Read Write Collect: Recent Episodes

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Replied to https://johnjohnston.info/blog/bookmarked-disabled-postkinds-plugin/ (johnjohnston.info)

I wonder if these are an alternative to IndieBlocks or something else.

@johnjohnston https://johnjohnston.info/blog/bookmarked-disabled-postkinds-plugin/

I remember reflecting upon Ton’s concern about Post Kinds lock in a few years ago.

Without the time and patience to develop my own fully fledged solution, I have instead taken to kind of living in both worlds by manually including the quote part of the respond property within my post. My reason for this is because I feel that this often adds context to the post, especially when displayed as a comment.

In addition to this, I have created my own buttons in the text editor to add ‘reply’ or ‘like’ to a link. I often use this as a means of displaying bookmarks etc in the comment section of a linked post, rather than displaying as a pingback. For example, this comment will display beneath my response to Ton’s original post.

Regarding Blocks and Classic, I am still live two worlds. I use blocks for my long post site and classic for this site, therefore I have not really dived into IndieBlocks. However, I probably should have a look. But to be honest, I think a part of me holds hope that David might one day integrate the response box into the content or provide an export tool.

For now, I plod on.

The post 💬 John Johnston on Post Kinds first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Micro.blog

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Replied to Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data by Aaron Davis (readwriterespond.com)

There have been a lot of discussions lately about Facebook, social media and connected society in light of the Cambridge Analytica revelations. Here are my thoughts on what it might mean to be more informed consent. Secret and Safe?At the start of Lord of the Rings, Frodo Baggins inherits a ring fr...

Doug, I was looking back at a past post today, and was reacquainted with your DML Central post on the ‘Brief History of Web Literacy’. You attempted to map the eras associated with the internet:

A few years ago, Doug Belshaw made an attempt at mapping the internet. He divided it into five eras:

• 1993-1997: The Information Superhighway
• 1999-2002: The Wild West
• 2003-2007: The Web 2.0 era
• 2008-2012: The Era of the App
• 2013+: The Post-Snowden era

I have been thinking lately, with fake news and data breaches, maybe we are entering a new era, what Belshaw mooted as an ‘informed era’.

Source: Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data – Read Write Respond by Aaron Davis

I was left thinking that in addition to the ‘informed era’, we may have entered a new era with AI?

The post 💬 Secret, Safe and Informed: A Reflection on Facebook, Cambridge Analytica and the Collection of Data first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Bookmarked M.I.A. Launched A Clothing Line To Block 5G On The Alex Jones Show by Danielle Chelosky (stereogum.com)

A couple of years ago, M.I.A. compared Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook lies to celebrities advocating for COVID vaccines. Last week, the British musician went on Jones’ Infowars show to promote her new clothing line that claims to “preserve your privacy, autonomy, and rights over your body and your data.”

Source: M.I.A. Launched A Clothing Line To Block 5G On Alex Jones’ ‘Infowars’ by @stereogum

Where is Chuck from Better Call Saul?

The post 🤔 M.I.A. Launched A Clothing Line To Block 5G On The Alex Jones Show first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched 1985 film directed by John Hughes by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.On the New Music Friday podcast, discussed The Bleachers origins as a soundtrack for an imaginary John Hughes film. (Read Yasmeen Gharnit’s attempt at matching up of John Hughes films associated with Strange Desires.) I was left intrigued at thinking about the Bleachers through this lens.

I grew up with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Planes, Trains and Automobiles, Uncle Buck, Home Alone and Dennis the Menace, but for whatever reason, I never borrowed The Breakfast Club (or Pretty in Pink and Sixteen Candles) from the video store. I recently watched The Breakfast Club for the first time. It was an intriguing film, basically set in one space, similar to Reservoir Dogs. (I imagine that both films have been adapted this for the stage since.)

It is intriguing watch these films with hindsight, as Ringwald touched on in her 2018 essay rethinking her three films in a post-#METOO world:

John’s movies convey the anger and fear of isolation that adolescents feel, and seeing that others might feel the same way is a balm for the trauma that teen-agers experience. Whether that’s enough to make up for the impropriety of the films is hard to say—even criticizing them makes me feel like I’m divesting a generation of some of its fondest memories, or being ungrateful since they helped to establish my career. And yet embracing them entirely feels hypocritical. And yet, and yet. . . .

How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it? Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art—change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past, in all of its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go.

Source: What About “The Breakfast Club”? by Molly Ringwald

There is something fantastical and absurd about all these films. But on a serious note, when were smoke detectors invented and where is the duty of care with leaving the students unattended for large swathes of time?

The post 🎥 The Breakfast Club first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Listened 2024 studio album by Charli XCX by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

I drink, I smoke, I use autotune

Source: TN:138 Charli XCX, George Daneil & A.G. Cook

Charli XCX’s comment on autotune on the Tape Notes podcast sums Brat up for me. On the one hand, Charli XCX cares, she cares enough to know that she wanted something other than her previous album, Crash, but she also does not seem to care enough to worry about how she might be perceived in supposedly turning from the mainstream. As Alexis Petridis suggests, Brat is something of a ‘palate cleanser’.

Satisfying the contract she signed with Atlantic as a teenager, 2022’s Crash was a conceptual go-for-broke by a pop star who had made her name as a refusenik, save a few uneasy youthful flirtations with the mainstream. She swapped her avant garde collaborators for blue-chip songwriters, mastered slick choreo and duly interpolated old dance bangers. It worked, becoming her most successful album yet. Having simply decided to be successful and then pulled it off, most artists in her position would surely keep at it. Not Charli, who has since admitted that she couldn’t even listen to some of Crash, nor stomach the rictus-grin promo. The sleazy grind of Brat, her superb sixth album, is the palate cleanser, albeit one that tastes like cigarettes, vodka and chemical afterburn.

Source: Charli XCX: Brat review | Laura Snapes’ album of the week by Alexis Petridis

I feel that there is an element of Ian Brown about it all. This is who I am, this is what you are going to get. I am sure there is more to it, but that is certainly how it feels.

Brat wears a prickly carapace as lure and defence. Unlike the crowdpleasing Crash, the textures here are defiantly underground – panel-beating, serrated, darkly bubbling with acid – made with the likes of Daniel, AG Cook, Easyfun, Hudson Mohawke and Gesaffelstein. It plots Charli’s history with dance music, from lifelong Aphex fan to bloghouse teen and PC Music doyenne with a sincere respect for trash.

Source: Charli XCX: Brat review | Laura Snapes’ album of the week by Alexis Petridis

As an album, Brat is rather lean, there really is no fat anywhere. Charli XCX manages to fit 15 tracks on one vinyl disc. I imagine there maybe some remixes drawn out produced from some of these tracks, as there are so many threads that feel that they could be teased out further, as was captured in the PARTYGIRL Boiler Room performance. However, as an album, everything feels like it is in its right place.

What was interesting was that the singles did not really lay out the narrative for me. I was circumspect on hearing ‘360’ and ‘Von Dutch’. I entered Brat as a ‘return to the club’ and wondered what that would mean.

i was born to make dance music.. i came from the clubs.. xcx6 is the album i’ve always wanted to make.

Source: Charli on Twitter, Feb 25, 2024

Yes, there is a clear palette 808’s and 909’s throughout, something discussed on the Tape Notes podcast by Charli XCX, ‘Alex’ Cook and George Daniel. However, as Jem Aswad suggests, “there’s a lot more more besides.”

The album changes moods surprisingly smoothly with nearly every track, not just musically but lyrically: The songs swerve between boastful swagger and shriveling insecurity and vulnerability, and are autobiographical in their conflicted feelings about fame, success and her own worth.
…
But “Brat” would be a masterful album even if all the lyrics were simply about clubbing — it’s melodically and musically sophisticated, with remarkably detailed production. As always, she’s a serial collaborator, and A-list coproducers here include Cirkut, George Daniel, El Guincho, Gesaffelstein, Hudson Mohawke, Finn Keane and others, and A.G. Cook is back in the copilot seat, bringing his shimmering arpeggios and countermelodies to a majority of the songs.

Source: Charli XCX Launches an Exhilarating New Chapter of Pop With the Innovative ‘Brat’: Album Review by Jem Aswad

In some ways, I wonder if ‘the return to the club’ is a distraction in the same way as St Vincent creating a ‘Toolesque’ album? Just as I was unsure about St Vincent’s initial singles, I too was not sure about Charli XCX’s initial releases, however in both cases hearing them as a part of a whole seemed to make more sense.

Charli XCX goes in and out of thoughts and experiences. One minutes she is talking about jealously, then regret, then her own ego. For me, it is an album album, with great tracks, made better as a whole. With this in mind, it is interesting listening to it alongside Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department. I feel both grapple with life, but each in a different way. Petridis argues that Charli XCX grapples with being human.

Most of her superstar peers are busy making unrelatable music about how hard it is to be famous. Yet Charli has never lost sight of how hard it is to be human.

Source: Charli XCX: Brat review | Laura Snapes’ album of the week by Alexis Petridis

Brat though is more than just an album, it seems to be an attitude. There is talk of a ‘brat’ summer, whatever that actually means. For me, this attitude was something that started with George Daniel and Charli XCX’s remix (or reclamation) of Caroline Polachek’s ‘Welcome to my Island’. With Charli’s added “bitch” to the chorus hook, it feels like she is graffitiing a piece of art, making it her own. I cannot hear the original without hearing Charli XCX’s statement, what is heard cannot be unheard.

Place between AG Cook and Caroline Polachek

Marginalia

Brat’s 15 tracks are exactly like its cover: a touch abrasive and intentionally messy. Going against current pop trends of nu-disco or sugary hyperpop, Brat looks back to electroclash and the mid-00s raves of Charli’s teen years (think Uffie, Justice, Peaches).

Source: Seeing a lime green square everywhere? Here’s why you should listen to the album behind the meme by Jared Richards

BRAT arrives as the best-sounding version of the Charli XCX promise to make the Apollonian pop landscape Dionysian again.

Source: Charli XCX: BRAT by Meaghan Garvey

Writing BRAT, she quieted her inner industry pro who strung together vowel sounds and buzzwords that rhymed, approaching her lyrics as if she were typing a gossipy text to a friend. The method worked, nudging songs about subjects like grief and motherhood past the usual clichés of “confessional writing” and into reality.

Source: Charli XCX: BRAT by Meaghan Garvey

The post 🎵 Brat (Charli XCX) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched Not exactly sure how I ended up watching Rick Beato’s interview with James Maynard Keenan, but I did not regret it. I was intrigued by the discussion of the three bands and how the combination of musicians in each allows for a different side, perspective.

The T-Shirt.

However, the thing that really left me thinking was Keenan’s reflections on touring. He discussed the reality of not being able to eat after 3pm and why even though every dietician would cringe, he then eats a meal at 12pm, after performing.

I have to eat either at three o’clock or not until 11 30, after the show, because you can’t eat too close to the show, because I’m carrying it around and you risk your reflux and now you now you’ve compromised your voice for the next three shows. So I have to eat early in the day, knock that out, and then after the show, if you have talked to any dietitians, they’re like, “you’re eating at 11 30 at night or midnight what’s wrong with you.”

Source: Maynard James Keenan Interview (Tool, A Perfect Circle & Puscifer)

This reminded me of the sacrifices that Kate Miller-Heidke makes as a performer.

The post 📺 Maynard James Keenan Interview (Tool, A Perfect Circle & Puscifer) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched I watched the performance of I’m Just Ken from The Oscars with my daughter and then showed her November Rain to explain the significance of the guitar solo. Her comment within seconds of the solo in November Rain, “why is he smoking? Smoking is disgusting …” I will trying to provide her a lesson in culture, instead she gave me one.

This was after she came into my office the other day concerned about a video that came up in YTKids. I was worried and asked her to show me. It was Van Halen’s Jump. She was really concerned about David Lee Roth doing the splits in leather pants. I had never really noticed that before, really I could never get past the hair.

The post 📺 Ryan Gosling, Mark Ronson, Slash & The Kens – I’m Just Ken (Live From The Oscars 2024) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Replied to Experiential Learning and AI: Redefining Education Through Immersive Experiences by New community features for Google Chat and an update on Currents (wiobyrne.com)

This powerful convergence of experiential learning philosophy and AI technology promises to reshape education in the coming decades. As AI continues advancing, understanding its applications in creating immersive, data-driven experiential learning environments is crucial. However, a lot more discussion is necessary as we explore the profound implications this convergence could have for individuals, educational systems, and humanity at large.

Source: Experiential Learning and AI: Redefining Education Through Immersive Experiences | Dr. Ian O’Byrne by Ian O’Byrne

I remember being in a discussion about devices a few years ago (probably ten) and I asked the presenter about the pedagogy underpinning the technology. I was told that technology is pedagogically agnostic. This has always lingered with me. On the one hand, I can understand the point, that technology makes learning more doable, but there is also a part of me that feels like an application that actively promotes surveillance clearly says something about the type of learning occurring in the classroom. In regards to things such as chatbots, I can appreciate the argument that it makes the learning more doable, but, as people like Dan Meyer highlight, are we happy with this learning? For me, this is why the Modern Learning Canvas has really stayed with me as a way of thinking about technological change. Too often it feels like the conversation around technology is in isolation, whereas the canvas invites you to think about all the different facets.

The post 💬 Experiential Learning and AI: Redefining Education Through Immersive Experiences first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon Micro.blog

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Bookmarked The machine stops (adactio.com)

Self-hosted sabotage as a form of collective action.

Smarter people than me are coming up with ways to protect content through sabotage: hidden pixels in images; hidden words on web pages. I’d like to implement this on my own website. If anyone has some suggestions for ways to do this, I’m all ears.

If enough people do this we’ll probably end up in an arms race with the bots. It’ll be like reverse SEO. Instead of trying to trick crawlers into liking us, let’s collectively kill ’em.

Source: The machine stops by Jeremy Keith

I am assuming that this is why some spaces, such as ABC News, stopped publishing their content through RSS? We certainly are in strange times.

The post 🤔 The machine stops first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Replied to The Feature is a “Dumpster Fire” by wiobyrne (digitallyliterate.net)

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue #397. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.This week I posted the following: Experiential Learning and Its Synergy with Artificial Intelligence – Anna CohenMiller sent me a request to get my thoughts abou...

As this technology advances, consumers will face new decisions about the products they purchase and the level of AI integration they are comfortable with. Just as we currently evaluate the specifications of a new smartphone before upgrading, we will need to understand the capabilities and potential implications of these emerging AI components. Do we want devices that can learn our preferences and habits? That can engage in open-ended dialogue? That can autonomously generate content alongside us?

The line between convenient digital assistant and autonomous artificial intelligence is blurring. Navigating this new landscape will require diligence from both companies and consumers to separate substantive technological breakthroughs from empty marketing claims. We must think critically about the roles we want AI to play in our lives and products.

Source: The Feature is a “Dumpster Fire” by Ian O’Byrne

I love how this newsletter starts out with Microsoft’s announcements, only to then for Recall to be recalled. I was left thinking about your points regarding comfort levels and thinking critically regarding the emerging AI components. For me, this reminds me of Doug Belshaw’s eight essential elements of digital literacies. Reviewing the list, I feel that I see a lot more dabbling with what is creatively possible and how to cognitively work through various challenges, but outside of my feed I am not seeing much critical conversations or setting up of cultural expectations. This makes me wonder if their is some sort of hierarchy of change in regards to the elements?

The post 💬 The Feature is a “Dumpster Fire” (DL 397) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://danmeyer.substack.com/p/teachers-arent-your-customer-support (danmeyer.substack.com)

If you are only engaging five students in a class of 30, you are by definition not personalizing learning for the other 25 students. You are not addressing their individual needs. You’re creating more work for teachers, also, treating them like tier-two customer support representatives, asking them to handle whatever problems your technology can’t solve along with whatever problems your technology creates.

Khan and other advocates of personalized learning will frequently disclaim that they aren’t trying to replace teachers. I appreciate that, though I’m worried about that possibility like I’m worried I might medal in the decathlon in the Olympics this summer. I do not, however, appreciate the role they imagine for teachers: a coercive force in the lives of students who need much more and much better support than personalized learning offers them.

Source: Teachers Aren’t Your Customer Support Representatives by Dan Meyer

The post 🤔 Teachers Aren’t Your Customer Support Representatives first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked Adobe’s Enterprise-First Ambitions Led To This Mess (Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.)

To me, I think there is a firewall of trust between product and business model that needs to be maintained, and Adobe has failed to do so. It’s not that Adobe necessarily made a mistake with its terms of service. It’s that goodwill around Adobe was so low that a modest terms change was nearly enough to topple the whole damn thing over. Adobe needs to get over its focus on B2B and realize that it is a B2C company whether it likes it or not, and price and focus accordingly. Cheap education pricing will not win over the next generation of creatives forever.

Source: Adobe’s Enterprise-First Ambitions Led To This Mess by Ernie Smith

The post 🤔 Adobe’s Enterprise-First Ambitions Led To This Mess first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked Do the benefits of ice baths or cold water immersion outweigh the risks? by Shelby Traynor (ABC News)

Alice has been doing ice baths twice a week for the past four months, and the effect still hasn’t worn off.

“It’s such a mental thing,” she says.

“For someone who’s an over-thinker … being in the ice forces me into feeling rather than thinking, because you have to feel, because it’s cold!”

Source: Are ice baths good for you? Dr Norman Swan investigates by taking the plunge By Shelby Traynor for the Health Report

The ABC Health Report dives into the ice bath. They explore the research into the supposed benefits to the immune system or muscle recovery.

Nick Cave has also shared his thoughts on ice baths, although his are more natural, rather than a tub full of ice on a beach:

In icy water, with our adrenaline and endorphins running riot, we are returned to our innocent, primordial selves via an internal ecstatic screaming to be born defiantly afresh. We become tiny creatures in the shock of nature, and, Freya, we are _made_ happy!

Source: The Red Hand Files – Issue #288 – What makes you happy? by Nick Cave

The post first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked Increasing your 'serendipity surface' by Doug Belshaw (web.archive.org)

Expecting your career, social life, or significant relationship to develop in new, unexpected ways when you do the same things over and over again is, after all, how Einstein defined insanity. Increase your serendipity surface!

Source: Increasing your ‘serendipity surface’ by Doug Belshaw

The post 🤔 Increasing your ‘serendipity surface’ first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked You Are What You Read, Even If You Don’t Always Remember It (blog.jim-nielsen.com)

I cannot remember the blog posts I’ve read any more than the meals I’ve eaten; even so, they’ve made me.

It’s a good reminder to be mindful of my content diet — you are what you eat read, even if you don’t always remember it.

Source: You Are What You Read, Even If You Don’t Always Remember It by Jim Nielsen

In a short post, Jim Nielsen reflects upon the purpose of reading, that being to expand your thinking. This thinking was in part inspired by Dave Rupert’s discussion of ideas over facts and how we check these.

The goal of a book isn’t to get to the last page, it’s to expand your thinking.

Source: How do you verify that? by Dave Rupert

This reminds me of something Amy Burvall once suggested:

“in order to connect dots, one must first have the dots”

Source: #rawthought: On Ditching the (Dangerous) Dichotomy Between Content Knowledge and Creativity by Amy Burvall)

The challenge that both Nielsen and Rupert touch on is that we are not always conscious or critical of the ideas (or dots) as we consume them, even so they make us who we are:

I cannot remember the blog posts I’ve read any more than the meals I’ve eaten; even so, they’ve made me.

It’s a good reminder to be mindful of my content diet — you are what you ~~eat~~ read, even if you don’t always remember it.

Source: You Are What You Read, Even If You Don’t Always Remember It by Jim Nielsen

This is based on a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

For me, the notion of unconscious ideas harks back to something J. Hillis Miller once said about the ethics of reading:

As we read we compose, without thinking about it, a kind of running commentary or marginal jotting that adds more words to the words on the page. There is always already writing as the accompaniment to reading.

Source: ‘The Obligation to Write’ by J. Hillis Miller

The post 📑 You Are What You Read, Even If You Don’t Always Remember It first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://view.nl.npr.org/?qs=5534ee38af86a9e7b5aae43d166384e73063a23a58640b5e9483bcc4f7e0ed71f89084614acc019c24233e0feb71f8fa671cbcd3a1e85fa7bebafabd0f1c421fa78a48acc6ab6d0ead31237b011e22176ef0fa77d12391ea (view.nl.npr.org)

The terms of nostalgia are always defined by the present day; they reflect ideals that may seem out of reach except by going backward, but which still uphold convention. Nostalgia in 2024 for 1990s television or goth/emo music, for example, fetishizes the ways in which those pop-cultural realms fetishized weirdness and rebellion; yet it doesn’t suggest ways in which weirdness or rebellion might actually transform the world. The Hellmouth in Buffy remains at least partially closed; the black mascara of the goth is removable. I Saw the TV Glow presents these manufactured signs of difference as hints of something deeper that will require much more than a horror-movie storyline or a wailed pop chorus to fully enact. While looking fondly to these signifiers, it asks for more. That’s why, for all of its fun strangeness, this film is ultimately more serious — more political — than it might seem at first.

Source: Returning to the past to battle nostalgia (and other demons) by Ann Powers

The post 🤔 Returning to the past to battle nostalgia (and other demons) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked mothereff.in/html-entities at master · mathiasbynens/mothereff.in by mathiasbynens (GitHub)

Web developer tools. Contribute to mathiasbynens/mothereff.in development by creating an account on GitHub.

An encoder to use for presenting HTML in Classic

The post 👍 mothereff.in/html-entities first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked #Color Our Collections (#Color Our Collections)

The New York Academy of Medicine Library

ᔥ “Jason Kottke” in Download Free Coloring Books From Museums and Libraries (06/09/2024 17:08:50)

The post 🤔 Color Our Collections first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked My Post-cPanel Toolkit by Reverend (bavatuesdays.com)

I spend less and less time in cPanel managing my online presence. I’ve moved bavatuesdays off cPanel 10+ years ago given my blog demanded a bit more juice than shared hosting could provide resource-wise. But once my go-to site went off cPanel, all the other projects I’d created with WordPress over the years were beginning to break due to major version updates and plugin/theme incompatibilities. It’s a trail of web tears if you let it go too far, so I’ve been converting as many of those sites as possible to static HTML over the years.

Jim Groom reflects upon his post-CPanel toolkit. I was particularly intrigued by the comments on email:

After DNS, one of the features folks might need is email. But email on shared hosting has always been a bad choice, and that is increasingly becoming the case, so much so that Reclaim is strongly considering discontinuing shared e-mail support for all shared hosting accounts. Why is hosting email on shared hosting a bad? Well, because there are tons of spam houses out there that monitor and block servers that send out what they consider spam (which is not always the case), which leaves small hosting companies like us playing whack-a-mole on the regular just to keep basic email working. And being a small company we have none of the leverage of a Office 365 or Gmail, so it’s truly a losing battle to ensure email running well on shared hosting. In short: don’t run email on your shared hosting cPanel server. And if you are anathema to the free services like Gmail and want to get serious out security and taking ownership then take a look at Proton Email.

I wonder and worry when my old “Sunday Drive” blog will just stay in the garage and not even get registered anymore?

The post 🤔 My Post-cPanel Toolkit first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched Looking for Alibrandi (film) by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.Rewatching Looking for Alibrandi, I feel that there are films, such as Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet, that manage to transport your back to a particular time and place through the soundtrack. I feel that this is different to say Donnie Darko whose soundtrack feels like it is designed to construct a particular past.

The post 🎥 Looking for Alibrandi first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched American Sniper by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.American Sniper, based on the memoir American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History (2012) by Chris Kyle with Scott McEwen and Jim DeFelice, provides an insight into the conflicted nature of and sacrifices associated with war and challenges with returning back to society.

The post 🎥 American Sniper first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked When your smartphone tries to be too smart by Tim Harford (timharford.com)

Donald Norman argues that a well-designed product should make functions visible and intuitive: users should be able to grasp how it works, what their options are and get feedback about the results of their actions. That is all very wise, but our modern devices have managed to become so intuitive and versatile by concealing from us how they really operate. Laying bare the true complexity of the supercomputers in our pockets would boggle the mind. We cannot be exposed to how these things really work, lest we lose our grasp on reality. (See also: ChatGPT.)

@TimHarford https://timharford.com/2024/06/when-your-smartphone-tries-to-be-too-smart/The post 🤔 When your smartphone tries to be too smart first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Read https://dominicsandbrook.com/adventures-in-time/the-first-world-war

The First World War is the fourth in my Adventures in Time series, and in many ways was the most exciting to write. It’s a colossal, epic tale, telling the story of the war from the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in the summer of 1914 to the moment the guns fell silent on the Western Front on 11 November 1918.

We often remember the First World War as a muddy, bloody, tragic waste, and in many ways it was. But purely as a story, it could hardly be bettered. The cast of characters includes everybody from Kaiser Wilhelm II, Edith Cavell, Rasputin and the Red Baron to Wilfred Owen, T. E. Lawrence and J. R. R. Tolkien.

There are some breathtakingly dramatic moments: the German attack on Scarborough, the sinking of the Lusitania, the first day of the Somme and the outbreak of the Russian Revolution. There are Sikhs and Cossacks, dashing air aces and footballing Tommies.

And at its heart, as in all the Adventures in Time, are the stories of ordinary people themselves: teenage heroines and plucky Boy Scouts, plunged into a clash of empires that would change the course of history for ever.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR – Adven­tures in Time

With The First World War – Adven­tures in Time, Dominic Sandbrook carves his way through the First World War, zooming in and out throughout. I think that what makes this a ‘children’s book’ is that Sandbrook does not get bogged down in nuisance and complexity. Instead, the book picks out some interesting bits and pieces, such as Franz Ferdinand shooting 275,000 animals, including kangaroos, taxis driving soldiers to the Battle of the Marne, and coffee made from sand, that make it more than a jump from one battle to the next.

What I enjoyed the most about the book is Sandbrooks ability to pick particular individuals and situations that helps us appreciate the human side of the war. In some part this approach reminded me of Anthony Hill’s Soldier Boy and the fictional recreation of the past.

I think that it is a useful book in grasping the main parts of the First World War and offers a useful jumping off point for readers who then want to explore various elements further.

ᔥ ”
The Rest Is History Club” in The Rest Is History | Membership (06/05/2024 08:10:44)

The post 📚 The First World War – Adven­tures in Time (Dominic Sandbrook) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://casco.art/resource/unlearningexercises/ (casco.art)

Unlearning Exercises shares a set of collective “unlearning exercises” to make way for a culture of equality, difference and fairness in art organizations; and aims to inspire active critical investigation of normative structures and practices in order to become aware and get rid of taken-for-granted “truths” and values.

Unlearning Exercisesᔥ “Doug Belshaw” in Life has no instruction manual – Open Thinkering (06/04/2024 20:53:03)

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Replied to Creating a Catalogue in Google Sheets by Aaron Davis (readwriterespond.com)

I was recently asked to have a look at spreadsheet that listed all the guides and videos located in a support folder as a reference. This folder also included a number of folders within folders, which created a level of complexity.The current workflow involved using an Add-on File Cabinet from the ...

I recently discovered that Awesome Tables’ Filing Cabinet Add-on has been deprecated, this broke the catalogue I had created with Google Sheets.

I searched online for any further explanation on the change, but was simply sent to Awesome Tables support page.

I started exploring other options online and short of paying for API connectors, I could not really find anything. I subsequently turned to CoPilot, wondering what it might give me. Surprisingly, it gave me a basic script for everything that I needed.

function listFilesInFolders() { var folders = [ {folderId: 'folderId1', sheetName: 'Sheet1'}, {folderId: 'folderId2', sheetName: 'Sheet2'}, // Add more folders as needed ];

var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();

for (var i = 0; i < folders.length; i++) { var folderId = folders[i].folderId; var sheetName = folders[i].sheetName; var folder = DriveApp.getFolderById(folderId); var sheet = spreadsheet.getSheetByName(sheetName); if (!sheet) { sheet = spreadsheet.insertSheet(sheetName); } sheet.clear(); sheet.appendRow(["Name", "Date", "Size", "URL", "Folder"]); listFilesInFolderRecursive(folder, sheet, folder.getName()); } }

function listFilesInFolderRecursive(folder, sheet, path) { var files = folder.getFiles(); while (files.hasNext()) { var file = files.next(); sheet.appendRow([file.getName(), file.getDateCreated(), file.getSize(), file.getUrl(), path]); }

var subfolders = folder.getFolders(); while (subfolders.hasNext()) { var subfolder = subfolders.next(); listFilesInFolderRecursive(subfolder, sheet, path + '/' + subfolder.getName()); } }

After a bit of back and forward, I had a new working catalogue which I provided to the team to provide feedback on.

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Liked https://doodle3d.com/ (doodle3d.com)The post 👍 Doodle 3D first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked The Case for Running AI/ML Models Locally by New community features for Google Chat and an update on Currents (wiobyrne.com)

Will running AI/ML models locally be the right choice for everyone? Probably not.

Cloud services offer unbeatable convenience and scalability. But for learners, tinkerers, privacy/security sticklers, and those looking to optimize costs, going the local route is an intriguing option worth considering. The hands-on experience could pay major dividends in understanding how to develop and deploy AI effectively.

The Case for Running AI/ML Models Locally by Ian O’Byrne

I am really intrigued by Ian O’Byrne’s export of his blog to markdown and development of his own local AI/ML models. Another example of becoming ever informed in a changing world.

The post 📑 The Case for Running AI/ML Models Locally first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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https://historyofphilosophy.net/ᔥ “Stephen Downes” in Downes.ca ~ Stephen’s Web ~ Watch Philosophy Lectures That Became a Hit During COVID by Professor Michael Sugrue (RIP): From Plato and Marcus Aurelius to Critical Theory (05/31/2024 22:02:08)

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Liked https://www.theredhandfiles.com/they-say-never-meet-your-heroes-i-met-you-in-a-cafe-when-i-was-travelling-in-london-in-the-early-nineties-and-you-were-pretty-terrifying-but-unexpectedly-kind-to-me-and-funny-have-you-ever-met-a/ (theredhandfiles.com)

This incident instructed me on the fragile and capricious nature of the creative spirit and reminded me of the necessity of constant daily work. I think of it when I struggle with my own vacillating creativity. Because deep in my heart, I know there is always something to write about, but there is also always nothing – and terrifyingly little air between.

Nick Cave ISSUE #286 / MAY 2024

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Listened Chris Aldrich on Cybernetic Communications from theinformed.life

Chris Aldrich has the most multi-disciplinary resume I’ve ever seen, with a background that includes biomedics, electrical engineering, entertainment, genetics, theoretical mathematics, and more. Chris describes himself as a modern-day cybernetician, and in this conversation we discuss cybernetics and communications, differences between oral and literary cultures, and indigenous traditions and mnemonics, among many other things.

The Informed Life Chris Aldrich on Cybernetic Communications

This is a fascinating conversation about memory, history and the changing of practices over time. I am intrigued by the discussion of ‘memory palaces’. I often find myself remembering where I was when I was listening to a book or a podcast, I am assuming that the memory palace is this in reverse. I also feel that Aldrich is someone who could easily speak for hours on these matters, unpacking each thread. As he says in closing:

Always leave ‘em wanting more.

The post 🎧 Chris Aldrich on Cybernetic Communications (The Informed Life) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked Oblongification of education (code acts in education)

Ishiguro’s notion of the “oblong professor” is useful because it helps to deflate all of the magical thinking that accompanies AI in education. It’s hard to get excited about an oblong.

Sure, AI might be useful for certain purposes, but a lot of the current promises could also lead to real problems that need serious consideration before activating autopedagogic tutors in classrooms. Currently, AI is being promoted to solve a huge range of complex issues in education.

But AI tutors are simplified models of the very complex, situated work of pedagogy. We shouldn’t expect so much from oblongs.

Oblongification of education by Ben Williamson

Ben Williamson questions the promises of AI tutors. Borrowing Kazuo Ishiguro’s use of “screen professors” and “oblongs”, he describes AI as the “Oblongification of education”.

For me, this touches on Dave Cormier’s point about the ‘left-overs’ after structured problem-solving.

The post 📑 Oblongification of education first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://asuo-images.streamlit.app/ (asuo-images.streamlit.app)

Enhance the accessibility of your course images with our intuitive tool. Designed to effortlessly generate alt text and detailed descriptions, as well as extract text from slides and images that are not accessible, our tool simplifies the creation of inclusive content. Just upload your image and hit ‘Create Image Details.’ Within seconds, you’ll see the generated content appear on the right side of the screen. Need to tailor the descriptions further? Easily add more specifics with the ‘Add Details’ option and generate updated descriptions to perfectly meet your needs.

Source: Image Accessibility Creator

ᔥ “Doug Belshaw” in How to easily generate image descriptions and alt text | Thought Shrapnel (05/25/2024 18:37:24)

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Bookmarked Steve Albini, an alternative rock pioneer and legendary producer for Nirvana and the Pixies, dies at 61 by ABC News (ABC News)

The legendary producer who recorded music for bands including Nirvana, the Pixies, and PJ Harvey dies after a heart attack.

Steve Albini, music engineer at Electrical Audio Recording, died of a heart attack. In honour, Austin Kleon shared the following quote:

“I’ve lived my whole life without having goals, and I think that’s very valuable, because then I never am in a state of anxiety or dissatisfaction. I never feel I haven’t achieved something. I never feel there is something yet to be accomplished. I feel like goals are quite counterproductive. They give you a target, and until the moment you reach that target, you are stressed and unsatisfied, and at the moment you reach that specific target you are aimless and have lost the lodestar of your existence. I’ve always tried to see everything as a process. I want to do things in a certain way that I can be proud of that is sustainable and is fair and equitable to everybody that I interact with. If I can do that, then that’s a success, and success means that I get to do it again tomorrow.”

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2021/9/7/22625278/steve-albini-big-black-sound-engineer-producer-nirvana-success-retirement-hearing

Here is a link to the ‘Steve Albini’ sound. Interestingly, Annie Clark spoke about going to record at Electrical Audio for All Born Screaming.

The post 📑 Success means you get to do it again tomorrow first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://www.pewresearch.org/data-labs/2024/05/17/when-online-content-disappears/ (pewresearch.org)

38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are no longer accessible a decade later

When Online Content Disappears
by Athena Chapekis, Samuel Bestvater, Emma Remy and Gonzalo Rivero

ᔥ “Cory Doctorow” in Pluralistic: Linkrot (21 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow (05/26/2024 18:35:32)

The post 😲 When Online Content Disappears first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://wiobyrne.com/turning-towards-each-other/ (wiobyrne.com)

• Cultivate Empathy: Empathy is the cornerstone of turning towards each other. It allows us to understand the feelings and experiences of others without judgment or defensiveness. To cultivate empathy, we must be willing to sit with discomfort and open ourselves up to the experiences of others.
• Practice Active Listening: Active listening involves fully focusing on, understanding, responding to, and then remembering what is being said by another person. This means putting aside our own agendas or preconceived notions in order to truly hear what someone else is saying.
• Embrace Vulnerability: Vulnerability can be scary because it involves exposing parts of ourselves that we often hide for fear of rejection or judgment. However, it’s through vulnerability that we create genuine connections with others.
• Acknowledge and Validate Feelings: Validating someone’s feelings doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with them. It simply means acknowledging their feelings and letting them know that their feelings make sense.
• Prioritize Connection Over Being Right: One of the key elements of turning towards each other is choosing connection over being right. This entails putting aside our need to win arguments or prove points, and instead focus on understanding the other person’s perspective.

Transitioning from Turning on Each Other to Turning Towards Each Other by Ian O’Byrne

The post 🤔 Transitioning from Turning on Each Other to Turning Towards Each Other first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked How I Made Google’s “Web” View My Default Search (Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.)

Forget AI. Google just created a version of its search engine free of all the extra junk it has added over the past decade-plus. All you have to do is add “udm=14” to the search URL.

Source: How I Made Google’s “Web” View My Default Search by Ernie Smith

In response to the news that Google is adding “AI overviews” to its searches, Ernie Smith discusses a simple hack shared by Danny Sullivan where you add “udm=14” to the search in order to get a web view. Alan Levine discusses how he implemented this solution by adding a shortcut in the browser, including Google Chrome.

The post 📑 How I Made Google’s “Web” View My Default Search first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://aboutmy.email/ (aboutmy.email)A site for testing email.

ᔥ “Jay” in Jay: “TIL https://aboutmy.email Thi…” – Mastodon (05/26/2024 17:04:04)

The post 🤔 About My Email first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked https://blog.ayjay.org/advancing/ (blog.ayjay.org)Alan Jacobs extends upon Elle Griffin’s discussion around the hard-truths associated with publishing and getting an advance:

Anyway, let’s imagine that I receive a $100,000 advance for a future book. Not impossible by any means. The thing is, and this is the point I think Griffin should lean on more heavily: “advance” is a misleading term. Advances don’t come all at once, they come in stages, either three or four of them, for instance:

• $25,000 at contract signing;
• $25,000 at submission of an acceptable (but still to be edited) manuscript;
• $25,000 at publication of the hardcover;
• $25,000 at publication of the paperback, or, if the publisher chooses not to make a paperback, one year after the publication of the hardcover.

(Sometimes the unit payments vary: for instance, for Breaking Bread with the Dead my agent negotiated bigger payouts for the first and third stages, smaller ones for the other two.) In a typical situation, after you sign the contract you might need two years to write the book. Supposing that your manuscript is pretty good and just needs editing, that process can take several months, and then getting the book ready for publication can take several more months. And the final payout will come a year after that initial publication. So while a $100,000 advance sounds like a lot of money, it often ends up being $25,000 a year; not nearly enough to live on.

Advancing by Alan Jacobs

The more I read books about the music industry or interviews with artists, I feel like being a rock star or an author is not always as glamorous as it is sometimes portrayed as?

The post 🤔 Advancing first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Listened Breaking With the Speed of the Internet by Written By Team Human from teamhuman.fm

Rushkoff discusses why he’s breaking from the preferred publishing schedules of advertisers and algorithms in favor of a more considerate approach. You can support Team Human on Patreon to unlock access to a number of great perks including ad-free episodes of Team Human, access to the Team Hu...

Coming at the problem of social media, algorithms and the internet from the perspective of the creator, Douglas Rushkoff worries about the ever increasing speed and pressures placed by platforms that is creating a “perspective abundance.” He wonders if one of the challenges we face in being more “disciplined” is in choosing not to add our perspective to the mix.

Most ironically, perhaps, the more content we churn out for all of these platforms, the less valuable all of our content becomes. There’s simply too much stuff. The problem isn’t information overload so much as “perspective abundance.” We may need to redefine “discipline” from the ability to write and publish something every day to the ability hold back. What if people started to produce content when they had actually something to say, rather than coming up with something to say in order to fill another slot?

Source: Breaking from the Pace of the Net by Douglas Rushkoff

To me, this touches on Dave White’s idea of “elegant lurking”

The Elegant Lurker can be much more engaged than the noisy contributor and not being visible doesn’t mean you aren’t present.

Source: Elegant Lurking by Dave White

Continuing with his reflection on the challenges of creating, Rushkoff discusses using AI to help him with the creation of a story and wonders if AI is actually taking all the fun stuff?

I was becoming the servant to the AI and the AI was doing the most fun part of the whole process, the actual coming up with the stuff.

Source: Breaking from the Speed of the Net by Douglas Rushkoff

This is something that Scott Stephens and Waleed Aly discuss on The Mindfield podcast, with Stephens worried about what is lost when we no longer spend the time.

Rushkoff then discusses the realisation that maybe the best use of AI is to use the feedback to know where not to write, to know where you have sunk into cliche:

The real value is to use what the AI produced to know how not to write.

The post 🎧 Breaking With the Speed of the Internet (Team Human) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/learnyjourney/ (ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub)The use of PressBooks to create “An e-Book of One’s Own” to document a learning journey.

The post 🤔 An e-Book of One’s Own first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked Pluralistic: You were promised a jetpack by liars (17 May 2024) by Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)

As a society, we have vested an alarming amount of power in the hands of tech billionaires who profess to be embittered science fiction fans who merely want to realize the “promises” of our Golden Age stfnal dreams. These bros insist that they can overcome both the technical hurdles and the absolutely insurmountable privation involved in space colonization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

They have somehow mistaken Neal Stephenson’s dystopian satirical “metaverse” for a roadmap:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/18/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video/

As Charlie Stross writes, it’s not just that these weirdos can’t tell the difference between imaginative parables about the future and predictions about the future – it’s also that they keep mistaking dystopias for business plans:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/tech-billionaires-need-to-stop-trying-to-make-the-science-fiction-they-grew-up-on-real/

Cyberpunk was a warning, not a suggestion. Please, I beg you, stop building the fucking torment nexus:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus

Pluralistic: You were promised a jetpack by liars (17 May 2024) by Cory Doctorow

The post 🤔 You were promised a jetpack by liars first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked https://blog.ayjay.org/accountability/ (blog.ayjay.org)

You can assign reading to students; but if you don’t develop strategies for holding them accountable, then it doesn’t really matter what you assign. They’re Self-Deceived Rational Utility Maximizers after all, and if there’s one thing you can never change about them it’s that.

https://blog.ayjay.org/accountability/

The post 🤔 Accountability first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked My own little patch (Rach Smith's digital garden)

If the web is now a metaphorical barren wasteland, pillaged by commercial interests and growth-at-all-costs management consultants, then I’m all the more motivated to keep my little patch of land lush, and green, and filled with rainbow flowers.

So, feel free to stop by any time and stay as long as you like. I won’t track you, make you look at ads, ask you to download my app, harass you with popups, suggest you sign up for my newsletter or push you through a sales funnel. Enjoy the garden, and the peace .

Rach Smith https://rachsmith.com/my-own-little-patch/

The post 👍 My Own Little Patch first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked Moving beyond ‘solving’ problems as meaningful learning- a conference #ShrugCon by dave (davecormier.com)

A conference about uncertainty which might also be about the left-overs after problem-solving.

Dave Cormier describes how, according to Herbert Simon, there are well-structured problems and the rest that is left over. Cormier explians why he prefers to focus on the “left overs”.

A well-structured problem almost never happens to me in real life. At work, as a parent, as a partner, as a citizen I am almost never in a position where I’m given a clear question that isn’t messy in some way, a process that I can follow, and a way for someone to say ‘yeah, you did that exactly right’. And when I am, I can mostly just use a GenAI tool to get there.

The things that are meaningful, to me, are about real life. They aren’t about chess, they aren’t about puzzles, they are about how each of us faces the uncertainty around us. With all these GenAI discussions swirling around I’m even more interested in how we learn when things are uncertain.

Moving beyond ‘solving’ problems as meaningful learning- a conference #ShrugCon
by Dave Cormier

The post 📑 Moving beyond ‘solving’ problems as meaningful learning- a conference #ShrugCon first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked Most Big Ideas Have Loud Critics by wiobyrne (digitallyliterate.net)

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue #395. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

In Digitally Literate newsletter 395, Ian O’Byrne reflects upon the promotion of AI platforms being ‘open-sourced’ even when they are keeping some parts for themselves:

“Open source” is supposed to mean that everyone can see and use all the parts of the AI model, just like sharing games where everyone can see, use, and understand all its parts. But some companies say their AI models are open-source even when they aren’t sharing everything. This continues to confuse, dislocate, and disrupt individuals.

Most Big Ideas Have Loud Critics by Ian O’Byrne

This reminds me in part about Google and Android. Maybe it is all a part of the same story.

The post 📑 Most Big Ideas Have Loud Critics first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Checked into https://www.katemillerheidke.com/events/2024-05-11-nunawading-the-round

Kate will be playing her greatest hits and most beloved pop songs, as well as performing tracks from her original musicals Muriel’s Wedding the Musical and the new Bananaland, some unexpected covers, taking requests, and telling stories from across her varied career. Excitingly, she’ll also be debuting new material from her forthcoming 6th studio album, which will dive deep into the genre of ‘gothic folk’.

This is a special opportunity to see Kate in intimate, stripped-back mode, accompanied by her long-term collaborator Keir Nuttall on guitar.

Source: KATE MILLER-HEIDKE: Catching Diamonds Tour 2024 | The Round

I feel like there are artists that you think you know, but never get beyond a superficial listen. I am not sure if it is because of the sources of music, such as radio, or something else, but I feel like I always appreciated Kate Miller-Heidke’s unique talent, but never dived in much further. I think that this changed after seeing her perform ‘Wuthering Heights’ as a part of the ABC New Years Eve concert, streaming music and Child in Reverse with its minimal production.

Although I listen to a lot of music, not much passes across the generations, Kate Miller-Heidke seems to be that exception. After missing out on Taylor Swift tickets, I bought tickets to see Kate Miller-Heidke for my daughter’s birthday, her first live concert. In part, this was because for the Catching Diamonds tour, Miller-Heidke was performing a cut-back show at theatres in the suburbs and in the country, meaning that it was all ages. I actually did not know what to expect from The Round. My wife suggested it might be a bit more dressy. There were definitely no band t-shirts. It felt more like the theatre.

It was also good to discover another great support act, Georgia Mooney.

Mooney’s music exists beyond the bounds of time and space. An avowed Star Wars nerd who presents as a 40s movie star – she seems both from a long time ago and a galaxy far away, while speaking directly to the present. Influences from every member of the Wainwright family, Joni Mitchell, the sophistication of the Great American Songbook and even classical composers sift through her songs seamlessly, alongside fuzzed out guitars and production that evoke the unsettling genius of Kate Bush – both her idiosyncratic wall of sound instrumentation and unexpected turns of chords and melodies.

Source: Georgia Mooney

I had never heard her music before and never seen a dulcimer played. This was also made more interesting listening to her album, Full of Moon, afterwards.

With the sound stripped-back, I wondered what impact that might have on the sound? Interestingly, aided by an array of effects pedals, Keir Nuttall on acoustic often managed to fill the sound of a whole band. While with the support from Kate Miller-Heidke on piano and guitar, I was left wondering if a full band was even needed? Even with her tracks from Child in Reverse, with their programmed loops, I feel that these would have been the same with or without the band, especially as she was supported vocally for these tracks by Georgia Mooney. I actually feel that the stripped-back sound allowed more flexibility to improvise. This all then served as the perfect foundation for Kate Miller-Heidke’s voice.

My (poor) memory of the setlist

• Fire and iron
• O Vertigo
• Sarah
• The Tiger Inside Will Eat the Child
• Humiliation
• Caught in the Crowd
• A Simon and Garfunkel track
• Last Day on Earth
• Hectic Glitter
• You Can’t Hurt Me Anymore
• Simpatico
• Zero Gravity
• Words / Paint It Black
• Psycho Killer

The post 📆 Kate Miller-Heidke (The Round) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Listened All Born Screaming, by st. vincent from st. vincent

10 track album

“You’re either alive or you’re dead,” she tells Double J. “And if you’re alive you better live life to the fullest.”

Source: St. Vincent – All Born Screaming) by Al Newstead

I remember when Daddy’s Home was released reading a passing comment from St. Vincent about nearly making a Tool-inspired album, but instead going all 70’s.

Appearing on Radio.com’s New Arrivals show (via Uproxx), St. Vincent explained that she was “dead set” on creating a “heavy record” as the follow-up to 2017’s ‘Masseduction’). “Like just heavy the whole time – like, ‘Hey kids, you like Tool? Well, you’ll love the St. Vincent record’, you know?” she said.

Source: St. Vincent reveals she almost made a “heavy” Tool-inspired album)

I was intrigued what that would actually sound like. When I heard the first few singles, ‘Broken Man’ and ‘Flea’ I was a bit taken back. It was dark and brooding, but not the Tool-inspired album I expected. I was therefore unsure in listening to the album. I felt a bit lost.

I listened to a couple of interviews, one with Zane Lowe) and the other as a part of the Tape Notes podcast. Both spoke about the beginnings in playing industrial dance music, but this foundation was brought to the fore with Tape Notes, especially when she started remixing her tracks on the fly. After this I felt that Tool may have been a distraction in part and that the electrical modular underpinnings is what makes this album.

I was reading a BBC article) about the return of the album over singles. In it, there was a quote from Billie Eilish about why she is against singles:

“I don’t like singles from albums,” she admits. “Every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I’m just already prone to hating on it. I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone.”

Source: Billie Eilish Would Like to Reintroduce Herself) by Angie Martoccio

I was left wondering if the initial singles associated with All Born Screaming where a help or a hindrance? I feel that this albums is definitely better as a whole.

Much like the album’s artwork, it’s a dark, fiery listening experience that will win you over with its sonic surprises and sense of raw urgency.

Source: Best new music to hear from St. Vincent, Ngaiire, Kamasi Washington and more) by Al Newstead

In an interview with Karen Leng, St Vincent talks about inventing an alphabet around electricity and chaos, with a balance between the raw and the perfect. I think that like all languages, St Vincent borrows from many places to make her own. Zooming into the different parts on the Tape It podcast, these influences are made clear, whether it be Massive Attack or Tool, however as a whole the album is definitely St Vincent.

All Born Screaming certainly lives up to that philosophy. It’s the sound of an artist rediscovering the most vital parts of themselves, a musical chameleon forging renewed purpose from primal instincts.

Source: St. Vincent – All Born Screaming) by Al Newstead

Also, a part of this new alphabet is an element of urgency.

Grief shaped much of the album, says the notoriously private Clark, who was rattled by an unspecified personal loss during the album’s making. But All Born Screaming is animated by a sense of urgency, not melancholy.

Source: St. Vincent – All Born Screaming) by Al Newstead

The post 🎵 All Born Screaming (St. Vincent) first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Read For Whom the Bell Tolls

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a novel by Ernest Hemingway published in 1940. It tells the story of Robert Jordan, a young American volunteer attached to a Republican “Republican faction (Spanish Civil War)”) guerrilla unit during the Spanish Civil War. As a dynamiter, he is assigned to blow up a bridge during an attack on the city of Segovia.

It was published just after the end of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), whose general lines were well known at the time. It assumes the reader knows that the war was between the government of the Second Spanish Republic, which many foreigners went to Spain to help and which was supported by the Communist Soviet Union, and the Nationalist faction “Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War)”), which was supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy “Fascist Italy (1922–1943)”). In 1940, the year the book was published, the United States had not yet entered World War II, which began on September 1, 1939, with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ForWhomtheBellTolls

I decided to read For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway after my grandfather said that he was interested in the audiobook when I was helping him search for books to listen to. There are many authors I feel I know about, but have not actually read. I was not exactly sure what to expect with this novel. I did not really do any pre-reading.

I found that it was one of those novels that percolates long afterwards. It would be easy to summarise it as a novel about “blowing up a bridge”, which it literally is. However, that takes away from the real point, the thoughts of a soldier in preparing to blow a bridge, ‘grace under fire’.

Turn off the thinking now, old timer, old comrade. You’re a bridge-blower now. Not a thinker. Man, I’m hungry, he thought. I hope Pablo eats well.

As Mark Cirino touches on:

Mark Cirino: So Hemingway once said, “The worst thing that a soldier can have is imagination, but it’s the most important thing that a writer must have.”

Source: Podcast #922: For Whom the Bell Tolls by Brett & Kate McKay

Overall, Cirino provides a good discussion of the book on the Art of Manliness podcast. For Cirino, the novel represents Hemingway’s concerted effort to present a picture of humanity from both sides, observing life through the good things and bad. For example, he does not hide from violence perpetuated by either side of the conflict. This focus on humanity is framed from the beginning through the reference to John Donne’s poem:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend’s
Or of thine own were.

Any man’s death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Source: No Man Is an Island by John Donne

The story revolves around Robert Jordan, a character with many similarities to Hemingway. He is cramming life and love into three days. It uses free indirect style to cycle the god’s eye view through the mind of the protagonist.

After reading the novel and recently reading All Quiet on the Western Front I was left wondering if it is easier to know history as a series of dates, numbers and characters, but harder to appreciate what it all actually means in the moment?

Marginalia

Robert Jordan did not know how much he had heard. You never know with a deaf man.

Your nationality and your politics did not show when you were dead.

They never tell you it is a holding attack when you make it.

There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true. The way the planes are beautiful whether they are ours or theirs. The hell they are, he thought.

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Bookmarked Copying all Pocket highlights with a bookmarklet (philnewton.net)I do not use Highlights with Pocket as I was not sure how they would fit with my workflow. However, after finding this bookmarklet from Phil Newton, I am thinking that maybe I could.

to_clipboard = "#+TITLE: " + document.getElementsByTagName('h1')[0].innerHTML + "\n\n"; all_highlights = document.getElementsByClassName('highlight'); for (highlight in all_highlights) { highlight_text = all_highlights[highlight].innerHTML; if (typeof highlight_text !== 'undefined' && highlight_text.trim() != '') { to_clipboard += "#+begin_quote\n"; to_clipboard += highlight_text.trim() + "\n"; to_clipboard += "#+end_quote\n\n"; } } to_clipboard += "*Source*: " + document.getElementById('reader.external-link.view-original').href; navigator.clipboard.writeText(to_clipboard);

I worked with CoPilot to change the structure to how I wanted it:

javascript:(function(){ for(i in o="",h=document.getElementsByClassName("highlight"),h){ t=h[i].innerHTML, "undefined"!=typeof t&&""!=t.trim()&&(o+="> "+t.trim().replace(/\n/g, "\n> ")+"\n\n"); } var url = document.getElementById("reader.external-link.view-original").href; url = url.replace("?utm_source=pocket_saves", ""); o+="Source: ["+document.getElementsByTagName("h1")[0].innerHTML+"]("+url+")" +document.getElementsByClassName("css-1ba1zfw")[0].innerText; navigator.clipboard.writeText(o); })()

It was an interesting process where I tried some things and was corrected. This was much quicker than learning it from scratch.

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Watched This video is being promoted as OpenAI’s first officially commissioned Sora collaboration with a musician as well as a filmmaker. Beyond the uncanny nature of the video, I found it strangely off putting the speed in which everything moved. It was interesting to compare this with something like Michel Gondry’s work with The Chemical Brothers.

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Checked into A recent staff seminar day ended with a presentation by Dr. Adam Fraser. Here are my notes.

Dr. Adam Fraser. is involved in work around topic of wellbeing.

Dr Adam Fraser is a peak performance researcher who helps people strive to achieve better performance in everything they do. In his time he has worked with elite athletes and sporting teams, special forces soldiers and business leaders.

Source: About Research Based Wellbeing Keynote Speaker — Dr Adam Fraser

In regards to education, he has developed The Flourish Movement program:

The Flourish Movement program, which began in 2016, is an internationally award-winning program, designed with and for school leaders. Driven by data and grounded in research, Flourish offers practical strategies aimed at helping school leaders develop sustainable leadership practices by improving both their effectiveness and overall wellbeing.

Source: The Flourish Movement

The focus of the program is to:

• Build recovery
• Prevent burnout
• Manage emotions
• Improve leadership and culture

Through his work he has found that he gets different results based on methodology. In particular, his work often focuses on action research. For example, rather than getting participants to complete a single survey capturing a single point in time, he gets them to complete a ten day survey.

With a lot of change occurring at the moment, his particular focus was on disruption and how we can be manage this. After reflecting on what we thought were our biggest challenges at the moment (missing functionality? clean data?) he shared end-of-life research which suggests that at the end of their life, we regret not being more courageous. Associated with this, the things that we are proud of (excluding raising children) is often based on the hardest thing we’ve done.

Extending on from the ‘hardest thing’, he explains that ‘happiness’ is a challenge just outside our reach, it is learning something new, where we have to grow and evolve to achieve it. The opposite of ‘happiness’ is chronic boredom. Bored employees are dangerous! In the end, growth comes from those who can sit with the discomfort. Often sitting with such discomfort comes from culture.

For Fraser, culture is “how we do stuff around here.” He the example of George Mohler’s work around predicting crime and the problem associated with cultural bias of police officers to elaborate on this ‘stuff’. At the heart of it, our behaviour and mood are contagious. The question is whether our mood worth catching? (According to Fraser, the poorest work habit is contempt and lack of respect. We need to be very careful of this.) Small behaviours lead to big outcomes. To demonstrate this, Fraser argued that one of the biggest developments in medicine was nurses being able to question doctors.

As an extension of this, Fraser argued that there is no such thing as a trivial behavior. He used a survey of American schools in which the most common item to be raised in staff meetings were the dirty cups left in the sink as lack of respect and humility. Another example was two small actions that Craig Bellamy made that has changed the culture at Melbourne Storm, that is, to socialise with/as a family and get a job in the off-season.

Like many players before them, 13 of our new boys ventured into the world of full-time, labour-intensive work alongside their pre-season training duties as a part of the New Recruit Work Program.

Started 18-years ago by our very own head coach, Craig Bellamy, the program sees new Storm recruits – regardless of reputation or experience – take on two 40-hour work weeks.

The goal? Teach them about hard-work and gratitude.

Source: Gratitude, Humility & Hard Work – Our Work Program by Melbourne Storm

Every person impacts culture.

One of the problem, Fraser stated, with culture as “the way we do things around here” is that it works like an immune system. When new people and ideas come in from the outside and try to change things, the system fights them off. The only way to change culture is to get a ground swell. Too often their is a lack of alignment between behaviour and values. The danger is trivial things that go unquestioned or unnoticed can often set things back. We will forgive a lot, but what we do not forgive is a lack of alignment, that is where trust dies.

Associated with our behaviours is the challenge of our emotions. We have a big brain hardwired towards pessimism. In addition to the positive and negative ripples that we create, we need to consider how we respond. Fraser referred to Shelly Gable’s four responses to good news to explain this.

Let’s imagine you have just told a colleague that you’ve been promoted. Here are Gable’s four possible responses:

1. Active-constructive: the responder is enthusiastic, interested and supportive. They might say, “That’s brilliant news! I’m so pleased for you. Can I help you prepare?”
2. Passive-constructive: they seem positive but their response is muted and with no enquiry. They say, “That’s nice,” with no real interest or enthusiasm.
3. Active-destructive: in this scenario, they energetically belittle or reinterpret your good news, focusing on any negative implications. They might say, “Seriously? It looks like more work for not much money, and the people there are boring. It doesn’t sound that great to me.”
4. Passive-destructive: they barely acknowledge your announcement or changes the subject. A typical response might be, “I see. Anyway, guess who I saw on my way in?”

Source: Gable’s Four Responses to Good News by Mind Tools

The question that we were left with is what small things we are going to do to help support change?

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Read All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues, lit. ’In the West, nothing new’) is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers’ extreme physical and mental trauma during the war as well as the detachment from civilian life felt by many upon returning home from the war.

The novel was first published in November and December 1928 in the German newspaper Vossische Zeitung and in book form in late January 1929. The book and its sequel, The Road Back (1930), were among the books banned and burned in Nazi Germany. All Quiet on the Western Front sold 2.5 million copies in 22 languages in its first 18 months in print

All Quiet on the Western Front by Wikipedia

All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque centers on Paul Bäumer and his experience of the Western Front during World War 1. Through the journey of the novel, Remarque manages to captures so many facets of war, whether it be training, food, lice, gas, hunger and recovery for a generation “destroyed by the war”.

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades–words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.

Our faces are encrusted, our thoughts are devastated, we are weary to death; when the attack comes we shall have to strike many of the men with our fists to waken them and make them come with us–our eyes are burnt, our hands are torn, our knees bleed, our elbows are raw.

I think that this all well represented in the 2022 film version, even if there are some adaptive changes.

In some respects the attempt to capture so many different facets feels similar to Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old. However, where they differ is that by focusing on a single individual, I feel Remarque is able to take us further inside some of the thoughts and feelings of the soldier.

Terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;–but it kills, if a man thinks about it.

It is interesting to compare Paul’s return home on leave with the account of soldiers returning home after the war in The Road Back.

Marginalia

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war.

CHAPTER 5

At school nobody ever taught us how to light a cigarette in a storm of rain, nor how a fire could be made with wet wood–nor that it is best to stick a bayonet in the belly because there it doesn’t get jammed, as it does in the ribs.

CHAPTER 6

Bombardment, barrage, curtain-fire, mines, gas, tanks, machine-guns, hand-grenades–words, words, but they hold the horror of the world.
Our faces are encrusted, our thoughts are devastated, we are weary to death; when the attack comes we shall have to strike many of the men with our fists to waken them and make them come with us–our eyes are burnt, our hands are torn, our knees bleed, our elbows are raw.

CHAPTER 7

Habit is the explanation of why we seem to forget things so quickly. Yesterday we were under fire, to-day we act the fool and go foraging through the countryside, to-morrow we go up to the trenches again. We forget nothing really. But so long as we have to stay here in the field, the front-line days, when they are past, sink down in us like a stone; they are too grievous for us to be able to reflect on them at once. If we did that, we should have been destroyed long ago. I soon found out this much:–terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks;–but it kills, if a man thinks about it.

CHAPTER 11

All other expressions lie in a winter sleep, life is simply one continual watch against the menace of death;–it has transformed us into unthinking animals in order to give us the weapon of instinct–it has reinforced us with dullness, so that we do not go to pieces before the horror, which would overwhelm us if we had clear, conscious thought–it has awakened in us the sense of comradeship, so that we escape the abyss of solitude–it has lent us the indifference of wild creatures, so that in spite of all, we perceive the positive in every moment, and store it up as a reserve against the onslaught of nothingness. Thus we live a closed, hard existence of the utmost superficiality, and rarely does an incident strike out a spark. But then unexpectedly a flame of grievous and terrible yearning flares up.

What use is it to him now that he was such a good mathematician at school.

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Read Lola In The Mirror by SupaduDev

A girl and her mother have been on the run for sixteen years, from police and the monster they left in their kitchen with a knife in his throat. They’ve found themselves a home inside a van with four flat tyres parked in a scrapyard by the edge of the Brisbane River.

The girl has no name because names are dangerous when you’re on the run. But the girl has a dream. A vision of a life as an artist of international acclaim. A life outside the grip of the Brisbane underworld drug queen ‘Lady’ Flora Box. A life of love with the boy who’s waiting for her on the bridge that stretches across a flooding, deadly river. A life beyond the bullet that has her name on it. And now that the storm clouds are rising, there’s only one person who can help make her dreams come true. That person is Lola and she carries all the answers. But to find Lola, the girl with no name must first do one of the hardest things we can ever do. She must look in the mirror.

https://www.harpercollins.com.au/9781460759837/lola-in-the-mirror

I wrote a longer review here.

MarginaliaMr and Mrs Finlay

France has the Mona Lisa. Egypt has the pyramids. Queensland has Moreton Bay bugs.

Santa Claus with Sore Head

Nothing. Not a single acknowledgement. And that makes perfect sense. For I do not exist. For I am nobody. For I am nothing. But then, truth be blurted, there’s power in being nobody. When you’re nobody, you are free to be anybody. Astronaut. Actress. Archaeologist. Or even a lowdown, dirty, send-her-straight-to-hell, suburban drug-slinger. Because if nobody can see you, then nobody can see your shame. Nobody can see your sorrow. And nobody can catch you crying your heart out.

Things That Go Bump in the Night

‘Her name is Phoebe Gould,’ Topping says. ‘Phoebe is the woman who wants to tell you who you really are. She’s asked to be the one who tells you everything. She’s convinced the story will be easier to . . . digest . . . if it comes from her. We tend to agree,’ he continues, ‘but we’re gonna play it how you wanna play it.’
‘It’s that bad, huh?’ I ask.
Millar leans forward at the desk. ‘It will be a difficult story for you to hear,’ he says.
‘I can handle difficult.’
‘Maybe difficult isn’t the right word,’ Millar says.
‘What’s a better word for it, Cameron?’ I ask. ‘Traumatising? Brutal? Impossible? Unbelievable? If it’s any of those, don’t sweat it. I can swallow any of those.’
He nods. Tucks his right thumb inside his fist and squeezes it three times.
‘Sad,’ Topping says. ‘Sad is the word for it.’
‘You must see a bit of it.’
‘What?’
‘Sad.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I see a bit of it. Too much.’
‘I’m sorry to add to the pile.’
He shakes his head. ‘I’m sorry you’ll have to hear such a sad story.’
‘How sad is it?’
‘Might be the saddest story I’ve ever heard. That’s why I’m not sure you should hear it from us.’

The Hunter and the Prey

Dark rooms are good for dreaming when you’re awake

Nothing real to be seen in darkness, she said, and nothing real to see you. You can be invisible down here. When you’re invisible, you’re no one. When you’re no one, you can be anyone.

‘I told you,’ Lola says, ‘your past is an unimaginable horror show of tragedy and intrigue. But, please remember this, the past has nothing to do with who you are. And the past has nothing to do with who you will be.’

The mirror was never magic,’ Lola says.
‘It wasn’t?’
‘Of course it wasn’t. Magic mirrors don’t exist.’
‘Then how come I can see you now?’
‘Because you are magic,’ Lola says. ‘You’ve always been magic. You’ve never needed a mirror to see who you are.’

Who Are You?

I am love. I am forgiveness. I am memory. I am misfortune. I am pain. I am art. I am friendship. I am family. I am sorrow. I am hate. I am rage. I am beauty. I am wonder. I am ink. I am blood. I am learning. I am longing. I am action. I am courage. I am laughter. I am joy. I am gratitude. I am fire. I am water. I am dirt. I am past. I am future. I am fate. I am taken. I am lost. I am returned. I am found. I am heard. I am seen. I am home. I am here.

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Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle

Cat’s Cradle is a satirical postmodern novel, with science fiction elements, by American writer Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut’s fourth novel, it was first published in 1963, exploring and satirizing issues of science, technology, the purpose of religion, and the arms race, often through the use of morbid humor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%27s_Cradle

I had never read any of Kurt Vonnegut’s work and had little idea of what to expect. I could tell you that he wrote Slaughter House Five, but have no knowledge what the novel is about. I was watching The Deadliest Infectious Disease of All Time | Crash Course Lecture and John Green referenced a poem from Cat’s Cradle.

“Don’t try,” he said. “Just pretend you understand.”

“That’s—that’s very good advice,” I went limp.

Castle quoted another poem:

Tiger got to hunt,

Bird got to fly;

Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”

Tiger got to sleep,

Bird got to land;

Man got to tell himself he understand.

This led me to the library and borrowing the book.

The book traces the narrator’s effort to write a book about the day of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. This leads him (and us) down one rabbit hole after another, from Felix Hoenikker’s creation of ‘ice-nine’, the island of San Lorenzo, Bokononism and the destruction of the world where all the world’s oceans are turned to ice.

There is so much to take in with Cat’s Cradle, whether it be the science, the absurdity and the modern world. Some novels capture their time, while others send messages that linger on. I had to check when it was written (1963) as so much of it still seemed relevant, especially working on a complex project. I now respond to colleagues about my work with ‘Busy, busy, busy’.

Had I been a Bokononist then, pondering the miraculously intricate chain of events that had brought dynamite money to that particular tombstone company, I might have whispered, “Busy, busy, busy.”

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

But all I could say as a Christian then was, “Life is sure funny sometimes.”

It is much better than talking about magic.

Vonnegut has explained the short chapters as a ‘mosaic of tiny jokes’:

Cat’s Cradle, despite its relatively short length, contains 127 discrete chapters, some of which are verses from the Book of Bokonon. Vonnegut himself claimed that his books “are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny little chips… and each chip is a joke.”[1]

Cat’s Cradle by Wikipedia

Alternatively, Kleon claims Vonnegut wrote ‘everything for his sister’:

Vonnegut said that in hindsight he realized that he wrote everything he wrote for his sister, just trying to make her laugh…

Be a Good Date by Austin Kleon

The fear I had was that the greatest joke in the end was us as a reader in taking the world so seriously at times?

Stylistically, the way in which the narrator incidentally unpacks Bokononism reminded me of the creative way in which Thomas More explores Utopia. I was also left wondering whether I am missing the modern humourist in my reading, as I would place Vonnegut along side other modern authors, such as Paul Auster, Thomas Pynchon and Joseph Heller. To me they all encapsulates the saying, “Cartoon descriptions? How else to describe a cartoon world?” However, someone else made the case to me that the best way to explain these authors is drugs. Think I will stick to cartoon descriptions.

In the end, I feel that Cat’s Cradle is one of those books that I could come back to again and again and get something different each time as it is so overloaded with information that we can never quite understand everything all at once. Of course this is the case with all readings, but I feel Vonnegut makes us strangely aware of this.

MarginaliaTHE MOST VALUABLE COMMODITY ON EARTH

It isn’t looking for a better cigarette filter or a softer face tissue or a longer-lasting house paint, God help us. Everybody talks about research and practically nobody in this country’s doing it.

DYNAMITE MONEY

Had I been a Bokononist then, pondering the miraculously intricate chain of events that had brought dynamite money to that particular tombstone company, I might have whispered, “Busy, busy, busy.”

Busy, busy, busy, is what we Bokononists whisper whenever we think of how complicated and unpredictable the machinery of life really is.

But all I could say as a Christian then was, “Life is sure funny sometimes.”

MEOW

My second wife had left me on the grounds that I was too pessimistic for an optimist to live with.

THE BOKONONIST METHOD FOR HANDLING CAESAR

There was a quotation from The Books of Bokonon on the page before me. Those words leapt from the page and into my mind, and they were welcomed there.
The words were a paraphrase of the suggestion by Jesus: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s.”
Bokonon’s paraphrase was this:
“Pay no attention to Caesar. Caesar doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s really going on.”

A BIG MOSAIC

You’ll forget it when you’re dead, and so will I. When I’m dead, I’m going to forget everything—and I advise you to do the same.”
“Has she been posing for this or are you working from photographs or what?”
“I’m working from or what.”
“What?”
“I’m working from or what.” He tapped his temple. “It’s all in this enviable head of mine.”

RING OF STEEL

Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies.”

A WHITE BRIDE FOR THE SON OF A PULLMAN PORTER

“Don’t try,” he said. “Just pretend you understand.”
“That’s—that’s very good advice,” I went limp.
Castle quoted another poem:
Tiger got to hunt,
Bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder, “Why, why, why?”
Tiger got to sleep,
Bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.

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Read The Midnight Zoo

The Midnight Zoo is a 2010 novel by Sonya Hartnett. It was first published on 1 November 2010 in Australia and was then released in the United States a year later. It follows the story of two gypsy boys that find an abandoned zoo after fleeing a traditional celebration. The novella has gained critical praise for its “lyrical” prose and for the illustrations in the United States version, done by artist Andrea Offermann.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Midnight_Zoo

The Midnight Zoo, a zoo of talking animals taken out of their original habitat, but left unattended after an invading army takes the owner away. Three Romany children, Andrej, 12, his brother Tomas, 9, and baby sister Wilma, stumble upon the zoo while escaping the soldiers. The rest of the novel occurs over one night, exploring ideas of freedom and responsibility. All in all, Sonya Hartnett is the children’s author for children who want things a little different.

MarginaliaAlex Baugh provides an interesting commentary on the ending:

Hartnett does not spare the reader any of the horrors of war in her descriptions. Knowing this, when I came to the end of the novel, I didn’t not see it as hopeful or life affirming. At the end, when the figure of a woman in a dark cape appears, the children and animals see who they want to see, someone they believe will take care of them. For Tomas, she is his mother, for Andrej, she is Saint Sarah, patron saint of the Romany; for the animals, she is Alice. And when I thought back on the sentence “They had journeyed to the final edge of life beyond which there were no walls,”(pg 214) my initial reaction was that the planes had returned with their bombs and it was the moment of death when the woman called the children come and eagle prepares to fly, but it was also the moment when they have found true freedom in death.

The Midnight Zoo by Sonya Hartnett, illustrated by Andrea Offermann by Alex Baugh

Note, Dr Pam Macintyre has created a useful teaching resources associated with the text.

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Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picnic_at_Hanging_Rock_(novel)

Picnic at Hanging Rock is an Australian historical fiction novel by Joan Lindsay. The novel, set in 1900, is about a group of female students at an Australian girls’ boarding school who vanish at Hanging Rock while on a Valentine’s Day picnic, and the effects the disappearances have on the school and local community. The novel was first published in 1967 in Australia by Cheshire Publishing and was reprinted by Penguin in 1975. It is widely considered by critics to be one of the greatest Australian novels. In 2022, it was included on the “Big Jubilee Read” list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.[1]

Picnic at Hanging Rock (novel) by Wikipedia

I remember watching Peter Weir’s The Picnic at Hanging Rock, well I definitely can recall the girls and the soundtrack, but what surprised me was how little of Joan Lindsay’s story the picnic actually takes up. It is a fascinating story that unravels as it goes on. Romy Ash touches on the dream-like element to the narrative.

Picnic at Hanging Rock was written quickly, after Lindsay had a particularly vivid dream, and it’s a dream state that permeates the narrative. The characters fall in and out of sleep, daydreaming in a way that suggests they may have woken up in a different reality. We see this just before the girls disappear.

On the Unpublished Ending of Picnic at Hanging Rock, and Other Mysteries by Romy Ash

I wonder if the story would have had the same impact if the final chapter with the girls travelling through a ‘hole in space’ had not been removed?

ᔥ “Stan Grant” in REVIEW: Australia Day (Stan Grant) – Read Write Respond (04/17/2024 22:26:33)

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Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club_(novel)

Fight Club is a 1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It follows the experiences of an unnamed protagonist struggling with insomnia. The protagonist finds relief by impersonating a seriously ill person in several support groups, after his doctor remarks that insomnia is not “real suffering” and that he should find out what it is really like to suffer. The protagonist then meets a mysterious man named Tyler Durden and establishes an underground fighting club as radical psychotherapy.

Fight Club (novel) by Wikipedia

Imagine if Joseph Conrad’s Kurtz was your split personality? While instead of becoming the police after their time as ‘droogs’ as is the case with A Clockwork Orange the nihilists are the police. This is the world that Chuck Palahniuk brings us into. Just as we might say that everything, whether it be our jobs, IKEA furniture, cinema, colonisation of space, is political , the question I feel Fight Club grapples with is what is life beyond all this?

MarginaliaChapter 1We have sort of a triangle thing going here. I want Tyler. Tyler wants Marla. Marla wants me.

I don’t want Marla, and Tyler doesn’t want me around, not anymore. This isn’t about love as in caring. This is about property as in ownership.

Chapter 4The people I know who used to sit in the bathroom with pornography, now they sit in the bathroom with their IKEA furniture catalogue.

Chapter 5I just don’t want to die without a few scars, I say.

It used to be enough that when I came home angry and knowing that my life wasn’t toeing my fiveyear plan, I could clean my condominium or detail my car. Someday I’d be dead without a scar and there would be a really nice condo and car. Really, really nice, until the dust settled or the next owner. Nothing is static. Even the Mona Lira is falling apart. Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw.

There’s grunting and noise at fight club like at the gym, but fight club isn’t about looking good. There’s hysterical shouting in tongues like at church, and when you wake up Sunday afternoon you feel saved.

Chapter 10Me, when I go to the beach, I always sit with my right foot tucked under me. Australia and New Zealand, or I keep it buried in the sand. My fear is that people will see my foot and I’ll start to die in their minds. The cancer I don’t have is everywhere now. I don’t tell Marla that.

Chapter 11I tell the detective, no, I did not leave the gas on and then leave town. I loved my life. I loved that condo. I loved every stick of furniture
That was my whole life. Everything, the lamps, the chairs, the rugs were me. The dishes in the cabinets were me. The plants were me. The television was me. It was me that blew up. Couldn’t he see that?

Chapter 13For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil.
And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.

“Recycling and speed limits are bullshit,” Tyler said. “They’re like someone who quits smoking on his deathbed.”

Chapter 15The mechanic says, “If you’re male and you’re Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies oris never at home, what do you believe about God?”
This is all Tyler Durden dogma. Scrawled on bits of paper while I was asleep and given to me to type and photocopy at work. I’ve read it all. Even my boss has probably read it all.
“What you end up doing,” the mechanic says, “is you spend your life searching for a father and God.”
“What you have to consider,” he says, “is the possibility that God doesn’t like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.”
How Tyler saw it was that getting God’s attention for being bad was better than getting no attention at all. Maybe because God’s hate
better than His indifference.

My tiny life. My little shit job. My Swedish furniture. I never, no, never told anyone this, but before I met Tyler, I was planning to buy a dog and name it “Entourage.”

Chapter 18If you can wake up in a different place. If you can wake up in a different time. Why can’t you wake up as a different person?

Chapter 19You’ve got to find Tyler.
You’ve got to get some sleep.
Then you’re awake, and Tyler’s standing in the dark next to the bed.

“Every time you fall asleep,” Tyler says, “I run off and do something wild, something crazy, something completely out of my mind.”

We both use the same body, but at different times.

“Remember this,” Tyler said. “The people you’re trying to step on, we’re everyone you depend on. We’re the people who do your laundry and cook your food and serve your dinner. We make your bed. We guard you while you’re asleep. We drive the ambulances. We direct your call. We are cooks and taxi drivers and we know everything about you. We process your insurance claims and credit card charges. We control every part of your life.
“We are the middle children of history, raised by television to believe that someday we’ll be millionaires and movie stars and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re just learning this fact,” Tyler said. “So don’t fuck with us.”

I was here first.
Tyler says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, well let’s just see who’s here last.”
This isn’t real. This is a dream, and I’ll wake up.
“Then wake up.”
And then the telephone’s ringing, and Tyler’s gone.

Chapter 20This way, when deepspace exploitation ramps up, it will probably be the megatonic corporations that discover all the new planets and map them.
The IBM Stellar Sphere.
The Philip Morris Galaxy.
Planet Denny’s.
Every planet will take on the corporate identity of whoever rapes it first.
Budweiser World.

Chapter 21Only in death will we have our own names since only in death are we no longer part of the effort. In death we become heroes.
And the crowds yell, “Robert Paulson.”

The post 📚 Fight Club (Chuck Palahniuk) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Read A Clockwork Orange - The International Anthony Burgess Foundation

A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novella by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him.[1] The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called “Nadsat“, which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to ‘-teen’ in English.[2] According to Burgess, the novel was a jeu d’esprit written in just three weeks.

A Clockwork Orange (Novel) by Wikipedia

Although I saw A Clockwork Orange years ago, I had never read Burgess’ book. I was intrigued by the two versions, US and British. Although I agreed with leaving off the ‘final chapter’ of Picnic at Hanging Rock where Lindsay explained what happened with the girls travelling through a hole in space, I am not sure if I missed something, but I thought that original version where the book ends with the narrator settling down asked more questions than ending with . It all makes me appreciate the achievement of Stanley Kubrick more and more.

There are so many aspects to reflect upon, whether it be the classical music, the violence, the aversion therapy, the use of language.

Upon its release, A Clockwork Orange received mixed reviews. While some complained about its violence and language, others noted that the novel raised important ethical questions, such as whether it is better for a person to decide to be bad than to be forced to be good and if forcibly suppressing free will is acceptable.

A Clockwork Orange by Britannica

Marginalia

But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into what is the cause of goodness, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that’s because they like it, and I wouldn’t ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do.

The post 📚 A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked https://www.theredhandfiles.com/how-do-you-reconcile-your-faith/ (theredhandfiles.com)

Our lives are complicated and we all think and do things that are often unfathomable to one another, but we do so because we live our experiences and find our truths in different places. To my considerable surprise, I have found some of my truths in that wholly fallible, often disappointing, deeply weird, and thoroughly human institution of the Church. At times, this is as bewildering to me as it may be to you.

In the end I suspect that it is within the music that we will all find one another.

Source: The Red Hand Files #280 by Nick Cave

—

Nick Cave on the importance of the artist being honest to themselves and finding each other in the music.

The post 📑 The Red Hand Files #280 by Nick Cave first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched Love in Bright Landscapes: The Story of David McComb of the Triffids by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Love in Bright Landscapes: The Story of David McComb of the Triffids is a feature-length documentary, depicting the life and times of late Australian songwriter David McComb (February 17, 1962 – February 2, 1999) best known for his work with the Triffids, a band he co-founded in Perth, Western Australia. The Triffids were active between 1978 and 1990.

The film was the directorial debut of Melbourne-based writer/broadcaster Jonathan Alley, who also wrote the documentary screenplay. The film was produced by Atticus Media and The Acme Film Company and distributed in the Australian/New Zealand territory by Label Distribution.

The title Love in Bright Landscapes refers both to the Triffids’ compilation of the same name, released in 1986, and the poem by Spanish literary figure Rafael Alberti, who published The Coming Back of Love in Bright Landscapes] in 1973.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_Bright_Landscapes:_The_Story_of_David_McComb_of_the_Triffids

—

I had watched Great Australian Albums episode on Born Sandy Devotional and listened to Kirsten Krauth’s Almost a Mirror episode on ‘Wide Open Road’, so I was aware of The Triffids story. However, what Jonathan Alley brought to the table with were some of the voices closest to David McComb. What was weird though about this was that by the time this documentary was released in 2021, how many of these voices were long past, a point made by Alley in the credits.

One aspect that I felt Alley made more light of was McComb’s life after ‘Born Sand Devotional’. I had not realised that the record company wanted to seemingly replace the band in the recording process for Calenture, their Island Records debut. It makes you wonder in this circumstance where David McComb stops and the band begins, a similar experience I had reading Love & Pain by Ben Gillies and Chris Joannou.

Another interesting aspect to this sort of documentary are the voices that are included and the subsequent ones that are excluded. For example, Bleddyn Butcher is not a part of the discussion. Maybe as he has his own book Save What You Can, then he did not feel the need to be involved or was not asked?

The post 📺 Love in Bright Landscapes: The Story of David McComb of the Triffids first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Micro.blog

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Read All the Pretty Horses

All the Pretty Horses is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. It was a bestseller, winning both the U.S. National Book Award[1]
and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is the first of McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy“.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_Pretty_Horses_(novel)

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All the Pretty Horses is another Cormac McCarthy novel where they kept on riding. I feel that there are different ways to enter the novel, whether it be an exploration of place, characters or ideas. In some ways McCarthy’s novels are otherworldly, they exist in a space that seems parallel to a semblance of normality. They offer a means of reflecting upon the everyday from a different perspective. I wonder if in a different lifetime if McCarthy could have written novels set in say an otherworldly New York?

The post 📚 All the Pretty Horses (Cormac McCarthy) first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Read The Passenger

The Passenger is a 2022 novel by the American writer Cormac McCarthy.[1] It was released six weeks before its companion novel Stella Maris. The plot of both The Passenger and Stella Maris follows Bobby and Alicia Western, two siblings whose father helped develop the atomic bomb.

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The novel follows Bobby Western, a salvage diver, across the Gulf of Mexico and the American South.[2][1] Western is haunted by his father’s contributions to the development of the atomic bomb,[2] and tormented by his inability to save his sister Alicia—the protagonist of the novel’s proto-sequel, Stella Maris—from suicide, which happens a decade before The Passenger takes place.[3] Alicia was a mathematics prodigy who worked under the tutelage of Alexander Grothendieck (a real mathematician who shunned the field at the peak of his influence and chose to live in relative seclusion[4]). The Western siblings grow up in east Tennessee as their father works at Oak Ridge on the Manhattan Project (with luminary physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer).[5] Both children are math prodigies; Alicia studies at the University of Chicago while Bobby drops out of Caltech to pursue a career as a Formula 2 race car driver in Europe, though a serious crash puts him in a temporary coma and ends his driving career.[6] The events of the novel are punctuated with short, italicized chapters about Alicia’s treatment for schizophrenia due to hallucinations of a deformed figure the narrator named “Thalidomide Kid” who perpetually teases and belittles her and summons his ghostly cohorts to perform unwanted and garish entertainment acts.

Following a salvage dive to recover any survivors from a submerged airplane, Bobby discovers that the pilot’s flight bag and data box are missing. Within a few days, he returns to his apartment to find two agents of some kind who ask questions about the submerged airplane and the missing items, and Western learns there was also a missing tenth passenger.

Western spends time in bars and restaurants in New Orleans with old friends discussing truths philosophical and scientific. He visits his grandmother in Tennessee. Her house had been ransacked two years prior, and his father’s research papers and all family records were taken. Now in hiding from the authorities on the advice of Kline (a private investigator), Western has his 1973 Maserati Bora seized and his bank account frozen by the I.R.S., ostensibly for failing to record in his taxes the money he inherited from his paternal grandmother. Left destitute, Western drifts across the country as a transient, eventually coming to reside in Formentera. At the end of the novel, Western lies in his bed in a windmill penning a letter to his sister, the love of his life. He has forgotten her face and believes he will see it again when he dies.

The Passenger by Wikipedia

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As is often the way with McCarthy, The Passenger is a book about characters and their journey through the world. As Peggy Ellsberg captures, the book explores identity, legacy and death and lose.

After Alicia’s suicide, Bobby loses his mooring and works for a while as a salvage diver in the Gulf of Mexico, a spooky enterprise involving deep descents into dark waters. He visits bars in New Orleans, lives in single rooms with his cat, hides out at the beach in an abandoned shack, eats roadkill, becomes so skinny that his clothes “hang on him.” As the story proceeds, Bobby also winters over in an unheated house in remote Idaho, cogitating on particle physics. He is a physicist but also a passenger, carried through the narrative by love, grief, and sheer stamina.

Source: No Prayer for Such a Thing: On Cormac McCarthy’s “The Passenger” By Peggy Ellsberg

Although it offers possible narrative elements … missing passenger, Nuclear father, finding a golden inheritance … these moments often serve other purposes. As Graeme Wood touches on, the focus is about contending with life.

The novels McCarthy published in 2022, at the age of 89, permanently resolve the question of whether McCarthy is a great novelist, or Louis L’Amour with a thesaurus. The booming, omnipotent narrative voice, which first appeared in McCarthy’s Western novels of the 1980s and had already begun to fade in No Country for Old Men (2005) and The Road (2006), has ebbed almost entirely in these books—perhaps like the voice of Yahweh himself, as he transitioned from interventionist to absentee in the Old Testament. What remain are human voices, which is to say characters, contending with one another and with their own fears and regrets, as they face the prospect of the godless void that awaits them. The result is heavy but pleasurable, and together the books are the richest and strongest work of McCarthy’s career.

Source: The Incandescent Wisdom of Cormac McCarthy By Graeme Wood

This has similarities with Shakespeare, where it is the characters that matter.

The Shakespeare is no coincidence—and of course Shakespeare, too, was weak on plot; as William Hazlitt and later Bloom affirmed, the characters are what matter. McCarthy’s Sheddan is an elongated Falstaff, skinny where Falstaff is fat, despite dining out constantly in the French Quarter on credit cards stolen from tourists. But like Falstaff, he is witty, and capable of uttering only the deepest verities whenever he is not telling outright lies. Bobby Western regularly shares in his stolen food and drink, and their dialogue—mostly Sheddan’s side of it—provides the sharpest statement of Bobby’s bind.

Source: The Incandescent Wisdom of Cormac McCarthy By Graeme Wood

It is a novel about ‘human concerns … scrutinized on the highest existential plane’.

Put another way, the early novels took place on a human scale, and Blood Meridian was about contests among humanoid creatures so violent and warlike that they might be gods and demons, a Western Götterdämmerung. The protagonist of the Border Trilogy was like a human on an expedition through this inhuman landscape. And the late novels featured humans forsaken by the gods and pitted against one another, or in the case of No Country, contending with demons and losing. McCarthy’s latest, and probably last, novels represent a return to human concerns, but ones—love, death, guilt, illusion—experienced and scrutinized on the highest existential plane.

Source: The Incandescent Wisdom of Cormac McCarthy By Graeme Wood

The Passenger is not a meandering tale like Blood Meridian or The Road, but it is still a journey. In some respects I was left thinking of Don Delilo and even Samuel Beckett, but feel the more I scratch at the surface, Flannery O’Conner might be a better comparison. (The trans character felt like they had just walked off the set of Wise Blood.) For Xan Brooks, it is a wreck of an idea:

Published a full 16 years after the Pulitzer prize-winning The Road, The Passenger is like a submerged ship itself; a gorgeous ruin in the shape of a hardboiled noir thriller. McCarthy’s generational saga covers everything from the atomic bomb to the Kennedy assassination to the principles of quantum mechanics. It’s by turns muscular and maudlin, immersive and indulgent. Every novel, said Iris Murdoch, is the wreck of a perfect idea. This one is enormous. It’s got locked doors and blind turns. It contains skeletons and buried gold.

Source: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy review – a deep dive into the abyss By Xan Brooks

Brooks talks about the attempt to escape history:

High-concept plots take on water; machine-tooled narratives break down. And so it is with The Passenger, which sets out as an existential chase thriller in the mould of No Country for Old Men before collapsing in on itself. Western might outpace his pursuers but he can’t escape his own history. So he heads into the desert, alone, to watch the oil refineries burning in the distance and observe the carpet-coloured vipers coiled in the grass at his feet. “The abyss of the past into which the world is falling,” he thinks. “Everything vanishing as if it had never been.”

Source: The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy review – a deep dive into the abyss By Xan Brooks

Along with Stella Maris, these novels linger long after they are finished.

MarginaliaV

Being wrong is the worst thing a physicist can be. It’s up there with being dead.

You cant illustrate the unknown.

VII

Even if all news of the world was a lie it would not then follow that there is some counterfactual truth for it to be a lie about.
I suppose I would agree. If it does have a somewhat lampish smell to it. The Greeks, I suppose.
I suppose. Possibly of course of humbler origins.
Such as Mossy Creek.
Such as. Do you ever think what it would be like to meet a person you’ve known for a long time for the first time in these later years? To meet them anew.

VIII

All right. It’s not just that I dont have to write things down. There’s more to it than that. What you write down becomes fixed. It takes on the constraints of any tangible entity. It collapses into a reality estranged from the realm of its creation. It’s a marker. A roadsign. You have stopped to get your bearings, but at a price. You’ll never know where it might have gone if you’d left it alone to go there. In any conjecture you’re always looking for weaknesses. But sometimes you have the sense that you should hold off. Be patient. Have a little faith. You really want to see what the conjecture itself is going to drag up out of the murk. I dont know how one does mathematics. I dont know that there is a way. The idea is always struggling against its own realization. Ideas come with an innate skepticism, they dont just go barreling ahead. And these doubts have their origin in the same world as the idea itself. And that’s not something you really have access to. So the reservations that you yourself in your world of struggle bring to the table may actually be alien to the path of these emerging structures. Their own intrinsic doubts are steering-mechanisms while yours are more like brakes. Of course the idea is going to come to an end anyway. Once a mathematical conjecture is formalized into a theory it may have a certain luster to it but with rare exceptions you can no longer entertain the illusion that it holds some deep insight into the core of reality. It has in fact begun to look like a tool.

I dont know what’s going to happen. I’m not sure that I want to. Know. If I could plan my life I wouldnt want to live it. I probably dont want to live it anyway. I know that the characters in the story can be either real or imaginary and that after they are all dead it wont make any difference. If imaginary beings die an imaginary death they will be dead nonetheless. You think that you can create a history of what has been. Present artifacts. A clutch of letters. A sachet in a dressingtable drawer. But that’s not what’s at the heart of the tale. The problem is that what drives the tale will not survive the tale. As the room dims and the sound of voices fades you understand that the world and all in it will soon cease to be. You believe that it will begin again. You point to other lives. But their world was never yours.

I dont believe anything about God. I just believe in God. Kant had it right about the stars above and the truth within. The last light the nonbeliever will see will not be the dimming of the sun. It will be the dimming of God. Everyone is born with the faculty to see the miraculous. You have to choose not to.

History is a collection of paper. A few fading recollections. After a while what is not written never happened.

IX

If you’d never been anyplace before and you didnt know where it was that you were going or why it was that you were going there then how excited would you be about going?
Not very I suppose.

X

It’s the idea of loss. It subsumes the class of all possible lost things. It’s our primal fear, and you get to assign to it what you will. It doesnt invade your life. It was always there. Awaiting your indulgence. Awaiting your concession. And still I feel I sold you short. How to sort your tale from out the commons. It must surely be true that there is no such collective domain of joy as there is of sorrow. You cant be sure that another man’s happiness resembles your own. But where the collective of pain is concerned there can be little doubt at all. If we are not after the essence, Squire, then what are we after? And I’ll defer to your view that we cannot uncover such a thing without putting our stamp upon it. And I’ll even grant you that you may have drawn the darker cards. But listen to me, Squire. Where the substance of a thing is an uncertain business the form can hardly command more ground. All reality is loss and all loss is eternal. There is no other kind. And that reality into which we inquire must first contain ourselves. And what are we? Ten percent biology and ninety percent nightrumor.

Mercy is the province of the person alone. There is mass hatred and there is mass grief. Mass vengeance and even mass suicide. But there is no mass forgiveness. There is only you.

The post 📚 The Passenger (Cormac McCarthy) first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Micro.blog Mastodon

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Bookmarked Pluralistic: The antitrust case against Apple (22 Mar 2024) by Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)

Apple is unexceptional. It’s just another Big Tech monopolist. Rounded corners don’t preserve virtue any better than square ones. Any company that is freed from constraints – of competition, regulation and interoperability – will always enshittify. Apple – being unexceptional – is no exception.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/22/reality-distortion-field/The post 🤔 The antitrust case against Apple first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Bookmarked Someday, we'll all take comfort in the internet's "dark corners" (pluralistic.net)

We all deserve dark corners where we stand a chance of finding well-managed communities that can deliver the value that keeps us stuck to our decaying giant platforms. Eventually, the enshittification will chase every user off these platforms – not just kids or sex-workers or political radicals. When that happens, it sure would be nice if everyone could set up in a dark corner of their own.

Someday, we’ll all take comfort in the internet’s “dark corners”/ by Cory Doctorow

—

Cory Doctorow explains as platforms continue to become more problematic, that dark corners on the web will become so important. For me this comes back to the challenge of the domain of one’s own. The problem I feel is that it is easier to have a site of your own, but more of a challenge to build a community. I guess time will tell.

The post 📑 Someday, we’ll all take comfort in the internet’s “dark corners” first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Bookmarked AI Literacy.fyi (ailiteracy.fyi)This site was developed in association with efforts to respond to UNESCO’s Call for Contributions to the definition of algorithm literacy and data literacy. In addition to links to the submission, it also includes an extensive library.

The post 📑 AI Literacy first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Read Boy Swallows Universe
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Boy Swallows Universe is the debut novel from Australian author, Trent Dalton. Set in Brisbane’s violent working class suburban fringe in the 1980’s, the story tells the tale of Eli Bell, a child finding his way in an often chaotic world. Throughout, it explores ideas of family, friendship and fate in a fantastical world. You

You can find a longer reflection here.

MarginaliaBoy Writes WordsLyle doesn’t believe in much, but he believes in the circumstance-shifting power of a broken nose.Boy Receives LetterThat’s Slim’s favourite nugget of porridge wisdom.Do your time before it does you.

Boy Seeks HelpThe concealer. The concealers. The concealed.A bee sting smarts like a bitch until someone clubs you with a cricket bat.Boy Steals OceanI tore the paper away to find the gift inside. It was no book. It was a block of paper, maybe 500 blank pages of A4. On the first page was a brief message.To burn this house down or set the world on fire. Up to you, Eli. Merry Christmas. Dad.

Boy Takes Flight‘I had some dark periods inside,’ he says. ‘Everybody just assumes the head of an organisation like mine would be flooded with letters from friends on the outside. But the reality is, in fact, the complete opposite. No bastard writes to ya because they think every other bastard is writin’ to ya. But no man is an island, ya know, not the Prime Minister of Australia, not fuckin’ Michael Jackson, and not the Queensland sergeant-at-arms of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang.’Boy Conquers MoonForward to the beginning. I like that. That’s all I’ve ever been doing. Moving forward to the start.She looks out from the foyer to Mum, Dad and August, now waiting at the edge of King George Square.‘I thought they’d look different, your mum and dad,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘You did?’
‘They’re so nice,’ she says. ‘They just look like any normal mum and dad.’
‘They’ve been working on normal for quite some time now.’

The post 📚 Boy Swallows Universe (Trent Dalton) first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Replied to On Feeds by john (johnjohnston.info)

Following a link from Brad I saw the lovely Making Websites Should Be Easy and then the handy What is a feed? (a.k.a. RSS) | About Feeds. Add a link to the last to my sidebar.

John, I really like your idea of including something like Matt Webb’s ‘What is a Feed’ link on my site as reference for wayward visitors who have stumbled off the highway. I like the idea of a newsletter as a feed, rather than another email.

The post 💬 John Johnston on Feeds first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Bookmarked Five Differences Between Human and AI Tutors (danmeyer.substack.com)

This hope for chatbots takes a serious challenge—meeting the vast and varied needs of students—and trivializes it.

The positive framing for this article is that I have just described a product roadmap for AI chatbot tutors, one that they are moving ceaselessly along with every new language model release.

The negative framing is that we are asking a tool that is quite neat to do something that is far beyond its capabilities.

https://danmeyer.substack.com/p/five-differences-between-human-and by Dan Meyer

—

Reflecting upon recent experiences tutoring and being tutored, Dan Meyer provides five reasons why AI tutors will not replace human tutors:

– Human tutors seek context.
– Human tutors use multimedia.
– Human tutors create relationships.
– Human tutors are pushy.
– Human tutors know their limits.

The post 📑 Five Differences Between Human and AI Tutors first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Liked A simple page builder app by @stefan@stefanbohacek.online (stefanbohacek.com)

There are many ways to make and host a website, and some of the tools even let you do that for free. This guide
will show you how to make a website with a simple drag and drop interface (you can still edit the code later!),
and host it for free.

@stefanbohacek https://simplepagebuilder.app/aboutThe post 👍 A simple page builder app first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Liked Threads has entered the fediverse by Chris Wiltz (engineering.fb.com)

In this initial phase federated Threads users will not be able to see who liked their posts or any replies from people in the fediverse on Threads. For now, people who want to see replies on their posts on other fediverse servers will have to visit those servers directly.

Certain types of posts and content are also not federated, including:

• Posts with restricted replies.
• Replies to non-federated posts.
• Post with polls (until future updates).
• Reposts of non-federated posts.

For posts that contain links, a link attachment will be appended as a link at the end of the post if it is not already included in the post.

Threads has entered the fediverseThe post 🤔 Threads has entered the fediverse first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Read The Bezzle
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Money-laundering, cyber-knavery and shell-company chicanery: Marty Hench is an expert in them all. He’s Silicon Valley’s most accomplished forensic accountant and well versed in the devious ways of Fortune 500s, divorcing oligarchs, and international drug cartels alike (and there’s more crossover than you might imagine).
Cory Doctorow’s hard-charging, read-in-one-sitting, techno take on the classic PI pulp novel.
**It’s 2006, and Marty Hench is at the top of his game as a self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerrilla war between the people who want to hide money and the people who want to find it.
He spends his downtime holidaying on Catalina Island, where scenic, imported bison wander the bluffs and frozen, reheated fast food burgers cost $25. (Wait, what?)
When, during one vacation, Marty disrupts a seemingly innocuous scheme, he has no idea he’s kicked off a chain of events that will overtake the next decade of his life.
Because he’s made his most dangerous mistake yet. He’s trespassed into the playgrounds of the ultra-wealthy and identified their latest target: California’s Department of Corrections, who manage the state’s prison system.
Secure in the knowledge that they’re living behind far too many firewalls to be identified, the tycoons have hundreds of thousands of prisoners at their mercy, and the potential of millions of pounds to make off them.
But now, Marty is about to ruin their fun…

Source: The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow has a way of holding up a mirror that helps make the world around feel that bit stranger, in a good way. The Martin Hench series explores the world through the eyes of forensic accountant. With The Bezzle, Doctorow dives into the world of the US prison system and the way that anyone can be held guilty of something. Marlene argues that the book is a ‘bezzle within a bezzle’:

The story in The Bezzle is a bezzle within a bezzle in a kind of möbius strip of bezzling that doesn’t so much end as shift into a state of mutually assured destruction. A state that Marty, fortunately for him, is finally able to observe from the outside looking in, instead of either from the inside of a jail cell looking out the way that his friend Scott ends up, or up from six feet under, as the villain of this story certainly intended.

Source: GRADE A #BOOKREVIEW: THE BEZZLE BY CORY DOCTOROW by Marlene Harris

However, I was left wondering if we are always-already interpellated within the bezzle and that we are never truly outside of this?

I enjoyed the book and as always was left thinking about everything from pyramid schemes, open access and privitisation. I liked Tavendale’s suggestion that it is part novel and part cautionary tale.

It reads partly as a novel and partly a cautionary tale on the excesses of the worlds of business and finance, and on the toothlessness of governmental oversight.

Source: Book Review: The Bezzle by Cory Doctorow by Tavendale

This is probably a good way of discussing most of Doctorow’s writing as he shines a light on certain elements of life around us to help us think differently.

My only frustration was with who is Martin Hench. Yes there were similarities with The Red Team Blues, but there were times it felt like a different characters. I kind of wondered if this was some sort of quantum fiction where the same character is able to live out different realities in different worlds that are both related and unrelated. For example, in Red Team Blues, Hench is in his late 60’s. However, in the ten years that this book spans, I am unsure how old Hench is or is meant to be. With all that aside, I felt it was a thought provoking read and enjoyed reading it.

The post 📚 The Bezzle (Cory Doctorow) first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Liked Bookmarklets for testing your website (adactio.com)

I ended up participating in:

• a session on POSSE,
• a session on NFC tags,
• a session on writing, and
• a session on testing your website that was hosted by Ros

In that testing session I shared some of the bookmarklets I use regularly.

Bookmarklets for testing your website by Jeremy KeithThe post 👍 Bookmarklets for testing your website first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Liked https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2024/02/17/cozy-hypertext-for-the-dark-forest-web/?utm_source=pocket_mylist (ribbonfarm.com)

If the web remains valuable at all, it will be because the hyperlink has remained the basic unit of currency. Once you lose the hyperlink, you basically lose everything else.

Cozy Hypertext for the Dark Forest Web
by Venkatesh RaoThe post 🤔 Cozy Hypertext for the Dark Forest Web first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: Mastodon

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Bookmarked https://timharford.com/2024/03/what-the-birth-of-the-spreadsheet-teaches-us-about-generative-ai/?utm_source=pocket_mylist (timharford.com)

There is one very clear parallel between the digital spreadsheet and generative AI: both are computer apps that collapse time. A task that might have taken hours or days can suddenly be completed in seconds. So accept for a moment the premise that the digital spreadsheet has something to teach us about generative AI. What lessons should we absorb?

First, the right technology in the right place can take over very quickly indeed. In the time it takes to qualify as a chartered accountant, digital spreadsheets laid waste to a substantial industry of cognitive labour, of filling in rows and columns, pulling out electronic calculators and punching in the numbers. Accounting clerks became surplus to requirements, and the ability of a single worker to perform arithmetic was multiplied a thousandfold — and soon a millionfold — almost overnight.

The second lesson is that the effect on the labour market was not what we might have expected. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that there were 339,000 accountants and accounting clerks working in the US in 1980, around the time VisiCalc started to take off. By 2022, the bureau tallied 1.4mn accountants and auditors. These two numbers aren’t directly comparable, but it is hard to argue that accountancy was decimated by the spreadsheet. Instead, there are more accountants than ever; they are merely outsourcing the arithmetic to the machine.

What the birth of the spreadsheet teaches us about generative AI by Tim Harford

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Tim Harford reflects upon the invention of the spreadsheet and makes comparisons with the rise of artificial intelligence.

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Liked Work is a Place (tomcritchlow.com)

Here are some of the distinct types of socializing that I might be missing:

• Belonging. A sense of being part of a team and some kind of shared objectives / goals / shared values.
• Support. Being able to have people around you to help you when you get stuck with something specific.
• Jam partners. People to feel energized and electric with, to help brainstorm or cram on projects.
• Creative collisions. Existing in a space where you can bump into new people or make new introductions.
• Micro human interactions. Being able to step out and grab coffee or talk about the weather.
• Tacit experience. The experience of passively observing others at work and seeing how people structure their time and work.
• Separation of home and work. The ability to go somewhere to work.

Work is a Place by Tom Critchlow

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Bookmarked https://bootcamp.uxdesign.cc/dark-patterns-are-now-illegal-in-india-6b3c35c5ce50 (bootcamp.uxdesign.cc)

The Indian government recently established guidelines to ban dark patterns in India. These guidelines are made to address underhand practices in digital design. These rules aim to protect consumers from misleading tactics encountered online.

Canvs Editorial Dark Patterns are now illegal in India

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I wonder who would actually follow-up with infringements of ‘dark patterns‘?

via Stephen Downes

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Liked Pluralistic: The Coprophagic AI crisis (14 Mar 2024) by Cory Doctorow (pluralistic.net)

A key requirement for being a science fiction writer without losing your mind is the ability to distinguish between science fiction (futuristic thought experiments) and predictions. SF writers who lack this trait come to fancy themselves fortune-tellers who SEE! THE! FUTURE!

The thing is, sf writers cheat. We palm cards in order to set up pulp adventure stories that let us indulge our thought experiments. These palmed cards – say, faster-than-light drives or time-machines – are narrative devices, not scientifically grounded proposals.

The Coprophagic AI crisis by Cory Doctorow

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Cory Doctorow reflects on the science fiction narrative device that ‘more training data’ can improve artificial intelligence arguing that it simply is not true.

What’s more, while the proposition that “more training data will linearly improve the quality of AI predictions” is a mere article of faith, “training an AI on the output of another AI makes it exponentially worse” is a matter of fact.

Source: The Coprophagic AI crisis by Cory Doctorow

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Bookmarked Switching To Linux Full-Time: My Thoughts Two Months Later (Tedium: The Dull Side of the Internet.)

My Linux journey has not been all sunshine and rainbows, but I think I’m getting the hang of it. A few thoughts.

@readtedium Linux Lessons (So Far)

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I really should tinker more with Linux, but after finding that running music software would be a challenge, I have parked it for now.

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Bookmarked The Great American Novels by The Atlantic Culture Desk (theatlantic.com)

136 books that made America think

In 1868, a little-known writer by the name of John William DeForest proposed a new type of literature, a collective artistic project for a nation just emerging from an existential conflict: a work of fiction that accomplished “the task of painting the American soul.” It would be called the Great American Novel, and no one had written it yet, DeForest admitted. Maybe soon.

The Atlantic Culture Desk https://web.archive.org/web/20240314123418/https://www.theatlantic.com/books/archive/2024/03/best-books-american-fiction/677479/

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I am always a sucker for a book list, I agree with the comment that the major text missing is Gravity’s Rainbow.

ᔥ “Edith Zimmerman” in Yesterday the Atlantic published a list of great American no… (03/18/2024 07:32:08)

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Replied to I Told You So by Audrey Watters (Second Breakfast)

As I argued in my book Teaching Machines the entire history of education technology, from the first decades of the twentieth century, has been bound up in this quest to automate education. And much of the early history of artificial intelligence too, ever since folks cleverly rebranded it from “cybernetics,” was deeply intertwined with the building of various chatbots and robot tutors. So if you’re out there today trying to convince people that AI in education is something brand new, you’re either a liar or a fool – or maybe both.

I Told You So
by Audrey Watters

The discussion around my edtech job has been how AI can help cutdown on the repetitive and mundane, of doing things like cleaning up duplicate data produced through previous attempts to automate things. I sometimes wonder if such errors occur because when faced with the investment in capacity and how people work, we just double down on more automation?

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Liked Publishing an Obsidian vault with Hugo - Jacob Kaplan-Moss (jacobian.org)

Here’s one way I figured out to publish an Obsidian vault as a static website using Hugo. This is a hard way: the easy way is to spend $100/yr on Obsidian Publish.

https://jacobian.org/til/hugo-obsidian/

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Replied to https://david.shanske.com/2024/03/12/7602/ by David Shanske (david.shanske.com)

Writing code at a hotel. Wondering if I’ve gone a bit overboard on the mobile setup. Portable monitor, mini PC, keyboard and trackball.

I remember during lockdown when people were sharing their home setups, such as this from Ian O’Byrne. I am however really intrigued by your mobile setup David. Personally, in the new normal of working in and out of the office, I often find myself living off my laptop, but am interested in adding pieces to my kit that are light and flexible. Am intrigued to see how you pack it all up and how heavy it weighs?

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I recently read Murray Bail’s Eucalypt and discovered he was married to Helen Garner. I had never actually read any of Garner’s work, so found The Children’s Bach on the local library’s audiobook app. Like Raymond Carver, Frank Moorhouse, David Williamson, it feels like Helen Garner’s writing captures a zeitgeist through everyday ordinariness of small … Continue reading "📚 The Children’s Bach (Helen Garner)"

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Watched

I dive deep into the new firmware updates for the Roland MC-101 and MC-707 grooveboxes, which offer some much requested improvements and features, including complete sound design from scratch on the MC-101 (the partial tone editor), new effects including phonograph, exciter, and JD Multi, scatter step sequencing, MC-707 sample assign, and more.

I finally got around to updating my MC-101 today after watching Gabe Miller’s walk through. I was circumspect about how fiddly the partial tone editor would be. I found it fine and love the ability to build from scratch. A great addition.

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Listened That Said, by Tony Martin from Tony Martin

Nine pieces from Tony Martin's popular ‘Scarcely Relevant’ column at the much-missed ‘The Scrivener's Fancy’, now in spoken-word form and exclusive to Bandcamp.Awkward encounters with journalists, shop assistants, delivery men and members of the public who have mistaken him for someone else are mined for comic gold; two contrasting movies, ‘The Shining’ and ‘Alvin Rides Again’, are commemorated nerd-style; a feeding frenzy by tabloid commenters is dissected in ludicrous detail; and a five-year attempt to domesticate an ungrateful cat is recalled with more affection than was ever shown by the subject. All this plus Anna Wintour guest-edits Australia's notoriously filthy ‘Picture’ magazine.

I listened to That Said, Tony Martin’s reading of a collection of pieces originally published in ‘The Scrivener’s Fancy’. In part I came upon these via an unplugged episode of Sizzletown where Martin read Irresponsible Journalism. I really enjoyed Lolly Scramble. Although some of the stories are better than others, there is something about Martin’s ability to capture the seemingly ordinary world around and bring it to life.

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The Truce recounts Primo Levi’s journey after being liberated from Auschwitz. It follows on from If This Is a Man. I have read and watched a lot about World War II, but I had never really thought about what happens afterwards, especially with the divide between the Russians and the Americans. I wonder if one … Continue reading "📚 The Truce (Primo Levi)"

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Inga Clendinnan’s Reading the Holocaust is what the name suggests, a reading of the various texts produced about the Holocaust. This reading is divided into sections, including a discussion of impediments, accounts from witnesses, what it meant to resist, the grey zone of those Jewish people who helped, the leaders, the police and the SS. … Continue reading "📚 Reading the Holocaust (Inga Clendinnan)"

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If This Is a Man is Primo Levi’s memoir of how he survived the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. A trained chemist, Levi approaches the recount in a very factual manner. This methodical nature reads something like an absurd Choose Your Own Adventure novel. Whether it be only being transported later in the war, having the right … Continue reading "📚 If This Is a Man (Primo Levi)"

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Laura, that is a great question about water. I vaguely remember actually getting random drinks from taps on people’s front lawns, but I don’t remember carrying around a bottle much. I actually do not remember there being many public water bubblers, especially not like parks today in Australia. (Wonder if this is a global phenomenon?) … Continue reading "💬 [FBT] on Networks and Napalm"

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I wrote a review of Sonya Hartnett’s The Ghost’s Child here. Marginalia She would have the memory of him, but the truth is that a memory is hardly ever good enough to console a heart. But she longed for him to be happy, to be hers: so she would not open the prison of her … Continue reading ""

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I remember reading Michel Foucault’s Archeology of Knowledge during university, but never got around to The Order of Things. Wondering about the crux of the book I stumbled upon this lengthy summary from Huzeyfe Kıran. I was left thinking about archeology in relation to my Honours thesis on psychoanalysis and the way in which what … Continue reading "📑 Book Summary: The Order of Things: The Archaeology of the Human Sciences / Michel Foucault"

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Not sure what ‘Damian Cowell’ the album is, but I am a yes whoever or whatever Damian Cowell is. Kind of feels like Cowell’s own Eras-style tour.

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Ventured in with the children to Melbourne on the weekend for the first time post-COVID. We went to the Queen Victoria Market to buy donuts from American Donut Kitchen. In the process, we discovered that CRFTWRK Melbourne Craft Fair was running. The girls loved looking at the different stall. Lost a whole afternoon. Eventually bought … Continue reading "📅 CRFTWRK Melbourne Craft Fair"

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Wordfence told me that there was issues with semantic-linkbacks, so I disconnected it after seeing that Matthias Pfefferle had archived the app. However, I agree with Khürt Williams, it made my site “feel like an 8-track cassette player.” So I am reactivating it. I guess we will see.

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Virginia Trioli’s reflection on focusing on the wrong thing to me is another highlight to the challenges of having conversations in the modern world? This again has me thinking about Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens’ discussion of contempt. For me, this is all nicely captured in Tony Martin’s Sizzletown, a podcast that is hilariously funny, … Continue reading "📑 When a mum breastfeeding her baby sparks outrage, we’re focusing on the wrong things"

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I am always intrigued by the choices made in putting an album together. I accept that there are some artists, like Tame Impala, that record the album and that is it. However, Carly Rae Jepsen has spoken quite a bit over the years how she write a lot of songs, many of which do not … Continue reading ""

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I wrote some extended thoughts on The New York Trilogy here. Marginalia It was like watching a marionette trying to walk without strings. For the most part his entries from this period consisted of marginal questions concerning the Stillman case. Quinn wondered, for example, why he had not bothered to look up the newspaper reports … Continue reading "📚 The New York Trilogy (Paul Auster)"

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Rudi Bremer speaks with Kev Carmody about writing of his track From Little Things Big Things Grow with Paul Kelly and its legacy. The two explore the many covers of the track, including: Ziggy Ramo Electric Fields The Waifs Zillmere State School Paul Kelly & Jess Hitchcock Carmody compares the various covers to “the embers … Continue reading "🎧 From Little Things Big Things Grow (The Music Show)"

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n Phil Mongredien’s review, he describes Átta as ‘disappointing homogeneity’. I wonder if the criticisms of the albums ‘unengaging’ nature reflects the challenges of the modern world where so much revolves around the ‘next hit’. If this is what you are after, then this album may not be it. (Maybe try Jonsi’s solo album Shiver?) … Continue reading "🎵 Átta (Sigur Rós)"

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In The Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy talks about heath to set the scene, however Antarctica for Kim Stanley Robinson feels like more than just a setting, it is both a physical place, but also political one too. With this, the book can be appreciated as an investigation into Antarctica, while being about Antarctica. … Continue reading "📚 Antarctica (Kim Stanley Robinson)"

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I continued my exploration of Kim Stanley Robinson with Red Mars, the first book in the Mars trilogy. It was included as a part of the Audible membership. Red Mars explores the colonisation of Mars. This journey begins with the First Hundred, who set up the initial settlement. (This reminded me of The 100.) One … Continue reading "📚 Red Mars (Kim Stanley Robinson)"

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Aphex Twin’s unofficial Soundcloud account.

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Erich Maria Remarque’s The Road Back details the experience of a group of young German men, including Ernst Birkholz, returning from the trenches at the end of World War I. It unpacks the many challenges they face in integrating back into everyday life and the way in which so many are left both physically and … Continue reading "📚 The Road Back (Erich Maria Remarque)"

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Thanks Ben for sharing this explanation about the difference between QUERY and CHOOSECOL. It was the first thing I though when reading your newsletter.

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Although I read The Secret River a few years ago, I had never read anything else from Kate Grenville. While doing my usual trawling the Audible Plus Catalogue, I came upon The Idea of Perfection. The novel is set in Karakarook, a fictional town in New South Wales no longer on the main road. It … Continue reading "📚 The Idea of Perfection (Kate Grenville)"

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There was something haunting about The Violent Bears It Away. Whether it be the characters or their fractured experiences, things always feel incomplete, both sad and unresolved. What exactly does it mean to say that human beings are made “in the image and likeness of God”? Three answers have dominated Western theological ethics—imago Dei as … Continue reading "📚 The Violent Bear It Away (Flannery O’Connor)"

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Nick Cave mentioned Flannery O’Connor in Faith, Hope and Carnage: I did go back and re-read Flannery O’Connor recently to remember why we must value her, but that was only because her books had been taken out of a college library in America, due to some skewed and overly harsh charges of racism. I had … Continue reading "📚 Wise Blood (Flannery O’Connor)"

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Bartleby, the Scrivener one of the first text I read at university. There is something strange and frustrating about Bartleby. I think ironically about the way in which he lingers long after the novel finishes, especially the phrase, “I would prefer not to.” One of the interesting things in re-reading such texts is how memory … Continue reading "📚 Bartleby, the Scrivener – A Story of Wall Street (Herman Melville)"

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I remember reading Michael Gerard Bauer’s Don’t Call Me Ishmael when I was still in the classroom. I therefore thought it might be interesting to dive into the novel where the title came from, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Other than being about a whale, Moby Dick, and including a same-sex marriage, I did not really … Continue reading "📚 Moby Dick (Herman Melville)"

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Bookmarked Second Breakfast (2ndbreakfast.substack.com)

The history of the future of food and fitness technologies. Or: How I get through the mo(u)rning.

There are some writers I read for the perspective they bring to the world. Audrey Watters’ is one such writer. I look forward to following her new journey.

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Bookmarked Search - Like A Version - triple j (triple j)

We love music. triple j is the place for the best new music from around Australia & the world. Listen via radio or stream online.

I have long loved Triple J’s Like a Version. In the early days, in the time before streaming, I remember listening back to the albums.

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Watched I enjoyed this documentary on the ‘birth of Cool Britannia’. I am not sure I was aware how central Suede was. All I remember was the Oasis vs. Blur saga.

It all left me wondering whether this is a story that could have been told in different ways? There were certain voices not necessarily included, such as Bernard Butler. I also wondered about other artists, such as Pulp, and they place they served? Also, will time tell a different story?

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Bookmarked How to change Google Sheets date format and convert dates to numbers and text by Natalia Sharashova (ablebits.com)I never cease to be surprised with what I can do with the QUERY formula in Google Sheets. I had a problem today where I wanted to match two datasets using the date column. The problem was that they were in two different formats. So I started searching. Low and behond, I discovered that you can in fact format using the QUERY format. The formula looks something like this:

=QUERY(A1:C7,"select * format B 'd-mmm-yy (ddd)'")

These are the available values:

• d | Day without a leading zero for 1-9 (i.e. 7)
• dd | Day with a leading zero for 1-9 (i.e. 07
• ddd | Day as an abbreviation (i.e. Wed)
• dddd | Day as a full name (i.e. Wednesday)
• m (if not preceded or followed by hours or seconds) | Month without a leading zero (i.e. 8)
• mm (if not preceded or followed by hours or seconds) | Month with a leading zero (i.e. 08)
• mmm | Month as an abbreviation (i.e. Aug)
• mmmm | Month as a full name (i.e. August)
• mmmmm | First letter of the month (i.e. A)
• y or yy | Two digit year (i.e. 19)
• yyy or yyyy | Full numeric year (i.e. 2019)

I know Ben Collins has spoken about formatting dates before, but I never knew there were all these options.

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Watched British historical drama TV series by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Peaky Blinders is a British period crime drama television series created by Steven Knight. Set in Birmingham, it follows the exploits of the Peaky Blinders crime gang in the direct aftermath of the First World War. The fictional gang is loosely based on a real urban youth gang of the same name who were active in the city from the 1880s to the 1910s.It features an ensemble cast led by Cillian Murphy, starring as Tommy Shelby, Helen McCrory as Elizabeth "Polly" Gray, Paul Anderson as Arthur Shelby, Sophie Rundle as Ada Shelby, and Joe Cole as John Shelby, the gang's senior members. Sam Neill, Annabelle Wallis, Iddo Goldberg, Tom Hardy, Charlotte Riley, Finn Cole, Natasha O'Keeffe, Paddy Considine, Adrien Brody, Aidan Gillen, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sam Claflin, Amber Anderson, James Frecheville, and Stephen Graham also star. The programme began on 12 September 2013, broadcast on BBC Two until the fourth series (with repeats on BBC Four), then moved to BBC One for the fifth and sixth series.

I had always heard of ‘Peaky Blinders’, but had no idea what it was about. I decided to watch it after reading that Nick Cave did the soundtrack for it. One of the interesting things was how now matter how many times Red Right Hand was played, it always felt fresh, with versions by Iggy Pop, Laura Marling, PJ Harvey, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and L.A. alternative band Fidlar.

As a series, I enjoyed the ebbs and flows, and the various characters. I also liked the way in which it tied in various historical elements and characters, such as shell shock, Wall Street crash, Tuberculosis, Winston Churchill, Jessie Eden and Oswald Mosley. However, I felt that the storyline got somewhat repetitious after a while. One person would die, a new family member would appear. One enemy would be overcome, another would take their place. Maybe this is a product of bingeing six series in quick succession, maybe it is just life. Not sure.

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Listened First Two Pages of Frankenstein, by The National from The National

11 track album

In an interview for Matt Berninger’s solo album, he spoke about the importance of exploring other projects and how that feeds back into The National. Listening to First Two Pages of Frankenstein, I cannot help but hear Aaron Dessner’s work on Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore. I was therefore not surprised to find out that they were both recorded at Long Pond Studio. I feel it is more subdued, also it continues with the collaborative enterprise started with I Am Easy to Find, with appearances by Sufjan Stevens, Phoebe Bridgers and Taylor Swift.

Although I have enjoyed it, I cannot help compare it to High Violet. I wonder if it is on of those albums that would have a second life in seeing it live. I think time will tell where it sits in their œuvre.

Place between Taylor Swift’s Folklore and The War on Drugs.

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Read Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary (/ˈboʊvəri/;[1] French: [madam bɔvaʁi]), originally published as Madame Bovary: Provincial Manners (French: Madame Bovary: Mœurs de province [madam bɔvaʁi mœʁ(s) də pʁɔvɛ̃s]), is a novel by French writer Gustave Flaubert, published in 1856. The eponymous character lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life.

Madame Bovary is a novel about the life of Emma Bovary. It revolves around her marriage to Charles Bovary. He is a good-hearted but dull officier de santé, a health worker not qualified enough to be called a doctor. After the death of Charles’ first wife, Emma and Charles marry. With her diet of romantic literature and fantasties of luxury, she soon gets bored. She instead has an insatiable thirst for something more, behaving more and more like an addict. This leads to a life of affairs with Rodolphe Boulanger and Léon Dupuis, as well as taste for the high-life. However, this all falls apart when the local merchant, Monsieur Lheureux, calls in his debt. Unable to accept the situation, Emma instead commits suicide.

One thing that needs to be said about Madame Bovary and Flaubert is that very little was made up.

Flaubert made up very little. Beginning with Madame Bovary , he became a prodigious appropriationist and researcher, a habit that would metastasize with time.

Source: Introduction to Madame Bovary by Chris Kraus

In particular, the main narrative was based on a local scandal involving Eugene and Delphine Delamare, suggested to Flaubert by his friend Louis Bouilhet. He would also spend endless time research various aspects of the book, such as the countryside or arsenic.

The novel ended up in court due to offenses against public morals and religion. The government of Napoléon III had begun to enforce laws of political censorship. The defense argued that it was a moral tale where Emma gets her just deserts.

Attorney for the defense Jules Senard argued persuasively that this very “realism,” and Emma’s meticulously described and horrible death, served as caution against the dangers awaiting young women like Emma, when they are educated and exposed to certain ideas beyond their comprehension and station.

Source: Introduction to Madame Bovary by Chris Kraus

In Our Time podcast suggested that the argument used in defense would these days be used against it, especially the sadistic description of Emma’s death.

What is interesting about the court case is how it stands in contrast to the world in which it was written into where adultery was a norm.

While “adultery” (or a multiplicity of sexual friendships and relationships) may be the source of shame and scandal in the provincial world of Charles and Emma Bovary, in the intellectual and society worlds of Paris it was very much the norm.

Source: Introduction to Madame Bovary by Chris Kraus

It could then be construed as a critique of the social inconsistencies between men and women, or as a critique of bourgeoisie.

Madame Bovary has been seen as a commentary on the bourgeoisie, the folly of aspirations that can never be realized or a belief in the validity of a self-satisfied, deluded personal culture, associated with Flaubert’s period, especially during the reign of Louis Philippe, when the middle class grew to become more identifiable in contrast to the working class and the nobility. Flaubert despised the bourgeoisie. In his Dictionary of Received Ideas, the bourgeoisie is characterized by intellectual and spiritual superficiality, raw ambition, shallow culture, a love of material things, greed, and above all a mindless parroting of sentiments and beliefs.

Source: Madame Bovary – Wikipedia

As a novel, Madame Bovary is often described as a seminal work of literary realism. This is based on Flaubert’s depiction of flawed and deluded characters and trite subject matter. However, it could also be argued to be a novel about style. As Flaubert suggested:

“What I would like to do is write a book about nothing,” Flaubert wrote to Colet, four months into Madame Bovary. “A book with no external attachment, one which would hold together by the internal strength of its style, as the earth floats in the air unsupported, a book that would have no subject at all, or at least one in which the subject would be almost invisible.”

Source: Introduction to Madame Bovary by Chris Kraus

Chris Kraus suggests that this “detached, descriptive style” is as “luminous and presciently modern as the paintings of Vermeer.” Interestingly, like a painter with a sketchbook, Flaubert developed a practice while abroad of trying to capture what he saw without judgement.

Throughout the trip, when he was not brooding about his future as a writer, Flaubert took stark descriptive notes about what he saw. Determined not to editorialize, not to embroider, he did his best to keep an accurate record of the landscape, people, and customs he knew he would not see again. “Return to Wadi Halfa in the dinghy, with Maxime. Little Mohammed is as he was this morning. Rocked by the wind and the waves; night falls; the waves slap the bow of our dinghy, and it pitches; the moon rises. In the position in which I am sitting, it was shining on my right leg and the portion of my white sock that was between my trouser and my shoe” (Flaubert in Egypt , p. 136).

Source: Introduction to Madame Bovary by Chris Kraus

In his essay, The Reality Effect, Roland Barthes described the way in which Flaubert captures the everyday ordinary.

The very absence of the signified, to the advantage of the referent alone, becomes the very signifier of realism: the reality effect is produced, the basis of that unavowed verisimilitude which forms the aesthetic of all the standard works of modernity.

This new verisimilitude is very different from the old one, for it is neither a respect for the “laws of the genre“ nor even their mask, but proceeds from the intention to degrade the sign’s tripartite nature in order to make notation the pure encounter of an object and its expression. The disintegration of the sign— which seems indeed to be modernity’s grand affair—is of course present in the realistic enterprise, but in a somewhat regressive manner, since it occurs in the name of a referential plenitude.

Source: ‘The Reality Effect’ by Roland Barthes

In addition to the storyline, Flaubert’s third-person narration blurs the difference between the speaker and the author. This can be described as ‘free indirect speech’:

Free indirect speech has been described as a “technique of presenting a character’s voice partly mediated by the voice of the author” (or, reversing the emphasis, “that the character speaks through the voice of the narrator”) with the voices effectively merged. It has also been described as “the illusion by which third-person narrative comes to express…the intimate subjectivity of fictional characters.” The word “free” in the phrase is used to capture the fact that with this technique, the author can “roam from viewpoint to viewpoint” instead of being fixed with one character or with the narrator.

Source: Free Indirect Speech – Wikipedia

Chris Kraus discusses this in his introduction:

“Omniscent narrator” of the classic story-driven novel moves so close to his characters that the reader can no longer be sure who is speaking.

…

The narrator was a wit, a raconteur, a knowing friend, a moralist. But in Madame Bovary , the narrator virtually disappears.

“An artist,” wrote Flaubert to Mlle. Chantepie, “must be in his work like God in creation . . . he should be everywhere felt, but nowhere seen”(Vargas Llosa, pp. 124-125).

Source: Introduction to Madame Bovary by Chris Kraus

The other aspect at play in the novel is the psychological nature of the novel, where reality always undershoots.

The social condition of women at the time was undoubtedly linked to considerable psychological suffering, but it cannot be said that this was the main cause of the development of hysteria. Freud and other analysts took into consideration several factors to explain this form of neurosis: trauma, personal dissatisfaction, life events and even a disposition to manifest mental problems. In chapter three of the second part of the novel, Flaubert compares Emma’s behavior with two other women: the nanny Mme Rollet and Mme Homais, the pharmacist’s wife. The former plays the social role of a mother who feeds and takes care of children while the latter “… she was the best wife in Normandy, gentle as a sheep …”. Emma, on the contrary, is not able to conform to social demands because she does not love her husband, she does not become attached to her daughter since she would have preferred a son (“A man, at least, is free … a woman is always hampered”). Moreover, she is bored in the new house in Yvonville. From a psychoanalytical viewpoint, the Superego, represented by social standards and moral conduct, is struggling with an Ego which is dissatisfied with the present and real situation while the Id, home to unconscious desires, takes the control and leads Emma to commit adultery.

Source: Madame Bovary and Hysteria: A Freudian Perspective by Giuseppe Giordano

For Flaubert, it can be argued that all this helped him give voice to how women think and feel.

It is interesting reading a novel like this, thinking about it now, but also thinking about it in the context when it was written. For me, I am left wonder how much it is still precient, even though the world has completely changed.

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Bookmarked How to Install macOS in a Virtual Machine on Ubuntu Linux (makeuseof.com)

Virtual machines are very important in computing and software engineering. They primarily allow us to test and use different operating systems without the need for extra hardware. Besides, you can rest assured that if something goes wrong with the virtual machine, it won't break your existing host operating system.This guide will show you how to install macOS on Ubuntu Linux using a QEMU-KVM Virtual Machine. With that, you will be able to use native macOS software that is not otherwise available in Linux.

I continued my tinkering with Linux. After replacing the operating system on my old Macbook Pro, I wanted to run some software that I needed MacOS to do. I followed Mwiza Kumwenda’s guide to using QEMU/KVM to run a virtual machine. Although it worked fine, I think that I came to the realisation that the days are numbered for the old Mac.

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Watched I was wondering if Autechre had ever shared any insight into their process, this led me to Sean Booth’s Twitch AMA reposted on YouTube. I have never watched or listened to an AMA before, especially not one that goes for six hours. I must admit, I only got to the four hour mark, but it was kind of interesting. My two highlights were his answer to tinnitus and his discussion of by neuro-divergent.

Responding to how Booth manages tinnitus, he suggested that it is as much neurological as it is physical. He finds listening to Computer World by Kraftwerk fixes things.

Discussing autism spectrum disorder, Booth explains that he is lucky as the various traits have actually helped him with his music, just as CEO’s with narcissistic personality disorder have helped them.

Regarding my question, I think that it is probably something that you can only learn through experience.

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Listened Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, by Caroline Polachek from Caroline Polachek

12 track album

There are some albums that I find hard to click with. I listened to Desire, I Want to Turn Into You when it came out and watched a few of Polachek’s television performances. I really did not know what to make of it. However, after listening to Switched on Pop’s discussion of the new age references and disruptive structure, I felt like I was better able to appreciate it.

Place between Grimes and Montaigne.

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Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Go-Between

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley is a majestic novel about an innocent young boy who gets caught in the middle of an illicit and ultimately tragic love affair. The story is told by a now-aging Leo Colston, who recalls the events of the summer of 1900, more than fifty years ago, when he was twelve years old and visiting a school friend on a lavish English country estate. Young Leo is a dreamy, romantic child, highly sensitive to the way others perceive him and still painfully ignorant of the workings of the adult world. He falls under the spell of Marian Maudsley, the older sister of his school friend, who takes a special interest in him. Marian is being forced into a socially advantageous marriage to Lord Trimingham, who has been grossly disfigured in the Boer War. But even as the momentum toward her marriage builds, Marian is carrying on a forbidden affair with Ted Burgess, a hottempered tenant farmer of a lower class. Tricked into acting as a messenger for Marian and Ted during that oppressively hot summer, Leo’s youthful naiveté is destroyed as he becomes ensnared in a devastating scandal that will kill one man and scar Leo for the rest of his life. Described by Ian McEwan as “a strange and beautiful book,” Hartley’s enduring masterpiece about class and sexuality and innocence, set in a vanished golden era, is a hauntingly beautiful, unforgettable work.

The Go-Between by LP Harley is a story about of innocence betrayed and corrupted. Leo Coulston, a thirteen year old holidaying with a friend in Norfolk, is somewhat unknowingly entangled within an affair that does not end well for either he or those involved.

Written in 1952, Hartley set the book in 1900 to capture a world before where everyone seems to be enjoying themselves, a time before the two world wars changed everything. As Hartley explains:

“I wanted to evoke the feeling of that summer, the long stretch of fine weather, and also the confidence in life, the belief that all’s well with the world, which everyone enjoyed or seemed to enjoy before the First World War . . . The Boer War was a local affair, and so I was able to set my little private tragedy against a general background of security and happiness.”

Source: Introduction to The Go-Between by Colm Tóibín

In an introduction for the New York Review of Books, Colm Tóibín captures some of the autobiographical aspects of the book:

The Go-Between has obvious autobiographical origins. In August 1909, for example, Hartley, who was staying with his school friend Moxey at Bradenham Hall in Norfolk, wrote to his mother, “I sleep with Moxey . . . and also with a dog, which at first reposed on the bed . . . On Saturday we had a ball, very grand indeed, at least, not very. We always have late dinner here. There is going to be a cricket-match today, the Hall against the village. I am going to score.” A year later, he wrote to his mother from Hastings, where he was visiting a Mrs. Wallis, who wanted him to stay an extra day “as she wants me to go to a party . . . You know I am not very fond of parties and I do want to come home on Tuesday. However, they have asked me to write to you and ask if you would mind my staying. I am enjoying myself here but I am sure we should both prefer me to be at home. Of course if you think it would be better for me to stay, write to me and say so; it is only for a day. But still, I do want to be at home again.” It is also clear from letters that the young Hartley, like Leo in The Go-Between, was not a good swimmer, though he was, like Leo, a good singer. Also, Hartley had worked as an army postman in the Great War and knew the thrill of delivering sought-after messages.

… In his book The Novelist’s Responsibility (1967), Hartley mused on the relationship between fiction and autobiography. He wrote that the novelist’s world “must, in some degree, be an extension of his own life; its fundamental problems must be his problems, its preoccupations his preoccupations—or something allied to them.” He also warned that while it is “unsafe to assume that a novelist’s work is autobiographical in any direct sense,” it is nonetheless “plausible to assume that his work is a transcription, an anagram of his own experience, reflecting its shape and tone and tempo.”

Source: Introduction to The Go-Between by Colm Tóibín

Going beyond innocence, the book also touches on ideas of class, culture, memory and sexuality. As Ali Smith has touched upon, it is a book where there is always something beneath the surface.

It is a masterpiece of double-speak and secrecy, somehow both ambiguous and direct. It works a magic on obviousness, so that it becomes a novel about British embarrassment and embarrassing Britishness. It’s a book which subtly, almost mischievously, rejects subtlety: “the facts of life were a mystery to me, though several of my schoolfellows claimed to have penetrated it.” But couched and quiet at its centre is a whole other novel at a further level of knowing, innocence and unsaidness.

Source: Rereading: The Go-Between by LP Hartley by Ali Smith

On finishing the book, I was left with so many questions. For example, what exactly happened to Mrs Maudsley and how long had she had her suspicions? However, these are questions that we cannot and in someway should not actually know. In this way, there are things we must know that we cannot truly know.

Reading it, the seemingly naive innocence reminded me of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, and Macel Proust’s Swann’s Way. Here I am touched by something that Ali Smith wrote while reflecting on The Go-Between:

Books are, in essence, go-betweens, works which conjure rhythm and release across time and history, across places of familiarity and those foreign to us; and personally and individually, too, it’s all a going-between, for every person who picks up a book for a first, then a second, then a third time.

Source: Rereading: The Go-Between by LP Hartley by Ali Smith

I think that this ‘go-between’ relates as much to text-to-self, as it does to the idea of ‘text-to-text’. For example, The Go-Between had me rethinking and remembering Atonement, but I also wonder what it might be like to re-read Atonement while thinking about the influence of The Go-Between.

Commentary

It is a masterpiece of double-speak and secrecy, somehow both ambiguous and direct. It works a magic on obviousness, so that it becomes a novel about British embarrassment and embarrassing Britishness. It’s a book which subtly, almost mischievously, rejects subtlety: “the facts of life were a mystery to me, though several of my schoolfellows claimed to have penetrated it.” But couched and quiet at its centre is a whole other novel at a further level of knowing, innocence and unsaidness.

Source: Rereading: The Go-Between by LP Hartley by Ali Smith

The Go-Between is about books as much as it’s about memory. It’s a model of the importance of rereading (and God knows we treat books lightly – we wouldn’t, after all, expect to know a piece of music properly on just one listen), knowledge and innocence so much part of its structure as to make it a knowingly different book on revisiting. Above all, though, it is a text which works like a charm: books are, in essence, go-betweens, works which conjure rhythm and release across time and history, across places of familiarity and those foreign to us; and personally and individually, too, it’s all a going-between, for every person who picks up a book for a first, then a second, then a third time.

Source: Rereading: The Go-Between by LP Hartley by Ali Smith

Highlights

If my twelve-year-old self, of whom I had grown rather fond, thinking about him, were to reproach me: “Why have you grown up such a dull dog, when I gave you such a good start? Why have you spent your time in dusty libraries, cataloguing other people’s books instead of writing your own? What has become of the Ram, the Bull, and the Lion, the example I gave you to emulate? Where above all is the Virgin, with her shining face and long curling tresses, whom I entrusted to you”—what should I say?

I should have an answer ready. “Well, it was you who let me down, and I will tell you how. You flew too near to the sun, and you were scorched. This cindery creature is what you made me.

To my mind’s eye, my buried memories of Brandham Hall are like the effects of chiaroscuro, patches of light and dark: it is only with an effort that I can see them in terms of colour. There are things I know, though I don’t know how I know them, and things that I can remember. Certain things are established in my mind as facts, but no picture attaches to them; on the other hand there are pictures unverified by any fact which recur obsessively, like the landscape of a dream. (pg. 28)

I was in love with the heat, I felt for it what the convert feels for his new religion…And without my being aware of it, the climate of my emotions had undergone a change. I was no longer satisfied with the small change of experience which had hitherto contented me. I wanted to deal in larger sums. I wanted to enjoy continuously the afflatus of spirit that I had when I was walking to Lord Trimingham and he admitted to being a Viscount. To be in tune with all that Brandham Hall meant, I must increase my stature, I must act on a grander scale. Perhaps all these desires had been dormant in me for years, and the Zodiac had been their latest manifestation.

Dimly I felt that the contrast represented something more than the conflict between Hall and village. It was that, but it was also the struggle between order and lawlessness, between obedience to tradition and defiance of it, between social stability and revolution, between one attitude to life and another. I knew which side I was on, yet the traitor in my gates felt the issue differently, he backed the individual against the side, even my own side, and wanted to see Ted Burgess pull it off. (pg. 124)

Nothing is ever a lady’s fault; you’ll learn that.

Lady-killer: what did that mean? I didn’t like to ask too many questions. I did not think, however, Ted would kill Marian: Man-killer, that was what I had been afraid of. Now the fear had passed away, lost its reality with the rest of my life at Brandham Hall. I could scarcely believe that I had once felt I ought to warn Lord Trimingham of his peril. The ninth Viscount would never know that I had saved him from the fate of the fifth. By removing myself I had removed the danger: it was my master-stroke.

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Listened Methyl Ethel’s metamorphosis from abc.net.au

This is an extraordinary Take 5. There’s something a bit different about capturing an artist at a particular moment in their creative life. Not talking with me to promote an album or to spruik a tour… but in the midst of creating something new. And following a curiosity that will take them to this unknown end. This is where I found Jake Webb – better known as Methyl Ethel. The Fremantle based muso has made textured, leftfield pop for years now. And across four albums has shapeshifted what he does and how he thinks about sound.For his Take 5, I gave Jake the theme of metamorphosis. And asked him to choose five songs that have marked chapters and change in his life. From The Supremes to Bjork to Deerhunter, this is deep conversation about art, and finding new ways every day to make something new.The Supremes - Keep Me Hangin’ On The White Stripes - Fell In Love With A GirlAntony and the Johnsons - SwanlightsBjork - HunterDeerhunter - Helicopter

Jake Webb provides an insight into his thoughts on music through five tracks. This included talking about his fascination with guitar and drums via The White Stripes, as well as his new fascination with cello. Personally, I could not imagine Methyl Ethel without bass, for me it is the ingredient to Webb’s music that ties everything together.

It was also an intriguing conversation for the insight it provided into the creative process. Webb spoke about the importance of process (coffee in the morning) and turning up. He also talked about splitting up his days into 45 minute blocks to prevent from falling down the rabbit hole, especially when working alone.

I was left with so many questions. For example, what has he learnt over the years? Is there anything that he would possibly do differently now, compared with the past? What does he do in-between each of the blocks of time? Has he always started with piano or is this a new thing?

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Read The Australian Dream by Stan Grant

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success – cultural, sporting, intellectual and social – that we see today. Yet this flourishing co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream.‘The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow – at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous … To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.’ —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

Stan Grant’s Quartarly Essay extends on his speech on racism in Australia at the IQ2 stage in 2015.

Now, you will hear things tonight. You will hear people say, “But you’ve done well.” Yes, I have and I’m proud of it and why have I done well? I’ve done well because of who has come before me. My father who lost the tips of three fingers working in saw mills to put food on our table because he was denied an education. My grandfather who served to fight wars for this country when he was not yet a citizen and came back to a segregated land where he couldn’t even share a drink with his digger mates in the pub because he was black.

My great grandfather, who was jailed for speaking his language to his grandson (my father). Jailed for it! My grandfather on my mother’s side who married a white woman who reached out to Australia, lived on the fringes of town until the police came, put a gun to his head, bulldozed his tin humpy and ran over the graves of the three children he buried there.

That’s the Australian Dream. I have succeeded in spite of the Australian Dream, not because of it, and I’ve succeeded because of those people.

The Ethics Centre https://ethics.org.au/stan-grants-speech/

Grant elaborates on the challenges associated with his personal history, the idea of indigenous people as ‘migrants’, and the layered nature of identity. I found it a fascinating book to read, especially in light of discussion around the referendum for a voice in parliament. For me, it highlights that there are no quick answers, instead it is always complicated.

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Read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

The story revolves around a portrait of Dorian Gray painted by Basil Hallward, a friend of Dorian's and an artist infatuated with Dorian's beauty. Through Basil, Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton and is soon enthralled by the aristocrat's hedonistic worldview: that beauty and sensual fulfillment are the only things worth pursuing in life. Newly understanding that his beauty will fade, Dorian expresses the desire to sell his soul, to ensure that the picture, rather than he, will age and fade. The wish is granted, and Dorian pursues a libertine life of varied amoral experiences while staying young and beautiful; all the while, his portrait ages and visually records every one of Dorian's sins.[3]Wilde's only novel, it was subject to much controversy and criticism in its time but has come to be recognized as a classic of gothic literature.

Although I had always had a copy of Oscar Wilde’s collect works, I had never actually read any of it. I really enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray. It is interesting to consider how the book, with its opium dens, hedonism and homosexual desire, would have been received when it was first the release. The dialogue reminded me of Marcel Proust, but with a gothic twist. I think that I could easily re-read it just for the quotes.

The gay strain in Wilde’s work is part of a larger war on convention. In the 1889 story “The Portrait of Mr. W. H.,” a pseudo-scholarly, metafictional investigation of Shakespeare’s sonnets to a boy, Wilde slyly suggests that the pillar of British literature was something other than an ordinary family man. In the 1891 play “Salomé,” Wilde expands a Biblical anecdote into a sumptuous panorama of decadence. Anarchists of the fin de siècle, especially in Germany, considered Wilde one of their own: Gustav Landauer hailed Wilde as the English Nietzsche. Thomas Mann expanded on the analogy, observing that various lines of Wilde might have come from Nietzsche (“There is no reality in things apart from their experiences”) and that various lines of Nietzsche might have come from Wilde (“We are basically inclined to maintain that the falsest judgments are the most indispensable to us”). Nietzsche and Wilde were, in Mann’s view, “rebels in the name of beauty.”

Alex Ross https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/08/08/deceptive-picture

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Checked into Check out who’s playing in April at the Thornbury LocalI saw Twinkle Digitz perform at The Thornbury Local. I had previously seen Will Hindmarsh aka Twinkle Digitz support Damian Cowell’s Disco Machine at the Corner. I was intrigued to see him again.

David Byrne talks about the the impact of space on the music that is created and performed. I am not exactly sure what music fits with the Local. The space includes a long bar on one wall and tables on the right, with a space down the centre to walk, with a small stage at one end with the mixing desk in front of the stage. Clearly, U2 are not going to work there, even with their cut back sound and choir. In some ways, Van and Cal Walker’s acoustic guitars, the support for the night, fitted the bill. What complicated things further was that it was clearly a shared space. Unlike myself, it felt like many were there for other reasons, some to socialise, some to eat, either way the music sitting in the background. After reading so much about The Go-Betweens and the Brisbane music scene lately, I wonder if this is what the Curry Shop was like?

Peter Walsh and Robert Vickers recall the Curry shop with wonder:

VICKERS: A dive, very small. It was, in fact, a curry shop. It was a place where you could buy curry and eat it, if you chose. A small basement— there was an alley in the back which opened into the store. It had a definite feel of squalor.
WALSH: It was dangerous to eat there. I don’t think I ever ate there. I played there.
VICKERS: It was certainly perfect for the time. It had columns, wooden columns, all through it; you were always up against a post. It looked like there were walls everywhere that had been taken down except for the uprights. A little tiny stage, and you couldn’t see anyone playing onstage because everyone could stand up front. You couldn’t hear anything—but you were there.
WALSH: You could hear the amps, and you could hear the guitars. The dressing room doubled as a urinal. I thought the people who ran it were hippies, and they meditated on a Sunday night, they had people to put you to sleep. And then someone must have said, “You should have some rock ’n’ roll!” – Page 46

Nichols – The Go-Betweens

With all this in mind, I am not sure if the music sonically fitted the space. However, the performance of one person on a stage supported by an array of technology means that the performance did in fact work.

One of the things that really draws me to Twinkle Digitz is the self-deprecating humor in the performance. This is particularly encapsulated in the outfits. (As a side-note, I feel There is something in the power of the prop. When I first saw Twinkle Digitz, it was at the Corner Hotel. At the Corner there is a clear divide between the stage and the audience, with a space off stage to wait and prepare. When I arrived at the Local, Will Hindmarsh was at the bar (to be honest, that is about the only place one can stand at the Local) with a few friends in a very unTwinkle Digitz attire, what I would call a lumberjack jacket. He was so unTwinkle Digitz that he had to explain to the lady behind the bar that he was in fact the performer for the night when ordering a drink. Once Van and Cal Walker had finished their set, he went about setting his gear in full view of the room. I wondered how he would transition from Will to the magic of Twinkle Digitz. However, once he had setup, out came the jacket and glasses. Surprisingly, these simple additions seemed to change everything. Alternatively, I am not sure that Worker & Parasite’s performance would have worked without the divide between setting up and performing.

Here is my attempt at the set list (although I am sure I have missed some tracks):

Pandora’s Box

Boogyin’ with my Baby-o

Shit Eatin’ Grin

In the City

Black Christmas

We Don’t Need Another Hero (Tina Turner)

Dancing In My Dream

SexxxKisss (Go-Go Sapian)

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Read Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote)

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a novella by Truman Capote published in 1958. In it, a contemporary writer recalls his early days in New York City, when he makes the acquaintance of his remarkable neighbor, Holly Golightly, who is one of Capote's best-known creations.

I stumbled upon Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s on Audible. I have never seen the film and actually had little knowledge what the book was about. The narrative style of trying to capture, Holly Golightly, this larger than life figure in a world of extremes reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. As WB Gooderham captures:

To start with, let’s take a look at the similarities between Jay Gatsby and Holly Golightly. Attractive, charismatic and enigmatic? Check. Connection with organised crime? Check. Penchant for hosting parties and affected speech inflections (old sport/darling)? Check/check. Cessation of said parties once romance blossoms? Check. Humble origins, changes of identity, driven by dreams and ideals leading ultimately to death and exile? Check, check, check, check.

@guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/sep/15/holly-golightly-great-gatsby

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Watched 2016 American mystery drama television series by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

The OA explores a multi-verse stemming from near-death experiences. Although I felt it was a bit slow to unpack all the characters and storyline, once it gets going it was quite captivating. From a storytelling point of view I feel like all these science fiction series blend into each other. There were aspects of talking between dimensions similar to Stranger Things, while the puzzle house reminded me of 1899.

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Listened 2023 studio album by Kimbra by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

A Reckoning is the fourth studio album by New Zealand singer-songwriter Kimbra, and the first under the label Inertia and [PIAS], having previously been signed with the label Warner Music.[1] It was released on 27 January 2023.[2] The album was promoted with the singles "Save Me",[3] "Replay!"[4] and "Foolish Thinking".[5]

A few years ago, my family and I went on a holiday to New Zealand. One of the things the stuck out to me was the balance between beauty and chaos. On the one hand, there are majestic landscapes, but these always feel in contrast to thermal mud pools and dormant volcanoes. I came away thinking that maybe one was not possible without the other. I had a similar experience with Kimbra’s new album.

It some ways A Reckoning continues on the path started with the raw striped back reimagining of Primal Heart. This is captured through tracks like Save Me, I Don’t Want to Fight and Foolish Thinking. However, this is contrasted by more upbeat and sometimes abrasive sounds, such as Replay and New Habit. This is something that Kimbra herself has touched upon:

Kimbra: There’s a juxtaposition in the aggression of certain sounds against something very soft and tender, which is really me in a nutshell. I have all these conflicting things that live within me. My art is an attempt to translate my inner world to be understood, like all of us. The sonic identity is ever-changing, because I’m ever-changing.

Source: Kimbra is Busier Than Ever After a Five-Year Recording Break: ‘I’m Growing as a Person’ by Bradley Stern

Even with the various ebbs and flows, the album still feels contained. For Kimbra, the constant is the storytelling:

Kimbra: I think the cohesion in my work is often the storyteller at the center, the voice that leads you through these different worlds.

Source: Kimbra is Busier Than Ever After a Five-Year Recording Break: ‘I’m Growing as a Person’ by Bradley Stern

An embracing of the contemplation:

Kimbra: It’s my belief that, when you try to annihilate parts of you, they just get stronger, you know? So, instead, I wanted to sit and listen to them and embrace the chaos and embrace the contemplation.

Source: Kimbra: “If You Try To Annihilate Parts Of Yourself, They Just Get Stronger” by Cyclone Wehner

Capturing the current shift we are all experiencing:

“We’re in a reckoning around spirit, race, our earth and how people walk in the world with a sense of conscience,” Kimbra has said of creating her fourth album. “I wanted to have something to say in my work that spoke to that shift we’re all experiencing.”

Source: Kimbra’s A Reckoning is mesmeric, contemplative and incredibly intimate by Bryget Chrisfield

Pain can transform us, and that this transformation is ultimately our best chance at a happy and just world.

Source: Kimbra – A Reckoning – Double J by @doublejradio

Additionally, the constant with A Reckoning is Ryan Lotts co-production that provides a consistent sonic pallet throughout. When I think about what makes that ‘pallet’, it is the tightness throughout. Whether it be strong sounds coming in just as quickly as they cut out or the way in which the vocals one minute feel distant and then feel close.

One of the interesting things I read about the collaboration between Kimbra and Lott was the way in which his role resembled a remixer.

Hunkering down in Upstate New York, she sent vocal demos to Lott, whose role resembled that of a remixer.

Source: Kimbra: “If You Try To Annihilate Parts Of Yourself, They Just Get Stronger” by Cyclone Wehner

Alternatively, Charles Brownstein has suggested that it is Kimbra’s performance the pulls all the disparate parts together:

You could listen to this album on shuffle, or the way it was designed, it really doesn’t matter — the one throughline is Kimbra’s performance. She always sells the song, whether it’s the yelling to get out of one’s head on “replay!” or the barely-there vocals of the closer. And on songs where the arrangements are eclectic, like on “la type”, “the way we were”, or “GLT”, she manages to make pop music fresh.

Source: Kimbra – A Reckoning – Northern Transmissions by Charles Brownstein

Place between Daniel Johns and James Blake.

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Read https://www.uqp.com.au/books/pig-city-10th-anniversary-editionAndrew Stafford the place and politics that laid the foundation to the music scene Brisbane music scene between 1975 and 2005.

Review published here.

ᔥ “” in The last time I saw Grant – Griffith Review (02/25/2023 21:51:03)

Marginalia

‘Here,’ writes Rod McLeod, ‘in a city practically under police curfew, you fucked and fought, got stoned, got married, or got out of town.’1 — location: 220 ^ref-1223

This book is my attempt to document the substantial yet largely unsung contribution that Brisbane has made both to Australian popular culture and to international popular music. In doing so, I aimed to chart the shifts in musical, political and cultural consciousness that have helped shape the city’s history and identity. In its broadest sense, Pig City is the story of how Brisbane grew up. — location: 231 ^ref-8907

A gerrymander represents the drawing of electoral boundaries in a way that serves the interests of the governing party. This certainly took place in Queensland, but it was the malapportionment, which meant that one vote in the west of the state was worth up to three in Brisbane, that was the critical issue. — location: 313 ^ref-21745

For much of the 20th century, education in Queensland was chronically neglected. Between 1919 and 1939, the textbooks in the small number of secondary schools remained unchanged; between 1924 and 1952, not a single new high school was built in Brisbane. The men ruling the state were the products of this system and the inheritors of its failings. As Peter Charlton observes, ‘It explains much of the state’s conservatism, suspicion and resistance to change.’4 It also accounts for the nickname given to Queensland by many commentators: the Deep North. — location: 326 ^ref-31412

Peter Milton Walsh: Anybody with a pulse would have felt they were trapped in a scene from In The Heat Of The Night. It was like a northern version of a southern American state; it was the cops against people who were alive. — location: 1895 ^ref-41850

This was punk’s greatest gift to Brisbane: far more crucial than any specific political refusal was the impetus that it provided to a bored youth to create its own history. — location: 1916 ^ref-19577

Living under the one roof on a diet of bread and black sauce was hardly conducive to group harmony; drinking and playing by night, no matter how good the gigs, only poisoned the cocktail further. — location: 1965 ^ref-45097

Mark Callaghan was too clever a songwriter to be stifled permanently by the breakup of the Riptides. With his new group, GANGgajang, he achieved deserved commercial success, writing a string of hits throughout the ’80s, experiencing a roughly equivalent measure of spoils and compromises along the way: the classic Sounds Of Then was even used as the soundtrack for both Coke and Channel Nine commercials. — location: 1977 ^ref-57417

Since acquiring Lindy Morrison, the band had completely deconstructed its original sound. Their music had become angular, based on shifting rhythms and tones rather than naive melodies. Robert Forster had no interest in rewriting Lee Remick, but for some time found himself unsure of which musical path to pursue: through 1980 and into 1981, by his own admission, ‘I didn’t write a really good song for two years.’ The band was practising obsessively and becoming stale. — location: 2210 ^ref-24557

Next to the albums that followed, Send Me A Lullaby, as the Go-Betweens’ debut was eventually titled, is often dismissed as amateurish and tentative. It is in fact ripe for rediscovery, making far more sense when viewed in the context of the band’s immediate post-punk peers. Still, the band was only beginning to find its feet. — location: 2242 ^ref-32483

Robert Vickers: I’d heard Send Me A Lullaby and thought it was quite different, obviously, to the early material. It was interesting, but it sounded like they were trying to work something out. So I was very happy when I heard Before Hollywood, because it was obvious that they had worked it out. It contained a lot of the melody that was in the early songs, but it was more intelligently put together. The structures of the songs were complex but also memorable, which is an almost impossible thing to do in music. — location: 2280 ^ref-4393

Not everyone appreciated the humour. Most of the station’s staff, particularly journalists, were finding themselves under increasing levels of surveillance. Some suffered the frightening experience of having their homes raided at dawn by the Special Branch. Others were subjected to more subtle means of intimidation. Amanda Collinge: I was at this Russ Hinze press conference one day, which was an eye-opener in itself, and I was approached by someone who started asking me questions that indicated he knew a hell of a lot about me. He asked me first how I was finding my lodgings at 8 Broadway Street in Red Hill. Then he asked me if my Datsun 180B was giving me a problem. And the third question was how was I managing to survive on whatever it was we were paid at Triple Zed at the time. — location: 2318 ^ref-61968

Where Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning spoke of ‘we’, and Archie Roach limited his own accounts of personal tragedy mainly to ‘I’, it is perhaps unsurprising that Carmody’s accusatory ‘you’ would prove too difficult for white audiences to swallow. — location: 2591 ^ref-3533

Some bands peak early. Almost all the great ones, however, take several years to hit their stride. — location: 4567 ^ref-37293

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Read The Go-BetweensDavid Nichols’ book on The Go-Betweens was first published in 1997. Capturing their rise in the late 70’s until their initial demise in the late 80’s. I read the third revision published in 2011, which included a postscript discussing the reforming of the band in the late nineties until McLennan’s death in 2006. My review can be found here.

MarginaliaMcLENNAN: Oh; we were driving along in a car one time; going to the Exchange Hotel. We drove over the bridge there and we were just thinking of a few names and 1 think Rob came up with the Go-Betweens. Because, we since found out, we went between two types of music, maybe, or …
FORSTER: Basically there’s night and there’s day, and you try and go between that, and you find the twilight zone—and there lies the Go-Betweens. – Page 20

Brisbane’s dance clubs in the 1960s—which were generally called discotheques, though in fact they featured live groups—must have been remarkable, especially the Sound Machine, which promoter and Brisbane patriot John Reid aka “the Brisbane Devotee,” remembered ten years later as having “fluorescent posters, red and black decor, telephones on the tables so you could ring other tables.” – Page 29

To follow the kind of lifestyle that people in other Australian cities took for granted—going out for the night, hearing a few rock bands who played music relevant to your world, drinking—was infused, in Brisbane, with a special kind of danger. The police could arrest you at any time, and effectively they could do what they wanted with you. – Page 30

Forster recalled that McLennan “was carrying a film mag and a Ry Cooder record” when they first met. “The film mag I approved of, the Ry Cooder record I was cool on.”

This kind of cultural flag-waving was a legitimate way to make friends in Brisbane in the late 1970s, according to Robert Vickers, who moved in the same circles as Forster and McLennan.

ROBERT VICKERS: If you walked down the street with a Nico album, and somebody who was interested in Nico saw you, they would probably stop. Oh. definitely, without a doubt. You really did judge people quite quickly by their tastes and that was very important. And you needed other people to be involved. Just someone to share it with. And if you did see someone walking down the street with a Nico album or Big Star 3, that was enough. If you saw someone on a train even dressed in a certain way, you might talk to them. – Page 38

McLennan has often characterized his relationship with Forster as a nonsexual homosexuality:

McLENNAN: We were in Queensland, which is a very macho state, and Brisbane symbolizes everything which is disgusting about Queensland. We were pushed together at university in our foppish attitudes towards theater as well. – Page 40

FORSTER: I’d been extremely successful at school; at school, I found a lot more freedom than later at university. I could do anything I wanted at school. It was a lot more creative, a lot more satisfying, a lot weirder, if you like. Which I thrived on. And as soon as I got into university and started handing in assignments, I was called aside and told, “If you want to do creative writing, we have little courses… but we don’t want creative writing.” And of course this is the way I’d written through school. And got good grades. I used to hand in schoolwork with photos. I’d take photos a lot. At university you were supposed to hand in a paper. I handed it in in a box—a cardboard box. It was rejected. And so there was a bad spiral. From being the schoolboy genius, I go to university and become the town dunce. – Page 41

MCLENNAN: At the end of 1977 he rang up and said, “You’re finishing [university], have you changed your mind, do you want to start a band?” And I said yes.
You know, it was: “Why not?” It wasn’t like: “Oh, yeah, let’s get a band together!”
It was just: Why not?” – Page 42

VICKERS: It was certainly perfect for the time. It had columns, wooden columns, all through it; you were always up against a post. It looked like there were walls everywhere that had been taken down except for the uprights. A little tiny stage, and you couldn’t see anyone playing onstage because everyone could stand up front. You couldn’t hear anything—but you were there. – Page 46

Recalling the Curry Shop in Brisbane

To be a go-between was far from a negative role in McLennan and Forster’s eyes. They were in between so many places, swamped by a cultural flood. While they faced the reality of Brisbane, the heat, parental pressure, and the influence of punk rock, they also yearned for New York in the 1960s and 1970s, Paris in the 1920s and 1950s, and were fascinated by Timothy Leary Bob Dylan, Tom Verlaine, Françoise Hardy, Samantha Eggar, Richard Hell, Blondie, and the Erasers. All of this was siphoned through a strange, anomalous Brisbane rock group called the Go-Betweens. – Page 52

PETER WALSH: They’d never say it, but you could tell which part of the record collection he’d listened to in the two minutes it took for him to write that song. – Page 60

FORSTER: Grant and I used to look at products. As a game, I’d go round the kitchen and pick up something like Vegemite. And we’d rattle off five or ten advertising slogans. Products around the kitchen. We were flying! We thought we were geniuses. The band was always the flagship: “If the band becomes famous, everyone’s going to be interested in these ideas. We’ve got to get famous.” The group was the get-famous thing—once that happened, we could go. ‘‘Surprise, surprise, everybody, yeah, we’re pop stars but we’ve got all these other ideas and we’re goddamn flickin’ geniuses. You thought you were only getting two moptop pop stars, what you’re getting is Truffaut and Godard! We’re the Orson Welles of rock.” It didn’t happen. – Page 70

MICHAEL O’CONNELL: John Willsteed virtually showed Lindy Morrison how to play the drums. In the performing process the spotlight was mainly on Irena and myself. – Page 79

Michael O’Connell on Zero

MORRISON: We went to Stradbroke Island for a Zero gig and we had our first fuck, and he was so overcome by losing his virginity and the joy of sex, that he went for a walk down to the beach and he didn’t return in time to get the bus back. I went back to Brisbane on the bus and he had to stay overnight, didn’t have any money, had to sleep on the beach. We all went back on the bloody bus which he missed because he wandered off to contemplate nature and the mysteries of the universe—because he’d had his first fuck. I didn’t hear from him for three days. Here I am. I’d finally got his pants off, and—the bloody guy—as soon as he does it he disappears down the beach and when he finally gets back to Brisbane doesn’t even ring me for three days! – Page 83

FORSTER: We arrived in London with acoustic guitars. We were the first people walking around London with them … this is late ’79. You could virtually be booked and put in jail for having an acoustic guitar. I don’t know who the last people were in London who had acoustic guitars or played acoustic songs to A&R people. They just thought we were completely nuts. They’d say “Oh, yeah. Send us a demo tape.” We’d go, “We don’t have a demo tape, we’ve got our acoustic guitars, we’ll come and play you some songs.”
I thought it was fantastic. Completely immediate. You can see that they play, they’re sitting on two chairs and they’re playing you the songs. If I was an A&R person I’d think: “I wish every band would come and do this.” But we were just laughed at. No one was interested. We went to Virgin. We went to Rough Trade and played “People Say” for Geoff Travis and he said “It’s too commercial.” I was just: “Whai does ihai mean? ” Too commercial? You just kept running up against these orthodoxies. ‘”No, you have to sound like the Gang of Four. You have to sound like the Fall. You have to sound sort of scrapey and scrappy, [with] the lyric way down in the mix.”
They thought it wouldn’t fit into what was going on. We arrived at a good moment and a bad moment. We only had half a dozen good songs in 197S. So if we’d gone over then, we would’ve— whatever time we’d gone over, it would’ve been the wrong time, we wouldn’t have been able to fit in. You know the week that “Lee Remick” came out? If we’d been there that week, it would have done really well. We would have been famous. Then. In England. – Page 85

Forster said, “In Brisbane, musically, we’re [enrolled] in a school, but we’re just doing it by correspondence, and then suddenly you go over to London and you’re actually at the college.” – Page 86

Dave Tyrer, Forster explained, ‘’has a Roland guitar synthesizer.” And, he continued, “Grant will be joining us, playing bass, when he gets back from New York.” – Page 97

There are so many aspects to the Go-Betweens story where one is left thinking ‘what if’, I can only imagine that a guitar synthesiser would have changed their sound.

MORRISON: I cooked this fabulous Christmas dinner, and half an hour before Christmas dinner everybody hit up. So when Christmas dinner came, nobody could eat. And everyone was just sitting around, the gravy was congealing in thick lumps over the chicken, the green vegetables were going stiff and the potato was hard. And the plates just sat there all day, it was a tragedy. It was that constant “straight” thing, that constant thing that I was very straight, and I could never move in that other world. Well, I didn’t want to. I didn’t need to. – Page 120

But although they were relieved, the group were determined to trust their instincts on their next release, and to return to the kind of music that had originally influenced them, rather than follow the rhythmic or fractured “art” influences that punctuated Send Me a Lullaby. – Page 121

The days ‘before Hollywood” were adventurous times. Before the era of sound; films could be made without the hindrance of language differences, in Europe, the USA or Australia (for which claims have been made, with some justification, as the birthplace of the feature film). The ruined European economy after the First World War gave Hollywood the boost it needed to cement its grip on film production; some loose parallels can be drawn with the music business and its perceived domination by Americans. The Go-Betweens, however, with their love and respect for the Monkees, Dylan, the Velvets, Jonathan Richman, etc., would be the last to criticize American cultural domination. – Page 121

There is obviously no love lost between McLennan and Morrison, but he pays her the tribute of conceding that “Cattle and Cane” “had a great rhythm, which I don’t think any drummer the world could have played except Lindy Morrison. Never ceases to amaze me, that rhythm thing.” – Page 124

The album is certainly very different from Send Me a Lullaby. Musically, it is closer to the work of Forster and McLennnan’s earlier heroes, such as Television. Lyrically, songs like the poignant “Dusty in Here” and “Cattle and Cane” (both McLennan compositions) initiated an approach, usually perceived as one of innocent sentimentality and nostalgia, that the group would still be embracing (and ultimately perverting) at the end of the decade. – Page 125

MCLENNAN: With “Cattle and Cane” I wanted to write an autobiographical song, and I was aware of that, and I say in the lyrics “Memory wastes.” That’s perhaps a little clever, but memory can be a wasteland where you wander around and live the rest of your life. – Page 126

Grant McLennan in an interview with Clinton Walker in 1982.

In keeping with McLennan and Forster’s “McCartney and Lennon” dynamic, Forster’s songs are far more bombastic, particularly the title track, “By Chance” – Page 129

NICHOLS: The big thing with Postcard seemed to be all these comparisons with the Velvet Underground. How do you think you fitted in with that?
McLENNAN: I don’t know. I know NME said that Josef K were the Velvets [in] 1967 and that Orange Juice were Velvets ’69. If we were anything, the Go-Betweens were the Velvets at their first rehearsal. Not quite grasping the songs, but the initial draw was there. – Page 142

NICHOLS: It’s [Send Me a Lullaby] not as coherent as the second one. Some songs don’t exactly fit together. I thought it was strange the way you chopped it up for Australian consumption. – Page 142

MCLENNAN: Keith saw me as being a more commercial writer than he was. I think that’s unfair, because Robert’s melodies you just have to absorb more than mine, that’s all. – Page 143

I think Robert Forster has the capacity to sing a song in a variety of ways. I sing it in a way that is always close to the heart. It’s a very intangible thing, I can’t explain it in any other way. – Page 146

McLennan’s “This Girl, Black Girl”—probably the first of his Go-Betweens songs to take on the Australian bush-ballad form that has since become a favored style for him – Page 148

[T]he Go-Betweens would. But the Go-Betweens were trying to flourish within a foreign culture—one they couldn’t tap into in the way Morrissey, to their evident frustration, apparently effortlessly could. – Page 151

I have agreed to donate all my interview tapes and other research materials to the National Film and Sound Archive (maybe writing this sentence will make me finally knuckle down to the task of fishing the tapes out from under the house). – Page 271

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Read Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head

One day in the summer of 2006 I learned that Syd had died. I phoned Mojo and asked if I could write the obituary piece. ‘Yes please,’ said the editor. ‘But we go to press in five days. Can you do 5,000 words by Friday?’ If it had been anybody else it would have been a chore, but I’d lived and breathed and dreamed Syd’s music since that twelve-year-old me first heard ‘Arnold Layne’. And so in the hottest week of that long hot summer I sat and wrote 5,000 words about Syd. Here’s another 140,000 to go with them.

Growing up, I had a friend who was obsessed with Pink Floyd. He learnt all the licks. He would play along to every track. Once, in a time before online shopping, we drove for an hour to buy a Syd Barrett boxset. There was always an aura around Barrett and his genius. I was therefore intrigued to read Rob Chapman’s book. I saw it come up in Faber’s Greatest Hits, it was also offered for free on Audible.

Chapman continues to push back on the myths around Barrett and his genius and subsequent mental collapse. Although there is no denying that drugs played a significant part in Barrett’s life, however there were also other aspects that influenced things. Chapman makes comparisons with the lives and works of other creatives, Edward Lear and Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll, who each in their own way suffered a lose that hung over them and influenced their art. Chapman also explores the difference in personalities and desires with the other members of Pink Floyd. With this in mind, success may not have been his thing. While in the end, for many during that time, madness offered up a way of being.

The stories that emulate around Barrett buying thirty guitars, living it up in a hotel or chasing down an airplane on the tarmac reminds me in some ways of stories that often surround Daniel Johns. So often there is a desire for such enigmas to fit a particular mold. However, I guess this may overlook their own desire of who they might want to be.

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Listened POLITICS: A Case Study of the Nexus between Populism, Apathy & Exploitation, by Worker & Parasite from Worker & Parasite

This EP has been commissioned and approved for circulation by the MINISTRY OF SOCIAL COHESION, as per directive #NC4551.All tracks were created, captured, and manipulated by members of WORKER & PARASITE sporadically over the period 2020-2022.Percussive instrumentation captured at CACTUS ROOM. Totality of additional audio captured at undisclosed locations.[REDACTED] commissioned by the relevant department to master all works. Accompanying visuals completed by @natrees.b and [REDACTED].Further PARTY acknowledgments: [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED], [REDACTED].Severe regards to all PARTY Members.

A friend invited me to attend the benefit for Food Not Bombs. In particular, he was interested in seeing Worker & Parasite. “They are like Devo.” I had not heard of the band, but was intrigued, especially after listening to their EP, POLITICS: A Case Study of the Nexus between Populism, Apathy & Exploitation. The performance was everything that you would want. The music was tight, the content was provocative, the presentation was intriguing (what was in the envolope?), and overall I was left thinking afterwards.

My one question was where to next? Sonically, the music goes in a few different directions, but I wonder if the music is a response to the current context?

(Sonically) Place between Architecture in Helsinki and LCD Soundsystem

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Read 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy by Contributors to Wikimedia projectsInspired by The Partially Examined Life’s investigation of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, I re-read the book. I remember by left in both shock and awe at the book when I first read it, but the podcast really helped elucidate what makes the text special for me, particularly the idea of landscape as a character and the contradictory nature of characters such as The Judge. This lead me to reading The Road.

I had never seen the film nor read The Road in the past. To be honest, even though I had heard of it, I did not really know what it was about before starting the journey. It is interesting, I am not sure if I would have read the book based on the summary:

A father and his young son journey on foot across the post-apocalyptic ash-covered United States some years after an extinction event. The boy’s mother, pregnant with him at the time of the disaster, committed suicide some time before.

Realizing they cannot survive the winter in more northern latitudes, the father takes the boy south along interstate highways towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and a supermarket cart. The father is suffering from a cough. He assures his son that they are “good guys” who are “carrying the fire”. The pair have a revolver, but only two rounds. The father has tried to teach the boy to use the gun on himself if necessary, to avoid falling into the hands of cannibals.

Source: The Road – Wikipedia

However, the destination does not always seem that important with McCarthy.

Initially, I was left wondering what had happened to the world that McCarthy’s novel traverses. However, it is soon made clear that it is not really the point. I guess when the whole world catches fire that you might not even know the cause is.

What seems to matter is what it means to exist in a world merely focused on survival. What does it mean to be ‘one of the good ones’ in a world where many have to cannibalism to survive?

“There is no God and we are his prophets.”

In part, the book feels like it is about the future and the threat of global warming, but it also feels like it is about the present. Although I have only read two McCarthy books, I feel different after them.

Bookmarks

McCarthy’s is an elemental voice. In his voice I hear stone shifting, glaciers cracking open, trees moaning in the wind. The ancient cadences of his prose take on an almost otherworldly quality, a quality that transports you. I’m constantly in awe of the language and recognizing how he’s putting together his sentences so exquisitely.

Source: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road May Have the Scariest Passage in All of Literature by Joe Fassler

Though McCarthy’s not afraid to stare into the abyss, he seems to also carefully consider his use of violence. When I’m reading someone like Chuck Palahniuk, I often feel he’s titillated by a kind of gorenography. He’s writing violence in a way that feels excessive and part of some carnival sideshow meant to make people slap their knees and guffaw horribly. When I look at The Road, or a book like Blood Meridian, McCarthy describes every terrible thing that a mind could conjure. But he’ll also pull back. He’ll allow some violence to take place off stage, because he knows unseen acts can be as brutal and affecting as violence that’s shown—perhaps more so.

Source: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road May Have the Scariest Passage in All of Literature by Joe Fassler

Joe Fassler explains that what makes McCarthy’s so powerful is his avoidance ‘gorenography’ by leaving so much of the violence off the stage.

The Road is neither parable nor science fiction, however, and fundamentally it marks not a departure but a return to McCarthy’s most brilliant genre work, combined in a manner we have not seen since Blood Meridian: adventure and Gothic horror.

Source: After the Apocalypse | Michael Chabon by Michael Chabon

The existence of a moral structure—the will to do good—is the soaring discovery hidden in McCarthy’s scourged planet.

Source: Cormac McCarthy’s new masterpiece. by Jennifer Egan

The way McCarthy sails close to the prose of late Beckett is also remarkable; the novel proceeds in Beckett-like, varied paragraphs. They are unlikely relatives, these two artists in old age, cornered by bleak experience and the rich limits of an English pulverised down through despair to a pleasingly wry perfection.

Source: Review: The Road by Cormac McCarthy by Alan Warner

SamuelBeckett #TheRoad #CormacMcCarthy

Which is to say that, deny it as we like, all of our effort and creativity in this world implies an orientation toward some transcendent place or mind outside this world; that human consciousness suggests a superhuman correlate; that, adapting Nietzsche, to believe in grammar is to believe in God. Following from this premise of a link between human and divine creativity, McCarthy inquires what will become of humanity if all of its efforts come to grief, if the divine security is thereby invalidated? On this question, The Road runs both ways: how can the last survivors of the doomed human race retain faith either in itself or in God?

Source: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by John Pistelli

It is to inquire about what purpose our activities have at all, however mixed and marred by violence or oppression they are.

Source: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by John Pistelli

The only thing in this world that is divine is us, or, more specifically, whatever in us rises above the merely reasonable. Reason can do nothing but perceive and manipulate the already-given, by definition evil in this evil world, but the divine spark preserves the irrational goodness and beauty of the true Lord.

Source: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road by John Pistelli

McCarthy is seemingly less interested in exploring the causes of this mass extinction event and its immediate aftermath choosing instead to focus on the dynamic relationship between a father and his son. This relationship, and the uniquely human traits that are exemplified within its bounds, stand in stark contrast to the primeval immorality of the other survivors they encounter on the road.

Source: The%20Road%20-%20Cormac%20McCarthy%20(2006) by Matt Burgess

McCarthy does not say how or when God entered this man’s being and his son’s, nor does he say how or why they were chosen to survive together for 10 years, to be among the last living creatures on the road. But the tale is as biblical as it is ultimate, and the man implies that the end has happened through godly fanaticism. The world is in a nuclear winter, though that phrase is never used. The lone allusion to our long-prophesied holy war with its attendant nukes is when the man thinks: “On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them the world.”

Source: Review: ‘The Road,’ by Cormac McCarthy by William Kennedy

Although, as expected, the Father makes all pragmatic decisions concerning survival, the Boy is the clear authority on morality, persuading the father to preserve a charitable spirit in McCarthy’s amoral wasteland. He is the bringer of light in the darkness, the embodiment of “carrying the fire” (p. 234).

Source: Survival and Morality in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: Exploring Aquinian Grace and the Boy as Messiah by Carla M. Sanchez

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Listened No Song No Spell No Madrigal, by The Apartments from Microcultures

8 track album

I started reading Andrew Stafford’s book on the Brisbane music scene, Pig City, and I stumbled upon this quote from Peter Milton Walsh:

Peter Milton Walsh: We sped them up! I was terrified of doing my own stuff, because it was so slow, and because it was intimate. And essentially, the thing that I liked about that time was everything felt like it was all amphetamine-driven and it was a great rock experience . . . [Whereas] a song like Nobody Like You, I could play it on the piano now and it’s a big, slow ballad. It wasn’t lounge music in the sense of the commodity that lounge is now, but very much like playing in your living room.

https://www.uqp.com.au/books/pig-city-10th-anniversary-edition

It dawned on me that even with all the references to Walsh throughout the Go-Betweens history, I had never actually listened to any of his music, so I jumped in.

Spotify provided me two references to ‘Nobody Like You’. I listened to the first version, the original track from 1979 EP, The Return Of The Hypnotist, while the second version was from the 2015 album, No Song No Spell No Madrigal. Interestingly, the 2015 version was much closer to the ‘slow ballad’ that Walsh touched upon in the quote from Pig City. I really liked the newer version, so I jumped into the full album.

I had read pieces about Walsh and his thoughts on things in the Go-Between’s documentary Right Here, however I did not really know much about Walsh himself. I really enjoyed No Song No Spell No Madrigal. It certainly showed a maturity from the early sound. It also demonstrated a rawness that really hit home. As Andrew Stafford captured in his review of the album:

For years, silence had seemed like the only way to suitably honour his son’s passing, but the more songs that came, the more they weighed. “I [couldn’t] go on if I didn’t do them,” he says. “It was like a necessity because here he lives, in these songs – do I just throw them away, so that’s another thing that’s forgotten?”

Andrew Stafford https://www.andrewstaffordblog.com/auto-draft/

Walsh’s reflection on the lose of his son, Riley, reminded me of Nick Cave’s discussion of lose in Faith, Hope and Carnage. Foc Cave, the devastation of grief happens to everyone eventually:

this will happen to everybody at some point – a deconstruction of the known self. It may not necessarily be a death, but there will be some kind of devastation. Page 102

Nick Cave https://www.nickcave.com/faith-hope-and-carnage/

Place between Destroyer and Guy Pearce.

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RSVPed Interested in Attending Food Not Bombs Punk Benefit

Saturday 4th March 2023 @ Bar 303, 303 High Street, NorthcoteDoors at 7pm - first band at 7:30Cash only on the door - first in best dressed.GUN LAWShttps://gunlaws.bandcamp.com/track/killing-the-landlordWORKER AND PARASITEhttps://workerandparasite.bandcamp.com/track/apoliticalREAKSIhttps://lavidaesunmus.bandcamp.com/.../esok-hari...SEPSIShttps://sepsispunk.bandcamp.com/album/demoKATORGAhttps://katorga2.bandcamp.com/.../grind-the-enemy-axegrinderENCIERROhttps://encierrocrusty.bandcamp.com/album/doomsday-demoThis event will take place on stolen Wurundjeri land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional custodians and pay our respects to all indigenous people, regardless of their age. Sovereignty was never ceded.Entry prices on a sliding scale: Unwaged $15 / Waged $20 / Solidarity $30Free entry for First Nations peopleAll door proceeds go towards building a permanent kitchen for Food Not Bombs Melbourne at the new Catalyst Social Centre in Coburg. Info: https://catalystcentre.net/about/

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Read My Rock 'n' Roll Friend by Tracey Thorn - Canongate Books

In 1983, backstage at the Lyceum in London, Tracey Thorn and Lindy Morrison first met. Tracey’s music career was just beginning, while Lindy, drummer for The Go-Betweens, was ten years her senior. They became confidantes, comrades and best friends, a relationship cemented by gossip and feminism, books and gigs and rock ’n’ roll love affairs.Thorn takes stock of thirty-seven years of friendship, teasing out the details of connection and affection between two women who seem to be either complete opposites or mirror images of each other. She asks what people see, who does the looking, and ultimately who writes women out of – and back into – history.

I wrote my review of My Rock n Roll Friend here.

Marginalia

You looked like confidence ran in your veins. You looked like self-belief in a mini dress, the equal of anyone. LOCATION: 94

I know you remember that day too, but maybe you don’t know what it meant to me, what so much of our friendship meant to me: how you were a friend to me, but also a symbol. LOCATION: 131

Ambition and enthusiasm had set the motor running, but it had been a longer and harder slog than any of them had imagined. They’d come close a couple of times, but things hadn’t panned out, and success had proved elusive, while critical acclaim came easily. LOCATION: 170

Somehow I was instinctively picking up vibrations which told me that this woman was someone, that she had a story, that she herself was the news. LOCATION: 281

For an obsessive personality type like Lindy, the drums are both exciting and soothing. LOCATION: 317

Gerard Lee’s debut, True Love and How to Get It, where she is thinly disguised as the character Megaton Monroe LOCATION: 336

The two private schoolboys met and made friends at university in 1977, and their first scene together in this story is a real meet cute: Grant’s got three records under his arm, which are Ian Hunter’s debut album, Ry Cooder’s Paradise and Lunch, and Jackson Browne’s Late for the Sky, while Robert is in thrall to Bob Dylan, Roxy Music, David Bowie and the Velvet Underground. They recognise in each other two typical nerdy boys, both studying literature and drama. Grant has a room full of film magazines, and neither of them are attracted to the aggressive machismo of Brisbane punk. Instead, they’re into Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine and Jonathan Richman, and when Robert starts to write songs they reveal a pop sensibility filtered through an academic lens. LOCATION: 377

If Robert meeting Grant was all about kindred spirits and mutual identification, then the meeting of Robert and Lindy is an attraction of opposites. He reciprocates her interest, he can feel the tug of the magnet, and they start circling each other. LOCATION: 397

Years later, when their relationship is shattering and dissolving, he will write a song called ‘Head Full of Steam’, and when they play it live on UK television on The Old Grey Whistle Test, he’s added a few lines that don’t appear on the album version: ‘Steam may rise / Steam may tear / Can I come to your place / Can I wash your hair.’ At the time, Lindy tells me those lines refer to an actual event, which is precious in both their memories, and I feel in possession of secret information, privy to the background details which make up the vivid story of this song. LOCATION: 425

With Zero, she’s been in a politically motivated punk band, and The Go-Betweens are decidedly not punk and not political. They don’t have nicknames or slogans or haircuts. They’re not a gang or a crew. LOCATION: 435

Robert and Grant are the kind of boys who buy Playboy magazine for the Bob Dylan interview inside. They may have written that dedication to girlfriends who didn’t exist, but then they became a bit embarrassed about it and decided they wanted a female drummer. LOCATION: 454

They feel that a woman might soften the band. And it’s hard not to laugh at the fact that they end up with Lindy, who is more ballsy than either of them, full of heart and emotion, yes, but about as soft as a decisive right hook. She’s never going to fit in with their fantasies of a chic little French girl, and she’s not going to be Edie Sedgwick, and she’s not going to revere Dylan like they do without asking some tough questions. LOCATION: 461

It is Lindy, Robert and Grant who are the original Go-Betweens. It is their band. In the future they might get in backing singers, or keyboard players, or violinists, or sax soloists, or a full-blown bloody orchestra, but the essence remains. They are a classic trio, whatever anyone might say later. LOCATION: 485

NOTE: This reminds me of austin kleon and the discussion of the complexity of children and relationships. I remember Clint saying that the addition of … was a disaster, but maybe the addition of any forth member was always fraut

Lindy makes it her business to start organising them, honing their sound, building a working relationship. She may have lived in a lot of boho houses but her work ethic is far from hippy-ish. The rehearsal room is her province. She finds the spaces, clocks the small ads, phones up the numbers, makes the bookings. Gets them all organised and there on time, and makes them practise. Practise, practise, practise, she says. It has always been that way, since high school, when there had been a choral competition, and she’d taken it upon herself to make sure that her team would win. She’d spent every spare minute rounding up girls to come and rehearse, chivvying them along. She had been relentless. LOCATION: 494

Every week his mother makes them a fruit cake, and because they have no money and are on the dole, they live off the fruit cake. The two of them walk around all the time holding hands, and she is twenty-eight to his twenty-one, which never feels weird to her, though her family make snide remarks about cradle-snatching. The flat is in a dangerous part of town, and terrible things happen; they hear fights next door, and someone gets pushed down the stairs. They come home each evening exhausted from the practice room, and sleep in till midday, then get up, eat fruit cake, go to practise, come back and lie in bed watching TV. LOCATION: 511

That title Lindy gives them for the first album, Send Me a Lullaby, is inspired by the Zelda Fitzgerald novel Save Me the Waltz. And Zelda is an interesting source of inspiration. A woman full of creative urges struggling to find an outlet, she lived, with her husband Scott, a life of drink and carelessness, but battled continually to escape from his artistic shadow, to make something of her own. After an all-out attempt to become a professional ballet dancer ended with a breakdown and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, she was hospitalised. On her release, she took up painting, then astonished everyone by producing a novel, sending it off to a publisher without telling Scott. It represented, as the critic Elizabeth Hardwick writes, another testament to her ‘unkillable energy’. Lindy too is full of unkillable energy. An almost supernatural determination and force of will is embedded in her character, and she will need it. Zelda died in a fire at a hospital, never having achieved artistic equality with her husband. Lindy will blaze and struggle and fight for a long time to get her due. LOCATION: 546

They are so poor that they have rows about buying butter, or shampoo, or anything that might not be deemed essential. Not everyone in the house is paying their fair share of the rent, but it is only Lindy who decides to take action. LOCATION: 588

She thinks the boys don’t really know how to count their bars, and they have no real sense of timing or rhythm, so it’s left to Lindy to literally drum it into them. She is determined not to ‘play through’ the quirky patterns, and not to straighten them out. She thinks that would be too nice, too boring. Instead, when she is presented with a song like ‘Cattle and Cane’, written by Grant with a time signature that she identifies as being ‘an 11-beat phrase’, she preserves all its strangeness, all its distinctiveness. She describes her drumming as providing a kind of counterpoint, rather than a back beat, following the melody in a more lyrical way. The song is lovely in its melodic sweetness, but thanks to Lindy’s drumming it is elevated into something much more elusive – a singular piece of music, impossible to pin down. LOCATION: 709

I wouldn’t have done it, but you’ve done it for me. I think the others are being disingenuous, up on their high horses claiming the moral high ground and pretending not to be curious about the details. LOCATION: 874

We devour biographies which only exist because someone opened a box they weren’t supposed to, or read some letters and diaries they were expressly forbidden to read. We respect privacy up until the point where we want to hear the end of the story, and then we tell ourselves that the story justifies everything. Is anything out of bounds? Maybe you and I are the kind of people who can’t look away; who can’t obey an instruction not to read; who can’t resist, can’t stand back, always want to know more. I appear to be more discreet than you but in many ways I aspire to your levels of indiscretion. I’m never going to purse my lips at you disapprovingly if you’re telling me a good story. LOCATION: 903

When it comes to describing you, everyone uses the same phrase: a force of nature. I do it myself in Bedsit Disco Queen: ‘as for Lindy, well, she was a sheer force of nature, an Amazonian blonde ten years older than me, unshockable, confrontational and loud’. Your friend Marie Ryan says in the liner notes to a Go-Betweens box set: ‘She was a force of nature, brash, opinionated and loud.’ Writer Clinton Walker says: ‘Lindy, is, as we know, this force of nature, and she’s very attractive in that, you know, and she can be a FUCKING NIGHTMARE.’ Peter Walsh doesn’t use the actual phrase, but comes close: Lindy Morrison. Her great, upending, tumultuous, machine-gun laugh . . . SHE SPOKE, IF NOT LIVED, EXCLUSIVELY IN CAPSLOCK, a Klieg light in a roomful of 40 watt bulbs. Describing her quickly exhausted all possible weather metaphors. Gales of laughter, gusts of enthusiasm, a storm of personality that broke in every room. An interview in Hero magazine says: ‘Lindy Morrison is an excitable girl. Some would say volcanic.’ LOCATION: 924

And we need our women friends in order to see ourselves mirrored and validated: to counter those moments we all experience when it feels like we don’t exist in the world; when we look and can’t find ourselves; when we are erased, pushed to the margins, written out of the story; when we start to feel invisible. In these moments, our female friends are invaluable to us. They reflect and embody us out there in the world; they remind us that we’re real, that we’re here, that we’re not mad. Female friendship isn’t a cosy thing: it’s a necessity. LOCATION: 1307

Still, why would I have known much about Australia? In 1987, I’d never been there. To me, she represents Otherness. She has come from Elsewhere. In that sense, the inaccuracy is truthful. Much about her is mysterious to me, unknowable. ‘I have a friend and she taught me daring / Threw back the windows and let the air in / She taught me how to be easy too / And I had a lot of unlearning to do.’ LOCATION: 1325

It was a time when we invented ourselves in diaries and letters. Not having social media didn’t mean we were more authentic. My letters to Lindy are as stylised and performative as any Instagram account. I am often trying to be my Best Self, or what I think is my Best Self – witty and anecdotal, flippant and bitchy. I want never to be boring. It will be years before I dare to show a more vulnerable, fucked-up self to my friends, and in these letters any flashes of truth are often disguised as jokes. LOCATION: 1375

She may have needed glasses, but she never had a problem seeing. LOCATION: 1551

When I learn about the child and teen she used to be, they are not immediately recognisable to me as the Lindy I thought I knew. The uncertainty, the self-doubt, the miseries suffered over her appearance – they’re at odds with my image of her. I had formed a first impression of her as a textbook heroine: a bold adventurer, no one’s plaything, no one’s victim. But I created that myself, out of almost nothing. LOCATION: 1607

Something has happened between the act and its recording – a band which was a trio has become the story of two friends. What happened to Two Wimps and a Witch? Who decided that the witch could be written out of the history, and who was at that meeting? LOCATION: 2428

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Watched The Go-Betweens: Right Here (2017) - The Screen Guide - Screen Australia from screenaustralia.gov.au

The Go-Betweens : Right Here is the feature length documentary about the people who created the seminal rock band the Go-Betweens. It is a heartfelt story of discovery, uncovering the intensely passionate, creative and fraught relationships that formed one of the most loved and influential bands in Australian rock history. It is also the universal story of a great creative adventure that spanned three decades, through countless successes, failures, romances, break-ups, betrayals, triumphs and tragedies.

Kriv Stenders tells the story of The Go-Betweens, from Robert Forster’s first meeting with Grant McLennan at university in 1975 throught to the end of the band when McLennan died in 2006. Stenders has some history with the band as the director of the music video to Streets of Your Town. It pulls together snippets of voices from inside and outside of the band both now and then. It is interesting to watch this alongside David Nichols book The Go-Betweens as it gives face to the many names. I would not be surprised if Nichols actually provided some of the source material. It differs from 16 Lovers Lane – The Story Behind the Album documentary in that it also goes into the band’s second reincarnation. It also provides a more nostalgic perspective on their legacy. A highlight is Clinton Walker’s commentary throughout.

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Read novel by Franco-Czech writer Milan Kundera, published in 1998 by Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Identity (French: L'Identité) is a novel by Franco-Czech writer Milan Kundera, published in 1998. Kundera moved to France in 1975. Identity is set primarily in France and was his second novel to be written in French with his earlier novels all in Czech. The novel revolves around the intimate relationship between Chantal and her marginally younger partner Jean-Marc. The intricacies of their relationship and its influences on their sense of identity brings out Kundera's philosophical musings on identity not as an autonomous entity but something integral shaped by the identities of others and their relations to your own.

The short novel explores the idea of identity and perception through the relationship between Chantel and Jean-Marc. Central to the story is Chantel’s comment “men don’t turn to look at me anymore” and everything that stems from that.

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Read Faith, Hope and Carnage - Nick Cave

Faith, Hope and Carnage is an extended conversation between Nick Cave and Observer journalist, Seán O’Hagan, who have known one another for thirty years. Created from over forty hours of intimate recordings, the book examines questions of faith, art, music, freedom, grief and love. It draws candidly on Cave’s life, from his early childhood to the present day, his loves, his work ethic and his dramatic transformation in recent years. From a place of considered reflection, Faith, Hope and Carnage offers ladders of hope and inspiration from a true creative visionary.The audiobook, narrated by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan, and directed and produced by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard, features sixteen musical codas and elements from Carnage, Skeleton Tree and Ghosteen and includes an exclusive 12-minute conversation between Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan.‘Astonishing… This beautiful book is a lament, a celebration, a howl, a secular prayer, a call to arms, a meditation and an exquisite articulation of the human condition. It will take your breath away.’ – Observer‘This is a book about the freedom attained from understanding that life is precarious. Everyday carnage has brought forth a book of hope and freedom and life. *’ – Telegraph‘Illuminating . . . If it meets a need for Cave, it also feels like a gift to the reader’ – Sunday Times ‘Unerringly frank, self-interrogative and insightful’ – Guardian‘Remarkably candid . . . One of Cave’s greatest skills is to bring a secular eye to the religious and a religious eye to the secular, the sacred and the profane intertwined’ – New Statesman‘The reveals come thick and fast, as does the wisdom. Meanwhile, the insight into Cave’s songwriting is profound, and he is thoughtful on the contrast, thematically and structurally, between then and now. ’ – MOJO ‘Music Book of the Year’‘Cave’s humour and insight into the human condition shine through. … Down in the darkness is a kind of consolation too.’ – Uncut‘A book that’ll stay with you forever’ – Stylist***

I wrote my review for Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Sean O’Hagan here.

Faith, Hope and Carnage is a meandering on and off conversation between Nick Cave and journalist, Seán O’Hagan, captured on the page through fourteen chapters. Beginning at the start of the 2020 and carrying on through to the end of 2021, Cave walks through the process of creativity as it happens, as well as reflecting upon the death of his son, grieving, life and music. It is very much a pandemic project brought about by the strange times.

Aaron Davis https://readwriterespond.com/2023/02/review-faith-hope-and-carnage-by-nick-cave-and-sean-ohagan/

ᔥ “Richard Fidler” in Nick Cave and the bruises of experience – ABC Radio (02/14/2023 21:37:55)

Marginalia

In terms of what you and I are doing here, it is difficult for me to go back there, but it is also important to talk about it at some point, because the loss of my son defines me. Page 12

In terms of what you and I are doing here, it is difficult for me to go back there, but it is also important to talk about it at some point, because the loss of my son defines me. Page 12

My music began to reflect life as I saw it. Page 12

by the time we wrote Ghosteen, Warren and I were purely improvising. I would play the piano and sing, and Warren would play electronics, loops, violin and synth, with neither of us really understanding what we were doing or where we were going. We were just falling into this sound, following our hearts and our understanding of each other as collaborators, towards this newness. We spent days playing more or less non-stop. Then there were more days of sifting through it all and collecting the bits that sounded interesting. And, in some instances, that was maybe just a minute of music or a single line. After that, it was really about constructing songs from these lovely, disparate parts. Our editing process was initially akin to collage or a kind of musical assemblage. Then we’d work at building songs on top of that. Page 13

I come to the studio with loads of ideas and an enormous number of written words, most of which, by the way, are discarded. Page 14

you only need ten songs, ten beautiful and breath-taking accidents to make up a record. Page 14

the lyrics lose their concrete value and become things to play with, dismember and reorganise. I’m actually very happy to have arrived at a place where I now have an utterly ruthless relationship to my words. Page 15

The creative impulse, to me, is a form of bafflement, and often feels dissonant and unsettling. Page 16

Really, what I was aiming for on Ghosteen, though, was the creation of a single moment that was being looked at from various different points of view. I didn’t quite get there, though. Page 19

Essentially, Ghosteen rises out of that moment of peace, of calm, of simplicity, before everything shattered. It’s quite hard to explain but I think that comes close to it. Page 20

I know it’s a valuable line when my body reacts accordingly. An almost erotic enchantment – a sort of sunburst! Page 22

It seems to me that my best ideas are accidents within a controlled context. You could call them informed accidents. Page 23

Religion is spirituality with rigour, Page 25

those early Birthday Party shows were religious in their way, with all that rolling around on stage and purging of demons and speaking in tongues. Page 27

older, I have also come to see that maybe the search is the religious experience – the desire to believe and the longing for meaning, the moving towards the ineffable. Maybe that is what is essentially important, despite the absurdity of it. Or, indeed, because of the absurdity of it. When it comes down to it, maybe faith is just a decision like any other. And perhaps God is the search itself. Page 28

I think music has the ability to penetrate all the fucked-up ways we have learned to cope with this world – all the prejudices and affiliations and agendas and defences that basically amount to a kind of layered suffering – and get at the thing that lies below and is essential to us all, that is pure, that is good. The sacred essence. I think music, out of all that we can do, at least artistically, is the great indicator that something else is going on, something unexplained, because it allows us to experience genuine moments of transcendence. Page 29

sadly, organised religion can be atheism’s greatest gift. Page 30

Sometimes you need to say out loud what you think or talk to someone else about the ideas you hold, just in order to see if they are valid. It helps clarify things for me to be challenged on my beliefs. This is the essential value of conversation, that it can serve as a kind of corrective. Page 31

Perhaps, but rational truth may not be the only game in town. I am more inclined to accept the idea of poetic truth, or the idea that something can be ‘true enough’. To me that’s such a beautiful, humane expression. Page 32

believing itself has a certain utility – a spiritual and healing benefit, regardless of the actual existence of God.. Page 33

I mean that all my songs are written from a place of spiritual yearning, because that is the place that I permanently inhabit. Page 35

God is the trauma itself. Page 36

Collective grief can bring extraordinary change, a kind of conversion of the spirit, and with it a great opportunity. Page 38

Well, that’s what it feels like with some songs. The more I’ve written, the harder it is to disregard the fact that so many songs seem to be some steps ahead of actual events. Page 40

Stepping into a church, listening to religious thinkers, reading scripture, sitting in silence, meditating, praying – all these religious activities eased the way back into the world for me. Page 42

there is a kind of gentle scepticism that makes belief stronger rather than weaker. In fact, it can be the forge on which a more robust belief can be hammered out. Page 42

The priest and religious writer Cynthia Bourgeault talks about ‘the imaginal realm’, which seems to be another place you can inhabit briefly that separates itself from the rational world and is independent of the imagination. It is a kind of liminal state of awareness, before dreaming, before imagining, that is connected to the spirit itself. It is an ‘impossible realm’ where glimpses of the preternatural essence of things find their voice. Page 43

I think to be truly vulnerable is to exist adjacent to collapse or obliteration. Page 45

found a kind of invincibility through acute vulnerability. Page 50

When you are making music together, conversation becomes at best an auxiliary form of communication. It becomes unnecessary, even damaging, to explain things. Page 52

In my experience, boredom is often close to epiphany, to the great idea. In a way, that is very much the agony of songwriting – because boredom is just boredom until it’s not! Page 56

The nature of improvisation is the coming together of two people, with love – and a certain dissonance. Page 57

One of the many things Arthur gave us was Ghosteen. Directly, I believe. I hope so, anyway. Page 60

It seems to me, life is mostly spent putting ourselves back together. But hopefully in new and interesting ways. For me that is what the creative process is, for sure – it is the act of retelling the story of our lives so that it makes sense. Page 69

she was unconditionally supportive of me even when I was at my least deserving. That’s a mother’s love. Page 71

Children need their parents, but parents need their children, too. Sometimes it’s all they have. Page 73

Religion is asking the question: ‘What if?’ And to me, that question is also, in its way, a completely adequate answer. Page 77

To me, the great gift of God is that He provides us with the space to doubt. For me at least, doubt becomes the energy of belief. Page 77

Why would I deny myself something that is clearly beneficial because it doesn’t make sense? That in itself would be illogical. Page 78

it has the ability to lead us, if only temporarily, into a sacred realm. Music plays into the yearning many of us instinctively have – you know, the God-shaped hole. Page 78

It deals with the necessity for forgiveness, for example, and mercy, whereas I don’t think secularism has found the language to address these matters. Page 80

But it could be that using heroin and the need for a sacred dimension to life were similar pursuits, in that they were attempts, at that time, to remedy the same condition. Page 83

you say dumb stuff when you’re young – that is the very definition of being young, then as now, as far as I can see. Page 85

It seems to me that much of our remembered past, especially around traumatic incidents, is based on assumptions and misunderstandings we collected at the time of the trauma and have gone unchallenged ever since. Page 88

t made me think about what our lives actually are, in the end. What are they made of? Are they only semi-fictions, received information and false, or eroded, memories? Are they stories you’ve told about yourself so many times, and shaped and reshaped, that have very little relation to the truth? There’s that famous Joan Didion line – ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live’ – which gets to the heart of our need for narratives that make sense of, or impose order on, our meandering lives. I guess it’s a way of making the cold, hard truths more palatable. Page 88

But in Mark’s version it’s like I was just eating up everyone who came near me and taking what I could from them creatively. Now, that is very much a matter of perspective. One of the criticisms aimed at me by people in the book is that I always needed a collaborator, as if that is some kind of weakness, rather than just a self-evident way of making better art – to be open to the ideas of other people, to be helped by other people. Some people he spoke to saw that as almost vampiric or something, but it’s interesting, because that kind of criticism almost always comes from people who were not engaged in creating art themselves. They were mainly peripheral, perpetual onlookers who know nothing about what it takes to create something of value. And if you were to ask me how I defined myself as an artist, I would say I was a collaborator, then and now. It’s actually one of the things I am most proud of, that I have had sustained productive relationships with people that have ultimately been mutually beneficial. I think most of the people I have worked with would agree. I always do my best to amplify and push to the front these people, you know … well, more or less. Page 90

I think we contain these traumatic memories in the cells of our body, in our blood, in our bones. Page 93

Some take drugs because they love the chaos and disorder; I took heroin because it fed into my need for a conservative and well-ordered life. Page 94

heroin addiction is all right until it’s not. It quickly escalates – very quickly, actually. Chaos is always just around the corner. And these kinds of rock and roll stories may be funny but they obscure a lot of darkness and pain. Page 97

I became a person after my son died. Not part of a person, a more complete person. Page 102

this will happen to everybody at some point – a deconstruction of the known self. It may not necessarily be a death, but there will be some kind of devastation. Page 102

I think we both worked out that we could be happy and that happiness was a form of insubordination in the face of, I don’t know, life, I guess. It was a choice. That’s it, a choice, a kind of earned and considered arrangement with the world, to be happy. No one has control over the things that happen to them, but we do have a choice as to how we respond. There was a defiance there, in the face of the world’s indifference and apparent casual cruelty. Page 103

I really don’t think we can not talk about it if we are talking about the creative process. It’s simply part of the whole thing. The creative process is not a part of one’s life but life itself and all that it throws at you. For me, it was like the creative process, if we want to call it that, found its real purpose. Page 104

I write songs is perhaps different from many songwriters. I don’t write continuously. Instead, I’ll put an actual date in my diary for when I will begin writing the next record. And that date is the starting point, the initial action towards making a record.

With songwriting, there are always these little glimmers embedded in all the scrambled nonsense and false starts and failed ideas. They’re buried in there like clues. What happens is that they suddenly present themselves, rise from the page, and begin to hold hands. Not all at once, necessarily, but quite rapidly, and then you start to get a creative momentum, a kind of collecting together of information that moves towards the basic framing of a song. Page 109

Travelling the world but seeing none of it! Page 110

you don’t want to then engage in some parallel occupation that makes you feel even worse, that picks away at your self-regard, makes you feel smaller or emptier or insignificant or a failure, or plunges you into a dark place that you have to climb back out of, or makes you cry, or makes you despair. Songwriting does that. Songwriting would be essentially the last straw. It’s just too fucking hard. So you write a book instead, or a screenplay, or an epic poem, or design a T-shirt, or something. Page 111

So thank God, quite literally, for music, because it’s one of the last remaining places, beyond raw nature, that people can feel awed by something happening in real time, that feeling of reverence and wonder. Page 112

Being on stage for me was just an amplification of the general way of life I was living at the time, but it wasn’t a great work ethic. In the end, after many years, I settled for chaos in the mind, order in the workspace. Chaos in the mind? That’s not something I associate with you these days. I mean chaos as a bounty of competing ideas racing around in your head. Page 114

it felt like there was a kind of radical intimacy taking place. Page 115

I could do it on my own, but I don’t think I’d do it nearly as well. The people I’ve worked with have brought a huge amount to the table. That began with Mick, and then Rowland came along with his extraordinary guitar playing and musical inventiveness. Page 116

On some level it’s just the nature of the beast, I guess. It is what I call the corrosive power of collaboration. Collaborations that work are the most glorious and productive of things. But if the collaboration is not attended to properly, with care and respect, it can eat away at itself. Page 119

We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self – This is me! Here I am! – in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces. And then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person – I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world. Page 121

The idea of encroaching mortality isn’t a concern – the idea of death as a sort of endgame, something separate, waiting down the line. It doesn’t feel like that to me. I guess I feel, day to day, and in a profound way, enmeshed in death, as if it is a clear and present state of being that manifests itself in a sort of vitality. I feel a certain receptivity to its positive influence or presence. Page 124

Susie is my wife, but also a collaborator. Page 126

You know the film I just made of ‘Idiot Prayer’, the solo show I did at Alexandra Palace during lockdown? Well, it was originally called ‘An Evening with Nick Cave’. That was what the team and I had always called it, and it had just sort of stuck, but when Susie found out that’s what it was called, her reaction was, ‘Wow! Could you even find a more boring title?’ So, I’m like, ‘Well, Jesus, babe, that’s just what it’s called! I can’t fucking change it now!’ And she’s like, ‘Okay, but I’m just saying it’s boring.’ So, after a while, I say, ‘Okay, what about “Idiot Prayer” then?’ And she’s like, ‘There you go.’ That sort of thing happens a lot. So a good result, but exasperating at the time. Page 126

Most of the time, I just don’t solicit other people’s opinions if can help it, unless of course I know their opinion is going to be the same as mine. I prefer to go with the flow, provided it’s my flow, Page 127

What I’m trying to say is that I am not just influenced by her, but emboldened by her. Page 128

And you’re right. She is astute to say that about my songs – ‘I always seem to be walking in and out of them’ – because it’s true; I don’t ever sit down with the intention of writing a song about Susie. It’s more that, when I am in that shadowy creative flow, I find it difficult to maintain my own form, so welded am I into her being. I find myself adopting her perspective – flipping from one to the other. A therapist would have a field day with this! Page 128

Sometimes I am trying to manage several voices in my songs – my voice, Susie’s voice and our shared voice, and of course the subjective or observational voice. Page 129

She doesn’t sit down and write the lyrics to a song with me, because there is no room in the process for her, or anyone else, for that matter. And I don’t physically help her design her dresses, because she has her own highly distinctive ideas about beauty and needs to get in touch with that. Page 129

I find not knowing about something in art, that kind of adventuring innocence, whether it is songwriting, scriptwriting, dress designing, score work, sculpture or any other thing, a distinct advantage much of the time. At least initially, anyway, because you enter into the project naïve to the potentially destabilising and corrosive aspects of it. You just blunder in and give it a go. Page 130

In the case of the Charlie Poole song, the lost, cuckolded man moving from house to house, retelling his tale of woe, generates a kind of narrative push to the song itself. Almost like the rhythm of the train tracks under a Johnny Cash song. It’s very beautiful. Page 138

I think we probably find the things that we love early on, and never stray too far from them. I read somewhere that there is something that happens within the brain between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three that makes us super-receptive, particularly to music, and that’s why we attach ourselves so strongly to pieces of music from that period of our lives. That certainly applies to me. To be honest, I simply don’t have the same attachment to music now, or maybe I don’t have the same fundamental need for it as I had back then. Even when I find something that completely blows my mind, there’s an almost academic remove. I don’t have the urge to play it over and over. Page 140

We have a kind of duty to remain engaged. There are a few lines towards the end of ‘Lavender Fields’ that are about that. Once I was running with my friends All of them busy with their pens But the lavender grew rare What happened to them? Page 142

To some degree I feel I have the distinct advantage of having made a long lifetime of terrible mistakes. Like most old people, I have been hurt more, I have suffered more, and I have fucked up more. I have also overcome things that are incomprehensible to younger people. I have experienced more by virtue of being in the world for a really long time. Older people may be broken down, but we are also vast repositories of experience and, if we have been paying attention to world, a certain amount of wisdom, too. This has value. It is worth something. Page 143

thinking about that some more, too, and I was reminded of that beautiful notion of William Blake’s – of Jesus being the imagination. And also that startling image from Matthew 27: ‘Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who remain standing there in front of the tomb.’ That always makes me think of what it’s like to experience the birth of a creative idea; it’s as if you are waiting for the Christ to appear, to step from the tomb, and reveal Himself. That’s quite an analogy. Do you see songwriting at its best as a kind of creative self-revelation? Yes, and in order for it to happen, you have to be patient. You must have faith. And often you must do the waiting alone. You have to have forbearance, a patient self-control and a tolerance of the process itself. And also an alertness. It is easy to lose one’s nerve, to run away like the apostles did, to go and do something else, but we do that at our peril. That’s when you risk missing the astonishing idea, the Jesus idea. Page 144

the residual idea that pretends to be the astonishing idea. As an artist, you really need to constantly be on the lookout for that. I would say, ‘Beware the residual idea!’ Page 144

Exactly. I tend to find that when I first sit down to write new songs there is a kind of initial flurry of words that appears quite effortlessly. They seem to be right there, at hand, so there is a cosiness about them, a comfortableness. And because they aren’t too bad, really, you immediately start thinking, this is all going to be easy. But these are the deceiving ideas, the residual ideas, the unused remnants of the last record that are still lurking about. They’re like the muck in the pipes, and they have to be flushed out to make room for the new idea, the astonishing idea. I think a lot of musicians deal in residual ideas, because they’re seduced by the comfortable and the familiar. For me, that’s a big mistake, although I can understand the temptation to create something reassuringly familiar. And, in a way, the whole industry is set up to cater to that – to the well-known or second-hand idea. Page 144

I think music can have a way of influencing the heart in a righteous way that enables us to do better, to be better. Especially when the songs get played live. Collectively, we can experience the music actually improving the condition of the listener. I see it all the time. I experience it myself as well. It’s a very real thing. Page 146

In the collective moment of a performance, people are united by the music. That, in itself, has a moral force. Page 146

It requires a certain amount of nerve to rip it all up and start again with something that feels new and, therefore, dangerous. For a start, your brain does not want to go there and it’s telling you that. It’s challenging to write away from the known and the familiar. Page 147

What I’m saying is that you can’t get to that truly creative place unless you find the dangerous idea. And, once again, that’s like standing at the mouth of the tomb, in vigil, waiting for the shock of the risen Christ, the shock of the imagination, the astonishing idea. Page 147

I think the old become not just repositories of lived experience, but of the dead, too. Page 148

I think these absences do something to those of us who remain behind. We are like haunted houses, in a way, and our absences can even transform us so that we feel a quiet but urgent love for those who remain, a tenderness to all of humanity, as well as an earned understanding that our time is finite. Page 148

always myself – even when it’s a character it’s just me in disguise. Page 150

I have absolutely no idea why I told you that story. You actually are like a therapist. Page 151

It’s all in the performing – performing in front of an audience. That’s when the fullness of the songs presents itself. I think the audience draws forth the true intent of the songs. Not that the recorded versions are lesser forms, mind. I actually prefer original recordings to live ones as something to casually listen to. They’re less histrionic, less demanding, but the live versions of the songs are much more experiential and communal. Page 152

blew it. We squandered it. Early on, many of us felt that a chance was presented to us, as a civilisation, to put aside our vanities, grievances and divisions, our hubris, our callous disregard for each other, and come together around a common enemy. Our shared predicament was a gift that could potentially have transformed the world into something extraordinary. To our shame this didn’t happen. The Right got scarier, the Left got crazier, and our already fractured civilisation atomised into something that resembled a collective lunacy. For many, this has been followed by a weariness, an ebbing away of our strength and resolve and a dwindling belief in the common good. Many people’s mental health has suffered as a consequence. Page 154

Yes, that’s right, the work is a form of salvation. Page 156

Twitter is really just a factory that churns out arseholes. Page 165

The Red Hand Files brought about a significant change in my life. For better or for worse, they became the channel that allowed me to step outside my own expectations of what it was to be a rock singer, or whatever it is that I am. They freed me from myself. Page 166

It all comes down to seeing, essentially, to the visual nature of things. That is the way I’ve experienced the world since childhood. And that is the way I write songs – as a series of highly visual images, often violent, mostly sorrowful. Warren, on the other hand, hears the world. Page 167

I kind of loved everything back then, especially painting. Van Gogh, El Greco, Goya, Munch, the nudes of Renoir. I loved Piero della Francesca and Stefan Lochner and Rodin and Donatello. Titian, too, and Rubens. Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele Page 171

For me, it has always been about the nature of the human soul rather than the problems of the society we live in. Page 173

Insofar as the rules that govern our lives no longer apply. I am very familiar with this feeling. It is the compensatory gift at the heart of grief. The usual precepts collapse under the weight of the calamity: the terrible demands that we place upon ourselves; our own internal judging voice; the endless expectations and opinions of others. They suddenly become less important and there is a wonderful freedom in that as well. Page 174

But, you know, I feel that the song addresses the idea that there is a bottomless rage out there that has been animated somehow and is now mutually sustaining – each side fuelling the other. The cosy arrangement that the Left and the Right have traditionally had has turned into something else entirely. It constantly feels like things are going to blow. Page 178

So you learn to make peace with the idea of death as best you can. Or rather you reconcile yourself to the acute jeopardy of life, and you do this by acknowledging the value in things, the precious nature of things, and savouring the time we have together in this world. Page 182

However, God cannot be defended, hence we must. Page 186

I can’t imagine there is anyone with no regrets, unless they are leading extraordinarily unexamined lives, or they are young, which often amounts to much the same thing. So, yes, I have my regrets. Not that regrets in themselves are bad things, of course. They are generally indicators of a certain self-awareness or personal growth or distance travelled. Page 189

prayer is not so much talking to God, but rather listening for the whispers of His presence – not from outside ourselves, but within. It’s kind of the same with the questions that come in to The Red Hand Files. I think they are singularly and collectively trying to tell me something, which may just be ‘I am here’. I think they reflect my own needs. There is an exchange of a sort of essentialness, wherein we attend to each other through a sharing of our collective need to be listened to. Page 190

one of the reasons the project was created was an attempt to find a language to set forth, in words, the travails of grief. Page 191

I do have a strong commitment to the primary impulse, the initial signalling of an idea – what we could call the divine spark. I trust in it. I believe in it. I run with it. Page 192

There is a sense of discovery about it. Things unfold. This place of discomfort and uncertainty and adventure is where an honest, good-faith conversation can happen. It’s all the same thing. Page 192

Grief actively revolves around a point of torture, a moment of realisation, an actual tangible thing. Page 194

There is a responsibility around The Red Hand Files that I had no idea I was getting into. Page 195

in a sense, Andrew was right, because if Arthur hadn’t died, I would not have been doing any of these things. But grief gave me a reckless energy. It afforded me a feeling of invincibility and a total disregard for the outcome, a sort of fearless abandonment to destiny. The worst had happened. Page 197

I can only imagine. So is Arthur a kind of guardian angel? Well, he does protect me, but he is not a guardian angel. Arthur is my son and he died. He exists just beyond my vision and my reason and a whole sea of tears – as a promise, maybe, or a wish. Page 197

This is how I have chosen to live my life – in uncertainty, and by doing so to be open to the divine possibility of things, whether it exists or not. I believe this gives my life, and especially my work, meaning and potential and soul, too, beyond what the rational world has to offer. Page 198

They may well be delusions, but these poetic intimations guide us back to the world. In that respect, they are as real and true as anything else, and perhaps the most beautiful and mysterious things imaginable. Page 199

what I am trying to present is the idea of grief as a gift. Grief as a positive force. Grief that can become, if we allow it its full expression, a defiant, sometimes mutinous energy. Page 200

Ironically, I think the rise of woke culture is akin to a fundamentalist religious impulse. Page 202

Any question where you have to mount an argument and do it in a few paragraphs without coming off as strident or conceited or like you’re pushing an agenda. This is difficult for me, as you know. Page 203

Negative responses take up mental space. They require time and energy they often don’t deserve, time and energy I would rather put elsewhere. Page 204

Well, music is one of the last great spiritual gifts we have that can bring solace to the world. It becomes a sort of duty, in my opinion, to use your music, not for your own aggrandisement, but for the betterment of others. As far as I can see, that is our purpose as artists. The Red Hand Files have come to belong in that tradition – as a small gesture of service, and, maybe, as a form of spiritual sustenance and kindness that may go some small way in helping people with their lives. Page 204

the night it happened feels acutely real and then everything afterwards goes kind of blank. Page 207

It felt like I was walking through treacle, or walking against the wind. Throughout the entire Skeleton Tree session I just felt dead, but I knew if I didn’t do the record then, I never would. Page 211

I was actually much better by then, but I do think, for a time, I lost agency somehow. I think that’s what happens: you essentially become a person who needs someone to tell them what to do. Page 215

I think grief needs to be measured by action. It’s not so much about working on your feelings. Your feelings come and go. They retreat and change and can ultimately surprise you. But you need to put some structure and method in your day, as best you can. I mean, that seems sound advice for any situation. You have to construct a series of actions around your day in order to survive: you exercise, you go down to the sea for a swim, you meditate, you make breakfast for your kid – you do all the small things. Page 216

we are not strong. We survived because we remained together. It is as simple as that. When one crashed, the other stepped up. That is important. Page 217

I don’t know how we got to where we are, because, in truth, I don’t know where that is. Page 218

People are good. I rarely see badness in people; rather, I see layers of suffering. Page 219

Love, that most crucial, counter-intuitive act of all, is the responsibility of each of us. Page 219

I feel the goodness of the world must be experienced to some extent through the mechanism of suffering – the God in the cloud – if the notion of goodness is to hold any kind of truth or real substance. Page 219

Yes, but you learn in time that this is just nonsense. In fact, you learn all sorts of things: that personal chaos is not a necessary condition for creating good art; that the pram in the hallway is as much a source of inspiration as anything else; that being strung out on drugs doesn’t necessarily make you a better artist. These days, that kind of compulsive mania I once had I find almost embarrassing. That said, I do still lose control over certain impulses from time to time. Page 223

It’s not so much the creative impulse itself that is so compelling, but rather doing something that feels challenging and vulnerable and new, whether that is ceramics or a different-sounding record or The Red Hand Files, the In Conversation events, Cave Things, this book, whatever. There is a risk involved that generates a feeling of creative terror, a vertiginous feeling that has the ability to make you feel more alive, as if you are hotwired into the job in hand, where you create, right there, on the edge of disaster. You become vulnerable because you allow yourself to be open to failure, to condemnation, to criticism, but that, as I think the Stoics said, is what gives you creative character. And that feeling of jeopardy can be very seductive. Page 224

Something tells me you’re quite a perfectionist about this kind of stuff. Well, I don’t know about that. I just need things to be done in the right way. Page 225

Ultimately, the figurines are not saying anything, they are not declaring anything, in the same way that all my work for the last six years is not saying anything. It is asking for something. Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen, Carnage, The Red Hand Files, the In Conversation Events, the live shows, even this book we are writing – they are all asking for the same thing. Which is? Absolution. Page 231

Well, in my experience, art does have the ability to save us, in so many different ways. It can act as a point of salvation, because it has the potential to put beauty back into the world. And that in itself is a way of making amends, of reconciling us with the world. Art has the power to redress the balance of things, of our wrongs, of our sins. Page 232

we find too much rehearsing becomes deadening. You need to learn the songs, of course, but then you find that everything changes when you play live, anyway Page 236

a record is never a thing in itself; rather, it’s just one part of a larger experiential event that terminates in a live concert. Page 238

I think art goes some way to reconciling the artist with the world. I guess that’s really what I’m talking about. Music can be a form of active atonement. It can be a way of redressing the balance somehow by explicitly putting good into the world, the best of ourselves. And, of course, that requires the participation of the world. Page 243

I don’t know about you but I find I have to write my ideas down to really know what I think. And, furthermore, I have to say those ideas out loud, or indeed to sing them out loud, to somebody else, before I know if they are valid or meaningful, or not. It’s that relational thing I was talking about. Page 246

We need to be able to exist beyond disagreement. Friendships have to exist beyond that. We need to be able to talk, to make mistakes, to forgive and be forgiven. As far as I can see, forgiveness is an essential component of any good, vibrant friendship – that we extend to each other the great privilege of being allowed to be wrong. One of the clear benefits of conversation is that your position on things can become more nimble and pliant. For me, conversation is also an antidote to dualistic thinking, simply because we are knocking up against another person’s points of view. Something more essential happens between people when they converse. Ultimately, we discover that disagreements frequently aren’t life- threatening, they are just differing perspectives, or, more often than that, colliding virtues. Page 246

Hope is optimism with a broken heart. Page 247

if I look back at my past work from the certainty and conviction of the present, it appears as if it was a series of collapsing ideas that brought me to my current position. And what’s more, the actual point I’m looking back from is no more stable than any of the previous ones – in fact, it’s being shed even as we speak. There’s a slightly sickening, vertiginous feeling in all of this. The sense that the ground is constantly moving beneath your feet? Yes, exactly. So how do you deal with that? Well, I have learned over time that the creation itself, the thing, the what, is not the essential component, really, for the artist. The what almost always seems on some level insufficient. When I look back at the work itself it mostly feels wanting, you know; it could have been better. This is not false humility but fact, and common to most artists, I suspect. Indeed, it is probably how it should be. What matters most is not so much the ‘what’ as the ‘how’ of it all, and I am heartened by the knowledge that, at the very least, I turned up for the job, no matter what was going on at the time. Even if I didn’t really understand what the job was. Page 247

It’s like we are running towards God, but that God’s love is also the wind that is pushing us on, as both the impetus and the destination, and it resides in both the living and the dead. Around and around we go, encountering the same things, again and again, but within this movement things happen that change us, annihilate us, shift our relationship to the world. It is this circular reciprocal motion that grows more essential and affirming and necessary with each turn. Page 248

But in Mark’s version it’s like I was just eating up everyone who came near me and taking what I could from them creatively. Now, that is very much a matter of perspective. One of the criticisms aimed at me by people in the book is that I always needed a collaborator, as if that is some kind of weakness, rather than just a self-evident way of making better art – to be open to the ideas of other people, to be helped by other people. Some people he spoke to saw that as almost vampiric or something, but it’s interesting, because that kind of criticism almost always comes from people who were not engaged in creating art themselves. They were mainly peripheral, perpetual onlookers who know nothing about what it takes to create something of value. And if you were to ask me how I defined myself as an artist, I would say I was a collaborator, then and now. It’s actually one of the things I am most proud of, that I have had sustained productive relationships with people that have ultimately been mutually beneficial. I think most of the people I have worked with would agree. I always do my best to amplify and push to the front these people, you know … well, more or less. Page 90

I think we contain these traumatic memories in the cells of our body, in our blood, in our bones. Page 93

Some take drugs because they love the chaos and disorder; I took heroin because it fed into my need for a conservative and well-ordered life. Page 94

heroin addiction is all right until it’s not. It quickly escalates – very quickly, actually. Chaos is always just around the corner. And these kinds of rock and roll stories may be funny but they obscure a lot of darkness and pain. Page 97

I became a person after my son died. Not part of a person, a more complete person. Page 102

this will happen to everybody at some point – a deconstruction of the known self. It may not necessarily be a death, but there will be some kind of devastation. Page 102

I think we both worked out that we could be happy and that happiness was a form of insubordination in the face of, I don’t know, life, I guess. It was a choice. That’s it, a choice, a kind of earned and considered arrangement with the world, to be happy. No one has control over the things that happen to them, but we do have a choice as to how we respond. There was a defiance there, in the face of the world’s indifference and apparent casual cruelty. Page 103

I really don’t think we can not talk about it if we are talking about the creative process. It’s simply part of the whole thing. The creative process is not a part of one’s life but life itself and all that it throws at you. For me, it was like the creative process, if we want to call it that, found its real purpose. Page 104

I write songs is perhaps different from many songwriters. I don’t write continuously. Instead, I’ll put an actual date in my diary for when I will begin writing the next record. And that date is the starting point, the initial action towards making a record.

With songwriting, there are always these little glimmers embedded in all the scrambled nonsense and false starts and failed ideas. They’re buried in there like clues. What happens is that they suddenly present themselves, rise from the page, and begin to hold hands. Not all at once, necessarily, but quite rapidly, and then you start to get a creative momentum, a kind of collecting together of information that moves towards the basic framing of a song. Page 109

Travelling the world but seeing none of it! Page 110

you don’t want to then engage in some parallel occupation that makes you feel even worse, that picks away at your self-regard, makes you feel smaller or emptier or insignificant or a failure, or plunges you into a dark place that you have to climb back out of, or makes you cry, or makes you despair. Songwriting does that. Songwriting would be essentially the last straw. It’s just too fucking hard. So you write a book instead, or a screenplay, or an epic poem, or design a T-shirt, or something. Page 111

So thank God, quite literally, for music, because it’s one of the last remaining places, beyond raw nature, that people can feel awed by something happening in real time, that feeling of reverence and wonder. Page 112

Being on stage for me was just an amplification of the general way of life I was living at the time, but it wasn’t a great work ethic. In the end, after many years, I settled for chaos in the mind, order in the workspace. Chaos in the mind? That’s not something I associate with you these days. I mean chaos as a bounty of competing ideas racing around in your head. Page 114

it felt like there was a kind of radical intimacy taking place. Page 115

I could do it on my own, but I don’t think I’d do it nearly as well. The people I’ve worked with have brought a huge amount to the table. That began with Mick, and then Rowland came along with his extraordinary guitar playing and musical inventiveness. Page 116

On some level it’s just the nature of the beast, I guess. It is what I call the corrosive power of collaboration. Collaborations that work are the most glorious and productive of things. But if the collaboration is not attended to properly, with care and respect, it can eat away at itself. Page 119

We’re often led to believe that getting older is in itself somehow a betrayal of our idealistic younger self, but sometimes I think it might be the other way around. Maybe the younger self finds it difficult to inhabit its true potential because it has no idea what that potential is. It is a kind of unformed thing running scared most of the time, frantically trying to build its sense of self – This is me! Here I am! – in any way that it can. But then time and life come along, and smash that sense of self into a million pieces. And then comes the reassembled self, the self you have to put back together. You no longer have to devote time to finding out what you are, you are just free to be whatever you want to be, unimpeded by the incessant needs of others. You somehow grow into the fullness of your humanity, form your own character, become a proper person – I don’t know, someone who has become a part of things, not someone separated from or at odds with the world. Page 121

The idea of encroaching mortality isn’t a concern – the idea of death as a sort of endgame, something separate, waiting down the line. It doesn’t feel like that to me. I guess I feel, day to day, and in a profound way, enmeshed in death, as if it is a clear and present state of being that manifests itself in a sort of vitality. I feel a certain receptivity to its positive influence or presence. Page 124

Susie is my wife, but also a collaborator. Page 126

You know the film I just made of ‘Idiot Prayer’, the solo show I did at Alexandra Palace during lockdown? Well, it was originally called ‘An Evening with Nick Cave’. That was what the team and I had always called it, and it had just sort of stuck, but when Susie found out that’s what it was called, her reaction was, ‘Wow! Could you even find a more boring title?’ So, I’m like, ‘Well, Jesus, babe, that’s just what it’s called! I can’t fucking change it now!’ And she’s like, ‘Okay, but I’m just saying it’s boring.’ So, after a while, I say, ‘Okay, what about “Idiot Prayer” then?’ And she’s like, ‘There you go.’ That sort of thing happens a lot. So a good result, but exasperating at the time. Page 126

Most of the time, I just don’t solicit other people’s opinions if can help it, unless of course I know their opinion is going to be the same as mine. I prefer to go with the flow, provided it’s my flow, Page 127

What I’m trying to say is that I am not just influenced by her, but emboldened by her. Page 128

And you’re right. She is astute to say that about my songs – ‘I always seem to be walking in and out of them’ – because it’s true; I don’t ever sit down with the intention of writing a song about Susie. It’s more that, when I am in that shadowy creative flow, I find it difficult to maintain my own form, so welded am I into her being. I find myself adopting her perspective – flipping from one to the other. A therapist would have a field day with this! Page 128

Sometimes I am trying to manage several voices in my songs – my voice, Susie’s voice and our shared voice, and of course the subjective or observational voice. Page 129

She doesn’t sit down and write the lyrics to a song with me, because there is no room in the process for her, or anyone else, for that matter. And I don’t physically help her design her dresses, because she has her own highly distinctive ideas about beauty and needs to get in touch with that. Page 129

I find not knowing about something in art, that kind of adventuring innocence, whether it is songwriting, scriptwriting, dress designing, score work, sculpture or any other thing, a distinct advantage much of the time. At least initially, anyway, because you enter into the project naïve to the potentially destabilising and corrosive aspects of it. You just blunder in and give it a go. Page 130

In the case of the Charlie Poole song, the lost, cuckolded man moving from house to house, retelling his tale of woe, generates a kind of narrative push to the song itself. Almost like the rhythm of the train tracks under a Johnny Cash song. It’s very beautiful. Page 138

I think we probably find the things that we love early on, and never stray too far from them. I read somewhere that there is something that happens within the brain between the ages of sixteen and twenty-three that makes us super-receptive, particularly to music, and that’s why we attach ourselves so strongly to pieces of music from that period of our lives. That certainly applies to me. To be honest, I simply don’t have the same attachment to music now, or maybe I don’t have the same fundamental need for it as I had back then. Even when I find something that completely blows my mind, there’s an almost academic remove. I don’t have the urge to play it over and over. Page 140

We have a kind of duty to remain engaged. There are a few lines towards the end of ‘Lavender Fields’ that are about that. Once I was running with my friends All of them busy with their pens But the lavender grew rare What happened to them? Page 142

We have a kind of duty to remain engaged. There are a few lines towards the end of ‘Lavender Fields’ that are about that. Once I was running with my friends All of them busy with their pens But the lavender grew rare What happened to them? Page 142

To some degree I feel I have the distinct advantage of having made a long lifetime of terrible mistakes. Like most old people, I have been hurt more, I have suffered more, and I have fucked up more. I have also overcome things that are incomprehensible to younger people. I have experienced more by virtue of being in the world for a really long time. Older people may be broken down, but we are also vast repositories of experience and, if we have been paying attention to world, a certain amount of wisdom, too. This has value. It is worth something. Page 143

thinking about that some more, too, and I was reminded of that beautiful notion of William Blake’s – of Jesus being the imagination. And also that startling image from Matthew 27: ‘Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, who remain standing there in front of the tomb.’ That always makes me think of what it’s like to experience the birth of a creative idea; it’s as if you are waiting for the Christ to appear, to step from the tomb, and reveal Himself. That’s quite an analogy. Do you see songwriting at its best as a kind of creative self-revelation? Yes, and in order for it to happen, you have to be patient. You must have faith. And often you must do the waiting alone. You have to have forbearance, a patient self-control and a tolerance of the process itself. And also an alertness. It is easy to lose one’s nerve, to run away like the apostles did, to go and do something else, but we do that at our peril. That’s when you risk missing the astonishing idea, the Jesus idea. Page 144

the residual idea that pretends to be the astonishing idea. As an artist, you really need to constantly be on the lookout for that. I would say, ‘Beware the residual idea!’ Page 144

Exactly. I tend to find that when I first sit down to write new songs there is a kind of initial flurry of words that appears quite effortlessly. They seem to be right there, at hand, so there is a cosiness about them, a comfortableness. And because they aren’t too bad, really, you immediately start thinking, this is all going to be easy. But these are the deceiving ideas, the residual ideas, the unused remnants of the last record that are still lurking about. They’re like the muck in the pipes, and they have to be flushed out to make room for the new idea, the astonishing idea. I think a lot of musicians deal in residual ideas, because they’re seduced by the comfortable and the familiar. For me, that’s a big mistake, although I can understand the temptation to create something reassuringly familiar. And, in a way, the whole industry is set up to cater to that – to the well-known or second-hand idea. Page 144

Exactly. I tend to find that when I first sit down to write new songs there is a kind of initial flurry of words that appears quite effortlessly. They seem to be right there, at hand, so there is a cosiness about them, a comfortableness. And because they aren’t too bad, really, you immediately start thinking, this is all going to be easy. But these are the deceiving ideas, the residual ideas, the unused remnants of the last record that are still lurking about. They’re like the muck in the pipes, and they have to be flushed out to make room for the new idea, the astonishing idea. I think a lot of musicians deal in residual ideas, because they’re seduced by the comfortable and the familiar. For me, that’s a big mistake, although I can understand the temptation to create something reassuringly familiar. And, in a way, the whole industry is set up to cater to that – to the well-known or second-hand idea. Page 144

I think music can have a way of influencing the heart in a righteous way that enables us to do better, to be better. Especially when the songs get played live. Collectively, we can experience the music actually improving the condition of the listener. I see it all the time. I experience it myself as well. It’s a very real thing. Page 146

In the collective moment of a performance, people are united by the music. That, in itself, has a moral force. Page 146

It requires a certain amount of nerve to rip it all up and start again with something that feels new and, therefore, dangerous. For a start, your brain does not want to go there and it’s telling you that. It’s challenging to write away from the known and the familiar. Page 147

What I’m saying is that you can’t get to that truly creative place unless you find the dangerous idea. And, once again, that’s like standing at the mouth of the tomb, in vigil, waiting for the shock of the risen Christ, the shock of the imagination, the astonishing idea. Page 147

I think the old become not just repositories of lived experience, but of the dead, too. Page 148

I think these absences do something to those of us who remain behind. We are like haunted houses, in a way, and our absences can even transform us so that we feel a quiet but urgent love for those who remain, a tenderness to all of humanity, as well as an earned understanding that our time is finite. Page 148

always myself – even when it’s a character it’s just me in disguise. Page 150

I have absolutely no idea why I told you that story. You actually are like a therapist. Page 151

It’s all in the performing – performing in front of an audience. That’s when the fullness of the songs presents itself. I think the audience draws forth the true intent of the songs. Not that the recorded versions are lesser forms, mind. I actually prefer original recordings to live ones as something to casually listen to. They’re less histrionic, less demanding, but the live versions of the songs are much more experiential and communal. Page 152

blew it. We squandered it. Early on, many of us felt that a chance was presented to us, as a civilisation, to put aside our vanities, grievances and divisions, our hubris, our callous disregard for each other, and come together around a common enemy. Our shared predicament was a gift that could potentially have transformed the world into something extraordinary. To our shame this didn’t happen. The Right got scarier, the Left got crazier, and our already fractured civilisation atomised into something that resembled a collective lunacy. For many, this has been followed by a weariness, an ebbing away of our strength and resolve and a dwindling belief in the common good. Many people’s mental health has suffered as a consequence. Page 154

Yes, that’s right, the work is a form of salvation. Page 156

Twitter is really just a factory that churns out arseholes. Page 165

The Red Hand Files brought about a significant change in my life. For better or for worse, they became the channel that allowed me to step outside my own expectations of what it was to be a rock singer, or whatever it is that I am. They freed me from myself. Page 166

It all comes down to seeing, essentially, to the visual nature of things. That is the way I’ve experienced the world since childhood. And that is the way I write songs – as a series of highly visual images, often violent, mostly sorrowful. Warren, on the other hand, hears the world. Page 167

I kind of loved everything back then, especially painting. Van Gogh, El Greco, Goya, Munch, the nudes of Renoir. I loved Piero della Francesca and Stefan Lochner and Rodin and Donatello. Titian, too, and Rubens. Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele Page 171

For me, it has always been about the nature of the human soul rather than the problems of the society we live in. Page 173

Insofar as the rules that govern our lives no longer apply. I am very familiar with this feeling. It is the compensatory gift at the heart of grief. The usual precepts collapse under the weight of the calamity: the terrible demands that we place upon ourselves; our own internal judging voice; the endless expectations and opinions of others. They suddenly become less important and there is a wonderful freedom in that as well. Page 174

But, you know, I feel that the song addresses the idea that there is a bottomless rage out there that has been animated somehow and is now mutually sustaining – each side fuelling the other. The cosy arrangement that the Left and the Right have traditionally had has turned into something else entirely. It constantly feels like things are going to blow. Page 178

So you learn to make peace with the idea of death as best you can. Or rather you reconcile yourself to the acute jeopardy of life, and you do this by acknowledging the value in things, the precious nature of things, and savouring the time we have together in this world. Page 182

However, God cannot be defended, hence we must. Page 186

I can’t imagine there is anyone with no regrets, unless they are leading extraordinarily unexamined lives, or they are young, which often amounts to much the same thing. So, yes, I have my regrets. Not that regrets in themselves are bad things, of course. They are generally indicators of a certain self-awareness or personal growth or distance travelled. Page 189

prayer is not so much talking to God, but rather listening for the whispers of His presence – not from outside ourselves, but within. It’s kind of the same with the questions that come in to The Red Hand Files. I think they are singularly and collectively trying to tell me something, which may just be ‘I am here’. I think they reflect my own needs. There is an exchange of a sort of essentialness, wherein we attend to each other through a sharing of our collective need to be listened to. Page 190

one of the reasons the project was created was an attempt to find a language to set forth, in words, the travails of grief. Page 191

I do have a strong commitment to the primary impulse, the initial signalling of an idea – what we could call the divine spark. I trust in it. I believe in it. I run with it. Page 192

There is a sense of discovery about it. Things unfold. This place of discomfort and uncertainty and adventure is where an honest, good-faith conversation can happen. It’s all the same thing. Page 192

Grief actively revolves around a point of torture, a moment of realisation, an actual tangible thing. Page 194

There is a responsibility around The Red Hand Files that I had no idea I was getting into. Page 195

in a sense, Andrew was right, because if Arthur hadn’t died, I would not have been doing any of these things. But grief gave me a reckless energy. It afforded me a feeling of invincibility and a total disregard for the outcome, a sort of fearless abandonment to destiny. The worst had happened. Page 197

I can only imagine. So is Arthur a kind of guardian angel? Well, he does protect me, but he is not a guardian angel. Arthur is my son and he died. He exists just beyond my vision and my reason and a whole sea of tears – as a promise, maybe, or a wish. Page 197

This is how I have chosen to live my life – in uncertainty, and by doing so to be open to the divine possibility of things, whether it exists or not. I believe this gives my life, and especially my work, meaning and potential and soul, too, beyond what the rational world has to offer. Page 198

They may well be delusions, but these poetic intimations guide us back to the world. In that respect, they are as real and true as anything else, and perhaps the most beautiful and mysterious things imaginable. Page 199

what I am trying to present is the idea of grief as a gift. Grief as a positive force. Grief that can become, if we allow it its full expression, a defiant, sometimes mutinous energy. Page 200

Ironically, I think the rise of woke culture is akin to a fundamentalist religious impulse. Page 202

Any question where you have to mount an argument and do it in a few paragraphs without coming off as strident or conceited or like you’re pushing an agenda. This is difficult for me, as you know. Page 203

Negative responses take up mental space. They require time and energy they often don’t deserve, time and energy I would rather put elsewhere. Page 204

Well, music is one of the last great spiritual gifts we have that can bring solace to the world. It becomes a sort of duty, in my opinion, to use your music, not for your own aggrandisement, but for the betterment of others. As far as I can see, that is our purpose as artists. The Red Hand Files have come to belong in that tradition – as a small gesture of service, and, maybe, as a form of spiritual sustenance and kindness that may go some small way in helping people with their lives. Page 204

the night it happened feels acutely real and then everything afterwards goes kind of blank. Page 207

It felt like I was walking through treacle, or walking against the wind. Throughout the entire Skeleton Tree session I just felt dead, but I knew if I didn’t do the record then, I never would. Page 211

I was actually much better by then, but I do think, for a time, I lost agency somehow. I think that’s what happens: you essentially become a person who needs someone to tell them what to do. Page 215

I think grief needs to be measured by action. It’s not so much about working on your feelings. Your feelings come and go. They retreat and change and can ultimately surprise you. But you need to put some structure and method in your day, as best you can. I mean, that seems sound advice for any situation. You have to construct a series of actions around your day in order to survive: you exercise, you go down to the sea for a swim, you meditate, you make breakfast for your kid – you do all the small things. Page 216

we are not strong. We survived because we remained together. It is as simple as that. When one crashed, the other stepped up. That is important. Page 217

I don’t know how we got to where we are, because, in truth, I don’t know where that is. Page 218

People are good. I rarely see badness in people; rather, I see layers of suffering. Page 219

Love, that most crucial, counter-intuitive act of all, is the responsibility of each of us. Page 219

I feel the goodness of the world must be experienced to some extent through the mechanism of suffering – the God in the cloud – if the notion of goodness is to hold any kind of truth or real substance. Page 219

Yes, but you learn in time that this is just nonsense. In fact, you learn all sorts of things: that personal chaos is not a necessary condition for creating good art; that the pram in the hallway is as much a source of inspiration as anything else; that being strung out on drugs doesn’t necessarily make you a better artist. These days, that kind of compulsive mania I once had I find almost embarrassing. That said, I do still lose control over certain impulses from time to time. Page 223

It’s not so much the creative impulse itself that is so compelling, but rather doing something that feels challenging and vulnerable and new, whether that is ceramics or a different-sounding record or The Red Hand Files, the In Conversation events, Cave Things, this book, whatever. There is a risk involved that generates a feeling of creative terror, a vertiginous feeling that has the ability to make you feel more alive, as if you are hotwired into the job in hand, where you create, right there, on the edge of disaster. You become vulnerable because you allow yourself to be open to failure, to condemnation, to criticism, but that, as I think the Stoics said, is what gives you creative character. And that feeling of jeopardy can be very seductive. Page 224

Something tells me you’re quite a perfectionist about this kind of stuff. Well, I don’t know about that. I just need things to be done in the right way. Page 225

Ultimately, the figurines are not saying anything, they are not declaring anything, in the same way that all my work for the last six years is not saying anything. It is asking for something. Skeleton Tree, Ghosteen, Carnage, The Red Hand Files, the In Conversation Events, the live shows, even this book we are writing – they are all asking for the same thing. Which is? Absolution. Page 231

Well, in my experience, art does have the ability to save us, in so many different ways. It can act as a point of salvation, because it has the potential to put beauty back into the world. And that in itself is a way of making amends, of reconciling us with the world. Art has the power to redress the balance of things, of our wrongs, of our sins. Page 232

we find too much rehearsing becomes deadening. You need to learn the songs, of course, but then you find that everything changes when you play live, anyway Page 236

a record is never a thing in itself; rather, it’s just one part of a larger experiential event that terminates in a live concert. Page 238

I think art goes some way to reconciling the artist with the world. I guess that’s really what I’m talking about. Music can be a form of active atonement. It can be a way of redressing the balance somehow by explicitly putting good into the world, the best of ourselves. And, of course, that requires the participation of the world. Page 243

I don’t know about you but I find I have to write my ideas down to really know what I think. And, furthermore, I have to say those ideas out loud, or indeed to sing them out loud, to somebody else, before I know if they are valid or meaningful, or not. It’s that relational thing I was talking about. Page 246

We need to be able to exist beyond disagreement. Friendships have to exist beyond that. We need to be able to talk, to make mistakes, to forgive and be forgiven. As far as I can see, forgiveness is an essential component of any good, vibrant friendship – that we extend to each other the great privilege of being allowed to be wrong. One of the clear benefits of conversation is that your position on things can become more nimble and pliant. For me, conversation is also an antidote to dualistic thinking, simply because we are knocking up against another person’s points of view. Something more essential happens between people when they converse. Ultimately, we discover that disagreements frequently aren’t life- threatening, they are just differing perspectives, or, more often than that, colliding virtues. Page 246

Hope is optimism with a broken heart. Page 247

if I look back at my past work from the certainty and conviction of the present, it appears as if it was a series of collapsing ideas that brought me to my current position. And what’s more, the actual point I’m looking back from is no more stable than any of the previous ones – in fact, it’s being shed even as we speak. There’s a slightly sickening, vertiginous feeling in all of this. The sense that the ground is constantly moving beneath your feet? Yes, exactly. So how do you deal with that? Well, I have learned over time that the creation itself, the thing, the what, is not the essential component, really, for the artist. The what almost always seems on some level insufficient. When I look back at the work itself it mostly feels wanting, you know; it could have been better. This is not false humility but fact, and common to most artists, I suspect. Indeed, it is probably how it should be. What matters most is not so much the ‘what’ as the ‘how’ of it all, and I am heartened by the knowledge that, at the very least, I turned up for the job, no matter what was going on at the time. Even if I didn’t really understand what the job was. Page 247

It’s like we are running towards God, but that God’s love is also the wind that is pushing us on, as both the impetus and the destination, and it resides in both the living and the dead. Around and around we go, encountering the same things, again and again, but within this movement things happen that change us, annihilate us, shift our relationship to the world. It is this circular reciprocal motion that grows more essential and affirming and necessary with each turn. Page 248

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Listened Write Your Adventures Down (A Tribute To The Go-Betweens) from discogs.com

Tribute album to The Go-BetweensDisc 1 recorded February and March 2007 at Sony BMG Music Studios, East SydneyLimited edition version featuring bonus disc of live tracks performed at Triple J's Tribute To The Go-Betweens concert; held at the Tivoli, Brisbane; November 30 2006.

Finishing off my Go-Betweens experience, I found a copy of the tribute album recorded after Grant McLellan’s death on eBay. I remember seeing it at the time, but never bought it. I like Bernard Zuel’s point that it highlights how good The Go-Betweens were.

This is a reminder of how good, and unconventional, the Go-Betweens were as songwriters (it would be good if fans of these younger artists went on to discover the originals). Plus, there are good versions here: Patience Hodgson from the Grates has the teenage energy Robert Forster originally displayed on Lee Remick; Youth Group capture the right tone of weariness of Grant McLennan’s Dusty In Here; and Glenn Richards of Augie March gets the edge of anxiety Forster gave to the fabulous House That Jack Kerouac Built.

Bernard Zuel, reviewer https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/music/write-your-adventures-down-a-tribute-to-the-go-betweens-20070623-gdqgbm.html

I felt that the album highlights the legacy left by the band. Some cover albums can highlight how dated the music has become. However, although this albums plays it somewhat safe, it feels like their music could have been released now. Here I am reminded of Walter Benjamin’s discussion of the task of the translator.

The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [ Intention ] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original. This is a feature of translation which basically differentiates it from the poet’s work, because the effort of the latter is never directed at the language as such, at its totality, but solely and immediately at specific linguistic contextual aspects. Unlike a work of literature, translation does not find itself in the center of the language forest but on the outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation of the work in the alien one. Not only does the aim of translation differ from that of a literary work-it intends language as a whole, taking an individual work in an alien language as a point of departure but it is a different effort altogether. The intention of the poet is spontaneous, primary, graphic; that of the translator is derivative, [76] ultimate, ideational. For the great motif of integrating many tongues into one true language is at work. This language is one in which the independent sentences, works of literature, critical judgments, will never communicate – for they remain dependent on translation; but in it the languages themselves, supplemented and reconciled in their mode of signification, harmonize.

http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/criticism/guest/Benjamin_W/Benjamin_W1.htm

With this in mind, I wonder what a tribute album might sound like today? And I wonder which artists would be a part of it?

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Bookmarked Creating an xml file with a script from google spreadsheet (Stack Overflow)

You need to create an xml file with a script from google spreadsheets. I use the code from these two topics:Google Script Export Spreadsheet to XML FileLooking to create an XML feed from a Google Sheet Table

I was asked about the ability to export the results from a Google Form as an XML file. I found this script which gets me part of the way there, I just need to work out how do produce child elements.

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Checked into Werribee Open Range ZooWent to Werribee Open Range Zoo for the . There are the usual Post-COVID changes, such as 1.5m and sanitisation stations. However, the biggest changes were in relation to ‘enrichment’ and choice. There seems to have been a change in ethos and language. As we did the tour, there were things like spikey balls for the ostriches or sand for the rhinoceroses. It was explained that these were provided to improve their lives. Additionally, there was a lot of discussion around not forcing animals to do anything. Instead, they were incentivised to do what was best for them, such as being given a treat for coming when called. I am sure that some of these approaches are not necessarily new, but the explicit choice in language does represent a significant change in my opinion.

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Read Writers on Writers

Provocative, crisp and written from a practitioner's perspective, the series starts a fresh conversation between past and present, and writer and reader. It sheds light on the craft of writing, and introduces some intriguing and talented authors and their work.

One of my recent finds on Audible was the Writers on Writers series, it involves one author writing about another author:

Writers on writers is a series of short books in which leading authors reflect on an Australian writer who has inspired and influenced them.

https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/stories/our-publications/writers-writers

This was different from something like the Fontana Modern Masters series, which from my experience provided a structured ‘guide to intellectual currents’. Although like the Fontana series each book involves an engagement between the two authors, where this series differs is that each book is unique in voice and style. For example:

• On John Marsden is Alice Pung’s letter of gratitude.
• On David Malouf is as much a reflection on Nam Le’s writing and what it means to be an Australian writer as it is about Malouf.
• On Patrick White is Christos Tsiolkas’ more methodical analysis about what made White’s writing so powerful.

What is interesting about these books is that knowledge of either writer is not essential as each book offers its own insight.

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Listened Oceans Apart by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Oceans Apart is the ninth and final studio album by The Go-Betweens, released in 2005. All the songs were written by Grant McLennan and Robert Forster. The album was recorded at the Good Luck Studios in London between November 2004 through to January 2005, except for "Boundary Rider" which was recorded at The White Room Recording Studio in Brisbane.

I always remember Oceans Apart, it did win an Aria, but I am not sure I ever heard it in full at the time it was released. I certainly never owned it. Listening now, it represents a classic Go-Betweens album, with a contrast between Robert Forster’s spritely upbeat tracks set-up in contrast with Grant McLennan’s dreamy pop. Although the band reunited with producer Mark Wallis, for me this album does not quite match the completeness of 16 Lovers Lane. I wonder if it misses the ‘Go-Betweens drama’ as Amanda Brown has put it or if a part of this disappointment is my own listening? I am going to assume the later. I think once I got over that I found that the hooks and melodies to be quite infectious. I also found the use of programmed beats and synthesisers worked, which seems ironic at time with how much the rallied against some of this in the 80’s.

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Bookmarked Learning recognition beyond an ATAR by gregmiller68 (gregmiller68.com)

Despite the need to engage in rigorous processes to develop Learner Profiles for students, in mid December when HSC/VCE/SACE etc., and ATAR results are released, we will still see the media bombard us with league style comparisons of schools and their end of year results. There will also be many schools, promoting enviable ATAR results of students suited to an examination approach to learning. However, I remain positive that one day, and one day soon, each one of our students will leave each one of our schools with more than one number on one day and a certificate filled with only marks and bands. I look forward to the day, hopefully one day soon, where we will have a Learner Profile which showcases the very best of who a young adult is and what they can do so they can find their place of meaning in this rapidly changing world.

Greg Miller talks about the various efforts in Australia to recognise learning beyond ATAR. This includes New South Wales Digital Wallet, South Australian Learner Profile Pilot Project and the New Metrics Project. It will be interesting to see how technology develops to accommodate these changes, whether it be timetables and assessment.

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Liked The Year in Quiet Quitting by Cal Newport (The New Yorker)

Quiet quitting is not a life philosophy or policy proposal that needs logical scrutiny. It’s also not a political weapon to be wielded to prove how much more woke or conservative you are than everyone else. It’s both more incoherent and essential than all of that. Figuring out how work fits into a life well lived is hard, but it’s an evolution that has to happen. Quiet quitting is the messy starting gun of a new generation embarking on this challenge. The specifics of what a young engineer says in his TikTok video might annoy or confuse many of us, but it shouldn’t. The content here isn’t that important. What matters is that Generation Z is waking up to the fact that the unnatural melding of self and work induced by an adolescence lived within online spaces isn’t sustainable. They’re finally—thankfully—ready to ask what should come next.

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Replied to Technology in education – friend or foe? by Gill (macgirl19.wordpress.com)

I can absolutely appreciate the validity of the arguments the authors raised particularly the big one – for young people (and actually, many adults as well) the primary function of technology is entertainment so attempting to change this to a learning focus (and expecting it to easily translate) is far from ideal. Technology provides an endless menu of distractions. Even as I’m writing this blog post, there are other tabs in my browser tempting me and my attention does flit from time to time. And that’s on a task that was self-initiated.

I find this such an intriguing topic Gill, especially in a post-COVID world. Your discussion of technology and distractions has me thinking about the challenge to justify the impact many years ago. I feel that the biggest challenge is actually being mindful about the choices, too often if feels like choices are made out of convenience, rather than some deliberate consideration.

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Liked Indiekit (getindiekit.com)

The IndieWeb is a community of personal websites, connected by simple standards. These follow the principles of publishing content at your own domain name and owning your data.Indiekit uses these standards to help you publish content to your own website and then share it on popular social networks.

Paul Robert Lloyd’s Indiekit looks like another interesting blogging platform. It offers a different approach to the IndieWeb that does not depend on WordPress.

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Replied to Why I Haven’t Embraced WordPress Blocks by David Shanske (david.shanske.com)

Indieweb Post Kinds actually does a few different things. It creates a taxonomy to classify posts, similar to the old post formats options. This just allows for automatic creation of archives. I also use the selector to change the interface, but this could be done differently. It also uses Parse This to create rich embeds of linked content. But it adds the microformats for different types of Indieweb posts outside of the traditional content block using WordPress filters. That is something I never particularly liked, and wouldn’t mind replacing with something integrated into content.

I have long been intrigued by this David, so thank you for sharing. I have tinkered with blocks in my long form site, but still see it as overkill most things.

For my two cents worth, I really like the idea of integrating the response box into the content.

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Liked A Zettelkasten, Commonplace Books, and Note Taking Collection by Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)

Below I’ve aggregated a list of some of the longer articles and material I’ve written about these topics. The completist can find and search my site for even more specific material with these tags: zettelkasten, commonplace books, and note taking. I’ve also contributed a fair amount to the Wikipedia pages for zettelkasten and commonplace books.

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Replied to The Downsides of Generalism by Wouter Groeneveld (brainbaking.com)

The path to generalism is indeed more challenging, yet the reward at the end of the rainbow is genuine satisfaction. Generalists are much more creative. Generalists are more curious. Generalists as system-thinkers are better at solving high-level problems.

I am not sure if I am really a generalist with various pokers in the fire as you seem to have Wouter, but I am always willing to dive into new areas of learning. I wonder if the biggest challenge with this is the narrative, something you touch upon. This week I was asked to step into a different position, one more technical. It is not necessarily my background, but it is what is needed for the project I am a part of. I plough on, connecting the dots, making new pictures, remaking old ones.

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Bookmarked Is the fediverse about to get Fryed? (Or, “Why every toot is also a potential denial of service attack”) (ar.al)

I love that the fediverse exists. And I have the utmost respect for the gargantuan effort that’s going into it.And yet, I am also very concerned17 that the design decisions that have been made incentivise centralisation, not decentralisation. I implore us to acknowledge this, to mitigate the risks as best we can, to strive to learn from our mistakes, and to do even better going forward.So to the ActivityPub and Mastodon folks, I say:Consider me your canary in the coal mine…

Aral Balkan reflects upon the perils of managing his own instance of Mastodon. He explained the ever present dangers of denial of service and the challenges associated with this. (Personally, I experienced this in part once when Balkan shared a link to a post I had written.)

The big issue according to Balkan is the incentive to join an instance that seemingly absolves users of such problems, this however just kicks the can down the road. For Balkan, instances should be limited from getting too big and ideally we should all have our own instance linked to our own domain, the ultimate form of verification.

I have tinkered with using my site as an ‘instance of one‘. Although I liked the idea, I could not get it all to work how I would prefer, so I persisted with my POSSE approach. This also have me thinking about Jim Groom’s reflection on life in the cloud. I guess the reality is that there is always a cost.

The post 📑 Is the fediverse about to get Fryed? (Or, “Why every toot is also a potential denial of service attack”) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Listened album by The Go-Betweens by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

The Friends of Rachel Worth is the seventh album by Brisbane indie band The Go-Betweens, released 12 years after their sixth, 16 Lovers Lane. For this album, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan were joined by all members of American indie rock bands Sleater-Kinney and Quasi as well as new bassist Adele Pickvance. The album was recorded in Portland, Oregon at Jackpot! Recording Studio by Larry Crane.McLennan said, "Rachel felt really natural – it wasn't like Robert and I had separate managers or any of that industry bullshit. We'd always wanted to record in America, too, so that was a real dream. I think it has a really mysterious, otherworldly, 'lost' feel to it."

Listening to The Friends of Rachel Worth, I am left thinking that any sort of follow-up to 16 Lovers Lane is going to be something of a come down. I think Pitchfork captures this dilemma in suggesting that the album feels like a ‘relic of another era’.

The Friends of Rachel Worth comes off as a relic of another era. New generations of Aussie pop bands have emerged since those early days

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3475-the-friends-of-rachel-worth/

I remember listening to an interview about David Byrne’s album with St. Vincent, in which he talked about thinking about first space the music would be performed when writing the music. This album feels like music written for smaller spaces. For me, this particularly comes through in the way that the vocals have been recorded, they always feel close. There is also something raw about the sound and feel that reminded me in part of their first album Send Me a Lullaby, but still the precision of their later work.

The result is an album that combines the rawness of early recordings with the spare and pristine emotion of the band’s later material

Joshua Klein https://www.avclub.com/the-go-betweens-the-friends-of-rachel-worth-1798194318

Although there are explorations and extension of their sound, with synths, strings and distortion, gone are the layers of production.

The post 🎵 The Friends of Rachel Worth (The Go-Betweens) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Watched 1899 by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

1899 is a multilingual German period mystery-science fiction television series created by Jantje Friese and Baran bo Odar. It premiered on Netflix on 17 November 2022. It received mostly positive critical reviews, with praise for its casting, directing, cinematography, and acting. The creators had ideas for two more seasons, but in January 2023, the show was cancelled.

I really enjoyed Dark and although it was slow to start, really enjoyed 1899 by the end of the first season. It is interesting to see the show cancelled by Netflix:

Plans are a funny thing in the streaming business. Obscure shows like Squid Game can find their audience, become cultural juggernauts, and then get additional seasons. Others, like Warrior Nun, can also find rabid fans but just not enough of them to stay alive. As the streaming landscape expands, the possibility of any show surviving starts to feel like Squid Game itself—and the thrum of “red light,” “green light” leaves everyone on their toes.

Angela Wattercutter https://www.wired.com/story/1899-cancelation-future-of-netflix/

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Listened album by The Go-Betweens by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

16 Lovers Lane is the sixth album by Australian indie rock group The Go-Betweens, released in 1988 by Beggars Banquet Records. Prior to the recording of the album, longtime bassist Robert Vickers left the band when the other group members decided to return to Australia after having spent several years in London, England; he was replaced by John Willsteed. The album was recorded at Studios 301 in Sydney, between Christmas 1987 and Autumn 1988.16 Lovers Lane was the final release from the original version of the band. The Go-Betweens broke up in 1989 and would produce no other material until Grant McLennan and Robert Forster reformed the band, with a completely different line-up of personnel, in 2000.

I doubt that it is any surprise that 16 Lovers Lane is my favourite Go-Betweens album. It was meant to be there breakout with a big push from the record companies. I am not sure what makes the album click, maybe it is the influence of multi-instrumentalist Amanda Brown, the addition of John Willsteed on bass and guitar, the impact of big-name producer Mark Wallis, or the natural progression of time and technology? One thing that stands out to me is the consistent sound throughout. Gone is Tallulah’s experimentation with the funk grooves or distortion, this is instead replaced with the acoustic guitar that beds much of the album. Although it is heavily produced, leading to some songs being difficult to reproduce live, it still feels more subtle and subdued than say Spring Hill Fair. All in all, I feel that you can easily listen to their previous albums with an feeling that each provided its own piece of the puzzle to allow this album.

One thing to note is that a little bit like Before Hollywood, it is interesting listening to Streets of Your Town. Although it fits with the acoustic vibe of the album, it jumps out like a familiar landmark during a long drive. Even though the lyrical content is dark:

Don’t the sun look good today,

but the rain is on its way

Watch the butcher shine his knives,

and this town is full of battered wives

In some ways it almost feels too upbeat, neither fast nor slow, almost joyful compared to the rest of the album.

For me, one of the interesting things about the album is the legacy. I grew up seeing Cattle and Cane and Streets of Your Town late at night on Rage, however I never really knew anyone who actually listened to The Go-Betweens. It was not really until their second coming that I really went beyond the singles.

MarginaliaThat Record Got Me High podcast explore some of the connections between Bob Dylan and The Velvet Underground.

SBS Classic Albums – 16 Lovers Lane provides some useful insight and context to the album and The Go-Betweens in general.

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Bookmarked

The Generative AI Landscape, v2 pic.twitter.com/xdsPdQ145D

— AI Breakfast (@AiBreakfast) December 25, 2022

This is a collection of generative artificial intelligence.

ᔥ “Tom Barrett” in The Dialogic Learning Weekly – Tom Barrett (01/03/2023 22:10:04)

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Replied to

Quick #GoogleSheets tip today!

Highlight several rows (or columns) by clicking on their numbers (or letters), right click and choose to Group rows (or columns).

This adds a button, which you can toggle to show/hide these grouped rows (or columns). pic.twitter.com/DNLz3e5m8T

— Ben Collins (@benlcollins) December 30, 2022

Ben, I love the use of grouping columns, but found it problematic when sharing a Google Sheet as it is not unique to the user.

The post 💬 Group Button in Google Sheets first appeared on Read Write Collect.Also on: brid.gy

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Replied to https://johnjohnston.info/blog/dave-winer-rss-is-federation/ (johnjohnston.info)

John, I somewhat agree with your preference for RSS over the social feed. Personally, I use Granary to actually bring Mastodon into my feed. For me, this allows me to become less of a slave to the ever current stream. I sometimes wonder though if this is bad faith as I assume I am not nessecarily following the rules on the packet, this can mean engaging in conversations out of time.

The post 💬 RSS is Federation first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Replied to bavachromatosis by Reverend (bavatuesdays.com)

We’ll see how much I can reflect on 2022 in the next few days, I still feel like I have to blog about what’s happening now so thinking about 12 months of time might have to happen after the new … Continue reading →

Jim, you might be interested in Tony Martin’s reflection ‘Any Old Iron’ included in his book Lolly Scramble. He discusses his own experience of hemochromatosis with wit and humour.

The post 💬 bavachromatosis first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked How the Lessons of Game of Thrones Were Lost (theatlantic.com)

Our present era of franchise-driven TV requires the industrialization of spectacle, but all the money in the galaxy can’t ensure crackling dialogue and convincing acting. The funny thing is that without a bit of goofiness, these supposedly mature fantasies undermine the credibility they’re chasing. A world where everyone’s frowning just feels fake.

The post 👍 How the Lessons of Game of Thrones Were Lost first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Listened album by The Go-Betweens by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Tallulah is the fifth album by The Go-Betweens. It was released in May 1987 in the UK on Beggars Banquet Records. Prior to the recording of the album, the group had expanded to a five-piece with the addition of multi-instrumentalist Amanda Brown. The original release consisted of ten songs. In 2004, LO-MAX Records released an expanded CD which included a second disc of ten bonus tracks and music videos for the songs, "Right Here" and "Bye Bye Pride".

Robert Forster stated that with Amanda Brown, that the band sounded like no other. Although I agree with this, I am not always sure that it always works with Tallulah. Unlike the experimentation of their earlier albums (Send Me a Lullaby and Before Hollywood), it feels like the experimentation on Tallulah was in sound and texture. For example strings are placed front and center in The House That Jack Kerouac Built and Right Here, the funk groove of Cut It Out is like no other, Hope Then Strife introduces the spanish guitar, Spirit of a Vampyre introduces the distorted guitar, while Bye Bye Pride brings in the Oboe.

In part I can see how this can be seen as a search for the right formula, but for me it all feels like a ‘what if’ album, what if there was a new multi instrumentalist in Amanda Brown? Andrew Stafford explains the school of thought that ‘every second album was better than its predecessor’:

Among fans of the Go-Betweens, there’s a school of thought that every second album they made was better than its predecessor: the first exploring a style, the second perfecting it, before they would immediately move on to a new form. In this way, the Go-Betweens’ parameters kept expanding, like Chinese boxes.

Andrew Stafford https://www.griffithreview.com/articles/the-last-time-i-saw-grant/

The post 🎵 Tallulah (The Go-Betweens) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Read novella by the English author Charles Dickens, first published in 1843 by Contributors to Wikimedia projects

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as cards and Christmas trees. He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors, including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several establishments for London's street children. The treatment of the poor and the ability of a selfish man to redeem himself by transforming into a more sympathetic character are the key themes of the story. There is discussion among academics as to whether this is a fully secular story, or if it is a Christian allegory.

A Christmas Carol is one of those stories that I felt I had always known, but never read. It was made all that more enjoyable with Tim Curry’s reading.

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Bookmarked General Questions to Use in Book Clubs or Lit Circles by Pernille Ripp (pernillesripp.com)

Book clubs or literacy circles are some of my most favorite explorations to do with kids. Making space for deep discussions, led by the students, and framed by an inquiry question is something that I love to be a part of. That’s why we have done book clubs twice a year for the past many years. I would not do more than that, kids also want to have experiences where they are not forced to read a certain book with peers, even if they have a lot of embedded choice. And as always, when in doubt, ask your students how often they would like to do them, make space for their ideas and allow for personalization and ownership.

Pernille Ripp provides an extensive list of questions to support book clubs / literature circles.

The post 📑 General Questions to Use in Book Clubs or Lit Circles first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Bookmarked GitHub - AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS: A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc. (GitHub)

A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc. - GitHub - AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS: A list of RSS related stuff: tools, services, communities and tutorials, etc.

AboutRSS is an extensive list of resources associated with RSS.

ᔥ “John Johnston” in bookmarked: AboutRSS/ALL-about-RSS: (12/21/2022 21:28:29)

The post 📑 AboutRSS first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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I had no intent of buying anothersynthesiser, but I changed my mind when listening Mark Ronson, in an interview with Jamie Lidell. He explained how he likes to start off sessions with a few toys, including an MPC, a Moog and a Juno. My latest addition is the Roland JX-08, a Boutique combination of the JX-8P and the PG-800. I really like my MC-101 and know that there is still a lot that I am yet to master. However, I really wanted something I could manipulate.

I once borrowed a PG-200 that was attached to a GR-700. I would play a note on the guitar, click hold on the foot pedal and spend time just looking for sounds. Although the JX-08 does not have the same solid feel as the PG-200, it has so much more functionality, including an arpeggiator, two channels and a sequencer. In addition to this, the sequencer has a random generator and random playback function. Together with built-in speaker, I like just sitting with it and poking it every now and then.

In Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Taylor Swift talks about how Aaron Dessner gave her Silvertone guitar with a rubber bridge and how playing some instruments write their own songs. I had a similar experience with the JX-8P. I am yet to properly dig into the various pattern, but for me it provides a piece of randomness that was missing with the groovebox.

The post 🎹 Roland JX-08 first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Listened Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express (The Go-Betweens) by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express, the fourth album by The Go-Betweens, was released in March 1986 in the UK on Beggars Banquet Records, the record label that would release the remainder of the original group's LPs through their break-up in 1989. The album was recorded at Berry Street Studios in London, England.

Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express is often heralded as a favourite album. Gone is the technological experimentation tinkered with in Spring Hill Fair, what remains is a consistent bright sound and feel produced using a more organic approach. As Robert Forster explains in Grant and I:

The production credit for Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express (what a wonderfully pretentious title) was going to read, ‘The Go-Betweens and Richard Preston’. There’d be no drum machines, no piecemeal recording, no acquiescence to a higher authority – we were experienced enough in the studio, and flying on the strength of our demoed songs and Richard’s easy, collaborative ways. Our intention was to expand upon the crisp, woody sound of Before Hollywood, to include a grander, more exotic range of instrumentation – vibraphone, oboe, piano accordion, and, at Grant’s suggestion and to my apprehension, a string section. But he was right; we were making music and living lives that demanded strings. And we had a crack rhythm section, with Robert’s swinging melodic bass and Lindy’s signature rolls and fills, inventive and sturdy under every song.

https://www.penguin.com.au/books/grant-and-i-9780143786405

I found it one of that albums where after a few listens each tune sticks in your head. It marks a real progression in Forster and McLennan’s writing, although it may simply be a reflection of their movement away from experimental song writing to more standard 4/4 song structures.

Grant McLennan: There was quite a fundamental musical change in the band, towards simplification. Something we’ve been accused of in the past, of being almost a pop band, almost an art band, you know, now we’re simplifying. Thinking more of 4/4.

https://www.clintonwalker.com.au/stranded.html

I really like how Clinton Walker captured in back in 1986:

That the Go-Betweens’ language is unlike anyone else’s in rock is undeniable; now, it is totally at ease with itself, stepping out boldly. Deceptively simple pop songs contain a whole world. Even if this isn’t the album that will provide the Go-Betweens with a real breakthrough, it will certainly pave the way. It is in itself an assertion of a right to life.

https://www.clintonwalker.com.au/stranded.html

What is interesting is that even though this album moves away from the precision provided by programmed beats and synthesisers, the sounds is still very tight. With the development of their sound, it feels like the bass and drums have found their place providing a base for the jangly guitars. I was left wondering how the album might have sounded differently if say John Brand had produced it?

The post 🎵 Liberty Belle and the Black Diamond Express (The Go-Betweens) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Read Grant & I by Robert Forster

The Go-Betweens, one of Australia’s most talented and influential bands, very nearly wasn’t. Grant McLennan didn’t want to be in a group, and couldn’t even play an instrument. That didn’t stop the singer-songwriter duo of Forster/McLennan becoming one of the most acclaimed partnerships in Australian music history.Just as The Go-Betweens always defied categorisation, Grant & I is like no other rock memoir. At its heart is a privileged insight into a prolific artistic collaboration that lasted three decades, and an extraordinary friendship that rode out the band’s break-up to remain strong until Grant’s premature death in 2006.Unconventional in lineup and look, noted for near misses and near hits, always a beat to one side of the mainstream – the band’s unusual beginnings were followed by twists that often confounded its members as well as fans and record companies. The story of The Go-Betweens is also the story of the times, and Grant & I is a wonderfully perceptive look at the music industry and a brilliantly fresh take on the sounds of the era.As distinctive a writer of prose as he is of songs, Robert Forster is wise and witty, intimate and frank, astute and knowledgeable. There could be no better tribute than Grant & I to this partnership and band who remain loved and revered.

Grant and I is a memoir that traces the history of The Go-Betweens through Robert Forster’s relationship with Grant McLennan. The narrative traces the journey though beginnings of the band, the various ideas and inspirations that influenced them, trying to make it in Australia and abroad, and the experiences of producing each of the albums. Even with all the supposed accolades, Forster pulls back the curtain to capture a life of living in squats and endless touring, pointing out that although they may have tramped all over Europe, they never really got a chance relax and take things in, and how they were left paying back the advance given to tour with REM for the next 26 years.

In a review for Australian Book Review, Doug Wallen summarises it as follows:

As with the band’s songs, Forster’s account is melancholic, cheery, and self-deprecating all at once. It is often unruly and mischievous as well. Rather than presenting a stock-standard Australian success story, Grant & I offers up the tangled lives of two kindred spirits who decided to make music together. Younger readers who only know The Go-Betweens as canonised legends with a major bridge in Brisbane named after them can discover how long the band toiled in obscurity before securing that lasting recognition.

Doug Wallen https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/archive/2016/187-november-2016-no-386/3649-doug-wallen-reviews-grant-i-by-robert-forster

There has been criticism that Forster left a lot out, such as the place of heroin in their lives. However, I was left wondering if that was asking something from the book that it never promised to provide and if maybe that was not Robert’s story to tell? In some ways, there was an air of David Malouf’s Johnno or F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby to it all, both books mentioned in the book, with McLennan both known and unknown.

The post 📚 Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens (Robert Forster) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Replied to ooh.directory (ooh.directory)

An in-house project to create a collection of blogs to help people find good blogs that interest them.

I really like the look and feel of Phil Gyford’s directory. I keep my own directory on my website, I wonder about presenting this OPML in a similar format?

The post 💬 ooh.directory first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Liked Useful Tech Tools: Image, Video, PDF by dogtrax (dogtrax.edublogs.org)

Someone shared these three sites that do some helpful tasks with image, video and PDFs. I bookmarked them, and you may want to, as well.* Image Candy * Video Candy * PDF Candy

The post 👍 Useful Tech Tools: Image, Video, PDF first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Read Tell Me Why

Not many have lived as many lives as Archie Roach – stolen child, seeker, teenage alcoholic, lover, father, musical and lyrical genius, and leader – but it took him almost a lifetime to find out who he really was.Roach was only two years old when he was forcibly removed from his family. Brought up by a series of foster parents until his early teens, his world imploded when he received a letter that spoke of a life he had no memory of.In this intimate, moving and often shocking memoir, Archie’s story is an extraordinary odyssey through love and heartbreak, family and community, survival and renewal – and the healing power of music. Overcoming enormous odds to find his story and his people, Archie voices the joy, pain and hope he found on his path through song to become the legendary singer-songwriter and storyteller that he is today – beloved by fans worldwide.Tell Me Why is a stunning account of resilience and the strength of spirit – and of a great love story.

Tell Me Why is the story of Archie Roach’s life. It talks about his life growing up in foster care after being removed from his family and his subsequent search for them. It traces Roach’s battles with addiction, firstly alcohol and then gunja.

I always felt like I understood the stolen generation and the trauma that it brought indigenous people. However, after reading Roach’s story it highlighted that my understanding was academic and somewhat superficial. It also gave a new appreciation for Roach’s music.

One of the things to note about the book is that even through adversity, there is humour throughout, whether it be Paul Kelly being referred to as a security guard or deep freeze diving at Woolworths.

Listening to Roach read the book made it even more powerful too.

The post 📚 Tell Me Why (Archie Roach) first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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Read Good Pop, Bad Pop by Jarvis Cocker

What if the things we keep hidden say more about us than those we put on display?We all have a random collection of the things that made us - photos, tickets, clothes, souvenirs, stuffed in a box, packed in a suitcase, crammed into a drawer. When Jarvis Cocker starts clearing out his loft, he finds a jumble of objects that catalogue his story and ask him some awkward questions:Who do you think you are?Are clothes important?Why are there so many pairs of broken glasses up here?From a Gold Star polycotton shirt to a pack of Wrigley's Extra, from his teenage attempts to write songs to the Sexy Laughs Fantastic Dirty Joke Book, this is the hard evidence of Jarvis's unique life, Pulp, 20th century pop culture, the good times and the mistakes he'd rather forget. And this accumulated debris of a lifetime reveals his creative process - writing and musicianship, performance and ambition, style and stagecraft.This is not a life story. It's a loft story.

I listened to Jarvis Cocker’s reading of his book Good Pop, Bad Pop. The book involves the Pulp frontman going through a loft full of objects he had stored there seemingly for a situation like this.

Good Pop, Bad Pop ambles through the 25 years before Saint Martins, tracking Cocker’s worldview as it takes shape in his home city of Sheffield. It opens in the present day, as he’s clearing out the loft of his London house. There is a lot of stuff in there, and each item has a story. His task is to decide whether to keep each thing or “cob” it (throw it out). Mulling over these ancient treasures puts him in philosophical mood, and the book soon expands into both an autobiography and a treatise on pop.

@guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/may/25/good-pop-bad-pop-an-inventory-by-jarvis-cocker-review

Through tales of buying second hand clothes, the embarrassment of the first gigs and the boredom associated with recovering in hospital, Cocker teases out his creative pathway. This is not to provide a model for how to be the next Pulp or the next Jarvis Cocker, but instead to help others find their own spark, maybe to just keep going.

In some ways, this reminded me of Damian Cowell’s podcast associated with the album Only the Shit You Love. Just as Cocker uses the collection of keep sacks as a jumping off point, Cowell uses the various tracks as a means of conversation. Both have a penchant for the small incidental stories, always wary about getting too Glenn A Baker.

ᔥ “Conversations” in Jarvis Cocker and the Pulp master plan – ABC (12/15/2022 23:10:49)

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Bookmarked https://justinehsmith.substack.com/p/a-locus-of-care (justinehsmith.substack.com)

Some Memories of the Life and Work of Bruno Latour (1947-2022)

Justin Smith reflects upon the legacy on Bruno Latour and his focus on the ‘matter of concern’ associated with a thing:

So, wherever you have a thing, you have a locus of care (or, if you will, a matter of concern). This is something conceptually distinct from an artefact, or from an object. In fact, Latour thinks, in order to get away from all the confusion into which the notion of “objectivity” has led us (a notion that really only takes hold as a dogma in the late nineteenth century, according to Daston and Galison in their celebrated genealogy of the concept, to which Latour provided the preface in its French translation), it might be better to retrain our focus on “things”. And it is in light of this retraining effort, I think, that his twenty-first-century shift to ecology and the climate crisis takes on a particular appeal. It was, recall, only in the mid-twentieth century that we got the first photographic images of our planet as the iconic “pale blue dot” that we all know, and love, today. Arguably, it is at this moment that the Earth itself became a thing, that is, came to be cognized and valued as a suitable locus of our care and solicitude, rather than simply, so to speak, the transcendent ground of our existence. This is the moment, also, when Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, which so influenced Latour’s thinking, became conceivable — it is not that no one in antiquity or later had ever suggested the world is an organic whole, but what was meant by “world”, for, e.g., the Stoics, was the cosmos, and not any particular life-supporting sphere within it. In a sense Latour’s late-career emphasis on matters of concern, or, if you will, on “truth as care”, is a continuation of the early-career work for which he was admonished as a partisan of the “post-truth” tendency. But his later work is at least somewhat less playful, more urgent, and in tone it is a universe away from the perceived cynicism of the golden age of constructionist science studies. He is speaking now not in the vein of irony, but of love.

Justin E. H. Smith https://justinehsmith.substack.com/p/a-locus-of-care

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Bookmarked Stop Wasting Your Time on School Improvement Plans That Don't Work. Try This Instead (Opinion) by Peter DeWitt (Education Week)

Some of this seems complicated, right? Problems of practice, theories of action, assumptions, success criteria, and program logic models all seem like a lot of work. However, what is more work is when leaders create a document in isolation that they never intend to use and never engage in conversations with teacher leaders about areas of focus they could work on together.

Peter DeWitt discusses the importance of a theory of action to guide the development of an improvement plan. In addition to a ‘theory of learning’, DeWitt suggests that it is important that plans are also practical.

When working on a school improvement plan, or what some schools may refer to as an academic plan, it’s important for its creators to make sure that it is useful. How do we do that? We do that by:

• Making sure that we do not have too many priorities;
• Taking time to reflect on how many actions and activities we should engage in;
• Including teachers and staff in the discussion and not just creating the document in isolation;
• Not storing them away only to look at next year when we have to create our next school improvement plan; and
• Making the document workable and based on our needs.

Peter DeWitt https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-stop-wasting-your-time-on-school-improvement-plans-that-dont-work-try-this-instead/2022/11

I wonder about the user of the How Might We question to frame this theory?

After this we returned to our original groups and worked through the ‘How Might We’ task. This involves completing a prompt: how might we ACTION WHAT for WHOM in order to CHANGE SOMETHING. The purpose of this was to come up with a clearer guide for our moonshot.

Aaron Davis https://readwriterespond.com/2014/09/gtasyd-2014-feet-on-the-ground-head-in-the-clouds/

It also has me thinking about the IOI Process in providing a structure to not only understand the intricacies of context, but help map out a path to change and innovation.

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Listened Spring Hill Fair (The Go-Betweens) by Contributors to Wikimedia projects from Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Spring Hill Fair is The Go-Betweens' third album, released on 27 September 1984 in the UK on Sire Records. The LP was recorded during a "very wet May"[1] at Studio Miraval in Le Val, France. Prior to the recording of the album, bass player Robert Vickers had joined the group, enabling Grant McLennan to move to lead guitar. The original release consisted of ten songs. In 2002, Circus released an expanded CD which included a second disc of ten bonus tracks and a music video for the song, "Bachelor Kisses".

Spring Hill Fair continues to develop The Go-Betweens towards the jingle-jangle sound that I associate them with. Gone is the contrast between fast and slow of their early albums. This is replaced with the attempt at a slicker pop sound, with the introduction of synthesizers and drum machines. However, they could not completely shake this earlier sound.

In the end, Spring Hill Fair feels like a searching album. I have read criticisms of John Brand, the producer of Before Hollywood, and the way in which he wanted to make a ‘proper album’. Some tracks feel honed, such as the singles Bachelor Kisses and Man O’Sand to Girl O’Sea, while other tracks still feel raw, such as Five Words and River of Money.

Wikipedia has a good collection of responses to the album:

Clinton Walker, writing in The Age newspaper, felt “the album as a whole was disappointing, disjointed and uneven.”[27] Helen FitzGerald was more enthusiastic in her review for Melody Maker, writing, “There’s an endearing imperfection to this record, but it’s a calculation of style rather than incompetence of design. In places, the vocals quaver dangerously as out-of-focus love songs paint a picture of the kind of melancholia that’s impossible to forge.” The songs were compared to sepia-toned photographs.[28] Biba Kopf of NME said, “It would be silly to pretend the Go-Betweens are a sparkling fun experience – they are sometimes excessively sombre, verging on sobriety. They don’t make for the easiest of entries, but the pleasures and rewards are longer lasting.”[29] NME ranked Spring Hill Fair at number 11 among the “Albums of the Year” for 1984.[30] In 1996, Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave the album an “A” rating.[26]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_Hill_Fair

With this album, maybe like the classic Beatles debate between Lennon and McCartney, I felt myself becoming more engaged with McLennan’s tracks, rather than Foster’s.

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Bookmarked The Highway and the Gap (daily.jstor.org)

North Americans tend to assume the Pan-American Highway was completed, that you can drive from North America down through the narrowing isthmus of Central America into South America. Try it, though, and you’ll dead-end in Panama.A map of the Darien Gap via Wikimedia CommonsThe border between Panama and Columbia is where the dream faltered. A route through El Tapón Darién, the Darién Gap, was never cleared and paved. To this day, writes Miller, “Panama and Colombia are the only neighboring nations on the globe without a single road link of even the most primitive kind.”

Matthew Wills discusses the history of the Pan-American Highway and inability to mark a path through the Darién Gap. For more on the Darién Gap, Jason Motlagh documents his experience of passing through the region.

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Bookmarked Five thoughtful ways to approach artificial intelligence in schools (aare.edu.au)

The use of artificial intelligence in schools is the best example we have right now of what we call a sociotechnical controversy. As a result f of political interest in using policy and assessment to steer the work that is being done in schools, partly due to technological advances and partly due to...

Greg Thompson, Kalervo Gulson and Teresa Swist provide five recommendations when considering the use of artificial intelligence in schools:

Ultimately, we suggested five key recommendations.

1. Time and resources have to be devoted to helping professionals understand, and scrutinise, the AI tools being used in their context.
2. There needs to be equity in infrastructure and institutional resourcing to enable all institutions the opportunity to engage with the AI tools they see as necessary. We cannot expect individual schools and teachers to overcome inequitable infrastructure such as funding, availability of internet and access to computational hardware.
3. Systems that are thinking of using AI tools in schools must prioritise Professional Learning opportunities well in advance of the rollout of any AI tools. This should be not be on top of an already time-poor
4. Opportunities need to be created to enable all stakeholders to participate in decision-making regarding AI in schools. It should never be something that is done to schools, but rather supports the work they are doing.
5. Policy frameworks and communities need to be created that guide how to procure AI tools, when to use AI, how to use AI why schools might choose not to use AI in particular circumstances.

@AustAssocResEd https://www.aare.edu.au/blog/?p=14976

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Liked Storytelling — End-Times Tales by Venkatesh Rao (ribbonfarm.com)

But definitely, something is going on that has temporarily shut down our ability to access a sense of the timeless in order to construct stable notions of ourselves in relation to it. For the time being, we seem to be eternity blind, unable to see past the sound and fury of reboots and reruns of our collective memories.

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Bookmarked “Eduspeak” Reconsidered (alfiekohn.org)

Not all of our lingo can or should be replaced with simpler words. Nor would everyone who criticizes it be satisfied with greater clarity. Nevertheless, educators, like other professionals, have a responsibility to communicate as clearly as possible with people outside their field. It’s a matter of basic courtesy to elucidate terms that may be puzzling to others even though we’ve come to take them for granted. And that clarity may also help more people to understand why traditional practices so often fall short and thus to build a constituency for change.

Alfie Kohn explains that the complexity of language depends upon the context and situation.

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Bookmarked GitHub - timhutton/twitter-archive-parser: Python code to parse a Twitter archive and output in various ways (GitHub)

Python code to parse a Twitter archive and output in various ways - GitHub - timhutton/twitter-archive-parser: Python code to parse a Twitter archive and output in various ways

Although I am happy enough with my Twitter archive stored in Github via Martin Hawksey, Tim Hutton’s code to turn a Twitter archive into markdown is interesting.

ᔥ “Matthias Ott “ in Converting Your Twitter Archive to Markdown · Matthias Ott – User Experience Designer (12/08/2022 21:53:15)

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Bookmarked https://www.patreon.com/IfBooksPod (patreon.com)If Books Could Kill is a podcast about “the airport bestsellers that captured our hearts and ruined our minds.”

ᔥ “Pod Squad” in What if the world’s best-selling books are actually misleading? (12/08/2022 18:12:53)

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Bookmarked The Man Behind Mastodon, Eugen Rochko, Built It for This Moment by Will Knight (WIRED)

People fleeing Twitter have turned to Eugen Rochko’s alternative. He says social networks can support healthy debate—without any one person in control.

In an interview with Will Knight, Eugen Rochko discusses the current move to Mastodon, Musk’s free publicity and the differences with Twitter. Rochko also explains why the same thing that has happened with Twitter cannot happen with Mastodon.

What if someone—say an impulsive billionaire—wanted to buy Mastodon or take control of it somehow?

The network is protected from something like that. The code is free, open-source software, and nobody can change the license or take it back retroactively, and all of the different servers are owned by other people. Somebody could buy Mastodon gGmbH [the German nonprofit that maintains the software] and with it the trademark and the servers we run—mastodon.social and mastodon.online—but it wouldn’t affect the Fediverse in any significant way.

Eugen Rochko https://www.wired.com/story/the-man-behind-mastodon-eugen-rochko-built-it-for-this-moment/

In other pieces on Mastodon, Clive Thompson suggests that it is an example antiviral design that encourages murmuring conversations, rather than the must-see post.

And I’ve realized that Mastodon is a superb example of antiviral design.

It was engineered specifically to create friction — to slow things down a bit. This is a big part of why it behaves so differently from mainstream social networks.

https://uxdesign.cc/mastodon-is-antiviral-design-42f090ab8d51

Jeremy Keith compares the exodus from Twitter to being at Dunkirk.

Right now, Twitter feels like Dunkirk beach in May 1940. And look, here comes a plucky armada of web servers running Mastodon instances!

Jeremy Keith https://adactio.com/journal/19650

Wouter Groeneveld wonders if social media scrolling is the answer, something I have been wondering about for a while.

I don’t really know what I’m trying to say here except that it’s perhaps not worth it to scroll endlessly on yet another social media platform where posts are starting to converge into the emptiness that Twitter had to offer.

Wouter Groeneveld https://brainbaking.com/post/2022/11/the-great-mastodon-influx/

Jim Groom and the team at Reclaim Hosting have documented how to setup your own instance.

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Tom Critchlow talks about going beyond the right answer to instead positing the ‘next most useful thing’.

I’ve been using this phrase “the next most useful thing” as a guiding light for my consulting work – I’m obsessed with being useful not just right. I’ve always rejected the fancy presentation in favor of the next most useful thing, and I simply took my eye off the ball with this one. I’m not even sure the client views this project as a real disappointment, there was still some value in it, but I’m mad at myself personally for this one. A good reminder not to take your eye off the ball. And to push your clients beyond what they tell you the right answer is.

@tomcritchlow https://tomcritchlow.com/2022/11/10/8-years-on-the-road/

This reminds me about Donald Winnicott’s notion of ‘good enough mother’.

Winnicott thought that the “good enough mother” starts out with an almost complete adaptation to her baby’s needs. She is entirely devoted to the baby and quickly sees to his every need. She sacrifices her own sleep and her own needs to fulfill the needs of her infant.

As time goes by, however, the mother allows the infant to experience small amounts of frustration. She is empathetic and caring but does not immediately rush to the baby’s every cry. Of course, at first the time-limit to this frustration must be very short. She may allow the baby to cry for a few minutes before her nighttime feeding, but only for a few minutes. She is not “perfect” but she is “good enough” in that the child only feels a slight amount of frustration.

@PsychToday https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/suffer-the-children/201605/what-is-good-enough-mother

So often when developing ideas, it can be easy to get caught up with the ideal, rather than coming up with an idea that responds to the situation at hand.

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Bookmarked The Problem with Teaching Sophisticated Vocabulary (theconfidentteacher.com)Alex Quigley shares some activities to support students with making apt vocabulary choices, including:

• ‘Vocabulary 7-up’ is a simple vocabulary game that encourages pupils to record as many synonyms as they can for common words (seven ideally!).
• ‘Word Triplets’ offers students three words to choose from, or synonyms, so that we can begin to shape their apt vocabulary selections.
• ‘Said is dead’. The use of ‘said’ is part of the fabric of academic writing.
• ‘Simple >< Sophisticated’. Teachers can quickly and repeatedly model apt word choices, along with the movement from simple to sophisticated, and the reverse when it is needed.
• Word gradients. A common approach is to have pupils discuss and select from a range of word choices – debating their meaning and value for a given task.

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Bookmarked Teaching After Twitter (danmeyer.substack.com)

I am interested here as someone who realizes how much a) community, b) professional learning, and especially c) knowledge production arose from the particular context (including technological, political, personal, epidemiological, generational factors, etc) of 2005 to 2015. And I’m wondering where teachers–especially new teachers–will get that next.

With the changes to Twitter, Dan Meyer wonders where people might go to in order to engage with community now? He suggests that platforms like TikTok do not allow for the same level of engagement. This has me thinking about Dron and Anderson’s Teaching Crowds and Ian Guest’s research into Twitter.

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Liked Wikipedia is swimming in money—why is it begging people to donate? by Andreas Kolbe (dailydot.com)

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), the non-profit that owns Wikipedia and other volunteer-written websites, is about to reach its 10-year goal of creating a $100 million endowment five years earlier than it planned. Its total funds, which have risen by about $200 million over the past five years, now stand at around $300 million. Its revenue has risen every year. In just the first nine months of its current financial year, it has raked in $142 million in donations according to an internal document—and already obliterated its previous annual record.

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Listened Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022) - Wikipedia from en.wikipedia.org

Actual Life 3 (January 1 – September 9 2022) is the third album from British producer Fred Gibson under the stage name Fred Again. It was released on October 28, 2022, through Atlantic Records.[6] Similar to the previous two releases in the Actual Life series, Actual Life 3 incorporates samples and audio clips from existing material, such as Instagram videos.[7]

I stumbled upon Fred Again last year. I was fascinated in the use of seemingly real-life samples to capture the world. What was interesting is the way in which Fred Gibson continually captures video of his experiences and how he incorporates this into his performances. I loved his use of his Maschine. This desire to move away from the dependency on the computer reminded me of James Blake’s focus on hardware when playing live. See his short demonstration for Zane Lowe for example. Yet at the same time this ability is balanced with a deep knowledge of music. Listening to his interview with Jamie Lidell, I was left wondering how one falls in with Brian Eno?

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For me, Alpha Zulu is a feel good album. I often find myself putting it on in the background when doing this and that: In a continuation of the direction Phoenix took on their previous two albums, Bankrupt! and Ti Amo, the band favors needling synths and skittering drum machines over the crisp guitars and … Continue reading "🎵 Alpha Zulu (Phoenix)"

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Grace Kim-Shin discusses the FBI’s closure of Z-Library. It makes me wonder how much has changed since the death of Aaron Swartz. via Stephen Downes

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There are some covers which are about the original artists, while other covers make the song anew. Cash’s American Recordings provide a new take on tracks like Mercy Seat, Rusty Cage, Personal Jesus and Hurt. I also love how Rick Ruben focused on creating the right conditions for Cash. On the other side of such … Continue reading "🎵 American Recordings (Johnny Cash)"

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My choice to change my habits in regards to social media and sharing has really led me to reflect why I do what I do. What I have come to realise is that at the heart of it, I share in my own space for me. With this in mind, I like your point about … Continue reading "💬 Posting a Message Nobody Reads"

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I was listening to The J Files on Cocteau Twins the other day and Robin Guthrie spoke about the influence of The Birthday Party. They played a few gigs together and were a part of getting them a start with 4AD. The Go-Betweens were similar in that vein. Although it can be easy to go … Continue reading "🎵 Before Hollywood (The Go-Betweens)"

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I really like your description of your newsletters as a ‘love letter to the internet’. I am not exactly sure what description I would give to mine. It sometimes feels like a habit without purpose at times.

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Sorry, late to getting to this piece Chris, as I get to my feeds in my own time. I have long lived a feed first existence. Even when engaging with Twitter, I have been consuming via my feed reader. I just realised that I can also produce a feed for Mastodon too using Granary.io. I … Continue reading "💬 #FeedReaderFriday: A Suggestion for Changing our Social Media Patterns"

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Benj Edwards talks about the AI generated Infinite Conversation site which involves an ongoing conversation between German director Werner Herzog and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek.

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Send Me a Lullaby is The Go-Betweens first album recorded in November 1981 with the help of Tony Cohen. It is interesting going to an artists early work and listening afresh. All in all it is an album that feels like it is trying to find itself. One minute there are jangley hooks that I … Continue reading "🎵 Send Me a Lullaby (The Go-Betweens)"

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Audrey on the money again. I think I found my problem, I really need to run more.

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As we deal with the current situation, we not only need to consider F2F, online, and hyflex education, we need to think about what pedagogy could and/or should look like in a post-pandemic system.

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While explore Audible, I stumbled upon an Orwell collection read by Stephen Fry. One of the things that really struck me in this rereading was the use of Emmanuel Goldstein’s book ‘The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism’ to build out the world of 1984. This reminded me of the way in which Raphael Hythloday … Continue reading "📚 Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell)"

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Welcome back to another month. With a series of structural changes going on at work, I was asked how I felt about my job. I explained to my manager that I felt that a lot of what we do is thankless. This is not to say that schools are not thankful, but rather it feels … Continue reading "📰 Read Write Respond #081"

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Chris Aldrich talks about what we talk about when we talk about zettelkasten. He continues his dive into the histories attached to note-taking. For me, this all reminds me of Doug Belshaw’s discussion of ‘digital literacies’ and the dangers of dead metaphors. What Belshaw encourages a discussion. Our definition of digital literacies is something created … Continue reading "📑 The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten"

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Jan, this looks interesting. I am intrigued in an alternative to Post Kinds. I fear that I am going to hit a wall at some point if or when the classic plugin is no longer supported. I like what it does, but agree with your concern about it being outside of the post. One of … Continue reading "💬 What IndieBlocks Does, and Why"

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I cannot help compare Carly Rae Jepsen’s The Loneliest Time with Taylor Swift’s Midnight. Both released on the same day, it has been interesting listening to them side-by-side. Whereas Midnight is somewhat contained, Jepsen engaged with various writers and producers to carve out the album. Although there is an overall feel of reflection throughout, the … Continue reading "🎵 The Loneliest Time (Carly Rae Jepsen)"

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Midnights is a concept album about late night contemplation. With this in mind, it is as much about setting an atmosphere. Spencer Kornhaber has described the album as ‘aggressively and aggravatingly normal’: Midnights is not different. It is normal. Aggressively normal, aggravatingly normal, and, in its way, excellently normal. She has found the cultural status … Continue reading "🎵 Midnights (Taylor Swift)"

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David Culberhouse discusses the tendency in education to snap back to the comfort of our old default habits in an effort to move on from the pandemic. The problem is that this approach often undermines our ability to engage with the future to support staff and students alike. As the world changes, often in accelerated … Continue reading "📑 How Are We Preparing For The Futures We See Coming?"

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Francis Fukuyama applies his thesis that history ends with the prevelance of democray to today. Fukuyama argues that history should be viewed as an evolutionary process, and that the end of history, in this sense, means that liberal democracy is the final form of government for all nations. According to Fukuyama, since the French Revolution, … Continue reading "📑 More Proof That This Really Is the End of History"

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Dan Hon suggests that the metaphor of towns and cities to explain the difference between federated spaces and social media platforms. Towns and distinct places. There was a great analogy I saw, that Twitter is like a big city. It contains super interesting stuff, a lot of people, in some cases it is quite dirty … Continue reading "📑 Mastodon, or What Happens When Your Software Has Opinions And Now You Have Choices"

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Clive Thompson reflects upon the writing tools he uses. Although written from the perspective of a Mac, I was intrigued by Scribd, which I clearly had not explored properly as a platform. I also liked the reference to Blackwing pencils, I feel I take this side of the way I work for granted at times.

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Katherine Wu reports on the changing nature of mask wearing in America. Even though the virus continues to spread and evolve, many have discarded mask wearing as a bad memory, instead seeking out a sense of normalcy. High-filtration masks are one of the few measures that can reliably tamp down on infection and transmission across … Continue reading "📑 It’s Gotten Awkward to Wear a Mask"

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Malcolm Harris goes beyond the technology thesis to explore why children today are so sad. In part, he talks about the lack of genuine autonomy and trust: Autonomy is essential for developing what psychologists call an “internal locus of control” — the sense that your choices and actions affect your life, that they matter — … Continue reading "📑 Why Are the Kids So Sad?"

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With Bruno Latour’s recent death, Stephen Muecke reflects on life and legacy. One of the interesting points that Muecke unpacks is the question of ‘truth’ in regards to Actor Network Theory: the truth has to be well constructed, it isn’t ‘just’ constructed. Simply claiming objectivity, and in the process bracketing out all subjectivity, is not … Continue reading "📑 Bruno Latour showed us how to think with the things of the world, respecting their right to exist and act on their own terms"

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On the release of Time for Socialism, a collection of Thomas Piketty’s Le Monde columns from 2016 to 2021, Noam Maggor explores Piketty’s work in general and reflects upon his legacy.

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Emily Fintelman

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Speaking about the inspiration to the title for his album , Brian Eno talks about Alexei Yurchak’s book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More and the two stages of revolutions: I think the idea came from this book that revolutions always happen in two stages. The first stage is when everyone realizes something … Continue reading "📓 Stages of a Revolution"

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Deborah Brandt explains that learning to read has meant many things over time. “Literacy was irrevocably transformed from a nineteenth-century moral imperative into a twentieth-century production imperative,” Brandt concludes, “Transformed from an attribute of a ‘good’ individual into an individual ‘good.’” Livia Gershon https://daily.jstor.org/why-learn-to-read/ This reminds me of Doug Belshaw’s work on digital literacies and … Continue reading "📑 Why Learn to Read?"

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Inspired by an ACEL presentation, “A synthesized model of teacher turnover” by Dr Hugh Gundlach, Andrea Stringer shares her thoughts on teacher retention. Gundlach and Gavin Slemp spent four years working on a meta-analysis on teacher turnover. One of the key take-aways is addressing those things that are within a school’s control by letting … Continue reading "📑 “Let Them Leave Well”"

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Oliver Quinlan reflects on productive learning in response to new situations as opposed to learning to cope with a dysfunctional workplace. Thinking about my current work, I wonder if learning to live through dysfunction is simply the first step towards more productive learning? Something of a foundation for deeper work maybe? I think that although … Continue reading "📑 You’re learning a lot, but is it valuable?"

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I am really concerned how the answer is to add a second set of numbers to the drivers license. What is going to happen if that number is somehow leaked? We really are in strange times.

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Ryan Barrett reflects upon the the potential of the blockchain and the importance of human trust. Next time you hear someone say they’ve taken a real world problem and solved it by putting it on the blockchain, ask them how. How do they authenticate the data? How do they vet the systems that do that … Continue reading "📑 Blockchain’s real world problem"

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I had a few errors on my sites recently. ALT LAB Timeline Maker and Subscribe To Comments plugins were causing issues on Collect, while I was unable to login to my Read Write Respond site. After logging a ticket with Reclaim Hosting, I was pointed to a guide for replacing the core files via FTP. … Continue reading "📑 50 Most Common WordPress Errors and How to Fix Them"

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Jasmine Jones explores the railway stations that have either been left to the past or reclaimed for other purposes. It is interesting to think about this alongside  Les Everett’s epic quest to uncover Australia’s ‘lost’ cricket pitches.

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I feel like I have read so much on Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter: David Frum on our complicated relationship with Twitter Charlie Warzel on the possibility of death by neglect Eli Parisar on why Twitter is not a town square Ben Werdmüller on why it may be time to move on For me, Clive … Continue reading "📑 Running Twitter Isn’t Rocket Science. It’s Harder"

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In the preface to the 15th year Italian edition of The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb reflects on writing books for the past as a means of remaining read in the future. If you want to be read in the future, make sure you would have been read in the past. We have no idea … Continue reading "📑 How I Write"

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Thank you for the updated picture of The Steps Dale. How did you drive there from Bendigo? I assumed that the Loddon would be impassable?

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I remember reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children when I was younger. Although I felt I appreciated Rushdie for his skill and style, I think I got lost in awe of the complexity. Recently returning to the novel at a different age, through a different medium – audiobook – I was still in awe, but I … Continue reading "📚 Midnight’s Children (Salman Rushdie)"

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HTTRACK is an application for making a site static is an alternative to other applications, like Site Sucker.

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One of the things I love about going to concerts is seeing the support acts. I saw Montgomery support Montaigne. I really enjoyed the performance and this EP. Place between Chvrches and Diana.

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Inspired by Daði Freyr’s collaboration with Montaigne, I took a dive into his music. I really enjoyed Welcome, but wanted more. This led me to watching quite a few live clips, including Jam in the Van, performance for Vogue, live at Lowlands and performance of Eurovision Songs. Other than the fact that the music is … Continue reading "🎵 Daði Freyr"

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I have found a cleaner method for adding in the commas and quotations required for the SWITCH formula: =char(34)&join(“””, “””,ARRAYFORMULA(QUERY(A1:A,”SELECT A WHERE A IS NOT NULL”)&”””,”””&QUERY(B1:B,”SELECT B WHERE B IS NOT NULL”)))&char(34)

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Kaitlyn Tiffany reflects on the demise of GIFs. She discusses the embarrassing nature in which particular GIFs are used on repeat. In addition to this, the MP4 format is a lot smaller. Ir is interesting to look back on when I presented on GIFs as a form of quick makes.

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We recently purchased an air fryer and have not looked back. Soak the potatoes in water before.  Can do spuds, wedges, fries … all awesome.

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I was not sure what to expect from seeing Montaigne live at the Corner Hotel. Personally, I was interested in how Making It! would translate to the stage. Although it was the Making It! tour, I did not expect the album to be played straight-through. The point made was that was how it was meant … Continue reading "📅 Montaigne (Corner Hotel)"

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I was a late call-up for Art of Fighting’s 21st anniversary performance of Wires at Melbourne Recital Centre. The debut album of Melbourne-indie band Art of Fighting, Wires, received widespread acclaim, receiving the ARIA in 2021 for Best Alternative Album, featuring the soaring tracks Give Me Tonight, Reasons Are All I Have Left and Skeletons. … Continue reading "📅 Art of Fighting (Melbourne Recital Centre)"

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Another month and another change to the team at work. Why is it that everyone seems to have had such amazing lives? The new manager at work ran a 10 hour charity music conference in his spare time. I am often happy if I have done the washing and got food on the table, I … Continue reading "📰 Read Write Respond #080"

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Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar has sat on my shelf for years. I was always intrigued by the association with The Catcher in the Rye, but for some reason never actually got around to reading it. Bekir Konakovic and Beth Scussel provide a summary of the comparisons: The Catcher in the Rye and The Bell … Continue reading "📚 The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath)"

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I was inspired to reread Thomas More’s Utopia after reading Dave Eggers’ The Every. A part of me wondered if it was how I remembered it from twenty years ago. It was how I remembered it, but then I read Susan Bruce’s introduction to Three Early Modern Utopias and I discovered that there was much … Continue reading "📚 Utopia (Thomas More)"

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Celebrating the birth of Florence Nightingale, Cara Giaimo discusses her impact in regards to the spread of ideas, not just as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’. After returning from Crimea, Nightingale spent two years putting together her notes and data. Fearing that the conclusions might be lost in the length of the report, she developed … Continue reading "📑 Florence Nightingale Was Born 197 Years Ago, and Her Infographics Were Better Than Most of the Internet's"

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Adrian Lenardic and Johnny Seales argue that the rewarding of attention economy has corrupted scientific research. They explain how historically, scientists would distribute findings amongst their peers before going public with those that findings that were ‘breakthroughs’. Whereas these days the roles have been flipped. Results are firstly presented to public before going through the … Continue reading "📑 The credibility of science is damaged when universities brag about themselves"

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Alex Christian talks about the importance of digital literacy today. Beyond my issue with the plural of ‘literacies‘, I am left wondering about how we talk about something that is continually morphing and changing? There is a danger of describing it as something that one all of the sudden becomes, like Neo learning Kung Fu … Continue reading "📑 Why ‘digital literacy’ is now a workplace non-negotiable"

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Complex answers, how else to describe a complex world? This reminds me of Dave Cormier’s discuss of complicated and complex in education.

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Tania, reflecting upon your thoughts and reflections on scaffolding, I am left wondering how much the issue is something missed during the COVID years or a general lack of engagement with learning in general?

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I am always a sucker for these sorts of listicles. Looking back, I feel that it will always be somewhat subjective to where you are or were. For example, there are no Australian artists. Maybe the music does not match up, but I feel that this maybe a reflection of something else.

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Alex Hern discusses the dark-side to the magic of artificial intelligence. He discusses Riley Goodside’s prompt injection to exploit GPT-3. The spell works as follows: first, the tweet needs the incantation, to summon the robot. “Remote work and remote jobs” are the keywords it’s looking for, so begin your tweet with that. Then, you need … Continue reading "📑 AI’s dark arts come into their own"

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Bonnie Stewart reflects upon the online learning with the return to the classroom in a post-COVID world. She discusses the problem we have with understanding terms of service and data privacy. One suggestion provided is to come together and work collaboratively to understand the impact.

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Really enjoyed Missy Higgins’ Take 5. I was particularly intrigued by the power and the pain of songs. My favourite quote was: You can’t really write your own story, you just have to surrender to it.

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I never considered how much we take something like baby formula for granted. Having had a child failed to thrive due to a dairy allergy, formula with synthetic was essential in working through this.

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Michael Barbaro speaks with Serial host, Sarah Koenig, about why the case against Adnan Syed was overturned. Koenig talks about new suspects, the withholding of evidence and lose of other evidence. So that’s the bulk of the state’s motion to vacate — new information about two potential suspects, important evidence withheld from the defense, renewed … Continue reading "🎧 Why Adnan Syed Was Released From Prison (The Daily)"

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Clive Thompson reflects on how easy it is to use Linux these days. In addition to this, here is a collection of command line prompts, as well as command line games.

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I have listened to Take 5 podcast for a while. I was not sure what to expect from moving it to television. I was strangely surprised. There was something about spinning the records and seeing clips of the songs in question. I must admit, I think I would enjoy a party DJed by Guy Pearce. … Continue reading "📺 Guy Pearce (Take 5 with Zan Rowe)"

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David Truss shares an activity he uses at the start of the year where he creates a portrait wall with a want, a wish, a hope or a dream underneath it. The key is that these are separate from any sense of learning goals, they are instead focused on the world beyond school. This is … Continue reading "📑 I want, I wish, I hope, I dream"

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I remember being introduced to Up (and in some way Peter Gabriel) by a British guy on my tour through South East Asia. These were the days of disc-mans and this was one of his only CDs. I always knew Sledgehammer and Don’t Give Up, but had not really delved beyond that. I was clearly … Continue reading "🎵 Up (Peter Gabriel)"

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In an excerpt from Build for Tomorrow, Jason Feifer provides insight into Amy Orben’s four-step Sisyphean cycle of technology panics. This is cycle that has been repeated again and again over time. Something seems different Politicians get involved Scientists slam the gas The low-information free-for-all Feifer explains that the way to break out of this … Continue reading "📑 Tech Fear-Mongering Isn’t New—But It’s Time to Break the Cycle"

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Ed Yong reminds us that the pandemic is far from over. Things have undoubtedly improved since the peak of the crisis, but calling the pandemic “over” is like calling a fight “finished” because your opponent is punching you in the ribs instead of the face. Ed Yong https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2022/09/covid-pandemic-exposes-americas-failing-systems-future-epidemics/671608/ He argues that change is still needed … Continue reading "📑 The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear"

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In order to survived the battered psyche, Venkatesh Rao explains that way have resorted to the ‘ark head’ mental model. This involves giving up on solving the world’s ills and simply hiding in our ark. Ark-head is an interesting collective diagnosis. It’s not depression, anxiety PTSD, or collective brain fog, though all those currently common … Continue reading "📑 Ark Head"

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Clive Thompson shares some Library of Congress serendipity tools: Old books Old Vinyl Old Radio Plays

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I enjoyed Peter Schjeldahl’s overview of the life and works of Piet Mondrian. The quote I liked the most was the importance of religion when it comes to atheism: Mondrian was caught up for much of his life in Theosophy, the anti-materialist mythos that was initiated in 1875, in New York, by the much travelled … Continue reading "💬 The Mysteries of Mondrian"

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Andrew Newman reflects upon the literary canon in American schools. Although I have not taught English for a few years, I was surprised how many of these books I taught in the Australian classroom, including Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird and Lord of the Flies. I think that there is something to … Continue reading "📑 These high school ‘classics’ have been taught for generations – could they be on their way out?"

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Abdullah Iqbal unpacks some of the research into the benefits of music on the brain. One of the interesting points raised was that although music may aid with memory, there are some memories that are better forgotten. it’s important to recognize that improving focus and memory aren’t always benefits. Laura Carbrera, a professor of engineering … Continue reading "📑 Music on the brain: Listening can influence our brain’s activity"

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We spent some time around Albury over the weekend. It was fascinating to see so much water. It was a contrast to the river I experienced while living in Swan Hill a few years ago when it was quite low.

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Can’t help but hear Orwell while listening to Jones. “All voices are equal, but some voices are more equal than others.”

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In an acceptance speech for the Nashville Songwriters Association International award for Songwriter-Artist Of The Decade, Taylor Swift shares her three genres associated with her lyrics. I categorize certain songs of mine in the “Quill” style if the words and phrasings are antiquated, if I was inspired to write it after reading Charlotte Brontë or … Continue reading "📑 Taylor Swift Explains Her Three Types Of Lyrics In Nashville Songwriters Association Awards Speech"

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Prior to COVID, we had a tradition as a family to go on a big holiday each September. We had not really planned to go away this year. However, with the passing of the queen and the additional public holiday we decided to make the most of the situation and go on a driving holiday … Continue reading "📅 Albury 22"

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Stan Grant reflects on the passing of Queen Elizabeth and the legacy of colonisation for indigenous people around the world. At times like these I wonder what it would be to not know apocalypse. To not know what it is to come from a people who face an existential threat. Who have clung on to … Continue reading "📑 After Queen Elizabeth II’s death, Indigenous Australia can’t be expected to shut up. Our sorry business is without end"

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Congratulations Greg. I have really enjoyed following your journey. Thank you for openly sharing. Good luck with whatever the future has to bring.

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Doug Belshaw explains that culture is continually remade: As Kojo Koram from the School of Law at Birkbeck, University of London, writes, however, culture is something that is continually remade by the people living it. These different conceptions mark the boundaries of the culture wars currently being played out in British politics and society. Doug … Continue reading "📓 On Culture"

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Ben Collins shares a means of creating a year calendar: =SEQUENCE(53,7,DATE(2022,1,1),1)

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Although I had seen and enjoyed the television adaptations of both The Slap and Barracuda, I had never actually read any of Christos Tsiolkas’ novels. I was partly inspired after listening to Tsiolkas in conversation with Waleed Aly and Scott Stephens, also Barracuda was the only novel available on Libro.fm. The novel revolves around Daniel … Continue reading "📚 Barracuda (Christos Tsiolkas)"

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I decided to read Dirt Music after reading Cloudstreet and listening to Tim Winton speak on Radio National. For me the novel had three key elements, fractured characters, the journeys we go on and the place of space. I think Magdalena Ball captures the novel well in her review. Dirt Music is a big sprawling … Continue reading "📚 Dirt Music (Tim Winton)"

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I listened to this book via the ABC Listen App, which provides a selection of different Australian novels to listen to. The tail of two families, the Lambs and the Pickles, whose lives are brought together in a large house on Cloudstreet. I was engrossed by all the different characters and what each brought to … Continue reading "📚 Cloudstreet (Tim Winton)"

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ᔥ ” Alan Levine” in Alan Levine on Twitter: “This tech is cool! Paywalls Everywhere You Go? Get to the Goodies With These Two Paywall Ladder Bookmarklets – @ResearchBuzz https://t.co/jHzGxc655E #cogdogcooltech From my stuff tagged “cooltech” on pinboard https://t.co/X3mG23ypdK” / Twitter (09/01/2022 08:20:57)

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Miguel Guhlin reflects on the process of selecting the right tool for teaching.

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Although there were elements that seemed a little far-fetched, I enjoyed this addition to the Predator franchise, especially the heroine. I also liked the comparison between the predator and the colonisers.

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Finally got around to watching Squid Game. What I liked the most was the exploration and redemption of characters.

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I really like how Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen captures Stella Donnelly’s album: Flood is an album that requires patient and careful listening, peeling back the layers in each song to find the pulsing heart beneath. There’s nothing as immediate as the songs on Donnelly’s debut, but that’s not a bad thing – these 11 tracks ebb … Continue reading "🎵 Flood (Stella Donnelly)"

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Not sure how interested you are Jeremy, but I have really enjoyed playing around with Moog’s Model D app with Garageband and my midi keyboard thingie.

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I have supported Cory Doctorow’s latest kickstarter. Interesting to see the use of Libro.fm in regards to the audiobook. Seems a similar approach to musicians using Bandcamp to provide access to crowdfunded music.

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Ben Collins provides a formula for generating a list of IDs or numbers dependent on how many items are in the list using the Sequence formula: =ArrayFormula(SEQUENCE(MAX(ROW(B2:B)*(B2:B""))-1))

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The Will of the People is a return to the tried and trusted sounds. As they have explained in interviews: It’s a montage of the best of Muse. It’s a new take on all of those types of genres that we’ve touched on in the past. Laura Kelly https://www.bigissue.com/culture/music/matt-bellamys-muse-the-will-of-the-people-can-be-something-to-be-frightened-of/ However, this reference to the past … Continue reading "🎵 Will of the People (Muse)"

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Ben, am I right to say that Named Functions allows the functionality that is available via Google Scripts, it just means that you do not have to go through the effort of creating the script? I am assuming that if I made a copy of a Sheet with a Named Function that this comes with … Continue reading "💬 A Guide To Named Functions In Google Sheets (New For 2022!) –"

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In an excerpt from Behind Their Screens: What Teens Are Facing (and Adults Are Missing), Emily Weinstein and Carrie James talk about teaching teens to build personal agency, anticipating and discussing different dilemmas before they arise, and encouraging collective agency where groups respond to challenges together. Although I agree with all this, I still think … Continue reading "📑 What Adults Don’t Get About Teens and Digital Life"

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Kenneth R. Rosen provides some tips to consider before starting your own foray into 3D printing. He structures this around a series of statements: – Know Why You’re Buying – Choosing a Type of Printer – Beware the Upgrade Spiral – Don’t Set and Forget

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I remember going for a job a few years ago at Manangatang, further north of Quambatook. The principal spoke about the changes to the land. I wonder what the long term impact will be for these areas.

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This live recording of Methyl Ethel is another reminder of what I missed out on earlier this year.

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Welcome back to another month. I feel like it has had a bit of everything, catching up with family visiting from interstate, eldest daughter managing to go on her first school camp in three years, as well as being being thrust into health and safety protocols. On the Work front, I feel like I have … Continue reading "📰 Read Write Respond #078"

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The Guardian take a dive into the decisions that led to where Uber is today. This is unpacked further in three podcasts, including an interview with Mark MacGann about the decision to blow the whistle.

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Inspired by Thalia Verkade and Marco te Brömmelstroet’s discussion of banning cars in cities, Clive Thompson thinks about the idea of monocropping and the impact of rewilding beyond just nature. In the same way that monocropping corn creates weaker, less resilient land, monocropping our streets with cars creates cities that aren’t as vibrant as they … Continue reading "📑 Rewilding Cities"

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The Harry Ransom Centre Digital Collections represent just a sample of the Ransom Center’s diverse holdings in literature, photography, film, art, and the performing arts.

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Jon Dron reflects upon the current edtech conversations. He shares his thoughts on how to help the edtech community find its soul again: We must make playgrounds, not production lines. We must embrace the logic of the poem, not the logic of the program. We must see one another in all our multifaceted strangeness, not … Continue reading "📑 Weary, old, a little broken, but not letting go of the dream: edtech in the 21st Century"

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This seems like an interesting application, I just wonder if this is a means of scraping user data?

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Thank you for sharing your reflection Bianca. I have been out of schools for years and have found identity one of the biggest challenges. Although I still clearly work within ‘education’, a lot of my work has morphed to working behind the scenes. My title is ‘subject matter expert’, whatever that means. Really I find … Continue reading "💬 Who am I?"

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I really enjoyed this reflection Tom on finding balance, as well as keeping on keeping on. This is something that I tried to capture a few years ago in regards to ‘being informed’ in response the Cambridge Analytica revelations. One thing that I was left thinking about after reading your piece was a recent interview … Continue reading "💬 Ed Tech Boxes"

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I really like how although these tracks are quite lengthly, they never feel overly repetitive or boring. This is something that Philip Sherburne captures in his review: Every few bars, there’s a new sound clamoring for your attention; the chords gradually become more enveloping, radiant, even sentimental. The drifting harmonies echo the Sea and Cake … Continue reading "📑 Sons Of (Sam Prekop and John McEntire)"

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Cory Doctorow addresses the changing times in regards to challenges with being able to be able follow a particular part of someone’s interests or output. If you loved a writer’s output of x but couldn’t abide their output of y, no problem — you’d just suck their feed into your reader and tell it to … Continue reading "📑 So You’ve Decided to Unfollow Me"

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Boyce Upholt explores the engineering nature and the challenges with reversing the side-effects. Whereas in the past, water associated with the Mississippi would flow out through the delta, dumping sediment and building up the land. Nowadays it all flows through a single channel. Every choice associated with fixing this problem has its own environmental and … Continue reading "📑 The Controversial Plan to Unleash the Mississippi River"

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Kieran Hebden discusses his epic Spotify playlist with Andy Cush. When Hebden launched the playlist in 2016, it was something of a lark, a way to share the spoils of his crate-digging with whoever cared to listen. Within a few months, as it grew in audience and duration—he never deletes tracks, so it’s always getting … Continue reading "🎵 Four Tet on His 155-Hour Spotify Playlist, the Coolest Thing on Streaming"

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This aerial view of Melbourne in 1866 is fascinating, not only for what it shows, but also to consider how it was actually constructed. Was it using a hot air balloon or was it simply based on De Gruchy and Leigh’s appreciation of the land?

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This is one of those times when you know a name, only to realise that there is a whole backstory that you are unaware of. In Speaking with Tongues, Tilley recounts his experience in the Revival Centres International and his subsequent life afterwards following his passions by going into media. What I found interesting is … Continue reading "📚 Speaking in Tongues (Tom Tilley)"

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The Gray Man feels similar to the Bourne series. Like The Punisher, I am always intrigued with the investigation of what is right. I enjoyed the contrast in roles played by Chris Evans, something of an egotistical Captain America.

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It would seem that with The Eternals, Dr Strange and now Moon Knight that multidimensionally is now on the menu.

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I always wondered about the place of X-Men within the Marvel universe.

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An absurd insight into the world of self-doubt and imposter syndrome. ᔥ “Damian Cowell” in Disco ex Machina – YouTube (07/30/2022 15:21:03)

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Wouter Groeneveld discusses his development of the Creative Programming Problem Solving Test (CPPST), a self-assessment test that measures more than just divergent thinking. It explores various aspects of problem-solving associated with programming with the intent to help developers test the efficacy of interventions. I am not sure I am really a true ‘programmer’, but a … Continue reading "📑 Self-Assessing Creative Problem Solving"

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You might be interested in Clive Thompson’s idea of ‘maximum viable product‘, where he discusses the idea of an application doing one thing and doing it well.

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I watched Season One of Stranger Things a few years ago after getting a downloaded copy. After finally getting Netflix I finally got around to watching the remaining seasons. Having binged all four seasons, although there were aspects that seemed somewhat stretched, such as breaking back into a Russian prison and Jim Hopper being able … Continue reading "📺 Stranger Things"

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This was an enjoyable piece of what-ifs, filling the gaps. It creates the opportunity to introduce various new characters, such as Tala Durith and Reva Sevander, as well as continue to explore others, such as the evolution of Darth Vader. However, there is something challenging about a story which you kind of already know the … Continue reading "📺 Obi-Wan Kenobi"

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The 100 is an interesting series. In some ways there was a lot of repetition where the same scenarios were raised again and again, but from different perspectives. This came up in regards to nightbloods and sacrificing for the greater good, as well as the place of artificial intelligence. As much as I enjoyed the … Continue reading "📺 The 100"

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Troy Hunt marks the argument that just because you are not paying for the product, it does not necessarily mean that you yourself are the product. Sometimes, he posits, we are simply consuming goodwill. On the flipside of this, he points out that when you pay for products such as YouTube or Netflix, this does … Continue reading "📑 If You’re Not Paying for the Product, You Are… Possibly Just Consuming Goodwill for Free"

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Another example of an AI story generator. Here is my example: I wake up each morning to the same gray sky. The same unremitting cold. It’s been like this for months. I don’t know what’s wrong with the weather, but it’s driving me crazy. I go to work every day, and each time I come … Continue reading "📑 Story Machines"

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I really should try this with my old Macbook that I no longer use.

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Ian, I was left thinking about L. M. Sacasas’ argument that life online is lived in the past. On the one hand, I am left thinking about my breadcrumbs as possibly leading to slow hunches. The thought that ideas for the future are produced from pieces over time. On the flipside of this, I was … Continue reading "💬 Interrogating Our Stuckness"

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ᔥ “Gillian” in Gillian on Twitter: “Future of education report – https://t.co/Se6GdGG3dw #TEP22” / Twitter (07/18/2022 20:47:00)

The post 🤔 The Future of Education – Insights into today’s students and their future expectations first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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I really like the search suggestions. Personally, I use Granary to follow, but really like customising the feed by kind as well as people.

The post 💬 Twitter Custom Searches first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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ᔥ “Alan Levine” in Alan Levine on Twitter: “Thanks to @BryanAlexander I fell into the AI Weirdness hole of the Kitten Effect https://t.co/tLoocpKUKL I can’t just tweet without trying myself, so yes, The Kitten Effect applies to llamas too https://t.co/D0KNNFz6DJ” / Twitter (07/16/2022 22:13:58)

The post 👍 AI Weirdness: The Strange Side of Machine Learning first appeared on Read Write Collect.

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So another month passes. For me, someone ran into the back of my car. Sometimes life just happens, I guess. When I initially inquired about getting a loan car, I was told that I would need to travel to the airport to collect it. Unwilling to do this, we managed to get through most of … Continue reading "📰 Read Write Respond #077"