666 and counting

so seeing as that i now have 666 page views i should dedicate to all you special people out there ticking over the bean counter to such a lucky number.
not that there should be any reason for anyone to visit as my browser does not seem to support blogger windows and indeed i will be suprised if this doesn't crash before i am able to upload it.  Wel not much happening anyway, have been out hunting for dwarve trees to make into bonsai.  weather in the deep south getting pretty wet and cold, time to watch movies and read all those books from the warmth of a low turnover cafe.
ha

nocturnes

when i 1st got to town, it felt like fitzroy was in the throes of it's final hours, the other day i felt like it's last breath whispered by.
Like the passing of anything that was held close there is a sadness but there is also the knowledge that with the passing of the old comes the place for the new.
the melting pot culture fired by numerous international sharehouses and cheaper accomodation, large parties incorporating many of these places and it's guests is gone, and unless a huge decentralization event occurs it will not recur.  It lasted while it could.
What it has been replaced by is room enough for another post if this browser will hold out long enough.
Institutions like everfresh born in the heart of this is only one of the many that developed out of the cultural exchange and creative possibility.  With the changing everfresh has moved to street related gallery shows though many of the original artists are still working with street commisions and works out there i wonder is any of the energy still present and passed on or is it a fading light, born again only when the spirit of a new atmosphere can purvey.
i don't go to their shows much and only rarely do i keep abreast of the local influx in international artists, it is simply too hard- a full time job to keep track of.
I am reading the street, hearing the fading words of the old guard and wondering as i walk.
Like the sometimes imperceptible change in the air on the cusp of seasons working their way before the cordial dates arrive the swansong felt to me long ago has passed and now what is to be can be realised.
How and what it can be time will only tell.

How not to sell out and save your soul from anothers hell

It's not often I run into a really bad art show but it's also more rarer to see one that is a step above the chaff.
Two this year I can remember, the first was the extra-ordinary compilation of works by William Kentridge, arguably one of the best shows of my minutae existence.   And the second is some of the works on exhibition currently at the Lesley Kehoe Gallery at 101 Collins street.

I do have a weakness for some of the Japanese styles and this is the freshest works I have seen on our shores yet.
Shohei Otomo is the artist in question and I know of his fathers work in the ground breaking single cell animation masterpeice Akira.  The sheer detail of these works and the level of completeness to the peices is extraordinary.  For working with cheap pens this is a feat in itself.  The show felt reflective in its mood and covered a range of subjects from Yakuza to Shunga and cyber punk styles as well as western toon styles - glimpses of the east west exchange clearly visable.  The combination of these themes is I think what makes this exhibition interesting, the masked geishas and the reworkings of the classic Shunga as well as the commentary upon the permeating threats of nuclear catastrophe with the recent Fukushima reactor collapse.  The ability to complete works that perhaps would be special using any subject considering the workings of penmanship combined with the humourous touch of Shohei make this something you might want to see if you are in town.

It's nice just to enter the building and see the architecture too, one of the powerhouse buildings of the Australian economy.  Pretend you just walked out of Harrolds and the security shouldn't bother you.

lets see how much we can say, as fast as we can - without missing the beat : before we are invariably unable. At last; to continue.

if it is indeed god who is testing us with self resolve then it must be a sadistic motherfucker with too much time on it's hands.  
what is god to the masses anyway, like the taste of saline to the sea.
sterile and only used ornamentally, to most of us anyway, over here in heathen land anyhow.  
i am trying not to be so disinterested but i'm not having much luck.  
Realestate is too expensive, and i am broke, this is not good for being in the city, whats the use of having great skills and fortuity if you cannot earn money, your honesty translates as simplicity and every hack down the way takes a peice, you either become indeed simple or as cruel and opportunistic as them.  
And then you are ripping of people who may have been having an honest moment and then the cycle starts again and keeps going on and on.  
I was honest once but now i've learned to just be quiet.


petite a petite i am learning this modern reason that abounds the city scapes and rips the bonds of resistance to cheap thrills and moral degradation.  That enforces the will of the many and crushes the individual of their chance to fuck up and learn the cut stings and the break takes time.


it's been a while sinse i was on here this computer making words into verse,
in the time since last time, i have:


had a freestyle rap battle with a mate and as a result he doesn't talk to me anymore,
and it wasn't even personal it was but not momma jokes yet.

am being ignored by another friend because i talked my mind about a mutual friend who has dependancy issues.


done about eight quotes and not got one job yet, well maybe one this week.


have painted a lot of pictures of various things human and not so human.


joined a band,


formed a band


relyed solely just about on the goodwill of lentil as anything for my tucker, because i 'm broke,
i consider my current debt to society level as i have been tuning RAHRAHRAH radio (rrr) and it's comunity love is all up there in my braine.


silconed my fireplace because there is a dead mouse in there and the wind comes down the chimney and blasts fetid death zephyrs into my sleeping nostrils.


saw my father and talked about what to do with family land.


...


Thats about all folks and remmeber,

if the bush was too quiet there would be fear without seeing a fearful creature.

i didn't make up the last line but everything else i am guilty your honor,

the title is what happened when i listened to charlie parker,
bird.

art is living made visible

i'll shut up here's a photo

This is where i spent weekends as a child.  Mostly happy, mostly up the coconut trees or in the bat caves

DICKNOSE LIVES

If anyone is interested in reposting this please do.

This Friday, BYO, Refills Brunswick Street Fitzroy.


See the work of the man himself.

strass nulius

it seems a little too quiet on the streets of late, rain and other stuff holding people back but still quiet.  as the winter sets in everyone goes down into their cave and thinks about what's next.
plenty of shows, not that i go to them but still, plenty of them.  bastardising the rawness into quiet squares and galerie pour le amusement ou nouvue bourgeoisie .  not that it's a bad thing, but it definately isn't that good either.

the council here now has so much money from the blossomming rates, reaping in with their fat little tentacles, pouring it into yarra city council sponsored grafitti buffing crews.  they may be black that dont mean shit to me but you've got a black heart.  by laws to protect the walls please.

Lovers of the art lite you can please all go back to prahan.  Isn't there more fake tan range there.
But you never will.  you want the desert of the real.

All there is to be done is to pick up the pieces and carry on.  petite a petite.  For what it's worth i hope you enjoy what is left.  There is still plenty. Skin and bones, the flesh is gone, the blood all drunk and the smile hollow and cool.

a material love song is always sad.

happiness is the consolation for life's necessity

i often find when i am in old gold mining town and i see the incredible architechture i am thankfull to the people who lived there and invested into the town they were a part of, the sense of community, though long gone but impermeable and outstanding in the relics that remain.  I think of this only in comparison to todays mining boom where the places where this is happening still remain extremely bleak outposts with little more than corrugated iron and a few truck stops.  I took two years travelling australia and seeing all this as well as growing up in a mining boom town, Mackay no less.  And the companies that run the mines don't seem to be interested in investing in this kind of thing and the government has little plans besides some kind of block art sculptures that keep popping up around the place.  I see there was a time in australia's past when there was some pride of home and town, i can only assume this in my interpretation of the art and architechture but the feeling grows nevertheless that the Australian majority culture has lost a sense of overall community.  I don't know, i am no sociologist just a layman but it is only in rare circumstances that i have felt a strong community around.

Is it because a big portion of the mines are owned by offshore investors, so the money is filtered into the government and then rushed overseas.  All i notice of the boom is the exhorbitant price of land, unruly development, over development of agricultural areas by sprawling urbanisation, extreme rent prices. 

I can't complain, i feel responsible and part of an apathetic generation.  I sometimes dream of owning a v8 7 litre just to get rid of the fuel quicker so we can settle down again.  Burn up all the coal so we can go back to having more simply and less disposable lives, disposable like our phones, our plastic bags our cheap thin plaster houses, with weak walls and poisonous materials.   It is a inevitablility that this will happen but i feel particularly impatient, because i work in the building industry, and i drive around the city  for my work and i have to see the mess that is spreading like a rash across this southern land.  And also because i recently saw a photo of an aboriginal camp amongst the trees on the yarra huge gums and ferns and healthy people, happier than us, living within nature instead of "above".

I long for the country and it's complex simplicity, but then i would miss the complex naivety of the human animal and their maruading ignorance.  I chose art as a agent of change and only time will well if it is a plausible vision, this one of mine.

If you have a lot of money you can do a lot of wack shit, If your are broke ass you gotta make the few count.

after navigating the treacherous sea which is impersonality
one may see a glimmer of hope,
that which lies in a true impartiality.

I find this all symptomatic of my unfortunate case of goodness.

There is no monetary reward in this, only greater challenges.

And temptation is a word in itself.

lots of country spraying lately.

and some trees too.

vaya 

Fitzroy Art Deaths

Have been noticing the export capper who's been smashing around the roy of late, i don't have photos but you can do yourself a favour get some exercise and see for yourself on Fitzroy Street.  The whole wall from rose street down to street i don't know the name of but towards alexandra parade.
This talented individual has taken meticulous care to make sure all the details have been given a bit of a touch up with the black export quality sheen.  psychopathic talent, distilled into malicious art.
I suppose it is a direct response to the tagging and sometimes vicious locations and responses by graffers to being shoved out so rudely by the influx of shiny tanned newbies and muscular clean shaven meat axes.
I actually me one of these bright sparks one night and he was sadly opposed to the graffetishism that can spread quickly in the soul of true believers.

But who are we to say that colour is better than white and black and long bands of monotonous faber.
i am sure there is room for both of us here in this habitable little village.
Because after all, this all will fade, and run into the seperatness from which it has come, and in a few billion years the sun will devour the earth and all you will have will be your excuses.

and so despite being human i have tried to approach the tit for tat with a bit of impartiality and tolerance and to tell you the truth from my little black heart i find it is the only way.

to 

a pocket full of rhymes

autumn fades now into winter and it is good to think about the places to avoid the cold and to try not to piss off too many people that you may have to rub shoulders with in the close quarters a suburban winter promises.  A full year back in Fitzroy and I feel at rest, i hate what the new folks done to the saturday night street though, it is repulsive.  But the cold days still find me happy on the streets and in the cafes, bimbos pizza still great as ever and if you tip the staff regularly the pizza is even better.  I am not drinking caffeine in any great amounts anymore so i can only rate the Chai that i have drank at many of the places, first place goes to Babka, second to Black Cat, third to Nova and fourth place to Lentil as anything( because it's free)
I pay really.
with my conscience.
And so we go, another wet winter perhaps, perhaps the sea temperature will change and we will get more droughts in years to come, probably, and perhaps the sun will spew a giant flaming arc of gas at the southern hemisphere and destroy all southern life as some have predicted.  I hope i can get my shit together and get my publication out on the streets though, if you do happen across it don't be afraid of it, fear of something is just a naive way of hiding from the truth that you hold onto to deeply, the truth that you think the same as me just at different times and sometimes, gracefully, in harmony.
My critics are my best friends, they're just going through a particularly arduous period of reconciliation.

Because sometimes is takes a lot of right to correct a few wrongs.

lates

hunger strike in nobu restraunt hostages eaten as appertif

a man went down to the town one day
came right back and had this to say
never saw a crowd like that fair play
went to the tree and sat in it's shade

sun moved about just to scare him out
he was not happy and said you lout
movin about like that old trout
i outta comethere and knock you out

so he devised a keen plan of paper and sand
wrote it all down with his opposite hand
made it to the sun and had his stand
then came right back with a fresh raw brand

cried for week then died last night
worried the neighbours who got quite a fright
when his corpse walked out devoid of sight
into their kitchen and said goodnight.

thanks for having us

dust becomes life and ashes snow
a life can be lived in an instant
and soon passes beyond and away
into the barren lands and the dark cool
what is this life that takes us down into the dark
and into the light beyond the night

i only know what ignorance has held tight to
and i've forgotten the best ideas i've ever had
they fell into that place all ordered and ready
and tied tight with a string of patience
and deep unknowing

autumn ushers in the window
it changes the firs to yellow
and then orange
and finally brown where they touch the ground
to shelter the cold stones of winter and bend down
to slip between them in spring and feed them through summer
before rising into the air
anew and asking us to trust our lives to them
and their knowledge
passes on and on beyond our brevity
but don't wait to hear
life is out there

DN

A memorial eulogy BOUT dn

Ciao

I think even in the next 10 years or so or as long as the paint will last there will still be dn in Fitzroy.

I remember noticing dick nose getting up back around 2009, it looked crazy as they come.

It's funny that i still recall the exact place in Fitzroy and the exact wall and as the wall hasn't been buffed yet i suppose it is still there under the countless layers that coat these talking walls.  

dn was impossible to define, he was equally hated and loved depending how you knew him, and sometimes how long.  He was brilliant and this was evident in nearly every artistic pursuit he did, whether it be writing, music, chefing and graff.  Because he had a style and he stuck to it.

he once told me that in the future people would see the joke in his words.

He went to court a few months ago for his accumulated spree's throughout Fitzroy and as his last defence  his legal team noted that preceeding must move quickly because the mayor was to be interviewed by the defendant.  This seemed to be sufficient to give a little leniency to the man.

I knew him through music initially and writing and he was already established in both these fields.  Several years in the Appalacians with some of the best players around gave him some chops to watch for, and every now and again he would freestyle some that could only have come from a NYr. 

There was no denying the criminal in dn.  he worked the streets for what it was worth and in the heights of his junk habit he rolled many people for cash for a hit.  He has enemies from this that will probably last their lives.  But he kicked the habit and was sober to see what he'd done and he took the hits he got and didn't say too much to tears about it. 

I hope other people can see the joke at least once, that which lies behind the simple letters we have to see everyday.

Rest Easy Brother

dn

1980 - 2012

serial tagger

musician

writer/poet

chef

boxer

and in his own words 

king of no style

though sometimes a mountain may be shrouded by mist and cloud is it still a mountain

.

an ocean of tears for a simple lie

wrapped in a ribbon
flailing
and sending out rings
in the cool water
just hit by the sun
rising in the haze
of early morning

are you there yet

the moon doth shine as brite as dae

i haven't had much to say because i have been thinking of silence, and silence is a clever devil.  and because i was stolen by a dragon, it lifted me up and took me away over yonder hill.  I slept awhile neath a cyprus pine and when i awoke the air was pure.  I drank of the water and the blackberries that grew i did taste.  Down the wandering stream, where the earth does like to hide this season round.  A silly mole that danced in his own self worth was upsetting the bank and digging his holes too spacious, a rain came down and they all fell in and he washed away and that was the last we saw of him.  Further down the apples spread up the soft curve of land away up to blue.  But they were restrained by fence and i couldn't bear the thought of that kind of joy so i left and like a leaf upon wind swayed on into the unknown.  It is said people fear that which they do not know, this seems foolish, as we are probably incredibly ignorant in comparison to the design of nature and the enormity of its character, but also fear is a great teacher and when we understand what fear really is the humour of life becomes a little more evident.  I reached a bend in the path and my way entered the stone and like all good friendships the stone became a part of me. It ripped a hole like a vent and out into the air came the life like red paint.  There is no time for dilly dallying though so i take my lesson with me and down into the forever.  The forever follows down the burrurulung to the sea but it will only be tomorrow that we make it down there to clasp eyes on the old mother, salty and cool like the shade in an autumn garden in Fitzroy.  The stranger blows into the room and like a friend is acknowledged and in the right direction pointed.  The service is with a grimace not a smile but this is the way and idle chit chat is a pithy substitute for a good job.
Return to the deep truths that you cover with your suspicion and your selfish heart.
A life spent in service to a goodness beyond its own needs is no longer kept in secret to happiness.