Cults - Offering

Haven't been able to make up my mind about this one. I've listened to it quite a bit - and sympathetically, given how much fun both their debut and Static were (especially that debut) - and it's pretty good and all. But it just hasn't seized me - I don't know why. The pop edge and inventiveness just seems a bit duller here, less vivid. So, pretty good, but oddly unmemorable.

Ali's Wedding

Surprising turn of events for me to have now seen not once, but twice, a film that I never sought out in the first place! Lucky it's so charming and easy to watch then.

(w/ Kevin)

Holly Throsby - After a Time

This is the second time Holly Throsby has ambushed me at this time of year with a song that seems woven straight from the Australian summertime and all its feelings; last time - late 2011 - it was "What I Thought Of You", from Team, and this time round it's "Mountain", from her earlier-this-year (but I only picked it up recently) release After a Time.

In the past I've felt with Throsby that she can be perhaps too gentle, too quiet, to the extent that there's an ever present risk of losing the thread of her music when listening to a whole album end to end, and while there's a bit of that still here, for whatever reason I've found After a Time holding my attention much more firmly all the way through - it feels more emphatic and direct than Team or On Night, while still entirely delicate, subtle and mood-filled, and it's my favourite that I've heard of hers so far, filled with little details and rises that augment its hushed songs. 

Michael Ondaatje - Running in the Family

Book 1 of 2 in Erandathie's reading course for me before I visit Sri Lanka.

In the acknowledgements, Ondaatje calls it 'not a history but a portrait or "gesture"', which is a good description of the book's tapestry of small pieces, weaving together the author's own voice - a composite of two journeys to Sri Lanka, in 1978 and 1980 - and those of many relatives, friends of the family and others, some of which could only have been nearly wholly, if judiciously, imagined, such as the wonderful extended bit that focuses on his grandmother Lalla through to her death by what was called in an earlier section 'natural causes', in a flood.

The bits that came most to life for me are those in which Ondaatje directly narrates his own experiences returning to the country from Canada, where he's made his home, and the 1920s/30s (jazz age!) vignettes in which his father, mother and associates - and, if I have the timing right, his free-spirited grandmother once liberated by the death of her patriarchal husband - live outrageously in their milieu of cross-country trains (literally: west coast Colombo to eastern Trincomalee features more than once), rubber estates, rest houses, colonial trappings, snakes and enormous flowering gardens. Very romantic.

"All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed" (Potter, Melbourne Uni)

Given that it was fairy tale-themed, the question wasn't whether I would like it but, rather, how much, and indeed there is heaps of good stuff in this exhibition at the impressively consistent Potter Museum.

Some pieces jump off quite directly from well known fairy tales, such as Lotte Reiniger's silhouette animations, from the 1920s through to 50s, of tales like Hansel and Gretel and Snow White and Rose Red, Amanda Marburg's plasticine-y oil paintings (though my favourite of them, "Juniper Tree" (2016), calling to mind both Dali and O'Keeffe, is more oblique; I also especially liked her "Hansel and Gretel" (also 2016), facing into the forest), Dina Goldstein's transpositions/juxtapositions, like "Princess Pea" (2009), and that computer game rendition of the Little Red Riding Hood story, "The Path", with which I spent some time a few years ago (referenced here).

The abject and the uncanny also loom large, strongly present in two of the strongest things on offer: Miwa Yanagi's series of black and white photos, many of which depict young women made up to appear very old, and Patricia Piccinini's "Still Life With Stem Cells" (2002), which struck me with a real jolt when I turned a corner and looked into a dark room to see its startlingly lifelike subject sitting there on the carpet, surrounded by typically Piccinini-ish organic-looking globule-y creatures (the way that succession of descriptors that I just rolled out is each not quite precise seems apt, trying to pin down something that, by nature, is elusive). Rare for art to reach out and deliver such an immediate shock - how great! It got better the longer I spent with it too. Also showing: her video "The Gathering" (2007), which I've seen before (in Canberra?), still wonderful.

And for sheer pleasurability, it'd be hard to beat Allison Schulnik's whimsical, poetic and inventive stop-motion clay animation "Mound" (2011), set to the morose tones of Scott Walker's "It's Raining Today" ... which also turns out to be freely available online.

Francine Prose - Reading Like A Writer

The best thing about this book - which is very good overall - is the close attention it pays to words and passages, with generous amounts of quotation from great literature and commentary about how it achieves the effects it does. Chapter headings: close reading; words; sentences; paragraphs; narration; character; dialogue; details; gesture; learning from Chekhov; reading for courage.

Josephine Rowe - How a Moth Becomes a Boat

I've been reading a lot of short fiction lately, some of it very short, and found my way to Josephine Rowe via the flash fiction anthology I read a few weeks ago.

The stories collected here are concise, rhythmic, and across the board good; my favourite, I think, is "Leak".

Thor: Ragnarok

I've definitely seen at least two Thor movies, counting The Avengers, and I thought I'd seen another but maybe that's just the trailer I was thinking of. Anyway, I saw the trailer for this one a while back and it made it look terrific, and it is.

Chris Hemsworth is a genial, likeable main character and basically everyone else who shows up here is a gift; Cate Blanchett, Jeff Goldblum, Tom Hiddleston and Mark Ruffalo are a formidable roll-call of especially enjoyable actors, plus Karl Urban (always good at looking handsome and conflicted), Idris Elba (for the usual maximal charisma), Anthony Hopkins (lending proceedings both camp and gravitas), various NZ accents and one face I recognised from Hunt for the Wilderpeople, and it also has up its sleeve an attention-grabbing turn from an actor I didn't know, Tessa Thompson, and a cameo from Benedict Cumberbatch, who's never unwelcome.

Put them all in a script that's smart, funny and energetic, and directed with an undistracting pizazz and there you go.

The Unthanks - The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons, Live from the Union Chapel (Diversions Vol. 1)

What a delightful, unlooked-for discovery, courtesy of my recent haunting of the local public libraries!

The Unthanks are an English folk group, and here they've covered six of Antony's songs (all but one from I Am A Bird Now, which more and more as time passes feels like a true classic) and nine-ish of Robert Wyatt's (one is very short and an 'excerpt'); the live-in-chamber air works a treat.

The Antony ones are done in relatively spare, piano-based style, which honours their beautiful melodies while allowing the sisters-vocalists' graceful voices to shine. All of the songs come through strongly: "Bird Gerhl", "Man Is The Baby", "You Are My Sister", "For Today I Am A Boy", "Paddy's Gone" (this one was new to me) and "Spiralling". And the Wyatt ones cover more ground, to good effect; the only one whose original I know, "Sea Song", is terrific but the others sparkle too.

Marvellous. I'll definitely be seeking out more of theirs.

Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Lotta Sea Lice

Hard to know how much it's the local connection, but it's been hard to avoid hearing about this one, not least, until recently, via the large billboard on the corner near me that I walk past every day during the periods when I'm walking into town every day (before it: Sleep Well Beast). But what made me buy it was hearing it in the Grace Darling the other day; the guy at the next table from me thought it was Lucinda Williams, specifically on their excellent cover of the still-excellent-in-its-own-right "Fear Is Like A Forest" ((1) Hidden Hands is still my favourite of Cloher's albums; (2) I only learned this year that Cloher and Barnett are partners), and it sure didn't hurt either that they end with a take on the great Belly song "Untogether" - and by the way, how did I never notice before that the opening lyrics of that latter are "I was friendly with this girl who insisted on touching my face"? Anyway, much conversationally melodic tunesing and electric guitar goodness - a nice collab.

Also: it's a record by Courtney and Kurt ... and doesn't sound a million miles away from the 90s in other ways either.

"Del Kathryn Barton: The Highway is a Disco" & "Akio Makigawa: Spirit and Memory" (NGV Australia)

Del Kathryn Barton

Enormous fun, this. There's serious-minded play going on here: gender (especially the feminine), sexuality and the unconscious get quite a workout, and there's heaps going on visually yet it all lands with a kapow, over and over.

Probably the most striking, and definitely my favourite, are the big polymer paint and pen works, including the one that gives the exhibition its name, the five-breasted "of pink planets" (2014), and the spectacular five-panel "sing blood-wings sing" series (2017).

But I also enjoyed the pen drawings, with small sections coloured, which are much more overt in grappling with sex and identity, and the intense 15 minute video piece, "Red", featuring mothers, fathers, death, life, redback spiders, heavy metal imagery, acid trip imagery, and a reminder (as if such were even needed) that Cate Blanchett is just some kind of wonderful.

* * *

Akio Makigawa

Quite the contrast to DKB but also excellent, this selection of sculptures is installed across the foyer and stair spaces of all three levels of the gallery. I'm often drawn to this kind of Zen-like stuff (another e.g.: Lee Ufan) and this is really good. Above: "Time keeper" (1987), "Untitled" (1981). Below: "Red", "Circle of Water III" (1999).

Haim - Something to Tell You

There are some straight-up pop albums that, while they're kind of immediate, actually take quite a few listens to really show themselves, and Something to Tell You has turned out to be one of those. I wonder, are guitar-based outfits more prone to that effect? Anyway, obviously I persevered through the initial 'oh, this is just kind of okay' listens because I'm already a fan and just as well because there's plenty of fizz and song-y muscle across the record, especially at the top and tail. First track "Want You Back" was that journey in microcosm, from initially thinking it was just nice enough but forgettable, to really worming its way in - and same with plenty of the others, including the several that come straight after it ("Nothing's Wrong", "Little of Your Love", "Ready for You" and the title track). I do especially like "Found It In Silence" too, with its massed strings and emphatic percussion.

Borg McEnroe

Pivots on the 1980 Wimbledon final; it added to the drama for me that I didn't know who was going to win (and in retrospect, I'm glad they picked '80 instead of '81).

A very good tennis film, making some interesting choices in how it introduces both Borg and McEnroe, and I liked the intense focus on their interiority, Borg in particular, though the film doesn't quite escape the 'fire and ice' / 'rebel and gentlemen' / 'America and Europe' cliches (although kudos for casting Shia LaBeouf as basically the ultimate American brat - and to him for turning in a strong performance in the role).

It brought to mind DFW's essays, and also - really only because of the tennis connection - Battle of the Sexes.

(w/ Erandathie)

Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 seasons 1 & 2

Rewatched for distraction at intervals over last few weeks. Again an utter delight of a sitcom, stiletto sharp at times - almost exclusively when aimed at the vacuousness of Chloe's and James' socialite/celebrity lifestyles - but basically candy-centred, in its treatment of June, NYC and everything else. Also, a solid set of supporting characters, both as written and performed: Mark (Eric Andre), Luther, Eli and Robin. Not to mention, whip-smart in an unobtrusive way, and deathly funny usually at least once per episode. (last time)

The Testament of Mary (Malthouse)

A powerful, one-woman - Pamela Rabe - show, giving voice to Mary.

(w/ Hayley)

Deborah Levy - Hot Milk

Every time I try to pin it down, it slips away. Even what its effect is is slippery, never mind how it achieves it - or, for that matter, why, or what the broader picture is that it's painting. But Hot Milk is powerful - sinuous, sulky, skating along on the surface, riven by subterranean forces. Cerebral and sensual. Slipping subtly unstuck through time, infused with the places it traverses, all significant - beachside southern Spain where medusa jellyfish sting mercilessly, a return to the father in Athens, Greece. Disquieting, at times menacing, at other times ecstatic, and bearing a wavering but sharp relation to the quotidian. Encounters, repetitions. Sofia and Rose, Dr Gomez and Nurse Sunshine (that would be Julieta Gomez), Ingrid, Juan and Matthew, Christos and Alexandra. Maybe its most signal achievement is how strongly it works on the level of representation and figuration while steeping itself in layer upon layer of symbolism, especially associated with the feminine (medusas, snakes, the breast-like formation of Dr Gomez's clinic, and many more). Any which way, it's quite something.

Broken Social Scene - Hug of Thunder

Broken Social Scene! Here's a blast from the past. They were big back when pitchfork was huge - or, at least, when it was huge in my parts - but never completely took hold for me, "Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl" aside; I'd completely forgotten but I even saw them play live, at a St Jeromes Laneway Festival back when the festivals were actually in the laneway.

Still, they and their music have had a way of rippling forward, directly and via their sprawling set of members, and I knew they were still making music at longish intervals, so I was receptive when the Feist-vocalled title track (and lead single I think), "Hug of Thunder", came around all joyously building indie-epic, and just as well, because the album is just terrific. There's crash and clatter, thunder and thump and skidding pop shimmer; I tend to lean towards the relatively more pop end of their spectrum, like "Protest Song" and "Gonna Get Better" (which makes me think of Mary Margaret O'Hara's deathless "Body's in Trouble"), but it's all good here.

Loving Vincent

Worked for me on the technical aspect - the animated paintings - but less so on the story-telling side, which tended heavily towards the episodic. Best watched as an appreciation of Van Gogh's art rather than as a conventional movie per se.

(w/ Erandathie)

Clueless

Somehow I'd never watched this one before, despite its position in the 90s pantheon. And it was pretty fun! (If somewhat dated, sometimes in ways that worked to its advantage, sometimes not so much.)

"Gerhard Richter: The Life of Images" & "Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow" (GOMA, Brisbane)

Richter is one of those artists whose work I've discovered - and, over time, come to like a lot - pretty much entirely through art gallery happenstance, starting with a chance encounter at the Albertina in Vienna several years ago, then a couple of years later being struck by a painting called "Meadowland" at a show in Perth built on MoMA pieces, and then last year's coming across a version of his luminous "Betty" (in the red gown) at Benesse House in Naoshima).

This exhibition drew the threads together for me, highlighting both the various modes that he works in - notably the blurry, often photograph-derived representational paintings, the over-painted photos, and the generally large format abstract pieces, and the concerns that tie them all together (including the relationships between painting, photography, paint, images, representation and perception). "Meadowland" was here, as was what I think was another print of the same "Betty" piece (in characteristic fashion, a print of a painting that instead had been based on a photograph); and I really noticed how lively the large abstracts - mostly done by squeegee - are up close. Also worthwhile were the many boards of small photographs collected as 'Atlas', which gave a real insight into Richter's work and process. All up, a terrific exhibition.

I wasn't so much in the mood for Kusama, so it was a somewhat dutiful wander through the selection on offer here, which nonetheless couldn't help but impress just a little bit, even if for no other reason than her sheer vigour and prolificness.

(w/ trang)

"Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium" & "Pat Brassington: The Body Electric" (Art Gallery of NSW)

The Mapplethorpe was a bit of an overview exhibition. Lots to digest, even though through time and familiarity - and no doubt the careful artistry of the work itself - his photos have come to register primarily on an aesthetic and iconic level rather than more deeply (and I didn't have time on this visit to penetrate). Notable: the ones of his young artist peer types including a young Philip Glass, and the flowers.

While the Pat Brassington was a selection spanning from the 90s through to now, leaning a bit towards the last few years, showing off her facility with the uncanny very well.

Atlantis (Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney)

By happy coincidence, this was playing at Belvoir on the night I was in Sydney - the latest in Lally Katz's string of more or less (one assumes) autobiographically-touched plays, and indeed calling back explicitly to the events chronicled in Stories I Want to Tell You in Person a few years back (cursed vagina, psychic cure and all). It was very enjoyable - truthful and sincere, and also knowingly artificial and theatrical, in a way that resonated. And, the panther made me think of Bobcat as well as of the other spirit-type animals that recur throughout Katz's oeuvre.

(w/ Hayley)

Firefly, Serenity & associated graphic novels

Fun revisiting the tv series and film, and a reminder of what great tv it was - fast paced, adept with the high concept, good on characters, and with a dab hand for manufacturing an iconic moment/line or few. The graphic novels - some of them only single-issue comics or slightly longer, and all apparently 'canon' (and scripted by or with heavy involvement from Joss Whedon), collected as "Those Left Behind", "Better Days and other stories", "The Shepherd's Tale" and "Leaves on the Wind" - are a mixed bag, though I guess it's inevitable that something would be lost in translation.

(previously)

"Pipilotti Rist: Sip My Ocean" (MCA, Sydney)

Smallish but quite wonderful; even allowing that I have a weakness for stuff that combines video, projection, lights and installation like this, I reckon it's pretty definitely the best contemporary show I've seen this year.

My favourites were probably the two two-channel video projections that alternated near the start of the exhibition, "Ever Is Over All" (1997), in which a woman joyously smashes car windows with a large, stemmed flower, and "Sip My Ocean" (1996), in which the screens shows a series of mirrored oceanic vignettes, many in close-up and with plenty of ugly to go with the dreamy and pretty, to the strains of a warped version of Chris Isaak's "Wicked Game" (which shazam tells me is called "I'm A Victim Of This Song"). Both of them, and especially "Ever Is Over All", reminded me of how powerful a poetic sensibility can be in a work that's otherwise heading in the direction of abstraction.

Also delightful, and packing a more immediate visceral-experiential punch, were "Administrating Eternity" (2011), involving a dozen or so hanging net curtains with various looping projections playing and diffusing across them, and "Pixelwald Motherboard" ("Pixel Forest Mutterplatte") (2016), which made me think of Christmas lights, then stars, then ice, then dreams, and which the exhibition notes say imagines a television screen exploding into a room.

And nearly at the end there was "Your Room Opposite the Opera", apparently collecting 14 individual works from 1994 to 2017, and setting them within a decorated 'apartment' in which we were invited to sit in the chairs and sofas, lie in the bed (onto which projections were also being cast - stars and people flying), and sit at the desk to add some lines of our own poetry ... including one tiny work, about the size of a 20 cent coin, visible through a hole cut in the carpet underfoot.

As an aside, this was the latest in a run of very good experiences with the MCA: Olafur Eliasson (Feb '10), Anish Kapoor (Feb '13), Tabaimo (Aug '14).

J D Salinger - Nine Stories

I really did not like The Catcher in the Rye for reasons that are now lost in the mists of personal antiquity, so it was a tremendous and pleasant surprise to discover how strong these nine stories are, all dating from the late 40s and early 50s. I haven't been able to work out exactly why I like them - there's just something about that that compels, something in the odd structures and unusual sentence rhythms and voices that run through them.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esme - With Love and Squalor" (both involving a returned soldier's interaction with a child, but to very different results) are the two that best combine substance and style, and "Just Before the War with the Eskimos" has also lingered (it's taken me several weeks to work through the stories, interspersed with other reading). There are a few that are maybe just a bit too cute in their design; "Down at the Dinghy" is one of these but works anyway with its opening set-up and ending reveal (partly because Boo Boo is such a lively character), but "The Laughing Man" and "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes" (despite its double twist in relation to the grey-haired man and Joanie) don't. And there is also the art-pastiche "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" which has plenty of fun with its resolutely self-absorbed precocious teen narrator.

Bad Genius

Wrings plenty of excitement from the escalating series of schemes executed by the titular brilliant student who finds herself helping her less intellectually gifted classmates to cheat on their exams (who are able to pay), culminating in making texting thrilling!

For most of the film I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel, or how I actually felt, about Lynn - she's set up as the protagonist so naturally you root for her, but cheating is obviously bad, but then again there are suggestions that the deck of Thai society is so stacked against those, like Lynn, not born into wealth and privilege that maybe it's defensible to take financial advantage of her intellectual gifts? - and the film resolves that aspect interestingly, though not especially satisfyingly (particularly with the way things turn out for Bank, the other scholarship student at the school, who is drawn into the scheme).

Anyway, it's scripted and directed with some flair, including a pop verve and musical sensibility that adds a fair bit, and while the performances from the principals - Lynn and Bank, and rich kids Grace and Pat - are nothing extraordinary, they're charismatic enough to carry their (well-written) characters through. In the sweet spot, as I'd hoped, of being all of entertaining, something a bit different, and even a bit thought-provoking.

Tegan and Sara - Sainthood

Very delightful. From 2009. Especially some of the more bubbly pop ones, like "The Cure" and "Alligator".

Jessie Ware - Glasshouse

Boy, Jessie Ware just keeps on putting one good record out after another. This one's almost uniformly ballads, not that I'm one to complain about that, and maybe just a tiny bit too evenly mellow but that's a minor quibble in the context of Glasshouse's overall high quality. Highlights: "Your Domino", "Selfish Love" (bossa nova!), "First Time", "Hearts" (the most ballad-y of the ballads), "Slow Me Down", "Finish What We Started" (complete with new wave good vibes).

(Devotion; Tough Love)

Joy Williams - Ninety-Nine Stories of God

Sometimes he (He) appears directly:

69

The Lord was in line at the pharmacy counter waiting to get His shingles shot.

When His turn came, the pharmacist didn't want to give it to Him.

This is not right, the pharmacist said.

In what way? the Lord inquired.

In so many ways, the pharmacist said. I scarcely know where to begin.

Just give it to him, a woman behind the Lord said. My ice cream's melting.

It only works 60 to 70 percent of the time anyway, the pharmacist said.

Do you want to ask me some questions? the Lord said.

You're not afraid of shingles, are you? It's not so bad.

I am not afraid, the Lord said.

Just give Him the shot for Pete's sake, the woman said.

Have you ever had chicken pox?

Of course, the Lord said.

How did you hear about us? the pharmacist said.

INOCULUM

Sometimes by reference or association:

25

Churches have pews, and when the congregation falters they have too many pews. They end up in the kindergartens and the music rooms and the covered walkways. They seem to multiply. Fine old oak uncomfortable pews.

Then they start showing up in bars and finished basements and in mudrooms where people take off their boots and shoes.

There was a little girl once in a birthday bounce house that wasn't tied down properly. A freak gust of wind picked it up and sailed it three backyards over, where it killed a beagle eating his supper.

Nothing happened to the little girl. She was a funny kid anyway. She never showed emotion about anything. But people felt terrible about the dog.

The young couple whose dog it had been had a pew in their kitchen, but they got rid of it. They replaced it with a bar made from the rear of a '64 Airstream Globetrotter. It became apparent pretty early on that it wasn't an actual rear of a Globetrotter but a copy. The neighbors who had felt so sorry for them began thinking they were frivolous and, even more, couldn't be trusted.

VERACITY

And sometimes only in the most oblique of glimpses (most of my favourites are these):

38

The child wanted to name the rabbit Actually, and could not be dissuaded from this.

It was the first time one of our pets was named after an adverb.

It made us uncomfortable. We thought it to be bad luck.

But no ill befell any of us nor did any ill befall the people who visited our home.

Everything proceeded beautifully, in fact, until Actually died.

ACTUALLY

At once seemingly transparent and puzzlingly oblique, Ninety-Nine Stories of God (as Kim pointed out today, spotting me sitting on a bench re-reading it, a title that sticks out like a sore thumb) is something different. The effect is a bit cumulative, but even still, at its best it's remarkable in the way it offers 'that glimpse of truth', though inevitably some of the 99 fall considerably short. Incidentally, it's been a good companion to Lydia Davis's collected stories, which I've also been working through lately.

Jeff VanderMeer - Annihilation

In which everything is very unstable. Mission accomplished. Heard about this one a while ago and was prompted to read it now by imminence of the film adaptation (which boasts a very intriguing trailer).

Benjamin Law - "Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal" (Quarterly Essay 67)

A good, clear-headed read. The biggest things I took out of it were the enormous role played by The Australian and the ACL in generating alarm and opposition re: Safe Schools, and the way the program acted as a lightning rod for much broader social concerns about gender, sexuality and children's safety, development and agency.

As an aside, even though I'm only a sporadic reader, it's pretty great that the Quarterly Essays have become such an established part of the landscape. While obviously tilted towards my own particular interests, as well as towards the periods when I was paying particular attention, the ones I've read go:

• Raimond Gaita on truth, morality and politics (#16, 2004) - one of the few periodicals to have survived my increasingly swingeing bookshelf culls
• Clive Hamilton on the decline (or, in his diagnosis, death) of social democracy (#21, 2006)
• Inga Clendinnen on the history wars and the relationship between history and fiction (#23, 2006)
• Peter Hartcher on how to win the 2007 election, written in early '07 (#25, 2007)
• Annabel Crabb on Malcolm Turnbull, written when he was opposition leader (#34, 2009)
• Laura Tingle on public expectations of government (#46, 2012)
• Laura Tingle (again) on the loss of institutional memory and resultant diminishment in good government (#60, 2015) - the other QE that I've held on to