April Rant

April rant disclaimer: this is going to be an odd round up, I didn’t get out and about too much and some of the things I did I’m refusing to talk about!

Flicks Rant: 

Let’s start with the not-talking. I saw a film this month and it was so offensively bad I don’t want to talk, or write about it. I wouldn’t discuss it with my mum and dad when I left the cinema, I wont tell my friends about it, and I won’t fucking blog about it, cos, I feel like, even tearing it apart is giving it publicity/word-of-mouth/intrigue it doesn’t fucking deserve. I’ve never had a film make me so fucking angry. It entirely spoiled my mood too. I was a total bitch for about 24 hours because I was just a ball of hurt, frustrated, cinematically assaulted, fury. So. I saw a really terrible film. That wasn’t even interestingly terrible. And I’m not going to tell you what it was, I am just going to hope and prey that no-one goes to see it. The end.

Strings Attached Rant:

My friend, who I’ve blogged about before, Gemma Lark, had her first solo show in April (and it runs till the 9^th of May so shake a leg and go see it @ Oh Really Gallery – 55 Enmore Rd, Newtown) and it was pretty fucking wonderful. She’s a theatre-ey trained artist (NIDA design) who’s a bit of a puppeteer/performer/everything too. Her works were very puppeteer inflected, including a live/performance sculpture of a marionette/woman/zombie tied to a wall with ropes and scissors hanging from the ceiling just above her crotch. Ropes also hung in the middle of the exhibition space, attached to the girl’s wrists, that you could yank and the performer would move accordingly. I found the work so powerful I could barely look at it. I felt like a sleazy, fucked-up, voyeur, complicit-in-rendering-women-as-dolls, puppeteer for even glancing at her and when the performer met my gaze I wanted to vomit and bawl. The rest of the works are gorgeous. A few yummy painted-on-bits-of-old-wood offerings with curling, curving, characters and moments with big eyes and something dark about them and lots of puppety sculptures. My favourite work was a teapot with a face, crying long drapey tears made of teabags. Yum. Anyway, at the opening I had a really random/weird/loveliness. I met this guy called Hugo and he epitomised everything I used to believe in: freedom, generosity and spontaneity… everything that seems to have turned to hipster in my life was still real and alive and generous and spontaneous in his. He handed me the short story collection he hadn’t even finished reading and asked me to read it, just cos he thought I’d like it and to pass it along when I was done. Sadly, I had nothing I could swap him but he was unfazed, I implored him to swap numbers with me so I could at the very least return the book, he wasn’t interested though, he just wanted to give it to me. He gave me hope, he also filled me with sorrow cos I worry his heart will get kicked around like mine and he’ll one day give up on the swings-and-round-abouts take on art - that everything should be shared and all knowledge should be free… not that I’ve given up, just that I’m very very disheartened and every time I think I’ve found a salon-like, earnest, generous, lets-just-share-ideas, type place of magic it tends to turn out its actually about wank and hipster and fame and isn’t really very magic at all… He was like time traveling to me in first year, and now I’m caught in a whirl of nostalgia, hope, bitterness, betrayal, gratitude, sorrow… and, I really hope that hope wins the war in my heart and soul, because humans should connect and give each other novels and share stories and art and love, and it shouldn’t be about return… oh dear… Anyway he convinced another fella we were chatting with to give me a copy of his EP It’s called Losing Business and the act is called Ex-Trendy… which is oddly fitting considering the universe lecturing me on growing old and jaded and trendy… It’s very cute and earnest and has a fun quality to it with Bowie-esque sounds in the singing style. I found the lyrics a little hard to take seriously at times ( foe example, they sing about standing in line at the text-book store) but at other times quite endearing. I think my favourite track was No Connection, which oddly enough is about losing all your (I’d say hipster) adornments and losing connection and contact. They definitely have heaps of promise. I reckon keep an eye on them. This EP isn’t amazing but it’s very impressive and shows heart and humour and love. And it’s beautifully presented with a gorgeous photographs of a man draped across an old TV-set taken by Greer Rochford. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to meet and connect with people on such a real, generous, level, at what is customarily the breeding-ground for disingenuous-ness and wank – the art-show opening night drinks… but I did, and I was also very, very proud of my friend Gemma Lark who, has made some very, very, nice, and fucking powerful, art.

Gig rant: 

This month I saw Shiver Like Timber play at World Bar, She (Betony Dircks) was great, as always. She triumphed despite some serious gig-adversity… crazy noisy amps and strange beer-throwing brawls in the crowd. I’m not so sold on World Bar, I found it a bit wanky and super cold. Betony was definitely worth my battle to be there, and I had to battle, apparently thongs are a liability or some such nonsense, I’ve not worn anything but thongs since I was 18 and have never had trouble getting in anywhere else. So my tear-filled wait in the gutter for a dear friend to rescue me and bring borrowed purple boots was all worth it and Bet’s gorgeous imaginary landscapes, nostalgia, story-telling and upside-down imagery delivered and looped in her unique (and extremely beautiful) take on the child-woman-with-her-mouth-full like singing voice dressed and danced away all the woes of the evening, well almost, to be entirely honest the weirdness of the evening did catch up to me and I did scurry home a bit of a mess... but Bet very nearly soothed all the worries and the wank... I also stumbled down the road (in thongs) this month and saw another friend, Dave Fong, play music at the Glengarry. He played a mixture of his own songs and covers and he was pretty damn awesome. I’d never seen him play before and was blown away by his honey-like dreamy vocals and dream-scape take to his own song writing, and others. It was a very enjoyable way to spend an evening. I also really like the Glenngary, it’s a neat pub, very local and real and not wanky and Sydney-tries-to-be-Melbourne… It also pretty much consists of one room, and one long table, which pretty much insists on connected-ness which is nice, you sit with strangers and talk to them, or, at the very least, acknowledge them! Not stomp around like we’ve all sucked lemons and pretend other humans who aren’t in our click don’t exist… There you go, April, in short, was about connectedness… (Perhaps)…

Love,

Ridiculous.