Combining cartography and creative writing, Concrete Dialogues is a
unique project that marks the beginning of a quite different map of
Perth. Online and on paper, some of Perth’s best young writers will
take you on a journey into parts of the city you’ve never known, and
show you some of the memories that shape a place in the eyes of the
people that call it home.
…etc etc etc.
It’s more fun just to read it, though – dialogues.concrete.org.au.
Still sick, but definitely improved.
Woke up at 10:30 and went to find The Squeeze. Couldn’t. At first I worried that I’d driven him off with my insane shrieking last night: “Go to bed! Stop making noise! You keep waking me up!” It wasn’t my fault, I swear – it was the antihistamines in my cold and flu tablets making me NUTS. And kind of irrational. Didn’t help that I kept waking up out of a deep sleep, all disoriented and unable to breathe, just because the poor Squeeze had – Goddess help him – opened the bathroom door.
Can I help it if I’m in the grip of a temporary (please, please, let it be temporary), antihistamine-induced insanity?
I’ve kind of got issues with antihistamines – I love them because I have allergies of various sorts most of the year (cats, dust, melaluca*, general seasonal stuff) – but I’m also afraid of my psychotic reactions to them. They make me NUTS. Kind of furiously, irrationally angry. Like a hormone thing, except chemically induced. They also make me dehydrated. But last night they were putting me to sleep, and with the amount of liquid I had in my head and chest (despite the 3thousandpillow tower of prop) I needed that sleep.
But anyway, I get to sleep, I wake up, and I have no clue where The Squeeze has gone. And I’m not sure I blame him. I find out later that he’s off with a nerdmate, doing nerdy things.
Nerd things that The Squeeze does with his nerd mates:
– looking at cameras
– playing with cameras
– eating pide at A1 and drinking tiny cups of turkish coffee that leave them highly, highly strung – like a 4 year old on red cordial
– talking about computers
– looking in camping stores, talking about camera-trips (don’t ask), buying hiking shoes (The Squeeze), buying bags (Yames)
– making up stories about computers/cameras/coffee
I’m sure they’re having a lovely time.
And while I certainly don’t want to be with them (it’d be like a non-dancer hanging with a pack of dancers at an exchange – teeedium), I’m kind of jealous of their mobility. I’d planned to go look at a bike I’m going to buy today – they were going to make it up for me. But I don’t know if I could make it over there. In fact, I’m thinking the couch looks pretty dang good from here…
….and that’s about all. Great post, huh?
*most-used tree for streetplanting in every city I’ve lived in
It’s ten past eight, and still way light outside.
I’ve spent the day divided between the couch and bed, dealing with serious goobs.
What else to do but watch telly?
We’re watching Veronica Mars on telly and I’m kind of not really digging it. I know other people really dig it, but me… not so much.
It’s been a while since I watched some Dead Like Me, which I’m holding as the main contender for decent teen tv… though it probably doesn’t count as teen tv, seeing as how the protagonist is 18 or even a bit older. It’s certainly a bit less mainstream than VM, seeing as how the protagonist is not only 18 and finished with schoool, but also dead.
Do the characters have to be at school to make it a teen flick?
I went to that stupid BBQ yesterday and kissed stupid Brian* (only the cheek, though – is that a good or a bad thing?) and now I have a stupid cold. Guess that’s why I couldn’t smell all the horrid smells everyone was crapping on about at the BBQ yesterday.
But anyway, back to the cold. A horrible, stupid cold – I have a chest full of goob and a nasty, wracking cough that really hurts my throat. I have a temperature, sore glands in my neck, sinus ache, goobs in my nose and sinuses and I am the definition of lassitude.
Poor ham. And just when I was getting hardcore with yoga and dancing (probably because I was getting hardcore with yoga and dancing).
So I’ve been lying on the bed reading and doing some doodling on the internet. No doubt i’ll have to rewrite everything once I’m properly lucid again – I kind of write like I’m transcribing trances for whirling dervish when I write ill, particularly when I have a temperature… but anyway. I’ve added some articles to FSP, noting the vast number of bands on in coming weeks (mostly trad jazz, and at least 3 I’ve never seen – all featuring the same guy, Mike McQuaid, so I’m interested), wondering if I’ll be well enough by Wednesday to do this gig.
I’m also carrying some mild Christmas-related anxiety. Did anyone else know it was only 13 days away? Has anyone bought any presents? Booked that restaurant for Boxing Day? Done anything more than order about 6kg of meat for 4 people?
And it’s hot and windy, with rain looming…
Bah. Humbug.
*Brian has had a heavy cold for a while. That’s why this point is relevant.
The Squeeze rediscovered his fish eye lense a few days ago and brought it with him to a BBQ on Sunday. I really like the way the whole group fits into one photo – I like the … scale. I like the way it allows a photo to have lots of things going on at once. There are hundreds in his photostream, but they’re all private. I went through and found a few I liked. Starting with this one, which I like for the number of things going on. I also like the green grass and lush garden – reminded me of brisvegas…
We’ve begun level one yoga – this is week 2. Level Bubs was proving to basic for us, but level Ones… is proving a little draining.
Last night I rode home and Crinks caught the bus/tram to my place, and we had to lie on the bed and eat because we were so buggered. Note bent legs to relieve lower-back fatigue. Also note the take-away menus in hand and Crinks’ obvious interest in said menus – we had to eat, but Goddess knows we didn’t have the energy to cook.
And, because it seems to be the order of the day…
and because I apparently have words to burn at the moment…
another blog entry.
I was reading a friend’s blog just now, and she asks
Does this happen to other people? Do you stick to what you intend to write about? Or do you get all Virginia Woolf and attempt to write down every thought that occurs to you?
Nope. Never happens to me :P Never on my blog, never in my thesis, never when I kept a diary, never when I talk, never when I’m lying in bed thinking before I go to sleep, never when I’m posting on the board, never when I’m tutoring or giving a lecture and never ever when I’m giving a paper.
As Galaxy writes,
there’s something that happens when I start writing: thoughts are sparked and tangents beckon, or as Dostoyevsky writes in Notes from Underground, ‘I practise thinking, and consequently each of my primary causes pulls along another, even more primary, it its wake, and so on ad infinitum’.
I can’t help myself. I’m never at want for something to say or write. If I ever am, I know there’s something up, and I worry about me.
To demonstrate the point….
as I was writing and referencing the bit above, I got to thinking about how neat hypertext is for referencing. Footnotes on the printed page are so oldskool – I love the way hovering over my footnote markers in my chapters in Word give me a little pop-up window with the footnote’s contents. I love clicking on a link to see the page/site that’s being referenced. I like links within a page, guiding me through the contents, especially if it’s links in a table of contents. How wonderful!
But all that ‘yay for hypertext’ stuff got me thinking about the paper I gave in Sydney, and how it’d be nice to post it online somewhere so all the people who’ve asked me about it could read it. It’d be cool to link to the clips I showed in the paper as well… though I have some reservations about that – it would certainly be in breach of my ethics agreement, unless I managed to get permission from all the participants. And I’m not sure the paper would work as well without my excellent intonation and timing for the jokes. Or the random forays into (un)related topics, mid-paper…
… I guess the tangents only beckon when you a great many thoughts jumping around in side your head. Wouldn’t it be horrible to never have anything to say or think? I remember once when my ex exclaimed in response to an observation I’d made (and I paraphrase the following): “You think too much!” and Galaxy stepped in with “Oh, I don’t think it’s possible to think too much – it’s certainly better than never having any thoughts at all”. I know that it was one of those moments where I suddenly thought ‘Yeah! More thinking! Yeah! I’m ok – I’m not a fool! Yeah!’. Thank heavens for Sisterhood: effective self-reflexivity is far more difficult when you’re busy paying too much attention to yourself.
Perhaps I should have left my ex for Galaxy then?
and house cleaning is DONE. been fiddling with the statcounter code and doing some blog tidying.
and it’s done.
so now i can quit procrastinating and get back to the thesis. yay!
it’s a rainy crap day, so i’m not sorry to stay indoors….
extraneous details:
– last night i went to yoga. crinks and i are doing bubs or ones. we’ve just moved up to ones, and it’s some scary shit. lots of inverted pose action. but i like to do bubs on monday and ones on wednesday.
– i’m thinking of popping up to the cornish arms to see the pearly shells tonight. they don’t swing so much, but chris tanner is playing with them tonight. and hell, it’s free, it’s a 5minute bike ride, i might catch up with some nice people, it’s nice to lean on the bar and drink pineapple juice and mineral water while The Squeeze has a pint. we used to eat dinner there too, but the kitchen has gone to crap. blurgh.
– i haven’t been dancing at a dancer run event since mlx. that’s nearly 2 weeks. i have been to see two bands though this week and last, and danced a lot in sydney. i am very much in love with virus atm – holy SMOKES that young trumpeter is GOOD! i mean, blow-your-brains-out good. it’s very excellent to go jiggle about with the crazy old jazz niks to virus on a saturday afternoon – and for free, too! i’m interested in going to see the Society Syncopators this saturday at the vic jazz club i think* – $12 though. so i’m getting a gutful of dixie these days – bring on the CHARLESTON! YEAH!! and then there’s cbd on thursday night, and the funpit on friday night (both dancer-run, DJed doos).
– crinks and i are making fillums. short fillums. we talk about the ideas together, we film it together, then she edits it. i’ve been doing the burning of cd copies and could possibly draw the titles. each film is a gem: 100% craptastic stupidity. beautiful. so far we share them with our friends (meaning The Squeeze and michael in sydney). long live the pun! one day we may even get a cast of more than two people together. one day we may buy our own camera and quit borrowing rob’s or using crinks’ dad’s crappy little still digital camera. one day. but we’re pretending we’re robert rodriguez using only scraps of film and with no budget, aiming for a local release rather than international fame. so it’s all about doing it tough.
*for those weird, crazy stalkers who are reading: just because you know where i’ll be, don’t mean you can stop me snubbing you. so quit with the stalking already.
and because I have plenty to blog about, does that mean I’m doing any blogging…?
I have, however, been busybusy with the thesis (I’ve probably jinxed it now) – the first two chapters have now been re-edited (come on down draft #3!), I’ve written a first (craptastic) version of chapter six, and I’m now going through chapters four and five, re-editing. I’m finding it tricky keeping the whole thesis in my head – I keep losing track of what the whole thing is about. I do need to go through and make it all answer this basic question:
How do swing dancers use electronic media in their embodied practices? It’s actually a pretty good question, and one I can answer. I just keep forgetting – I get caught up in the details.
So,
chapter 2: Afro-American vernacular dance in the 1930s and before.
Electronic media isn’t really used in embodied practice. I talk about embodied dance as discourse, and vernacular dance as being in every part of everyday life – so it is a medium in itself. I introduce the idea of cultural transmission in dance.
chapter 3: contemporary swing dance culture.
I take up the idea of cultural transmission in dance, positioning contemporary swing dancers as on the receiving end of transmission from the Afro-American vernacular dance tradition. I introduce the idea of the recreationist myth and its use in swing culture. I discuss the various ways swing dance today is mediated – by studios and classes; by electronic media. Then I discuss specific examples of the way certain moves and traditions in swing dance have been taken up by contemporary swing dance communities around the world, in different ways. In these moments, I take issues of gender and sexuality as case studies. So I’m introducing the idea of local difference within a global culture.
This chapter is good, and kind of important, but as you can see, it’s also kind of a mess.
chapter 4: AV media.
I haven’t gotten to this one yet. But I do know I’m looking at three stages in the development of the contemporary swing dancing community, defined by three types of media. This suggests that particular media forms and their use are central to and also indicative of social and cultural change within a community.
So, we have the first stage – archival film and its use in the 1980s revivalist moment. Then we have the second – ‘official’ videos (instructional; mementos for camps, etc) and the development of local community identity. And finally we have digital clips and the rise of a localised global community.
I also discuss gender and sexuality in this chapter, but not to a great extent.
It’s easy to answer the question ‘how do swing dancers use electronic media in their embodied practices?’ in this chapter.
chapter 5: DJing
This is a bit of a big mess, but I have lots of things to say. I talk about the increasing complexity and diversity in cultural practice within a community as that community gets older, and develops inter-community networks. So I’m paralleling cultural diversity with global community participation, yet still emphasising the essential nature of embodied practice and (consequently) local community practice and identity. I use discussions of the SwingDJs board in this, as well as some references to Swing Talk and other discussion boards.
I talk about the professional development of individual DJs within the Melbourne scene, and parallel that with the development of the Melbourne scene as an increasingly globalised community. I also discuss the role of gender and class and other identity markers in the rise of a professional DJing role, and also in individual DJs’ experiences as DJs in local and global swing culture.
Again, it’s not difficult to answer the question ‘how do swing dancers use electronic media in their embodied practices’, it’s just that the chapter is kind of busy….
chapter 6: Dance schools and other institutions
This was going to be a chapter about camps and exchanges, but I found I had very little to actually say about camps and exchanges that was actually addressing my Question, but that I did have a lot to say about the role of institutions in swing culture. I’m not sure if this chapter will stay here, at the end, or if it’ll go back to the beginning somewhere. I kind of like it here, because it sums up all the other chapters, explaining the way DJing, AV media and embodied dance practice are all managed discursively by schools. I emphasise the commodification of swing dance in contemporary Melbourne swing culture, thus indicating its mediation by schools. I also discuss the role of emailed newsletters, school websites and other ‘official’ discourse and texts, and the ways in which they mediate embodied dance practice.
This is perhaps the most interesting chapter of all, and also the most obviously political. Here, I’m attempting to address the conflicts between profit-oriented, old-school captialism and a communitarian rhetoric. I’m also interested in the way the revivalist myth (ie the idea that swing dancees have to be revived at all) is employed by schools and other institutions as justification for their activities, particularly their business activities.
I also make a clear argument about the way a school-as-a-business employs pedagogic principles – the significance of institutional heirarchies and heirchical orderings of knowledge; the neglect of alternative teaching and learning practices; the encouragement of heirarchies within a body of students which encourages them to consume – to buy – more classes, rather than to explore experiential learning. In other words, I’m interested in why schools are bound to push classes as the most valid form of learning, and congruently neglect the learning opportunities presented by social dancing.
I’m facinated by the role of emailed newsletters and websites (where there is no dialogue) in this process (developing and securing a market for a product), and the alternative offered by Swing Talk as an institution. I do not suggest that Swing Talk is necessarily any ‘better’ than the schools, as institutions go, but I do argue that it employs different strategies, has a different ‘dominant’ ethos or ideology, and functions in different ways than the schools. It is still, however, a site where ideas about dancing are managed cooperatively and in reference to existing social and cultural heirarchies within the community.
I get so close to talking about public spheres here, it’s not funny.
So the thesis is going well. It’s all interesting. It’s kind of a mess, but I’m working on that. I aim to get through all these chapters, then send them to my second supervisor to get her to read through it all. Then I write chapter 1 (the introduction) and the conclusion.
Then I begin rewriting all over again!
I’ve been busy busy lately. So no blogging. Though I guess that’s one good thing about being busy – plenty to blog about.
1.MLX5. we ran it the weekend before last. It went majorly well, and – surprisingly – I don’t now hate the thought of the damn thing. We had a Tasmanian and a Perthian stay with us (with extended visits from crinkle) and had a jolly time.
2.Sydney. On the Thursday after the Monday MLX finished, I went to Sydney to do a paper at the CSAA conference. It went well. The visit was way fun – stayed with nice local dancer, sampled the city’s local dance scene, etc etc. Did no site-seeing though, which I kind of regret, esp as I wanted to get to the PowerHouse and the Gallery. But bought three Proper box sets (Fats Waller, Bix Beiderbecke and Ben Webster) for me and one for The Squeeze (Oscar Peterson). All for only $35 each. That’s a total of 16 superior CDs for only $150. I know, I know, it’s amazing.
3.The Squeeze quits his job and goes on holiday. We are both home all day, now, which is only mildly distracting for PhD girl, and could end in mutual, cataclysmic explosion action. But only could. Good thing we like each other.
4.Came home and wrote chapter. The best is last, of course. That goddamn final chapter is now down in words. Of course, it’s a crazy mess and needs mucho mucho work, but still.
Jobs to do:
1.Edit chapter into chapterness. Out of the wilderness, into the world of agriculted thesis.
2.Get a decent photo for the Melbourne Jazz Dance Association site (the body we use for running dance events – starting with MLX5), buy a domain and get the goddamn thing up there.
3.Think about the MLX6 website and theme. Am considering some sort of blogging software to make updating the site much easier and to allow muliple authors. Could use some other sort of data managment outfit, but… we’ll see. We definitely need a discussion board and facility for uploading files as we’ve pretty much maxed out our yahoo site’s space. But that will depend on the purchase of the domain and foundation of the website. Pft.
4.Got to yoga. Just go.
5.Go see a film.
