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The last night in Australia
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008
Ahhhh, Australia, I hardly knew ya...
One of the cool things about traveling to places like Australia, New
Zealand, New York or LA is that you somehow end up seeing people you've never met or wanted to meet /or people you've always wanted to meet. I met Eddie Campbell for the first time the other day in Brisbane. He lives up there now with his big son Calum. I Received an email from his daughter Hayley (Facebook chum) saying I should get in touch and arrange for him to come and check out the show and what not. She also wanted me to check out the weird cat on You tube that says 'Hellloooooo' in a weird voice that sounds like kermit the frog gargling with marbles-but I did not do that. Anyhoo- I emailed Eddie and asked him to come along.
For those of you who don't know Eddie's work, he's the guy who drew all the pictures for Alan Moore's seminal FROM HELL graphic novel ,which was then completely bolloxed up by the Hughes brothers when they made the movie. The graphic novel is a fine piece of work, intricately drawn,brilliantly written and superbly put together. Eddie is a master of his profession -he's been parodied by Dave Sim in Cerebus and even Tom Waits has written a song called The Eyeball KId based on one of his characters from Bacchus ...another cool comic of his from back in the day. So I got to hang out with Eddie Campbell and his son in a hotel bar in Brisbane. He was a mensch too - not worrying too much about standing on ceremony-he hurled himself into the midst of our group and chatted in a friendly way to everyone. I was very impressed at his social ease..a real cool guy -and guess what? He's gonna send me some comics ! Yaaaay!
In Perth I got to meet Tim Winton!!!!! Yeah -Tim Winton the guy who wrote Dirt Music (one of my favorite books of all time) and Breath (his most recent novel , full of sex , and extreme sports and childhood pain and more sex -wooh hah!) -what a top bloke. He showed up for the show with wife and kid in tow and although he couldn't come out for a drink for various reasons (first day of school next day -big deal -totally understand dude) he stayed and chatted for a while and we exchanged contact details. If you've never read Tim's work , you've got a treat in store - Dirt music is wonderfully poetic about the hinterlands of
Australia, the one horse seaside town where fishing is the main
occupation and poachers are frowned upon...his descriptions of the
Australian fauna and flora are breathtakingly beautiful. I just bought
all the books on Amazon -that's me sorted for a bit. Nice to meet you Tim!
Last night just after we arrived in Perth Maggie Gerrand and I got in a cab and went straight to the Sydney Opera House (Alien Teacake on it's side) for a performance of a show called Mathinna. This is achoreographed drama by Bangarra dance theatre company about a 'stolen' indigenous Australian girl Mathinna who is snatched from the bosom of her family and taken to a white settlement, made to wear western clothes, have a western education which leads to her being rejected, raped and eventually subsumed by alcohol and God knows what else.
The blurb from the programme probably says it better than I do ' Inspired by a young girl's journey between two cultures ,Mathinna traces the history of a young aboriginal girl removed form her traditional life , adopted into western colonial society to be ultimately returned to the fragments of her original heritage' Elma
Kris plays Mathinna as an inquisitive, intelligent and sensitive young woman -showing the distance between herself and her white captors with a lock or the shape of her shoulders.
My only cavil with the show is that whilst the dance company are clearly wonderful, lithe, strong and technically precise I could have done with more of Elma's dancing, because she was extra-ordinary when allowed to bust one or two moves. At the after show party I got to meet some indigenous Australian women who wanted to say a) they love the Vicar of Dimbleby and b) that I should come and hang out with them...One of them a 72 years old and looked about 40! Brilliant. The artistic direction of the show was on point too - Stephen Page really knows what he's doing on a theatre stage - I thought all aspects of lighting , sound and choreography were breathtaking - and the music-composed by David Page was a triumph. By turns tribal, symphonic, ambient, rhythmic it really controlled the pace of the story and filled narrative holes of time and place when the choreography might have been a bit obtuse. Bravo!
I'm enclosing a dodgy picture of me by the poster so you can have a look at the image - and I also have to say that the show is coming to London, probably Sadlers Wells in the Autumn check it out it's an hour long! You can be in Joe Allen's by 9:30pm, love!
The shows have been going well - I'm finding that if I write some jokes on the computer 30 mins before I go on stage, I can usually remember them when I get out there, and they work! Hoorah!
Now -how do I generate the 'I've meditated, had a steam, had a poo, feel
really hype about the show' vibe so that I can write in my
office..there's definitely a difference. I'll have to ask Neil Gaiman...
I'm listening to: An Aussie Hip Hop crew called Two Dogs at the moment-pretty funky, Also Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris 'Dance Wiv Me' before every show I'm loving 'The Car Song' by The Cat Empire cos the guy sings with a nasally Australian accent over this bouncy, ska, big band beat -it shouldn't work but it does.
I'm reading The Anatomy of Story by John Truby ...(22 steps to becoming a master storyteller) and I'm wishing he wrote like Robert Mckee....
I'm watching 'Weeds' with Mary Louise Parker, the bald black guy from 40 year old virgin and Kevin Neallon ex SNL alumni ...it's a show time show, so it's raunchy and transgressive and very funny. About a middle class suburban widow ,mother of two, who also happens to be a dope dealer...get the dvd, it's pretty funny.
I also just watched the Pedro Almodovar movie 'Volver' with Penelope Cruz. Please watch this -if you've never seen Cruz in anything other than the hair ads when she says , 'It's because I'm worth eet', you need to check this film out, it's passionate, moving, sexy, strange and heart breaking...all about secrets, skeletons in closets (and Fridge Freezers) and dodgy parenting skills...you won't be disappointed.
I just got the most recent issue of Powers! Fantastic - Bendis and Oeming really go for it with this issue, resolving the whole 'Deena the powers junkie on the rampage' story line with juice to spare.
I'm liking the Skrull secret invasion thing, but I'm wanting it to be
over soon...
That's it -I'll probably report from New Zealand soon on the very last leg of the Where You From Antipodean Japery Jaunt..
Peace.
Len x
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