the importance of having a good story to sustain you
Have been struck recently by the starvation and poverty amongst the people I cross paths with. It's not material poverty, it's an intellectual or mental poverty. People craving company, a connection, friends to share adulthood with, interactions. People whose memories of intensely social times from younger years, aren't quite enough to sustain them through adulthood and they're winding down, having trouble replacing them. They're starved.
I really am one of the lucky ones, and I forget it. I have my stories from moving house (so many times), my year overseas (though it seems distant and belongs to 20something me, not current me), of weekends spent in houses with friends, I have my books I've read, paintings and artwork I've created, interactions with people I've sought out (some of whom I'd like to talk to again but am too shy), I have interesting friends and acquaintances, I've done volunteer with childrens organisations (also a good way to appreciate your good fortune) which have created many memorable occasions in my mind. I've stayed in small places with not many people and seen some parts of Australia that are more outback where you start to respond to place. I have stories... and I'm noticing people are reaching their 20s and they've run out.
And funnily enough, this made me really appreciate AUSTRALIA when I saw the movie on Monday. All the hype and hyperbole, but I did see how Baz wanted to create a story, wanted it to be colourful and visual and larger than life and to show things that you'd never capture from just the end of your nose, like the cattle droving or the bombing of Darwin or the ship evacuation from Mission Island. I understood why people like my grandfather can't speak of the terror of war, but still feel nostalgic for the intense camaraderie of the time. With the terrible occupation of being solved for you (you worked for the war), your mental energy was released. Because working out what you are going to do, is so hard. And then even if you have employment, you worry that you are not significant. Younger people talk of their ambitions, their craving for recognition and freedom, their desire for oxygen that is only limited.
You tune into the messages you want to receive-and so it was that I kept capturing bits of dialogue from Australia, from The Drover and in regards to Nullah's initiation, why it was important to go on a journey. You needed to travel, to live off just the things that could be carried with you, you needed to have an adventure, form your character, create a story, have a powerful memory that would shape you for all the years of your life. He wanted Nullah to have a country to call his, a pride, a sense of being, an identity, to have been lost in time that could be relived in times again. I always interpret the stories of the dreaming, as being about that, when the haze of a fire causes you to lose time. So many scenes in the movie showed communications from fire smoking, signs sent from one huge rock down to small tiny people dot figures far away.
In the evening after I saw the movie, I watched Bill Leaks Face Painting. He was doing a portrait of Charles Perkins, who I have a huge amount of admiration for. Meeting people up here who can talk about the Freedom Rides first hand told me something that books couldn't. More than anyone else, Charlie could talk about the racism, the human rights problem that occurred when you always judged a person by the colour of their skin. What it would be like to always expect the worst, have the worst expected. As he put it of his achievements, "I'm so much the exception to the rule that it's not funny, it's a disgrace". First university graduate, first head of a commonwealth department. Educated, emancipated, tall and articulate, blunt in his assessment of unfair treatment as a young child and discrimination he experienced again and again. It was so sad as well, to hear his comrades talk about what it's like since he died, that there's no-one Aboriginal cutting through nationally, the way Charlie did.
I really am one of the lucky ones, and I forget it. I have my stories from moving house (so many times), my year overseas (though it seems distant and belongs to 20something me, not current me), of weekends spent in houses with friends, I have my books I've read, paintings and artwork I've created, interactions with people I've sought out (some of whom I'd like to talk to again but am too shy), I have interesting friends and acquaintances, I've done volunteer with childrens organisations (also a good way to appreciate your good fortune) which have created many memorable occasions in my mind. I've stayed in small places with not many people and seen some parts of Australia that are more outback where you start to respond to place. I have stories... and I'm noticing people are reaching their 20s and they've run out.
And funnily enough, this made me really appreciate AUSTRALIA when I saw the movie on Monday. All the hype and hyperbole, but I did see how Baz wanted to create a story, wanted it to be colourful and visual and larger than life and to show things that you'd never capture from just the end of your nose, like the cattle droving or the bombing of Darwin or the ship evacuation from Mission Island. I understood why people like my grandfather can't speak of the terror of war, but still feel nostalgic for the intense camaraderie of the time. With the terrible occupation of being solved for you (you worked for the war), your mental energy was released. Because working out what you are going to do, is so hard. And then even if you have employment, you worry that you are not significant. Younger people talk of their ambitions, their craving for recognition and freedom, their desire for oxygen that is only limited.
You tune into the messages you want to receive-and so it was that I kept capturing bits of dialogue from Australia, from The Drover and in regards to Nullah's initiation, why it was important to go on a journey. You needed to travel, to live off just the things that could be carried with you, you needed to have an adventure, form your character, create a story, have a powerful memory that would shape you for all the years of your life. He wanted Nullah to have a country to call his, a pride, a sense of being, an identity, to have been lost in time that could be relived in times again. I always interpret the stories of the dreaming, as being about that, when the haze of a fire causes you to lose time. So many scenes in the movie showed communications from fire smoking, signs sent from one huge rock down to small tiny people dot figures far away.
In the evening after I saw the movie, I watched Bill Leaks Face Painting. He was doing a portrait of Charles Perkins, who I have a huge amount of admiration for. Meeting people up here who can talk about the Freedom Rides first hand told me something that books couldn't. More than anyone else, Charlie could talk about the racism, the human rights problem that occurred when you always judged a person by the colour of their skin. What it would be like to always expect the worst, have the worst expected. As he put it of his achievements, "I'm so much the exception to the rule that it's not funny, it's a disgrace". First university graduate, first head of a commonwealth department. Educated, emancipated, tall and articulate, blunt in his assessment of unfair treatment as a young child and discrimination he experienced again and again. It was so sad as well, to hear his comrades talk about what it's like since he died, that there's no-one Aboriginal cutting through nationally, the way Charlie did.
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