Miranda July

I would like to present to you Miss Miranda July, who has appeared as a flurry of inspiration in my life this week - just when I needed it! I read about Miranda in a past issue of Frankie Magazine (lovingly kept with all my other precious little Frankies), then her book No One Belongs Here More Than You was recommended by Marieke Hardy on ABC TV's First Tuesday Book Club. She described it as "a little ray of sunshine" or something like that. Marieke usually likes good books. I searched a couple of bookstores to no avail and then came across a copy in Borders, but the white cover was all dirty and the last one. Found it in immaculate shape at Gleebooks (but, of course!) and started reading it the other day. It is quirky and original, light and funny, and oddly sweet. On to her website to learn more and saw that her film (that she wrote, directed and starred in) called Me and You and Everyone We Know won awards at Cannes and Sundance. The trailer is here and I'll be searching it out this week. Miranda has done a number of short films, live performances and is working on her second feature film. So talented. So creative. So makes me want to write more. So hope you can find her inspiring too...

Misty Mountain Hop

I am a true believer in the healing properties of getting the hell out of town and breathing in some Eucalypts and sky. So thanks (?) to the Pope himself having a little meet n greet on the same street as my work I got a day off to do just that.

Leaving home during the hour the chill becomes visible, I ladida'd the whole way up the winding mountain road, hoping the lingering patches of fog on the roadside weren't an indication of a sequel to the valley white-out from one of my last trips up the Blueys. The temperature was dropping the further I ascended but as I drove into Katoomba I felt a thrill in every twiggy-branched bush in every weatherboard yard. Arriving at Echo Point, home of the Three Sisters and the obvious first stop on any sojourn into the area, I jumped out of the car and thrust my hands deep into my pockets while they still had blood flowing through them and wound down to the lookout.

A beautifully serene sight was before me. The valley had a thick layer of fog, yes, but it was neatly snuggled amongst the surrounding mountains. The three sisters were proudly rising out of the white cloud, as was Mount Solitary opposite.

Solo bush walking really is one of the finer things in life. I wandered along the cliff side, meandered through the trees, intermittently looking up and across at zooming birds, the names of which I do not know, or watched brightly plumed Rosella's chew on seeds. I brushed my hand across moss, across rock faces, across Eucalypt and fern trunks, anything with texture unfamiliar. I stopped at every lookout and breathed the valleys deeply in. I put my hand in the waterfall runoff and watched the sparkle of the reflecting sun across it's ripples. I smiled at everybody that walked past and I meant it.

At lunch I took myself to a cafe with blue walls and read The Guardian Weekly. I forced myself, despite my sudden sleepiness, to do another walk in the afternoon and then went and met my mate Jez, a local, at the pub with his workmates for a couple of beers. Next time I will not leave it so long between trips. I love a good day in the mountains :)

Zach returns

...and then Zach de la Rocha released that non-RATM project, seemingly a wafting rumour never realised. The recent touring of RAGE (which I was blessed with a bunch of dance floor tickets at their Sydney show -and at which I learnt the fine art of jumping on crutches) was a further indication that the Zach side-daliance was never to materialise.
But here it is...the outfit is called One Day As A Lion and the debut EP is out worldwide 22nd July - apparently - but I downloaded it already (from iTunes peeps, not on the sly!). One Day As A Lion presents a collaboration between Zach and 'like-conscioused' Jon Theodore on drums. The sound is fierce, the lyrics confronting and the energy is high in a way that we have come to know from de la Rocha. Is it sinful to suggest that it confirms that Zach's departure from Rage took a fair bit of the soul away (I mean, what the fuck was Audioslave, really, if not a disappointing absence of Zach de la Rocha). One Day As A Lion indicates that a fire has been re-lit in the scape of political music and while it may not be burning as boldly as it was in the climax of Viet-now, it may be on it's way. Check em out here and watch this space for more news...

A True American Independent indeed...

The Sydney Film Festival brought 2 great films into my life in the last few weeks, the first being Choke based on the book of the same name by Chuck Palahniuk. The at times hilarious rehabilitative quest of a sex addict, Choke has the ability and guts to make you squirm and squeal in equal measure. See it if only for a hit of laugh medicine.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S. Thompson takes you into the carnival of our favourite Doctor of Journalism and on a ride through the 70s and 80s; on the campaign trail, through the barrel of a gun, along the highway of the Hell's Angels and spits you out somewhere different entirely, with the knowledge that the world was a damn sight more interesting for having Hunter a part of it. The American Dream indeed...you must see this film. Click on the above links for the trailers and enjoy the Ibogaine.

Great Escape 2008

Speaking of festivals (I wasn't was I? Anyway...), this morning I went for a bike ride with the old man through bicentennial park and we wound our way down towards Newington Armory. Ah, the site of my festival of festivals, my joy weekend, Gomez and hay fights, beer in cans, old train housing stations playing arthouse doccos, Evan Dando and cabaret, juggling arena and the waterside stage...ooh poffertjes too...mmm. Across the empty site I saw and heard the rumble of it all in my minds eye. This year The Great Escape is on October 4th-5th (Labour Day long weekend) and tickets are on sale Wednesday 19th July. Getting giddy at the thought. If you know what's good for you, get a ticket and I'll seeya there...

Ted.com

Feeling the need to be inspired? Ted.com is such a fantastic website packed with 18 minute video lectures on topics as diverse as science, politics, the environment and the arts. Open yourself up to ideas being discussed by some of the most innovative thinkers out there in the world today. As I starter I recommend this one by Michael Pollan about how plants have evolved to use us as much as we do them. Enjoy!

Melbourne Love

Two trips to Melbourne last month and every time I go I find more reasons to fall in love with this city (though in the Melbourne vs Sydney rivalry, my toes are dug in the BEACH of course:). With so many amazing places to eat - MoVida, Cookie (a new fav you must check out for dinner or drinks), Misty (bar on Hosier lane next door to MoVida - funky cavernous place), Gin Palace (a dim establishment with lavish and comfy furnishings), Electric Ladyland in Praram, The Carni which holds warehouse style parties, Soul Mamas vegetarian restaurant in St Kilda, quirky fashion (Quick Brown Fox, Kinki Gerlinki etc), fuck it I'm not stopping - Brunswick Street, grafitti, and of course my favourite spot in Melbs - DEGRAEVES LANE. There's alot of love...

Why reading?

So working in publishing and being an ex-bookstore employee - it is no surprise that I am an avid reader. But I often wonder why I chose this profession (or it chose me?), and where this inclination to bury my head in literary la la land comes from. I think there are two main reasons - the first being that language is a tool which we can use to chip away at the meaning of all that is around us. It is a vast and deep sea of options (I mean, do you realise how many species down there we have come up with names for?) that can be playfully and bluntly and artfully and sinuously...(see?) spun into an all but endless array of expressions. Language's craftsman are a bunch of metaphor magicians who conjure up sentences and whip them into stories that take us on a journey to god knows where and depending on the individual's skill will take us on a bumpy journey, a spiritual one or (as Tom Robbins is quite fond of) all the way to Timbuktu.

Which brings me to the second main reason that I love to read - I spend all damn day and night in my own world and I interpret what I see in my own way, so it is refreshing to skip Kate-town for an hour or so a day to take a mental dive into someone else's swimming pool. I love that I can let Isabelle Allende introduce me to people who have drunk so much Amazon juice that their hearts beat to the rhythm of the Incas, or Hunter S. Thompson take me on a rum-fuelled row-boat ride to Cuba to escape a dead pigs head in a toilet (to make me realise that life is not so ordinary for everybody), or Henry David Thoreau take me into the woods for a couple of years. There is an earth full of people out there having adventures and experiences so very unlike my own and I want a ticket on their written express. And I especially want to go wherever the hell Kilgor Trout or Pan and Alobar wish to take me.

A Matador's Kitchen...

MoVida is a simmering treat from the moment you meander into Hosier Lane (Melbourne) and see the bold girl graffiti the colour of bubblegum and the sea, sprawled across the walls opposite. Although the alleyway is packed full of trendy caricatures vying for your attention, the star of the hall, matador of the arena is certainly the bar de tapas - MoVida.

The restaurant as a whole is nowhere near as showy as the overhanging lamps are large, and as we wait for those to arrive (or not arrive….ahem) we easily relax into the casual surrounds. Our petite waitress explains the way things work – there are tapas and raciones. Tapas serve one and raciones are larger plates that can be shared amongst three so you each get a taste. She then proceeds to calmly explain the specials which leave us slyly wiping the creases of our chin.

The tapas arrive in a flurry – fried silky croquette flavoured with mushrooms, half shell scallop oven baked with jamon and potato foam, or roasted lamb cutlet encased in a Catalan pork & paprika pate to name a few. The moans are getting embarrassing already and the eyes are sparking in delight. And this is only the beginning. On comes the raciones - octopus cooked in the Galician menner, with kiphler potatoes and paprika, air cured wagyu beef thinly sliced with a truffle foam and poached egg, oven roasted portabello mushrooms finished with sherry vinegar and you get the picture.

For my friends I was dining with and for myself, this was a whole new species of restaurant where truffle foam was king. And don’t get me started on dessert, OK, some parts that come to mind are goats cheese ice cream, crème brule, pear and brandy ice-cream and of course what Spanish experience would be completa without churros and it’s doghnutty goodness?

MoVida is definitely worth the month long wait to get in and my hat is off to head chef Frank Camorra, and all the Spanish cooking Gods that obviously influenced him.

...Ode to Tom Robbins...

Ok, maybe not quite an ode, as a great quote-fest. When trying to choose a 'literary quote of the week', I went for Tom Robbins - the fact it took me three weeks to get there was my iron willpower...ahem. I love Tom Robbins as an author so very much. He once explained that he likes to take an incredibly crazy idea or scenario and write himself out of it, like squeezing out of a sticky situation. He is my favourite because he can take you on such a wild ride whilst making clearer sense of the universe. I found it real hard to decide which quote to use so I thought I would share a few of my favourites:

She had never paid much attention to the Middle Eastern situation, per se, and now she knew why. It was an overload of craziness. It was a seventy piece orchestra rehearsing a funeral dirge and a wedding march simultaneously in a broom closet. FROM 'SKINNY LEGS AND ALL'

If spirit is the electrical system that illuminates the house, then soul is the smoky fireplace, the fragrant oven, the dusty wine cellar, the strange creaks we hear in the floorboards late at night. FROM 'VILLA INCOGNITO'

He returned to his Bible, meditating on the verse about how the lilies of the field don't bother to flip burgers or climb the corporate ladder. FROM 'VILLA INCOGNITO'

perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful)thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there. FROM 'JITTERBUG PERFUME'

Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route. FROM 'JITTERBUG PERFUME'

Anyway, I really better stop or I won't have any more quotes of the week.