Georgiezine

I read The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenedis, which was great, not unlike the Pittsburgh Mysteries by Michael Chabon. Also read The Weird Sisters, and now The Family Fang, which has a quirkly plot (adult brother and sister return to family home of their parents, who are performance artists) and uses light humour to examine the foibles, pretensions and naivety of the adult children, scarred as they are by their parents. Back history is delicately recalled, assumed and the narrative keeps moving. In other news, I had another "theatre is crap" moment. Why don't I enjoy performance anymore? It was an open studio weekend at Vitalstatix. It was partly the misguided belief by artists that the development process is interesting to anyone not involved in the piece; and also because the development/research process being used was quite lame. I could give examples, but I'd only feel narky. My sister talked about the irony of listening to middle class dancers evaluating whethe...

I arrived in Hobart yesterday. First time I've been back since I left 5 years ago. Mixed feelings. It's kind of the same really, a small state that has many wonderful natural attributes but a localism that partly protects it and partly restricts it. This evening I was briefly talking to some of my friend's crowd and was thinking how nice they were-educated but not snobby, relaxed but intelligent-and of course they were all PhD students: science no less, well rounded and interested people. Louis had fun mugging in his beanie for them. This was at Rektango, the regular Friday evening gig in Salamanca Square, where an outside bar is set up, a band plays and people and children mingle. Louis got adopted by four boys, who were about 7-8 years old, who thought he was very cute and were delighted by his ability to give "High Fives". This was the highlight of the night for him, having 4 big kids dance with him and pat him and pay him attention, once they left, he ran am...

Hardly any films or music or literature comes to mind as finds of 2010. I think that's because the year was dominated by my personal life-new job, renovations, marriage and becoming a mother. Do have to join the new century though-am currently listening to a Liz Phair CD I borrowed from the library. The whole purpose of browsing their music collection was to make a new discovery, and instead I am listening to confessional 90s singer/songwriters. Which I DO like, and I do think in general that women are under represented in the music scene and I give blessings to the whole early 90s riot grrl scene for challenging that.... but I just don't find the music that great to listen to whilst at home on a hot early new years eve. Maybe if I was walking down a city street, anticipating a crowded smokey night with friends. (Sorry Liz). Stephen Cummings provided some amusing analysis of current female singer songwriters in Australia, with reference to people such as Sally Seltmann and C...

I think I've written about my current inability to enjoy attending theatre. It dates from about 2003, when I saw a terrorism themed play by Stephen Sewell at the Festival Centre and hasn't improved much since then, though I did enjoy a performance I saw at the Fringe about Dads. On Saturday night I joined 3 friends to see RUBY BRUISE at the Waterside Workers Theatre at Port Adelaide. To some extent I enjoyed it more, as a "complete" theatrical performance than SASKIA FALLS-it was well designed, the 4 actors were good, they effectively performed all their theatrical "tricks". But the play itself was kind of pointless, left us all with a so what feeling. It was interesting to read, on the same day, an interview with a performance artist in REVIEW, who was asked to explain the difference between performance art and theatre. Theatre is fake, she said, completely artificial, whilst performance art is Real! Whilst I sometimes cringe at performance art, the det...

I'm one of the lucky people that have a really good hairdresser who is also an interesting person. Midweek I saw her, and she offered to let me listen to her Drones album. This interaction actually started with me ducking my head into Frankie magazine and her teasing me for being a bookworm but confessing she likes the silence to concentrate... but then we pleasantly diverted into a talk about modern music and the dark side and kindred quirks. She talked up the drones, and I thought I'd like them, they're on a path of musical interests for me that goes from Nick Cave, Dirty Three, Mess Hall, Peter Head and Bridezilla. Plus I remember admiring their duffel coat. Then she asked if I was heading to the All Tomorrow's Parties gig for the Sydney Festival. I said that I was eyeing it off, but didn't currently have a buddy to attend with, what with my kindred Nick Cave spirits being parents of under 2s/overseas/travelling in South America or China/working 7 days a we...