TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

11:16 AM
Posted by jodi rose

It's so delicious coming home from a walk in the rain to snuggle into favourite red/black mohair comfort jumper and work from home.
Listening to Jacob Kirkegaard CD 01-02 released by Bottrop Boy - gorgeous delicate minimal layers of subtle sound texture. perfect for dreaming away a rainy morning.
Sydney has this incredible spring rain, it's not like the melbourne drizzle, but comes down thick and juicy and really really wet. The few metres between our kitchen door and my studio was enough to make me wish I'd brought an umbrella out. And it goes on for days and days, this tropical lush downfall, forming black rivers snaking along the concrete. Sadly not much use to anyone, which is a shame when the city apparently has only 90 days of water supply left. Hmmm, alternate methods, recycling, collecting rainwater in urban areas for gardens, washing etc?
Oh no, Sydney water plans to drill deeper and siphon off 'excess' from other places - great longterm solution guys. Reading the paper this morning at Campos coffee - missenden road, went there with Dad a few weeks ago after the laughing in the park - very cosy, dark wood, jazz always playing, coffee smooth and creamy and rich. Completely olde-worlde, I heard the waitress this morning telling a girl using her palm pilot that Laptops weren't allowed - it's a fine line, she said, this isn't really a laptop, but people stay in here for hours on them. I kinda like that - the anti-technology; my notebook and pen didn't attract any untoward response although I could also have been there for hours writing.
Anyway, the ex-head of Sydney water is quoted in the paper today saying that it's against that companies business interests to encourage recycling or alternate methods of collecting water, as there goal is to make people consume more and pay them for it. I find that extraordinary, that businesses can be so short-sighted and self-interested and completely work against the interests of long-term sustainability, environmental concerns and encourage waste and over-use of natural resources. Although it happens all the time, so why should it surprise me today?
Someone in melbourne invented a really cool water tank in the form of a fence, so that inner city terrace houses that don't have room for a large water tank could install them - that kind of thing needs to be standard practice. But no, it's like alternate fuel, we must use oil because it makes so much profit....
Ahh well, guess it's back to bridges for me. The esoteric abstract doesn't let you down like that..... (wry smile)
Did a guest lecture yesterday for Heather-Grace's Radio students (Mass Comm, Macquarie Uni) and talked to them about the radio program I've just finished for ABC Residency, choices, process, how and why. It led to some interesting questions and discussion - one girl asked 'why sound'? I don't often get to articulate some of these ideas, and it's really satisfying to have more engagement than the usual 3 minute conversation. Talking about how sound actually moves through your body, and affects you physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I find myself overwhelmed by the constant noise of post-post-modern western capitalist society, the flow of information, entertainment, advertising, conversation and messages to consume consume consume... leave me exhausted, numb and hollow. My hope is that something like the bridge sounds can open a tiny sliver of a gap in this incredibly dense empire of signs and signals and sounds, that it could be closer to silence than noise - and give just a brief respite from the constant pressure to conform, produce, perform, consume.
That's why I struggle so much with the concept of releasing this CD - I really have trouble with the idea of adding more stuff to the world, that's going to end up remaindered for $5 on the bargain tables along King St. With all the other music and sound and writing that people spent years pouring their heart and soul into. Oh well, maybe along the way someone will listen and be changed by it. Maybe not, it could all be a grandiose delusion of artistic adequacy. But hey, either way it keeps me busy and feels like filling in the time of my days on this earth with something meaningful and worthwhile.
It's curious how people develop their own interests to a point where everything outside that range of vision seems unimportant - I know I do it too, it's a huge effort to engage with politics, or the world around me sometimes - and not a particularly rewarding one at the moment, and I guess if you don't have that kind of devotion and commitment to what you're doing then nothing really happens. More power to us all, obsessive and strange as we are!!!