Sonya - Helen Garner on Conversations

Just in case you're reading This House of Grief' (I think we all are!), this episode of Conversations is an excellent companion podcast to the book.

Helen Garner - Conversations with Richard Fidler

The interview focuses on the content of the book, and I waited until after I'd finished to have a listen. Two things struck me, first just how much specific information about the trial I'd retained from reading the book but most significantly, how stricken Helen Garner sounds for the duration of the discussion.

You certainly get a sense of it reading the book, but it's another thing entirely to hear her describe what she witnessed, how she comprehended it and how it impacted her. She is also so careful when discussing particular details of the case, which reaffirmed the trust I have in her as a narrator.

Sean - The Multiple Meanings of a Philip Guston Drawing

Quick read. This is the type of essay that succinctly pulls together a few strands in a fascinating narrative, and ends up being perfect. The strands are things that I'm particularly interested in at the moment. It's about collecting art, even when you can't really afford to. Perhaps especially when you can't afford to. Something I can relate to! It's about acquiring an art work because you really like it, and you don't care what anyone else thinks about it. It's about the artist Philip Guston, whose work I love. Guston's later large paintings on the surface could be considered quite ugly, but it's beautiful-ugly, something I admire in art. All of the experienced artists I've spoken with really love Guston, something about the way he uses paint. It's about the endless regret of reluctantly parting with something you love. (A lesson I've learned from selling off parts of my record collection in the past. I will never part with any of my art collection! Although I'll gladly part with any art that I create, because again a lesson I've been taught is to let your own work go). And finally the article is about delving, really quite deeply, into the meaning of a simple drawing. Via poetry. And the article contains a line that's quite similar to the type of advice that my current drawing teacher Pam gives: "this enigmatic drawing came from the simple acts of looking, seeing and remembering simple objects that were familiar to the artist."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/mazurki-the-multiple-mean_b_799875.html

Sean - Brian Eno: Taking Manhattan (By Strategy)

Music nerd alert! I know I'm the music nerd amongst us, and occasionally I can't resist a music related post. Here's one that is about NYC while one of our Kites is still in the field in that city.

"From 1978 to 1984, Brian Eno lived and worked in NYC. As celebrated music journalist Simon Reynolds writes, the music he helped create there has influenced generations."

I loved reading this article, because it touches on almost everything in music that totally excited me as a young man. It just happens that musician/theorist Brian Eno was in NYC in the period covered, and Zelig like managed to be a part of many disparate cultural elements. While it's the music covered here that thrills me, I also thought the article throws a light on a past New York that you might find fascinating. No Wave music, the Mudd Club and CBGBs, Talking Heads, early video art, Eno's ambient music series, and Jon Hassell's Fourth World 1: Possible Musics LP, which to this day remains my absolute favourite record.

http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/brian-eno-in-nyc-feature

Sean - Japanese youth in revolt

We seem to be on a city themed track at the moment, so here's my contribution. I love this series of photographs from Tokyo, 1964.

"In 1964, LIFE photographer Michael Rougier and correspondent Robert Morse spent time documenting one Japanese generation’s age of revolt, and came away with an astonishingly intimate, frequently unsettling portrait of teenagers hurtling willfully toward oblivion."

If I could select places from the past to visit, Tokyo early 1960s would be one of them! What city and era would you like to visit?

http://life.time.com/culture/japanese-youth-in-revolt-1964/#1

Take Picture - The New Yorker

It's a very different thing, reading The New Yorker whilst being in the city. So many sections that never quite clicked to me at the front of the magazine are now much more enjoyable.

You may have read about Konstantin Petrov this past week, as the anniversary of September 11 was marked. 

Petrov worked the night shift at the Windows of the World restaurant inside The World Trade Center as an electrician. He was also somewhat of an amateur photographer who snapped the empty interiors of the building where he worked. His photos were recently discovered by a filmmaker who is producing a documentary about the final hours of the towers.

This story is intriguing, light-hearted and, of course, tragic in parts, and it's actually even better online because you get to see some of the photos Petrov took as he worked. The photos are eerie and stunning and in the story you learn of Petrov's fate following 9/11.

Read: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/15/take-picture

Photo by Konstantin Petrov