June 15
Yesterday was another long travel day (though nothing compared to getting here in the first place). I took an 8 hour train/bus from Melbourne, despite the availability of insanely cheap airfares, in order get a sense of the Australian countryside. The countryside didn’t disappoint, although the train stuck mostly to agricultural areas – I can confirm with great certainty that there are a lot of sheep and cows between Melbourne and Canberra.
More about Canberra in a moment. First though, there were some definite highlights to my second week in Melbourne. At the top of the list would have to be a performance by violist Erkki Veltheim at the Make It Up Club on Tuesday night. The Make It Up Club is a long running weekly improv gig that features short sets by 3 separate acts (if you’re in Melbourne, I’ll be playing a set there with Adam Simmons and Eugene Ughetti on July 14th and another at the Horse Bazaar the next night).
Erkki is an accomplished violist whose performance credits include the Berlin Philharmonic and Melbourne Symphony. On this particular evening he carefully set up a bass drum and snare with foot pedals and two large cymbals hung perpendicular to the floor directly across from one another just about at head level. He tied a metal striker to the end of his viola, then unceremoniously gaffed a microphone to his face and lit into an extended one man heavy metal, feedback laced shred, complete with unintelligible lyrics, thrashing, epileptic spasmodica and one thrown viola worthy of enduring YouTube fame (if only it had been filmed!).
Another
highlight would have to be a powerful Australian film called Samson &
Delilah by aboriginal director Wallace Thornton. It recently won the Camera d’Or
at Cannes. S & D, which contains almost no speaking parts, focuses on the
lives of two contemporary aboriginal teenagers who are destined to be married
simply because they are the only people of the same age in their town, or any
near town for that matter. Their "town" is an illustration of
everything that's ever gone wrong with public policy concerning the aborigines
(which is pretty much everything in the view of this film). The short telling
is that S & D begin their life together by discovering that there is no
place for them in the only world they know. The life that waits for them in their
town is a monotonous and depressing sort of non-life, but when they run away
together to the whitefella’s world they can't even navigate the simplest of
interactions and end up being just as consumed by white society as their own. I
won’t go through the entire film, but will reassure you that there’s an
absolute star turn by a kindly, far from completely sane, but completely
endearing homeless man (the only sustained speaking role) and a bona fide happy
ending.
Otherwise, this week I’ve seen quite a bit of extraordinary aboriginal art (and Euro-Australian art for that matter), taken in another Speak Percussion concert, met a wide swath of Melbourne musicians, heard a local band or two, drunk a fair quantity of quite nice espresso and tried a few more local beers (I promise to do a full critique of Australian beer after I’ve done a more thorough survey).
Here’s the more about Canberra I promised – Canberra has a widely agreed upon reputation for being… well. Boring. No, I mean, really really boring. It is clear, as I had been profusely and passionately warned by pretty much Australian who I told of my travel plans, that after 8pm you can indeed do ten push-ups in the middle of any of the busiest streets here without being run over by anything worse than a possum.
That being said, my first 24 hours here have been quite lovely. I started my day today with a crisp 4k walk down to AIATSIS to begin my language research. AIATSIS – Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islanders Studies – home to an extensive audio visual archive. AIATSIS is a fantastic modern facility located directly next to the Australian National Museum on the Acton Peninsula, with views of Lake Burley Griffin (I’ll post a picture in the next day or two). The staff was brilliant and helpful, ready for me, accommodating, friendly and interested. As expected, most of the material that I reviewed will not be directly useful to me and a large amount of material has not been archived yet (meaning it won’t be available, even for listening), but I was able to get well acquainted with the basic sound of Dalabon and did find one really stunning example of gorgeous sounding narratives dating back to the 60’s.
While the AIATSIS staff took their lunch break (meaning I had to take a break and go away for a while) I made a run up to the ReCyclery – a local non-profit that does pretty much what you’d expect. There I was able to care of all my transportation needs for the next couple of weeks. For a fraction of the cost of renting a bike, let alone a car, Minky (the proprietor) provided me with a perfectly serviceable mountain bike. It’s red, in case you care. The 21 gears are overkill in light of the extreme lack of hills in Canberra (I’ve used two so far), but it’s the kind of waste I won’t feel guilty about. So if you’re in Canberra and you’re in the market for a perfectly serviceable, 21 speed mountain bike, I’ll have one available for about $50 in 9 days. It’s red.
My only disappointment so far? I haven’t seen a single kangaroo. Do they really exist?
Comments