Regina Spektor @ Newcastle // rise of the new three

It was Reginas birthday, and the crowd sang happy birthday.  The performance was great. I had planned to go, and Pippa told me i must, but had heard that it was sold out.  Sarah magically made it happen. So we went, and it was good. Incidentally, i had forgotten how stimulating to thought processes live music was.

So, a hat trick, i have seen Neko Case, Regina Spektor and Joanna Newsom. Not at the same gig… but that’s ok.  Watching her play piano, i was thinking  is there a new trinity for a remake of the “lips, hips, tits and power”  article   on Bijork, Pj Harvey and Tori Amos in 1994. Pj=Neko, Regina=Tori and Joanna=Bjork for the sake of argument, though I am willing to discuss it. So what is it that links them all? The current three are great storytellers, bittersweet,  occasionally containing more than a hint of pathos, but with some desirous joy too, and optimism. Its strange, or it should seem strange that these stories encapsulated as songs should still resonate so deeply in this pseudo-rational world.

the space between

be my highway home

grew up in the smallest room in the biggest country

agr/claustr/-o-phobic

the space between

those wide plains

the days

the time between population centres

the space

the quiet towns by railroad tracks and wheat silos

sandwiches on the back of the station-wagon

the tailgate flap down

a seat

bread, butter, ham and cheese

with jam for deserts

rounds of sandwiches go fast

debates on merits of squares vs triangles

back in the car for more endless kms

of country, of cropland

slowly inching across the map

home and holiday

the problems of artists access to technology

So youve discovered this piece of technlogy that interests you. You want to make some art about it, maybe you want to make some art with it, maybe you want to critique what lies behnd it. What is access and how can you get it….

Access can be broken into three separate albeit interrelated aspects:

-physical/economic access (do you have the money to buy?/economics)
-intellectual access (do you have the right to use/patents)
-regulatory access (can you use this technique without crossing proscribed boundaries/can you satisfy regulations?)

If we take Stelarcs third ear as an example, it would be expensive to attach the ear surgically. The cast of his ear would have involved using a proprietry polymer, and the surgey itself may have required regulatory approval.

Home is home but not 100%

It has been hard to get to 100% home feeling. Travel is no good for this, but i can say i am around 70% home here in Newcastle. The 30% is the lack of family, but i have someone who loves me, a group of friends and peers, I have a place. Somewhere to call my own. I have a significant chance of meeting someone I know in the street by accident. So in this respect… it is home. Is Adelaide still home, or is 70% the best I can now do anywhere. Maybe thats one of the consequences of growing up…home becomes more diffuse, spread over, decentralised, clumping around friends and family in disparate places. I thought for a while that home was anyplace where three people knew my name, and had had a conversation with in the last week. I think this was a bit of a weak idea of home….but worked for then.

I am now looking for something stronger, and for the time being this is it.

the antipodean traveller

Im not sure if the Australian experience is unique, or mine typical, but the premise is that Australians that travel are obsessed by it, by what it means, by the process of being transplanted, separated from home. Show me any Australian artist apart from Stelarc that has not this idea of travel encoded at a deep level in their thoughts/art works.

I wish we would all stop moving, but we are children of a new and old culture, a hybrid split.