Tag: art

Remember

Remember that mixed cassette tape you made a friend in the 90s, before there was a Kate Bush renaissance inspired by Stranger Things, and no self-respecting teen would listen to that much electronic synthesiser in one song. Remember when you sat beside your old Sony Stereo in 1998 and recorded Kate Bush anyway, so your friend would have something to which she could laugh and listen, when she travelled to the back woods of Oregon. Because at 16 on the South Coast of Australia, you weren’t quite sure where Oregon was situated and whether they even had music there.

Remember the dreams you wrote with a friend, scrawled onto lined A4 paper, about the art gallery you would open and the cats you would own and the veranda upon which the two of you would sit, growing old. Remember another friend’s art school photography, and the collection you apparently inspired, where she photographed Henna tattoos on a belly dancer’s soft chest and muscular back.

 And actually, you don’t remember, not really. Not until they send you screen shots of the letters written, of the black and white photography, taken on a Hasselblad and processed in a photographic dark room in a time before smart phones and Instagram filters. And you still don’t remember these actual moments, but you remember how you made each other feel.

Hopeful. Inspired. Seen.

Remember friendship not merely as little moments, but also as feelings looped together on a mixed cassette tape. Today you’re celebrating friendship, not as a concept or a series of analogue remnants to be placed in a time capsule, but as feelings recorded and archived in the spirit.

And you’re thinking of memory, over pizza with two friends, one of whom is prematurely losing her mind.

This is not a metaphor.

You try not to think about the autopsy, that Alzheimer’s can only be truly confirmed after death, when an autopsy reveals a shrunken brain, filled with tangled proteins.

Today is a good day. Your friend remembers you. There will be a time when she won’t, but today over margherita pizza and fries, she remembers you, and there is laughter and, in your soul, there is a portable Sony stereo and a 90-minute cassette tape, and you remember to press record.

Circus human

So, you want to write words that move,
scrawl sound upon the stratosphere,
and stop the earth from dimming in its fumes?
So, dance circus human, dance.
Let art be the boat that you drown in.
Make art that tears muscles and breaks bones,
stitch syntax into skin and graffiti your mind
with stolen syllables and
a masterclass of madness.

Dance so bone shoots from socket,
But shatter nicely girl.
Make a nice sound, a nice shape, a nice story. 
Break and break again. 
Stretch viscera from pole to pole,
burst life from caged bone and teach us to cry. 

Break circus human, break.
Break nicely.
Break utterly.

What I wanted to do but never did

Today I spoke to a dear friend about some of her recent journal writing. She was inspired by a person who had written a letter to a well known poet. The poet died in Covid quarantine before the letter was received.

We discussed the inevitable and often sad moments when we stop to take stock of our lives, and the choices we have made. There comes a time of reflection, where we think about missed opportunities or different paths that we could have taken. I have always lived by the popular adage “we regret the things we don’t do.” And I have pushed through fear and depression to achieve a number of items on my personal bucket list. I am also blessed to live in a country where I don’t have to worry about day to day survival and I can think about a bucket list. So I have no regrets when it comes to travel, education or creative projects.

But I have many regrets, often tinged with a suffocating guilt that wakes me in the middle of the night. Let me explain.

Life desires equilibrium, which can sometimes be mislabeled as irony. I have the capacity to write tomes detailing with great complexity and frequent indulgence, the feelings of my characters. I try to capture motivation, regret, desire and the subtleties of human interaction. To counteract this, my nature is one where I appear reserved, detached and unemotional.

I have no contact with my family, and without divulging too much to the online world, this lack of contact extends beyond those with whom I have a legitimate grievance. I do not speak to cousins, my brother, aunts and uncles-not because they have hurt me, but because the realm of human connection is overwhelming. This is not because I don’t care, and it is my concern for them that keeps me awake in the middle of the night.

It’s an odd thing to notice about myself. I have no problems pursuing non-relational desires. And perhaps it is because there is certainty with bucket list goals. You either travel to Europe or you don’t. You pursue a creative project and it works, or it doesn’t work, or you revise it.

But reaching out to others, there is uncertainty to this. Humans are unpredictable. We say what we don’t mean and we mean what we don’t say. We let anger and resentment shield love and loss. And unlike a novel, a story or a film, sometimes there is no resolution to the plot complication. Sometimes there is no character arc, as some people may choose to never grow. The innate satisfaction, the dopamine hit, that accompanies a sense of completion never arrives.

Perhaps this is why we need stories, why we need art and music, because it is capable of providing us with the closure we may never receive from those we love.