Gleeful: Never My Love

Joel's vocal group doesn't have a proper name yet. They don't wear a uniform: "performance black and grey" is the dress code, which can mean anything from a white shirt, a black miniskirt, a grey cardigan, a pretty brown dress with a hint of white petticoat. They have only just learned to bow properly, together, and have almost stopped messing with their hair between songs. Some are tall; and some are short.

For all that, their sound is warm and close: perfect for a capella traditions and competitions.

Last week they competed in the Get Vocal competition for school groups as part of a six day festival of concerts, workshops and competitions. They won their small division on Wednesday and last night were invited to perform at one of the closing night conferences.

First up was the group (from a school in the Yarra Valley: a most beautiful place) that placed first in the larger contest, and second in the division that our lot won. A bigger group, possibly slightly older, and looking for all the world as if, with the lighting and sound production of Glee, they would be contenders for television. Their act was choreographed and dramatic, and featured a Glee style mash-up, arranged by one of the boys, of "Crazy" and "Rolling in the Deep." The boys wore black suits, the girls wore black cocktail dresses, high heels, make-up, and white ribbons in their pretty spiffy hairstyles. Gorgeous to see. They did that Glee-style walking around, singing to each other business. They closed in a triangle formation and one of them courteously thanked their teacher and families, the concert and festival organisers. They sang about five songs. Some of their solos were very good indeed, and they rightly received rapturous applause.

The MC also raved about them, and expressed some surprise that they were beaten in one of the divisions. In spite of his disbelief, he nevertheless introduced the Princes Hill group.

They walk on. They are smaller, less formally dressed, less polished behind their mikes. But they open their mouths, and when they get to their first long sustained harmonic chord, you can hear the warmth and closeness of their sound, something that wasn't as evident in the other group.

They sing only two songs. I spent several hours last night trying to move a 7 minute video from my iphone to my computer, on outdated software. I'm only posting the first song, as the second they are working up for another competition in Mt Gambier in a few weeks. But here they are, with apologies for sound quality, and with shaky camera action stilled by YouTube. It's just a phone. Click through to full screen to see all seven of them.

Utterly incomprehensible interwebz joke

I *will* finish this chapter and this review this weekend. In the meantime, by way of a warm-up to fabulous writing, check out Still Life with Cat's utterly fabulous utterly incomprehensible interwebz joke:

http://stilllifewithcat.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/if-sylvia-plath-were-lolcat.html

Stéphanie la deuxième

One of the great joys of the Centre of Excellence has been the appointment of nine fabulous post-doctoral fellows in various hubs of the Centre around the country. We have two at Melbourne: Sarah and Stephanie. Both are fabulous young women who are throwing themselves into the work of the Centre with such enthusiasm it is quite inspiring. They have their own projects to work on; they are establishing networks with other post-docs; they are going to conferences; they are helping us organise conferences; they will be doing a little graduate teaching; they are setting up reading groups; they are exchanging work for commentary and discussion; they are making our little suite of rooms feel like a very active and buzzing little hub.

Today was the first meeting of the Old French reading group Stephanie had organised, with the assistance of Véronique in the French department. There were a dozen people in the room, reading Marie de France's Laüstic, learning not to do eighteenth-century "r"s, counting octosyllabic lines, and looking at photocopies of the sole Harley ms., which also features the music and lyrics of "Sumer is i-cumen in."

Staff, post-docs, doctoral students, honours students, retired folk, all just concentrating together. A very happy hour, reminding me of the best things a university can be.

In which I go national

With thanks to the good people at the National Library, Humanities Researcher is now regularly being archived by Pandora. I'm quite chuffed at this. For a start, it means I don't have to worry quite so much about backing up or losing past entries in a blog meltdown. When I have a bit more time, I'm going to explore their site more thoroughly and see what other blogs they are archiving like this.

But in the meantime: what ho for national posterity!

Day Surge

A minor operation. A procedure I've had before, in the same hospital, with the same gynaecologist. The worst thing beforehand was fasting after an early breakfast, and missing my 11.00 coffee. I picked Paul up from the airport after two weeks away, we ran a few errands, and then he dropped me at the hospital at 1.30. The Women's hospital is a new building, and I'm in the private ward, Frances Perry House. Everything is clean and calm; and there are no televisions. The nurses introduce themselves by name. I put on my robe and climb into bed under my white cotton blanket. The pale teal curtains are drawn around me. After a while there's a bit of a bustle, a trolley is wheeled in, and it's clear there's a new baby. I don't catch its name but it's named after its maternal grandfather, I hear the father say. I don't hear the mother speaking, but the baby is learning to feed, just practising, the nurses say.

After a while it's quiet again — they have gone back to the ward, I suppose — and Olivia comes to tell me there's a bit of a delay. I'm re-reading Nice Work for a new PhD class starting this week, but after a while I put it aside and sleep. The lights are bright, but it's been easy to slip into the passive role of good patient. I can't email, or hold meetings; I can't write. So I curl up and sleep, for close to an hour, I think — there's no clock — and wake to a gentle touch on my arm. It's Deborah, wearing her scrubs and surgical cap, telling me we'll be going in soonish: there was an emergency caesarean ahead of us. She's the most recent in a long line of wonderful medical practitioners I've met in the last six years: dry and warm (speaking humorally, I see). She is kneeling at my bedside as she wakes me. What a simple thing to do: how little she loses in status by doing so; how much she gains my trust.

I love the feeling of being looked after by this team of competent calm professionals: male receptionist; female nurses; male orderly; female gynaecologist; male anaesthetist.

Graeme comes to take me into surgery, with a new white cotton blanket, which he has warmed up. I meet Andrew the anaesthetist and he and Deborah and I chat about the Melbourne model and the loss of the old Arts/Medicine degree. Another nurse deftly plants sensors on my chest, and before I know it, they have attached me to the drips. I have had almost no experience with hallucinogens in my modest life, and so am curious about the moments before unconsciousness. I keep my eyes open, looking at the white pipes across the ceiling, the lights above me, and hearing Andrew's voice. I think briefly about Michael Jackson. Then, I guess, my eyes roll back, and I'm gone.

I wake. Someone — is it Deborah? — is telling me everything went very well. I think I am back in the ward, but I hear someone telling me they are about to move me back into "day surge". I don't remember the journey, and it takes me a long time to wake up and sip some water. Later on, a cup of tea, some salty biscuits (bliss!) and a sandwich.

Another baby arrives, just with its father: the mother is still in surgery, I think. This baby is called Philip. The father is teacher at a boys' school and tried hard to find a name not shared by any of his students. The baby has a funny little cry, like a chicken... It's not at all disturbing to my calm, to hear the sounds of happy parents. The baby's big sister, five years old, has no idea, apparently, that a baby is arriving today.

I'm home by 7.30 and even manage to sit up for pizza night. Two days later, my legs still feel a bit wobbly, but it's much better than the last time I had a general anaesthetic, when I felt teary and miserable for nearly a week.

This was a diagnostic procedure, just to make 100% sure the observable and measurable after-effect of Tamoxifen on the endometrium isn't malignant. I'm expecting nothing but good news.

Flying, mortality, perspective

A lightning fast trip to Sydney I did *not* have time for, given the terrible juggling of writing and reading deadlines I am trying to wrangle at the moment.

The plane flew in low over the suburbs, not along the coast as I'm more used to: all the little houses lined up, shuddering each time the planes fly over. Taxi to hotel, walk to dinner with colleagues (where I disgraced myself, I suspect, hogging 90% of the gorgonzola pannacotta on our shared tasting plate), walk back, sleep soundly, walk to campus, walk into the beautiful old quadrangle building

for an all day meeting, discussing the government cuts to the organisation's fundings, and cutbacks and suspensions of many of its most useful programs. A 30 minute lunch break — no time for a walk in the sun as I usually insist on in all-day meetings — then back into the air-conditioned, very claustrophobic room. The air-conditioning made a continuous low reverberation, like a car running, that made my brain seem to vibrate, all day. Then at 4, we jumped into cabs then back to the airport. No time, obviously, to catch up with Sydney friends, I'm sorry.

During our dinner I heard about a colleague who'd lost a child in traumatic circumstances several years ago, and the devastation that was still spreading rings around everything. It sat with me all through the meeting yesterday. And yesterday evening as we flew into Melbourne around 7.00pm the flight took us low over a little cemetery. Very small, but the little tombstones so distinctively small and grey in a landscape of houses like the Sydney ones. Cemeteries usually appear as grey blurs from the air, and on google maps, but we were very low, so you could see the miniature streetscapes. I think you fly over another cemetery as you fly into Adelaide. This one seemed particularly small: a little village of the dead under the bustle of folk itching to get out their mobile phones and reconnect with the world.

I drove straight to the school, for a meeting led by its extraordinary principal about a trip he leads to PNG every three years or so. They stay in villages (boys in the men's hut; girls in the women's), and work with communities, and also attempt an overnight 5 hour hike up Mt Wilhelm, comparable to the Kokoda trail (one guide per three students). This trip is not about tourism, or buying souvenirs, nor is it about testing yourself against the elements, it's about building a relationship between the school and this village, and with the students and staff who go.

If Joel goes, he will perhaps be seeing dawn on Mt Wilhelm the day his VCE results come out. Now there's a perspective.

Jury service

Write, write, have a little holiday, write, pause to process a thousand emails, write, write, have big ambitious thoughts, have a possibly serious and threatening brush with post-Tamoxifen side-effects, then write some more.

And then, today: jury duty. I've never been called, not once, so was curious, though very scared of getting empanelled in a long trial. In the end, you actually have very little say over what happens. I was in the County Court, a rather nice modern building opposite the old Supreme Court, with 200 others, all under the care of an astonishing jury pool supervisor, who kept us informed, described procedures in crystalline clarity, made us laugh, and took all the uncertainty out of the process. So lovely to see someone loving their job and being great at it.

I chatted to her at one point (my occupation was first listed as teacher of English to non native speakers, and she then changed my "professor of medieval literature" to "university professor) and she had done teaching and librarianship at Melbourne, and had travelled a fair bit too. She told me when she took her husband on his first overseas trip, it was Hadrian's Wall and Stonehenge that really blew him away. There you go, with that medieval stone thing again.

Anyway, the people who had to return from yesterday were being empanelled for a TWELVE WEEK trial. The longest one for us was about three weeks. Were any of us wanting to be excused? As we were waiting, I'd phoned my gynaecologist, and confirmed some minor diagnostic surgery* in three weeks' time, so I felt I could legitimately say I couldn't guarantee to keep that time free.

Then I was called for a shorter, civil trial. Thirty of us lined up to be called for a jury of six. This was after a great deal of elaborate, but also efficient calling and registering of numbers and a lovely old wooden box from which they drew the numbers.

We all lined up and were taken into court. Judge, wearing wig and purple robe; two bewigged male barristers, two unwigged male ones, and two elegantly dressed female associates. The judge explained the case (an OHS one) and read the list of witnesses. We were then asked to excuse ourselves, and a few people did. I bit the bullet and said I was "present." But then one of the self-excusers said she had a holiday booked the same day as my surgery, and she was excused, even though the judge said it was unlikely the case would still be going. But then I changed my "present" to "excuse". I don't want to put off the procedure any longer. We then watched as 12 names were drawn, and the two sides had the change to remove three names (they'd all turned to look at us as their names and occupations were read out), then six were chosen and sworn in, and the rest of us went downstairs.

By then it was lunchtime and so I went out and bought a pair of shoes (I don't normally shop in the city, but it was FABULOUS! so many shops! so many sales! Spanish fabric wedge pumps reduced from $315 to $75!!!). We all turned up again at 2.00, hung around for half an hour and were then let go. I could tell Pauline didn't want to let us go. She was like a great tour guide, or a lecturer, actually. She told me she loves it best when she is managing big groups. She would have been looking forward to tomorrow, when she will have about 400...

Well, I'm glad, now, I don't have to do it, because there is a fair amount of writing to be done. There are three facebook friends all waiting for me to get on with it, so I'm back on to it now.


*seriously, just minor. So far, I have dodged the big bullet that seemed to be heading my way.

That horrible moment when...

You know the drill. You've submitted your thesis to the examiners, or your essay or book has gone through final proof stage when ... you discover a book published ten years ago on exactly your topic that for some reason you never came across and have taken no account of.

Resigned to the worst, I trudge over to the library to find the offending, newly discovered volume, and turned with foreboding to the index. Sure enough, lots of ominous entries for "Garter, Order of the." I turn resignedly to the most substantial looking, but wait: Caroline Shenton can't possibly have written TWO articles on Edward III's collection of leopards in the Tower of London? Hooray, it's a book (Heraldry, Pageantry and Social Display in Medieval England, ed. Peter Coss and Maurice Keen), which I read in St Louis in 2005. And yes, it's in my bibliography.

This is not to say I won't yet discover something I should have read. It's inevitable, really. But today, this Friday afternoon, I feel I have definitely dodged a bullet.

Audio, video, Wagner: face, dream, Melancholia [SPOILER ALERT]

Last week, three immersion experiences: painting, experimental video-audio art, and cinema.

I am sitting for (I learn that "to" is also acceptable, though somewhat precious) a painter friend who is returning to portraiture after a few years painting in other genres. I sat for Kristin many years ago, and am once more enjoying the afternoons in her studio. We used to be neighbours and regular walking companions though we have fallen out of the habit somewhat in recent years. But we still are comfortable chatting away. I sit with my back to the garden.  Kristin alternates sitting and standing before her easel on the first day, which produces three drawings which I really like. The next day she starts with the oils, and things don't go so well. The third day is more promising, though I haven't yet looked to the other side of the easel to observe progress. I went back yesterday, and she thinks she will be done with one more sitting. Here are a few links to websites featuring her work: here and here. And at this site you can see what Kristin sees when she looks past me into her garden. It's a difficult, difficult art, moving and layering the paint so it produces ... not just a face, but my face. In previous years, when doing portraits, Kristin has used photographs, and indeed much of her recent work has been directly from or about photographs. But this time there is nothing mediating between her eye and the paint. It's never boring. I feel a bit like a cat, sitting still and watching someone working. It's actually rather lovely to sit still (or chat, or listen to the blackbirds in the garden — the Beresfords, they are called). And when there is nothing to say, there is always that still point behind Kristin's ear to look at, and to try and imagine what my face looks like, when I'm holding it still, without a mirror.

On Thursday, I went to another friend's collaborative video-audio installation/performance. A series of meditative video- and soundscapes: Alternate. A small group met in the foyer of the old Commonwealth Bank in Bourke St. Built in 1941, its stern marble was forbidding. Jessie came down to meet us, wearing her blue flannel dressing gown and carrying a little candle/lamp. Quietly she led us into the lift and up six floors, and then down four flights of stairs. We sensed the moving up and down, but also the ritual form of the journey, the stilling of the mind, even while our bodies were still moving. We removed shoes and bags, and then spent an hour in various rooms in the large studio, lying, or sitting, and watching, dreaming and meditating about the space and the sound of a dream. Or the idea of a dream represented in sound. We collected fragments of text from other people's dreams on tiny cards, and wove them into our own silent dreamings, as we puzzled over Alice's extraordinary vocal performances coming from the next room. In one room we watched a slowly-moving face, its features re-organised so the mouth sat above the eyes, which just ... was. Not speaking, just breathing slowly, rather like me being painted by Kristin, I suspect.

Then on Monday, Kristin and I went to see . Warned to sit at the back, in case of motion sickness produced by lots of handheld camera action, we didn't suffer, or feel too bad, or have to leave, as I have heard many have to. The first sequence is, as everyone agrees, mesmeric. One of the most astonishing cinematic sequences imaginable. Probably this is pirated but there is a clip on YouTube: (
[don't watch if you are going to see the movie: it would be so much better on big screen and with big speakers].



Kristin pointed out immediately the two sets of shadows in the formal garden shot, early in the film: the sun and the newly discovered planet Melancholia, seemingly on collision course with the earth, casting opposite shadows. It was strange sitting next to her, when I remembered she had painted a series of paintings of brides in formal gardens: white tulle and satin against rich dark green trees. Melancholia had the same strong visual quality. But as a two-part narrative, it also juxtaposed the stories of the two sisters, held together around the themes of depression, melancholia, ritual, and the proper way of doing things. There were also family narratives.

I loved the movie. The wedding gone wrong; the frustrations of a difficult family member; the relations of sisters; the portrait of depression and the character unable to simply snap out of it; the desire for appropriate ritual practice, whether for a wedding or the end of the world. The visual imagery is superb: the crush of a wedding gown in the car; the candlelit balloons floating up into the night sky; the small boy peering through a handmade loop of metal to measure the approach of the blue planet. Traumatic glimpses of family life: the disenchanted mother; the helplessly libidinous father; the resentful, wealthy husband. The tantalising absence of "the world", with only brief allusions to the village, the internet. The music. Wagner's Tristan overture is probably a cliche; but it is so fitting here I cannot imagine any other orchestral score could suffice.

And of course, the big blue planet, Melancholia. Luminous, lustrous, inexorable. From a distance, burning red. As it comes closer, it's moonlike: compelling, and mostly seen in full. It's not revolving around us, but heading towards us. Its light is soft and blue. Why would you not want to lie naked in its light?

The blue planet haunts most people who see this movie. Its devastating final moments are telling, in terms of the narrative development of the main characters. And then, stillness. No more Wagner. No more art. No more.

Broader, deeper meanings? Some will be frustrated by the film's blithe disregard of the usual disaster movie psychodramas; and of course, by its disregard of realist conventions. Some by its refusal to talk about what it is doing. But it is, all the same, bristling with communications. The endless filling up of a day, a life, with ... stuff: rituals, eating, drinking, bathing, and ceremony of various kinds. In such a world, a blue planet both gives meaning, and takes meaning away.

Is it a medievalist film? Clare and Louise on facebook are suggesting that, perhaps. There is the medievalism of Wagner, the apocalypticism, the Breughel painting; perhaps the medievalism of the great house's architecture. For me, though, the film is little concerned with time, or historicity or periodisation, or the kind of dialogism I associate with medievalism. It is more about the frailty of almost all human projections.

Christmas highlight: redemption by family

Our three day family Christmas marathon is over, and we are back to our funny little holiday routines of sleeping in, working, painting the back fence, and in my case, watching the father-son holiday project — painting a complicated historical time line covering 2,500 years of human history all down the corridor — taking shape. Pictures will follow soon.

My holiday highlight was the kris kringle exchange of gifts at my sister-in-law's place on Christmas Eve. I'd drawn my other brother-in-law, who is an art curator, so he was easy. But who had drawn me? As luck would have it, mine was almost the last present to be given. We did one at a time, and everyone made a little speech. My sixteen-year-old nephew, who had a terrible year, really, having left school, and left home and been in all kinds of trouble (we weren't even sure he'd come), got up, went to the tree, picked up the present, and said, "I've never given a present before and don't know if this is right, but Merry Christmas", came over and kissed me (I see him once or twice a year, no more), and gave me a bag with a card, a ribbon bow, and inside a fridge magnet and computer cleaning cloth from the Mornington Peninsula art gallery, and a fine red cooking apron. I think everyone was just holding their breath. Perhaps just a temporary moment of redemption by family, but a powerful one, all the same.