The Menstruum 36: Nelly's Shoes

[FIRST PUBLISHED IN INPRESS MAGAZINE, 14.07.2011]

It’s fun to imagine Dame Nellie Melba with a gut full of blue dye and ipecac, thunderously chundering onto the pristine beige floor of her dressing room. I’m seeing her, all hunched over with gloved hands to her belly; such is the routineness of her perfection that even her heaving and retching are set to concert pitch, the A above middle C.

Nellie Melba as Ophelia in Hamlet, c. 1889. Image courtesy The Arts Centre, Performing Arts Collection, Melbourne

I’m riding the elevator down at the Arts Centre and wondering if I’ve got what it takes to make something, even a small something, of my life. The exhibition upstairs was Black Box <> White Cube, a show of performance meeting art in all its brilliance and nonsense. Mike Parr has been the grand old dame of Australian theatrical flagellation for forty years, and despite all else on show – The Kingpins and mock-comic drag, Jill Orr commendably committing an entire career to being utterly humourless – it’s the sight and stink of Mike Parr that’s still lingering in my stomach as I head down to see the commemorative display of Dame Melba. 

Mike Parr. The Emetics (Primary Vomit): I am Sick of Art [Red, Yellow and Blue] Blue, 1977. Photograph.

 

Parr’s great double a-side: in ’77 he stuffed himself with bread soaked in dye and poison, walked into a gallery space and erupted in a coloured mess across the canvas of the ground. Soon after, he sat before a seated audience, produced a meat cleaver and proceeded to hack his left arm to pieces. Many never realised it was his prosthetic arm packed with liver and offal. It didn’t matter, the self-destruction was believable and complete.   

Mike Parr. Cathartic Action: Social Gestus No. 5 [Armchop], 1977. Photograph.

I’m now in the lower level foyer, peering into glass cabinets, seeing the documents and costumes of Nellie’s life and feeling that mixed and so common combination of jealousy and disappointment.       

I’ve only ever wanted to be a novel-writer, to be responsible for something truly honest and good. Somewhere along the way I decided that self-punishment was a necessary part of the equation. I would write book after book, demanding that it be torture. Six years ago I set the task of completing three novels, printing them, deleting the files, then burning them all to ash without showing them to a soul. I did this, don’t regret it, but now know there must be another way.      

I’m looking at Dame Nelly and she’s so beautiful. I haven’t eaten all day, so am a little guilty that I’m staring into her portrait and wondering if there’s a place around here to get cheap elevenses. What’s the Nelly and food thing – Peach Melba? Must be. Wait, Melba Toast? I get it all mixed up with lamingtons and pavlova. They were named after opera singers, ballerinas? Something. There’s some argument about them being from New Zealand? My memory is in need of nutrients. One more display cabinet and I will go find a chocolate croissant.     

I look down at Nelly’s shoes, they are the size of a child’s. There must be a way for beautiful things to come from peace rather than pain; must be. I imagine these shoes being loved, being worn, pulled snug and warm around the Dame’s tiny feet.

The Menstruum 35: Sing Me To Sleep

[FIRST PUBLISHED IN INPRESS MAGAZINE 06.07.2011]

There’s a song, ‘The Impression That I Get’ by the Mighty Mighty Bosstones – as a tune it’s a hot cup of crappuccino, but it has these two lines: “I’m not a coward, I’ve just never been tested. I’d like to think that if I was I would pass.” 

In a life without a god, without the threat of an ultimate moral reckoner, it’s curious the things employed in calibrating a moral compass. Perhaps more than I’d previously admitted to myself, this snatch of daft lyric, this blip of 1997 Bostonian third wave ska, has played judge in the court of my decision-making for the best part of my adult life. I’m not worried what Allah, my mum or the Magistrates’ Court of Victoria make of my actions, but for some reason I’d hate for the shiny-suited Dicky Barret and the rest of the Mi-Mi-B-tones to think I’d made poor choices.

Image courtesy Paramount.

 

In watching Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty I’m reminded of the magnificent and terrible possibilities we all share in being cosmic freelancers.

The film gives us Lucy, Emily Browning, as the untethered student; bouncing drunk from each dismal situation to the next. She sells herself to stay afloat. She is wiping down cafe tables, she is having sex, she is a medical experiment. Through this Lucy is acting numb, and hoping that the act will become real and that this life as a pinball will cease to hurt. 

Image courtesy Paramount.

The ante is upped, and now Lucy is asked to give herself completely to this role as a living puppet. She will drink a potion rendering her powerfully asleep and be left naked and unprotected. Others will pay to have this unconscious version of her for a night, for the bedroom door to be locked.  

I watch these scenes of aged men salivating and molesting. The men are desolate and bloated, looking like Christmas currants soaked in alcohol. All white pubes and embarrassed, shriveled dicks. I feel sick, but not for good reason, because I realise that in watching, I’m not Lucy, I’m these wretched bastards. I’m immediately in their position, not Sleeping Beauty’s. That I wouldn’t do what they have done is not enough.   

Is it just because I’m a man that I’m inside their heads and not Lucy’s? If so, that’s frightening. That I would so easily assume the point of view of the attacker, even if it was to stop the attack, is disquieting. Knowing that I’m not a rapist is not enough of a thought to be proud of.  

I am able to walk through my life never knowing what it is to be a victim. Christ, everyone should be so lucky.  

Image courtesy Paramount.

   

Sleeping Beauty does not, and should not, make moral decisions on our behalf. This film is a courageous and beautiful thing; neither because of the flesh and mono-bonking on show. It leaves us where it found us, maybe confused but carrying the responsibility for our actions. We are beholden to ourselves and each other. Art, surely, should not take the place of an absent god.  

The Menstruum 34: The Merry Widower

[FIRST PUBLISHED IN INPRESS MAGAZINE 30.06.2011]

A certain hideous freedom comes with being the subject of tragedy. 

Photo by Jeff Busby.

The house lights have gone, the conductor has waived his arms high from the pit to a cascade of applause, and that mythical royal purple curtain of velvet is rising like a shot to the roof. It is the 371^st occasion of this, of the Australian Ballet’s production of The Merry Widow, and by the state of the gorgeously anachronistic Chaplinesque chap returning slow and late to his seat in front, I’m figuring he’s borne dozy-witness to at least a couple of hundred of them.

This performance will be everything that is right about this group of dancers; the near-Classical form: sincerity, precision, sexless voyeurism and false moustaches. Principle Robert Curran saunters out to sung praise and wooed-cheers, and I think of The Fonz stepping through the front door to the Cunningham’s living room in Happy Days. It was strange, the catcalling Henry Winkler could elicit from that faceless crowd – stranger still the similar ovation regularly granted to each Flintstones episode’s first sighting of our boy, Fred. How, exactly, did that live studio audience work?

Snapping back, I realise: that I’ve missed a scene, that abruptly ditching coffee from my diet has left me in a remarkable waking sleep, and that Curran is a true marvel. He is the centre of this ballet company, and if he were to grande cabriole under a tram tomorrow, a great and unconquerable vacuum would appear centre of stage. 

Ahead, the story unfolds. We are in the Pontevedrian Embassy, Paris, 1905, and I am slipping in and out. Baron Zeta and his much younger French wife, Valencienne, are blowing up at the news of our eponymous widow and her hunt for a new bloke. The acts roll on and the costumes and grandeur are amazing. Flash – something like Cossack dancers – tall kicks and knickers of can-can girls – an unfortunate snog in a backyard shed. The caffeine I haven’t imbibed over the last seven days suddenly rises above and around me in a galactic swirl. I am the supermassive black hole, I am the centre of a brown and sparkling Milky Way. I see stars and think awful thoughts. 

Who hasn’t fantasised about the freedom that would play widow to a great loss? If a proper, real catastrophe were to befall me, I could finally give up and rest. If my mind or my world crashed to pieces, I would have all the glare of expectation removed. Part of me craves so much the Universal Excuse. We could submit, and perfectly sleep.

An ecstatic roar! And back; our star lady is now truly merry, the curtain dropped, our troupe bowing and accepting flowers, the room now standing in gratitude, a wind made from clapped hands.   

The fact that we simply continue is a human and miraculous thing. We could all resign, right now, but mostly, we do not. We choose to expect things of ourselves – to persist, we choose to bloody well dance.