I love travelling.
No, that's not quite right. I love being between a known place and a visited place. The travelling itself is often very tiring, or noisy or uncomfortable (or all and more), but that gap between stepping out of the daily habit and the worn paths, and the stepping into the new schedule is a space especially made for daydreaming, imagining and enjoying.
To be in transit even sounds temporary. Much more so than the slightly stuffy "in transition". I'm not always a chrysalis! I particularly enjoy being on planes, with a view of clouds. Surely that has got to be the furtherest from everyday that normal people can attain. I daydreamed about the plane being the cocoon, and that when I would disembark, I'd go to the loos, change my clothes, turn my wig around, discard my broken suitcase and walk out someone unknown. Someone new and fresh for this adventure.
Of course, when I do land, my mind is already fixated on walking quickly getting the luggage, getting the train, making the connections, did I remember the tickets for the show? Oh it's raining, thank goodness for the warning to bring a brolly and zoom zoom zoom off we go again and my half-formed stoies and ideas don't get written down and so errode away as my blood sugar drives me to find some food and get to the next connection. To stride along and not get walked over by these strange creatures that are the locals here. So big, so very elsewhere.
Arrival is the end.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Mules Film
The last few days I've had a chance to meet a couple of local animators and learn about their project. I have never had much exposure to people making stop-motion animation. Everyone knows the basic idea - moving characters/props a fraction at a time, a frame at a time to build up a moving image. It more common I think to see claymation.
Anyway to see the short 20 seconds or so that come from 2 days (or more!) of shooting is inspiring! They are also handcraft all the puppets, all the props and sets. It truly is an enormous creative undertaking! They started making the film in 2004 and so far have made 47 minutes of footage. It sounds so slow and painful, but talking to them about it, they describe it as a liberation to no longer worry about their actors and finding the right set or the money to rent things. They have huge bags of toys they use to make props with, as well as molding the puppets themselves. They shoot with a digital SLR, frame by frame (yes, they hand made their camera dolly too) and it all happens in a shed near the Ipswich Cemetery!
If you're interested you can find out more than you ever imagined there was to know at their online journal. It's meeting people like Miles and Julie that is the most rewarding part of my job.
Anyway to see the short 20 seconds or so that come from 2 days (or more!) of shooting is inspiring! They are also handcraft all the puppets, all the props and sets. It truly is an enormous creative undertaking! They started making the film in 2004 and so far have made 47 minutes of footage. It sounds so slow and painful, but talking to them about it, they describe it as a liberation to no longer worry about their actors and finding the right set or the money to rent things. They have huge bags of toys they use to make props with, as well as molding the puppets themselves. They shoot with a digital SLR, frame by frame (yes, they hand made their camera dolly too) and it all happens in a shed near the Ipswich Cemetery!
If you're interested you can find out more than you ever imagined there was to know at their online journal. It's meeting people like Miles and Julie that is the most rewarding part of my job.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Tough Call
If I was an American, today I would be gnawing the end of my pencil.
Who to vote for?
A feminist's dream candidate or an idealist's dream candidate?
Both of them have drawbacks of course. Clinton is a Boomer's Boomer and we know what we'll get more of (though I doubt that will include any inappropriate sexual liaisons, but good for her if she can add that in). Obama has the great speeches, but can he walk the talk? Has he got the chops?
I've been chasing my tail on this one for the past two weeks. Every time I think it is clear that one of them justifies my vote, another round of to-and-fro comes through. I am honestly undecided, for all the right reasons. I'm not on a fence, I'm not uninterested, I am really interested in this election outcome but for the first time in what feels like ages and ages, I honestly think it's an in-principal win-win.
Am I just being too naive?
After Thatcher I am not caught up in the idea of a national leader for gender's sake (although I'll admit to a pleasant frisson when Gillard took the reins over xmas) so I really am staying focused on what they offer as a leader. And that's the real crux of it. For the previous decade Australia was governed by a management team and the social and cultural consequences of that were enormous. I don't think that either of these candidates would generate those kind of problems, but it prompts the question - what kind of leadership do we think we deserve? What kind of leadership in our hearts do we hope for?
There's my own answer that I just keep coming back to. That politics and leadership needs to include some heart and vision. They both have it, but I think Obama's is catalytic in nature and it needs to be in the mix. The world needs the same people who are already powerful in industry, in commerce, in the financial markets to change their stripes, even just subtly, to make a difference in our planet surviving and humans being worth thriving.
That's a lot to ask, but every heart shifting a little more towards compassion, inclusion, cooperation has an impact beyond the simple and obvious immediacies.
Can I trust this hope or have I just been spun?
Who to vote for?
A feminist's dream candidate or an idealist's dream candidate?
Both of them have drawbacks of course. Clinton is a Boomer's Boomer and we know what we'll get more of (though I doubt that will include any inappropriate sexual liaisons, but good for her if she can add that in). Obama has the great speeches, but can he walk the talk? Has he got the chops?
I've been chasing my tail on this one for the past two weeks. Every time I think it is clear that one of them justifies my vote, another round of to-and-fro comes through. I am honestly undecided, for all the right reasons. I'm not on a fence, I'm not uninterested, I am really interested in this election outcome but for the first time in what feels like ages and ages, I honestly think it's an in-principal win-win.
Am I just being too naive?
After Thatcher I am not caught up in the idea of a national leader for gender's sake (although I'll admit to a pleasant frisson when Gillard took the reins over xmas) so I really am staying focused on what they offer as a leader. And that's the real crux of it. For the previous decade Australia was governed by a management team and the social and cultural consequences of that were enormous. I don't think that either of these candidates would generate those kind of problems, but it prompts the question - what kind of leadership do we think we deserve? What kind of leadership in our hearts do we hope for?
There's my own answer that I just keep coming back to. That politics and leadership needs to include some heart and vision. They both have it, but I think Obama's is catalytic in nature and it needs to be in the mix. The world needs the same people who are already powerful in industry, in commerce, in the financial markets to change their stripes, even just subtly, to make a difference in our planet surviving and humans being worth thriving.
That's a lot to ask, but every heart shifting a little more towards compassion, inclusion, cooperation has an impact beyond the simple and obvious immediacies.
Can I trust this hope or have I just been spun?
Monday, February 04, 2008
Geckoville
There's an utterly unnerving, unterrestial noise near my house at night.
An explosive cracking CHIT CHIT CHIT randomly smacks me in the head. It's a phenomenal sound, and scared the bejesus out of me for the first 2 months I was in the new place. I had no idea what it was and after the first time, but when I didn't die, I figured that it was largely benign. Besides, if whatever was making that kind of noise decided to attack, well, at least it would be over quickly.
Then mum was over one night. "Oh you've got Geckos!"
"Can you see one?" I asked (having just pretended that maybe it was a secret airforce jet making that noise).
"Didn't you just hear it?" she said, and didn't I look like a boob!?
So, it's geckos making that horrible sound. Since I learnt this, I've started paying a tiny bit more attention, and learnt that there's not just one very gregarious gecko co-habitating with us, but rather at least two, and more recently a little tacker. Gecko love! Yeah baby, feel my suction pads!! It's a regular frackin gecko love-in at my place.
Given that the alternative is spiders, I am very positive about the geckos. Arachnids are just too far away from my branch of the tree.
An explosive cracking CHIT CHIT CHIT randomly smacks me in the head. It's a phenomenal sound, and scared the bejesus out of me for the first 2 months I was in the new place. I had no idea what it was and after the first time, but when I didn't die, I figured that it was largely benign. Besides, if whatever was making that kind of noise decided to attack, well, at least it would be over quickly.
Then mum was over one night. "Oh you've got Geckos!"
"Can you see one?" I asked (having just pretended that maybe it was a secret airforce jet making that noise).
"Didn't you just hear it?" she said, and didn't I look like a boob!?
So, it's geckos making that horrible sound. Since I learnt this, I've started paying a tiny bit more attention, and learnt that there's not just one very gregarious gecko co-habitating with us, but rather at least two, and more recently a little tacker. Gecko love! Yeah baby, feel my suction pads!! It's a regular frackin gecko love-in at my place.
Given that the alternative is spiders, I am very positive about the geckos. Arachnids are just too far away from my branch of the tree.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Mattering Matters
How cool is it when someone, from pretty much out of nowhere, plops it into conversation that they're just stoked to hear from you, and that what you're doing matters to them just because it's *you*?!!?
I know that's a lot of exclamation marks, but it just feels good. You know, warm in the cold places and a little tingly around the mouth.
Mattering to someone else is a great feeling. It makes a big difference about facing all those humdrum hurdles in a day. It's also - strangely - easy to forget how much we do matter to people who know us, who love us, who watch us but may not ever say it. Why are human beings built in with such a sense of taking-for-grantedness? I'm sure there's a word somewhere for this part of human nature (if you know it, or would like to suggest one, please post!) or even a word for just getting bogged up with the crap we have to wade through (day job anybody) and lose sight of all the yummy things. Leading of course to that other dreaded scourge, the tacky chain mail letter....
I digress.
Back on message, back on message. Oh Yeah.
Mattering Matters.
Ask any quantum physicist.
I know that's a lot of exclamation marks, but it just feels good. You know, warm in the cold places and a little tingly around the mouth.
Mattering to someone else is a great feeling. It makes a big difference about facing all those humdrum hurdles in a day. It's also - strangely - easy to forget how much we do matter to people who know us, who love us, who watch us but may not ever say it. Why are human beings built in with such a sense of taking-for-grantedness? I'm sure there's a word somewhere for this part of human nature (if you know it, or would like to suggest one, please post!) or even a word for just getting bogged up with the crap we have to wade through (day job anybody) and lose sight of all the yummy things. Leading of course to that other dreaded scourge, the tacky chain mail letter....
I digress.
Back on message, back on message. Oh Yeah.
Mattering Matters.
Ask any quantum physicist.
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