Crochet Crotchets
I admire that craftiste who, upon finding the pattern of something which she desires to make – (say, for argument’s sake, the crocheted jacket on page 10 of Margaret Hubert’s “Runway Crochet)” – opens the cupboard containing her yarn stash, frowns a bit, then says “yes, that’ll do nicely” to some skeins of something and, just like that, starts to make the (again, just as an example), close-fitting long-sleeved Juliet Jacket. I admire her because she has made up her mind about the pattern , she has the right amount of the right yarn, she knows the right size, her tension is good, and she just…
Continue Reading →Cry Jailolo
Oz Asia Festival, “Cry Jailolo” (Dunstan Playhouse, Festival Theatre, Adelaide) (24/9/15) Jailolo, part of the Indonesian archipelago, has coughed-up a troupe of seven fit young men who (choreographed by Eko Supriyanto) present a genuinely novel dance sequence based on indigenous tribal myth from North Malaku, with modern overtones of environmental threat to a pristine local environment. Sinuous, mesmerizing, ephemeral and fluid, involving moves that are both new and alien, this is an interpretation that intrigues and engages lovers of dance and agnostics alike. Their unusual motion, use of light and shade, stillness, subtle use of hand and foot for percussion, and sense of space,…
Continue Reading →Morality Tales
It’s one of the oldest plots: to grab the gold, you must renounce love. Here is a sprinkling of morality tales on film. The Box If you pick up the box that landed on your doorstep, open the button unit and push the button, you will receive one million dollars (tax free, and at early 1970s values in real terms) but at the precise moment of pushing the button, somewhere, someone you don’t know will be killed. Woo Hoo! Give us that box! Many might not believe in the veracity of this bizarre offer but when a gentleman like the one played by Frank…
Continue Reading →Old School
Image by W. A. Fraser, 1901
(by Tobias Wolff) Imagine! A school of boys whose role models are writers! Where is this youthful intellectual paradise? Somewhere in the USA of the 1960s. But beware, boys. Literature is a wolf and your morals are its prey.
Continue Reading →Twilight of the Gods
(Dir. Julian Doyle) (2013) Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the successor to Schopenhauer and a great writer and weirdo, said he “would never have survived my youth without Wagnerian music.” “And Wagner did become Nietzsche’s awakener, who, by subsequently failing to live up to the youth’s ideals, dealt him wounds which, though they never healed, yet played a salutary role in his development into one of history’s most formidable philosophic writers and thinkers. Like King Ludwig, he at first placed Wagner upon so high a pedestal that the concussion of the idol’s fall shattered not only it but the shocked worshipper, too….
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