With Melbourne slowly opening up, I had to go to an appointment. The specialist is located on the first floor of a business centre. Unable to locate the stairs, I pressed the button for the lift. As I entered the lift, two other people turned up. I entered wondering what the protocol is. When I was last in the office, our policy was one person at a time. The other two people entered. It was at that point that I noticed that neither person was wearing a mask.
For me, this epitomises the real challenge. We can talk about Dan Andrews and a failed hotel quarantine. However, neither of these things are necessarily within our control. Wearing a mask is. I think that Kin Lane captures this best:
It is fascinating to be able to see who cares about other people and who doesn’t, simply by looking around to see who is where a mask and who isn’t.
As David Truss asserts:
The economy can stay open if people wear masks, socially distance themselves and sanitize appropriately. Some people might disagree with me, and on a topic like this we can agree to disagree.
However, with 40,000,000+ cases worldwide 1,118,443 deaths, and over 9,000,000 known active cases worldwide this is not just a bad flu, it’s a pandemic. And if you want to disagree with that well then sorry… you are wrong.
Put a mask on, and thank those around you for being respectful and doing the same.
The problem I have is what do I say or do in this situation? Sometimes I feel like asking where they got their cure from? However, sarcasm never really succeeds much. So I stay silent and sad.
James Michener’s Space was a novel about more than just the exploration of the universe. It was also an exploration of the concept of space itself. Whether it be the creation of a space for ideas to thrive, being in a political space to make a difference, being in the right place at the right time, working in a pragmatic space where lies and truth do not matter, making clear a place of race within space, and manipulating space to own and control it.
Discussing Autechre’s new album, SIGN, Andy Beta makes comparisons with outer space:
the Manchester duo’s sound remains singular in the canon—not just of cutting-edge electronic music, but in a section of outer space that few other artists ever venture towards, much less wholly inhabit.
While Philip Sherburne talks about how the album catches the ‘light’:
Even the softest material on SIGN isn’t all that different from the most austere or amelodic material on NTS Sessions; it’s just been smoothed into a form that catches the light differently,
It is interesting to compare this with the idea of music and space. When I listen to Autechre’s abstract music there is nothing that says ‘Manchester’ to me, let alone out of space. It is a reminder of the idea of space as metaphor.
According to Wikipedia,
A simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal. According to Baudrillard, what the simulacrum copies either had no original or no longer has an original, since a simulacrum signifies something it is not, and therefore leaves the original unable to be located.
When it comes to fiction, space is a simulacrum. For example, Ian McEwan’s novel is set during the Second World War. This conception of space is an imagined one that comes to stand in the place of any sense of reality.
This reminds me discussions such as Jack Antonoff’s association with New Jersey.
Left unadorned, Mr. Antonoff’s songs would join the hearty broad-stroke school of songwriting of his New Jersey predecessors Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi, with their four-chord choruses and whoa-oh invitations to join in.
You grew up in Mercer, Pa. Was that a part of the state with the “weirdo culture” the Midwest is famous for? One could make an argument. There weren’t a lot of things to distract you, so you’d end up turning inward. I can’t help but think about that lack of access. The side effect was that when you could get something, whether it be an album or a magazine that looked like a portal into a new world, you pored over it, because it wasn’t one Google search away all the time. I think I turned out the way I did because I was so bored.
Sometimes such spaces are nostalgic and slightly concocted, as with Antonoff’s re-creation of his childhood bedroom.
For “Gone Now,” that meant executing his most quixotic idea to date: removing his teenage bedroom — where he lived until he was 27 — from his parents’ home, replicating it exactly in a trailer and taking it on tour.
Kevin Parker pushes back on the idea of place and music.
At the end of the day, geography shouldn’t have anything to do with it. I have never consciously been aware of it. You know like so much of the music I started making I made in like my bedroom in a really dirty share house.
What is interesting though is that although Parker’s music may not necessarily be influenced by space, it is still a product of place.
In Perth there was a bunch of us, but there weren’t that many people. We made tons of bands out of it, so like 10 people when there’d be like six bands with different combinations.
As a side note, I still think that nothing captures Iceland like Sigor Ros:
Discussing John Baville’s Quirke series, Charles McGrath touches on the way in which space can act like a character in itself.
Banville, who is 74, grew up in County Wexford, which he thought boring and provincial. As a boy, he loved visiting an aunt in Dublin, which seemed much more vivid and exciting, and some of that romance lingers on in the Quirke books, in which the city itself — its sights and smells, its atmosphere of secrecy and repression, especially where matters of sex are concerned — is practically a character.
This is something that Leigh Sales’ also touches upon on the Chat 10, Looks 3 podcast in regards to the representation of the Northern Territory in Trent Dalton’s novel All Our Shimmering Skies. It is interesting to contrast this with the ‘best books set in each country‘.
Talking about St. Matthew Island in Alaska, Sarah Gilman reflects on what it means for a space to be designated as a ‘wilderness’.
Many people think of wilderness as a place mostly untouched by humans; the United States defines it this way in law. This idea is a construct of the recent colonial past. Before European invasion, Indigenous peoples lived in, hunted in, and managed most of the continent’s wild lands. St. Matthew’s archipelago, designated as official wilderness in 1970, and as part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge in 1980, would have had much to offer them, too: freshwater lakes teeming with fish, many of the same plants that mainland cultures ate, ample seabirds and marine mammals to hunt. And yet, because St. Matthew is so far-flung, the solitary pit house suggests that even Alaska’s expert seafaring Indigenous peoples may never have been more than accidental visitors here. Others who’ve followed have arrived with the help of significant infrastructure or institutions. None remained long.
It is interesting to think of this alongside the discussion of the city and rather than being ‘untouched’, maybe it is ‘uncontrolled’?
Comedy and humour often serves as a safe space for addressing.
I thought using the Mr Men characters provided a lovely safe space to discuss their characteristics, traits and wellbeing. The characters were a proxy for some of the feelings they might have. You can imagine developing this further with other characters from other stories or films.
The problem is when this cuts too close to the bone, when the medium serves up a mirror too close to the truth. Such a safe space then becomes uncanny.
It recently occurred to me that I had somehow become unsubscribed to Laura Hilliger’s newsletter. Maybe I did it, not sure. Whatever the reason, I subscribed again. It has been great to have her voice coming back into my inbox again. Thinking about the many dots that extend my serendipity surface, I was left wondering what it is about Laura’s ‘moldy trash of a newsletter’ (her words, not mine) that means it is often the first one I open. Maybe it is the humour in her voice? Or the honesty and insight of her reflections? Maybe it is her ability to spark my thinking. This week, it was her discussion of ‘meditation rage’. Whatever it is, I am grateful. Maybe it takes a village to create learning space and such a space includes many voices.
Some things are best learnt when given space over time. However, like a sourdough starter, such learning needs to be fed. Of late, I have come to fill this need from various places, including feeds, newsletters and courses. For example, I was reading Ben Collins’ newsletter recently, described as ‘your Monday morning espresso, in spreadsheet form.’ In it, Collins’ discusses the different notation forms.
In the QUERY function, use “select A, B, C” type notation with direct range references and “select Col1, Col2, Col3” type notation with generated ranges.
In itself this information does not mean a lot. However, in regards to my wider knowledge of the QUERY formula, it addressed something I had been wondering about for a while. It seems obvious now and I am sure I could find an elaboration easily, but it only seems that way because of all the other dots that are a part of my serendipity surface.
I remember being on after-school homework/detention duty a few years ago. It was on the second story of a building to separate it from the rest of the school. The time had started and the students had spread themselves around and were getting on with their work, when out of the lift came three students, one of whom was riding a scooter. Can I just say, the seriousness and control that was in that space quickly dissipated, turning into chaos. It was interesting to see other students initially laugh, until it stopped being funny.
Ed Droste suggests that it takes five listens to form a judgement about an album. I have been diving into DIANA’sFamiliar Touch. As the song structures become more known, new sounds are revealed, subtly hidden within. The album creates a certain fragile space held together by the rhythm and bass.
I remember in my first teaching position looking out the window of a crummy old portable at the picturesque mountain ranges in the distance. I made a comment about this to one of the students. They griped, “try looking at it every day.” Although I was taken aback, it was something that stayed with me. With one road in and out, over time I learnt that with all the beauty and majesty, the mountains were both physically and mentally claustrophobic.
At the end of Anna Krein’s interview with Steve Kolber they break from the discussion of technology to reflect upon the art of writing. Krein uses the analogy of building muscle in explaining long form. This reminded me of Clive Thompson’s reflection on The Non-Fiction Podcast. For Thompson, long form writing involves living with an idea. A process of organising, getting things down and crafting the final piece. A part of all this is finding space and time.
On the You Am I track, Good Morning, Tim Rogers famously sang,
Waking up is easy when you got a voice you know
Rattling up the ratings on the breakfast show
Waking up is easy when you got a voice you love
Telling you what’s out there
Is anyone out there?
The song was inspired by AM radio stations that Rogers would listen to in the morning while writing the album Hourly, Daily.
Often I wake up depressed, as people do, and I found it really comforting. I could see how you could get attached to it, instead of waking up with someone next to you.
Similarly, the weekend mornings have been made easier during Stage 4 restrictions with the familiar voice of Dylan Lewis. It feels like the weekend habits associated with the pandemic and staying at home have replaced what was the morning commute.
I find that my diary is a good place to have bad ideas. I tell my diary everything I shouldn’t tell anybody else, especially everyone on social media. We are in a shitty time in which you can’t really go out on any intellectual limbs publicly, or people — even your so-called friends! — will throw rocks at you or try to saw off the branch. Harsh, but true.
In regards to music, I wonder if there are projects are out there in storage that have never been released. Sound experiments allowed air to breathe, but not released into the world. Maybe Damian Cowell has secretly recorded a shoe-gazer album? Or Nick Cave is sitting on a swath of political anthems?
I was reading Greg Thompson’s introduction to The Education Assemblage. I was left wondering about space as a component of the assemblage.
Concepts, for Deleuze, are more than ideas – they are novel incursions into creation that exist in combination, a concept is defined by its components.
If an assemblage always ‘exist for purposes’, what does this mean for a concept? Just as Stanley Fish says that ‘a sentence is never not in a context’ I wonder if a space is always understood as a part of an assemblage even if we are not always aware of the various components? For Steve Collis it is about the physical, information and shared social. I wonder how this lens is limited and if such a framework is always itself incomplete?
I have been spending a lot of time lately documenting questions in regards to the reporting and attendance program I help support. The hope is that this will help with support. The problem as I see it is that simply knowing the steps does not automatically build capacity. You also need access to a space to play and time to do so.
Early on in the crisis, our daughter cared a lot about learning online. However, as time has passed, this interest has dwindled. Although this has been difficult, it has has also highlighted the importance of a space to fail in order to learn.
It is interesting to reflect upon different social media spaces and think about the features and the limitations. For example, Twitter annoys me the inability to edit posts, while Micro.Blog frustrates me because of the way it responds to headings (I know, real blogging does not have headings). In the end, I think that is why I have taken to posting on my own site and working from there. Maybe that does not always have the same reach and interaction, but we have to compromise somewhere.
