January 7, 2022
The [Western] new year has been birthed and already it is wheezing. Tasmania’s covid cough is at pains to massage and message its gifts to & fro. The pan of the demic is on-wing.
I invite the third/3rd year of this zoonotic prion into my dawns and dusks and funk because I now have no choice. Governments (and their pathetic nepotistic health advisors) plot and preen, and here we are, at the cusp of catastrophe. The island (surrounded by water I think) was promoted as an idyll of pathogen-free living – until it wasn’t: from December 15 when the tunnels were blasted open. The foe is here. Whinging won’t heal anything but complain I will.
What is this year? Where are the last two years? What will fester next year? This maelstrom of disease is but a ‘symptom’ of the planet’s fermentation and hysteria as it plunges towards immolation.
I will digress now to what could be known, to remind myself of the pleasures of being alive and present; and to not forget the birth of a beautiful grandson with an exquisite Celtic name: Gwydion. And to let myself be 70 years old!
This morning, beautiful rain, after a month of summer dryness. Leaves drip and shine. The air is clear and still. Sparrows chant incessantly from the olive tree that flourishes after the unusual spring rains. My nine varieties of tomato plants are as tall as small trees. I inspect the flowers daily for fruit, stake another branch, douse the plants with worm waste and add mulch. It’s as if my waiting signifies hope, and that the appearance of red, orange or black tomatoes will reset my vim.
I lost my vim last year. This is an admission, a revelation of mislaying treasure. I feel as if I often embody a habit (dark) that hides what might be, what is. Improvising explodes the malaise and it is through improvisation that I throw off the cloak.
Last year, 2021 was a great year for making it up: guest performer at the opening to Sally Rees’ Crone exhibition; inviting friends to improvise with me at the Sidespace gallery (Salamanca Arts) during my t[w]o islands installation in July; improvising at the Launceston Improvised Music Alliance with Karlin Love; workshop weekend sessions with the Hobart improvisers’ collective; improvisations (pre-recorded) broadcast on radio for Sisters Akousmatica at the Junction Arts festival; regular mentoring sessions, on Zoom, with Andrew Morrish (improv teacher/mentor for 20 years); discovering the brittle acoustics on the stairs of the house; playing with loops.
I invoke the generative arts, those gestures of mania and exposed-suppression, into the un-becomings of the malaise of my future; to salute what can be and what is and what might be shared.
I’m alive.