You heard it here first

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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!