March 3rd, '08 -- Nigel on Fire

Soulful perfection served raw and blazing.

Small man with shaved head and mohawk, baggy silk jacket and hanging braided belt, homeless chic: swearing on stage and kicking footballs into the audience, he raises his violin.

The stage, the seats, the crowd, the building are gone in an instant. The sky screams open and the clouds sing; howling, wailing, keening in joyous perfect harmony and glory the music crashes through you, the strings and horns pound crystal notes into you in waves so wide and deep your body expands to accomodate them--your spine vibrates, your toes hum and it's pushing against the back of your eyes. Paralyzed and gaping and near tears you surrender to pure exultation and joyous celebration.

Nigel Kennedy and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra play Beethoven and Motzart.

October 8, 2007 -- Two Cents' Worth

...meanwhile money is balm, a universal salve to quiet your immediate pain. A new shirt cures loneliness. A nice breakfast in a cafe alleviates lack of meaning. Visions of matching furniture lull you to sleep. This is the guage by which you measure your self-worth. These are your rewards for navigating the world on your own; the only milestones you're offered in your endless game of snakes and ladders.

At what point do you abandon your search for meaning and impose your own? There is no universal truth, no answers to anything, no underlying reason: there is only what you decide or allow others to decide for you.

October 2, 2007 -- Ideal Value

"...all ideas seem equally good to me; the fact of their existence proves that someone is creating. Does it matter whether they are objectively right or wrong? They could never remain so for long."

Lawrence Durrell: JUSTINE

December 16th, '06 -- Wonder

A crowd of black villagers are packed shoulder to shoulder in an aerial photograph, gazing up at the camera. There are hundreds of them--the frame is not large enough to hold them all. Every one of them is smiling and waving--eyes wide and bright, teeth flashing. They are the embodiment of simple excitement and happiness, as bright as the clothes they're wearing.

A caption on the back of the photo states they are African villagers waving at a hovering helicopter.

At what point do we trade joy and wonder for technology and creature comforts?

Does mapping the human genome and colonizing space make us happy? Does it make us better?

There are tiny pockets of tribal people who live off their land, self-sufficient and self-actuating, who live, love, struggle and die without ever seeing a microwave oven. They know their place in the world, are sure of their purpose, and are spiritually rich. Their happiness is simple and honest and direct, as is their pain. Their joy is the people and land around them.

How will curing cancer benefit their lives?

Will education make them better people?

In our desperate struggle to complicate and validate our lives, we are outdistancing our own capacity for joy and wonder.

August 8, '06 --Death by Jim Morrison

How to acquire death in the morning show.
TV death which the child absorbs
Deathwell mystery which makes me write
Slow train, the death of my cock gives life.

Forgive the poor old people who gave us entry
taught us god in the child's prayer in the night.

June 14th, '06 -- Worth the Waits

all halo, horns and a tail
shovelling coal inside my dreams

the plough is red, the well is full
inside the dollhouse of her skull

her cheetah coat fills up with steam
she's such a scream

Tom Waits: She's Such a Scream (Bone Machine)

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when the moon is a cold, chiseled dagger
and it's sharp enough to draw blood from a stone

he rides through your dreams on a coach and horses
and the fenceposts in the moonlight look like bones

when their boots mount the staircase
and the door's flung back open

he's not there, for he has risen
he's not there
for he has risen

Tom Waits: Black Wings (Bone Machine)

May 30th, '06 -- Proust Juice

"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes."

- Marcel Proust

A salesman gave me this one, if you can believe it.