Lorelei V

How I will explain my complicated feelings towards Courtney Love to my teenage kids

2011-10-12T20:24:00.021+10:00

Kids, I will say.

Kids, you might not know this but Courtney Love is one of my heroes. She changed my life when I was your age. The best day of my life was in August 2009 when she replied to one of my tweets: it was both illiterate and exhilarating.

They’ll roll their eyes because it’s another of my crazy 2000s stories. I’ll ignore them and carry on.

Kids, I love Courtney Love. I really do. But she can sometimes be a bit of a dick. This all became very clear to me way back in 2011, when I went to see her give a talk in Istanbul.

Oooh, did you fly there on a plane, my sarcastic son Surfer Rosa will ask.

That’s what we all used to fly on back then, I’ll say defensively. And then my tone will turn really serious.

Kids, I need you to understand that sometimes you can think a celebrity is amazing and brilliant whilst at the same time recognise they can also be arrogant fucktards. And that’s okay. See, everyone’s personality has contradictions; shades of light and dark, like the album cover of The CD Version of the First Two Records by Bikini Kill.

Booooooring, says Pattinson-Stewart-Meyer, my daughter, conceived during a brief but passionate Twilight phase. She hates me because she’s at that age where everyone thinks she’s a law firm. I ignore her and begin the story:

'It had always been my lifelong dream to interview Courtney Love, so when I heard she was coming to Istanbul I was determined to get ‘access’ to her, which is what we used to say back when celebrities attended events in real life, and not as holograms like they do now.

'Sadly, it didn’t happen in the end because she was whisked away by a short PR guy with bleached orange hair before I could speak to her, as so many of them were in those days.'

I take a moment to wipe away a tear and then pull myself together and continue.

'Anyway, I wrote down everything she said and then posted her quotes alongside photos from the day on the Internet, which is this thing we used to have.'

And then I will wheel out the Internet and it will start up with a splutter and a whir and Surfer Rosa will roll his eyes.

But Pattinson-Stewart-Meyer will say with that attorney smirk she is perfecting, Mum, is this even ethical: I mean, throwing all of Courtney Love’s quotes together, completely out of context and probably misquoted, for your own purposes?

Of course it is, I snap. Who are you: Katy Perry? And Surfer Rosa will say, Duh Mum, I think you mean Perry Mason: we did him in our 16th-century culture class.

Surfer Rosa Bossanova Doolittle! I holler, because he knows he’s really in trouble when I use his full name. Neither Perrys—Mason nor Katy—were alive in the 16th century! I am appalled at the ignorance of my own sperm-donor-flesh-and-blood! What are they teaching you at that school on that planet I send you to?

Exasperated, he explains I told you Mum—there's too much culture in the world now so they've streamlined it all into one century.

And as they pore over my Courtney Love photo essay which I constructed so they might learn a moving lesson about humanity and also because I was too lazy to write the story up as a proper article for money, I repair to the valium room to unwind and listen to early Hole records and weep.

Courtney Love at Istancool, May 2011

Courtney Love on music:

‘I want to win the Grammy for liner notes.’

‘Most of my friends are Metal rockers and I go round to their place and read Yeats with them.’

‘Michael Stipe and I had dinner the other night and we talked and you know what? We decided Kanye West is okay.’

‘I hate continually referencing Michael Stipe because he’s here in the room*. But yeah, we’ve just written a sea shanty together.’

On acting:

‘It broke my heart not being in Moulin Rouge. It was between me and Nicole Kidman. I wanted the part in theory but I guess I didn’t want it enough in my soul.’

On her music career:

‘No, Fiona Apple was after me.’

‘My earliest memory is of wanting to be famous.’

‘It’s insane how impure it has become to be an artist.’

‘I don’t see myself as a brand.’

‘I write couplets for a living; that is my job, that is just what I do.’

On the venue:

‘It’s hard to hear in here. Are we in a mosque?’

‘Can we smoke in here? Is this a mosque?’

On gossiping:

‘It’s important to zip it. What you do is make art.’

On not giving away the secrets of her daughter's life:

‘Not to give away the secrets of my kid, but I read her diary and they were doing Grease at school and she really wanted Sandy but she got Rizzo, and I know she was thinking, Will they ever see the Sandy in me? And I’m like, Well, sorry but you’re the child of badasses. It’s really hard.’

On guys named Kenny:

‘A guy named Kenny gave me Horses.’

On showbiz:

‘It’s showbusiness: you’re up, then you’re down.’

Final words of wisdom:

‘You know, if it’s in your heart, do it.’

*Courtney is not speaking metaphorically here; Michael Stipe was actually in the room. He and Kirsten Dunst stole our front row seats and we were made to stand.

PHOTOS BY JOHNNY MACKAY

No cause for her pain found

2011-05-08T19:27:00.022+10:00

It's been almost fourteen months since my last ~~confession~~ post which is such a humongous timelapse there is no other proper way to explain all my goings-on during this time except through the use of a frenetic, nonsensical mind map, which you can enlarge or ignore according to your level of interest:

But basically, all you really need to know is that the past fourteen months culminated in a gazillion recent medical tests, which can all be neatly summarised in this pleasingly existential diagnosis, below, which also inspired the title of this post, as well as—with eerie, retrospective, ultrasonic insight—the past 31 years of my life in general:

And now that you know the exact size in millimetres of my left ovary, let me tell you even more about myself c. 2011. Five days ago I moved to Istanbul, which is where (as you would know if you have ever imbibed more than half a bottle of anything with me) I lived for one year as a 17-year-old exchange student. I've been wanting to come back for years, and suddenly a situation has come up where I get to live in a magnificent multi-storey, artist-run space that also has trapeze fitness classes twice a week and a terrace that looks out onto the Golden Horn:

It's stunning! I love being back here so much. To celebrate my newfound happiness, here is a quick story. Last night my new friends took me out, and over a feast of pancakes, one of them—an American who has lived in Istanbul for years—told me about the time she and a group of friends were violently attacked down the road by some glue-sniffers who were trying to sell them a coat and who ended up stabbing them. The story was compelling for many reasons, not least because the location of the attack was within a kilometre radius of where we were sitting, and also because she is now married on Facebook to the man she met the night they got attacked, and will marry him in real life just as soon as they can both find their birth certificates. (FACT YOU SOMETIMES FORGET: While you don't need a birth certificate to get married on Facebook, you do in real life.)

Anyway, obviously I wanted to hear to the end of this romantic tale, but after just two cuba libres my jetlag—which I thought had disappeared quite impressively after a nice day of sleep when I first arrived—came back to settle itself upon my eyelids like butterflies made out of elephants. I simply couldn't keep my eyes open, and regretfully announced it was time for this Australian to get on her kangaroo and hop home to bed.*

(*I didn't say this. I would never say anything like this. I don't even know why I'm saying it now.)

I asked my hosts—directing the question with particular pointedness to the friend with the stabbing story—if it was safe to walk home. She described for me a simple calculation I can use whenever required: Before Midnight = Totally Safe, but After Midnight = Get a Cab.

I checked my watch, and seeing that it was 11.30pm I put on my coat and prepared to walk home. However, due to the entertaining bon vivant qualities of my friends, somehow I didn't actually end up leaving the bar until close to 1am, which rendered necessary a revised calculation: After Midnight = Get a Cab.

The cab driver was young and all I could see of him were his eyebrows in the rearview mirror, which made me trust him because they were well-tended eyebrows, which I respect in both men and women alike. The thing about the neighbourhood I'm living in right now is that it's an industrial area and apparently most cab drivers are like, "What? You want to go there? But noone lives there," and they refuse to take you. This guy, as predicted by his eyebrows, was cool though. He was even cooler when, once I admitted in spiked Turko-Inglizce when we got to where I asked him to take me that I recognised absolutely nothing about the place, and that it was all hopeless because there was no way I would be able to find my street in the dark let alone the door to my home, and that he should just leave me on the side of the street to die like a dog because I was a stupid, pathetic, human being, he drove up and down the narrow and hilly cobblestone alleys until we miraculously found my place.

I paid him and spoke two of the truest words I have ever said: "Thank you", and he replied in the grandiloquent Turkish fashion, "And I, also, thank you". He kept the engine running while it took me five minutes to clumsily unlock the three deadlocks on the door, and drove off only when he saw I was safely inside.

I found this to be the height of gallantry, which is not a quality I remember night-shift cab drivers in Istanbul possessed back when I was a 17-year-old exchange student, but when I told my friends about it they said, "Well, he just would have been terrified and certain that you were both going to get murdered out here, because it's so deserted cab drivers think people must frequently get murdered out here."

Repeated use of the word 'murdered' disarmed me so impressively I spontaneously delivered some of the most precise Turkish I had attempted in the past five days. "Öyle mi?"* said I.
*Really?

"Yeah," she said. "But it's crazy really, because if somewhere is completely deserted like it is here then how can you get murdered, because, I mean, there is noone around to murder you, right?! That's what deserted means! Noone! To murder you! I mean, right?!"

IN CONCLUSION! Earlier that day, during a pleasant walk in a new neighbourhood, I insisted getting my photo taken next to a bus advertising the colourful and amusing Greek travel company, Vergina Travel:

The original photo has me doing a happy thumbs-up next to it but I've cut myself out of the picture because I don't feel comfortable exclusively endorsing Vergina Travel anymore when, as you have just heard, I have recently found penis travel—and here, in case you missed it, I am hilariously alluding to the all-male microcosm that is the Istanbul cab driving community—to also be extremely satisfactory.

NEXT WEEK! More bad jokes.

Thirty

2010-03-17T15:23:00.009+10:00

This is a photo of my tenth birthday dinner. CAN YOU SEE ME AT THE CENTRE OF THE TABLE, COYLY NIBBLING ON A CHIP? My haircut is based on Mary Stuart Masterson's in Some Kind of Wonderful. I wanted to be a drummer back then, but my school music teacher made me play clarinet instead because I was a girl and girls played clarinet; he had obviously never seen Some Kind of Wonderful.

Although the catering at my thirtieth birthday dinner tonight will be a lot more more sophisticated, I can't vouch for the improved maturity of the behaviour. I'm actually secretly hoping that everyone acts like giggly ten-year-old girls, in fact, with maybe one underwhelmed younger brother sitting there at the end of the table awkwardly, because what else is a thirtieth birthday but a good reason to act like you're ten.

In other news, I must explain that I've been neglecting this blog because I haven't had time for it. It's a most ingenious paradox because I wouldn't have so much brilliant and challenging work unless I had this blog, but because I have so much brilliant and challenging work it's hard to have this blog. I'm trying to get back here, but the trip is taking longer than I thought. Stay tuned though; I'm a believer.

Meanwhile, I'll be listening to this all night, and I urge you to as well. My amazing friend Jess McGuire wrote it and I just discovered she wrote this as well, which is better than a telegram from the queen and I don't know what I did to deserve it. Thank you, Jess. And thank you, everyone for reading and staying with me.

Workspace

2010-02-04T17:52:00.006+10:00

The Queensland Writers' Centre is having another little blog tour, and once again, I've been invited to take part. This time, we get to invite you all in to our workspaces. Which is perfect for me, because I was looking for a distraction anyway. Come in. Great to see you. Take a seat. Mind the crap.

I personally love looking at other writers' rooms, so I know you're going to just bubble over with feverish excitement at the prospect of seeing mine. But first, let's talk for a moment about what went into creating this particular writing space. Essentially, I based it on the Jane Austen ideal:

*Jane Austen's actual writing desk. I think.

And combined it with the Tina Fey model:

*Maybe not Tina Fey's actual writing desk. Probably just a set-up for the American Express ad the photo was for. But maybe not. Maybe her daughter does write all her stuff. Maybe her Post-It notes do all stay stuck up on the wall like that.

And voila. This is what I got:

If you'd looked at this image straight after the Austen pic, I feel certain you would have fled for fear of contagious disease/clutter, but compared to Fey's I now think it looks rather orderly, actually. Thanks, QWC! Now, a game!

CAN YOU FIND:

Two children's dolls, both half naked
Two chairs (WHY TWO?)
A scattered jigsaw puzzle
Four unread New Yorkers
Twenty-three books recently scored from Lifeline Bookfest, none of them even opened as yet
A green pencil sharpener
A red apple
A power extension cord connected to nothing
An empty guitar case
A photo of Leo, my friend Phoebe's son
A mostly-full bottle of moisturiser that I'm very disappointed with
One burnt disc of Glee
Fourteen wheatgrass sachets in a plastic sandwich bag
EM Forster's Aspects of the Novel, a beloved old teal edition
The Chicago Manual of Style
A random record collection: all that seems visible is Treasury of Great Operettas but there is absolute, utter gold in there if only you'd let me show you
A DVD of A Chorus Line
Two of the most awkward tables known to mankind, purpose-built to be neither ergonomic nor properly sit-at-able
A cushion which does nothing to aid in comfort
Somewhere in there, a computer, where all the magic happens. Occasionally. When you're not in here distracting me. Get out will you? I said—GO. Git. Vamoose. Etc. Oh, and thanks so much for coming over, I loved having you here.

A sporting mystery

2010-01-26T11:27:00.013+10:00

The second most viewed article on UK newspaper the Guardian's website today (after the one about the Apple Tablet) is headlined: Robbie Fowler refuses to start on bench for North Queensland Fury.

I thought this article sounded interesting. I always try to keep up with any mention of Australia in the overseas press: Two Indian Students Assaulted in Melbourne, for example. Or: I'm exploding with happiness, says pregnant Danni Minogue as she returns to Britain with Kris Smith, and so on.

So of course I clicked on 'Robbie Fowler refuses to start on bench for North Queensland Fury' because Robbie Fowler sounded like one defiant young man and I am naturally curious about defiant young men and how they might be connected to North Queensland, and why, indeed, the Guardian should even care.

I read the entire article, and while I can feel moderately confident that Robbie Fowler is a sportsperson of some kind, nowhere in the piece could I find a reference to which sport his skillz relate to. I daresay the answer to the mystery hinges on me finding out the meaning of the word 'striker' and whether it pertains to archery, baseball, pheasant-hunting or just plain hitting people over the head with a stick, but to be honest I can't be bothered. I'm just old-fashioned, I guess, because I think it should be the responsibility of the journalist for an online newspaper to explain these things to me, especially if it's going to be the number two most popular story of the day.

Of far more interest and amusement is the fact that Mr Fowler's wife is failing to 'settle' in Townsville. 'It's not like back at home where there's more stuff to do,' Mr Fowler explains. I adore that quote, with its mild tone of astonishment hinting that the Fowlers had moved to Townsville under the impression that there might be stuff to do there.

Here is the article, in case you'd like to try to unravel the mystery sport for yourself. The only other clue you've got to work with is the word 'goal', which makes me think it's probably about netball after all.

The former Liverpool and England striker Robbie Fowler sat and watched his North Queensland Fury team-mates from the stands rather than take his place on the bench for their A-League match against Brisbane Roar on Saturday.

Fowler refused to start as a substitute for the home match against Brisbane in Townsville and was subsequently left off the team sheet by the Fury coach, Ian Ferguson. Brisbane and North Queensland subsequently played out a 1-1 draw.

Ferguson later denied that Fowler had made his final outing for the club. "No, not at all," he said. "There's a couple of issues we have to sort out. Robbie's a great player, he's an experienced player, he's a player that we want to keep at the club.

"At the end of the day I felt it was obviously a decision I had to make, I wanted Robbie to go on the bench and he refused to go on the bench. We'll go over it on Monday, we'll have a serious talk and see what it takes."

Fowler has scored nine goals this season for the ninth-place Fury but reports have suggested the 34-year-old is seeking to leave despite still having a year to run on his contract. Fowler, who is the Fury's captain, has admitted that his wife has failed to settle in North Queensland.

Fowler told the Daily Mail this week that his wife is finding it tough adjusting in Townsville, the northern Australian city where the Fury are based.

"The kids are very adaptable to where they are, but my wife still needs a bit of convincing," he said. "It's not like back at home where there's more stuff to do and more families that we know, so she's still adjusting."

Fowler, who scored 161 goals in the Premier League, became one of the A-League's biggest recent recruits when he joined the Fury in February of last year.

Postscript: I have since revisited the article. And there, on the Guardian website, right up the top, I can now see the subheading 'Sport—Football', swathed in two different tones of green and surrounded by a general sort of 'DUH, YOU IDIOT' vibe.

But I still stand by my point that the content (and heading) of a story shouldn't be so rude as to assume that the reader will realise they've been whisked far away from the frothy little page they were reading in the Life & Style section, all the way over to the 'Sport—Football' section if they happen to click on some mysterious 'most viewed' story of the day.

Sorry if I've just given away the mystery, by the way.

Who Wow It Better?

2010-01-21T17:00:00.003+10:00

With apologies to the more common:'Who Wore It Better?'

Kylie Minogue 'Wow'

Kate Bush 'Wow'

PS You don't really need to answer, I already know.

Anyone moderately familiar with the rigours of composition

2010-01-20T22:07:00.007+10:00

Will not need to be told. How he wrote and it seemed good; read it and it seemed vile; corrected and tore up; cut out; put in; was in ecstasy; in despair; had his good nights and his bad mornings; snatched at ideas and lost them; saw his book plain before him and then it vanished; acted his people's parts as he ate; mouthed them as he walked; now cried; now laughed; vacillated between this style and that; now preferred the heroic and pompous; next the plain and simple; now the vales of Tempe; then the fields of Kent or Cornwall; and could not decide whether he was the divinest genius or the greatest fool in the world.

—Orlando, Virginia Woolf, 1928.

A submission to the board of whoever makes those 'Worst Album Cover' lists

2010-01-19T10:24:00.005+10:00

For your consideration:

It may seem innocent at first. I know it's no this or this. But please consider the following:

1. Look carefully at each Manhattan Transferrite's face and you will see that every single expression looks obscene. Three of them look like they are involved in varying stages of sexual intercourse, and one of them looks like he is thrilled at the prospect of dropping in to Bunnings for an hour after finishing up a profitable day's work at his used car sales business.

2. One of the men is gripping one of the women's breasts. She seems to be enjoying it, but I don't think she's sober enough to make her own decisions at this point, so it just seems wrong.

3. The fact that both men are holding the women back quite forcefully, perhaps restraining them from the 'Coming Out' of the album's title, hints at far more nefarious objectives than those an American jazz vocal group would normally be expected to have (to sing 'Chatanooga Choo-Choo' just once at the Super Bowl, for instance).

4. One of the women is wearing chain mail armour in hues of green and red and fawn. This is because she missed the tanning appointment the other three went to and now her blanched complexion is going in to battle with the rest of them and she'll be damned if she's not armed and ready to defend her pale looks in the sea of dazzling bronze.

5. I have to go back once more to their facial expressions because I simply can't get over them! By staring at this in horror for the last day or so I have learned that everyone—whether man or woman, pouter or smiler, tanned or pale, used car salesman or Maid Marion—can look sleazy if they put enough effort in.

Now, when I was in a band, we just loved doing crazy photo shoots. We would pore over the pictures afterwards and laugh at ourselves: 'Oh my god, we look dead!' we'd scream in shared delight. 'We look like The Shaggs!' we'd exclaim, pouring another round of cuba libres. 'We look like we're brilliantly inventive amateur porn stars!' we'd cry with glee. 'Oh my god, we look like Abba on the cover of Gracias Por la Musica!' which was usually the effect we were after, so then we'd be very pleased with ourselves and pack up for the day or else pass out, whichever came first.

But despite our love for hamming it up in front of the camera, I can't recall any of us—after observing, 'Oh my god, we look badly-dressed, over-blushed, drunk and engaged in coitus reservatus!'— ever suggesting: 'Indeed we do—let's turn it into our album cover!'

Oh, I forgot to turn the record around:

And enough said.

A happy accident, maybe

2010-01-08T13:06:00.013+10:00

I'm in the middle of January working madness, and on an idle break just then I was blithely browsing through Amazon book reviews, as I often do because I love them for the stories they reveal about people:

This review is from: Complete Poems and Major Prose: John Milton (Hardcover)

Coming from someone who was so frugal that my choice of major in college was influenced by the fact I could find most required reading for a dual degree in philosophy and English literature in the library rather than pay my hard earned money for books that were not worthy ... this is my strongest possible recommendation: This was one of the few texts I actually shelled out money for in college without regret and would even purchase AGAIN! ( My copy was destroyed by Hurricane Isabel.)

I don't know why, but I love this review: The frugality! The hurricane! I loved it so much that I clicked the 'One-Click Shopping' button and suddenly realised I had bought the $75 hardback copy of this book in one click. I would have loved to have bought something else with that money instead (A NICE NEW OLD DRESS), but it's not to be, and now I understand that it never will be. Because I have a problem. I buy thousand-page books that are too heavy to carry in my bag, that have no hope of ever fitting into the little book holder thing on the cross-trainer at the gym, that are destined to always live without me in someone else's home because I may never own my own, and I know exactly why I do it. I do it because possessing books is a comfort. And sometimes I think that surely there must be cheaper and less burdensome ways to find comfort in this world (whiskey, gourmet food, a spouse) but still, I will always crave books just to have them.

I know it's not a remarkable or new disease, bibliophilia, but everything suddenly became very clear for me when I heard the sound of one click shopping. And, recognising my own problem, this is why I feel defiantly confident that the ink-and-paper publishing industry will always survive—because heaps of us will always want to line our shelves and furnish our homes with books because they really just bring us comfort.

So I have half an hour to go back and cancel my order, of course, but I'm not going to. Because sometimes on a five-minute lunch break you just have to spend $75 and commit to reading Milton in 2010. Because you've known some drunk married gourmands in your time and they don't seem that much happier than you are anyway.

Notice

2009-12-21T20:13:00.008+10:00

Sorry everyone, I've been very negligent. I've been doing this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

Please allow me to continue. In the meantime, why don't you sing along with the singalong version of Mitzi Gaynor from South Pacific doing 'A Wonderful Guy', with a strange pistachio-sheen washing over the whole thing that I don't ever remember being there before:

And finally, apropos of nothing, here's a picture of a woman in a yellow dress and hat staring at herself in a reflective surface:

And as the year becomes ever more chartreuse, please carry on with your own celebrations and I'll be back with you shortly.

QWC blog tour

2009-12-06T23:01:00.011+10:00

The lovely folks at the Queensland Writers Centre have invited me to be part of their blog tour. If it sounds a bit like a Contiki thing, imagine that I'm that small and obscure mini state the bus rolls through in the middle of the night that you wouldn’t bother getting out for except maybe to pee.

I’ve been asked to answer a few questions about writing.

Where do your words come from?

I think probably from a similar genetic disease that gives me random nosebleeds each and every day of my entire life—the thoughts simply refuse to stay inside the relevant cavity and spill out over the sides no matter what. The only solution is to quickly shove something in front of it to catch it before it gets all over someone's nice rug or son—a blank Word document or an A4-sized notebook both work pretty well.

If you thought that was a terrible metaphor—and believe me, I thought it was horrific (and the only excuse I have is that it's 2.30am and I feel braindead and my nose happens to be bleeding right now and what can I say, we write about what we know)—let me put it another way: I don't feel like I can understand or know anything properly until I've written it down. This makes me an excellent and prolific diarist but a bit of a dick in real life—I've heard the frustrated sighs of my dinner companions when I whip out a notebook in order to work out my feelings on paper before deciding whether or not I want the spinach cannelloni or the vegetarian moussaka. Dinners can be very long. But alcohol helps.

Where did you grow up and where do you live now?

Through a bizarre concatenation of events that has somehow led to me being able to find the sort of leisure time to sit around learning how to use words such as concatenation confidently in sentences—after twelve years a-roaming I have recently moved back to where I started. It's a quiet, leafy suburb on the Sunshine Coast where I grew up, and I take frequent trips to Brisbane and Melbourne to keep me sane.

What’s the first sentence/line of your latest work?

The lovely folks at the Queensland Writers Centre have invited me to be part of their blog tour.

What piece of writing do you wish you had written?

Is this some sort of trick question for writers? EVERYTHING. I wish I wrote everything except of course for the things I’ve written. Some days I get jealous of the authors of certain Centrelink forms I have the privilege of filling out every two weeks, for their ability to get straight to the point. Compare ‘Payment will stop if this form is returned late’ or ‘This is an information notice given under the social security law’ to any of the sentences I've written here today. There really is no competition when it comes to logic, clarity and conciseness.

But to be a bit more specific: Annie Hall, Howard’s End, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, anything by Dorothy Parker, Chekhov, Ibsen, Didion. I love Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters. Mrs Dalloway blew my mind when I finally got it on the fourth attempt earlier this year. Some days I can't even start work until I've reread The Swimmer or a few pages of Carver. If I had ever, by some insane fluke, written The Sheltering Sky there would actually be no need for me to continue living. I also wish I wrote When Harry Met Sally. And all of Anais Nin's diaries. And Playtime with Your Scarf. I know that's more than one, but honestly you guys, that question was totally unfair.

What are you currently working towards?

I want to finish reading the rest of Proust before I turn 30. I've got two and a half volumes and three months left. I believe I can fly.

Complete this sentence… The future of the book is…

Assured. So, so assured. But I do understand why so many doomsday column inches are devoted to its demise because, as a professional blogger myself, I realise how hard it is to find something, anything, to write about every day, and you eventually find yourself just grabbing on to any preposterous subject matter just to have something to talk about. I myself grab onto preposterous subject matters constantly, as you would know if you've ever read any of my incisive work on Mariah Carey. But I think the book will be fine. I mean, I think the book is at least as safe as any the other niche things I'm also into, such as Aerobics Oz Style and Don McLean.

I still think it's a good rule to give books as gifts any time gift-giving is warranted, though. Either a book or a goat is an excellent holiday gift idea in my opinion. In fact, why not think of both the book publishing industry and third world countries in the same way this Christmas—your support for either/or would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks to the QWC.

This post is part of the Queensland Writers Centre blog tour, happening October to December 2009. To follow the tour, visit Queensland Writers Centre’s blog The Empty Page.

Alternative titles for the Guardian's news story about the recently uncovered home video showing Marilyn Monroe smoking marijuana

2009-12-02T21:04:00.004+10:00

They called it—Some Like it Pot.

I would have called it—well, I like what they did with it, but there are so many other conceivable options that I think just got overlooked. So I sent out word on my Facebook page and spent a good 51 minutes thinking up some other ideas the Guardian might have gone with if my friends and I had been sub-editing that esteemed newspaper today. Romy, Kate and I came up with:

Let's Make it Legal
Gentlemen Prefer Bongs
The Green Grass of Wyoming
Reefer of No Return
The Seven Year Spliff
Niagunja
Bud Stop
Munchies Business
All about Weed

And here is the poignant, haunting and be-comma-ed suggestion offered up by my friend Pete—

Gentlemen, Reefer, Blonde

My friend Lee added how dope Marilyn looked in the home video. And then we got off Facebook and got on with our lives.

All apologies (in one convenient post!)

2009-11-25T22:38:00.009+10:00

You may have noticed that my reading list, at left, seems petrified in time, and that it looks like I have been reading Volume 4 of Proust for at least three months now.

It's true. I have been. For some reason it's taking me so much longer than Volumes 1 or 2 or 3 took, but that's because after I got back from India the reality hit me that I would have to start earning a living again all of a sudden. This, as you can imagine, has come as a bit of a shock, petrifying me like Volume 4 of Proust due to the terrifying recollection that earning one's living can take up a lot of one's time if you make any sort of effort at it.

Anyway, I know I've been away from not just Proust but you guys too for far too long, but I just need a bit more time to pull myself together if that's okay. I am trying to work out a way to be back here blogging every day again soon though, which, as you know, is the entire point of my existence, but life has shuffled things up for me again and it's all yes, wonderful things,* but please bear with the intermittent postings for a little while longer while I catch my breath.

In the meantime, if you really miss me that much, why not look in at my delightful new blogging gig where, for all I know, you started at in the first place to find me HERE, but where regular readers (hi Mum) may not know they can now find me twice a week—a thorn amongst the roses of my clever and brilliant colleagues whose company I have been enjoying ever so much over the past month or so.

Now, have I ever plugged my work on this thing before? Have you ever heard me do inter-blog promos? I would usually be totally against that sort of thing, but I am just trying to earn a living here. Thanks for your attention. And please remember that someday soon we all will be together, if the fates allow.

Until then we'll have to muddle through somehow.

*Yes, wonderful things is the name of my gorgeous friend Miri's gorgeous blog, and also—as I only recently discovered because I am generally a total ignoramus—the words that Howard Carter exclaimed when he opened Tutenkhamen's tomb and Lord Carnarvon asked him if he could see anything.

I love it.

The Patti Smith Precedent

2009-11-15T16:06:00.019+10:00

This is Patti Smith at 29 years old:

This is Cyndi Lauper at 31 years old:

For the last ten years, I have cuddled these images in close to my heart, because not only are they brilliant records, but they also mollify, placate and reassure a girl that's it's okay if she still hasn't released her hit debut single during her twenties, because that just means that she is totally like these women—two of the best minds of her (mum's) generation—and she is obviously just biding her time until she releases her magnum opus at some stage before she turns 32.

This concept is known to my needy ego as The Patti Smith Precedent. (Not to be confused with The Patti Smith President, which is another fantasy I have, but it's sort of irrelevant to the current story.)

So even though I know I'll have to find some other icon to look up to if I turn 32 and still haven't released anything, I do find that thinking about Patti and Cyndi is a much better way to live than if you just focused on, say, Kate Bush, who was 19 when her first album was released:

You will shy away from ever trying to be good at anything if you think about Kate Bush too much.

Anyway, I've been writing and recording random songs for a decade now, but you must understand it's more for the fun of it, as well as an irrational, post-netball-playing-career, ersatz, aggressive female competitiveness with Patti/Cyndi/Kate, than from any sort of actual musicianship or skill.

(Just to demonstrate the sort of aggressive female competitiveness that I developed as a result of being encouraged in Australian early childhood to play netball—and which I think has been sublimated in adulthood but is nevertheless still ever present in theories such as The Patti Smith Precedent—please allow me to go off track for a minute and present to you an entry from my diary from when I was nine years old:

You can click on it if you'd like proof that there are a few rare nine-year-olds who are inveterate good spellers, and who have the sort of grasp of homonyms [such as 'too' and 'to'] that you'd really only expect from some sort of child prodigy genius. But even if that doesn't interest you, allow me to draw your attention to the entry for March 10 anyway, which reads in painfully bad handwriting:

Netball. Round Robin.

The first team we played we beat them 4—0.

I shot all the goals!

Second team we tied 2—2.

I shot them both.

Went to Sarah's for the day.

All together shot SIX GOALS!!!!!!

Looking back, I think that there is something quite brilliant about that last sentence, mostly because I've never been that good at adding up numbers since.

But this prepubescent diary entry tells me one other thing besides my mathematical abilities, and that's this—that the last thing I wanted was for the incidental details of my day at my friend Sarah's house to overshadow my sensational goal-shooting victory. So, with the canny skill of a total bitch, I hardly mention her at all. Which I think says something about my aggressive female competitiveness? But it hurts too much inside to really investigate any of my emotions too intensely as they are really pretty deep, so can we please leave it there now thanks very much.)

TO CONTINUE:

To demonstrate to you how effortless songwriting used to be, here's a song my friends Hannah and Gill and I wrote when we were 24:

Look how simple it is! We didn't even have to write down any chords because we knew so few, so it was pretty obvious what they were gonna be.

And singing was a cinch, too! Here are some scrawlings from my singing notebook:

I have no idea what that means anymore, but feel free to call it ART if you like. I do.

Anyway, now that I've been back in Melbourne for a bit I've been trying to write songs again and I can confidently say that it's the hardest thing I've ever done. Suddenly, throwing a 'sinister/random bit' onto the end of a 'nice bit' and then doing a 'cabaret' bit doesn't cut it. 'Ya ya ya ya ya ya ya' isn't working anymore for me either, as now I prefer my lyrics to be in English, although sometimes I throw in some French as it can lend a nice flavour to some of the jauntier tunes.

IN SUMMARY:

I turn 30 next March, supposing I make it, and I've had this idea in my head since I was about 20 that I must release a debut single while I'm still 29, because of The Patti Smith Precedent. Otherwise I'm STUPID and WORTHLESS and it's no wonder I don't have a boyfriend, because everyone knows that men don't want to sleep with you unless you have at least one hit debut single to your name. (Although I have to say that I don't want to sleep with them either unless they have at least one hit debut single to their name, so I guess fair is fair.)

But anyway, with only a few hours in the studio tomorrow, and just two songs written (both of them 1 minute 15 seconds long), I have to wonder if I am well and truly retarded to imagine I can create a 'Piss Factory' or a 'Time after Time' on a Monday afternoon in Northcote with little to no preparation. I don't even have any money to get there on the tram! All my courageous intentions, inspired by years and years of thinking about The Patti Smith Precedent, seem utterly doomed to fail.

PEP TALK:

I decide to chat to some friends to get some songwriting advice before I choke in my sleep on the terrifying realisation that I am just hours away from becoming, once again, an enormous disappointment to myself.

'Excuse me, but how do you write a song?' I ask Melbourne recording dude, Jack Farley, seated at left.

'I have no idea,' he replies. 'I think it's really hard. That's why I'm a recording dude and not a songwriter.'

Which is the exact sort of answer you get when you ask a Melbourne recording dude and not a Melbourne songwriter. So then I decided to ask a Melbourne songwriter.

'Excuse me, but how do you write a song? I ask Melbourne songwriter, Craig Dermody, seated at right.

'You just have heaps of shit stuff happen to you and then you think about it while you've got a guitar in your hands,' he says.

EPIPHANY:

Craig's words make so much sense to me!

So please—if you will—think of me tomorrow afternoon. You can rely on the fact that I will be cradling a borrowed guitar and brooding very intently over the one or two netball goals I tragically didn't shoot when I was a nine-year-old, all in the name of the noble art of Songwriting.

Ridiculous things I haven't been able to stop talking about nonstop recently, often (but not always) under the influence of alcohol

2009-11-06T08:57:00.010+10:00

I had forgotten how attacked you get on Swanston Street by people trying to make you do surveys. The other day, a woman with a clipboard jumped in front of me and squealed: 'So, if you could be any superhero in the world, who would you be?!' Then on the next block a schoolgirl came up to me while I was waiting at the lights and asked me to fill out a survey about what I like to eat on my lunchbreak. Then a hyper-exuberant guy stopped me at the very next corner and asked me what my favourite animal was and whether I had time for the environment.

The way I deal with this is I tense up and take a deep breath in and fix my steely stare on a vague point in the distance to stop me from getting dizzy, just as if I'm about to do 32 fouettés en tournant:

And I just keep walking.

The reason I mention this is because it feels like all these people are trying to find out exactly what a 29-year-old redhead thinks and feels and needs and wants, and it should almost be quite flattering except it never is because they actually block my path and I hate them for it because I like to walk quickly and with purpose down all streets, but most particularly down Swanston Street.

So here's a heads up about what I've been talking about and thinking about for the past fortnight in Melbourne, and if the Swanston Street surveying society is serious about wanting to know more about me they should take good note of these points and then get out of my way quicksmart, because the thing about fouettés is that they can really hurt if you get one right in the face.

1. Adult Behaviour

I seem to be getting drunk and talking incessantly about this thing called Adult Behaviour lately, which seems appropriately ironic because one of the tenets of Adult Behaviour must surely be to not get drunk and bore people, but there you go. I have no idea what Adult Behaviour actually entails, but I am quite proud of coining the term and the idea of it is most alluring to me.

I think you can basically call anything Adult Behaviour if it seems responsible—this includes eating breakfast, owning nailpolish remover or using contraception. Although even not using contraception can be called Adult Behaviour if you look at it in a certain way, because by not using contraception you might have a baby, which is surely one of the most Adult things you can possibly ever do besides rolling over your super. For me right now, Adult Behaviour can best be described by a cryptic ratio of 8:3—stop at eight whiskeys and try to be in bed by 3 am.

2. Xylitol

I had never eaten chewing gum in my life until my friend Ben told me about Extra Professional and how it is the only chewing gum in Australia that contains xylitol, which is some kind of plant substance that was first derived from birch trees in Finland, and which is amazingly good for your teeth if you chew it after eating.

This conversation came about because my Finnish friend Sanna pulled some Finnish chewing gum out of her bag and Ben asked her if she'd ever had a hole in her teeth, and she said, Of course not, I'm Finnish. Have you ever seen a Finnish person who has bad teeth? And Ben said, No, and Sanna said, Well, that's because in our culture we chew xylitol after every meal, you fool! And then she ran off to play a game of tennis with Liz Smylie.

Don't forget, you really have to make sure it is the Professional brand, and not the other sort though. Apparently I can get very insistent about this detail.

3. Peace with my relationship to the internet

When people ask me what I did in India, all I've got for them is: 'I made peace with my relationship to the internet.'

This sounds like a vague and abstract notion, I know, and even when I have pickled my brain beyond the valley of the dolls I still have enough clarity to understand that these words don't really make sense and that they sound like the thoughts of a stark raving madwoman/hippie. And so I then feel compelled to go into a massive monologue about how, You know, it's really important to understand where you fit into the greater scheme of things online, and that you really need to reach a place of peace with things like Twitter and Facebook, et al, but you would be a fool to turn your back on them, especially if you are a writer, because the internet is a GREAT MYSTERY and IT IS IN OUR HANDS TO SCULPT IT INTO WHATEVER WE WANT IT TO BE!

And when I've been repeating myself over and over ad nauseum, and non-smokers are starting to chainsmoke out of sheer desperation, and atheists are turning to God for the exact same reason, and people with normally perfectly good music taste have started humming 'She Will Be Loved' by Maroon 5 just to block out the babbling, I topple face-first into the gutter, which I KNOW is not very Adult of me but whatever, and everyone heaves a sigh of relief.

But then, in the morning, all I have to do is eat breakfast and then go out and buy nailpolish remover, and suddenly, without really even trying, I'm an Adult again.

POST SCRIPT: If you've been blessed with my company lately and you think I've missed out on mentioning a topic here that I've been crapping on incessantly about over the past fortnight—WHY NOT ADD IT BELOW?! I know there's heaps more things I've had a bibulous obsession with talking about, I just honestly can't remember what any of them were.

How are you guys doing?

2009-11-01T23:10:00.013+10:00

I'm feeling a little frazzled and freaked out myself, thanks for asking. So does anyone mind terribly if I just try to calm down in my own special way, which tonight, for some reason, means posting all these old clips that everyone's already seen, in a row like this down the page, and just quietly watching them on repeat until things start to look up? Is that okay with everybody? And then maybe can we agree to meet back here in a couple of days when I have my head back on straight and I've recovered from one of the biggest battles of my young life, namely, an entire week of inexplicable technological crashes and smashes and absolute failings, which I barely have the tech savvy or skills or emotional capability to cope with and which, as a result, I actually thought I would definitely die from this week?

So perhaps when we meet back here later on we can discuss all this in a far more civilised and calm manner and really just make the most of our lives together, because when you spend twelve hours writing one thing and then you lose it because your computer crashes, you start to realise that there's really not that much time to do anything as properly or as well or as good as you want to, and you just have to learn to be cool with that concept and try to get on with your life.

So, is this alright? Will you promise to come back? DON'T WORRY, I KNOW HOW YOU'RE FEELING! I MISS ME TOO! I can't wait to see you back here soon. Honestly. But I know we are all going to be totally okay. It helps, I think, to know that Natty and Rashida love us—all of us—unconditionally.

NATALIE PORTMAN & RASHIDA JONES Speak Out from Natalie Portman

NATALIE PORTMAN & RASHIDA JONES Speak Out Once More from Natalie Portman

NATALIE PORTMAN & RASHIDA JONES Speak Out Again from Natalie Portman

Opera: Touching breasts; touching hearts

2009-10-28T09:40:00.008+10:00

I sometimes fancy myself as a bit of a 'marketing' person, because I really think I have an affinity for this special art—marketing the unmarketable, promoting the unpromotable, and profiting off the unprofitable. Opera is a good example of the sort of elite, 'high-art niche product' I'm talking about, which I think I would be fantastic at marketing to more mainstream audiences. If I worked at Opera Australia, for example, what I'd do for their January/February 2010 marketing campaign is I'd juxtapose this image from Manon Lescaut:

With this image of Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson at the Superbowl in 2004:

And wordlessly, with just the power of the images alone, what it would say to contemporary audiences is that opera is really just like a Superbowl halftime show if you think about it right. And then I would watch ticket sales skyrocket.

Things that happened today

2009-10-27T17:51:00.009+10:00

1. I didn't have my headphones properly stuck into my computer so I accidentally blasted the special NO TALKING section of the library with at least two verses of 'I Got You Babe'.

2. I turned my phone off so as not to further annoy the other patrons in the special NO TALKING section of the library, and then I discovered, to my great distress, that I could never turn it back on again.

3. I spent two hours waiting for service in the Nokia Care Centre before being told it can't be fixed because I bought it in Thailand.

4. I spent half an hour in line at Australia Post to buy a $49 replacement phone that is so shit I can't even write a literate text message on it.

5. My pride was wounded because being literate in text messages is a major part of who I am.

6. When I put my old SIM card into the new handset I realised that I'd lost every single phone number and text message I've ever received because everything was saved to the old phone, not to the SIM card.

7. I then remembered that in the past month I've received some of the most beautiful and brilliant text messages of my entire life. AND NOW THEY ARE ALL GONE.

8. To top it all off, I blame Sonny and Cher for everything, which makes me feel just terrible because they're such lovely and outstanding people in the main and it's just that people who are cramming for exams in the State Library don't really appreciate them, which I think is such a shame because if they did none of this would ever have happened.

Look. This is the last time I am going to ever speak about this today or ever again in my entire life. I know stuff like this happens to everyone. But I treasure texts like I treasure dresses, and even when they are old and out-of-date they still mean so much to me. So if you've ever sent me any sort of brilliant text message at any time in your entire life, PLEASE RESEND IT.

Melbourne, by the way, is going great.

An ambitious young woman, determined to build a career in TV journalism, gets good advice from her first boss, and they fall in love

2009-10-19T09:06:00.011+10:00

This blog has just been a bit too cutesy ever since I got back from India and moved back in with my family. Tales about feeding raw meat to baby magpies? Photos of my adorable three-year-old niece sitting in a cardboard box while I recline on a barge comprised entirely of the second series of Popular Penguins? Anecdotes about the local video shop? Some days I feel like I am Karen from Wisconsin and the only thing missing is my ragamuffin toddler twins, Brodie and Joshua, and their bossy big sister, Madeleine, who is 'five-going-on-25' if you ask her dad, Lance. Something has to change or I fear I'm going to lose the base core of my readers, all five of you, because I know you all expect something just a bit more sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll from me.

Anyway, if I learnt anything from watching Michelle Pfeiffer as Sally 'Tally' Atwater in 1996's Up Close and Personal, written by Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne, it's that you sometimes have to move to Philadelphia to become a famous television reporter. (SEE SUBJECT LINE OF THIS POST FOR QUICK SUMMARY OF THAT FILM.) So I'm going to do just that. When I get a visa.

So while I wait to hear back about whether or not I've lost the US green card lottery for the fourth year in a row, I'm going to bide my time by travelling down to Melbourne tomorrow (which is sort of like Philly anyway, but without the free wi-fi or the Bruce Springsteen song), so I can hunt down some stories that are more sizzling and relevant to your youthful lifestyles.

Posting may be intermittent, because, frankly, I have a lot to do over the next four weeks, but I promise I'll try to raise things up a notch and come back to you every few days with some totally sordid tales about all my friends' lives, who three years ago seemed to quite literally incarnate the philosophy of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, but whom I have to admit now all seem to have moved out to Coburg and started brilliant cooking and gardening blogs. Which I suppose is what happens around the time you get to be almost thirty and you're still not a famous television reporter (I told you guys you should have fallen in love with your first boss; see above).

But anyway, whatever it takes, I can tell you that from here on in there's going to be fewer photos of me feeding raw meat to baby magpies and sitting in a barge comprised of the entire second series of Popular Penguins, and more photos of me feeding raw meat to hot, naked, bearded men who are snorting cocaine off each other's stomachs while sitting in barge comprised of the entire second series of Popular Penguins and occasionally jumping overboard into a sea of whiskey and vomit and wading over to the kitchen to check on the freshly-harvested rainbow chard they have roasting in the oven. This is my solemn promise to you.

Birdland

2009-10-16T11:17:00.010+10:00

Ever since I was four or five years old, I longed for the day I would find a little baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. I dreamed of taking the fragile little thing home and nursing it back to life. My idea was to start small, with the baby bird, but I always knew that if I worked at it I could probably eventually think about sainthood:

Like St Francis. And after a short time as a saint, I would probably then get promoted to all-out divinity:

Like Jesus. And maybe, if I was really good, I might even become a god:

Like Sigourney Weaver as Dian Fossey in Gorillas in the Mist.

More than twenty-five years later, my fantasy finally came true. I woke up this morning and my parents and my niece had found this baby magpie on the lawn outside:

It had fallen out of its nest and it was too young to fly.

Dad fed it some raw mince. And as I watched them together, I thought of Dian Fossey as Sigourney Weaver in Gorillas in the Mist and of the incredible bond she shared with those gorillas.

And I realised that if I still wanted sainthood, I would have to at least try to feed the baby with my own bare hands, too. So I did.

And it was safely the first time in my life I've ever handled raw meat. And the experience was just so incredibly disgusting that now I know why some people are saints and some people are just vegetarians.

But still, I queasily got on with the job because I thought I could feel the sunbeams moving across the garden to beatify me. And that was when the baby's real mumma appeared.

And so we put the baby out onto the lawn. And the mumma hopped towards it.

And they found each other again! And it was a beautiful and heartwarming reunion, and Mike Munro really should have been there.

And as I sit here typing this, pleased with the day's work, if I listen carefully I think I can hear the magpie family outside caw: 'In a land of beauty, wonder and danger, she would follow a dream, fall in love and risk her life to save the mountain gorillas from extinction.'

And I smile and wave out the window to my new avian friends, knowing now that I would do anything—even handle raw meat—to save them from extinction.

Except—if they or any of their kind ever try to swoop me or my family ever again after everything we've done for them, I will scream and wail and flail my arms around so violently that they'll regret the day they decided to mess with ~~Sigourney Weaver~~ ~~Dian Fossey~~ Lorelei V.

So game on, mags. Don't you dare try to tell me you're swooping me because it's springtime and you're trying to protect your babies, because any fool can see that you're letting them fall out of nests all over the place. And then who has to clean up, huh? Society does, that's who. Mike Munro really should be here.

Debt and the Maiden

2009-10-15T10:41:00.005+10:00

About seven years ago, my brother Lachy rented The Graduate from our local video shop. Being a kindly soul, he then lent the movie to one of his mates, who promised to return it to the video shop before the due date. But the friend—being one of those impossible lads of 20 or so, and obviously more interested in cars and girls than late fees—never returned it. So, since Christmas 2002, I have been going into Blockbuster on each of my twice-yearly visits home to the family and paying the overdue fee in increments myself.

I have no idea how much we originally owed, but the debt was ginormous. So you can imagine my pride when I went in the other night to rent Up Close and Personal and saw that I have finally gotten it down to $6. The sense of accomplishment would be a lot higher if the video shop ever had any movies that were worth watching (Up Close and Personal was pretty good, though) but still, I'm going to feel so good when I finally get that debt down to zero by hopefully this time next year.

Ridiculous

2009-10-14T08:34:00.007+10:00

There's really no other word to describe the events that were destined to occur on our verandah the day my prize came through, from Penguin Books Australia, of the entire second series of Popular Penguins.

My three-year-old niece Poppy helped me tear open the box, and together we just instinctively knew—in the way that the women in my family have known for generations—what needed to be done next: A photo shoot, obviously.

The whole idiotic buffoonery was captured patiently on camera by my dad for either posterity or an easy day's blog post, depending on how you look at it.

The vibe we were going for was this:

HOW DID WE DO?

ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS YOU MIGHT BE WONDERING:

1. I won the books on Twitter for writing something witty and clever. But seriously, what else is new.

2. Our inspiration, The Lady of Shallot, is not a Popular Penguin—it's a poem, and probably not very popular at the moment. But don't let that stop you from reading it because it's very beautiful.

3. Yes, I do have the cutest three-year-old niece in the world, thanks for asking!

Ha ha! Handle with care! Thanks Poppy for being so cute!

And thanks, Penguin!

You'll be happy to know that I will be able to start reading these books just as soon as I finish the last two thousand pages or so of that Unpopular But Unbelievably Rewarding Penguin, In Search of Lost Time. The plan will be to begin with Truman Capote's Summer Crossing sometime in the winter of 2019, and follow it immediately with the other forty-nine books if I can only live that long.

Now I have my books, Poppy has her box, and Mum and Dad have a major bookshelving crisis.

Hearing voices; seeing mirages

2009-10-13T11:13:00.004+10:00

A minor crisis of confidence this morning was almost cured by a providential electricity outage, which meant I had no internet access for about an hour. As I sat here drinking cool lime water in lieu of my regular green tea (because I couldn't use the electric kettle), my mind wandered and I thought of all the things I could do today that didn't involve the internet. I could finish reading a book! I could record some music! I could mend some dresses! I could practise some monologues! I could work out how to use my camera! My confidence was slowly coming back, and it was as if I had finally emerged from the desert and I was free. I had stumbled upon a well completely by accident, and now a friendly nomad was drawing water for me and offering some delicious, fresh dates on the side, and my dusty spirit and soul were starting to feel rejuvenated, and I felt like I was some sort of biblical heroine and I had found the way back to the road of my heart.

But then the electricity came back on and the dastardly internet with it, and I started to feel guilty about everything I had to do, and I checked my email and I realised that this blog was only the beginning of the day's tasks, and all the day's tasks involve the internet, and although I could feel myself begin to wither away inside again I could hear a snappy voice in my head screeching: You'd better get back online and start working again quick-smart, you've already lost an hour! And sit up straight and put your shoulders back while you're at it!

But I'm taking the day off anyway in flagrant disobedience to that screeching voice, albeit with the small compromise of writing this post. Because you don't catch a glimpse of that kind of brilliance, a flash of that kind of beauty, and turn your back on it. If you do you're a bit of a dick, I say.

How You Voted

2009-10-11T21:00:00.008+10:00

I started off writing today's post in the romantic, whimsical style I promised:

I had waited all week, and it was finally Monday—Monday! The night of our big date.

Ghost Rider, a dead ringer for Zachary Quinto, picked me up in his ute and snarled: ‘I’m going to take you to this place that I think you’ll really like.'

He put me on the back of his surfboard and, before I knew it, we were entering the hallowed, picturesque grounds of Caloundra High ...

But what I would rather do is simply go over the responses of the survey and have a bit of a chat about how insane my readers most clearly are. Because I learned more about you guys than I did about myself, and as a writer, that is something I am never interested in doing again because it's meant to be all about me.

But still—YOU GUYS DESERVE ANSWERS because you took the time to do the survey. So thank you so much, and take it away, readers!

RESULTS

As indicated earlier, the overwhelming majority of you guys wanted us to go on our first date to Caloundra High School, after hours. I have no idea why you are fantasising this. Maybe the fairytale romance of Daniel Johns and that girl from Caloundra High has captured the heart of a nation; I can't say. But my other favourite date suggestion (and please note this if you are ever planning on taking me out for a date), was:

In my ideal world, Little Birdy are playing at Australia Zoo (and smoking bongs with a topless Amy Adams).

Now let's get onto onto Ghost Rider himself.

WHICH CELEBRITY WOULD YOU HAVE PREFERRED GHOST RIDER RESEMBLED?

Many of you could appreciate Ghost Rider resembling Elvis Costello, but some of you had other ideas:

Matthew McConaughey. Because he began his acting career in 1991 and Maroochydore just reeks of the nineties.

Keanu Reeves, because I watched the start of Speed on the weekend and he is the ultimate quiet tough guy with a sensitive side.

Rhys Ifans (specifically, in the movie Notting Hill)

I would prefer a naked Clive Owen:

Zachary Quinto. Because... Zachary Quinto.

I would like him to look like my spirit animal: Ben Affleck. But less robust.

gale harold- omg, gale

kurt cobain

Adrien Brody- but that is on the proviso that there are two young chaps out there both resembling Adrien.

I want him to look like this:

(Nicolas Cage as Johnny Blaze, the stunt rider who sold his soul to the Devil, in the film Ghost Rider.)

Keanu Reeves circa Point Break

Crispin Glover in Willard

The question about our second date also revealed a huge variety of responses that I like to tell myself says more about you than they do about me:

WHICH UPCOMING GIG AT THE SANDS TAVERN, MAROOCHYDORE, WOULD YOU TAKE ME TO NEXT IF YOU WERE GHOST RIDER?

The majority of my 2000 respondents (NOTE: may not be accurate figure) for some reason thought that either Diana Anaid or Bodyjar would be an excellent second date. A sample of responses reveals an additional underlying confusion about Diana Anaid's surname:

Diana Anaid. Absolutely. Didn't she used to be Diana Ah Naid though?

Diana Anaid, does that mean she is no longer Diana Ah Naid? That was always a bit wanky.

Diana Anaid, of course. Voice of honey.

diana anaid?

DIANA AHNAID! I CAN'T BELIEVE SHE STILL EXISTS/IS "GOING OFF" (RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW).

To be trite I would say Diana Anaid. But really I'd take you to Kid Sam.

Anything but Bodyjar, for the love of god.

Bodyjar for sure.

BODYJAR!

wtf is a bodyjar? maybe we should ask ghost rider that!

But you readers are an unpredictable, motley crew, and some of you had completely diverging opinions:

Omni Anti - the cheapest

Jesus fucking christ! You have to move. Now! That's a musical atrocities exhibit.

Wouldn't matter which cause you'd be makin' out all night and he'd be tryin' to finger-bang you.

Sad to say—I have no idea. Am not elitist scum, am just in Germany.

I am so thrilled to know I have German readers, I can barely even continue reporting the results. But we're nearly finished now.

CHART TIME

For the final two questions, I am going to present some charts to you. These charts have 'SAMPLE' written across them, because I refuse to buy a proper account with the survey company I have used, and thus we are going to have to deal with some unprofessionalism on this blog just for once.

You may need to click on these charts to enlarge them to fully investigate the FACTS. But I think the important things to be gleaned from them are:

1. Most of you would do anything to pick me up, including buying a US$12.99 surfer wig from a Californian costume company.

And: 2. Most of you are concerned about Ghost Rider's future dental bills if he continues to drink Jack Daniels' from a can, which I find very pleasing and responsible of you.

In conclusion, since collating the responses of this survey and writing them up into a meaningless but momentarily distracting blog post, I love you all even more than I did before. And I can now see that the relationship between writer and ~~procrastinator~~ reader is as precious as the naked Clive Owen pics whose existence I wouldn't have known about were it not for you guys. So thank you again, very much.

How Would YOU Like My Date with Ghost Rider to Have Gone?

2009-10-09T01:31:00.005+10:00

Hey! Remember that story about Ghost Rider from two weeks ago that all of you have been asking me about? Well, I think you guys should help me write the sequel to that post because I am sick and tired of running this show on my own.

So I have created a survey in order to hopefully understand more about the expectations of my target audience—YOU. Please click on the link below to answer seven simple questions about youthful dating practices on the Sunshine Coast. Feel free to add comments at any point throughout the survey; I am interested in everything you guys think and feel, as I hope you know.

I am going to collate all the responses on Sunday evening around 9pm QLD time, and weave them into a romantic retelling of the Ghost Rider story for posting on Monday morning. That's right, folks—this is THE INTERNET as you've never seen it before.

SO WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! GET INVOLVED!

Click here to take survey

My month and my life

2009-10-08T08:55:00.009+10:00

There is something vaguely Buddhist about iCal's ability to apply the one single, continuous, recurring task to every day of the calendar for the rest of your entire life.

I opened up the application today after a year of not using it and was disarmed by how charmingly simple everything actually is; by the way iCal understands everything so much better than me sometimes.

Ladies of the canon

2009-10-07T09:19:00.003+10:00

When things get a bit too much, I find it calming to think about some of my favourite actresses playing some of my favourite roles. There are too many of these to mention here today, so I may make this column a regular feature, especially considering how smitten I am over my clever series name. (DO YOU GET IT?)

Let's meditate upon Baroness Schraeder (Eleanor Parker) from The Sound of Music for a moment.

Ever since I was a kid, her husky voice, regal bearing, bell-like laugh and humble handover of Captain von Trapp to his nanny Maria has really made an impression on me. She's a very transfixing and convincing example of the sort of baroness I would like to be one day.

Similarly, Barbra Streisand, in the final scene of The Way We Were, exhibits the sort of calm acceptance and mature perm you would like to think you too will present to the world when your ex-husband and the father of your child rocks up on the east coast all of a sudden with his new girlfriend while you are handing out pamphlets on the street.

'Your girl is lovely, Hubbell!' The words inspire deep and noble thoughts about how you too can be a wonderful, complex, grown-up woman who accepts and understands Things About Life, including how it is perfectly okay to wear those furry camel-coloured trenchcoats in New York under the right political circumstances and with the right sort of perm. (But NEVER at anytime else. I am deadly serious about this, guys.)

Meryl Streep is amazing in anything, but I particularly love her as Polish immigrant Sophie Zawistowski here in Sophie's Choice.

Ample make this bed.
Make this bed with awe;
In it wait till judgement break
Excellent and fair.

Be its mattress straight,
Be its pillow round;
Let no sunrise' yellow noise
Interrupt this ground.

—Emily Dickinson

It has a pretty sad ending. But some good post-war house-dresses to admire, too.

I often reflect on movies like Sophie's Choice, which I'm sure will be around forever; films that my grandchildren and their grandchildren will still be watching and being wowed by—in much the same way as I am still watching and being wowed by Hitchcock's 1940 film, Rebecca.

I love this story in both book and film form. I have a bit of a raging competitiveness with Daphne du Maurier, who wrote the book, which would perhaps be more rational if my talent was located anywhere near her level of genius to begin with. Anyway, may I present for you—Joan Fontaine, the innocent, without-a-Christian-name, 'Second Mrs de Winter'.

The Second Mrs. de Winter: [collapsing in tears on the bed] Oh, stop it! Stop it! Oh, stop it!
Mrs. Danvers: [opening the shutters] You're overwrought, madam. I've opened a window for you. A little air will do you good.
[as the second Mrs. de Winter gets up and walks toward the window]
Mrs. Danvers: Why don't you go? Why don't you leave Manderley? He doesn't need you... he's got his memories. He doesn't love you, he wants to be alone again with her. You've nothing to stay for. You've nothing to live for really, have you?
[softly, almost hypnotically]
Mrs. Danvers: Look down there. It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you? Why don't you? Go on. Go on. Don't be afraid...

There is nothing like a terrifying housekeeper with a plaited crown and a steely profile to make you want to jump out the window because you are not—and never can be—Rebecca.

Finally, let us think for a moment about Liv Tyler in Onegin, who sports the same hairstyle as the above Mrs Danvers, but is literally light-years hotter.

Every single scene of this film is etched in my memory forever because of something magical involving the colours and the lighting design. Allow me to give you a brief summary of the plot if you don't know it.

Tyler is the bookish Tatyana, the woman who goes out on a limb to confess her love to Onegin (Ralph Fiennes) and is made to feel like a fool when he rejects her. But THEN she gets fallen in love with by the very same Onegin later on—but by this time she is married and totally not in any sort of situation to be courted by the man who rejected her years before (and killed her fiance-in-law in a duel to boot), and you get to feel a wickedly sorrowful sense of frustration and satisfaction that, also in nineteenth century Russia, guys could be magnificent idiots where love was involved.

INTERESTING FACT: I have many times tried to read this novel, which is Russian and written in iambic tetrameter, but each time I didn't get very far at all. One day I plan to finish it.

Pavlovas. Opera. The Bible. For the first time ever—together in one post!

2009-10-06T11:36:00.013+10:00

I am hitching a ride on my friends Romy and Sarah's blog today, because:

1) I love their cooking,
2) Pavlovas are brilliant, and
3) I'm having trouble framing a post around the only other thing I pressingly wanted to talk to about today, which is something my mum said this morning: "I love opera and the Bible for the exact same reason—the melodrama!"

As if to demonstrate, she is currently downstairs cooking and singing along to a biblical opera, which you might suppose would lead to an overdose of melodrama, but she seems to be going okay so far. I have to wonder though—will she still be able to retain her love of histrionic outbursts after a few weeks of having me living back at home again? STAY TUNED. And in the meantime, all of you go and make pavlovas for me before I turn vegan again in the next week or two.*

*(My melodrama-loving mum is gonna LOVE the return of my veganism, which ten years ago had me wandering in a desert of Sao biscuits for forty days and forty nights before being rushed to the emergency ward of the hospital suffering from malnourishment. And while I was being turned into a pillar of salt via the saline drip in my arm, she was pulling out her hair out and tearing her clothes, and asking: Why, God? Why! It was very biblical, now I think about it. I might even try to put some music to it this time too, though, just to really make it worthy of the woman who birthed me.)

Hot tip

2009-10-05T09:36:00.007+10:00

I like to think of myself as being a bit of a 'trend hunter', a 'merchant of cool', and thus, I like to keep you all posted on what is happening in the hot world of vocab. If there was one word that reached its tipping point at the National Young Writers Festival, it was disjuncture. I have no way to prove this to you, so you'll just have to trust that my sensitive ear picked up on this word used by a whole bunch of different people, at a whole bunch of different panel sessions, at a rate of frequency I had never before heard in my peer group.

I'm interested in this because when I was a Young Writer during the early years of this millennium, I remember that if we ever wanted to describe a great gulf or separation between two things we would usually just say there was 'a great gulf or separation' between the two things. The fancier among us would perhaps bring out something like 'chasm' or 'dichotomy' for effect, but I'd never heard the word disjuncture used in a frequent enough way to make it popular until this weekend.

Maybe I've been out of the country too long to have charted the rise of this word properly; maybe its popularity peaked at the National Young Writers Festival on the weekend. But if my finger is on any kind of pulse (AND WHO CAN DENY THAT IT ISN'T), then take it from me—I am pretty sure that disjuncture is about to come back big time.

So try to use it in your day today. I'm pretty sure that women will swoon and empires will crumble as they prostrate themselves before your impressive ability to tap into the vernacular of the brightest of our nation's youth.

The reason I won't be posting today

2009-09-30T09:19:00.006+10:00

I had the BEST STORY to relate today—it was the one about when I went to ART SCHOOL for a semester and learned all about Cindy Sherman and Yoko Ono and Jenny Holzer and Tracey Emin and Diane Arbus and fluxus, and I did all these crazy art projects, one of which I wanted to show you today, which is a Polaroid of six pieces of toast with the Australian flag painted on it. However, the Polaroid of the six pieces of toast with the Australian flag painted on it is pasted somewhere in a journal, and the journal is somewhere in our attic. And in our attic, there is this:

I don't mean the box with the primus stove and/or the printer and/or the lanterns in it. (We have always had a very confused labelling system in our attic.) I mean the carpet snake. I know he has to get right up close to you to actually strangle you but I just don't want to take the chance. So in lieu of showing you the visionary art project which started off as six pieces of bread that I first had to toast, which I then had to sew together and paint the Australian flag on, and finally capture in a Polaroid photograph, please accept a photo of me and Jack and Blake singing into a lightbulb in 2001 instead. (Photo by Hannah Brooks.)

And also, here's a link to smarthistory, which is a "dynamic enhancement (or even substitute) for the static traditional Western art history textbook". So you don't even have to go to art school to learn about art anymore! Amazing! So why don't you spend the next few days drinking cocktails and tapping your toes to the jazzy piano leitmotif used throughout the educational videos, and when I come back next week I will test you to see what you have learned. See you on Monday, kids.

Sick day

2009-09-29T10:50:00.004+10:00

I am taking myself back to bed immediately as I have a bad cough and a weary demeanour, but today's thought for the day comes from my friend Natalie, who mentioned during a breakfast discussion we were having this morning about cults: 'Every time Hillsong Church has a national conference, it totally messes up the ARIA charts because their albums go straight to number one.' And I said, 'Really?' and she said: 'Well you might want to check your facts before you write that on your blog, but it's what I've heard.'

And so I checked my facts like a proper journalist, and if the Wikipedia entry is right, then Natalie's right, too:

The 2004 Hillsong live worship album For All You've Done, debuted at #1 on the Australian Record Industry Association album charts. This is the first time an album of Contemporary Christian music has topped the album charts in Australia. There was some controversy about this outcome as almost all of the albums were sold at Hillsong's annual conference held in early July. The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) have defended the outcome noting that the album sold more copies than any other record on sale in Australia that week.

I don't even know why I'm blogging this as it's such old news, but it actually made me laugh and splutter on my own phlegm. I don't even know what's going on with the ARIA charts normally, but I suspect it would probably be something that would also make me laugh and splutter on my own phlegm anyway. And I had intended on expanding this idea further so you would at least feel like you are getting value for money here, but all this spluttering on my own phlegm has left me so exhausted that if I don't go back to bed right now I will never be in proper shape to head to Newcastle on Thursday for This Is Not Art, which, each year, I tend to leave in a sicker state than I was when I arrived. Which means there's probably no point even trying to get healthy first, but I am at least going to give it a try. For the ten others sharing three and a half beds with me, if not for myself.

Water, water everywhere

2009-09-28T11:14:00.009+10:00

Yesterday, I had an urgent craving to re-read the article that Gloria Steinem wrote in 1963 about being a Playboy Bunny. I couldn't find it online, but apparently it's included in her 1983 book of essays called Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

Now, I know that I've seen that book in our house at one time or another and I was determined to hunt it down. There were just a few places the book might be.

In this bookshelf, I found all my old Enid Blytons, Les Miserables, Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much, a Henry Miller biography, Dreams from My Father, Sons and Lovers, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Too Many Men, The Forsyte Saga, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Everything is Illuminated, The Love Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, all the Harry Potters, Nights at the Circus, a coffee table book about the Bolshoi Theatre, The Line of Beauty, a really old edition of Leonard Cohen's The Favourite Game, Gloria Steinem's Revolution from Within, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this weird collection of books arranged randomly on the top of a cabinet, I found Brighton Rock, The Mitford Girls, Eleven Types of Loneliness, Istanbul, The Forest for the Trees, The Year of Magical Thinking, French Women for All Seasons, How Proust Can Change Your Life, Tough Guys Don't Dance, Almost French, and Far from the Maddening Crowd, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this pile of books sitting in a corner of the living room, I found a new edition of Leonard Cohen's The Favourite Game, as well as his Book of Longing, and also Sexing the Cherry, The Transit of Venus, The Alchemist, Big City Eyes, and The Book of My Enemy, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this bookshelf I found Candide, Strindberg Plays Volume 1, Sylvia Plath: A Dramatic Portrait, The Arts in Early Childhood, Leaves of Grass, The Prophet, Under Milk Wood, My Brother Jack, South American Mythology, Shakespeare's Sonnets, Some Americans Abroad, Artist Descending a Staircase, Philip Larkin Collected Poems, Three Plays by Ionesco, Three Jacobean Tragedies, Saint Joan, Yevtushenko Selected Poems, Jude the Obscure, and La Mort a Venise, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this bookshelf I found A Town Like Alice, I Am a Cat, Germinal, Sputnik Sweetheart, The Twelve Caesars, The Mayor of Casterbridge, A Man for All Seasons, The Great Gatsby, and Ten Little Niggers, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this bookshelf I found Sesame and Lillies, Longfellow Poetical Works, War and Peace, The Complete Plays of Bernard Shaw, Moby Dick, Doctor Pascale, The Ministry of Fear, two editions of The Story of San Michelle, A Movable Feast and Travels with My Aunt, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this cabinet I found The Saggy Baggy Elephant, biographies of Max Perkins, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Tallulah Bankhead, Katherine Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Ronnie Spector, Carson McCullers and Marianne Faithful, Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, Letters to a Young Poet, Absalom, Absalom, The Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock, The Sexual Life of Catherine M, Marjorie Morningstar, The Complete Patti Smith, Two copies of Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, Juno: The Shooting Script, Other People's Words, Chekhov's Plays and Stories, The Journalist and the Murderer, Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Making of Birthday Letters, three thesauruses, Reading Like A Writer, Orlando, Bird by Bird, Ulysses, Stella Adler on Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg, The Chicago Manual of Style, The Editor's Companion, Franny and Zooey, Dirty Blonde: The Diaries of Courtney Love, War and Peace, Eat, Pray, Love, The Art of Vogue Covers, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Lulu in Hollywood, Nine Stories, Gertrude and Alice, The Way of a Pilgrim, Diary of a Seducer, The Almost Moon, n + 1 issue six, and Women, Sex and Rock 'n Roll, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this cabinet there are five French dictionaries, two Italian dictionaries, three Turkish dictionaries, a Turkish-to-French dictionary, a Russian dictionary, a German dictionary, Cycling France, a CD of French poetry and Traditional Houses of Rural Spain, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this bookshelf there is A Year of Sport Travel, Moths of Australia, Cricket Yearbook 1990, Cultivated Plants of the World, Living with Design, America the Majestic, The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Insects, Trees of the World, The Practical Encyclopedia of Orchids, The Great Australian Wine Book, Complete Book of Australian Birds, Explore Wild Australia with the Bush Tucker Man, Butterflies of the Australian Region, and Mites: Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellion.

In this bookshelf I found both the old and the new editions of The Cook's Companion as well as Cooking for Cher, The New Enchanted Broccoli Forest, Squirrels' New Vegan and Vegetarian Cookbook, Cooking with Days of Our Lives, Fondue It, Traditional Arab Cookery, Herbs for Health and Cookery and Skewer Cooking, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

In this bookshelf I found The World of Ancient Times, Techniques of the Great Masters of Art, The Enchanted Dolls' House, A Pictorial History of Horror Stories, The Game, Lambs' Tales from Shakespeare, The Power of One, The Lord of the Rings, The Misanthrope and Other Plays, Picnic at Hanging Rock, Exercise Physiology, and my ballet slippers, but no Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

These books lead an obvious path to my bed, and include An Inspector Calls, Phaidon's Art Book for Children Volumes 1 and 2, Acting That Matters, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Antigone, Acting: Preparation, Practice, Performance, The Insanity Defense, Birthday Letters, Dorothy Parker's Complete Stories, Acting: The First Six Lessons, A Shakespeare Glossary, Literature: The Human Experience, Stanislavski: An Introduction, and an audiobook of Candide.

No Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions.

Defeated, I dragged my laptop into bed with me and just ended up re-reading Susan Orlean's brilliant article about The Shaggs instead.

Margaret Mead in Maroochydore

2009-09-25T12:48:00.016+10:00

Last night I went to see my friend's band play at The Sands Tavern, Maroochydore. In case you don't remember, I just got back from India, and so I am totally at ease with strange, new cultures. And even though I'm not usually in favour of drinking whiskey out of a can, having my freshly-washed coiffure patted by sweaty, drunk girls in $70 Citybeach dresses while waiting in line for the dunnies, and ducking under the swinging dreadlocks of triangular-bodied surfers with bloated faces, I find that if I just open myself up to the culture and try to really embrace the rum-soaked atmos, I can actually have a pretty fun time thanks to all my previous cross-cultural experiences which have taught me never to judge.

ACT 1

Cute, blond, anachronistically Elvis-Costello-looking guy glides up to me while I'm waiting for the first band to start.

GUY: What are you writing?
ME: Oh, me? I'm just taking notes.
GUY: Are you writing a book?
ME: No, I'm just taking notes.
GUY: If you're writing a book, can I be in it?
ME: Okay. But like I said, I'm just taking notes.
GUY: Can you give me a cool name, like 'Ghost Rider' when you write your book?

I melt a little as I look up into Ghost Rider's radiantly, heavenly eyes—or is just that the diamond lights from the stage are refracting dazzlingly off his dark-framed glasses? Whatever the case, he bounces off into the crowd and the support band starts.

INTERVAL

During the break, I go out into the empty, non-smoking beer garden, and type up my notes on my phone, sketch the outline of a play, write a letter, delete a bunch of text messages I no longer need, clean out my handbag and read six pages of Proust. But as I look over into the jam-packed smoking area, I think to myself—what if I'm missing out on an important cultural experience? So I take out my notebook once more and plunge back in to the pub for more research.

TEENAGE DUDE WEARING A DENTAL PLATE AND A BLACK T-SHIRT: What are you writing?
ME: Me? Oh, I'm just taking notes.
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: Are you writing a book?
ME: No, I'm just taking notes.
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: I find that weird.
ME: You find me weird?
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: I find it weird that you're taking notes.
ME: Well, I'm ...
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: Are you reviewing the show?
ME: Yeah, that's it. I'm reviewing the show.
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: Who do you write for?
ME: Um, I have a blog.
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: (Rolls eyes) Oh, a BLOG. Really! (Shouts out across the room) HEY EVERYONE, THIS GIRL HAS A BLOG! (Turning back to me with raging fire burning in his eyes) Well, it might interest you to know that I have a blog too!
ME: Oh, really? That's fantastic.
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: (His voice is low, threatening) But as if I would ever write anything on it though.

I suddenly remember why I have never dated anyone from my home town before.

DENTAL PLATE DUDE: You think you're pretty good, don't you?
ME: No.
DENTAL PLATE DUDE: You think you're pretty good but you know what? You're weird.
ME: I've gotta go.

ACT 2

Luckily, the band starts, and they are brilliant and amazing and I whisper under my breath, Well, maybe I'm gonna write a review for my blog after all, you idiotic orthodontic dick. I move to the outskirts of the crowd where, suddenly, the gorgeous, not-of-this-place, Ghost Rider bounds back over to me.

GHOST RIDER: Still taking notes?
ME: Yeah. I'm doing some research and I wanted to ask you—what sort of music would you call this?
GHOST RIDER: (Thinks for a moment) Psychedelic!
ME: Really? Why?

Ghost Rider scratches his beautiful, bare, barely legal chin. After a lengthy pause, he decides on the following definition:

GHOST RIDER: Because they use an effects pedal.

I am not afraid to tell you all that I think this concept is one of the most brilliant things I have ever heard.

ME: Okay then, if this band is psychedelic because they use effects pedals, what would you call the band that played before them?
GHOST RIDER: (Thinks) Oh, they were pop. (More confidently) Yeah, pop. (He rests his case.)

DRAMATIC FINALE

Ghost Rider suddenly stares at me deeply, intently, and sways ever so slightly as he crushes an empty can of Jack Daniels' in his nubile young fist.

GHOST RIDER: Do you ever feel like you're 'an observer'?
ME: I beg your pardon?
GHOST RIDER: Right now, you kind of feel like you're standing on the outside, don't you?
ME: Well, yeah, now that you mention it, I guess I do.
GHOST RIDER: (Through gritted teeth; suddenly intense) Put it away.
ME: What?
GHOST RIDER: I said—CLOSE YOUR NOTEBOOK AND PUT IT AWAY!

I close my notebook and put it away.

Ghost Rider takes hold of my wrist and leads me easily into the crowd because I seem to have turned to jelly in his juvenile hands. As he pulls me deep, ever deeper, into the mosh pit, his mouth swoops down close to my ear and I can smell his caramel breath as he yells: AND DON'T COME OUT OF HERE UNTIL YOU HAVE A BROKEN NOSE!

And then Ghost Rider disappears completely—like a ghost.

I realise I'm in the heart of a mosh pit, which I always thought became extinct in about 1999. I suddenly have other people's dreadlocks in my mouth, other people's sweat spraying all over me, and the roof is also starting to drip some sort of gross moisture caused by all the humidity in the room. Man-boys are pushing each other and punching each other and dry-humping each other, and there's crowd surfing and everyone is falling on top of each other and everything feels like it's 1999 to me.

And as I'm being pushed up against two girls with long bleached hair who make me get in their photo because I am 'awesome!', I realise I am being inducted into a whole new world; a much simpler world. A world where drinks come pre-mixed with lots of sugar and there are just two genres of music—the only difference between the two being an effects pedal.

EPILOGUE

Ghost Rider asks me for my number—I assume so that he can teach me even more about his culture.

GHOST RIDER: Hey, I need your number because there's this thing happening on Monday night and you have to see it.
ME: Oh yes, I want to see it!
GHOST RIDER: I think you're really gonna learn a lot.
ME: Oh yes, I want to learn!

Ghost Rider puts my name—'LAUR'—into his phone, and his eyes glimmer as only the eyes of a skinny man who has just drunk eight cans of whiskey in four hours, can.
GHOST RIDER: I really think you're gonna love it!

FINDINGS

I hope Ghost Rider calls me because I'm really excited to discover a new subculture. I'm also determined to disprove my friend, Clare's, theory which is: All you guys do on the Sunshine Coast is smoke bongs and eat KFC.

Ghost Rider, if you're reading this and you're planning to take me out on Monday night to smoke bongs and eat KFC, I'm gonna be really pissed because you should know from the outset that I totally can't stand KFC.

TO BE CONTINUED

Some mornings, when I wake up and go downstairs—still half-asleep—to make breakfast, this fridge magnet is the most hilarious thing on earth.

2009-09-24T09:56:00.017+10:00

'I Wrote a Play' by Cole Porter

2009-09-23T09:57:00.019+10:00

I wrote a play
And it took me many a day,
It took me many a month, hear, hear!
It took me many a hungry year,
Yet I still thrill when I say
That I wrote a play.

When I finished my play
I said to myself one day
"It must have a title with sweep and swirl."
Then suddenly I thought of it, "Boy Loves Girl,"
So "Boy Loves Girl" right away
Became the name of my play.

Then I packed my play
And carried it quick to Broadway
Where I dug up a millionaire friend of mine
Who took Gilbert Miller somewhere to dine
And filled the great gourmet so full of feed
That finally Gilbert agreed to read
Without a moment's delay,
"Boy Loves Girl", my pearl of a play.

A year passed and a day
Then Gilbert phoned me to say
"I think your play is excellent stuff
But hardly European enough
Yet with slight alterations it ought to go far
So it's being re-written by Shaw and Molnar
And I'm changing the title from 'Boy Loves Girl'
To 'Hungarian Princess Loves British Earl.'"
So I went to his office that day
And stole my pretty play away.

I next took my play
To the Theatre Guild, heigh, heigh!
They read it and said "It's charming stuff
But, of course, for the Guild not long enough
So Eugene O'Neill will re-write the whole thing
And when it's longer than Wagner's Ring
We'll start rehearsing your play at once
As we've simply got to revive the Lunts,
But as 'Boy Loves Girl' doesn't quite fit in
We have changed the title to 'Alfred Loves Lynne.'"
So I rushed to their office that day
And snatched my darling play away.

Then heavy-hearted I trod
With my play to Michael Todd,
He read it and said "It's terrifical stuff
But for Broadway it ain't big and dirty and enough,
Still I'm gonna produce it, just for a lark,
I'm taking the Mall in Central Park,
It's being re-written by Gypsy Rose,
I'm hiring a nudist to do the clo'es,
The cast will consist of Man Mountain Dean
And a boat-load of babes from the Argentine
And I've changed the title, so help me God,
To 'The Love Life of Michael Todd.'"
So I ran to his office that day
And I plucked my precious play away.

Then I sent to the coast my play
And Sam Goldwyn 'phoned me to say
"Hello, my boy, and au revoir,
Now listen slowly and have a cigar.
Your lousy play is a stinkeroo,
I just read part of it all the way through
But I like the title extremely much,
Somehow 'Boy Loves Girl' has the Goldwyn touch.
Now that I've bought a play that was tough to get
Called 'Romeo and Juliet'
But if the title was 'Boy Loves Girl'
What a helluva picture for Milton Berle!
And if you'll sell me that title, by heck
I'll wire you at once a blanket check."
So I sold him the title that day
And that's what became of my play,
Yes, that's what became of my play.

A song (that I think was cut) from Porter's Seven Lively Arts

Socialite Mrs. Lytle Hull chatting w. musical composer Cole Porter as party hostess Elsa Maxwell leans over his shoulder at a dinner party she is having at the Waldorf-Astoria in honour of the opening of Porter's new show "Seven Lively Arts." December 1945 (Life Magazine)

Things I have two of

2009-09-22T09:27:00.005+10:00

That add to my life immeasurably:
—nieces
—nephews
—sisters
—guitars
—exes I can still speak to
—copies of Hounds of Love on vinyl

That don't really seem necessary anymore:
—invented middle names
—kidneys
—degrees
—Moleskine 2009 diaries
—copies of The Bestseller by Olivia Goldsmith

A Streetcar Named ... Editorial Pedantry

2009-09-21T10:18:00.016+10:00

I learnt a lot from STC's production of A Streetcar Named Desire—things like how to femininely throw back shot after shot of hard liquor (what you do if you are Cate Blanchett is you push one foot daintily behind you for balance, then with a backwards throw of the head you slam the drink down hard and fast, and then afterwards you wipe your mouth with your hand before carrying on with the scene in that winsomely willowy manner that amazes and delights us all).

And I also learnt how professional actors can retain their concentration even when an elderly woman in the audience is discovered apparently dead by her daughter who is sitting next to her, and who is now gripping the limp body by its shoulders and shaking it terrifyingly and shrieking out from Row E of the balcony—‘Mum? MUM? MUM!!’ But Cate and Robin McLeavy (PROFESSIONAL ACTORS) remained in perfect character throughout, continuing on beautifully with their scene, which was more than could be said for the audience—those of us sitting one row behind them, in Row G (not having trained at NIDA ourselves) couldn't help but break our concentration for the next ten minutes or so as we watched the chilling offstage drama which culminated, thankfully, in the mother being eventually revived. But my god, it was so awful, and we totally missed a major Blanche/tt monologue because we were all so horrified. But as an aside I have to say that I think Tennessee totally would have loved the humanity of it.

But it wasn't just the actual performance that taught me stuff. I also learnt heaps from the Streetcar programme, too. Cute things, such as how Dashiell, Roman and Ignatius Upton, all under eight, have each donated +$2,000 to Sydney Theatre Company!

Nice work, boys! With no romantic intrigue of my own going on, I have decided instead to spend the rest of my days contriving ways I can set up my three-year-old niece, Poppy, with one of you. Just so you know!

And also, I learnt that Wikipedia was one of the research sources for the info in the programme.

I have to admit, this relatively minor detail located way back in the end matter of the programme freaked me out even more than the realisation that I was suddenly and against-my-will attracted to Joel Edgerton, who has beefed up tremendously and did such an impressive rendering of Stanley Kowalski that I almost died (only figuratively though). Because now I have to wonder—which parts of this $15 programme were sourced from Wikipedia? Because $15 is almost the same price as a new release paperback book, the majority of which—need I remind you—go through rigorous editorial processes that many of us spend our entire lives training and refining our skills in order to be professionally qualified to do, with the express purpose that people have something more authoritative than Wikipedia to refer to for factual information. And knowing that Wikipedia is in the bibliography makes me feel less confident as a reader, so that now I have to wonder if the first sentence of a fascinating letter written by Tennessee Williams to Elia Kazan, which has Tennessee saying—‘I will try to clarify my intentions in his play’—is reproduced correctly in the programme (because I think Tennessee might have meant to say to Elia: 'I will try to clarify my intentions in this play') or more likely a sloppy proofreading error. But I might be wrong.

Look, there's not anything too noticeable overall and I know what I have mentioned here is not really a big deal. So am I just being totally unreasonable because the show is so magnificent and so wonderful that I have nothing whatsoever to say about the performances because no words can adequately describe how much I loved it and so instead I am going to crap on about how important internal consistency, authoritative research sources, and all the rest of the things that come with editorial integrity are to my world, even though I know noone else notices that stuff and I'm sure it is hardly on the same list of priorities for STC as, I dunno, getting bums on seats? Is it okay if I keep relentlessly emphasising that—even though I know that as an editor it's practically impossible to get everything right all the time, I still don't see why—when you have pretty much attained theatrical perfection—you shouldn't aim for whole perfection, and make both a performance and its programme flawless and Wikipedia-free? Do I just strive for textual perfection in all things—theatre programmes, food wrappers and train timetables included—because I believe it is one of the most holy and beautiful things on earth and it is basically the only way I can make sense of the world? Or am I just being a bitch?

NB Red knitted moustache as worn here by Cate Blanchett (Blanche DuBois) is not an accurate indication of Streetcar wardrobe design—it is just me out on the street reenacting her final magnificent mad scene with the shawl because I think I'm just jealous that I'm not in the production, which must be why I feel violently critical at the inconsistent use of single and double quotation marks throughout the programme instead of simply admiring the behind-the-scenes photos like everyone else does.

Self-referential Thursday; continues through Friday

2009-09-17T09:25:00.007+10:00

What were you doing a year ago? Because I know that I was weeping a lot and trying to live off brown rice and that cheap silken tofu whilst working intently on my Hilarious Debut Novel™. I was also booking tickets to see Sydney Theatre Company's production of A Streetcar Named Desire starring Cate Blanchett and directed by Liv Ullmann, and now a year has passed and the time has finally come to see it!

Hey! Isn't that a picture of Liv Ullmann, chatting with Bibi Andersson and Ingmar Bergman on the set of that amazing 1966 film, Persona?! Oh my god I love that movie! WOW!

It is for this and other theatrical reasons that I'll be absent from tomorrow's post. BUT, to make up for it, I am doing something I almost never do, and that is to recommend that you read one of my old posts. The one I offer up to you is this long and rather tedious post from back in March (SURGEON-GENERAL'S WARNING: May Cause Confusion/Boredom - Break Up Reading with Frequent Cigarette Breaks for Relief) where, in my characteristically equal, fair and balanced journalistic style, I present both myself and the future father of my child as totally irritating morons.

Reading back on it now, of course, there are things I would do differently, but my staunch blogging rule is never to edit anything after 24 hours of posting, so it has to stay as it is. If you ever actually get through to the end of it, please feel free to send me your own boys' baby name suggestions, then for god's sake, go off and enjoy your weekend.

The fun of reading

2009-09-16T09:44:00.007+10:00

Dan Brown, in an interview with The Wall Sreet Journal, talking about his new book, The Lost Symbol:

After The Da Vinci Code was published, people came up to me and said they hadn't read anything since high school or college, but that they'd now discovered the fun of reading.

Although I was in the middle of a raucous breakfast with my chattering three year-old niece (who really wanted peanut butter with her poached egg), and I had the burden of a thundering, pounding deadline weighing down on me (which was making me feel guilty that I was even eating breakfast, let alone reading an interview with Dan Brown) that quote still made me put down my knife and fork, benevolently shush the niece, breathe in a lungful of fresh country air, and really savour that exhilarating, vivifying moment of laughing out loud.

Lorelei's 24th October Theory - Debunked

2009-09-15T13:19:00.009+10:00

It wasn't ever really even a theory. Just an observation. But I liked it. It gave me something to cling to in this crazy world.

The theory (observation) was just that October 24th is quite a special little day.

It originated in some misguided fact I must have learned from a poorly-edited copy of Smash Hits when I was about twelve. In it, I read that the 24th October was Winona Ryder's birthday. (I know this is the second day in a row I have been talking about Winona, but she's on my mind. She really is always on my mind.) But from the exact moment I connected Winona's birth—that momentous date that she arrived into this world (rolling her eyes sarcastically, as I imagine it)—the 24th October has been branded into my heart.

Then, as the years went by, I became mystifyingly drawn to others whose birthdays fall on October 24th. Three of my friends have October 24th birthdays. That's a lot, don't you think? Plus, another old friend has picked October 24th as the day he is going to get married this year. And then, today, sitting in Centrelink, the guy ran off to photocopy something and he left all these private documents scattered over the desk in plain sight so of course I looked at them and someone's birth certificate said: the 24th October! I just seem to always notice that date, anywhere and everywhere. And it all started with Winona.

Anyway, I just found out that Winona's birthday is actually the 29th of October, not the 24th. I was pretty upset. But after a few seconds of painstaking internet research, I did find out that someone else just as good—Kevin Kline!—was born on the 24th. So it's still a very special day in my books, and I have no plans to give up on it just yet.

Winona vintage clothes shopping on Rodeo Drive with Jada Pinkett-Smith who was born on September 18th.

Do you or someone you know celebrate a birthday or some other special event on October 24th? Feel free to emote about it in the comments section!

Life Lessons

2009-09-14T11:36:00.016+10:00

My greatest priority when I got back to Australia—after dying my hair, reuniting myself with about 80 of my closest friends and spending the ensuing four days screeching at them all that I LOVE them SO much—was to watch Grey Gardens.

Not the documentary, not the musical, not Grey's Anatomy, but Grey Gardens, the HBO film starring Jessica Lange and Drew Barrymore, which I've really been waiting half my life to see.

Drew Barrymore as Little Edie in the HBO film version of Grey Gardens.

My friend Clare as Little Edie in Ben and Scott's New Farm version of Grey Gardens.

As my friends and I were watching it, we were flabbergasted by all the LESSONS you can learn from this true story of two eccentric society doyennes living together in decaying squalor, as reinterpreted by HBO films for Emmy award-winning purposes.

Adele, Ben, Clare and Scott, discernibly flabbergasted by all the lessons they are learning. (Please admire cheese/chocolate/fruit platter in lieu of the more themic choice of tinned cat food and ice-cream.)

Here are what we think are some of the morals of the story. Feel free to add your own in the comments section:

Human relationships can be as damaging as they are rewarding.
It’s okay to leave your mother.
Be related to a Bouvier if you need house repairs.
Neuter all cats.
Don’t threaten the marriage of a married man you’re sleeping with.
Get your mental illness diagnosed early.
Don't listen to your mother—move to New York.
If you have any kind of creative or artistic flair WATCH OUT.

But for me, the most powerful thing I took from the film, the one lesson that resonated most strongly with me, was that Drew Barrymore has suddenly turned AMAZING! In fact, I think she has even superseded Winona Ryder in my books! When I announced this bombshell to the room all I heard were shouts of: 'Um? About time!' 'Winona should've been ousted from your admiration years ago!' 'WINONA? What are you ON?' But I am such a loyal and dedicated fan that not even Sex and Death 101, co-starring Simon Baker, or her totally accidental and completely explainable shoplifting moment has ever been able to shake my conviction that Winona is still it. Until now.

I suspected after Donnie Darko that Drew was actually a genius, but I was too scared to commit to it in case she did another Charlie's Angels (which she did). But I'm happy to report that now I feel completely confident about her brilliance. And I'm SO looking forward to Whip It.

Things I Will Miss

2009-09-03T23:16:00.030+10:00

The science is very simple but the feeling still perplexes: Whenever you move somewhere new you leave behind a bundle of things at the old place that you might call 'Things I Miss' (so for me that would be my family, my friends, and Darren Sylvester's record on vinyl). And then, months later, when you start getting ready to head back to that first place—the place that has all the precious 'Things You Miss' nicely contained in it (family, friends, and Darren Sylvester's record on vinyl)—you realise that all you've done over the last five months is inadvertently create a new list, which is a new one called: 'Things You Will Miss Once You Are Back in the Place Full of Things You Used to Miss (But Which You Don't Anymore Because They Are Now Happily Back Within Your Reach'). And so now you get to experience the full spectrum of homesickness and yearning that comes from Missing All These Other Things You Never Imagined You Would Ever Care About, Until the Day You Decided to Leave the Original Place Long Enough to Feel the Pain of Missing the First Things. It's a bit of a confusing emotion, and normal people must have to struggle with it every day on their own, but luckily I have a blog so I get to work through my feelings publicly.

So here is a brief compendium of things that would sit under that second list I have just described, which, for simplification, I will shorten to: Things I Will Miss about India.

I will miss eating these every day:

And seeing things like this:

And colour schemes like this:

And rowdy Indian festivals like the one today, celebrating the end of the monsoon:

I will miss these cows:

(I am pretty fascinated by this cow's body):

And I'll never forget that very first sight of the Taj Mahal, when, as you walk up the stairs and head through the little doorway, you emerge with the crowd and suddenly this gigantic thing that you've seen in so many pictures and which, frankly, you thought would totally bore you to death, appears right there in front of you—bigger, more magnificent and more breathtaking than you ever imagined.

There are so many better pictures than this one, but I like it because it reminds me of that first instant I laid eyes on it, when I was so utterly blown away to realise that it actually just sits there like that, day in, day out, so shimmering and enormous.

And there were such beautiful and unexpected details inside the Taj, like this:

And this:

And this:

But back to other things I'm going to miss. I'm going to miss posing with ridiculous but exciting new vegetables:

And fruit:

And I will miss the amazing serendipity of landing in the same random Indian town at the exact same time as Erica, my brilliant, beautiful friend from Brisbane circa 2001, and the many wonderful conversations and vodka concoctions and dress-fitting excursions we've had together since:

I'm really going to miss living with my brother, Lachy, because he's pretty much my favourite person on earth:

And I'm just going to miss all the people I see every time I walk outside:

In conclusion, I guess I'll miss the time that India's given me to think and write and read and design incredible new dresses in conjunction with my tailor, Cheryl:

India, it's true: I used to detest you, but now I love you. You've been very understanding about my caprices, and for that, I thank you.

And I want you to know that I'm really, really going to miss you.

[cue Taj Mahal shot, number 3243 of 4000—the one with the thoughtful hawk flying overhead at just the right moment]

A most ingenious paradox

2009-09-03T00:24:00.006+10:00

It never ceases to amaze me how I can get so tortured over some sentence or a paragraph I am trying to write, and yet if I shift over to some other artform, like music or painting, I discover I can effortlessly create a song or a picture I'm happy with within the hour. I would like to suggest that this is not because I have low standards in music or art, but simply because I have not placed either of them at the centre of my world—neither of them are my current 'career', so there is no pressure to create anything of genius in either of those spheres. The surprising (and you'll agree, modest) result of this is that—quite often—I'm pretty sure I do.

Today I set aside the entire day to write and record a song. It's been something I've been wanting to do the entire time I've been in India, and I hadn't gotten around to it yet because there always seemed to be a sentence or a paragraph I needed to write instead. But today I just set myself up with the guitar and opened up Garageband, and—even though the established rule is that I'm never happy with anything I do—I ended up coming up with a song that I am pretty sure is the bee's knees. Amazing, huh? And just the experience of listening back on something you've made instead of having to read it and read it until your eyes are aching so much that you can't work out whether you've spelt 'liaise' properly or not—it's really such a novel and edifying way of experiencing your own STUFF.

See? Rock n' Roll: It can really teach you something.

Kickstart your writing process in five easy steps

2009-09-01T22:23:00.024+10:00

There is nothing more sobering than quitting your job to focus on your writing and moving overseas for the better part of two years to do it, and then feeling completely paralysed once you get there because you realise you're a fraud who can’t actually write. As the peripatetic author of three unfinished novels, an unfinished screenplay, three unreleased albums, and a very moving but sadly as-yet-unpublished acrostic poem, I can totally relate to this scenario. But, even in the frozen depths of despair, I've learned that there are several things I can do to get my mind focused and moving again, and I'm not sure if they'll work for you or not, but if there's one thing I've learned about the internet it's that it's a place where people go to find out how other people do things instead of just getting on with it and doing it their own way. So it's possible that you just might appreciate finding out:

(How I) Kickstart My Heart!

1. Apply lipstick. Wearing lipstick while I'm writing focuses my mind by reminding me of the time when I was gainfully employed in an office and had actual, real deadlines. Also, when everything goes screensaver black and I see my own eerie reflection looking back at me, distorted and looking very—

—it scares me into quickly moving the mouse which brings my work back onto screen which reminds me why I'm there in the first place.

HANDY HINT: Are you a man? Well, don't let this stop you from wearing lipstick. Please.

2. Wrap your head up in a turban. Wrapping my head in a turban focuses my mind by taking me back to a time before I became gainfully employed in an office, when I was a bohemian free-spirit for whom nothing mattered but Art.

(Interesting aside: This was roughly around the same period as when I was a performance poet and developed a bizarre song and dance routine based around the Australian anti-war slogan No hoWARd, combined with the gameshow, Wheel of Fortune. The perplexing refrain involved me purring over and over, with a Casio RapMan and my best friend Beck as accompaniment: 'John Burgess, you're gorgeous!')

HANDY HINT: Not sure whether turbans are for you? Go to the Turbanizer first to find out! For example, here I am wearing lipstick and looking quite pleased with all the motivation it has spontaneously inspired in me with hardly any effort whatsoever on my part:

But how much more motivated do I feel when I'm also wearing a turban?

Well, I can answer that—HEAPS!

I've also discovered that if you tie a turban tight enough around your ears, you can even block out the interruption of household clatter, suburban lawn mowers, and your own biological clock, ticking like a time bomb and reminding you that you will never meet anyone to have sex, and thus a child, with, if you sit all day at the computer, refusing to finish writing your three novels, your one screenplay, the liner notes for your three unreleased albums, and that very moving but sadly as-yet-unpublished acrostic poem. So maybe just keep one ear uncovered so you can still make out the sound of that most motivational of all ticking-tocks. It might even work better for you as a kickstarting writing tool than both the lipstick and the turban combined—WHO CAN SAY?

3. Protect your ovaries and/or testes. This is related to the above point. In this age of laptops, most of my friends write with their computer on their lap. Now, presuming you get off the computer long enough to meet someone to have sex and a kid with, you've got to think of the future—if you’re a writer who has made themselves barren from having their computer sitting on their lap too long, who will write the tell-all autobiography about what it was like to grow up as your kid, huh? And without the publication of a tell-all autobiography about what it was like to grow up as your kid, what sort of writer will you be, huh? I'll tell you—ONE WHO DOESN'T HAVE A TELL-ALL AUTOBIOGRAPHY WRITTEN ABOUT THEM BY THEIR KID. Not really much of a writer at all, you have to agree.

This is one of my favourite book covers ever. I don't really know whether Tallulah writes much about her parents in her autobiography—her mother died shortly after her birth and her father was in fact a senator, not a writer—but I do know that Tallulah's last coherent words before she died were: 'Codeine ... bourbon' and that's good enough for me.

4. Stations and drills. My brother is a personal trainer, and he sometimes sets up 'stations' around the living room where I can do 'drills' if I wish to, say, get a flatter stomach in fourteen days or something like that. But this same concept is easily transferable to your writing practice. For example, set up a corner that is your 'Adverbs' corner where you go for five minutes to think up adverbs that you can use in your short story. You might think up some excellently useless adverbs such as 'avuncularly' and 'cholerically' at the 'Adverb Station'.

Then, set up another 'station' where you focus solely on 'Irrelevant Backstory'. This is where you can waste a lot of time trying to really get to know your character, using a stubborn corkboard, last February's Harper's Bazaar and the diaries you wrote when you were twelve.

After that, why not move on to the 'Author Pic' station, where you get to conduct a survey with your seven closest friends via a Skype conference call to ask them which dress they think you should wear on the back cover of your book. And this is all before moving fluidly on to the 'Research Station' which is also sometimes called 'Twitter time'.

I think you get the picture. 'Stations' are an excellent concept that I think have been under-utilised by the writing fraternity as a whole and I strongly urge you to incorporate them into your daily routine.

5. ‘Get into the Groove’. Need I remind you of some of the most razor-sharp and intuitive lyrics of the eighties: ‘And you can dance—for inspiration.’

You know what I say to that? Sí, se puede dance for inspiration. (Yes, we can dance for inspiration).

I have been dancing for inspiration every day this week. I mean, it’s a workout, really. And much easier on the calves when you ‘lock the doors where noone else can see' (Madonna again) because this way you can comfortably wear your sneakers instead of those heels you almost killed yourself wearing at Ding Dong during the years 2003-2006, because, as Madonna reminds us so catchily, noone else can see.

Anyway, this is how I kickstart my heart. Et vous?

Just in case there was a possibility that I was ever going to forget India ...

2009-08-31T23:14:00.009+10:00

... this country has, it seems, gleefully decided that I'm not allowed to leave the place until I suffer through one last round of vomity spew stomach sickness. Thus, in place of a proper post today, please accept this photo of Marlene Dietrich calmly drinking in the sight of Barbra Streisand's animal-print-clad nerves instead.

I've got to go back to bed.

Enormity vs Immensity

2009-08-30T22:30:00.007+10:00

Enormity does not mean hugeness or great size, although it is often used in this way. This, straight from my computer's dictionary:

This word is (often) imprecisely used to mean 'great size,' as in: It is difficult to comprehend the enormity of the continent. But the original and preferred meaning is 'extreme wickedness,' as in: The enormity of the mass murders.

To indicate enormous size, the words enormousness, immensity, vastness, hugeness, etc., are preferable.

So, it's weird, because they're sort of saying that you're allowed to use enormity when referring to the size of something because everyone else does it, but you really shouldn't if you can help it (just because everyone else jumps off a cliff into the ~~enormity~~ vastness of oblivion, does that mean you should too, etc).

So if I were you, I would only ever use 'enormity' to mean extreme evil; a hideous offense (i.e. any reference to Hitler/Stalin/Kyle Sandilands). And if I was talking about size I would try to stick with immensity, or—perhaps even more pleasingly—hugeness, which has that fantastic 'yew' sound in the middle of it that Australians are particularly skilled at using to great effect.

Vale Ellie Greenwich

2009-08-27T22:36:00.010+10:00

Last night I was having the best time listening to The Shangri-Las and then I woke up this morning and discovered Ellie Greenwich, amazing songwriter for those guys as well as about eight zillion other incredible bands, has died, aged 68.

My friend Monica drew my attention to this interview, which is one of the best things I've read in ages. Greenwich worked in the famous Brill Building in New York with Carole King and Gerry Goffin and Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and wrote tonnes of songs (many with husband Jeff Barry) like 'Be My Baby', 'Chapel of Love', 'Doh Wah Diddy Diddy', 'Da Doo Ron Ron', 'The Train to Kansas City', 'Leader of the Pack', 'Be My Baby', 'Look of Love', 'Out in the Streets', 'River Deep Mountain High', 'The Sunshine after the Rain', and 'What Good is I Love You'. She produced Neil Diamond among others. She did backing vocals for everyone from Frank Sinatra and Bobby Darin to Dusty Springfield and Cyndi Lauper.

The interview above led me to this, Greenwich's 1968 advice on How to Write a Hit Song, originally published in Disco Scene Magazine, and it's all I want to blog tonight.

How to Write a Hit Song

by Ellie Greenwich

1. Write about something that you're familiar with.

Human relationships—that's what my songs are about. The teenage years are very tricky. High school's a crucial time. You first begin to wake up to what the world contains and to see people a little more clearly. "Puppy love" isn't a joke to the kids who go through it. It can be lovely or terrible.

2. Keep it simple.

The basic things are the simplicity of the words—very understandable, very simple, very basic. Boy, girl, meeting, breaking up, in love, pleading, be my baby, I love you. Just very simple, basic things.

3. Know the basic song forms.

There are always variations from the basic song forms, but you should know the ones that are used most often. There's verse, verse, bridge and verse, known as A, A, B, A. Or 32 bars: 8, 8, 8, 8. Or the chorus first. Or AB, AB, AB. Then there's the 12 bar blues.

A lot of top records have made it with an extra bar, or all of a sudden everybody stops and there's talking. The rules are flexible.

4. Don't copy anyone else.

Anybody who hears a song and thinks, "this is the way I should do it," is headed for disaster. If you hear someone you particularly admire because his sound is different, then come up with something equal to that—but your own.

It's difficult if you write words and not music or vice versa. It's best to find a friend who can write either music or lyrics.

Also, if you copy someone else's music, they might sue you.

5. Make a demonstration record.

Music publishers and record company executives are busy people. They can't sit around all day and listen to every songwriter who knocks on their door. You have to submit your songs to them on a demo record.

Several recording studios specialize in making demos. They charge about $30 an hour and they have pianos, drums and other instruments available. Any musicians you use get paid around $20 or more an hour.

Get your demo made as inexpensively as possible.

6. Find a music publisher.

Once you've made a demo record of your song, think of an artist it might be good for. Find out who published the artist's last song by looking on the record. Go to that publisher, nicely dressed, and tell them what you have.

Nearly every major publisher has an office in New York between Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and 45th and 57th Streets. The two most important buildings are 1619 Broadway and 1650 Broadway.

If you don't live near New York, mail your demo record. Enclose a stamped, self-addressed return envelope. You can probably get a list of music publishers by asking your librarian.

7. Believe in yourself and don't give up too easily.

If you don't think you're good, don't try it. You'll starve. You're better off in school.

If you have faith in your ability, never give up. I was writing songs for eight years before I met with any success. Learn from your mistakes and keep trying.

With thanks to Spectropop.

Scarved

2009-08-27T00:18:00.014+10:00

Well, the Melbourne Writers Festival is in full swing, and even though I'm not there to enjoy it I thought I'd offer you something as a special tribute to this most blustery and bookish of seasons. Allow me to re/acquaint you with what was (at least until Nam Le's The Boat came out), pretty much the most earth-shattering publication to hit the literary festival circuit in years—the brilliant, wordless Playtime with Your Scarf, by Hermès'.

We all know that my fashion tastes are actually those of a 57 year-old woman and, added to this, being a professional book editor means it's mandatory for me to incorporate a scarf into my daily attire. (It might interest you to know that learning how to tie a plisse knot was actually the first thing we learned at Publishing and Editing School, even before they taught us what a caret was). So it will come as no surprise to tell you that I love this booklet. In fact, I love the entire Hermès site. It's beautiful.

Apparently you get given a copy of Playtime with Your Scarf for free when you purchase a Hermès scarf. So you might like to buy this gorgeous piece:

Jungle Love
Cotton charm scarf, hand-rolled (28" x 28")
Ref. 411876S06
$250.00

Or this one:
Chasse en Inde
Silk twill scarf, hand-rolled (36" x 36")
Ref. 001747S28
$375.00

Or this:
Brandebourgs
Vintage silk twill scarf (70 x 70 cm), hand rolled
Ref. 981569S07
$AU 445.00

But did you know: These principles of scarf-tying can be applied to absolutely any scarf you already have in your possession! So why not just download the full booklet off the site, gorgeously attach a scarf to your neck in one of the styles instructed by Hermès, flit over to the Melbourne Writers Festival for that session with Kate Grenville, and spend the cash on books instead?

Isn't life grand!

BONUS MWF TIP: 'Wow' all your new writers' festival friends by casually throwing the proper pronunciation of 'Hermès' into your conversation! You will quickly realise that learning how to say this word is a useful skill that you can re-use over and over again at arts festivals world-wide.

Here it is. And don't say Lorelei V never teaches you anything worthwhile.

The 'H' is silent. Hermès is pronounced 'ER-mez'. Not 'AIR-may'. Not 'HERM-ease'.

My brother takes the most beautiful photos

2009-08-26T00:40:00.004+10:00

My time here is almost up, so I just wanted to clock in a couple more India-centric posts before I leave.

Here are some of Lachy's photos. You should click on them to enlarge. They were taken in Rajasthan, in northern India.

Photos by Lachlan Raoul Waite

Interview with Courtney Love

2009-08-25T00:34:00.024+10:00

All my friends are un-following Courtney Love on Twitter because she is utterly incoherent. Noone can understand a word she says. Courtney herself knows about this, and today she screeched through the Twitterverse: YEAH I DONT MAKE ALOT OF SENSE TO MOST OF YU SO IM GONNA GET A PRIVATE ACCOUNT FOR FRIENDS AND A PUBLIC ACCOUNT I KNOW...

But I wanted to help her out because she is honest-to-goodness one of the biggest heroes of my life. And I figured that if people could have the experience of reading her tweets in the context of a conventional-style interview, like the kind they read every weekend in the crappy, glossy, pullout section of a newspaper, then maybe they will be able to reconnect with what she is trying to get at and thus make peace with her erratic but highly entertaining style, instead of viewing her merely as an illiterate interruption to their day.

Courtney Love glides into the room and settles her tall frame into the sofa. Her assistant hands her a cup of lapsang souchang and she sips at it with a demure grace that seems out of character for a notoriously badly-behaved rock goddess. She looks the very paragon of fashion, but don't tell Ms Love that! "I find that other than an investment here and there, it's all irrelevant," she says. "Example: I am wearing a Dries skirt; it's from the nineties. You'd never know/care!" She points at her gorgeous Laboutin high heels. "It's not like I'm going to buy every Laboutin in the store," she clarifies.

The widow of Kurt Cobain lights a cigarette and ponders for a moment. "I do want the Acne forties bathing suit—looks like the Geigriches topless suit (YES, I HAVE ONE, and a paper Campbells Soup dress !)—but pinup," she says with a shrug. "But when girls love clothes more than music, it rankles my soul." She emits a deep grizzling sound, best interpreted as a harrumph. "When said girls are allegedly 'musicians' that disgusts me." Taking a long drag on her cigarette, she asks herself out loud: "Music or clothes?" Her eyes shine like onyx as she contemplates the age-old riddle. "I'll stick with music, thanks, if it's down to it. I can always write a song—good pen, good paper, fine cigar and a Martin."

Lighting another cigarette, she continues with weary exasperation, as if she is always being asked to speak on behalf of every woman who plays guitar. "Ask Dave Navarro and Billy Corgan if they would actually give one fuck what they were wearing, over their guitars." She then lets out a sudden bellowing howl, like an animal in pain. "I'm the same creature!" she murmurs. "DON'T call yourself a musician, PLEASE, if your clothes matter to you more than your guitar." She takes a deep drag of her cigarette. "It makes me ache with such ... genderly sadness," she whispers, with frightening intensity.

After a few minutes, her three minders pick her up off the floor, and the subject turns to etsy.com, her favourite online shopping emporium. "Westwood, Dries, Laboutin, (NO WEDGES EVER, except Owens Wedge Boots). Is there a 'Classic' jean? YES! Hysteric Glamour!" she answers her own question exuberantly. But it's not all online shopping for Love. She relates a dangerous encounter she had today in an actual shop. "Got snookered by LA store into this megabundle of a sale," she explains. "End of season drama/comedy. It's silly! Love it, just don't need it," she states firmly.

She suddenly grabs her phone and, apologetically informs me that she really has to tell Peaches Geldof something immediately. "I'm a tard, I should've grabbed this dress, hurled caution to the wind, headed down to Larkin Electric Ladyland," she explains. "Can't you sing pretty?" she exclaims suddenly, presumably to the housemaid who has come in to wipe the dust off the indoor greenery. In the same breath she confides to me in a husky stage-whisper: "I relate to the Tanqueray commercial on Mad Men." Tapping her Laboutin-clad foot impatiently as she waits for Peaches to answer, she elaborates: "It's a great ad. I hate gin though, always have."

She only gets Peaches' messagebank. With a huff, she orders: "Call me—I have a series of three questions I need you to answer from your gut." She brusquely hangs up. Turning to me with a non-sequiturial sparkle in her eye, she says: "If a piano is sharp to MY ears—trust me, it's SHARP."

Suddenly, with an abrupt gasp of horror, she picks her phone back up. Tut-tutting herself, she dials another number. The phone is on loudspeaker; I hear the call has gone to Mariah Carey's voicemail."I lost your number!" Love bellows into the phone. "I think we'd better have that lunch, now that I'm settling. That shawl, by the way, is AMAZINGLY cool, FYI." She signs off with her characteristic drawl: "Courts."

She immediately dials one more number and sits waiting for voicemail to pick up again. "Pink!" she squeals. "You need to RUN on your day off to the Tony Robbins master course! I met him on The View and at Brett Ratner's." She shakes her head, almost disbelieving. "Amazing, AMAZING MAN!" she gushes.

Then—remembering that Pink is currently on tour in Australia—she articulates her next words very carefully into the mouthpiece."Pink. Seriously do not fuck around with the Australian suburban insect wildlife. Shit, I felt like Ozzy—I'm in the SPOTLIGHT and I get bitten!" Warming to her theme, her arms start moving around wildly as her assistant tries to light her another cigarette. "NOONE believed me! Except our drummer Samantha Maloney who saw the thing. I threw an axle-sized strop and next day had STAFF INFECTION!" She jumps up on to the couch. "On one of the Bog [sic] Day Outs I did! I got FUCKING—I swear to god—BITTEN BY A BAT THING onstage in Adelaide in front of 80,000 or so."

Despite the grave dents her Laboutin heels are making in the hotel upholstery, Love starts jumping on the sofa until she is abruptly brought down to earth by the re-entry of the housemaid with her daily laundry. She takes one look at it and rolls her eyes. "Oh now, for fuck's sake, someone has REALLY DONE IT!" She snatches the bag from the maid and yells down the line to Pink: "Housekeeping has DRYCLEANED a nineties Flannel of my dearly departed's. This is too much!" she says with an almost Basil Fawlty-esque slap of her forehead. She apologises to Pink, says she's gotta go, and lumbers reluctantly down from the couch.

Flipping her phone shut, she suddenly turns and snaps viciously at me: "Have you ever just slept and slept and slept and woken up to Bridezillas and gone 'Oh fuck no' and sat waiting for tampons? No? well..." She addresses everyone else in the room (three minders, her PA, the maid with the laundry and Eric Erlandson) and informs them all with a menacing snarl: "If that was lost on any of you it's Chinese for 'loads of my daughter's trust was stolen and continues to be by lawyers who also stole MJ's dollars.'" She then starts sobbing and reaches once more for her phone, and works on the keypad maniacally for a few tense minutes.

Then suddenly, without warning, in a poignant gesture of female camaraderie, she passes the phone to me so I can see who she texted. It's Gwyneth Paltrow. "You know, I know, as do many many others, how much you put into Sylvia," it says. "Anyone not seeing it is a fool—she pours it out, 110%." Love wipes away a final tear and pauses for a moment, reflectively. Then, with a grin and a cheeky conspiratorial glance in my direction, she grabs the phone back and starts madly texting again. Chuckling heartily, she shows me what she's written. It's a text to Quentin Tarantino. "You down with Tony Robbins?" it asks. "I'm making Diablo Cody go with me to FIJI. That'll kill her avoidancy." She giggles and then tenderly puts the phone back in her Laboutin purse. I ask her what she thinks of ...

"NICK CAVE is a GOD," she suddenly cries out. "Anyone who doesn't know that simple fact shouldn't be allowed to BE twenty-two!" I nod my head in absolute agreement, relieved that her dark and haunting melancholy seems to have passed. "Have you seen Cave's SON? I feel so old." She thinks for a moment. "Then again have you seen my daughter? I am so old! Kids stop with the POP."

With this rather enigmatic statement, she looks at her watch and gasps. "So, changing subject, I have to go make music now," she says, gathering her cigarettes and stuffing them into her Laboutin purse. "After I read some of Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and chant and listen to the 'Art of War' CD."

She leaves me with one final piece of advice: "Listen to The Gossip—'Love Long Distance' (Fake Blood Remix) at http://awe.sm/1Ea2!" she insists. And as she disappears down the hallway she turns back to me and screams: "The Gossip go Rubin!"

And then suddenly, just like that, all is quiet and Courtney Love is gone.

All quotes are directly from @courtneylover79, although italicised emphasis is my own, because goddammed Twitter still won't allow anyone to do it. But I think I've put it where she meant it to be.

Why not consider following her again if you've recently un-followed her? You don't get anything valuable in this life without hard work, right?

A bittersweet weekend

2009-08-24T00:52:00.004+10:00

The good part: I spent all of Friday night cleaning out my entire inbox to zero. There have been 5,400 emails sitting in it since 2006. The experience was exhilarating, psychotic and cathartic and took four hours.

The bad part: I spent all of Saturday and Sunday trying to build a new website. The experience was exhilarating, psychotic and cathartic and has taken 48 hours so far and counting.

There's nothing like computer problems to make you wanna suddenly get back together with every boyfriend you've ever had on the offchance that one of them might pop round and be able to fix everything. It's a really pathetic feeling.

I knew it was going to be hard but it's turned out to be really hard and if you don't mind, I pretty much hate everything and just want to be alone with Proust right now.

But before I go, let's accentuate the positive. If you're wondering how I managed the incredible task of cleaning out my inbox completely, I was inspired by this talk from 2007. It was so pertinent and interesting to me that I took notes while I was watching it. The guy, Merlin Mann, has swiftly become my hero. I read every word the man has written on his website, 43 Folders,while I was waiting for weird shit that I don't understand to upload, download and just freakin' work this weekend, and it was so interesting to me that I took notes of that stuff, too. Also, his 5ives are good.

Liver lovers

2009-08-21T00:27:00.006+10:00

I find it rare to find someone use the word 'liver' to mean 'one who lives' but Maya Angelou has done it. What do you think of:

Life loves the liver of it.

Sure, I know there are heaps of definitions of 'liver':

Liver

One who, or that which, lives.

A resident; a dweller; as, a liver in Brooklyn.

One whose course of life has some marked characteristic (expressed by an adjective); as, a free liver.

A very large glandular and vascular organ in the visceral cavity of all vertebrates.

The glossy ibis (Ibis falcinellus); — said to have given its name to the city of Liverpool.

But whenever I hear the word, I only ever hear the definition that describes a very large glandular and vascular organ in the visceral cavity of all vertebrates. So I prefer to substitute the word 'liver' with 'a person who lives' whenever I discover it in my reading, just to avoid all reddish-brown, digestive, bile-ish connotations that always seem to rise the surface, because I'm a bit squeamish like that. So, for me, Angelou's exuberant observation, above, becomes:

Life loves the person who lives it. Which is nowhere near as good, I know, but you still understand what the cheerful woman is trying to get at. Which is more than I can say for Miguel de Unamuno's little platitude when I gave it a liver transplant:

A man does not die of love or his person who lives or even of old age; he dies of being a man.

Or Ray Charles' anatomy lesson:

I was born with music inside me. Music was one of my parts. Like my ribs, my kidneys, my person who lives, my heart.

Still, clarity rarely matters once you get going; away I went, blithely substituting the word 'liver' in anything I could find, when I hit on Irishman JM Synge's liver-usage, below. I immediately realised that, due to my deep respect for rhyming poetry, there was—sadly—no way I could operate on this one:

Lord, confound this surly sister
Blight her brow with blotch and blister,
Cramp her larynx, lung and liver
In her guts a galling give her.

I was gutted. You might even say I was livered.

Indian sunset from our balcony

2009-08-19T22:39:00.008+10:00

Not many words again as I'm on deadline. But this is what I saw tonight. Photos by Lachy. Dead palm tree by both of us.

We really did try our best with that plant, but it stubbornly refused to live.

Cherilyn Sarkisian

2009-08-18T23:39:00.011+10:00

One day I'm going to have my own show on TV and every single episode I will sing this. And maybe on Fridays, I will vary it with this.

Thank you, Cher. There is noone on earth like you.

Astronauts' wives

2009-08-18T00:15:00.003+10:00

"I used to go outside and just look up at the Moon," says Faye Stafford, former wife of Apollo 10 astronaut Thomas Stafford. "It was hard for us wives to understand what the men were really experiencing. And of course they were treated like royalty. It was hard for them to come home. What could ever compete with that? I was lucky if I could come second."

(via)

Grief Tourism

2009-08-16T22:07:00.018+10:00

Mumbai
Mumbai, or Bombay as it is still seems to be called by pretty much everyone, was wonderful. Oh, I had to work through some pretty gruesome themes in my head before I could forget about bloodshed and bombs and set out to shop for fabrics and peacock feathers. It was all because I'd read a bunch of articles about grief tourism before we left, and even though I was heading there to buy fabrics and peacock feathers, and even though it was already a popular travel destination for visitors to India even before terrorists killed a bunch of people less than a year ago, I had read so much about grief tourism and it was so fresh in my mind, and I have such an annoying habit of thinking the worst about myself which compels me to be perennially suspicious of my own motives, that I was forced to ask the question: Well, am I a grief tourist, then?

So that's why I found myself at the Leopold Cafe (which was a tourist destination for over a hundred years before the bombings happened last November), eating a plate of palak paneer with my brother and visualising how I might respond if a bunch of gunmen started throwing grenades around and shooting at us, right then and there, like they did at that very establishment last year. Welcome to what it's like to be me. I played the same grisly game at Anzac Cove, Ground Zero, the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Anne Frank's house, and I mean, you should have seen me at Troy, when I spent a concerted minute or two really feeling what it might be like to be positioned inside a wooden horse rolling around the countryside with my sword held at the ready.

Grief tourism and me
So I really don't like the term 'grief tourism' one bit. I tend to favour the word 'imagination' instead. Because isn't this act of going to a place and putting myself in the same situation and thinking about what it might have been like to be there, a way of trying to understand something about humanity which is rather precious to me as a person and also crucial to my profession as a writer? I bristle at the thought that someone has invented a term to describe something I've been doing instinctively ever since I was in about grade three and went camping with my family and, for the first time, actually listened properly to the words of 'Waltzing Matilda'— understanding suddenly by the jolting, sick feeling in my stomach that the jolly swagman drowned himself in the billabong; a billabong that was probably just like that muddy, brown lagoon we swam in every day. Imagining it in full colour like this by visiting a place that made it real was a revelation. And it scared me off stealing sheep forever.

So, I still don't really understand what 'grief tourism' means
Researching it over the last few hours has made me hate the term even more, especially when I see how nebulous the definition is and how easy it is to label even a visitor to the pyramids of Egypt a 'dark tourist'. This website tries to explain the difference between a grief tourist and a regular tourist, but I find the distinction pretty shaky. It says: A tourist who travels to New York City to visit Ground Zero is a grief tourist, but a tourist who travels to go see some Broadway shows and climb the Empire State Building who also happens to visit Ground Zero is a regular tourist.

Utterly absurd to try to even analyse why you're visiting New York City in these terms. Surely you're there for the city, and a city is a bunch of different experiences. And isn't it just as natural to want to visit Ground Zero because you saw it on TV as to want to visit Katz's Deli because you watched When Harry Met Sally on TV, too? I don't mean to compare the deaths of thousands of people with a Nora Ephron film, but once you start telling people they're sick if they're curious to go to a place and experience it for themselves—whether they want to sit at the table where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm or visit the empty space where the almost unimaginable (and it is unimaginable if you have never been there) horror of 9/11 occurred—you run the risk of scaring people off from trying to grasp for themselves some really important concepts, such as bad things (terror attacks; romantic comedies) can and do happen because humans are essentially idiots.

Touristic intent
I understand that the definition of grief tourism rests on intention, and I'm not going to suggest that the hundreds of tourists filing through the British town of Soham were interested in anything other than the 2002 murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, but the term still riles me. Because that feeling you get by connecting with a place and its history used to just be called travel, and it's what we all used to do to educate ourselves and make ourselves better people before some dudes who may never ever get over Princess Diana's death coined the term and started to make us all feel paranoid about doing anything which might make us learn or feel anything.

Back to Mumbai
Anyway, so Lachy and I were in the Leopold Cafe and I was looking around, and it has that vaguely stoned, backpackery vibe shared by every place listed in any Lonely Planet guidebook, and I wondered out loud if maybe all these people were grief tourists then: Were they all here to look for bullet holes in the walls?

And Lachy—being better read than me as he has gotten up to page 122 of Shantaram whereas I dropped off at the second page—said, 'Dude, all these people are obviously here because of Shantaram.' And I looked over to the counter, and sure enough there was a pile of Shantarams sitting proudly by the cash register, and I could see bits of the book's turquoise and rust cover peeking out of several people's bags, and I knew Lachy was right.

I leaned back in my chair and, even though I only got to the second page of it myself because I found it so boring and illiterate, I felt pretty excited that a book, any book, had generated this sort of interest in a place. I mean, it's what we in the business call a publishing phenomenon! And literary tourism is such a nicer thing to call it than grief tourism, whatever that is.

So even though I haven't read the book and never intend to, I decided I was at Leopold's as a literary tourist too. But because there are no rules saying literary tourists can't also be completely messed up in the head and paranoid about their own safety, I then asked Lachy what he would do if some guys walked in and started shooting, and he sighed and said he'd probably hit the floor, he supposed? I nodded vigorously, and while he polished off the last of the naan bread I made some quick calculations and worked out that from where I was sitting I could probably sprint to the exit in a couple of seconds, and then if I hadn't already been shot or blown up, maybe if I ran fast enough down the street I might be okay.

Out of the office

2009-08-10T22:50:00.008+10:00

Tomorrow Lach and I are going to Mumbai for a few days, so I won't be posting for the rest of the week. Please accept this old photo of my Mum and Dad (at right) posing with two exceedingly interesting young men (at left), as a substitute for regular blogging.

If that isn't enough, and if you—like eight-year-old me—can't live without constant amusement in your life and need a list of things to do whenever you get bored, I have come to your rescue with a few scrambled-together suggestions:

Entangle yourself in this page of Marilyn Monroe costume tests
Read the Tao Te Ching
Learn how to make a mind map
Check out the poem of the day
Watch the bit just before the murder-suicide in Act 3 of Kenneth Macmillan's ballet, Mayerling
Read 'The American Male at Age 10' by Susan Orlean
Watch hilarious Variety Shac shorts
Listen to the Cat Power BBC collection
Find out why lots of people hate the word 'moist'
Watch this Ted Talk about brains
Marvel at Chekhov's prolific brilliance
Scour the Guardian's series on Writers' rooms
You could just maybe for two seconds look at The Diary of Suri Cruise
Read this 1961 piece by John Updike on Franny And Zooey
Enjoy this genius collection of Tom Swifties adverbial puns
Watch Kate Bush film clips

I think it's fair to say that everything always comes back to watching Kate Bush film clips.

Careers counselling

2009-08-10T00:13:00.017+10:00

There's only one way to describe a person who can finish reading Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White at 1 am Sunday morning, and then wake up at 9 am the next day and immediately get started on part four of Proust's In Search of Lost Time without even getting out of bed.

That person can only be described as the architect of their own life, and that person this weekend was me.

Needing to articulate the euphoria that this realisation produced in me, I decided to get up and tell my brother about it. He was in the living room.

'You know what, Lach? I just realised I'm the architect of my own life.'

'Hmm?'

'I said, I'm the architect of my own life! Thanks to a dramatic series of personal and professional failures which made it necessary to completely drop out of society for a while (except for Twitter and sometimes Facebook), I've inadvertently constructed a lifestyle where I can just read book after book after book without anyone even trying to stop me!'

'That's really great.'

'Or do you like choreographer better? "I am the choreographer of my own life."'

'Choreographer sounds good, too.'

'Or what about author? People are always talking about being the author of their own lives. "I'm the author of my own life." What do you think?'

'Yeah, author's good, too.'

'Which do you like best though: Architect. Choreographer. Or author?'

'I like them all.'

'But which do you like best?'

'Well, choreographers write their own steps, so I guess I like choreographer.'

'But they're not writing the steps for themselves usually, are they?'

'I don't really know the ins and outs of the profession.'

'Well, I do actually, because my best friend is a ballet dancer, so even though there are probably some dancer/choreographers out there, most choreographers are choreographing the steps for someone else to perform.'

'Well, can you be the dancer/choreographer of your own life then?'

'Well, I'm uncomfortable with that because it makes me sound arrogant.'

'I see.'

'Because wouldn't you feel intimidated by my multiple talents if I went up to you at a party, and said,"Hi, I'm Lorelei, and I'm the dancer/choreographer of my own life?"'

'Okay. So go back to architect then. I liked architect.'

'Yeah, I liked it, too. And I can definitely imagine introducing myself at a party as an architect.'

'So it's settled. You're the architect of your own life then.'

'Except the only problem is that all the architects are out of work right now.'

'I thought we were only speaking metaphorically though.'

'But metaphors need to be based on fact! I did a creative writing undergrad, Lach, I should know! And with the recession, the fact is, architects are the first people who lost their jobs.'

'I still don't see that it really matters when you're just trying to find a way to express that euphoric realisation that you are the master of your own destiny.'

'Well, my best friend is an architect actually, Lachlan, and so sorry if I just don't feel comfortable acting all smug about being the architect of my own life when she is really struggling right now just to be an architect of houses, okay.'

'Okay. Sorry. So why don't you just be the author of your own life, then?'

'Because while we've been sitting here talking about it, I've started to have second thoughts about that one, too, and I realised I don't like having a metaphorical job that's the same as my real job. I just think it shows a real lack of imagination. Can you help me think of something else?'

'Okay. What about a builder?'

'I'm not gonna be some metaphorical bogan tradie! I want something artistic.'

'Okay, so, maybe like a composer?'

'Sounds like "poseur".'

'A costume designer?'

'Too camp.'

'A director?'

Too much responsibility.'

'A cinematographer?'

'Too many syllables.'

'A dolly grip, then?'

'Yes! That's it! You've got it! That's exactly how I feel right now! I feel like I'm the dolly grip of my own life!'

'Mum and Dad would have wanted you to be the architect.'

'Well it's not their life, is it, it's mine! And I'm the dolly grip of it!'

Be still, my moving, movie title heart

2009-08-07T01:03:00.011+10:00

If you—like me—are just perpetually super-crazy-busy going about your life, manically trying to do all the little things with your day that you need to do to keep everything moving forward, you've probably never really given much thought to how brilliant the art of movie titling is. Or maybe, you—like me—have, but you forgot about it straight away because then the movie started.

Furthermore, perhaps you—like me—had no idea that there are people out there who put a lot of time and effort into collecting screenshots of movie titles and putting them all on a website so that you—and I—can be reminded of how interesting they are. But there are! To wit: this site.

Here's what the creator of the site says:

I've seen a lot of movies over the years, and to prove I've sat through at least the first ten minutes of them I started making screenshots of the titles. Then my computer crashed and I almost lost them all. To save them for future generations I created this little website.

To save them for future generations. Isn't that the best?!

I think that Sunset Boulevard one is actually my favourite. Oh, but don't make me choose. I'm crazy about them all. Go and take a look for yourself. It's the end of the week!

(via Matt Riviera)

I'm a feminist and I suspect you might be too (even if you don't like the word)

2009-08-05T22:21:00.018+10:00

A brilliant article on feminism in the Times was paired this afternoon with a live online debate, which was really interesting to follow. Here are some of the comments from readers that stood out to me:

[Comment From Lucy]
I find it frankly bizarre to think that modern women don't identify themselves as feminists. If you are a woman and you refuse to accept the role as a mother alone, then surely you are a feminist! Maybe it is just a lack of understanding about what the concept means? Btw I loved the article today!

[Comment From Katie]
... How can you expect young people to say they're a feminist when they're given conflicting definitions of a highly politically charged term? It needs to be either re-claimed or altered. Feminism doesn't mean equality, that's the issue. That's how you and I see it, but thousands of men and women think it means something else. I am a feminist and I'm proud, but I go to some lengths to explain what that word means to me, and what it means to my mum who was on the cover of Spare Rib in the 80s.

[Comment From Clive Burghard]
I think Katie is right, we do need a new turn of phrase as the word 'feminism' conjures up some pretty unapealing images.

[Comment From Naomi Mc]
If feminism conjures up 'unpleasant' images for you, then the backlash propaganda is working! If you think feminism is about man-hating than you are sadly deluded. And not very well read.

[Comment From Auraliser]
I think the whole 'misandry' thing is a distraction. I don't know any feminists who 'hate men', and know many men who are feminists. It's just a handy stereotype to discredit feminists who are fighting to change the status quo.

[Comment From Lisa Benjamin]
chris, just because the primary carer has traditonally been the mother it doesn't mean that it should be that way and that men can't take an equal caring role. Gender roles shouldn't be so rigid.

[Comment From Emily Amber]
The problem isn't men as such but the way that society expects/allows men to behave. It surely shouldnt be 'normal' for a man to be ogling page three on the bus to work surrounded by school girls?

[Comment From nan]
To me, a large part of the problem is the negaitve and gendered language used by the media when describing the actions of women, or women generally. Today the Times has an article entitled "[UK Labour's Deputy Leader Harriet] Harman digs in heels to demand tough rape law". Why not simply, "Harman demands tougher rape law"?

[Comment From Naomi Mc]
Men can learn a lot from feminism and use it to analyse masculinity. Men's gender is constructed as much as women's.

I couldn't help adding a plug for one of the best books I read last year (see my review of it here), but in my enthusiasm I completely forgot to mention the several other excellent feminist-issue books that have also been published in the past decade.

But I'm writing this post because it never fails to shock and surprise me when I realise there are women and men out there who don't identify as being feminists, when they so obviously (to me) are. How can I have such a different idea of the word to other people? Do people honestly still think of feminists as being fat, hairy lesbians? Were they ever that? I don't think so. Let me hand it over to commenter Beth for a second:

[Comment From Beth]
In the first year at uni we were asked who in the class were feminists. Only myself and a couple of other girls raised their hands. In the third year when asked again nearly all members of the class self-identified as feminists, including most of the lads. It's all about education.

I agree.

Anyway, this is just all way too enormous to even try to attack in one post, but it's always an excellent thing when the mainstream media starts talking about feminism so I really wanted to highlight it.

Here are some places to go where people are talking about this stuff non-stop, though!

Confessions of a Brand New Feminist—this is just one article on The F-Word, a UK blog, that recently caught my attention. A 22-year-old woman explains how she never used to identify with the word 'feminist' but now she does.

The F-Bomb—a blog written by a 16-year-old American girl who I'm jealous of because she got to interview Gloria Steinem.

Bust Magazine—because it's just the best.

And two excellent Australian blogs that you should check out regularly if you don't already. Because I said so:

The Dawn Chorus

Hoyden about Town

There are so many other brilliant sites to check out if you are trying to work out whether you want to call yourself a feminist (and I say it again—I really think that you do), but that's a start. Also, I admit that I'm honestly, only now, at 29, starting to understand how reluctant some people feel about using the word, but I can't help but say to those people that the very nature of language is that it changes. It's alive and breathing. It means what we say it means. People are in control of language, not the other way round. So if you're concerned that the word 'feminist' is a bit too hazy for your liking and you're scared of what other people think it means, then think about how you can actually sculpt the meaning of a word through your own actions, your own ideas—and then if everyone realises it's just a word and not a frightening monster full of perplexing ideas that they don't really understand and turn it into the word they want it to be—because we need a word for what we're talking about here and noone has seemed to be able to come up with anything better yet—then eventually there will be no doubt what we mean when we say 'feminist'. It's exciting to think about that, I think.

Give the maid the night off

2009-08-04T22:27:00.006+10:00

I think most of you would agree that the 'Let's Go to the Movies' number from Annie is so jaw-droppingly good that it's impossible to really talk about too much. But I think its safe to say that the main points the average viewer will take from it are:

Ann Reinking flashes her undies at us several times while she is dancing in her slip.
Ann Reinking—after donning her stylish and smart movie-attending suit, the one with the impossibly tight-around-the-hips pencil skirt that most women would barely be able to get into, let alone kick up in any sort of razzle-dazzle, musical-theatre-way—manages to flash us one more time in it just as she and Annie are leaving the house.

Her skills in this are utterly breathtaking. And it's precisely this final flash before they leave Daddy Warbux's mansion and arrive at Radio City Music Hall that brings me to what I'd like to highlight this evening.

By now, you have ascertained by her flash-worthy enthusiasm that Ann Reinking is just too thrilled to be going to see Camille that she couldn't care less about the proper running of a household, and so she stampedes out the door (in a jazzy, Bob Fosse way), and sings, with the carefree abandon of a woman whose billionaire boss is waiting outside to take her for a spin in his Rolls Royce, the line: 'Give the maid the night off!'

And that's when you see the loyal old maid, who has just handed Reinking her delicate little hat, do a sort of 'whooping' gesture, and you hear a zany whistle sound which cannily mirrors the character's own elevated and uncontainable emotions.

Here are the screenshots of what I'm talking about:

See how stoked that maid is? Anyway, this is all just to say that I feel exactly like that maid right now, because I'm giving myself the night off! Which means I am going to do some aerobics, wash my hair, then make a hot chocolate and continue reading The Woman in White which is SO DAMN GOOD I can barely even BREATHE.

Now that you know my entire schedule for the evening, you can watch the whole 'Let's Go to the Movies' scene here. Or otherwise any night whatsoever at either my parents' house or either of my sisters' houses. I repeat, any night at all. I think that movie has been playing non-stop, on a loop, at every residence I have ever been vaguely associated with by blood, since I was born. And in some way, I think perhaps that it has made me who I am today.

Why I love Twitter (most of the time)

2009-08-03T22:01:00.022+10:00

Like many people, I have a stormy on-again off-again relationship with the internet. Every time I decide I hate it and swear off it forever (usually because it's stopping me from writing), I always come crawling back to it within days (sometimes hours), begging for its forgiveness and feeling stupid for not having properly comprehended its massive power, its usefulness and its genius.

And then, each time I come back, I invariably go through a bunch of different phases with the rich variety of stuff it has to offer—just as there is a time to love and a time to hate, I honestly believe there is a time for Facebook and a time for StumbleUpon. But at the moment, the reason I am once again assured of the internet's brilliance, is Twitter.

THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE BORING ILK OF EPIPHANY THAT GENERALLY VISITS UPON MIDDLE-AGED HOUSEWIVES WHO HAVE JUST DISCOVERED THE INTERNET FOR THE FIRST TIME

It isn't boring, it's quite revelatory, I assure you. Shut up and let me get to the point.

Now, remember how a little over two and a half years ago I fled to New York in the hope of becoming pretty much just your average, everyday, shit-hot New York publishing maven? I worked very hard in the months leading up to departure—not just on my hair colour, which I was determined should be of the fiercest red—but also on sourcing as many contacts as I could (I was assisted greatly in this by two of my wonderful former university lecturers at RMIT).

I spent months before I even got on the plane writing introductory letters, and then follow-ups, and then follow-ups to follow-ups, and I finally set up some meetings through a series of complete flukes. Actually, they weren't complete flukes at all, because one of the first things I learned about the New York publishing world was the willingness of its inhabitants to explain their jobs and their passions to random, (fiercely) redheaded Australian editors who just happened to be interested in what they did for a living. I totally loved that about them, and I owe so much of what I got to experience to this vital characteristic of the NYC industry.

And then once I got there, each person I met with would more often than not recommend me to someone else. Who would then recommend me on to someone else. And thus I was the grateful beneficiary of the wisdom of an entire chain of awe-inspiring editors, publishers, and marketing and publicity directors; people who were so generous in sharing their knowledge and their contacts with me that, even to this day, I can't believe how lucky I was to have ever gotten to meet any of them.

ENOUGH OF THE SUCK-UP—WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

I learned a lot of things over those nine months, including:

1) Wear a dress that stays on if you are going to an interview, and

2) Just because my old band has a MySpace page it does not in fact prove that I have the savvy internet marketing skills and qualifications necessary to actually work in the publicity/marketing department of a major New York publishing house. (Point embarrassingly taken. Out of the 60-plus interviews I went to during my time in New York, that was by far the worst, most inept one I have ever stumbled through.)

NON, JE NE REGRETTE RIEN

So, even though none of it worked out (FYI: it had more to do with visas and immigration than badly-behaved dresses), it all ended up okay in the end, because then I went to Thailand, read War and Peace, learned how to meditate, wrote a book, threw myself into the freelance life, and now here I am in India, reading In Search of Lost Time, letting my blonde roots grow out, perfecting my Pilates plank and working on my very first villanelle, due to come out sometime in late 2010 if I can ever think of a rhyme for 'carnelian'. It's been one crazy ride and I don't regret a minute of it.

But the reason I am mentioning all this is that I would do that New York stint so differently if I did it now. And I'd do it differently because of Twitter.

PRAY TELL

Before I left Australia, in 2007, I scoured the internet like crazy, googling every combination of 'New York' and 'publisher' you could possibly think of. (NB: I quickly discovered there's really only two serious combinations you could possibly think of, and both of them lead to the exact same places, but that's by-the-bye.)

And it gave me a bunch of excellent leads. For example, I was already an avid reader of editor Cheryl Klein's blog before I left, and we had arranged a lovely lunch meeting together when I first arrived. A little later on she needed an intern and I jumped at the chance, and thus I got to spend a delightful few months interning and learning from Cheryl and her colleague Emily at Arthur A Levine Books. So, yes, the internet definitely helped me back then.

But I can see how much more it could help me now if I was to attempt the same idiotic ambition again today.

YOU STILL HAVEN'T MENTIONED TWITTER YET

Okay. So I know I'm not the first one to discover that if you're a writer or if you work in publishing, Twitter's gotta be one of the best things that has ever happened to you since Gutenberg's dad said to Gutenberg's mum, You're looking ravishing tonight darling, why don't we go and make a baby who can grow up and invent the printing press so that billions of people over the next seven centuries will be able to write and publish and read books.

Because, by following writers and editors and publishers and literary agents (my personal favourites—geez, they're fiery, I love them) on Twitter, you are able to swiftly find blogs, articles, advice and conversations that you would never have discovered all on your own because the internet is too huge. You can pretty effortlessly gauge what's happening not just in your own local industry, but in other countries, too. You can also gradually get to know some splendid new people. And if you get to know some splendid new people, and if they work in New York publishing houses, or London publishing houses, or Sydney publishing houses, or if they're a writer in Dublin or Buenos Aires or Chennai, then it just makes you aware of a friendlier world out there, a world which makes the very idea of packing up and following your crazy redheaded publishing maven ideals feel perhaps a little less crazy than it felt in 2007.

YOU SOUND REALLY HAPPY WITH TWITTER. I FEEL VERY PLEASED FOR YOU.

Well, no, like I said, I frequently hate it. I took all of last Friday off it, in fact, because I just couldn't bear the distraction anymore. It was totally interrupting my work. But that was sort of my problem, not Twitter's. I honestly believe that with responsible use, Twitter can really help you stay excited about being a part of a world that loves books—one that cares as much about what happens to them as you do.

And so the reason I'm writing this is because I often find myself looking up people and publishers whom I think should be on Twitter, for the completely selfish reason that I really want to follow them so that I can better understand the machinations of their mind or their company or their dietary habits or whatever it is they feel like Tweeting about every day—but they're not there. And that reality kind of kills me.

So as you can see, this is not an ad for Twitter, it's an ad for community. Isn't that a pleasant and perfectly civilised way to finish things off?

The Young Visiters

2009-08-02T21:30:00.007+10:00

I have no idea how The Young Visiters has escaped my attention all these years. Like, for the last hundred or so. The novella was an instant hit upon publication in 1919, was then turned into a play, then a musical, then a film (starring Jim Broadbent, in 1984). I 'm sure you all already know about it, but I've been so busy with my own problems all my life that I totally missed it. So now it feels like I'm uncovering the most wonderful, gorgeous treasure that I've been waiting for forever. I bet my mum (former school librarian), knows all about it and will instantly protest that she has pointed it out to me a billion times before, but if so, I obviously didn't pay any attention. (Just like that other time I didn't pay any attention to her when she told me 'You know what, I think that redheaded boy is keen on you': Said redhead is now some sort of multi-billionaire and I probably should have listened to her then, too.)

Written by nine year-old Daisy Ashford in 1890, it has an amazing prose style which I know there is no way to imitate, but I still wish I could. You can read the entire thing on Project Gutenburg here. It's so short, that it will take you less than three morning tea breaks to read, I promise. And it is just so, so sweet, it'll really make you smile.

The opening of Chapter 2 is just one example of utter heaven. It concerns Mr Salteena, 'an elderly man of 42' who was 'fond of asking peaple to stay with him'. He has 'a quite a young girl of 17 staying with him named Ethel Monticue', and they have been invited to go and visit a friend:

When the great morning came Mr Salteena did not have an egg for his brekfast in case he should be sick on the jorney.

What top hat will you wear asked Ethel.

I shall wear my best black and my white alpacka coat to keep off the dust and flies replied Mr Salteena.

I shall put some red ruge on my face said Ethel because I am very pale owing to the drains in this house.

You will look very silly said Mr Salteena with a dry laugh.

Well so will you said Ethel in a snappy tone and she ran out of the room with a very superier run throwing out her legs behind and her arms swinging in rithum.

Well said the owner of the house she has a most idiotick run.

I wish I could write like this.

Ghosts

2009-07-30T21:25:00.011+10:00

'I am half inclined to think we are all ghosts. It is not only what we have inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us, but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over the world. They must be as countless as the grains of sands, it seems to me.'

That's the troubled Mrs Alving from Ibsen's play Ghosts which I read yesterday. I loved it. The ghost here is the old morality and the old ideas people cling to, but also, these ghosts are memories. Memories that haunt.

I was once told that if you go straight up to a ghost and look him directly in the eyes, then he can't haunt you anymore; that if a recollection torments you, you can make it melt like the Wicked Witch of the West if you stand up and look it straight in the face. It seemed so appealing at the time, but I soon discovered that it's harder than it sounds because ghosts are faceless and formless and you can't see them when they are in the room; you only sense they are there because of the sorrow swallowing you up with enormous gulps. And even if you can see his face, the ghost often has such beautiful, bewitching eyes—spellbinding eyes that were the reason he started haunting you in the first place—so that staring into them can only make his presence even more powerful so that soon you are feeding him with other memories and asking him to stay and then soon, the tactic you took to try to exterminate him has pounded you back onto the floor in a weeping, miserable mess, which is exactly the thing you were trying to lower the frequency of when you decided to look the bastard in the eyes.

So perhaps you really just have to accept that ghosts will haunt you forever, and hopefully, as time goes on, you simply get used to them being around. And maybe, eventually, they stop being terrifying and become friendly.

This is just a photo of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton running late for the ballet

2009-07-29T21:48:00.006+10:00

If you ever did the survey I ingeniously concocted about four hours before I boarded the plane to India (AND NINE OF YOU DID), you would know about one of the loves of my life, a little book called The Diane Keaton Scrapbook that my friend Hannah gave me. It's an early-eighties publication, full of photos of Annie (as she is affectionately known - her name is really Diane Hall, so she is Annie Hall, how about that!) and pairs those pics with really banal captions such as: 'Diane's interest in clothes leads her to fashion shows. Here she checks out a Ralph Lauren collection with Candice Bergen and writer Joel Schumacher'.

Anyway, the caption for this pic is bulging with such meaningless detail as to almost make it appear like there is something salacious going on between the lines: 'When Woody escorted First Lady Betty Ford to the ballet, his real date was Diane. He arrived with her, then joined Mrs Ford inside.'

Anyway, now you know 'the story behind the story', you can ponder Woody's fervour for joining the First Lady inside for perhaps half a second, worry at Diane's flustered gait for another half-second, admire the amazing flashes and the old-school video cameras for another moment, and then—precisely two seconds after you first looked at this photo—get back to your real life.

Oh yeah. I'm in India.

2009-07-28T21:59:00.005+10:00

My friend Rhianna sent me an email today that said: 'How are you going in India? From what I can tell you don't seem to leave the house much any more.' She's a scientist, among other brilliant things, so she cleverly calculated her inference on the evidence of these blog entries, which don't mention India so much anymore, I guess. (Except when something, well, happens.) She's right. I don't really leave the house much. Oh, I go for little walks now and then. Like, over the past three days, I went outside every single day. Just a little stroll down the street, to get, in order of purchase:

Saturday: Bread and books
Sunday: Painkillers and pomegranates
Monday: Lemonade and ladyfingers (okra)

(It's a real pain whenever I need two items on the same day that don't collude with my alliterative shopping list desire/disorder, but I cope. Usually by googling the thing in various foreign languages until I find a first-letter match.)

But it's been so wet. I had to cancel my morning jogs around the compound, it's that wet. Some days, it's impossible to get out the front gate on foot because the water is up to above your knees. But well, I guess there's really not much need to go out. It's sort of amazing. Maybe hellish and unhealthy to be so solitary and alone for so many days on end, but amazing, too. (And let's not forget I have Facebook, Twitter, Skype et al for social contact so I'm not a total monkish hermit. Yet.)

So this is the reason you don't hear about India much. I'm already starting to get anxious about leaving, though. I hate the very thought. I've fallen in love with it, and with my life here. Bet you thought you would never hear me ever say that.

Nature still happens in India during the monsoon, it's just that I only really ever get to see it from my window.

So anyway, I married the SOB

2009-07-27T23:21:00.013+10:00

Let's talk about Edward Albee today. I've become re-obsessed with him ever since I found out about the residency he offers at his barn in Montauk and saw that interview with him on The 7.30 Report. In. Love. But like so many of my crushes, he's 82 years old and gay. It's hard being me. Anyhoo.

In The 7.30 Report interview, he talks about the process of play writing and about the experience of having his first play, The Zoo Story, performed for the first time not in English but in German. He reminisces about the recent election of America's first black president in light of his 1959 play, The Death of Bessie Smith, which refers to the death of that outstanding jazz singer who allegedly bled to death after a car accident because a white hospital refused to treat her.

But let's just sit back and look at a bunch of photos from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf today. I feel like I could cultivate a really nice hobby, collecting photos of George and Martha and Nick in this dramatic scene, for the rest of my life. Martha's expression, no matter who she is played by, is just total gold to me.

Original Broadway production, 1962. With Uta Hagen, Arthur Hill and George Grizzard.

Film, 1966, directed by Mike Nichols. With Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, George Segal and Sandy Dennis.

1977 Broadway production. With Ben Gazzara, Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Kelton.

A 1992 production in Leeds. With John Hannah as George.

Dundee Rep production, Scotland, 2009. With Irene MacDougall as Martha.

2009 Broadway production. With Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin.

And just for good measure, here's a fun little snippet from the movie:

God, it's brilliant. Reading this play is one of the best things you could ever do with your Tuesday afternoon.

Half-time

2009-07-27T02:34:00.015+10:00

I have to somehow mark the occasion of reaching the halfway point in my reading of In Search of Lost Time. In the absence of having anyone to drink champagne with, please let me instead share just a little of what I've been going through in these final few pages.

Proust photographed two days after his death. By Man Ray. Hoping to get to the end of it before I die, too.

Near the end of Volume 3, the aristocratic Duchesse de Guermantes, who is on her way to dinner with her husband, the Duc, is dressed in the most magnificent red satin gown. In her hair she wears a long ostrich feather dyed bright red, and a tulle wrap of the same colour covers her shoulders. The enormous rubies she's wearing are described as 'claret glasses filled to the brim'.

She asks our old hero from Volume 1, Swann, to travel to Italy with her and her husband in ten months' time. He refuses.

'Will you tell me in one word why you can't come to Italy?' the Duchesse challenged Swann as she rose to take leave of us.

'But, my dear friend, it's because I shall have been dead for several months by then.'

This is the first the Duchesse (and the reader) has heard of Swann's terminal illness, and she has no idea how to react:

Poised for the first time in her life between two duties as far removed from each other as getting into her carriage to go to a dinner party and showing compassion for a man who was about to die, she could find no appropriate precedent to follow in the code of conventions.

So she acts like his illness is a joke, laughs it off ('We'll talk about it later'), and steps into the carriage to join her husband.

But the Duc notices she is wearing black shoes with her red gown, instead of red shoes. Even though, a minute earlier, he was incensed that they were running late for dinner, he now insists she go back and change into her red shoes, because he says 'it looks more elegant to have them matching the dress.'

She hurries in to change, and the Duc has a chat to the dying Swann about how hungry he is, and how much he hates being late for dinner.

And then the carriage rides off, and the memory that I, as a reader, am left with (until my brother comes back in two weeks with the next three volumes), is of poor, lovely Swann's impending death, the cruelty of the aristocracy, and the Duchesse's red, red, red shoes. It's totally genius.

A lovely red gown, maybe similar to what the Duchesse de Guermantes was wearing that night. (Ostrich feather not pictured.) There is no way to know from this photo if Anne Hathaway is pairing hers with red shoes, but if someone could just make her step into a carriage we would find out for sure.

People are harsh about Tom Cruise, but at least I don't see him making his wife run back into the palace to change her shoes.

Obviously, the Duc would had to have approved of this matched-up get-up. He would find the jazz trio horrifyingly bourgeois and badly-dressed, though.

I think he'd approve of this too, as both red gown and red shoes are present. Which makes me kind of still like him, even though he's a philandering bastard. Because which other early-twentieth-century French duke can you think of who would be a fan of Cyndi Lauper?

Maybe my carriage has finally reached the Champs Élysées

2009-07-24T01:43:00.009+10:00

Just going through a minor crisis of confidence. Wrestling with it takes up a lot of time and energy. Haven't written even a centimetre of a sentence all week that has made me interested in continuing any of the four of five partially-completed whatever-they-ares that I have on my plate, and this makes me enormously depressed.

I know it visits us all from time to time and the only reason I'm even mentioning it is because I vowed to myself back in February that I would write on this thing five days a week no matter what (except when I was out of range) so there is simply nothing else to do but write today's post even though the gist of it is that I hate myself for forcing myself to do this hard, hard job for the rest of my life, but that I would hate myself even more if I didn't rock up every day and try to do it despite the fact that I hate myself for ever even agreeing to it. To anyone else that would make no sense, but I know that you guys understand what I mean.

I'm a little delicate too because I'm at the bit in The Guermantes Way where Marcel's grandma is dying and Proust insists on cruelly twisting my insides around with sentences like this:

We make a point of telling ourselves that death can come at any moment, but when we do so we think of that moment as something vague and distant, not as something that can have anything to do with the day that has already begun or might mean that death - or the first sign of its partial possession of us, after which it will never loosen its hold again - will occur this afternoon, the almost inevitable afternoon with its hourly activities prescribed in advance.

And this one:

We have no suspicion that death, accompanying us in some obscure way, has chosen this very day to make its appearance, in a few minutes' time, roughly at the moment when the carriage reaches the Champs Élysées.

If you've ever read Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes you would know how difficult it is to read when your vision is completely obscured by your own hot, endless tears and scrunched-up eyes, but as you know it can be done. Although sometimes I think it would be better if we were more physiologically designed so that it couldn't. It's very fatiguing.

I'm now going to take the easy road out and snuggle up with Hitchcock's Notorious and then knock myself out with the brick I keep on my bedside table for this purpose. And you'll be pleased to know that I'm pretty sure my heart will have pulled me out of this slump by Sunday, 5pm, because that's what hearts are there for. Except once or twice it took years longer than Sunday, 5pm, to drag me out of the ditch, but this time I feel confident in a two-day recovery, I really do, so I'll see you back here then.

Sorry again for even talking about my own 'issues' like this - I so rarely mention myself on this blog that it seems embarrassingly personal to even bring them up.