The Road from Coorain

One has only to set the date, buy the ticket, and let the earth, sun, and moon make their passages through the sky, until inexorable time carries us with it to the moment of parting.

Jill Ker Conway

A book on the shelf

The name, Jill Ker Conway,

Stirs a memory

A historian and writer

Born in Australia

Now living in America 

The Road from Coorain

An autobiography

A story of growing up in rural NSW

Barely surviving the drought 

Living in Sydney 

Post the second world war

The familiar names of 

Mosman, Waitara, and Pennant Hills 

The relief of reading stories

Of someone 

Who never felt at home in Australia

In Sydney 

Despite the beaches and bush 

The smell of eucalyptus and earth 

What it feels to board the plane

To leave 

Knowing that Australia will always

Be a part of who you are

But knowing that your life

Exists somewhere over the ocean

Relief and tears 

Connection with a woman 

Whom, despite an age gap

Of half a century,

Loves history and reading and learning

And discovery 

And finds a place

Beyond the continent 

Of her birth. 

The end. 

Getting Married (Part 4)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

I love a good wedding

All my friends will tell you

I’m the first to cry at them

Be there to sing and dance and by merry

And celebrate the legal uniting of 

Two souls

I’ve been to weddings in gardens

On farms 

In churches

I’ve had the privilege of speaking at weddings

And singing in the ceremony

I love watching friends and family

Declare love

To their loved ones 

And for my own wedding

I wanted exactly no part of the circus

I’ve been engaged once before

We started preparing a wedding

Picked a date, went dress shopping, drafted lists, looked at venues

Learnt that the minute you mentioned

“Wedding” instead of “party”

The prices instantly doubled 

I discovered that 

Every. Person. In. The. World.

Has. An. Opinion.

And if you don’t listen to, and follow through, with their 

Sage advice

You will be DOOMED

Or offend, insult, or have yourself struck from the family tree. 

Instead of perusing wedding magazines

And blogs

Or attending fairs and conventions

Or sitting with girlfriends and sisters over coffee

Discussing details

I read about the history of weddings

Trying to understand 

What bought us to this level of crazy

I discovered that, in its earliest days,

The Christian church abhorred marriage

And declared celibacy was the only way to spiritual truth 

That marriages throughout history

Have been about the economic empowerment of men

And a means of controlling women

Their bodies

And reproduction

Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert

Was the most readable 

The traditions didn’t speak to me 

The white dress, the rings, the vows,

Bows on chairs. 

I hate, with a strange passion, chairs covered with white fabric and bows. 

I just wanted to marry my love

And live happily ever after the end. 

I begged my first fiance to elope 

Save the trouble and expense and drama

Instead we broke up. 

Nearly three years later

I nervously told Aaron

I didn’t actually want a wedding

He was thrilled. 

And so after a very long wait
And most of the year apart
We finally became husband and wife.

We got married on a Monday 

Because it was the first day we could

After applying for the marriage license. 

I wore a dress 

I’ve worn a hundred times 

And will hopefully wear a hundred times more 
Aaron wore a collared shirt 

We both wore smiles. 

We drove to the town hall in Aaron’s car

We walked inside the building

And because we live in Colorado

We did not require witnesses

We did not require a ceremony

Just the intention to be legally bound

We signed our names

Sealed it with a kiss, and, 

We were married.

We called our families
Wrote to our friends
And shared a dinner that we cooked together
It was quiet and lovely
And outside, the snow was glistening. 

The end. 

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 

A Way Back to Then

Remember a time

Before you’d ever even been to Broadway

New York was just a place

Across the ocean

Far away

It may as well have been the moon

And musicals were accessed via cast recordings

Played on CD (and cassette!)

Repeated so often you knew

Every inflection

Pause and intonation

And then you’re sitting in the

Lyric Theatre, London

And Trevor Ashley

Australian performer

Who taught musical theatre at State Music Camp

And performed at Schools Spec

Is performing his Liza show

He is brilliant

The camp and the sass and the deadpan humour

Meet moments of utter sincerity

That make a caricature of Liza

(Though the portrayal is so spot on

It's more real than play) 

Human 

You remember

State Music camp and

Being around other people who

Got it

You performed ‘Over the Moon’ from RENT

(Which you had learnt by heart

By listening to the recording

Over and over til you got it right

Moo)

(And your friend

Gave you your first standing ovation

Lept to his feet when you finished moo-ing)

It was thrilling to sit in chairs around the piano

Holding sheets of music

And singing the songs

You had listened to

And already knew by heart

And all that jazz

And you remember all your teachers

Mrs Harrison and Mrs Ross

Mrs McAndrews

Mrs Stevenson, Miss Lorschy, Mrs Martinotti, Mrs Turner

Mr Harrison, Miss Boyle, Miss Richards (theatre etiquette!), Miss Paris, Miss Simone, Mrs Page, Mrs Stewart, Mr Kelso, Mrs Miltiades, Mrs Miller, Mrs Cull

George, Andrew, Gina, Frank, Kane, Ste, Christine

The ones who believed in you and gave you a chance

And if you could tell your fifteen year old self

You get to do it!

You go to New York

Broadway is real

You study musical theatre in London

You live in a houseful of actors

You learn for real the phrase

“Starving actor”

It’s not just about hunger and being poor

You need to perform and write and play music and tell stories

And when you don’t

You get really depressed

And even though it’s hard

It’s incredible

There is no other life you can lead

The Tony Awards are real

You actually go, twice

Get all dressed up

And sit in the rafters

And watch your childhood heroes

Make their acceptance speeches

You see Idina Menzel in concert (twice)

You see her rehearsing!

You see Marvin Hamlisch conduct the London Symphony Orchestra

In a medley from A Chorus Line

You see Liza in concert

You see Trevor as Liza in concert

And it takes you back to 15 year old you

Who wants nothing more than

This life

And you say

Hold on

You’ll get here

The end. 

MonuMENt

Men are remembered

As scientists, soldiers

Arists and architects

As political leaders

And heroes 

Women are remembered 

For the care they give men

As mothers and nurses 

And bodies 

In Embankment Park
Every monument is to a man
The one woman
Leans

Bare-breasted, weeping, delicate, sensual, against Sullivan's bust

Blue Stockings at The Globe

from here

Suddenly you find yourself

Inside The Globe! 

The detailed recreation

Of what once was 

Shakespeare's playground

There is a feeling of exhilaration

The theatre has been beautifully re-created
The whole thing is utterly stunning
The grand columns
The box seats

The wide open space on the floor for 

The "Groundlings" 

The long and narrow thrust stage

Cutting through the middle 

The floor is concrete

You try to imagine layers of straw and dust and dirt and grime

At the apex of the stage
A balcony,

Its windows closed for now
It seems Juliet could fling them open and lean over the railing and "ah me" at any moment

The boxes right above the stage with their richly coloured frescoes 

You can imagine royalty sitting there

Sitting to be seen 

Even from the position of the pleb

You really can see everybody 

The audience watching each other

Playing a game of being

The audience 

The way you see sky when you look directly up

There's something dramatic about Shakespeare and sky together

The sky is pale blue

Translucent thin whispy clouds
It's the end of the day
Mild, not too hot, not too cold

Tonight's play is called Blue Stockings

Rear centre stage a small drum kit and a music stand
A small balcony above, more music stands, a trumpet, lights for the musicians

(You forgive the modern intrusion)

The columns have been made to look like book shelves

The play is about the fight for women's access to college education

And the fight

At the end of the 19^thC

For the right for women attending college to graduate

There is something tongue-in-cheek

About a feminist play being produced

At the Globe

It is beautifully produced
It is refreshing to see a genuine issue discussed, dissected
The relevance of women's education
The prejudice we faced
Still face

Through the play we see their struggle

And sacrifice

And we are heart broken

It is easy for a modern day, predominantly white, presumably educated audience to laugh at history

“I can’t believe he just said that!!”

Chortle.

But in this year, the year 2013

University fees are so prohibitively expensive

Many will not be able to attend university at all

Last year a teenage girl was shot in the head

For daring to speak out and fight for her right

To an education

And even still, today, right now

Men continue to try and ultimately control women

Deny access to basic human rights

Blue Stockings offers no solutions

Only that we must go on

Must continue learning

For the sake of learning

To inspire great minds

To allow people to go out into the world and achieve their fullest potential

To understand and to dream

I am incredibly aware of the privilege

That has bought me to be standing in the middle of The Globe

One night at the end of summer

The fact that I am a university graduate

With two degrees to my name

The fact I got to go to school at all

Is a fight

That was won

Before I was born

But is still being fought

In a treacherous warzone

History and story-telling

The stories that have resonated throughout

The Globe

To demand an understanding of history

So that we may imagine

The meticulous re-construction

Of a better place

The end. 

A Delightful Day in London

To wander the streets of London
From Holborn through to Lincoln's Inn Fields
Paying homage to the ghost of Charlotte Charke
First female actor-manager
Who in the 18th century wandered these streets
Desperate for work upon the stage

Down the Strand past the Royal Courts of Justice and
Onto Fleet St, where,
Somewhere along this road
Mordecai, relative in time, was arrested
Caught creating counterfeit cash and
Eventually tried at the Old Bailey
And shipped to Australia
The Royal Bank with a waterfall of tropical
Pink, orange, and yellow flowers
Cascading down its cold walls
Impossibly narrow buildings squished between
"Newer" edifications
Stone monuments that seem fairy-tale like with their
Statuesque dragons and winged horses

Down to the Thames
The buildings that grace its banks
The very sites that in themselves are the 

Synecdoche of London
Tower Bridge, St Paul's, The "Shard" 

The latter, still under construction
The city is still being built
Still growing above its labryntine streets
Winding paths that open to secret courtyards, squares, gardens
And ever more winding paths

To walk from Blackfriars as the sun is still rising
To see the world
"Half-way in shadow
And half-way in light"
It really is, as Bert describes,
"Coo, what a sight!"

The city made more real
By the previous experience of it in books, film, television, and art
To be here in the flesh
Wandering the streets of London
Smelling the city
Watching the workers scurrying away
Women in sneakers and stockings
Men in suits and ties
The same brands on nearly every corner

Stone and glass walls built side by side 

It feels like I must be in an elaborate set

Some two thousand years in the making

The end. 

Reflections from Tanglewood

You expect,

With a name like 

“Tanglewood”

Chaos and mess

And vines and dark woods

And twisting paths. 

Instead there is 

Total order

Calm

And loveliness. 

Sweeping green lawns

Manicured gardens.

Rows of clipped hedges

Form an organized maze. 

Hidden within are

Tributes to musicians past

(Mostly men) 

A beautiful house

With wooden floorboards

And painted walls

And images of musicians past 

(A mix of men and women) 

In the centre of the sweeping grounds

A giant pavilion

The summer home of the 

Boston Symphony Orchestra

World famous

Top notch

Leader in its field 

Thousands of people surround the structure

They have come with picnic blankets and chairs

And baskets full of food

Wine and cheese and chocolates

Even glasses filled with wild flowers

And you sit in the field

On a warm summers day

And the sky grows dark

With threatening clouds

The bell rings

Once, twice, three times!

The concert is about to begin!

And the sky opens up

Sit in a field during the fall of summer rain

Without an umbrella

Rain on your skin

Grass beneath your body

Sky above your head

The feeling of liberation 

The storm passes by

The sun is warm

And dries your skin

The concert commences

Stravinsky’s “Fireworks” Opus 4

Brings unexpected tears

Yo Yo Ma and Dvorak’s Cello Concerto

The sound is perfect

You can hear the bow scratching across the bridge

It is overwhelming 

The accumulative hours of practise

Of the players of the orchestra

Are astounding to imagine 

Imagine all the players as children

Drilling scales in their living rooms 

You are transported to your own living room

More specifically

The living room of your grandparents

To be more precise

Down the hall, to your 

Grandparents’ bedroom

Far away in Sydney

Twenty years ago 

You would wake up and go into their room

And Abuelo would have 

ABC Classic FM playing full blast on the radio

And you would dance to the music

And make him smile

You never talked about the composers

Or the history of the music

But the notes are as part of your legacy as your own blood

(Music passed down through generations

From your mother teaching ballet

Whilst you sat fetal, and later in a pram

Earlier: Abuela and Abuelo at concerts in Manila

Earlier still: Great-Abuelo fetal in Shanghai

While his father (great-great Abuelo) played violin)

And you, four generations later 

Sitting in a field in Massachusetts

As a counselor in music

The history of notes

Imagine being in the theatre when Stravinsky premiered 

The Rites of Spring

The boos and hisses! 

Now, high art 

The tangled web of family and history and influence 

How we came to be 

Where we are

Is orderly when viewed from a distance

Melodic lines able to be traced

Emphasized

Harmonized with

Made discordant 

And written into

Music

The end. 

Mary Wollstonecraft

Mary Wollstonecraft, by John Opie

Mary Wollstonecraft
Wrote 'A Vindication on the Rights of Woman'
In 1792
And stated that
That the low status of women
And the way in which
Society, and women themselves,
Perceived women
As individuals, and as a sex,
As weak and inferior
Would be done away with
If women received a decent
Education

But today we find
In 2013
That even educated women
Are still relegated secondary status
Are still perceived as weak and inferior
Because the society in which we live
Says that women
Are mere sex objects
And things for looking upon

We live in a time where educated women
Choose
To be viewed and judged
By their looks and sexiness
Appear spread eagled and naked in magazines and videos and online
Use sex
As a way to pay for their education

We live in a time
Where even if you have a college degree
You have to stand up and say
No.
My body is my own
And not yours to oggle and coddle
Please listen to what I have to say
Not how I look as I say it

Where does this leave
A Vindication on the Rights of Woman?
Yes, we must educate girls and women
We must learn maths and science
And drama and music
And history and English
And languages and sport
We must be equipped with knowledge and skills
We must go out into the world

But we also must educate boys and men
To treat women with respect
To not fear women with power
To learn how to speak with women
(And about women)
With terminology that doesn't involve sex or beauty or derogatory statements

Women are still weak and inferior
Because the misogynistic system
That has been in place
For millenia
Has not yet been replaced
With a system
Of education
That teaches compassion, and respect, and humanity
Above looks and impressions and sex

So yes
Teach girls and women to be strong
But teach boys and men
To be okay with the shift
That says women are no longer inferior
But equal
That is the vindication I seek.

The end.

Rise Up

http://onebillionrising.org/

I'm reading
A history
Of women in power in England
Before Elizabeth I
The injustices these women faced!
Married off as political pawns at birth
Literally entering those marriages at 12
And being carted around Europe
And bearing the children
Of unfaithful
Selfish
Arrogant kings
Imagine being a 12thC princess
No thanks!

But if only
The trampling of women
Were "history"

Today I read
How the upcoming
Children's films
For 2013
Do nothing to promote
The visibility of women
On screen

Yesterday Upworthy published an article
Congratulating Dove for using
"real women"
In its "real beauty" campaign
Yes, they weren't anorexic
But where was their cellulite?
Or their stretch marks?
Or body hair?
Or skin "blemishes"?
Just as photoshopped and airbrushed as the
Derided Victoria's Secret
bikini models
Visible but conformist
To the gaze
That requires
Perfect bodies

The answer?
Speak out!
Say it is wrong!
Point out where the trouble is
But
The Independent
Published an article
About how when women speak out
They are literally told to
Shut up

Today
If you are a powerful woman
You are a witch
A bitch
A liar
Criticized for not wearing makeup
For wearing too much makeup
For being visible at all

I'm sick of
People not treating
Other people
As people
Because of race gender beliefs
Whatever
I'm sick of living
In a culture
So entrenched for
Centuries
That prizes women for
Their glorified looks
For their silence

I want to live in a world
Where people are people
The end.

In two weeks
Eve Ensler is calling
For people to
Rise
To stand up against
Inequality
And brutality
Towards women

I want to rise
To say
Whoever you are
Whether you identify as man woman or neither
Please can we just work together
To make life on this unstable planet more bearable
More fun
More beautiful
To ensure
Every person
Born to this planet
Has good food
And shelter
And access to music
And culture
And freedom of expression
And freedom to be
Themselves
Perfect
Just as they are

The end.

A Weekend in anoTHEr Country

In the morning you go out to meet another Aussie-expat and you go to a lovely Australian/New-Zealander cafe called Flat White and enjoy your renewed-found love of coffee. You make a note-to-self to find an alternative to espresso, as even four sugars per tiny cup seems excessive - though it is down from five. You enjoy delicious toast with homemade hummus and fresh avocado. It is the best hummus you have had in ages but you spend the rest of the day paranoid you reek of garlic. Afterwards you walk through beautiful St James's Park to the War Rooms. There are ducks and geese and swans and a woman is hand-feeding them over the fence. You think she is a bit mad, but realize that these birds are probably rather used to people hand-feeding them. 

The Churchill War Rooms are bizzare. They are secret bunkers for the British War Cabinet during The War. Small and slightly claustrophobic and when the war ended the people literally turned off the lights, walked out, closed the door, and didn't come back for decades. Now the rooms and corridors and bunkers are a museum and you can walk through and see exactly how it all was over seventy years ago. Imagine being in the rooms Back Then. The rooms would have been smokey because everybody smoked back then, and above you the world was falling apart and you didn't know if when you left work for the day (or night) if your house or even your street was still going to be there when you did. No one except the government was allowed to know that you worked there because it was Top Secret. If you were a secretary you had a special gas mask that allowed you keep talking on the telephone even during a gas attack. The War Stops For Nobody.  

You walk back to Soho to the Soho Theatre Bar to mingle with other drama students. You are late, but it seems you haven't missed much except a free drink. A casting director is giving a talk. She says things you have mostly heard before, but you're feeling light and inspired and you scribble down some of her points and feel a sense of renewed enthusiasm. Then you wander around the room and meet some of the other actors. They are all graduating this year too, ready to go out into the Big Wide World and try their luck at this acting thing. Will all this time and money and effort be worth it?

You meet a girl with Scandinavian/American heritage. She wants to move to New York and live the life of a starving actor. She knows it's a bit weird to want that life, but you understand what she means. It's New York. And then you meet a boy who gives you the feeling that he is on the cusp of something brilliant, but you're not quite sure what it is, but you're sure he is destined for great things. And then you meet another girl who is interested in verbatim theatre and using theatre to make a positive difference to the world. And it is nice to meet someone as excited and passionate as you about the possibility of theatre. 

You head home on the tube. And you get home and you make chickpea patties, which you haven't made in the longest time, and you make a big batch of quinoa and steam some spinach. And you spread a little beetroot dip from yesterday's cooking adventures on the chickpea patties, and you pour out a little sweet chilli sauce. And you sit at your desk to do some work and you breathe and smile and know that you have had a most wonderful day. 

The end.

A Weekend in New York

On a whim I decided to go to New York for the weekend
It is entirely possible from London
If one has a flexible schedule and a willing credit card
So I booked the trip
And flew to New York on the Friday afternoon
And I stayed at my friend's house in Queens
And looked after his cat

I saw a Broadway show
It was even better than the cast recording
It made me laugh and cry and filled me with joy
Then I went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
And melted at all the resources they have available for free
I met up with beautiful friends who inspire me
I met five young sailors in Times Square
And the wonderful, delicious musical stereotype of it all thrilled me
New York, New York, it's a...

On Sunday afternoon I went to a recital at Steinway Hall
And watched Walter Hautzig, at age 90, play delicious pieces by Mozart, and Schubert, and Chopin
The walking stick hiding his nimble fingers and lightness of touch
As he played I thought about how musicians from centuries and countries far away can be brought to life right here, right now, through patient learning, through dedication
He talked about learning Chopin's Ballade in G minor at age 16
And how when he was ready to perform it at his school in Vienna
The soldiers marched in and the world fell apart
And Mr Hautzig decided that they could never take away his music
And they didn't
And he ended up working with my great-grandfather in Baltimore
One from Shanghai via Spain via the Philippines
One from Vienna via Jerusalem via New York
And I ended up working with his granddaughter
An Australian in Connecticut
Completely separately, amazing coincidence of strange happenstance
Or are we drawn to the same people in each life time?

Going to the airport, it was chilly
The rain kissed a gentle goodbye
There was even a rainbow
I boarded the plane
And suddenly I was back on the Tube wondering if I had dreamt the entire thing