Courting controversy

Warning: this post contains uncensored 'strong language' (and more on 'strong language' in a future post).

It’s been a feisty week in Victorian Arts. Sculptor Greg Taylor caused a furore by posting 120 posters around the City of Melbourne with the title of his show emblazoned across them: Cunts. And artist Sam Leach's short-listed entry for this year’s Archibald prize upset a number of people because he painted himself in the guise of Adolf Hitler.

The interesting thing about both stories is not so much that both artists were aware their actions would cause controversy---of course they were---but that everyone knows they wouldn’t get the same sort of publicity without being controversial. And it worked: Sam Leach’s portrait hit the front page in Victoria’s broadsheet The Age on Friday (29 February) and the articles on Greg Taylor took the best part of a full page in the same newspaper on Wednesday (27 February).

To be fair, the paintings of Archibald Prize finalists do get a reasonable airing in the media every year, particularly the overall winner and Packing Room prize, and Greg Taylor has received extensive media coverage in the past (in the mid-nineties, for his life-size sculpture depicting Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip sitting naked on a park bench by Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin: Down by the Lake with Liz and Phil). However, a footy player or cricketer only has to limp slightly to receive the same coverage.

So is it any surprise that artists court controversy in order to seek recognition? Beyond the technical skills they possess, and beyond the noise of controversy, is either Greg Taylor or Sam Leach contributing something worthwhile to the Arts or not? Whilst, in The Age, Greg Taylor declares, ‘It’s all about the word,’ and Sam Leach apparently didn’t expect Melbourne’s Jewish community to denounce his painting as offensive, should we regard the likes of Taylor and Leach as show ponies, publicity pimps, or artists? Is a painting or a ‘show’ of porcelain portraits a work of art simply because it excites a passionate exchange of ideas and, if so, is everything that excites a passionate exchange of ideas art?

In the wilderness

Once upon a time, many years ago, I had a three-year plan:

• use every spare minute when not at work to finish first novel;
  
• after publication of first novel, use proceeds and switch to part-time work, so can write second novel even quicker;
  
• when second novel hits best-seller lists, quit job and write full-time.
  

Not a bad plan.

Three years later, my first rejection slip advised that whilst the characters were interesting the pace was too slow; the second told me that the story was well-paced but the characters ‘wooden’, and the other six or seven left me in no doubt that it was time to move on, get accustomed to the eight-to-five drudge, and work on novel number two in my spare time.

I’ve kept the vast majority of my rejection slips, in the belief that they might help me track progress through what’s felt at times like a wilderness---not a pleasant wilderness of trees and mountains, you understand, but a wilderness that’s dark, inhospitable and teeming with uncertainties. These rejection slips, it seemed, might be used to retrace my steps and get me out of there if I ever wanted to leave, except you can never go back the way you came, can you? And so the black humour of some of them have served to entertain me at times instead. One of my favourite rejection slips contains the following:

“That you have the instincts and energy to make a writer there is no doubt, but how you are to learn the disciplines of restraint, taste and relevance He alone knows. Story-telling is an art denied to all tell-alls.”

Oops. Ouch.

Which brings me to questions of resilience and purpose: What strategies do writers, musicians, artists, develop in the face of frequent and long-term rejection? What stops us from stopping, and from deciding to never pick up a pen or a keyboard or a palette knife ever again?

Is it a matter of gleaning every morsel of useful advice each rejection slip offers? Of finding solace in the knowledge that you’re a member of a very large club (even though you’d really rather not belong)? Or switching into another medium where one’s skills might be better recognised? Of bolstering the ego by standing in front of a mirror every morning and reciting: ‘Every day in every way my writing is getting better and better ...’ or chanting: ‘I think I can, I know I can; I think I can, I know I can ...’? Or do all of the above apply?

I pinned the Peanuts cartoon (above) above my desk, very early on, along with the rather genteel matchbox joke, because I figure it’s better to laugh than cry, however wry the humour. And I’ve sent my work to manuscript appraisal services to buy as much detailed feedback and advice as I possibly could, to compensate for the (understandably) brief rejection slips from those poor souls chained to the slush piles in each and every publishing house. And when the wilderness seemed too dark and inhospitable and teeming with uncertainties, and there seemed to be no way out, I consoled myself by immersing myself in my writing and telling myself yet another story or two.

How about you?

Autumn and Josephine Baker

Each summer, the population of the small town in which I live rises well above two thousand, as the coastline and beaches, cafés and restaurants, accommodate the seasonal influx of holiday-makers. People move constantly in and out of town, unloading and re-packing luggage, unrolling beach towels and dragging out surfboards and packing them all away again, with the same rhythm of the tide rising and falling, flowing in and out. When December 1^st heralds summer, we always know the holiday-makers won’t be far away.

Similarly, we chart the onset of autumn not so much by the arrival of March and cooler weather, occasional showers, mellow evenings, but by the influx of twenty-eight thousand people across the long ‘Labour Day’ weekend, pouring in for ‘The Folkie’. For three days, our seaside town swells to breaking point and, from Friday noon to Monday noon, cross-currents of music flood from a dozen or more venues, drawing everyone in to drift from one to the other to the other. Here are bass lines to pound against your chest and push you backwards, the roar of drums beating rhythm into rhythm, a medley of vocals in a world of tongues to suck you forward, siren-like. It becomes a carnival town of machete jugglers and flame throwers, market stalls and buskers, street cuisine and gutter drunks, acrobats and dancers, and is one last fling before conceding that summer has truly waned.

Although tagged as a folk festival (with a leaning towards world, roots and acoustic music), it’s much, much more than this, and you certainly don’t have to be a fan (I’m not) of nasally folk songs or mournful ballads to enjoy it. These can be found if you want them, but the music and the entertainment is considerably more eclectic than even its broad tag suggests.

Forget Ralph McTell, the highlights of 2007 for me were Eric Bibb (US), Banditaliana (Italy), Habib Koité & Bamada (Mali) and Kelly Auty (Australia). Kelly Auty’s show, Wild Women, paid a dynamic tribute to some of the “greatest female singers of the 20^th century”, such as Bessie Smith, Edith Piaf, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin and the like.

With the shortest of stories and briefest of costume adjustments (the addition of a hat here, the removal of a feather boa there), Kelly Auty sang and danced through the life and times of ten stunning performers in one stunning performance. And, along the way, she introduced me to Josephine Baker, who, somehow, I’d never heard of until that night.

I came across Josephine Baker again recently, but on YouTube this time, and found a whole gallery of clips recording her life, her voice and her dance. The first, whilst dubbed to a different but strangely appropriate track, captures her vibrancy (and check out the costume headgear of the extras). The second paints a portrait of her as a singer. I love the theatre of both these excerpts.

It’s timely I found these clips and reminded myself about that evening for two reasons. Firstly, because the more I find out about her, and want to find out about her, the more I suspect that the qualities I admire in people like Josephine Baker are qualities I'd like to explore in some future piece of writing: the ability and determination to defy convention, and to shape one's own success from this. Maybe a character or two will one day germinate from her likeness and from this seed of an idea. Maybe.

And secondly, because in less than two weeks autumn will be here, and our small town will, once again, become happily caught in the rip of several strong currents and a carnival atmosphere, and there'll be machete jugglers and flame throwers, market stalls and buskers, street cuisine and gutter drunks, acrobats and dancers ...

Blogs and blogrolls

When publisher Keirsten Clark offered PaperBooks’ authors a guest blog, I wasn’t sure how to respond. I’d read various blogs previously, but this was usually a result of glancing visits, when a Google search bounced me into some post or other, rather than from any deliberate encounter. The only blog I’d ever read with any thoroughness was Where is Raed? ... and I’d read that entirely in paperback (The Baghdad Blog by Salam Pax, Guardian Books) and not online!

Nine months later (and a few weeks before The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore is due to appear in print *gulp, sigh*), I thought it might be timely to review the situation. Have there been problems? What have I learnt? Who have I met? Has it been worthwhile?

For me, the biggest problem is scarcity of time. Maintaining a regular blog is time-consuming, and I stand in awe of those prolific writers and thinkers who post something interesting every day---in contrast to my weekly effort. But then I remind myself that it'd be too ironic if I no longer had time to write fiction because I was posting blogs about my involvement in writing fiction, and I take a deep breath and relax again. Besides, I won't get paid and there'll be no bread on the table if I spend so much time blogging that I forget to turn up to work, and then there's domestic duties, being sociable, relaxing and, well, having a life ... in short, I’ve contented myself that a post-a-week is okay.

I’ve learnt that blogging is about having something to say (duh!) and is a great tool for networking and building a neighbourhood of friends through posted comments, e-mails and conversation. (Blogcatalog lends itself to making this process easier, but also attracts those who use the process purely for advertising/self-promoting rather than generating any real dialogue.) The whole process serves to reveal a tremendous range of perspectives, views, ideas, frustrations, achievements, aspirations ... the whole gamut of human experience. It’s a bizarre journey which leaps round the globe through night and day and which allows you to discover other writers who you have an affinity for because of how they write or what they write about, or the colour or shape of their blog.

I’ve also learnt a different way of writing that's got little to do with writing fiction, I suspect, but which I value nonetheless, because it’s an intriguing challenge to put together a regular article in a limited number of words and to have it reasonably polished in a three hour time-frame ... especially as a short story might take me weeks and a novel can take years.

Instant gratification---hmm, I like it!

Lastly, who have I met? Well having recently received the honour of being placed on the blogroll at Go!Smell the flowers, I thought I could answer this question by generating a blogroll of my own (soft, unbleached and environmentally-friendly), so that you might explore some of the links for yourself. There are numerous other sites I occasionally tap into, but what appears below is a list of those I visit regularly because I particularly enjoy them. Before too long, I’ll build another page into my website (click screenshot at bottom right corner of this post) that includes this blogroll on a more permanent basis.

• PaperBooks' blogs obviously (click on the homepage author links to see who's blogging and what's happening). Gary Davison (Fat Tuesday) is a particularly frequent blogger here.
  
• Go!Smell the flowers - a magazine-style post with a dynamic community of twenty writers all posting on diverse topics.
  
• Alina Sharon posts some of her original (and frequently stunning) poetry, as well as old favourites, at The Musings of Madness.
  
• Novice Writer provides a "medley of books, movies, crafting ideas and of course some random thoughts."
  
• Scott Pack (ex-big cheese in HMV and Waterstones, and currently a director at The Friday Project) writes on anything and everything---no holds barred, and usually assisted by a wry sense of humour.
  
• Margo Lanagan (highly acclaimed and much-published author of speculative fiction for YA) gives insight into her writing and is ready to tackle crassness whenever she meets it.
  
• Dovegreyreader "scribbles" about books, books, books ... and occasionally something else. Self-described as a bookaholic, it's hard to see how she reads so many and still has time to sleep, but what a pleasant vice.
  
• Mike French is one of the founders at Go!Smell the flowers, but also maintains his own blog at The View From Here. Mike provides book reviews, interviews (including one with yours truly), competitions, experiments in writing, and many visual delights.
  
• Stella alternates between providing excellent, detailed advice for writing fiction (different forms of structure, developing dialogue, etc), samples of her own prose and witty haiku.
  
• Harriet Devine is a recently retired professor of English Literature who writes books and who posts mostly about literature.
• Mr Grudge provides some interesting anecdotes from his life.
  
• Much of a muchness claims to be a bookbinding blog, but I'm drawn to it because it's much more than this. Much more than just a muchness. Great clips, nice art, well-written.
  

What if?

It’s an old truth that there are few new stories; only new ways of telling old ones. Even dear old Willy Shakespeare borrowed a good number of his storylines from a variety of sources, just as writers have been borrowing from him (and his contemporaries) ever since. Indeed, it’s the way stories are interpreted to reflect the age we live in and the way story-tellers use language, form and structure to tell those stories that counts more than anything else. It’s about providing interesting, entertaining and thought-provoking variations on a theme.

Good versus evil, life versus death, loyalty and betrayal, unrequited love, the love triangle, the nature of reality, identity and belonging, rites of passage, crime and punishment, war and peace ... these are stories we all know and about which we enjoy hearing endless variations.

But it’s about being surprised too. And one of the tasks of the writer is to challenge the reader’s expectations and to lead them places they might not otherwise have thought about going. To this end, one of the questions most writers have to ask themselves, I believe, is: What if?

What if this had happened instead of that?

What if the character decides to act in this way rather than that?

What if the path were to lead into this dark and tangled forest rather than into that clearing?

What if there's a landmine in the middle of that clearing?

The possibilities are endless, and I find I spend a lot of my ‘writing time’ exploring different possibilities before I choose to create a map of any particular one, and then to see how characters might respond to being there. Perhaps it leads to a warped view of the world too, this sense that anything might happen---from the absurdly sublime to the beautifully ridiculous.

I was very amused when a friend sent me the following Eddie Izzard sketch on Facebook this week (thanks, Mara). It applies the question ‘What if?’ to the problems Darth Vader may have faced when queuing for food in the Death Star’s canteen. Star Wars fans should enjoy!

Bouncing along the trophy cabinet

It seems that artists, writers and musicians strive to create for multifarious (and sometimes apparently contradictory) reasons: to observe, to record, to preserve, to entertain, to celebrate, to challenge, to change, to illuminate ... to live.

The Arts are inextricably linked in this respect, but, for me, are linked in many other respects too. It's often the case, when I'm writing, that I'll have either a piece of music in my head, which is shaping the structure of a story and/or the rhythm of its words, or a painting or a piece of sculpture. Sometimes it takes me a while to realise that a piece is actually sitting there with me and that I'm somehow writing to it; however, when I do realise it's there, I know it's time to bring it to the surface through exploring/researching it, in order to understand and accept (or dismiss) its connection. Sometimes, having done this, I have to allow this new knowledge to fully redefine what I'd originally set out to write. It changes everything.

And because writing, for me, is about making worlds out of words, and painting with them, and playing with them, and letting them sing and dance and live and die, and about interpreting the world as I see it, and the way humanity reacts and interacts in that world---which is a similar world, I think, to that of painters and directors and composers and choreographers---that's why I particularly enjoy those opportunities which expose me to other ideas and interpretations and methods for communicating these. It's the way that ideas are conveyed in books, music, theatre, dance, art, films, as well as criticism, that gets the words and ideas bouncing for me.

Reading Helen Dunmore's introduction to D.H.Lawrence's novella's The Fox/The Captain's Doll/The Ladybird this weekend might have made me reflect on the way Lawrence used language to present a view of England in the aftermath of the First World War, but it also provoked me into asking myself: What is it I'm trying to say when I'm writing and how am I trying to say it? The process led me towards jotting down a couple of notes for Novel Two that I otherwise might not have arrived at.

It was also a fitting article to read as I travelled to the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne to see an exhibition of 250 paintings and sculptures by British artists, dating from 1900--1960. This was superb---a visual feast, from which I still feel gorged, and which I won't fully digest for some time---but it was essential to buy the catalogue in order to catch up with a lot of the background information that supported the exhibition. Although there were 27 Stanley Spencer's on display, it was the story of his life I found most interesting (and same with L.S.Lowry); whereas the single Francis Bacon painting was stunning in its own right. A couple of my favourites (see above) were Dod Procter's In a strange land, which I've been drawn to since I first saw it about twelve years ago, and Madeline Green's Glasgow, which I saw for the first time yesterday.

When we left the exhibition, my sister and her partner, who we went with, gave us a copy of Banksy, Wall and Piece (thanks J and M). This, inasmuch as Banksy's street art challenges a notion of art, was similarly fitting and led us in search of a piece which is tucked off Flinders Lane. Two great catalogues that I'll spend some time with, although I especially enjoy the quote on the back of his (click to enlarge):

And three fine examples of his art:

And a quote from Banksy to finish with, which, whilst it might be at odds with evidence that over 25,000 people, for example, viewed Roger Fry's exhibition of Manet and the Post-Impressionists during a two month period in the winter of 1910-1911, certainly keeps the ideas bouncing:

Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions and buy records by the billions. We the people, affect the making and the quality of most of our culture, but not our art.

The Art we look at is made by only a select few. A small group create, promote, purchase, exhibit and decide the success of Art. Only a few hundred people in the world have any real say. When you go to an Art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.

Favourite words and phrases

Put down the pen, pushed back the keyboard and enjoyed a brief holiday from writing (redrafting novel two, working through a short story, blogging, etc) whilst travelling to Perth and exploring south-west Western Australia recently. But nothing is ever wasted, because such experiences inevitably end up shaping or informing or serving as a backdrop in future projects, to some extent at least. There may be a scene or a smell or a relationship observed or a choice of phrase overheard---it all gets processed in the Factory of the Imagination.

Had intended posting a photoblog (or is that a phlog?) with a few choice shots of this magnificent area, but our camera became seriously ill the day before we left, whilst I was crazily snapping away at a friend’s wedding of all things (now recorded through a grainy, pink filter), so I only have a few decent pics. Make that terminally ill. The camera is terminally ill. It has good moments of course, when it’s hard to detect that there’s much wrong with it, but on the whole things aren’t looking too good. Literally. It’s on its way out. And perhaps this isn’t too bad in itself, because it’s too easy to replace the patina of memory with a thousand digital images and to end up experiencing life, second-hand, or vicariously, through the lens of a camera.

Went on a guided tour of Fremantle prison (c/o Jim, ex-prison officer), which was in use from 1855-1991, with few modifications. A grim place, but plenty of images greedily processed and stored down at the Factory. Was delighted to see young baobab trees in Perth, which looked pretty much as if they’ve been drawn by a child, and which reminded me of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince (although he treated them a tad unfairly perhaps). And saw flame trees too, and a forest of tingle trees, and some pretty warm sea, and where the Indian Ocean meets the Southern Ocean, and visited Cape Mentelle vineyard in Margaret River (which we drank a portion of).

This brings me to the cellar door and the subject of favourite words and phrases (a round trip of about 5,400 kilometres).

In the film Donnie Darko (written and directed by Richard Kelly, 2001), the character of Karen Pomeroy (played by Drew Barrymore) says: ‘This famous linguist once said that of all the phrases in the English language, of all the endless combinations of words in all of history, that Cellar Door is the most beautiful.’ The famous linguist in question appears to be J.R.R.Tolkien, and his preference for the phrase has become well known largely because Donnie Darko has acquired cult film status. Discussions of the phrase are well documented.

Cellar door. Hmm, it does have a beautiful fluency to it.

C’est la vie works for me in a similar way, and I sometimes wonder if this is a secondary reason why the artist Marcel Duchamp used it as the surname for his alter-ego Rose Sélavy---other than the value of the word play (Eros That’s life = Love is life).

However, one of my favourite words, not only because of the way it sounds, but because of the way it looks when written is syzygy. It seems such an unlikely word with that close collection of tails, but snaps away from the front of the tongue and the lips like a piece of brittle toffee. I like the meaning it carries too:

1. (Astron.) conjunction or opposition, esp. of moon with sun.
   
2. Pair of connected or correlated things (as in yoked or paired).
   

Reference: The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary

So, in the absence of having an album of a thousand photos to put together, I thought I’d collect some favourite words and phrases instead. If you have a mind to, send me your own favourites, with the reason why they’re special and, if I receive enough, I'd like to list them in a future post.

To finish, and given the mention of Donnie Darko, thought I’d post the trailer for it, in case you too like films that are little off-beat and feel inclined to view it.

Through a glass darkly?

It’s an interesting experience when you revisit anything that you formed an attachment to many years previously---places, people, music, films---but haven’t been in touch with since. Books are no different. My summer reading has been swamped by texts I need to read for work, which isn’t a complaint because it’s an aspect of my job I particularly enjoy, even though I’ve had to relegate a number of other books to the bottom of the pile until I’ve finished. However, with some of these titles, it’s very much a matter of visiting old friends after a long absence and learning to see them in a different light. Unlike people, who have a tendency to change views, affiliations, tastes and the like, I know these old friends haven’t changed at all (not by one dot or comma), although their jacket designs may have been altered once or twice in the interim, and so, if my reading of them is significantly different, what’s really highlighted is the degree to which I’ve changed since I originally met and read them twenty or thirty years previously.

One of the courses I’m preparing for comprises:

• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger,
  
  
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell,
  
  
• Bombshells by Joanna Murray-Smith,
  
  
• Look Both Ways, written and directed by Sarah Watt.
  

Whilst the other course comprises:

• The Patron Saint of Eels by Gregory Day,
  
  
• Radiance by Louis Nowra,
  


• The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë,
  
  
• Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov,
  
  
• The Fox/The Captain’s Doll/The Ladybird by D.H.Lawrence,
  
  
• John Donne poems.
  

I’ve commented on some of these texts in earlier posts and won’t repeat anything here, but five of the above are very old friends and, developing a reading of them now, after a break of a couple of decades or so is illuminating to say the least.

When I first read Catcher as a teenager, for instance, I seem to remember unconditionally admiring the character of Holden Caulfield for what I saw as his willingness to challenge all that was phoney in life regardless of the consequences, whereas now he seems remarkably vulnerable to me. In part, it was the uniqueness of the voice Salinger had given him that enamoured me and short-circuited a broader critical consideration on my part, whereas now I find myself questioning and analysing his strident repetition and assertion of facts, views, opinions, as he seeks to define who is (and why he is) against his abiding grief and sense of ennui and depression. I've become more sympathetic to the experiences that shape his character and explain his outbursts, but less empathetic. If anything, I like him more for being able to recognise the nature of his flaws, and I find him a more likeable flawed narrator than, say, Nick Carraway in F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.

Found this interesting response to The Catcher in the Rye on YouTube, with captivating soundtrack:

As for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, I can’t remember finding the structure quite so awkward or the style quite so plodding when I originally read it and thought it a tremendous gothic mystery, and yet neither can I remember it challenging quite so deliberately and powerfully the dominant views of its era on gender roles and the nature of relationships and marriage and the notion of eternity. I still like the book, but for very different reasons. I recognise and admire the risks Anne Brontë took in writing it far more now than I did first time round.

Sometimes, when walking through a shopping precinct, it’s possible to be caught unawares by the reflection in the plate glass windows of a person who seems to be taking a parallel path. There is something disorientating in the familiarity of their stride and their ability to mimic your movements, but their hair may be greyer or shorter or longer than you thought yours to be, and they may seem older than you thought yourself to be, and in a moment you realise it’s the image of you. In some senses, revisiting a book (or a place, or a film, or a long-unheard album) creates the same impression: it obliges us to admit to ourselves that, against a fixed measure, we have indeed changed, which can be confronting but is often illuminating.

No wonder I’m steaming through this pile of books and am keen to start something brand, spanking new!

Journey at a word's notice

I relish research. That’s a confession. It’s one of many aspects of writing I love getting lost in. There’s something exciting and adventurous about exploring a word or a phrase or a reference and suddenly finding yourself in new territory: rediscovering ideas, concepts; tracing their origins; charting the passages between one place another; creating connections and making these new places your own---anything that broadens the horizons.

For example, when putting together an early draft of The Snowing and Greening of Thomas Passmore, I used the word ‘flamenco’ to suggest a style of dancing that takes place in one scene. Though only intended as a passing comment, the moment I wrote it I wasn’t sure if it was really appropriate or not, and whether I could leave it in or not, and so, before I could say ‘Burke and Wills’ or ‘Dr Livingstone I presume’, I'd reached for the reference books and was engaged upon a major expedition that I haven’t yet returned from.

My trusty two volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary noted the first recorded use of the word ‘flamenco’ in the English language as 1896 and identified a connection with the Spanish for ‘flamingo’ (which made a kind of sense with the bird’s ‘bright scarlet plumage, long and slender legs and neck’). It also noted that it’s a ‘Spanish gipsy style of singing or dancing’. However, my Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary made the more popular qualification that the word derives from ‘Flemish’ (and a belief that gipsies were Flemish in origin). Regardless of this, I’d begun browsing now and couldn’t help but notice a few convenient definitions for the word ‘flame’, which was sitting comfortably nearby in both books:

• ‘The condition of visible combustion’;
  
• ‘A bright beam or ray of light’;
  
• ‘A burning feeling or passion’;
  
• ‘The object of one’s love’;
  
• ‘To move as or like flame’;
  
• ‘To kindle, inflame, excite, animate’.

All this was good stuff and felt relevant to the way the story was heading at that time, but I hadn’t learnt much about the nature of flamenco dance---the rhythm, the gestures, the mood, the music----and so I left the books behind and set sail across Google.

Three days later ... well, I won’t take you through the initial stages of the journey, but from many sites I visited along the way I learnt this form of dance grew from song, and that the songs originally recorded tales of the oppressed and the under-dog, and that the passion and the fire and the mournfulness were all an integral part of flamenco and had been through the centuries, and that the song was often accompanied by guitar. The site http://www.answers.com/topic/flamenco was a particularly useful place to visit and a fine staging post to other sites, such as http://www.flamenco-world.com/magazine/about/que_es_flamenco/indice11112004.htm . The more I discovered, the more I wanted to listen to flamenco music, to click my fingers and shout “Olé” along to the tune of it, to eat paella and tapas, olives and soft cheeses, and to spend time in Andalusia. And some of that I’ve done, and some of that I’m yet to do.

Went to see Gala Flamenca perform in Melbourne a few weeks back, on tour from Spain. They were stunning, colourful, fiery, passionate, mournful, seductive, entertaining, and left me feeling content that I’d taken a closer look at the meaning of the word ‘flamenco’ when I was working on that early draft, even if it was only a word to use in passing. Olé!

This excerpt is taken from a film by Carlos Saura, which I haven't yet seen, and which I only discovered whilst putting this post together (another journey), but I'll be looking to get hold of a copy now. Thought it was a nice example and I hope you enjoy.

Of A Sea Lion

I’d fully intended this post would be about the books I’ve read recently, and started getting my thoughts together on this, when these best laid plans went happily astray. Life got in the way.

Jogging along the beach this morning, I came upon a sea lion. At first I thought he was dead, because he was flat out and because we occasionally get dead seals, stingrays and fairy penguins washing up, particularly after a storm, and because he wasn’t moving. So it goes. However, although he mightn’t have been feeling crash hot, he took a deep breath as I looked at him and he blinked an eye to get rid of the flies swarming his face. Beached, injured, dying perhaps, but still alive. A magnificent beast from a different world and a sight to behold.

It’s put everything else out of my head today and reminds me how much I enjoy living close to the sea where such things occasionally happen. More than this, it also reminds me of what I find important in the stories I enjoy reading and writing: where the extraordinary rises to the surface of the ordinary (so that what is extraordinary seems ordinary, and what is ordinary seems extraordinary). At one extreme, it’s why I enjoy the surreal diversions in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-5, Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate, or Murakami’s novels, and, at the other end of the spectrum, why I enjoy Tim Winton’s stories so much.

To my collection of such experiences, I’d love to add something my son witnessed a few months back: a killer whale (very rare in these waters) leaping into view a hundred metres off the lighthouse and then diving again. Or the pod of dolphins my wife watched one afternoon. But I can claim the occasion a New Zealand friend was staying with us and saying how she’d never seen a kangaroo in the wild, when one went hopping down the street a few seconds later (the first time we'd ever seen one so close to the house). However, and just to prove there’s an urban equivalent to these moments, I’ve held onto the memory of something I observed when I was in Melbourne last year: a blind woman---dark glasses, white cane tapping the pavement in front of her---wheeling a bicycle at her side. It stopped me in my tracks, and I waited to see if she’d mount the bike and start pedalling down the street, tapping the cane in front, but she never did.

I’ll never find out the rest of her story, although I wonder about it sometimes, but I was able to follow through on the sea lion. As soon as I reached home, I phoned a wildlife emergency number, and within fifteen minutes they’d returned the call to let me know that a vet had previously been called out to look at him, that they suspected he was suffering from a hernia or a tumour, but that they’d continue to check up on him. Later, I’ll head back to the beach to see whether he’s still there or has found his way back into the sea.

C'est la vie.