Wild Sovereign Development Site

Tag: culture

  • sharing the Herb

    Herbie Hancock came to play Brisbane, it was bona fide. He and the band really loved it each other. When he came onstage, spontaneously people in the audience stood up, one by one, until pretty soon we were all standing. We wanted to acknowledge his effort and grace, the effortless grace and hard work. He mentioned a ‘Wayneism’ by his friend Wayne Shorter, who recently died: “Jazz means, ‘I dare you.’”

    He told us, Kamala Harris has to win, and a shout went up. The room felt so joyous. Afterwards there was a long queue for the merch counter, at which we could buy not one of his 53 albums but they had assorted t shirts, and hoodies, and tote bags and a baseball cap. At the end, he wouldn’t leave the stage, the band were all gone and seven hundred people standing applauding. Herbie went all along the front row, shaking hands or a fistbump with one after another, and one guy asked him a question and he dropped down to his knees and started talking, and the two of them were talking and we were all just standing there, happy and rejoicing and wanting to be present. And I had this fantasy that the audience would disperse and go home, and the great hall with its vast pipe organ would be empty, and the two of them sitting there, going Yeah, man. The fusion, the half diminished, the monster drummer. The music.

  • Uruk

    In the museum today we followed the script, that is, the writing. Ancient forms of writing carved in stone, and some felled onto papyrus that was torn out of its location later and jammed into ‘found’ metal boxes. What is it about inhumanity that allows one to covet a culture’s gorgeously wrought temple at the same time as dehumanising them enough to justify tearing down the temple, or carving a chunk off it, and then rebuilding in a far colder climate in your own museum? We found this headstone densely scribbled which I so longed to touch. Only that I wouldn’t have put my fingers’ oils all over the ancient, four thousand year old stone. But if I had this in my house (I told my companion) I would rub my face over it every day: like this.

  • the two languages of dream

    I went to a strange and interesting event which was sentimental and yet truthful and moving. Afterwards we stood around in tiny groups and two men who had spoken out about crying in public put their heads together and let their voices drop low. A woman who is four weeks fresh in Berlin said to me, “What do you do?” And I answered, like I always answer, “I write ~ ” and then wondered, as I always wonder, how to best finish that sentence. ” ~ poetry and jazz,” I said, and she said, peerlessly, “Oh! But those are two such beautiful languages.”

  • feierabend

    I love how in Germany restaurants closed on Mondays will say, Montag ist Ruhetag. Monday is our day of peace. And every single day, week in, week out, when you are finished your work and knocking off for the day, home time is Feierabend: celebration-evening. People will say to one another consolingly at the checkout: Not to worry, it’s nearly Feierabend.

    The peace at one end of the day, festivities at the other: it seems to me somehow an ideal sweetness for the life.

  • jazz bar, balconies, bikers, busker, moth, Madrid

    The moth which landed in the glossy black curls of a woman sitting on the Metro so lightly and delicately without her noticing, and which spread its dun linen wings like opera skirts to reveal the sheer, white gauze underneath. The two boys who jumped on and played joyously, their guitars facing belly to belly. The long, arching trees filling curving streets with greenery and palpably articulating the breeze into soft whistles and dim spirit presences, into a welcoming and retired song, almost a language. The man and woman whose voices caught my attention from above and whose conversation diagonally across from his first floor balcony to hers on the third seemed frank and gossipy, reflective, unhurried. The jazz bar with windows open right onto the street and spilling glorious plants, which served gin and tonic in round-bellied goblets with surprisingly sweet, chewy, nutlike juniper berries bobbing against the cubes. The lovely dog opposite, above the antiquarian bookshop, who stands on the balcony and gazes up and down the street with such a mournfully intent expression; the man playing a baby grand under a white cloth in his open window and gesturing to his colleague, playing violin, and the crowd of silent witnesses standing with their phones and faces raised on the curving road underneath. The security guard reading a volume of poetry on the underground, so intent he almost missed his stop. The three tiny ladies chatting loudly and volubly on the train who parted with light, smacking kisses at Nuevos Ministerios. The BMX bikers who practice outside the opera house every day, every day, waiting their turn and daring each concrete bench and set of steps to rout them like ballet dancers swimming far out to sea. The low doorways and Metro tunnels against which my sweetheart has to watch his head. The expressiveness of public life with a girl flying into a passion of sobs at the post office counter, a woman crying openly as she was talking on her phone walking through a crowded restaurant district at lunch time. The yoghurts brewed in little glass pots desde 1992 which we top with strawberries, blueberries, bananas; the milk section of the supermarket which is on shelves unrefrigerated because everybody likes powerfully adulterated longlife milk yet luscious, unpasteurised, handmade yoghurt. The quiet, hot siesta hours when shops are barred and windows shuttered and the Metro crammed to the gills. The people who gaze up so curiously, so unjudgingly, at me and my two metre tall lover as we bow our heads to enter the train. The busker in orange top hat who tied his dog to the railings and turned aside into a shop window to tune his guitar. The little backstreet shops which build guitars and the man with his cardboard box desk on the shopping street who carves crosses out of two sticks and binds them together to sell, one after another, he was here at Easter and he is still here now, filling the paving creases with whittled shavings as though there can never be enough crosses in the world and he must fill the lack.

  • hair now gone to morels

    Today I had my hair cut and lost enough length to stuff a small teddy bear. Afterwards I crouched on the floor in the horseshoe swatch of paler wood worn on the black boards where the hairdresser stands every day in an arc that sweeps back and forth around each customer, and tamped up the soft, drying clumps in my fingertips, and put them in a paper bag they gave me. My hair had spread across a wide area and I gleaned back as much as I could. I feel a bit weird saying, Can you give me a bag, I want to take this stuff home: and even weirder about leaving it there lying on the floor. To get swept up. Mingled in with other people’s hair. Dusted in landfill, with its bad magic.

    I had chosen for this outing a place I felt safe in, in a chic part of town where women carry little dogs in their handbags. All the trees have sprung into service and the old buildings gleam. On my way home feeling lighter and breezier in the fresh afternoon Spring air I pulled the handles of the bag apart and peered in – a soft knot of washed and combed ends and curls lay there in a heap, big as my two fists, coiled on itself on the floor of the bag like some little dog lured from its home.

    I so hate getting my hair cut that it happens only once every year, or two years; for a long time I used to cut it myself, with the scissors on my Swiss army knife. The girl who took my appointment earlier in the day had a blond bob severely asymmetrical but her eyes were soft. “I will put you with Damir,” she decided. “He has an unusual name too.” Damir was very cool, as all hairdressers are cool, and reminded me of my friend M. Same quirked brow, same smooshed beanie on the back of his head; same deft hips. He let my hair out from its elastic and said, Ahh, in a tone of satisfaction. Took his time, handling the masses of it for ten minutes, parting and lifting it, weighing it, judging the curl and its spring and the way the colour grows. Only then did he say, “Let us go wash,” lässt uns waschen gehen. It was a pleasure to close my eyes and let myself be handled. He said, see how it’s much curlier at the back. See how it’s ginger at the ends, I said, and he said: that’s because you wear it up in a knot and that’s where the sun most gets to it. Right, I said, slowly, thinking: oh, riiight. How little one notices oneself.

    Would you like something to read? He went over to a low table by the huge windows and bent over, sifting and separating. In the mirror I watched him choose me out three magazines and order them into a stack. One had a photo in it of the beautiful photojournalist Lee Mitchell, shortly after the death of Adolf Hitler, in his apartment taking a bath in his tub. When Damir offered me a drink and I said I’d like some water he said, Still oder mit. This translates, “Still or with?” Germans ask each other these questions about water, still or sparkling? With or without. “With” means with gas: bubbly. The salon was huge and only one other person was getting their hair cut in it. How much was all this going to cost? “I don’t care,” I said to myself, trying to calculate when it was last cut: more than two years ago. It was peaceful there under his hands within the tent of my own hair. I remembered how I used to go to nightclubs just for the dancing, and would dance alone, all night, all night. When men came up to me I didn’t yet know how to get rid of them so eventually I would take the elastic out of my hair and let it fall across my face like this, making a thorough curtain through which I could see out but no one could see in. I used to smoke and I guess it was eerie to see a woman sitting smoking stolidly through the sheet of her own hair, certainly no one persisted past that curtain and this reminded me of that. I closed my eyes and let sensation scratch at me all round. The fingers brushing the back of my neck. The tugging as he lifted wings of hair up high to trim the ends. The soft feathering as it fell down over my face. The scent of tobacco from his fingertips, that lay on the hairs hanging combed straight over my nose. The faintly tropical, faintly chemical smell of salon shampoo. “You never blowdry it,” he said, and I said, “I don’t even own a blowdryer. Or a comb.” “You can feel it in the hair,” he said, letting it run through his fingers like water in sand.

  • I’m in trains

    I came clattering down the stairs to find the train already humming, its destination sign was flashing which means departure imminent. I franked the ticket and ran. The train was right down the far end of the platform. As I came pelting towards the front carriage the doors closed and it began to move. I could see the driver sitting gazing at me from his little cubicle. I said, in English, “You’re kidding, right?” and blew him a sarcastic kiss. And guess what he pulled up again, just ahead, and opened the long row of doors for me. Oh! I said in German, “O! Das war lieb!” He couldn’t hear me because the window was closed. I laid my hand on my heart to thank him. As I climbed in the other passengers looked up, startled, and one man said knowingly, “Ah! Extra Service!”

    Another time I watched as a lumbering skinhead with terrifying facial tattoos made his way slowly down the cabin to where an older man sat slumped in his sleep, all alone. Everybody tensed up as the skinhead said to him, “Hey!” I was wondering should I go up and intervene. His next words were, “Hey! Du! Alles ok? Geht’s dir schlecht?” Hey, you. Everything ok? Aren’t you feeling well? He touched the sleeping man on his shoulder and shook him gently. The man muttered, he was alive, everybody’s ok, the sun is shining.

    Two years back when I was living in Friedrichshain I used to ride back and forth on the highline between my house and my beloved’s. The sensation of speeding among the treetops along an invisible rail was one that always cheered me. The red medieval bridge that linked our suburbs was built in Victorian times: the train zips along its brick turrets and either side down below there is the river. I glanced up from my writing to see an older man gazing with an expression of indulgent fondness, as though I were his granddaughter. “Schöne Schrift,” he offered: lovely handwriting. “Danke!” I said, and we both smiled and I went back to my compelling page. At the end of the ride I clipped up my pen, closed the page, gathered my gear and as I got up to leave he was nodding and nodding. “Alles schön aufgeschrieben,” everything written up nicely, he said, with as much satisfaction in his voice as though he had written something of his own.

    Then yesterday I started to want to write something just as I left the house. All down the street I was towing it like a balloon, bobbing under the trees that have appeared rather suddenly, like umbrellas opening, in the short week we were away in the countryside. Someone has been decorating the city with Spring. I jogged down the stairs and sat down, and pulled out my pen. When the train arrived I got on it and kept writing. You know that intent feeling when you daren’t look left or right, you must keep following the scent underwater with your nose until you find its home cave, that treasure. Just as I reached for my mountaintop – balloon, umbrella, cave – a large man standing nearby said, “Guten Morgen meine Damen und Herren, Ihre Fahrkarten, bitte.” Tickets, please. He went first to the woman on my right and I just pressed on, shaping a tide of sand across the page. The outer part of my mind was tensed waiting for the interrupt. That tiny spurt of rage interruption invariably brings to the writing tide. Matchflare underwater. Dimly I felt how he had moved past me – so cultured! – asking the people standing further up the carriage for their tickets. When I was done writing and had capped my pen and zipped my bag I saw him and his colleague gathering themselves at the doors and he didn’t even catch my eye, I had the ticket out to show him because I wanted him to know I wasn’t trying to evade justice and had played fair, they were chatting casually to each other and jumped out at their door and I jumped out at mine and though the staircase was clogged with drug dealers so aggressive they will actually stand in front of you to ask what do you want I felt high and unstoned and free, like the train that curves among the treetops, in this city which respects art and respects thought, in these people.

  • wake in flight

    In my dream I was in this amazing cafe taking five floors of an abandoned building in Brisbane. Right at the top was a little terrace looking out only on treetops. There was a waitress dressed up in a robot suit she could not see out of which blinded her from doing her work, she struggled cutely from table to table and her colleagues were laughing gamely but I thought: how annoying. A boy who wanted to move to Scotland the next day & was saying farewell said to me, that is the thing about Brisbane! just when you leave something incredible opens up in the trees. Then I was talking with this man who lived on a remote island where he showed me how to find my way to his camp and said, this is where the olds are doing a lot of planning to take their Country back. Then he came in to wake me up pulling up the dense shutters and the sound of the dog snuffling and squeaking outside the door and it is time we went to the markets, we direly need vegetables and the birds are teeming life is like a dream, only people have chilly creaking jackets and their hug is cold because they have been sitting outside scented with coffee and the wind is icy although the sun is warm.

  • the great book explosion of 2015

    Imagine we were all living in a world where almost everyone was carrying a book in their pocket. And was intently engaged in its consumption. And pulled it out of their pocket to read more at every interval and sometimes stood stock still in the middle of the grocery aisle because they had become so lost in reading their great book.

  • desperate for literature

    At ten o’clock at night I went out walking round the curve of the road under bright green trees lit from the lamps, everything beautiful, hot and radiant. A bookshop was open, or so I thought. When I pushed on the door two guys came running out from the rush-bottomed chairs where they’d been chatting. “Oh, sorry,” I said, “you look as if you’ve just closed, actually.” “No, no, come in, come in.” The books were in English down one wall and Spanish on the other, stacked on shelves which started out polished and neat and then wound up built from raw old wood and bricks. A beautiful woman came out from some back room and told me, “The books up the back are just as good as the books up the front here, keep looking.” They sat down and continued their chat. “What was the name of the girl in To Kill a Mockingbird? Cass?” “Was it Cass?”

    I said, “I know people in Hollywood have named babies after her, so if we could just think of the right baby…” “Scout!” said the man with the beard who had Google in his hand. We talked for a moment about the new novel and how there is some concern Harper Lee may have been… persuaded into finally publishing it. “It’s about Scout’s life as an adult,” said the other guy, an American. A small crowd of people came in at the narrow front door. One said, I think, this reminded him of Shakespeare and Co in Paris, and the English man said pointing to his partner, whose name was Charlotte, “That’s where we worked! Up until three days ago!” Two hours earlier he and Charlotte had taken over this tiny store, which is called Desperate Literature, from their American friend, whose name is Cory. “So we’ve met!” said Charlotte, a gorgeous woman who acts as though being beautiful gives her no special status. The little man who had mentioned Shakespeare and Co gave a cry. “We’ve met! So you’ve patted my book!” “I’ve patted your book!” she said. “Wait – what book was it.” Without hesitation he named the book everybody buys when they visit Shakespeare and Co in Paris. “The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas.” “That was you!” she cried. I was out the back laughing. The timing was so wonderful, the sense of willing group improvisation that is true conversation, as at the loveliest dinner parties. Charlotte was jubilant that they’d sold a copy of Wisława Szymborska (to me) on their first night and her partner Terry introduced himself and told me, as he had told the Paris customers, “We are having a big party here on Thursday night, come by.” He looked around the tiny, crowded rooms. “Well – a little party.”