Canberra

My cousin has been visiting and last week I took her to the nation's capital, Canberra. When we arrived, it appeared likely to fulfill its reputation for dullness. There were wide streets which were strangely depopulated, boring government architecture, spaces through only cold winds seemed to blow. It was as if nothing had been touched by imagination, even the houses seemed a uniform brick. Given that Canberra is government town, this you thought was what a safe, middle class world looked like. On the positive side, its very middle classness gives it the NGA, cycling rides around Lake Burley Griffin, decent book shops, a university feel and the like. In fact in the night we were surprised to find the city restaurants and cafes to be quite lively. I once had the idea of opening a chocolate bar (as one does inspite of not quite liking the stuff) - but they appear to be quite the thing given Sydney has Max Brenner and Melbourne TheoBroma and yes even Canberra has Koko Black.

Then again, I have lived in towns like Canberra and there is nothing to say that the internal worlds of Canberra residents are any less vivid than those of people elsewhere. Perhaps we have become too accustomed to wanting to live in "happening" cities, to wish every city to be tourist ready and can't appreciate those that adhere to neither.

As the above sampler of pictures shows, Canberra's natural setting is quite spectacular (the pictures are taken at the lake and in the city). Even this like the city is partly man made - the lake was created for the city and the tree plantings ensure a spectacular autumn and spring. But the backdrop of the straggly bush set on flat spaces and the cold clear air which in itself is akin to a relaxing massage is all Canberra's own.

Menswear

The web is cluttered with blogs relating to women's fashion so it was interesting to find a men's fashion blog - which also hosts links to other sites. It lacks colour and shoes/boots seem to turn up an inordinate number of times but it is nevertheless an interesting browse, particularly if you know men devoted to dressing well.

And via SMH and the blog, a menswear company, Engineered Garments, that specialises in reconstructing and adapting classic American workwear to modern times. I kind of like the loosely fitting fluid nature of the garments. It does seem to have a bit of a Japanese sensibility - or am I reading too much into it given the designer is Japanese-American?

Love in a Hot Climate

Last week we went to see Samson and Delilah, a tale of “true love” set in Central Australia. The near wordless film follows the two eponymous teens who live in a remote indigenous community where life is little else than ennui, petrol sniffing and poverty. The boy has a brutal, uncaring brother, the girl a loving but ill grandmother. Boy is given to petrol sniffing, girl to making “dot art’ with her grandmother. The initial scenes establish both the monotony and limited nature of the community and the timid, part hostile yet burgeoning relationship between the protagonists (memorably captured by a wide eyed Delilah observing Samson’s frenzied dance). Briefly Samson moves into Delilah’s place, the grandmother, much prone to humour, calls him Delilah’s husband. The grandmother dies and a few events later, the teens are on the run in a stolen car and in Alice Springs. Here things take a downward spiral with Samson taking with greater vigour to petrol sniffing, Delilah trying unsuccessfully to hawk her paintings and both teens living rough in the open. Their protector of sorts is a drunken indigenous man (Gonzo) who is as voluble as the teens are silent. More brutalisation later, an event puts Delilah in hospital from which she emerges to drag Samson off the street and to a remote outpost that offers some glimpse of a more hopeful future for the two.

The bare bones of the story are used to illustrate a number of themes by the director, Warwick Thornton. Primarily the film is concerned with the innocence and potential of young indigenous people and how they are systematically failed by adults at almost every level. Thornton also implicates indigenous adults – there is little love from the adults who surround the teens and many scenes bring this home to the viewer. The theme of indigenous teens on the run was touched on earlier, in Ivan Sen’s Beneath Clouds. Sen’s movie is a little more fatalistic – though in both the female protagonist holds more hope for an escape from a dysfunctional life. Sen’s film is also concerned with identity themes as one of the teens is part indigenous. Thornton is concerned purely with indigenous experience. Also his movie is about hope and grace – this allows him to infuse his film with humour and a few light touches even when things look exceedingly grim. In both movies, the outside world intrudes now and again. Beneath Clouds has more direct scenes of police assault. In Samson and Delilah, there are watchful mall workers, galleries where Delilah’s grandmother’s art is sold at exorbitant prices, the cafe society through which Delilah wanders trying to sell her paintings.

There is also a distinct Christian influence in the film, not least in its final message of the possibility of redemption and finding your own small Eden. This is not overt, I am not sure if the director is a practising Christian. At one point Delilah enters a church when at her lowest, then leaves when the priest arrives. The most overt suggestion (at least to this viewer) is perhaps in the ending scenes when Delilah appears bathed in light before Samson – we ourselves are not sure if she is dead or living. Delilah herself is representative of something pure, uncompromising and uncorrupted through whom Samson may well find grace and redemption. There is also plenty a reference to the cutting of hair – though this appears to be an indigenous custom and merely a faint nod, if at all, to the original Samson and Delilah legend.

The backdrop to the film is the Central Australian desert, which is both harsh and beautiful. It is probably difficult to get such a landscape wrong and Thornton doesn’t – the images are beautiful and tactile. Similarly Thornton uses his music well establishing separate mood pieces and themes for Samson, Delilah and Gonzo. His film is also helped along by its performances, in particular the two teens who carry the film. It is hard to say what future roles they will do; Australian cinema has little place for a full fledged film career for most indigenous actors.

Most movies made here on indigenous society play on themes of the noble wise savage or white-black politics (with the exception of Rolf de Heer’s charming film of an indigenous story, Ten Canoes). Thornton and Sen’s films are the only ones that I have seen that deal in a clear sighted way with the problems in indigenous communities today. Perhaps this is helped by the fact that both directors have roots in the indigenous community. Both therefore seem more vital than so much Australian film – along with its directors you too see the vulnerability and beauty of indigenous youth and hope for a better future for them.

Post Scripts

Samson and Delilah won the Camera D’Or at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.

Interview with Warwick Thornton here.

Land Art

Once in a while I go across to Richard Shilling's site to look at its land art - the photographs make a welcome break when I am buried in text.

Dust Buster

"Did you know that Thoreau used to bring a bag of dirty laundry for his mother to wash when he'd go to visit her?"

Salon reviews "Dirt: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of Keeping House."

Thoreau did some housekeeping duties though. The link hosts the Emerson - Thoreau letters and one states: "Lidian [Mrs. Emerson] and I make very good housekeepers".

Autumn!

Pictures from let to right (I think) are maple, aspen (the catkins can be seen) and a decorative grape vine.

A trip to the Hunter Valley last weekend yielded these photographs. The day was perfect with a cool breeze and a mild honeyed light, in autumn the Valley was a bit like John Donne's lines:

No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace
as I have seen in one autumnal face

More famous autumn poems: Keats' ode to autumn, Jackson C. Frank's Milk and Honey (memorably covered by Nick Drake), Emily Dickinson's take and Du Fu's very many meditations on the season.

And Guardian link to many more as well as readers poems here.

Election!

Every now and then well meaning people of English origin will tell you that the British were “good colonisers” as opposed to the dull and brutal Dutch, the rascally French, the corrupt Belgians etc. The English, common wisdom goes, left behind some really good stuff. And the most important of course is the great English democratic tradition. To which one replies by pointing out the failed states (in the current parlance) they left behind. And adds the fact that India is unique in having taken on these good things and fashioning it to its own needs. In other words, the democratic tradition survives in the country, in whatever bastardised form, because we as a people have always understood it intellectually and are deeply invested in it. And each election in India only confirms this view. Usually I eschew the notion of taking pride in one’s nationality but in every election I can see the good common sense of the land of my birth. And also why its founding fathers are near iconic in so many developing nations. So for today, Vande Mataram! - yes, I know the term has a saffron tinge these days but I simply didn’t want to use a phrase in the language the rest of the post is in :-)

Guardian link on burlesque

Burlesque as misogynistic sham:

"Contemporary burlesque has ceased to be subversive; it is now just another part of our own modern, sexed-up "culture of consolation". Tired of fighting for equal pay, reproductive freedom and the right to walk down a dark street without fear, tired of being judged for what we look like rather than what we do, today's young women can be forgiven for wanting to play with the small amount of power we have. But stripping of any kind can only offer passive, cringing empowerment at best. The sexual power-play of burlesque strikes no great blows for feminism."

Avalon Beach + Dangar Island

Young surfers before jumping off the rock pool at Avalon Beach (one of Sydney's Northern Beaches).

View of Hawkesbury River from Dangar Island.

These pictures I took indicate the varied natural aspects of Sydney. Avalon has a surfing beach, and the suburb itself has a cultivated laid back, village charm. Here there is the air of something open and simple as people lounge on the beach or launch into the Pacific swell (strictly not the Pacific but the Tasman Sea), though the suburb itself is affluent. Behind the suburb lies bushland (not pictured) - as you venture in the topography and mood again changes. The Hawkesbury River on the other hand is a series of meandering inlets and small islands with the air of something secretive, people seem shaped by living on rivers. I haven't read The Secret River, but the name seems apt. Similarly the novel The River Baptists was inspired by a move to river living. Along the river are oyster farms (the film Oyster Farmer is set in the Hawkesbury and evokes the moody yet placid nature of the river).

More Cavafy

1/2 PAST TWELVE

Half past twelve. Time has gone by quickly
since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp

and sat down here. I’ve been sitting without reading,

without speaking. Completely alone in the house,

whom could I talk to?

Since nine o’clock when I lit the lamp

the shade of my young body

has come to haunt me, to remind me

of shut scented rooms,

of past sensual pleasure-what daring pleasure.

And it’s also brought back to me

streets now unrecognizable,

bustling night clubs now closed,

theatres and cafés no longer there.

The shade of my young body

also brought back the things that make us sad:

family, grief, separations,

the feelings of my own people, feelings

of the dead so little acknowledged.

Half past twelve. How the time has gone by.
Half past twelve. How the years have gone by.

Moushumi Kandali

Moushumi Kandali is a dear friend. As is her husband, Dhruvarka Deka, who was a classmate (in passing, I note that he is a renowned quizmaster).

So I am predisposed to like her collection of short stories, A Tale of Thirdness and Other Stories, that has just been published. A few of the stories have been translated by Dhruvarka. I have read a few stories before, I read them again – each rereading after all gives a new perspective. My only regret is that I cannot read it in the original Assamese (though the translators have done a good job). It is also a bit sad that so much literature published in India remains inaccessible – unless the work gets translated.Moushumi’s work has a number of themes but her strong narrative voice runs through all the stories. Feminism, displacement, the effects of modern culture as also the milieu of the academic world all find a place in the stories. In spite of a number of strong segments that deal with tribal life (e.g. The Crossroads of Mukindon) and a number of references to the Assamese natural world and culture, the stories are not specifically rooted in the region. The juxtaposition in some stories, for e.g. a culture in transition in The Crossroads of Mukindon or the similar predicament of two women across decades in Eternal is familiar in literature per se. Similarly the effect of modern media on ordinary lives (That Eye) or terrorism in the modern world (In Search of a Vanishing God). There is also a futuristic tone in some stories (specifically in Ravan_1020), this didn’t always work for me - but that may be a personal disengagement with the subject matter. In all the stories, there is also another kind of juxtaposition – quotidian detail admixed with the surreal and the absurd. Somehow the mixture and the abrupt shifts of tone work very well in all the stories.

Two stories stood out for me, A Tale of Thirdness and An Arty or Nonsense Kind of Story. Both deal with gender roles but the elliptical nature of the former and a hint of the absurd in the latter lift it far above the genre. Just the catalogue of the days in An Arty or Nonsense Kind of Story makes it stand out. Two others were however my favourites – Anirvan: the Unquenched and Ferns in the Moonlight. There are no discursions and nothing overt in these simple, elegant stories and they bring out Moushumi’s strong, lyrical voice.

The book traveled all the way from Assam to Australia so is quite precious. The accompanying book was Listen my Flowerbud, which is an English translation of Mising poetry from Assam (collated by Jiban Narah and translated by Moushumi). There is a lovely foreword on Mising culture. The poems have a simple charm with an awareness of life in parts – it reminded me a bit of Randhir Khare’s The Singing Bow. A few are elegant and concise in the manner of old Chinese poetry.

Movies - On Ozu

Along with Rohmer, Ozu is one of my favourite filmmakers. Yet until the recent past, I had not seen either film maker's work.

I saw a number of Ozu's films in a retrospective of sorts last year at the NSW Art Gallery. The core of Ozu's work is his films on the post-war Japanese family circa early 1950s. In particular, Ozu concentrates on a three generation structure for these films with the same actors playing different protagonists. In his much reviewed triptych of Early Summer, Late Spring and Tokyo Story, the characters have the same names but the family dynamics change. These particular films have won critical renown abroad and in Japan because they fluently capture a society in transition. The personal history of a family with its attendant disappointments, sadness, estrangement and invisible bonds as a microcosm of a nation is not an unfamiliar theme but Ozu takes very simple, elegantly framed elements to effectively bring out universal truths. Of the films, both Tokyo Story and Early Summer have a subtle but clear thread of inter-generational conflict. Tokyo Story deals with the marginalisation of the pre-war generation (the grandparents) in the modern Japanese family and is universally considered Ozu's best, though I didn't find this to be the case. Ozu is clearly drawn to this theme as his other films also have echoes of Tokyo Story. Early Summer, however, concentrates on his female protagonist (Ozu regular Setsuko Hara) i.e. the modern Japanese woman and her limited emancipation. Ozu does have freer representations of women in the marginal characters in his films but by and large the major characters have their choices limited by the duties owed to a family and the restrictions imposed by society. Nevertheless I don't think Ozu is concerned with the politics of this situation, things come to pass and if this contradicts their deepest desires, people don't complain but simply resume life. My personal favourite is Late Spring which deals with the marriage of a daughter (Setsuko Hara again as the "Noriko" character) unwilling to disrupt her companiable domestic set up with her father (played by another regular, Chisyu Ryu - Ryu and Hara work very effectively together). Unlike the other films, Ozu uses a single dramatic episode at a Noh drama viewing which drives the narrative forward to its conclusion. The father must get his daughter married even if it goes against his grain and to bring this about he has to sow the seeds of doubt in her mind regarding his own marital intent. The inevitable result is the coming apart of their harmonious domestic set-up. This disruption causes pain and yet must be gone through. On one level the film is on the inevitable transition into adulthood which must be accompanied by a rupture with the natal home. Yet on another level - and here Ozu departs from most narratives - Ozu shows that this set-up is complete and answers its protagonists needs. Ozu shows the strong bonds that can exist in families and the film is quite remarkable in that its non-traditional family set up is not rooted in a sexual relationship, or at least an inter-family relationship, but in the basic family unit. I am sure the relationship can be subjected to Freudian analysis but that is to miss the subtle, interwoven patterns of Asian familial set-ups. It's that singular film where the arc of the story biases you towards the continuance of the father-daughter relationship and not romantic fulfilment. The propulsion into adulthood as defined by society leaves both characters lonely and its final image of the father alone at home is surely one of the most poignant shots in cinema. In some ways it is a film that will always be an oddity - its themes and conclusion, for example, is hardly in tune with the times we live in where sexual fulfilment and the call to action are both social imperatives.

All the films also have numerous allusions to the war - returned soldiers, lost sons, the hardships of the women who stayed home. Ozu doesn't step back into the time however, the war is a silent presence in the movies. Life has moved on and Ozu simply looks at it post-war. Ozu's themes will of course be familiar to Indians. It also made me think a bit of my grandparents' life - in Ozu's films for example they are the modern generation thrusting forward into the future and leaving a slightly bewildered older generation in its wake. Their move from the villages of Tamil Nadu to city life must have been a somewhat similar rupture with the past.

Of the other films I saw, two were outliers. Early Spring, an exceptionally long movie, deals with the salaryman and modernizing Japan and foreshadows the disconnected nature of modern life; it is successful in parts. For Floating Weeds, a remake of an earlier film, Ozu departs to a fishing village and a visiting itinerant theatre group. More than his other films, there is a sense of something slightly archaic in its themes - Ozu is a bit of a nostalgist and this can create sentimental errors, at times I felt I was watching an Indian movie where everything must be made palpably obvious. Floating Weeds is, however, in colour and Ozu's use of it is masterful. The movie needs to be watched simply for the way hue and set design function in the film.

Ozu is of course extensively discussed on the web, in particular his style of film-making, themes, the use of pillow shots, stations, city buildings et al. A few links here, here, here, here and here.

Melbourne 2003

In October 2003 I went to Melbourne for a part of my studies and stayed at the University of Melbourne. Excerpts from my notebooks:
_________________________________________________________
Saturday night. Rain in Melbourne. From my rooms in Ormond College, I can see rain falling on wet tennis courts.

The next day on my way to Victoria Market, a tree on Berkeley Street. The street is otherwise all car sheds and auto shops. The tree is in bloom and a brilliantly coloured bird is feeding. Then on Pelham Street, a eucalypt with large purple tinged gumnuts – the kind I haven’t seen in Sydney. Elsewhere on the streets, the trees are green canopies, perhaps European in origin like most of the city. The most common is a light, lovely green; its winged seeds float around the city and accumulate in large drifts on street corners.

Tiramisu at every cafe. In India for a long time it was a food out of reach, the kind of thing that might appear in a page 3 column or at an expensive wedding. Foods are commonplace or an affectation depending on where you live.

Reading Banana Yoshimoto. I feel much older, unable to write about simple things - meeting friends, coffee sessions, late night rides, the first flush of a romance. For this first year here has been a solitary experience. Some part of life has passed. When younger, I was drawn to slightly melancholic, serious looking boys. At the beginning of a love affair, you cease to judge the world. Its affectations, its ordinariness, its vulgarity – all of it is acceptable. Then it changes, quotidian life resumes. Now all around me there are couples, families, friends interrupted by a lone person wrapped in coffee and a paper. I think I feel wistful, nostalgic for the past but the sun casts a weak light on Lygon Street, a bookstore at the corner catches my attention and I am swept up by the moment.

The afternoon is dark and rainy and I go to see Japanese Story. The Pilbara is red and blue, the heat jumps out of the screen. Toni Collette learns some life lessons. Her Japanese counterpart finds himself before his sudden demise.

One of the students in my class is an Australian of Hungarian origin. He tells me law is a profession for the moneyed upper classes here. In reality the class is overwhelmingly middle class and everyone talks about the same things, almost as if there is a common pool to draw upon. We discuss the persistence of ancient hatreds – he asks me about the religious tensions in India, tells me of the fractious Turkish-Hungarian relationship. These feelings survive a move to the Antipodes.

Lots of Marxist-Trotskyist-Leninist posters on campus. They exhort ill-paid workers to join them. Universities are probably the last bastions of the left.

I am invited to a late evening student do. It is sweet in its simplicity and casualness.

On the tram, everyone in black, grey, brown. Everyone sallow, especially Asians of a darker complexion. We look faded in the cold weather – almost as if we need a tropical jungle to set off the brown. Many Calcuttans migrated here and are tram drivers. I ask the driver if he is Bengali, he looks tired. It turns out he has been asked this question several times. He is Sri Lankan and waives my ticket.

In a week I head back to India. The life I knew there is receding and I wonder what the visit will be like.

Merrepen Arts

I went to the Garma Festival in the winter of 2003. The festival is held in August of every year in Gulkula (in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory) and is an indigenous cultural event. It showcases indigenous issues like health, poverty and the like but is also a celebration of being indigenous and in this world. The site is fairly remote (the nearest airport is Nhulunbuy, a small mining town in NT) but it attracts a motley crowd of academicians, NGOs, artists and casual visitors both from Australia and abroad. The year we went, the festival showcased indigenous art from various regions of the country.

At the festival we met Meng Hoeschle, who at that time ran the Merrepen Arts Centre and were very impressed with her work with the Centre. The Centre's artists, the McTaggart brothers, were also present and did a panel of the collaborative art project at the Festival. Most people associate indigenous art with "dot" paintings, which are not always common - if at all they are synonymous with anything, it is desert paintings. The Daly River region, where the Merrepen Arts Centre is located, is verdant and lush with a fairly plentiful supply of food and the art produced there reflects this and is fairly removed from the "dot" stereotype. Meng showed a short film that was a sweet ode to the region - it was filled with images of billabongs, water lilies, the soft blue of Northern skies and the sound of women singing. Meng had sent me a catalogue which I unfortunately misplaced when I moved and I find there are few images of the Merrepen Centre's paintings on the Net, in particular those that relate to water spirits. The two I located give some idea of the paintings I saw.

Link to a film on basket making from the merrepen plant here.

Geoffrey Bardon's 2004 book (Papunya-A Place Made After the Story), though primarily on desert art remains the best first source on indigenous painting in Australia, for anyone interested.