Darkly I shine, in the wind, I, God’s fire
A star shrieking, descending, through the deafness of night
At the sombre-most summit I mourn thwarted desire,
And with the sparks of my pain, red aurora, ignite.
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At the end of The True History of the Kelly Gang, Justin Kurzel’s adaptation of Peter Carey’s magnificent novel of the same name, Thomas Curnow, a hostage who survives the gang’s chaotic last stand at the Glenrowan Inn, gives a speech to a fancy crowd in a fancy room. His audience wear the uniform of power – grey beards and starched collars, bejewelled consorts, diplomatic sashes and medals pinned to frock coats. Distinguished looking gentlemen all. Curnow himself is a distinguished looking gentleman (the actor, Jacob Collins-Levy, has the sort of looks that make him convincing as a Tudor king or underworld kingpin). His speech begins with a rebuke: Australia, he says, has no George Washington, no Thomas Jefferson; the closest thing it has to a national icon is a horse thief turned cop killer. Unless Australia can find other, more edifying stories to tell about itself, it will, he cautions, remain beyond the pale of respectability.
Read MoreThis is a series of essays about books, old and new. I have been led to them by anything in their content or form which relates to elements I am exploring in my own creative writing. In this process of reading for writing, I have benefited from recommendations from teachers of literature, writers, editors and friends.
In the case of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which was first published by the Czech writer in 1915, at the time, I was writing about bugs. Franz Kafka was writing about people.
Read MoreMaybe it’s why we do it all, what’s deeply underneath the choices we make, the ways we make the decisions we do, take the paths we take, even when it ends up creating the opposite of our intentions, even when we accidentally push away what we really wanted to attract…everybody wants to belong. So many of our daily struggles, our yearly quests and the wide sweeps of our character arcs are about chasing the glow of belonging, of being part of something, a community, a crew, a family of whatever kind (including those crews made up specifically of those rejecting other crews).
Read MoreThere’s a video on the internet that is, I would say, a perfect piece of art. It’s a recording of the final song of the final gig by the experimental band COIL, performed in Dublin in October 2004.
The song is called ‘Going Up’, which was a phrase that the couple at the centre of COIL — John Balance and Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson — used as a joking euphemism for death. In what turned out to be his and COIL’s final live performance, Balance adlibs some lyrics that seem to shade into a statement of a readiness for, and resignation to, death — ‘are you ready to go now?’ And then, finally: ‘It just is.’
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This is a piece about watching birds. Years ago I used to write zines about music, about local punk bands. But now I don't want to write about music so much anymore, so I thought instead I'd like to write about something else which can easily take over waking thoughts, and dreams, and be a point of weird obsession if you're inclined that way. But it's also about how being into watching birds is different, special, and in some ways unique.
Read MoreThe Franco-Bulgarian psychoanalyst and (here I beg your indulgence, anticipating rolling eyes) critical theorist, Julia Kristeva, describes the corpse as the paradigmatic abject object: ‘The corpse (or cadaver: cadere, to fall), that which has irremediably come a cropper, is cesspool, and death; it upsets even more violently the one who confronts it as fragile and fallacious chance. […] The corpse, seen without God and outside of science, is the utmost of abjection.’
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