prevented my opinions from derailing what she was fashioning as a perfect friendship. My wiliness to talk to anyone often left her feeling neglected and caused a rampant jealousy to develop. Her mood swings became drastic and contradictory as possessiveness crept in.

It all came to a head when our student group took a day trip to the coast to end the month on a high. The beach was deserted and the pier was rotten but we’d pinned our hopes on the venture and even the increasing drizzle couldn’t dissuade us. Despite the water being cold enough to induce coma, I managed to swim out far enough to float and bob. Flo wasn’t far behind and when she drew along side promptly challenged me to swim even further.

When we were safely removed from the group and had covered an impressive distance, I found her arms snaking around me in a sinking embrace. She dappled my face with brief kisses in what I assumed was an adrenalin rush brought on the icy water. It wasn’t until Flo kissed me full on the mouth, with the taste of dirt and salt, that I realised the significance she was investing in the moment. She withdrew to gage my response with desperate eyes. Sensing the redundancy of the act spoke volumes I was too overwhelmed to address, we only felt numbness distinct from the freezing sea. I swam away towards the others and hoped what had just happened would wash into the Mediterranean.

As soon as we retuned to town, Flo withdrew and downed two bottles of vodka. Her wretched screams soon filled the third floor of our sleeping hotel. I was reduced to hiding in another student’s room to avoid what I could only assume would be violence. All the misunderstood rage an 18 year old could possibly hold turned the building into a terrifying prison with me lined up for its firing squad. Eventually, the course lecturer intervened and Flo was practically sedated.

We barely had a month to get aquatinted but in that time we’d managed to skim the bond of friendship and a warped sort of love only for it to nose-dive into a blazing hotel showdown, fuelled by God knows what kinds of damage. We parted ways at the end of our time in Italy brittle strangers who, for all they had shared, would remain estranged out of a mixture of emotion and necessity. 

(Better memories from Venice)

Also: Best script we've read so far this semester has been from this movie. I recommend tracking down a copy for yourself.

You heard it here first

! xoxoxox !

http://www.myspace.com/trashkit

My friends are in your new faviorite band! An ex-Electrelane member is on the action too - how fucking ace is that!? I swell with pride.

I couldn't care less about clobber

BUT

I feel I may have to wear red shoes exclusively some day

*****

Weekly creative writing time!

50 word mini-epic - 4 Foot Romance

Submerged in the cloakroom, hiding behind voyeuristic coats. After weeks of my nagging, we’re clutching hands. Clumsy kisses make me want more but I’m too young to fathom what follows. Playground swagger drains from him as I persist. Maybe I come on too strong. Our parents receive a phone call.

 

Impacted

 

The sterilised smell and lighting of hospitals put me on edge. As soon as I step inside I know rooms are filled with bad news and long stay patients. The very air stifles and numbs. It’s no comfort my mother’s health is at the mercy of this humourless environment.

Her room is too small for its massive, automated bed, and even that seems unable to support all the medical paraphernalia attached. She’s lost in a mess of wires and sweat-drenched bed sheets and for the first time in my adult life, I’m truly frightened. She’s out of her mind on morphine and starts to scream at my father for wearing bandages only she can see. In the agonising moments that follow, my dad tries his best to keep my mother calm. He adopts an unnaturally measured voice but his stress and strain are evident. Neither of us can recognise the woman in the bed. Watching my mother’s pained, hysterical out burst take the last ebb of energy she has, watching my father grow unnervingly quiet, faced with the room’s soulless décor and its view of a muddy, unremarkable car park, I suddenly understand what mortality might amount to -anonymous defeat.

Youtube sees me through the day once more

& watch Nick Cage's efforts in the Wicker Man remake when you need a pick me up.

A few of my favorite things:

• Serendipity
• Second hand clothes
• Bad Idea Magazine

Revaluation island!

Cargo cults. Heard of them before? The John Frum kind? No, I hadn't either. Now I'm over this side of the world, I feel a pilgramage coming on, maybe even a final film project.

A visiting lecturer introduced me to the subject. Mike Daisy is a John Farley/Jack Black-esque American chap that makes ends meet as a performance "monologist" (this, from what I could gather, is basically an overly enthused stand up comedian avec great capacity to rant and gush - my dream job?). He's quite the fire cracker raconteur and his emphasis on the pragmatic pursuit of the sort of audience coalescence that can't be commodified is "right on!" in my books. 

He's just returned from the Vanuatu island of Tanna where he was investigating the surviving enclave of the cargo cult. Armed with a crate of Levi jeans, he asked if he could stay a while. For reasons I can only try to describe below, the islanders embraced his offering and a strange odessy followed, one that has me itching to plot my next trip abroad.

When the American military rocked up in the 1930s to build army bases to bolster their efforts against Japan, the islanders' rudimentary way of life was abruptly introduced to the 20th century. Airplanes, type writers, torches, demin...overwhelmed, they could only assume these men in military fatigues possessed supernatural powers - Gods amongst men!

Props to http://awkward-city.blogspot.com/

When the Americans abandoned the bases years later, the natives continued to revere all things American and practiced sympathetic magic to attempt to conjure their American gods once more. They would build 1 for 1 scale models of aircraft bombers out of bamboo and foliage in the hope that it would attract U.S aircraft from the heavens. The guitar was widely adopted and played, being, as it is, the iconic instrument of their holy America. They adorned their bodies with stars and stripes tattoos and clothed their backs with improvised army uniforms in the hope that it would lure the Americans back.

Much of this practice died out across the island chain over time but on the island of Tanna it has continued to go from strength to strength, gaining momentum, and in particular their worship an American called John Frum, (a name that could well have come from war-time GIs who introduced themselves as "Jon from America").

Of as population of 18,000, 70% are committed followers of the cult and the remaining population usually joins in when festivals and celebrations are held. Apparently, the reason this particular island holds the practice so dear is that years prior, they were occupied by both French and British colonialists simultaneously and subjected to abject barbarism of a truly appalling nature. The Americans that passed through treated them with a sort of relative decency, for the sake of keeping the peace, that redefined the white man. Combine that impression with their visitors' ability to fly, communicate with people beyond the island and offer Marlboro cigarettes, and it soon appears you have merciful deities on your doorstep! Tanna never had it as good as when the Americans were in town.

All this is swept under the carpet somewhat. Vanuatu as a nation is embarrassed by the cult's apparently hysterical adulation for America and it's 30/40/50s artifacts. Tanna has one of the most active volcanos in the world and its tourist industry prefers to champion that as the island's offering to the world. It's a great shame as this rich and fascinating culture is lost to obscurity as it denies the islanders a great segment of their national identity in post-colonial history.   

There is little to no decent footage of the cult. There are photos in circulation, and some rather fustity anthropological articles that mention it but otherwise it's only one in 10 people who have heard of it and even they assume that it's all but died out.

Mike Daisy is currently touring with a monologue based on his experiences there, put in the context of the current international financial crisis, in what I assume is an exploration of different conceptions of the success and failure of the "American way." 

So, anyone up for a trip to America land? 

(Here's a pretty detailed article for further reading)

Seriously?

So apparently people are reading my bloggy outbursts now. I feel I need to raise my game. Yes, we even went down the mad (bad) route of poetry together, didn't we? Dear me.

Here's something different to help us move swiftly on!

Firstly? Old art. This shit is 3 years old now! I really need to get back into some sort of discipln in this department. I have become a champion doodleler but haven't ever really pushed beyond that comfort zone.

Yeah, I really need to get on this.

Secondly? Nobody told me The Seventh Seal was so funny! I was perturbed by its "worthiness" for years and never realised what I was really missing. Lest we forget, it inspired this greatness too. Anyway, Jons is the man. 

Thirdly? I'm looking forward to a quiet day of reading and convalesce tomorrow. I have Mon Oncle and The Fireman's Ball already over due from the school library so they will be watched, even if nothing else gets done. I'm actually quite excited to do some of our course readings. Our C.F.I class,(centre for ideas ...earth shattering, no?) has an eclectic reader and this week's text is all about the basic rhythms of life. It champions the exmaple of an oyster's life cycles to illude to strong cyclical forces in the world arround us, beyond our present comprehnsion. Here's something similar that google coughed up. 

Goddamn it, with stuff like this, I'll end up a well rounded individual one day!

Venus in Retrograde (off day)

This guy next to me?

I want to fill

him

with gin

so he might

let me in

somewhat.

Those caught

glimpses 

of

fraught

thought

enthrall and frustrate

but ultimately

leave me

alone.

So I drink 

and drink 

and wait (like a fool)

When he smiles

I'm relieved

because

I feel like

he's returned

from

that private place

I have no right

to infiltrate.

Respecte Le Donne!

Lately:

• The camp, kaleidoscope beauty and ham acting of "The River" at ACMI. My Wednesday nights belong to the Melbourne Cinematheque now. March mini Bergan season, here I come!
• Sleeping everywhere but Le Student 8, if I can help it!
• Tales of mishap on shoots and random anecdotes tinged by violence : "Like the guy in America who wanted to demonstrate break-proof glass in a high-rise - he ran at the window and fell to his death. The glass was fine. It was the frame that didn't hold up."
• Pall Mall Slims & maintaining my weight with beer.
• Getting whiplash at Dan Deacon at the Espy on Saturday. Admiring St. Kilda until natives pointed out the syringes on the beach and the middle aged men cruising the corners for "company."
• Reading this for school and getting to know my classmates through their writing & wise cracks.
• Watermelon for diner.
• Italian Spiderman!