Naidoc week is over for another year. The Aboriginal writer, theologian and former journalist Stan Grant wrote an article last week about his weariness with words and what they have done in our world. He wrote that he was turning to music such as by Arvo Pärt instead. Another article in the Saturday paper this week by Santillla Chingaipe wrote that seriousness has been lost in American politics as it is replaced by spectacle and entertainment, such as the meeting between President Trump and President Zelensky which was marked by the absence of respect shown to Zelensky. She notes that journalists are complicit in their reporting and engagement with this, and also that citizens have a civic duty to engage as part of the democratic process.
I agree with both of them. I can’t engage regularly with the news as I find it overwhelming and distressing, but I agree that it’s my civic duty to do so. To balance this duty with my distress, I read The Saturday Paper slowly throughout the week and don’t engage with any other news. This means that my knowledge of world events can be days out of date; but what I read contains analysis rather than sensationalist headlines.
I tend to offset this seriousness with distractions like playing the piano and running, listening to my favourite podcasts (I hope Michael Williams’s excellent Read This finds another home), and contained amounts of work.
Some other distractions we enjoyed during our recent trip to Melbourne included playing with my nephews. They live in the moment, like when they’re following a book being read to them, or doing endless laps of the house. Felix often comes out with funny things. He has been trained to articulate his feelings, so when he was crying at the end of storytime he said ‘I’m disappointed because I can’t read more stories.’
I loved the Impressionist exhibition from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the way each high ceilinged room was painted a different colour, decorated with furniture and rugs from the period. It was like going for a stroll in the late 1800s to be there, as I’m sure was the intent. They even showcased some wonderful female artists like Louise Abbéma’s portrait of a woman wearing luminous white at her writing desk.
I also loved the exhibition of Australian tonalist artists like Max Meldrum and his followers Clarice Beckett and many others, at the Hawthorn Gallery. Tonalists use simple blocks of pure colour to convey mood and place: our Australian places and some in France. Many of those artists I had never heard of like A M E Bale, Colin Colahan and Polly Hurry. Many lived locally.
Around the corner at Annie’s house, Lotus played with the girls, and she entertained Annie as well with her doings. She did not play with her cat-cousin Duck, who was being minded at Annie’s house also while most of her family were holidaying overseas. Duck side-swiped Lotus on one occasion and hissed at her on another when Lotus took his perch above the cupboard.
I thought of Stan Grant this afternoon back home watching Bangarra’s latest offering ‘Illume.’ This was a performance of eleven stories set in the Kimberley. The stories were about mother-of-pearl, which lies at the heart of spiritual and traditional life for the Goolarrgon Bard people in the Kimberley; a medicine tree; energy; fish; fire as light; whalesong (a totemic figure for the Goolarrgon people); and light.
In one story, there was a structure in the corner of the stage burning slowly and emitting flames and smoke while the dancers danced, mesmerizing scenes. The costumes ranged from black shorts and tops with long black tassels reminiscent of some sort of underwater creature; to comfortable white outfits complementing the sometimes cave-like scenery. The opening scene filled the stage with large projections of silver balls through which the dancers were initially barely visible.
It was a reminder of the beauty of dance and how this is a form of play also – though also deeply culturally imbued in the case of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dance – and one that fully engages without the need for words.
