Mona and the festival of modern art

Mona-Foma is back again in Hobart and is receiving warm support.  It is not often that St Mary's Cathedral is packed for a concert and the audience gives a standing ovation to the performers.  However, Nick Tsiavos and his talented group were received enthusiastically, as they presented their particular take on new music, Byzantine chant, free jazz and new minimalism.  Deborah Kayser's incredible voice rose and fell in pure simplicity against a background of liminal bass tones and imaginative, sensitive percussion.  In this performance  the ancient did indeed become modern and the playing was passionate and beautiful.

Following the Liminal performance another packed audience listened to  Rod Thomson playing a number of organ pieces by Messiaen.   These meditations and musical visions also reflected Greek, Hindu, Indonesian, Japanese and jazz influences and were played in masterly fashion by the organist.  The cathedral resonated with the joy and splendour of the music celebrating power and majesty and the muted tones of the meditations on suffering.   This concert too was enthusiastically received and makes me wonder whether Brian Ritchie playing his shakuhachi flute    can possibly be any more inspiring next week.

A new year arrives

 Those of us who live in Tasmania know what a gem of a place it is.  When expatriate Tasmanians come home over the Christmas-New Year break, however, they remind us once again of the special delights of the Tasmanian summer. Their international companions are amazed by our gourmet food and wine experiences and marvel at the peaceful stillness of our unspoilt beaches and coves and the grandeur of our bush and wilderness. As our visitors wander round Salamanca and the wharves, explore our off-shore islands and the East coast resorts, admire the colonial buildings of the North and the pristine beauty of iconic mountains and tarns, they bring home to us the charm and value of so much we take for granted in our southern Australian outpost.

On this first day of a new year it is salutary to remember how fortunate we are to live in our island state. 

After the unseemliness of so much of Australian public life of late, it is also worthwhile remembering how remarkably well the Australian economy has performed to date, compared with most other countries.  An important analysis of this performance can be found here , while Mr Denmore has some cogent remarks about the performance of the media during 2011 that are well worth reading.

Botanico

               Deep in this green world visitors wander

                          listening to ancient lays,

                          that the birds have been singing here

                          for hundreds of years.  

                          Lilting notes that float gently down
                          from the tracery of trees and drift
                          through the stillness till they finally fade.
                         A silence of memories prevails.

                         Centuries of history rest in this soil

                         memories of passion and dreams

                         from the first sod turned, the first seeds sown,

                         when more than a garden was made.

                         Plantings were trialled here and theories tested,

                         collections preserved and described in new ways,

                         shared with the world and their lineages argued.

                         A science of plants was begun.

                        When the birds fall silent, their eulogy finished,   

                        the visitors leave, but the garden lives on,

                        its green world has fashioned a union still flourishing

                        where nature and culture are one.

                       500 years later the garden's enticing

                       for botanists to savour and scholars to probe,

                       but the greatest delight of this special place

                       ---its survival for us to embrace.

Memories of Europe

My trip to Europe seems like a dream now, but images still swirl up of the gilded spires and domes of the Altstadt in Dresden, its reconstructed harmony of landscape and buildings, churches and museums all nestling round the river and its terraced green hills.  Dresden is an appealing, beautiful city and the sculpted saint who looked down onto the destruction of the Frauen Kirche (and everything else) and wept during the war must be overjoyed today to watch over the city's restored wonders.

Dresden is unforgettable and Padua is too.  So many amazing old churches, museums, galleries and houses to wonder at, as they appear around every corner. Most spell-binding of all though was the overwhelming experience inside the Scrovengi chapel, where Giotto created in 1305 a landscape of frescoes covering all the walls and all the ceilings.  Such beautiful images from so long ago and inspiring as much awe today as they must have done then. An amazing set of images telling a story for the illiterate populace of the times still casting a spell on visitors from another age just beginning to be dominated by image and icon again.

How to sunburn a cow

I've been attending a U3A course exploring ideas about time.  In discussing the introduction of daylight savings (summer) time across Australia David gave the example of an opponent of this change (a Queensland farmer) who thought that the extra hours of sunlight  would 'sunburn his cows'.

Last year I spent time in Greenwich, London and visited the Royal Observatory.  I remember standing on the Meridian line, after finding Hobart marked out, and then discovering that nearby schoolchildren had no idea where Hobart was.  However, the children knew my friend and I were obviously Australian, because they thought we sounded just like the stars of 'Neighbors'.

As I spent a lot of time thinking about time in Greenwich (including reading a book by a scientist, who argued that time did not exist) I have been very interested in David Leaman's course.  It has also reminded me of my visit to an amazing house Spitalfields in London, where Dennis created a home that seems to be still occupied by the original Huguenot owners.  It's an unusual tourist attraction.(http://dennissevershouse.co.uk/)

Paperless Office?

Is there a convergence of ideas whose time has come?  John Quiggin (http://johnquiggin.com/) recently asserted that the paperless office is closer than we commonly believe.  The purchase and use of e-readers and e-books in Australia seems to have really taken off this year and every day, as we spend more and more time in social networking, information gathering, communication and artistic expression using screen-based activities, the need for paper is lessened.  Perhaps our literary-based culture is in the process of transforming into a visually-based one.  As we digitise everything we can for easy on-line access we create an on-line world that is multi-faceted: on the one hand personalised, immediate and accessible, on the other hand   universal, omnipresent, and inter-active, but  in either case a world  framed in ways that use much less paper.   This week in Tasmania we are finally reaching a peace settlement in the 30 year battle of the forests.  Wouldn't  it be ironic to reach this point only to find that the market for paper products is decreasing with every day that passes? 

Pakistan

In happier times before the Great Flood

Holidaying

Around this time last year I was in Cornwall holidaying with my grandchildren.  Come to think of it the weather then (mid Summer) wasn't very different from what we've been experiencing here lately in Winter. What I remember most from this trip, however, was how I came  to appreciate the joys of parenthood more keenly.

Observe a father taking his near-teen daughters on a half-term holiday.  See how number 1 daughter strides confidently off 50 yards in the lead with a number 2 daughter in rapid pursuit, while father valiantly struggles to steer the small procession from behind: establishing destination, setting direction, purchasing tickets, managing mountains of luggage and carefully supervising your global grandparent, who is always to be found a considerable distance to the rear.  Along footpaths and platforms, over footbridges and steps, along tunnels and corridors, down escalators and up stairways, in and out of trains see them go.

McDonnell Ranges, Alice Springs

In the beginning

I was here.

Long ago in the Dreaming,

when all that was

was sea and stillness,

I was here,

waiting.

When my time came, 

giant spasms shook the sea,

churned and strained, thrusting upwards

in cataclysmic shudders.

They ripped the sea's womb wide open
and flung me out into this world.

Mine was a violent birth,
but I was a long time young.

You didn't see me then, 

when I was young

and partly hidden high beyond the clouds,

my face all smooth, my body strong,

rising imperious, abruptly sheer

from endless flatness far below.

I was a roof for all the earth,

a sanctuary for those beneath,

who cherished me.

You didn't see me either, as I aged.

when the fierce winds came

and the storms raged and the rain coursed

deep into my limbs

etching furrows in my skin,

sheering offspring near and far,

as I began to falter

down the millennia.

Now that you've come

like all the others, 

and looked and wondered at this place,

remember that I'm old, like you,

grown heavy, wrinkled, as I'm weathered

slowly downwards,

in buckled, folded, jagged slide

towards the earth,

from where beneath

 my home is calling.

Yet on this day I still stand watch 

and talk to you, who stops and listens,

and contemplates how brief a stay,

is given us from dust to dust.

You feel my guardian spirit's touch,

enduring deep and long.

I feel your sense of kindred fate,

that all must end some day.

Remember then when your time comes,

the centre's heart will take you in

and I will point the way.

For until time itself is done,

I'll still be here to guard this land.

 

The heart of Australia

 It's a long way from mega city traffic to the vast stillness of the Red Centre.  But this is one journey that's well worth making.  While in Alice Springs recently, I couldn't help but wish that all Australians could visit here to reconnect with the heart of our country.

Near Alice Springs

Beautiful Hobart

I'm now back from Brisbane on a calm, crisp and sunny day.  Once again as I step onto the  tarmac  and breathe the clean, pure air and drive from the airport towards the bridge with that wonderful sweeping view of the  river and the city nestling under the mountain, I realise just how lucky I am to live in this beautiful island state.  Tasmania, the hidden
jewel in the (Australian) crown.