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April 14, 2008

don't die of shock. no, don't.

more than a year.

proof enough of the same old dilettante approach i've taken to this thing. it's getting old.

which means, it's time for it('s author) to undergo some reinvention.

a lot has happened, naturally - love found and foolishly lost, address changed, and fortunes, too (more in weeks to come on that note...).

but i am certainly going to be back. it might be a while - i need to think carefully about the next step. i'll be milestone older... 'there's always time' is getting harder to blurt out and actually believe. can't fool anyone else if i can't fool myself.

crackbook has made it easier for me to be lazy with the 'rum, which was initially a way of staying in touch. FB does it better; i can't blog anymore without a purpose. the friends i've made through 'blogging' are now: my housemates, reasons to travel interstate, home-fires burning. i don't do it any justice being this sporadic.

so i'll be back when the nascent blobs are more clearly defined.

i know, i know - quitting your blog is soooo 2006...

love

Posted by reuben at April 14, 2008 9:22 PM

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March 25, 2007

comforting sounds/mew

sureness is something i have always found hard to come by. it's not for want of confidence, but for a certain restlessness of mind/spirit etc.

for the first time in years, i have music on a fairly grand scale in my room again. i sold my iPod recently, so i could get some enjoyment out of commuting again. i find the iPod experience helps disconnect you from the world, which sucks, as people are pretty disconnected from one another anyway, i feel. don't get me wrong - they're great for long distance travel, but for the regular brevity of the commute, i'd rather dip in and out of a book. just finished Martin Amis' "The Information" since you asked, and enjoyed it immensely. recommendations happily accepted.

life in funswick is wonderfully stable, insofar as i can derive any happiness from that - happiness is a tenuous proposition anyway, so i'd rather be stable and tenuously happy than unstable and tenuously happy.

changes since my horribly-ages-ago last post include: growing worry about how long i can mantain the facade of caring about a job i clearly have little interest in despite the life it allows me to live in terms of personal comfort, the arrival of lola , a cute and sickly little tortoise-shell into the funswick homestead (shown here on housie's journal), my rapid consumption of my first batch of homebrew (turned out great!), the feeding of friends and accidental offending of others, and the purchase and imminent arrival of this...

...further proving my financial management skills have not improved in line with the higher income/expenses. laugh all you like; so-called 'metal' guitars of this vintage are excellent playing instruments, and brilliant to record with. i'm buying it as a fire-up-arse-light to make some comforting sounds of my own again. if i fire up in public with a toneful ensemble, there'll probably need to be another guitar for that (for pure sonic purposes), but i'm growing in the confidence to actually play out with the/a shred-beast. my friend mel helped me confront this, actually, and i realised the coolsie indie-ness of only condoning the reverential use of indie-approved retro instruments is just another aesthetic fascism in reverse: these guitars carry a stigma because a lot of the bands that played axes like this often used an outrageous visual sensibility to compensate for musical lacks. ergo, the only way to shut the critics up is by playing something substantial and awesome with it. i think my 17 years of playing music, 8 years of writing and co-writing original tunes, and 30-odd years of super-broad listening might help there. all i do these days is shred the acoustic, while squealing away off key to exercise the vocal cords. the upside is, the chops are still good as gold, i just dont have anyone to write for. housie is remarkably understanding about the wailing.

i thought i didn't have much to say, oddly. but there's stuff to be learned/mined from life hanging sometimes pleasantly, sometimes blandly in this suspended state between desire and action, about normal for me. my foot slipped temporarily into my mouth while back-and-forthing with my favouritest (a pattern we'd somehow managed to blessedly avoid for nearly a year now) over some insecurity she's feeling, me and the housie have weathered our own little storm, i've grown increasingly complacent about a variety of things, and i'm (bizarrely) generally non-plussed by much of what the world has/is throwing at me.

it seems for me that 'calm' is a double-edged sword; the absence of many stresses also saps the desire for change. i thrive on change, but the uncertainty of it kills my mental health. turn the volume down or take my foot off the accelerator as i have for the past few months, and i think straight, but my heart quails a little - the upbringing means i'm far too comfortable with a life that doesn't match the (relative) heights i've allowed myself to hit when giving further sway to my more romantic leanings. i like risk.

so why don't i anymore?

the point (if there is one) is, i have recently got myself back into a position i was in about five years ago, when i risked a lot and lost. i got back to here by systematically restoring some touch points that have provided me with security - photos and music. i've hatched the roughest of plans for a new band, uploaded 700 odd photos to flickr - (check 'em out, do - it's all the past, but it's the sweat of film photography rather than the offhand snapping of digital - not dissing users, i just find that i don't 'think' as creatively with a dig in my hand: the process is part of the art *for me*, and film still wins). i also plan to move in the next 12 months back to writing (at least part time) again - reviews, interviews, etc. i need to flex in some format that isn't the bland diarising i always seem to fall back on here. i need to have a goal (ie. criticism, analysis) for what i write to feel that writing is useful. many journallers are so much more entertaining than myself, that i never bother with that here. plus i'm piss-funny IRL, LOL!!11!

so stay tuned.

i'll leave you with an image of my old amp, a pure monster, that i have hung onto not because of any material attachment, but because i only throw my heart after something (or someone) that i know has gravitas, warmth, power, potential for the future - something that will facilitate growth, that will give as much as it takes. in a fit of overblown self-congratulation one day, i re-labelled all the controls - boring stuff like 'bass' 'mid' and 'treble' - with terms like 'arse' 'thwack' and 'zing' because i thought they more accurately reflected what this amp could do. in humbug's last dozen or so gigs (the band i used to be in) this amp's sound got me more compliments from soundguys than in the previous 7 years of shows.

it will sing again soon.

ps. yes, that quote over the name badge *is* a quote from Dante - "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here."

i'd peel such pretentiousness off if every single word wasn't true.

Posted by reuben at March 25, 2007 3:19 PM

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February 11, 2007

D'oh.

idiot that i am, i was all set to post something.

then, i got my muddy fingers all over the code in this thing and now it is doing crazy shit. please ignore the repeated posts (and banner, wtf?) appearing halfway down the screen if you scroll down. I R IN YR XML, RUINING YR RDNG XPRIENCE!!111!

i am trying to get friends with teh big branes to help me out, so i can get back quick smart to boring you with my pics and images, but for now i am just enjoying tearing my hair out and wondering why i never listened to my teacher who said 'learn about computers - they're the future. if you know how to work them, you'll own the future', when i was ten.

in the meantime, i finally got myself a Flickr, so i will be probs posting piccies there from now on.

if i can't get this shit sorted in a week or so, i will allow the redrum to die and simply break ground on a new bastion of navel-gazing excellence.

the tranquil looking fish are crosby, stills, nash and young, and they LOVE living in brunswick hella more than st kilda. they are full of vigour and, indeed, a not inconsiderable amount of vim, placed as they are near the sun streaming in through our delightful backdoor window, which has faux-leadlights with a tulip shape that looks decidedly like a pair of inverted cocks. simply dicklightful!

the photo above is of the bookshelf by our 'reading corner' which contains merely the overflow from me and the pirates' shared bibliographical resources. i think it's got something for everyone, frankly - all are catered for, from your garden variety pervert (120 Days of Sodom) to your wistful europhile (Le Petit Prince, Lonely Planet Western Europe - in which yours truly wrote the chapter on Northern Italy; the Netherlands edition next to it is my handiwork, too), canonical snooty-noses (the Norton, bard's complete yadda yadda) to nimble-fingered minxes who might want to try a spot of paper fondling, Nippon style. We even have kids books, for, well kids (or the young at heart) and a compendium of the 18 and 19C cussword stylings of those lovely genocidal Brits who founded this fine, remarkably white nation...

you are all invited to curl up in the sun in the corner of our kitchen like lazy cats whenever you like and read away, while pirate and i coax perfect espressi out of lucy, and program tunes to soothe or suggest in iTunes, your perfect Rancho-Relaxo style oasis of calm, unassumingly nestled in a quiet street amid the otherwise rapacious nihilistic lefty clamour of the Ghetto of Hate.

do come over, do.

that is all.

ps. LOVE! life in the ghetto
pps. if i ever offer to cook you a parma, say yes, because it looks like this - real chicken breast, real ham, real napoli/ragu, and no scrimping on cheese.
ppps. eggplant parmas at a day's notice for non meato-philes.
pppps. this is why we no longer pay $10 for that poor excuse at the east...

Posted by reuben at February 11, 2007 7:33 PM

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December 4, 2006

the weight is a gift

***

it is 10.36 on a monday night. one of my housemates has been away at a circus convention in wollongong; he just cartwheeled into my room, thrust a coopers into my hand, hugged me hello and bombarded me with all the exuberance i remember having at 19, too. so sweet.

neil young is singing about his cinnamon girl (oh to be living in laurel canyon in 1971. *sighs*), and all is well with the world for tonight.

this pic reminds me of a time when i was momentarily flush with happiness amidst a maelstrom of heartsickness. everything i love is in it: the wide open sky, a relic replete with a billion stories and lives not too far away, beautiful language and flavours to tempt it into song, and silver halides and peoples i loves...

it will have to stand in for sitting in sugardough on sunday, catching myself just happy, though - i didn't have a camera with me, for once. i had a slut red bowl of hot tomato, roasted capsicum and chorizo soup and a plate of crusty sourdough in front of me, and was poring over didion at a tiny one-person table in the corner, and (despite the book being an exploration of what grief and mourning can do to an otherwise rational mind) an uncharacteristic stillness sat beside me. though sad, it's never indulgent. beautifully written, it is a document all the more powerful for its measured detachment in circumstances where a little indulgence would actually be easily forgiven.

earlier that day, the ATM had ripped me off $50. the gal at the caf had burnt my hand to the point of blistering by spilling hot oil on it.

nothing could make me angry. my total lack of angst shocked me.

for years, i had been told 'let it go' and words to this effect, being someone prone to obsessing. it was like riding a bike; i could do it once i stopped *trying* to do it.

maybe it was the memoir, maybe it was the music i've been listening to lately, maybe it was nothing more than the blazing summer-y sun and hope just loitering by that horizon i'm in love with, a cheeky smile splashed across its gob.

i've come too far to not know what to do with this: happiness doesn't have to last - i don't think it's in its nature. in the book, didion talks about loving someone 'more than one more day'. for ages, i've been thinking about who and what i love more than my next breath...

moments like these. juicier for their unexpectedness.

***

Posted by reuben at December 4, 2006 10:33 PM

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November 13, 2006

here's to better daze

what a difference a month makes...

i looked in an old (physical, book-type) journal the other day and saw this line i'd written: "... i fly this holding pattern with a pilot's patience, and a passenger's longing for landing." though i was talking about a soldier girl, so far away, who made my head spin around, i can only smirk when i think of the restlessness and impatience that, no matter where i go and how i grow (or resist growth), seems always a part of me. in every aspect of my life.

will be starting a new gig in a few weeks that won't require much of my passion, but will need most of my energy. but i'm content to circle now, whereas as a younger man i would have been champing at the bit, wanting specific changes to happen now/10 minutes ago/ yesterday. the changes i want to make will take time. and money. i can give myself to this, create a basis of stability for a few years, then shift. can't i? it can suck, thinking and dwelling on how one might not be in a particular position if one hadn't made such bad choices, and it can even suck thinking that a new direction is a compromise, however positive. this choice made me, rather than i it: right now, i want more stability. i can only get that from this steady, steady new trajectory.

but rather than it being a fearful, conservative choice, it has taken tremendous courage - the daily grind is not who i am, and though i do an awesome imitation of someone who is capable and solid there, it is not my natural terrain. i feel like an animal in the zoo must; it's life, like, but not as it should be. i can only grit my teeth, project the gains i can make in my creative endeavours and charge on in, making ongoing reassessments about whether i am getting the satisfaction - overall, in life - that the job merely facilitates/provides.

i chose it because of the implications for my real life. i've been serving up a stilted, limited version of myself to people in my world for months and months now. amazingly, this watered-down version i've been - in terms of audacity, not honesty - has somehow made me still able to be seen as attractive and vibrant to some people, even though i haven't been a me i'm really proud of for quite a while. i've been accepting limitations, and acquiescing under challenges i would normally dig in my heels and fight against for so long; this was never me in a previous, prouder incarnation, and i've loathed it. but i finally feel some of the fight coming back, and there's work that needs to be done. work i can't do if i'm too dependent on any one person.

the knowledge that i had hit the bottom and have started on the upward part of the arc again made me make a change this weekend to a wonderful relationship i've been in for the past six months or so. to end one phase, but only ultimatley to become something better, even if it means we miss out on some fun with each other in the short term...

i'm moving soon, with someone i was seeing, but am not anymore. because we know we're good together. because we will be great at living together. but we came together in a way that was more comfortable and friendly than explosions and doppler shifts, more gently 'tested' than a frantic collision, and we want to keep getting the goodness of each other without the burden of expectation. some of our closest know, some don't; some understand. some don't. none of this matters: i - and she, as far as i know from the honest words we've shared on the matter - know it is the right thing.

some might see it as cynical. i'm far from cycnical; in the past i've been struck to my knees under the weight of my own saturation in love, buoyed through horrible things on the lightness of my own heart at waking next to someone and just sitting, watching the quiet miracle of her breathing, her aliveness, wanting to die right in that moment of observing her sleep, my summum bonum, the happiest experience i could ever possibly have, and all i could ever want. i am continually humbled by any and all affection people show me; on a good day, i am thankful, and grateful, and do my best to reciprocate. on a bad day, i wonder how i could possibly deserve such a gift.

but somehow these days i'm generally much more the realist about how to have respectful and mature relationships even in the absence of the arrows and butterflies. i'm not immune to love, it's not even 'harder' for me to fall than it once was (as if we have any say in that!). i just accept that you don't 'choose' who you fall for - that's why they call it 'falling', it's not a *step* you take, it's a stumble that can hurt you on landing or give you more wild, heady forward momentum than you know what to do with...

i don't want someone i care about to be with anyone who's not being or giving their all - even if the 'anyone' who's not being or giving their bestest and mostest is *me*. i ain't kicked myself to the curb before, but i don't feel bad about having done it. it's not about thinking 'she's better off without me' or me having 'low self-esteem', it's about seeing what we're *actually* good at being for each other and not imposing any retrofit Couple™ kits on it; being able to stand back and assess what we really do and mean for each other, what's good and bad, and how best to emhpasise the strong and minimise the weak.

i'll fall in love again, as will she. but, "... to find someone you love, you've got to *be* someone you love."

so. i've got work to do.

heartfelt thanks for all the sofars, soons and will-bes, wheelie. i've loved every minute...

x

Posted by reuben at November 13, 2006 8:13 PM

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October 9, 2006

stop and grow

a quick meme, with apologies to sub for the lateness. life's been.

1. Three things that scare me
People dumb enough to believe in 'Intelligent' Design or limitless economic growth. *shudders*
Enclosed spaces and restricted movement
My talent for unwittingly hurting people I care about

2. Three people that make me laugh
Clunk
Liverpool supporters; nothing like scouse wit.
Fits

3. Three things I hate the most
Cowardice
People with no spatial awareness; dicks who can't move in crowds, who stop dead (with flow behind them) can't estimate space, don't look when coming out of doorways, can't merge. all should die.
'Front' masking limited ability; greatness doesn't need to announce itself, it's always ready

4. Three things I don't understand
How frequently Naked Emperors get away with it
Why people give a fuck about material 'stuff', who focus more on shit they own over who they are.
Nationalism. How can a place (geographical/physical reality) own 'values' (abstract, ideals influencing behaviour/social exchange)?

5. Three things I'm doing right now
Contemplating poverty
Recovering from a sudden fit of spontaneous blubbing
Applying for jobs I don't want because all the good jobs are about who, not what, you know

6. Three things I want to do before I die
Find someone I trust enough to live and make babies with. I'm cool with it not happening, it would just be lovely. i found two, but they both left.
Make one really amazing work of art, musical, photographic, i don't care - something worthy of leaving behind so the few people who knew me and who touched my life might look at it or hear it and be reminded 'yeah, that's him. all he wanted to do was give us something to know him by'.
Love as unreservedly, courageously and passionately as I did the last time, risking everything. This is less aspirational of course; I know it will, eventually, happen. I just wish it would happen while i still feel capable of using my changing energy levels to their best ends.

7. Three things I can do
Write, though I don't offer anything on this journal as evidence.
Take good pictures with any camera in any lighting after two minutes of familiarising.
Travel with a light step. I'm never happier than when going somewhere new.
*Honourable Mention: wail a rock guitar lead break like a fucking possessed man.

8. Three ways to describe my personality
Brash?Arrogant (I don't feel it, but i know people think it)
Playful
Tender

9. Three things I can't do
Wait
Relax
Bite my tongue when someone is being rude, aggressive or unreasonable.

10. Three things I think you should listen to
M83, Before the Dawn Heals Us. I stole this description - "my bloody valentine with keyboards". Enough said.
Sufjan. Godboy rocks, sincerely.
The Go! Team. Ass-shakin' party music par excellence. I can't dance to save myself, but nothing can stop me from moving to this album. I'd dance to it to save YOUR life. Proof that music to make you move doesn't have to be a metronomic bleepy drug soundtrack, but actual people-playing-it organic music.

11. Three things you should never listen to
Governments. They should be listening to you.
Anyone rebounding from a long-term relationship.
Your head; at least, when it's trying to shout down your heart.

12. Three things I'd like to learn
To get out of my own way
To do what i should, not what i want
Money; how to be good at handling it while still not giving a shit about wealth, status, power etc.

13. Three favourite foods
Pasta, if i'm making it
Mushrooms in just about any configuration
Pho (and noodle soups in general if they're fresh)

14. Three beverages I drink regularly
water
red wines
the milk of human kindness...

15. Three shows I watched as a kid
Match of The Day
Countdown
Anything to do with space (Battlestar Galactica etc)

16...Three people I'm tagging
none.

the stallion doesn't tag (private - and very bad - joke).

***

it's been a strange and frustrating time since the last post; the imminent job loss morphed into actual unemployment, despite picking up some freelance gigs here and there. this time last year (subtracting a few months) I was so broke I had to sell my guitar to get bond together for a new place. i'm so stretched at the moment that i may have to flog THAT guitar's replacement to make rent next month.

and today is a special anniversary. the birth of someone whose very existence bolsters mine. an old friend, a best friend, a perfect lover, a spiky travel companion, a lifetime's affection. the only sense the world has ever made.

she's way away on the other side of this huge rock, kicking massive career goals, sharing a life with someone more solid than me. for three years now, i haven't been able to say happy birthday properly. for one of them, i was over there. i gave her some magic shoes, dreamwalking shoes to put on while imagining yourself in another life. she hadn't settled yet, london was still pushing and challenging. i wanted there to be a link between me and her and there.
but i was a link to a life she wanted to leave behind; i might have been a good thing at a bad time, but good or not, i was part of that time, and had to be severed along with the rest of it. i see that now - back then, all i could see was the bloodletting. mine.
the next year, i sent her a movie of her past and a poster-size print of her spiritual sister, the good bits, so she wouldn't forget. she has a terrible memory. she called me, weeping, and thanked me. and still i hardly heard from her, forging the new in east london. 2005 was crazy. i sent her endless cups of tea, but it was a tiny, desperate flare sent up in the darkness our relationship had become.
when she came to visit in january, i acted my socks off just to convince them i was sane and okay.

and what of this year? i have nothing but every space between every breath and beat to offer my b. i was feeling dejected this morning, and marty, one of our mutual bestest friends had posted this lovely song on his own journal. by dumb coincidence, i recently put this on a mix disc.

it felt like a gift. sure, i'll admit to having a soft spot for christopher eccleston, but then i put it to you that few other actors could take a concept so simple and make it scan.

is there a point? can i tie this up?

i've been pretty down, which in turn makes me feel guilty, cos i'm scared i won't be very good company for those closest to me these days, (even though we are remarkably good at talking plainly with each other) or because i have ability and skill at some things and then feel i must be flawed in some other way if i can't then turn that into opportunity or success in other parts of my life. i'm my own harshest critic right now.

but the antidote to such sadness and ill-timing and things just not going my way is not more moping and bitching, is it? i'm far from the pollyanna type; i've chowed down too many fluoxetines and xanaxes to ever be accused of that, and even the birthday girl in question has painted me with a cynic's brush. but i think this clip is about remembering that the other way is a better tactic for digging yourself out of the hole you stand in.

today, better than any drug or therapeutic gambit is the simple knowledge that someone who shook me to the very core is in her moment, is a star. she will be first and foremost in her world, showered hopefully, even in tiny fractions of the joy i've seen her bring to others (her gift - drawing people in, making them feel valued, eliciting truth), and know she's given me. in metrics i can never repay. she is hope and trust in human form. i take happiness and hope from merely knowing of hers. i never just wanted her, i wanted to be more *like* her, too.

ain't that all love is?

happy birthday, b.

r

x

ps. apologies to bloglines users; i am a linktard.

Posted by reuben at October 9, 2006 1:28 PM

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August 28, 2006

les be friends

why is it a perfectly charming evening can be disrupted by the actions of one cocktard?

one moment it's all champagne, cucumber sandwiches, a friend's hen's do, eating cock with a local arts maven (plus ro and e from the previous week's frolics) and trading anecdotes on mediterranean swearing with another new friend, the next you're picking through your own gender politics, frantically trying to figure out if it's okay to knock some venomous dwarf's teeth through the back of her angry neck.

isn't it always the way?

disclaimer: i use the term dyke advisedly. anyone who knows me well will be aware of my solid awareness of queer politics, both personally and theoretically. i have many gay, bi and lesbonic friends and acquaintances and, thankfully, they're all of the strain who try - precisely because of their own experiences of marginalisation and intolerance - not to pre-judge people at first meetings. i understand that anger and militancy are stereotypes often unfairly appended to 'unattractive lesbians' in particular, and more broadly as a general category.

i never do this; i judge people (if at all) on their actions, how they appear to engage with the world and whether or not the sum of their passion and compassion (claimed, implied or otherwise) is manifested in their observable behaviour.

this chick was just a fucking cunt-axe of the lowest order.

picture: i am minding my own business, having a wonderfully buoyant conversation with some newly acquainted friends of my lovely, who happens to be sitting down the other end of a long trestle on the rooftop deck at madame brussels. for those who haven't been, it's a sweet place, with a kitschy, faux garden party aesthetic happening (inside, mind you; astroturf, white garden furniture etc) and all were having a quite mildly raucous good time. so the host sidles up to me, gestures towards her loveliness and what can only be described as 'herve villechaize with a vagina', deep in not-entirely-comfortable conversation.

hostie: "hey r, you might wanna go over there and rescue e."
me: "really? what, from the tufty gnome in the ill-fitting bad suit? i'm sure e can look after herself."
hostie: [raising an eyebrow] "mmm, i know. but this one's a wild one."
me: "hmm, well. here they come [as e makes a rapid exit from that table back to ours]. sure it's all fine."

poisonous leprechaun saunters over, hot on the delectable e's heels. introductions and small talk ensue. at this point we are getting along fine.

gollum de generes: *something inaudible* very hot woman. great tits, don't you agree?"
me: [amused] "but of course, they are mighty fine."
gollum: "i'll bet they feel as good as they look" [slides hand inside e's top, under the bra, obviously going the full grope, yet making eye contact with me, challenging.]
me: "do you really think that's cool?" [trying not to give fuckarse de rossi the rise she so clearly wants. e is calm, not reacting. much.]
e: "your hands are a bit cold... [now getting more exasperated] and would you mind a little less nipple action, thanks?"
me: "hey, that's out of line..."
e: "r, don't worry about it, it's okay. just leave it."

i attempt to turn back to my conversation with the others, trying not to overhear e negotiating this homonculus' (unwanted, please remember) hand off her boob, as if she should need to, and am doing a good job of pretending to be cool with all of it until i hear:

xena the warrior hobbit: "why, because i'm bold enough to do it? [turns to e]. he's just a straight guy, he doesn't know how to touch a woman. don't worry about him. he's just a typical, repressed, uptight straight guy."

this, after having known me for two seconds. needless to say (but this is me...) the veracity of this claim is, at best, highly questionable...

i won't write what i spat at her, only because my parents (and some younger rellies who are probably already scarred for life) also read this, and might be a bit shocked. it was enough to make ani di fucko pipe down for half a second.

after dinner bint: "you see [smug smile]. typical straight guy, can't handle..."
me: [as calmly as i can manage, given that, if she were a feller, she would've been gargling her molars by now] "look, i'm not pissed because you're handling 'my woman', i don't fucking think of her as my possession in any sense. i'm angry because what you just did was socially inappropriate; you've made EVERYONE sitting here feel uncomfortable - it's simply fucking RUDE, okay? it's just poor fucking manners, and even though she is being cool about it, frankly i think you fucking owe her an apology."

an assortment of shouting, everyone in my corner and this one little turd trying to bash me into the box she'd built before finding out ANYTHING about me at all.

enter host, politely but forcefully frogmarching our toad with the 'wandering pads' off to cool down. thank you, hostie.

the upshot of all this?

look, i've negotiated vast amounts of sapphic traffic in my time; you can't be involved with the performing arts without encountering it, never mind having some of your closest friends go through their whole 'coming out' arc in the time you've traversed with them, from being kids to growing into mature functional relationship participants. as some of my companions observed, the viciousness with which this particular soapboxing lesbian set-up the scenario (she had earlier bragged to e about her penchant for/skill at 'turning straight women' - thereby fetishing the resistant heterosexual gal in EXACTLY the same way ignorant young het males often fetishise lesbian subjects in the context of porn - the 'i'm man enough to turn you' phenomenon) was such that it was obvious she'd intended deliberately to push my buttons.

she did. but not the one she expected. what shat me was not her actions but her purpose - she went out, much like over-testosteroned guys do, *spoiling for a stoush*, but her kind of stoush rather than the direct physical sort. it's almost laughable that what triggered my anger was not someone fondling my date (who can totally take care of herself), but rather being underestimated, misread, presumed so much like a class of person i quite proudly consider myself wholly distanced from. i have actually made a concerted effort throughout my adult years, and in both academic and normal daily life, to better understand the politics of difference and challenge bad faith in bigotry and prejudices wherever i see them. she could not have offended me more in suggesting my ignorance (of sexuality, difference or anything else) had she never even laid a hand on my companion.

i guess i owe her for proving my theory that there are only two kinds of people in the world: decent folks and fuckwits. gay, straight, black, white, what the fuck ever - if you don't fall into the happy half of that first and most important social categorisation, be prepared to be told. i had to wrestle with the fact that, had this event occurred with a man in her place, pacifist or not, my will to violence/direct physical action would most certainly have been triggered. not because e is 'mine', not because she couldn't or wouldn't do it herself, but because the disproportion of physical strength on the one side would - for me - vindicate a morally questionable action on the other. (although defence of self and those one cares about is, conceivably within certain contexts, not the same thing as violence...).

ultimately it was but a speed-bump on an otherwise barmy, lovely night; caught up with other lovelies, watched the reds beat west ham 2-1 (sorry any west ham fans, but that agger strike was magic, you must concede...) and went home with my fondled to an even barmier lie-in.

unleash the foulest stream of invective you like at me if i ever ire you, just don't ever call me a 'typical man'. and shove 'repressed' and 'uptight' straight up your (un-lubed) jacksie while you're at it. there are some tags i won't wear comfortably.

ps. cracker (if you wind up reading this), sorry if you feel i've lambasted your mate too harshly. i'm sure in other contexts she's fine, but on friday she was about as appealing as a fart-flavoured chupa chup.

Posted by reuben at August 28, 2006 12:58 PM

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August 20, 2006

remote controllers

the tourism ad says: 'swap the remote for the remote'. howard for costello? could it be any truer? do display ad guys dream of eclectic puns? or am i pulling my own phillip k dick with that one?

i need another job. not as in 'i am wistfully dreaming of better employment' but as in, my work (finally, after a year!) realised that they and i are incompatible (fuck, really? i could have told them that after week one) and politely invited me to start interviewing.

if anyone knows of anything going that's vaguely publishing, specifically editorial, writing, photographic, layout or whatever - let me know. of course, anyone reading this (all three of you, hi, btw) is probably in a similar boat, so i understand if it's crickets and tumbleweeds time. in the meantime i will try to avoid applying for shit that demeans me and my expensive education (thanks, baby boomers). not to mention my high IQ, international work experience, passion, energy and creativity.

on being overeducated and underemployed/under utilised, is it any wonder my 'generation' is associated with the adland-invented musical genre of grunge? mind, i'm split between hating the sound of our own complaints and feeling 'my generation' has a lot to whinge about - however ill-defined we actually are outside the convenient marketing/demographic label that 'gen x' essentially was/is. still, i have been riffing with a few people about how us x'ers might have to save the world; the y kidults will be so debt-addled and fat that they'll be completely socially useless by thirty-five or so, and the boomers will all be dying/too old for politics, so we might finally get a chance to wield some power with a bit of conscience and aplomb.

speaking of which, i was at an is not party on the weekend that featured more than the usual quota of twenteen-somethings, and, standing with my little enclave of late 20s/early 30s pals (as luck would have it, i was amongst a bunch of incredibly sexy, witty and talented women, including this gal, this gal, this gal, this gal and had just been introduced to this new gal) when i was bombarded by waves of irony while watching the bands on the bill.

both were solidly professional, but in very, very different ways. Tic Toc Tokyo were cute, tight and completely derivative, in an oh-so Y cold, distant, franz ferdinand-y way; the Basics, drawing on a back catalogue of even older beatles-y, cream-y references, were utterly charming and engaging, even able to improvise a version of 'wipeout' when the vocal PA crapped it (though sadly denying us their sublime three part harmonies). fuck, call me stereotypical but that's what live performing is all about - banter, interaction, improvised stupidity and fun - not a perfectly struck pose.

that grey gradient between emulation and homage is so, so blurry.

it struck (though didn't surprise) me that the 'fringed faction' seemed to be enjoying the retro stuff way more than the angular twanging proffered by their coolsie peers (i have no idea how old the guys in the basics are, but TTT looked exactly like their own audience), and this despite the fact that the basics' blustering, ballsy pop rock wouldn't even have been easily referenceable (?) by the kids as the soundtrack of their parents, but more likely their *grandparents'* (in some cases) reactionary 40s.

it's too much in the realm of 'taste' - and thus not disputable - for me to conjecture about one band having any more or less 'substance' than the other, but i do reckon a certain heart is attributable to respectful pillaging of the past, homage that uses an older source as a jumping off point for something else, rather than being a simple copy of something current. the rawness and 'willingness to fuck up' in the basics was beautiful. i liked what TTT were doing, it just didn't touch me at all. the basics shook my ass.

charles rennie mackintosh put it better than i ever could (i am still thinking about this as another tattoo someday, so firmly do i agree with it):

"there is hope in honest error; none in the icy perfectionism of the mere stylist."

Posted by reuben at August 20, 2006 5:07 PM

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July 6, 2006

the curse of lomo

first and last time i will write about this; apologies to lomo owners...

lomo and lomo-obsessives bug me.

but it's a well-founded annoyance, borne of years of my own hard yards of chemical photographic learning; then unlearning and deconstruction, resisting taking up the digital cudgel (i have only done so very recently, and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth) and finally applying actual critical faculties to all the bullshit and hyperbole, the pseud posturing that cloys, fart-like around this apparent pop-cultural phenom.

for those who came in late: lomo is a (brand, anti-brand) brand of (once) cheap, crappy, russian cameras. this is not merely my opinion; the anti-hero rebel mystique is in full effect in lomo's own self-aggrandisement materials - they play up their basic-ness, stressing that good equipment is not a pre-requisite for interesting photography. about this, they are right.

paying lomo €200 for the 'basic' package (going up to about €375 for their 'deluxe' package) is probably even less necessary - ask any photographer.

what happened was, some clever-dick (probably with a special, special haircut) got lateral with the problem of 'what to do with thousands of shite-y, communist era throwback cameras lying around gathering dust' - and decided to rebuild sales potential by re-branding the whole practice of photography as 'lomography'. as if you could only take a more right-brained, abstract, impressionistic or just plain random approach to burning through film by having a crap old commie compact?

'lomography' is marketing in search of a product; it is a poignant exercise in hipster branding, ergo - hollow and completely meaningless.

go to the site, or any of thousands of the 'legendary' lomo lc-a adherents' sites, and wade through the gush about their lomo experiences, and you will soon feel amidst a photographic nirvana akin to the kind of product fetishism reserved for iPod owners and what some feel it has done for their exploration of a wider range of music. except it's the rampant *anti*-populism of using a lomo that is supposed to make you so cool...

the re-branding of this cold war relic essentially explains away all the (known) shortcomings of the cameras - both optical and mechanical - as positives, championing in their place a more punk, DIY aesthetic and *approach* to photography that is a brilliantly achieved obfuscation of the dialectic between praxis and product; lomography is superior to normal photography (in that it champeens the underdog's view, the willingness to play, experiment and see the world differently) and yet can only be achieved with the incredible (enter the brand) lomo. otherwise it's just photography. fuck, really? i baulk at going into detail about vignetting and colour shifts here... the technical stuff is irrelevant. sort of. suffice it to say, the impact of 'lomography' has been such that photoshop wags have come up with many a plug-in to emulate the effects of the lc-a's (shit) lens.

this conflating of ethos with product is soooo frustrating; as someone who stands to gain/would love to be able to communicate more freely about/has his heart's cockles warmed by - a greater understanding of photographic possibilities, some might think it churlish or mean-spirited of me that i want to point and shout 'no clothes!' at this particular butt-naked emperor. because lomography *is* a championing of a freer aesthetic, perhaps i should be quiet? maybe even thankful?

my gripe is not at all with the deconstruction of the process of taking pictures, which is an excellent road to wander down, necessary - even essential, i think, for any broad-minded shooter.

but - and it's a big but - there seems a totally cynical sales purpose behind pushing this product 'mystique'; it's all about making you think you can ONLY bust through your creative limitations with *their* product, and that is a fundamentally false claim. lomo don't champion this photographic vision for its own sake, as a broadening/skewing or changing of staid aesthetics into a new carefree visual dynamism (that, it has to be said, smacks of so much other more western/mainstream 'yay for you, you're YOUNG!' marketing); this photographic vision is a mere by-product solely of the redemptive consumer act of buying a lomo. own the lomo, own the 'eye'deology.

my balls.

the shot at the head of this post was taken with my old xa, using slide film which was ultimately cross-processed. then again, i've shot my friends having pizzas and beer and it looks good shot on slide and cross-processed... so there's nothing special about the materials or technique used, except that i only had to read a book or two and have a mind hungry enough to find the fuck out how to do shit, you know? - rather than kid myself that the only way i could access some vaunted realm of rarefied aesthetic brilliance could be to pony up stupid bucks for a piece of shit camera that has the fringe benefit of suggesting membership to some self-stroking coolsie club. if the point of lomography is ultimately in how to 'see things tangentially' and pull out all the *mental/perceptual* barriers that make conventional snapshot photography 'boring' then surely you can do it with any camera? no real artist is bound by their tools.

i have been shooting with forty year old japanese cameras for years (in addition to my SLRs) - anyone give two turds? most of the stuff from the first few months of this blog was shot with an olympus xa, the ultimate portable film camera, which i got in a swap for an old SLR, and still use as much as or more than my spiffy digital. the difference between it and the lomo is that the xa - handled with some knowledge - is a vastly more versatile photographic tool than any lomo, available at about a quarter of the price on the second-hand market.

ultimately, the main difference between style and substance is that there are no short cuts to substance.

Posted by reuben at July 6, 2006 9:28 PM

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June 29, 2006

mesticulous and precise

too many things.

a game that turned into a nightmare re-iteration of all that is corrupt and vile about the impact of money and tradition and status on a sport that could be the tale of the human condition (the ball is round; the game runs for a certain length - all else is theory...), with a powerhouse, traditionally strong nation being matched by a new upstart, and the ruling orthodoxy instituting a 'correction' at - literally - the last possible moment. it wouldn't have hurt had italy brought any of the beauty of their culture to bear on this whole tourney. their play has been ugly, limited, ignoble. australia, though less imbued with flair, had played with *heart* for every minute they'd been on the park. see you in four years, amici. we will not forget.

***
a girl that let me into her life with an open, trusting heart, despite knowing my limitations, despite seeing the weakness at the broken places. she took me at my word, though my words were warnings, and true, and met them with tenderness and candour and playfulness. while i dance around attachment and hurt and pleasure and respect, she humbles me by calling me 'charming' and 'lovely', and, though our bodies sing a little, she doesn't paint it grand or dramatic, just sees what is there. it can't last, and we are not 'like', but i have never been handled with so much simple *respect* - an adult's affection, unfettered or overburdened by excess or timidity in any form. measure for measure.

***

i have been reading, books and people. it's humbling to read some of the amazing people whose world i skirt round the edges of; in journalling, some entertain, some reveal, some hide, some play, some instruct. all are incredibly skilled, both those who have sought to write professionally, like i once did, and those for whom it is an outlet and catharsis. there are teachers and government workers, self-made business people, dilettantes and freaks and people i can laugh down the local with, regularly writing stuff that puts to shame the 'published' crap i sometimes read. sometimes, they humble me enough to not want to write. but i know this is my own insecurity getting the better of me. i think i more realistically wish i could manufacture the kind of light, haughty tone in which so many entertaining journals are writ. this levity *is* a facet of my personality, but, weirdly, it's something that is most at the forefront when i am out socially, in person, and rarely surfaces when i write. i never could figure out why that is...

***

but mainstream 'published' titles? a new borders opened in perth while i was there two weeks ago, and i shopped for once. to whit, daniel handler's 'adverbs' is fucking awful! i expected more, actually not minding the lemony snicket stuff. but the condescension (somehow overlooked by me and pointed out sneeringly by a delightful new acquaintance recently) that seems somehow okay in kids fiction (even though it's not and my hackles usually rise at any form of 'dumbing down' for young readers) is no less visible - and, because of context, somehow more glaringly offensive - in his adult writing.

adverbs is, ostensibly, a series of riffs and vignettes on love (of every kind) revealed in hands (dealt, actually, in the showy, needy, 'please-be-impressed-by-my-writing-chops-style) that are cringingly prescriptive, leading, instructional and overly foreshadowed. anyone who has fucking *been* in love doesn't need *pointers* to its shades and nuances, dan. i bought it on a whim (there was a mind-bendingly hyperbolic dave eggers fellatory on the jacket, this despite my not actually having read eggers yet - hey, i owe him for mcsweeney's alone) precisely because it had just been sooooo long since i'd bought a book i knew nothing about, and purely for 'what if's' sake.

it stank.

though 'ask the dust' (which marty has been recommending for yonks) turned out to be all they say it is. i could taste a fiery realness, a surety and boldness in nearly every line of the first half, and cringed at the recognition of all the camilla lopezes i've loved... i have to read the whole bandini series now. what a rich character! so potent and flawed at once, and fante's pacing and phrasing are just chocolate smooth. he had the instincts of a musician more than a writer.

and the wee parable i bought for a b'day gal (but haven't been able to give to her yet, due to an unremitting calendar [hers] tighter that a fishes bum) is a corker of a novella; made me weep with joy. one not forgot quick. light, but powerful.

i hope she likes it. i reckon she shall...

***

an acquaintance of mine who is a talented designer writes a blog that makes me blush with its bumper sticker over-earnestness and new-agey positivity; to write, one must be a reader. to read is to know that one can not impose narrative structure on *every* aspect of life or growth. because neither reading nor growth are always linear, both happen often in a roundabout way. we revisit shit over and over getting it wrong. until we get it right. nor can a writer put themself at the centre of every story. it is one thing to heed the maxim 'write the truest thing you know' but once you get past the identity issues that dominate your existence for the first twenty odd years of your life and start to know (however fleetingly or with erroneous certainty) a thing about yourself, the next natural step is to cast your eye over the world around you. and to be able to comment on it without relating it *all* back to one's self. she strives for (visual) beauty and functional clarity in her work and play, and is very good at this; logically, the desire to extend this talent to other aspects of her life is all-consuming. but no-one is adept at everything, and *living* itself is a skill, often perpetually in r&d - some people are just better at accepting what the universe throws at them, good or bad. but this friend, with a telos or developmental trajectory that unrealistically permits *only* hope, positivity, growth, redemption, good aesthetics and moral surety, shows she's not writing (or reading) her life at all, is denying the fundamental *flawedness* that is the core strife - and yet also comfort, the one sure guarantee of something that can and will happen to all of us - within the framework of experience we call "being human". that inevitable uncertainty. she is a giver, and i can't bear to see her verbal output as merely 'what i had for breakfast' done 'pretty'.

***

i hated the film 'as good as it gets' though i thought it a salient question, handled poorly by writer james l brooks: you don't begin to accept that you can change your life, or what is even good about your life, until you accept that it is not a linear progression toward (or through) a predetermined set of life experiences from strength to strength, and that it is not governed or navigable by easy rules or maxims. you can't *always* be happy, but, more importantly, it might not be wise to even *try*. the things we endure make us able and nimble and more assured. love the ugly, i say. the scars that show where you fell, where you dared. there is a difference between wallowing in sadness and knowing there's a point to it.

***

when asked 'is the glass half empty or half full?' the most beautiful person in my world said 'either way, i'd like a top up'. lovelovelove.

my first instinct was to ask what was in the cup.

maybe that's why we're apart.

Posted by reuben at June 29, 2006 7:56 PM

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June 21, 2006

the meme police

my hair is about this long now and needs a decision on its future. i wish its future was in barcelona, like its past in this partic'lar frame. i wish the gal shuffling my cards wasn't still. in many senses.

sick as a dog and home from aforementioned/posted work, doing domestix (ooh, how goscinny and uderzo!) and digesting the previous night's wonderful winter roast, courtesy of la pirate queen herself when i was pleasantly surprised to discover i had been tagged by mskp with the following meme. apparently lurking on the cool kids' journals and throwing out the odd half-assed comment isn't entirely wazzing in the wind. who'da thunk?

four jobs i have had in my life:

A) author, lonely planet publications [dancing through the netherlands and italy and trying to put it into tightly defined wordy structures. clashes with authority. the bestworst job ever].
B) editor, grok magazine [encouraging playfulness and pushing the limits of allowable chaos amongst aspiring writers, designers and general freaks at curtin university, WA]. shambolic but satisfying comedy performance in a managerial role.
C) night manager, hyde park hotel, london england [bantering with hot guests and DJ fascism with canadian co-workers while finessing my italian, french and spanish swearing in-between throwing one eye at the CCTV to check which of the french house-keeping staff were letting their lovers/drug dealers/ dosser friends in through the fire exits that night. suddenly throwing on the lights in the common room to discourage laced seppo college twats from shagging on the pool tables].
D) rock guitarist [writing, recording and performing years of music with boys i loved hated loved. getting played on radio, touring. shows and riders and wailing like a demon through strats and marshalls and mesa boogies and more. went to 11].

four movies i could watch over and over (complete with choice lines):

a) rushmore - "i saved latin. what did you ever do?"
b) withnail and i - "i feel like a pig shat in my head."
c) the philadelphia story - "I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives? you know one time, I think I secretly wanted to be a writer."
d) hedwig and the angry inch - "one day in the late mid-eighties, I was in my early late-twenties. I had just been dismissed from university after delivering a brilliant lecture on the aggressive influence of german philosophy on rock'n'roll entitled 'You, Kant, Always Get What You Want.'"

four places i have lived:

a) london, england [yeah, yeah, so have a lot of people. meh. a fascinating and frustrating place. too big, too fast for someone who couldn't properly step onto the labour treadmill there, due to lines-on-a-map-legalities. i would have loved it more, i'm sure, had i been able to do something on par with my skills and abilities, rather than having to work black].
b) amsterdam, the netherlands [family all over. amazing, welcoming cosmopolitan place with all the muchness of a big city, concentrated around a small-town size ring of canals. again, but for lines on a map legalities, might be there now].
c) fremantle, western australia [where i was born and raised, where i started trying to build a life with my betrothed, where my band was born and grew, where i learned the known i knew. quiet, dinky little place whose managers and planners are deaf to the potential lurking in its suburbs and streets].
d) east brunswick, melbourne. [home. where my heart is. where i wanna stay and grow and be for a while, the mad pull of travel notwithstanding].

four television shows i love to watch (when they are/were on):

a) the world game. i liked the round ball before it got all coolsy this month.
b) shameless. scatter!
c) iron chef. the secret ingredient tonight is... CAMPNESS-UUUU!!!!!!!!!
d) rage. the only way i can even feign an attempt at keeping up with what the kids like these days. i hear 'talk' on the internet, then check rage for guessing at a new property's actual 'cache' with the flesh-and-blood public.

four places i have holidayed:

a) romania and bulgaria. pork, cabbage, dumplings, sturm und drang, artillery.
b) spain. sun, sea, oranges, football, music and heartbreakbeats, rhyme, reason.
c) italy. there are no words. she is the song; dance listen or swoon. seriously.
d) turkey - the arab world 101, for the confused/timid. intoxicating. moreish (oops).

four sites i visit daily:

a) the beeb
b) the guardian
c) melbourne liverpool supporters club
d) questionable content

four places i would rather be right now:

a) quietly agog in the front row of an elbow, decemberists or sufjan stevens gig. or frying off my dial at a go! team gig. or just pogoing at a new pornographers gig. in sweden watching the wannadies with lightning blue eyes.
b) on location anywhere (though preferably somewhere in spain or italy) shooting for magnum, SIPA or similar photo agency
c) the ten bells, shoreditch, east london, having a pint with The One That Got Away
d) equal fourth: sitting across the desk from a perfect writing partner, co-writing our magnificent octopus; on stage spraying the almighty rockness (think final scene of 'crossroads'); in a darkroom alone, printing old-skool stylee with mùm or ratatat pulsing gently in the background.

four people i shall tag:

hmm, check back later ... need to think about this one.

oh, and shout-outs to my wee cousin julia who is FAR TOO YOUNG TO BE READING THIS SORT OF THING, THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR DROPPING ME IN IT, MISSY! don't you have school tomorrow? straighten up and fly right. tuck your shirt in. don't pick at that. i don't CARE what the other girls' parents do. apologies to marty and ali; i didn't mean to slash at the seams of your parenting with my excessive use of the awful cusswords and Adult Concepts. haven't you guys heard of Net Nanny?

come on, give ya nephew writer a break...

Posted by reuben at June 21, 2006 11:22 AM

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June 12, 2006

the sporting life

instead of turning my journal momentarily into yet another micro-version of nick hornby's 'fever pitch' (the few people i *know* read this are far too close to my liverpool obsession to need any reiteration about my enthusiasm for this month's football ubiquity - they've also written about it better than me), i thought i'd show the lucky few what i come in to work to face each day.

it drives me fair crazy that it looks so neat and simple and amenable, presented like this. i probably set 150-200 pages a day like this, in between bouts of proof-reading and editing (yeah, if you find a typo here, stick it up your spellcheck... this is playtime. though i do find grammatical accuracy VERY SEXY). the lowercase is a nod to ee. and laziness. shut up.

I interviewed last week for a new position that would have afforded me more money, more freedom, the room to actually be a little creative, was more compatible with my lifestyle (location, dress, ethics etc). I got down to the last two from a field of 40 or so. they gave it to the other candidate.

this is the sixth time this has happened to me in the past year.

a beautiful, fleeting someone who doesn't know me very well (apart from my body) suggested i might have poor interview technique; i disagreed, suggesting that, to get through three/four interviews it actually had to be rather good, and that it probably came more down to my personality.

ah. that made me feel better. knowing i must just shit/confuse/antagonise/annoy people at initial meeting/s (because early impressions don't count at all, do they?).

actually, all it comes down to is my natural restlessness. someone asked me a question at a casual couch-party-gathering kind of thing a few weeks back: describe yourself in a single word. i cunningly managed to not have to answer, as everyone was distracted. 'restless' would have been the word. that or 'defiant'. or 'spiky'. pity restlessness can so often come across as nervousness.

so many times *my* calm must have come across to others as antsiness. christ... i can change my interview technique, my CV etc, but i can't change who i *am*. i am growing gradually calmer and stiller as i get older, but i started out so jittery and full-tilt as a kid, i'm still nowhere near anyone's idea of thirty-something 'sorted'-ness. which triggers suspicion or mistrust, i reckon.

honestly, i am so sick of all the bullshit that goes with trying to improve my (job) lot; even trying to get the time off work to interview for this other position was such a bitch i nearly got fired because of *that*. how i wish i had the balls to just go into business for myself.

but there's the catch-22, innit? freelancing is all about personality - networking and pitching and getting in peoples' faces about your own ability and trying to forge that most elusive of bonds, 'professional' trust. when you're cursed with a god-given ability to rub people the wrong way, it doesn't really permit one the confidence to conjecture positively how such a career move might go.

i have always been a better collaborator than initiator/instigator; I have tons of good ideas, but work better with a brief/jumping off point/impetus thrown down for me by someone else; it's almost like i am so certain that i will approach any given problem/brief from such a skewed POV, one that usually won't have been thought of by others in the team, that i need something/someone to lead or define the parameters, just so's i can fuck with them. cause fucking with stuff is my way, what i'm good at... i love limits - they aid the creative process by forcing you to think in permutations of variables: the hitting of the wall/limit invariably leads you to 'what if' thinking, which nearly always lets you think through those walls and into somewhere that becomes its own genesis, something new - a creation.

but alas my present job is process-driven, and i am a 'mapper', not a 'packer'; i am a monkey with a mouse, and the repetition is stifling. there is no room for creativity within it and, when i come home, i am too exhausted to create alone (but then, for me, creating alone is exhausting anyway - it is collaboration that GIVES me energy, that fans the fire of my enthusiasm).

so. to distract myself from the pointlessness of my existence (presently), and the deviation from what i expected my life to be like, and my gobsmacked quiet envy at peers being able to turn their plans into realities, i pay disproportionate attention to beautiful things...

when i was younger, my sense of aesthetics was driven to the big, the bold, the dramatic, the larger than life - i had to play guitar faster, more intensely and bombastically, i had to shoot photos from within inches of performers to emphasise the sweat and movement, i had to write with the most showy vocabulary and the most outlandishly forceful similes and descriptions... these days, i like tiny stuff, stuff that could be missed if you don't have the right eyes. like this:

at first, i wondered why this building* was laughing at me. but, after a while, it didn't matter why, because it simply reminded me that this sort of thing is *always* there for those willing to look, and that is point enough. there is a chuckle full of rose petals sitting on a building backlot somewhere... it made me smile wide.

took my mind off the usual fixations. this week: going back to perth to celebrate the birthday of one of the most amazing women i've ever known (my mum's mum), in so doing passing up a chance to swing camping-out-stylee with some lovely new hepcats (in the birthday service of one particularly lovely hepkittten) - who, i am happy to be finding out - reek of at least as much substance to match their enviable style, a new skinterest who dug me out of a hole with her loveliness a week ago, an old skinterest who has replaced me, but nags with her insistence in my memory and lightning blue eyes/against the daylight, an even older mirror/magnifier whose boy must surely know about the motorcycle exhaust burn/scar on her leg (even if he'll never fall recklessly into the infinite potential of a freckle on her right shoulder), a dearest friend-cum-former-fiancee and sometime co-dog-parent whose birthday also drifted through, technology conspiring to keep me from contacting her

so much stuff... maybe we should all just be reading achewood instead.

* First to name that building gets a kiss and/or a beer from me...

Posted by reuben at June 12, 2006 4:39 PM

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« between the leaves, fruit | Main | the sporting life »

May 27, 2006

smells like mean spirit

saw this act of political lampooning and loved it; someone's making a statement in my street using the available dog shit. brilliant.

in other news, friday yielded total extremes; the sharpest beauty and the bitterest ugliness.

i got on a tram and sat down to some yeats (look, it's not posturing, okay? poetry is perfect transit reading because, like short stories, you can dip in and out in little bites or even bitelets, as befits your journey. anyone wanting to hack on the pretentiousness tip - you're right, i can be. but not in that revelation i ain't...). it was supposed to be a 75 or 70, but read "00 North Melbourne" on the front. i informed the driver of this when he asked, to which he laughed in reply, saying 'oh, well - we'll find our way to wherever we're going'. he then bantered with the passengers, taking requests for route names and numbers.

some minutes into my heart fluttering at the fenian's piercing, vital eloquence about age and life and the heart, we had arrived at all the sporting arenas, when the driver leaned out the window to speak to a colleague on the platform:

driver: [to platform guy] hey, who's in charge here?

pg: don't know

driver: no one's in charge? who's running things?

pg: no one.

old guy near front doors: [good-natured, chuckling] what's new?

driver: [to platform guy] where am i supposed to go? [to kind of everyone] does anyone know, or should i just follow my heart? [nervous laughter]

tram punters: yes!
tram punters: *always* follow your heart!
tram punters: [laughter]

driver: [pulling out of platform, to passengers] where do we want to go?
tram punters: surprise us!
tram punters: wherever *you're* going ...
me: [enthusiastically, not impatiently] who cares? if you're following your heart, that's good enough for me. drive!

in a week where i got slugged with a $150 fine for having a two-weeks expired concession card, it was almost worth it so see a half-empty tram of laughing, warm commuters being shown the nakedness of the system's flaws and idiocy being met with a gentle, joyful response rather than mean-spiritedly.

but i got my share of bilious immaturity later in the evening.

Posted by reuben at May 27, 2006 2:46 PM

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May 23, 2006

between the leaves, fruit

why do people with these velcro lettering shirts always (eventually) feel the need to hang shit on yours truly? in this case, it was my housemate.

mind, i had been calling him a cock-jockey in perfect italian all week.

fantino di cazzi, in case you were curious.

i've been roundly accused of being a writer before; if you are what you get paid for, then i both am, and will be again, though you'd never know it from this particular outlet. it often astounds me that, for the hundreds of interviews, articles, reviews, books ect that i've worked on that i have so little to show for it. one reason is that i get most lucid, creative, direct and adventurous when writing emails and letters and things that - by their very private nature - will never see the light of (public) day. but i think the main reason i feel so inert and unable to fall through the hole in the page when i sit down to write for this forum is because it (and I) am suffering from a bit of an identity crisis...

it's been mostly photos simply because that's the only real creative flexing i'm doing at the moment (not counting wailing like a fucking rock ninja on my axe behind closed doors - the stage doesn't call so much these days); in recent years any creative impulse i've had has been spent on *people*. i had/have forgotten how to create just for the sake of it; when i was in a band, shooting and writing about bands was only natural, as i was just feeding back into a community that was supporting me, that i was part of. it may be coming up to two years, but in melbs, i'm still kind of interstitial and not really anywhere much. more tellingly, i don't even have much ambition to get anywhere in particular - i've proven to myself many of the things i set out to. professional and creative goals seem to fall away when the biggest, simplest thing of all is so elusive: to just be content with what i have.

there's little evidence of it here, but my writin' muscles are being warmed up.

and once the photo site launches (trust me, also on the back burner) i will start something here. maybe i will talk about The Best Job In The World™ and the Second Best Job In The World™, both of which i have held down.

i don't know what is coming, but i can feel something building up.

maybe i just need some brown rice.

either way i'm gonna lose this tone of quiet earnestness. it is so. fucking. not. me.

Posted by reuben at May 23, 2006 10:21 PM

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« too much, too young! | Main | ho ho ho. mo. vember »

November 22, 2005

the (for)getting of wisdom

not an original header, i know ...

i've been away sooo long. i got a job. i may be being head-hunted for a new one on more money than i've ever earned before. so much certainty, and so much un. i'm loving my new neighbours. i'm thinking of wheels and mobility again. summer. a relative's property in lorne. xmas bellinis with other orphans, divided from their families and the friends they love best. i screamed australia across the line from fed square against uruguay, in a moment unparalleled in australian football - the atmosphere walking home through the melbourne CBD was astounding, almost as if NYE had suddenly hit, and the passion for the round-ball had finally overflowed, for a brief moment, into the hearts of egg-ball AFL sheep everywhere. note, guys and gals: i was kissed and hugged by a brazilian guy, a dutch guy, an englishman, two scots and a german. the world game, indeed. if only i were gay...

so: i'm walking along minding my own one sunday when my mind has been sliced open by a good book (extremely loud and incredibly close by jonathan safran foer); you know the feeling - everything looks more contrasty, cut with the scalpel of feeling from its bland background like some existential bas-relief. i came upon this butterfly. not being a natural entomologist (as opposed to etymologist, which i am) i couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed like it was dying. i was wondering what to do. i wanted to get close to it to take a picture, even though i couldn't do it justice with my shitty little digital - to capture the fleetingness of this perpetual symbol for the ephemerality of beauty and change.

as i got closer, it flexed its little wings in what seemed like an attempt to fly away, even though it could not. i had to wonder: is whatever passes for fear going through its little lepidoptera mind? or is it just instinct to cling to life? which is worse? to dwindle away, unable to even perform the simple act that is your raison d'etre (to fly) or to have some merciful fate eliminate any chance of you feeling loss for what you were or could be, now that decay has set in?

it got worse. i remembered some urban myth bullshit about how butterflies 'taste' with their feet, an afternoon riffing in the retiro with a gifted, magical storyteller about what various cities would taste like if we could likewise sample flavours through walking. i wondered if it was supposed to be like this, tasting a shitty north fitzroy footpath, or would this fragile little bugger have been better off scooped into the mouth of a passing bird or collected by a windscreen, mid-flight, tasting the sky?

or was i just projecting my own stupid fears onto this simple insect, my foot poised above it, ready to crush, to perhaps spare it from longing for something to come, or missing something it never had? of course; the butterfly's emblem isn't flight - many things fly - it's *transformation*. it didn't know it, but it had lived through the hardest part, lucky little winged bastard ...

it was a total blade runner moment; if that butterfly could have said one thing to me it probably would have been: "i want more life, you fucker"

more life. and i spared it for the same reason roy batty spared deckard; in that moment, life itself - any life - was precious. a book had made me feel *something* again, after i'd been walking around numb for months.

a life won't end in december, but some ugly, crawly thing will emerge from its coccoon, perhaps more beautiful, eager to learn to fly, i think.

with or without bells and fanfare, an audience or cheersquad. time to die. and be born.

* * *

don't lose faith; it isn't all pseudo-profound revelation; the shots of one very drunk womble cosying up to a hot sailor, plus my awesomely embarassing gay-trucker Movember stylings will all be up here soon...

the following moment of genius is courtesy of my housemate, sim, a wisecracking calabrese with a memory like a steel trap, and a penchant for scatalogical repartee. with an atavistic scrawl of a whiteboard marker, a hangover born of a golden weekend was tipped right over the edge by the simplest of sunsets over east brunswick meeting a throwback, directly to year five, do not pass Mrs. Rockwell, do not collect 200 lines ...

i laughed and laughed

Posted by reuben at November 22, 2005 10:29 PM

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« the rare(r) still | Main | latest "bows" and (musical) knots »

September 22, 2005

growing up

almost exploded in a fit of childish blubbering and uncontrollable nostalgia today in a bookstore, stumbling across a bunch of titles by the incredible Eric Carle. only a nearby six-year-old forced me to maintain my composure.

remember this?

and this?

i do. so, so, so fondly! i had to stop myself from losing it, because a Very Grouchy Ladybug-like friend and i had had snarky words recently; in actuality, she is a Very Hungry Caterpillar and i, as ever, am a Mixed-Up Chameleon, and we're both so caught up in our own arcs that it's hard to see antennae to antennae at the moment...

how come i could nut this stuff out when i was five, but now it just kills me?

Posted by reuben at September 22, 2005 12:28 AM

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September 21, 2005

the rare(r) still

here's an oddity: when i am full of tumult, i go out and get shaved.

there's nothing kinky or odd about it, and i'd go so far as to say: you're not a man 'til you've been shaved by a barber. i do it maybe once a month (or two?).

i often get labelled as someone unable to be still, someone restless, fidgetty. in times of immense stress, i go and get shaved. "Having a Shave" is a normal, twice weekly necessity.

"Getting Shaved" is an event.

now, i freely admit that part of my affection for this dying ritual of masculinity is partly attributable to my italian heritage, and growing up in freo (that's fremantle, western australia), where many elderly italian migrants plied a lasting trade as barbers. shave and a haircut, two bits. there were barber shops aplenty in the port town before the america's cup yupped up the place, even during my childhood, not just my dad's.

what i love about it is this: the quiet, the undivided attention and care, and the tacit confrontation of issues that somehow seem to be at the core of various types of expressions of masculinity: vulnerability, trust. letting go, placing your personal safety in the hands of your fellow man.

picture: a near-sighted man for whom english is a second language quietly guiding a razor sharp piece of possibly not entirely hygienic steel around your face for twenty minutes; there's even courage and derring-do involved!

no, far from it being some olde worlde curio, delectable just for the un-tarted-up, un-market-researched soap smells, the dusty counters and AM radio, the Italia '82 posters emblazoned with a beaming Dino Zoff or Paolo Rossi trumpeting the football (soccer) triumphs of the Motherland that go largely un-noticed in this land of the assymetric bladder - no, there's more to it than a mere aesthetic and romanticism or nostalgia.

there's the care that's shown, only as effective as the shavee's trust in allowing the shaver full acquiescence and malleability. there's the faith in the ritual, that the attention to method and process in sterilisation and preparation will mitigate forty years of unheeded sanitary and technological developments (my barber's 'implements' were in a blue-lit box that trumpeted 'Ultraviolet Sterilisation' - since when did UV light sterilise anything???). there's the sense of being pampered simply because it *takes time*. it's not the haphazard Mach Three before work, it requires Patience.

time to think, time to contemplate and pause - and time where it's absolutely necessary to Be Still. being shaved is calming.

sure, in the days when these barbers were the norm and not the present-day exception, a shave was 10¢, not $10. but it's a chance to recapture and revel in an era when the Care of The Self (to pull a Foucault) perhaps felt less about a paranoid sense of surveillance than de-bearding might first appear ... more like the last vestiges of a certain kind of 'pride' more than conformity in line with a conservative stereotype of presentation that equated to 'respectability'. a pride in allowing oneself to be Groomed in a way basically superior to the 'fast' alternatives that have emerged during the practise's decline. a barber shave is closer, smoother, feels and looks better than your Mach Three jobbie.

barber-shop shaves rock; they allow this jitterbug space for contemplation, and letting go of what would ordinarily make him twitch.

Posted by reuben at September 21, 2005 11:24 PM

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September 15, 2005

when my battery/just runs out on me/ i like to take a walkabout

i've been thrashing the amazingly awesome Apples In Stereo track The Rainbow for ages ... (even though it's about to get waylaid by Hewlett Packard for a photography/printing ad) - it's so positive in its gleeful acceptance of the transitory nature of, well, everything, but mostly human connection ...

"Baby don't you know that people come and go, oh! Just like the rainbow?"

- simple, but set to the most awesomely upbeat melody and rhythm. and it always makes me smile, just like iron & wine's passing afternoon always makes me bawl.

i had been using it (Rainbow) as my personal mantra for clearing a huge blockage (ahem, i get plenty of fibre thanks very much - talking about the mind and heart here...), it was making me feel strong and confident about how ephemeral loving someone can be, about how easy it can be to let go if you're wearing the right mind-set. i was making progress, getting somewhere ... it was helping me see that that's not just a twee cliche or platitude, but a real, strong, simple affirmation: people come and go. but, just like the rainbow, you got to enjoy the beauty for a bit, however fleeting, so be happy!. even the people you thought or wished had it in them to stay or last - they're people, and People Come And Go. - i GOT it! i was about ready to drop some dead weight finally, once and for all, building the courage to drop the blade and make that final excision, stop accepting the unacceptable.

and then i see this graf at my eye-height on a wall in my own street, walking home: love is real

well, of course it is, but i ...

fuck.

fucking fuck.

Posted by reuben at September 15, 2005 3:26 PM

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« nasty close-ups of cherry nova ... and BTAB news | Main | menace recontextualised »

September 5, 2005

apparently i leak stars

odd. i woke this morning to find a tiny, tiny star in my bedclothes. yes, that is a five cent piece dwarfing it.

flamboyant as i am - and i have been known to throw the slap about of a big night - i ain't been wearing any glitter/stars/regalia lately. even odder, no lady company has been about (often the unwitting source of such stray beauty/detritus) - recently, anyway ... AND i just changed the sheets yesterday. i love that this close-up is so close that my shitty, bog-standard IKEA sheets look like super-thread count egyptian wonders ...

so totally unsound but excellently amusing conclusion: i am a source of small stars in my sleep

Posted by reuben at September 5, 2005 7:29 PM

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« self [help] portrait [help] | Main | (is anything really as) bold as love (?) »

July 2, 2005

from the sublime to the ridiculous ...

i was gonna just leave this wordless, but i couldn't resist musing, this was so far out of left field. dancin' gal looks better in her shots.

if anyone speaks japanese who reads this, i'd love to hear a translation.

seriously, this is not a photoshop gag or anything; i am a melbourne shmufti-laneway fashion plate to japanese expat-mag journos, apparently.

where the fuck has my hair gone? maybe the same place as my missing socks and dignity ...

Posted by reuben at July 2, 2005 2:12 PM

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June 29, 2005

self [help] portrait [help]

how i feel right now, after being forced to move house at short notice.

originated on provia 100f, normal proc. shot in ferrara, italy, may 2004, while on the road for The Best Job In The World™

more to follow when i get my life back ...

Posted by reuben at June 29, 2005 1:14 PM

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May 26, 2005

mersey, mersey, me

for all the hyperbole you will read in the ensuing weeks - especially those among you holed up in ol' blighty now - i don't consider myself a sports nut, or even a my-favourite-sport (football) nut.

grown men often cry, and, even amongst my peers, i'm considered a bit of a sook. but nothing, absolutely nothing, can dilute the resolute show of heart in the face of the insurmountable that my beloved reds mustered last night to win their fifth european/champions league cup. it literally made me blub.

because they came on as a wet paper bag of a team, their overcrowded midfield strafed with the kind of lightning counter-attacking that typifies the best of italian football. ac milan were rightly up 3-0 at the major break, and i, like so many other liverpool supporters felt hot-faced shame at the poor showing the underdogs were putting up; could all the press about them having been 'lucky to be there' be true? really? after their incredible tactical finagling of unexpected wins against both juve and chelsea, the two best teams in their respective competitions? after the resurgent victory over olympiakos, brought on by a show of leadership - echoed last night - that will be crowed about for years to come? exaggeration, i beseech you - heed the white stripes: there's no home for you here now, go away.

steven gerrard. rafa benitez. between them, they salvaged the greatest comeback in recent - although possibly all of - european club football history. i have not yet read what rafa said to his charges at half-time, though by the liverpool that emerged to claim three goals within seven minutes - *please, please, just read that bit again slowly after you arrive at the end of this sentence* - whatever he said must have been to football what martin luther king jr's 'i have a dream speech' was to the civil rights movement in the States in the 60s.

i single out gerrard - despite a blinding, impenetrable performance from jamie carragher and sami hyypia in the rearguard - because of one thing, and it wasn't that delicious glancing header that pulled the first one back: he did not pause, not for one second, for personal glory. at just 24, this young man (and i can say that, turning 32 on saturday) saw what that goal meant - hope, momentum, the erasure of dreaded resignation in the hearts and minds of his players.

his *first* instinct was to turn to the travelling fans and rouse them into song, gee them into volume - he knew that morale was the only thing that would alter the result. the team already knew they had the skill before they took to the pitch, they just forgot to play in the first half. by his own example, he revealed the possible; pride could be salvaged. between them, xabi alonso and vladi smicer completed the *impossible*. inside 10 minutes. far, far more than pride was salvaged. hope.

slapped-face stunned at going from 6th time champions to suddenly battling, a black hole appeared in the middle of ac milan's previously liquid midfield.

i personally hate penalty shootouts - they detract from the eponymous beauty of this game, though i most certainly appreciate the symmetry of butterfingers dudek (bollocks line-break and all) being the hero of the day, outkeeping dida from the line. when he remembered to stay on it. a season of prat falls and shitty, unnecessary mistakes made up for with one purple patch that no-one who has ever loved liverpool will ever forget.

this is why i love that liverpool won, and it's not because they're the team i arbitrarily chose to support at 8 years old in 1981, for the prurient reason of their then-legendary status and perpetual population at the top of the league (plus the fact they wore red): they drew on a tremendous character and pedigree to not give up when any team - of any stature anywhere - could fairly be forgiven for having done so. one of the banners flown by a travelling 'pool punter read: 'form is temporary, class is permanent'. liverpool used theirs to defeat an obviously more skillful team, coming from waaaay behind, and demonstrated first-hand the kind of courage and faith in one's companions that their (often-foolishly-derided-as-hokey-sentimentalism) theme tune You'll Never Walk Alone is *actually* all about.

consider also: FA cup winners arsenal were captained by patrick vieira, from france (by way of senegal)*see comments. league champs chelsea may well be helmed by a local, but i daresay the only time tel's spent in Ken Sing Ton was as a teenager with his mates 'scrumping' for BMWs. had man u won, the fa cup would have been hoisted by roy keane, an irishman.

steven gerrard speaks with a scouse accent, was taught to play at melwood, and - despite two of the world's most obscenely wealthy clubs (real madrid and chelsea) openly declaring their interest - and willingness to open their bottomless chequebooks - at every opportunity for his services, stuck around to see what kind of longer-term changes new manager rafa had in mind for 05 and beyond.

this is character. this is loyalty. this is love.

bless you steven gerrard. your reward was the right to hold up, at 24 and as captain of your boyhood hero-team, the most prized trophy in global club football. greatest day of your life? if you're a footballer? um, yeah, i reckon so.

as one of liverpool's now *other* favourite sons famously put it: in the end the love you make is equal to the love you take. you took your home's love with you and gave it back many-fold.

sorry about the length - this one's for any and all who mock the poetry in sport.

Posted by reuben at May 26, 2005 1:27 PM

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May 20, 2005

awake

some peoples' vision of togetherness is that of the wedding photographer's sample on the left; mine's closer to that in the graf scrawled on the right: "one day i woke up to find, right in the bed next to mine, someone who woke me up with the corner of her smile."

that happened to me in a place called russell st.

Posted by reuben at May 20, 2005 6:26 PM

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May 12, 2005

the hierarchy of desire

ah, milan. fashion. chocolate. girls who look like boys. sex.

x-proc and metro systems were meant for each other.

Posted by reuben at May 12, 2005 5:11 PM

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Posted by: marty at July 15, 2005 10:06 PM

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« irony. that's like steely and bronzey, innit? | Main | the hierarchy of desire »

May 11, 2005

is good.

www.isnotmagazine.org

these guys are mint. in select locations around the city, 'dead' public space that is most often filled by huge bill posters advertising excretainment/tours is reclaimed by this magazine/poster of similar size and superior layout, but filled with interesting reading material. in one of the corners is a bunch of melways/UBD/A-Z style map refs (C3, H5 etc) that function like a 'contents' listing and allow you to find the patch of poster where a piece that sounds interesting actually is.

championing unknown writers, illustrators and designers, the themes are 'conventionally oppositional binaries' (the first was "love is not lust", next month's is "seeing is not believing" etc), and challenge the erstwhile passerby to stop and actively engage in the act of reading; both the skill of paying attention itself and the practice of cognizant interpretation.

i think i will send them stuff. so should you.

Posted by reuben at May 11, 2005 4:43 PM

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« press. play. | Main | is good. »

May 10, 2005

irony. that's like steely and bronzey, innit?

www.righteousbabe.com

this was one of the first photos i shot in melbourne. i sent it to righteous babe records, but never got a response. for those unfamiliar with ani's oeuvre (sp?), she's a proudly feminist songwriter and, though she wouldn't be explicitly against any woman manipulating her appearance in any way she sees fit, might smirk at the relative proportions of the advertising and their proximity. it certainly got a wry smile out of me...

Posted by reuben at May 10, 2005 11:56 AM

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« why won't it snow/like they said it would? | Main | street=wise »

May 3, 2005

lampoetry

it says: "you come here to me tonight, we'll collect those lonely parts and set them down."

this appeared at my tram stop one day and i wondered about who wrote it and when, and why, and why specifically next to a tram timetable? there are so many stories, but we spend so much time wrapped up in our own. what if our own aren't the most interesting stories? or worse, what if they ARE and we're wasting too much time worrying about whether or not our story is interesting enough for someone else?

i like this. observing. making myself invisible. not reading other peoples' stories, but watching people *write* their stories, watching the act of 'writing' - (not always as literal as in this case). E6 proc C41.

Posted by reuben at May 3, 2005 3:16 PM

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Main | london photographic award, entry #03085 »

April 29, 2005

nihil sub sole novum

yes. yes it is.

Posted by reuben at April 29, 2005 3:56 PM

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