Neopolitan Dreams

Here is a slightly dramatised/romanticised recount of last night:

She walked onstage as gentle as a falling autumn leaf- unassuming and gorgeous in her finely honed act of vulnerability. Her little red bow shone with the reflected glory of stage lights. It struck him across the room like an icy dart to each eye. Then she sang some songs and stole his heart. The room was silent, save for the flutter of the hummingbirds that carried his heart away.

If she needed a coin for her laundry, he would buy her a washing machine. If she wanted to change the setlist, he would start her a new band. If she wanted to have a morbidly uplifting conversation with a dead person, he would die for her. No one else in the room existed. She was singing to him. Her awkward dance moves were for him. He wanted to just give her a big hug and take her away from the dark mystery of the world away from the stage.

Later that night, she was at the bar. Their eyes met and they talked. His friends and he took a photo and they awkwardly requested her penmanship. His very soul jolted with each curve of the pen. She only came to his shoulder and was so young it shocked him slightly. He bought her a drink and they got talking about her music. She had just finished school and he was nearing the end of university. She was going to England and he just wanted to get out. She nervously scratched her left wrist as he bought a round of Cokes.

“I remember you from the TV. I didn’t know people still existed after that,”
“Yeah I was supposed to die…”

It was his turn to laugh nervously. The hummingbirds could not carry the weight of his heart as the reality of the chasm between fantasy and reality opened before them. Animals of such small wingspan could simply not traverse such a distance. The hummingbirds faltered in their charming flight path and his heart dropped like a suicidal stockbroker. His friends had left him 24 minutes earlier. He had to salvage the moment…

“Thanks for the Coke,”

She stood up from the bar. As she turned her head, he just caught the scent of her hair. It hit him like seaspray- fleeting but refreshing. And the night carried her away like the autumn leaf she would always be in his dreams. What could have, or should have been, simply did not matter to the world.

He would see her at the next concert.

Elephant Leg Neck Girl

So it's that time of year again where I show up another sketch i drew for no other reason than to be an active part of the wonderful self-indulgent tool we call blogging...so here goes nothing!

The days are slow and grey, like a scratched silent movie no one cares to watch. Only a handful of well-dressed folk would even stop to consider and appreciate the string of events unfolding before them...perhaps they will write essays. They may or may not follow deconstructionist theories on how the author was simply dealing with deep and complex 'daddy issues', or whether it was a Dadaist examination of the absurd and the meaninglessness of art, the universe and everything. They can deconstruct all day long...but before they know it they will go home to listen to their Joy Division records in the dark and drink their red wine. I must admit that I've never listened to Joy Division, but I know they are from Manchester.

Right?

I visited Manchester once. We played football in a park near my cousin's house. On the way to the park, we had to pass through a muddy undergrowth that was no doubt frequented by delinquents and homeless alike. There was a discarded mattress on the wayside. I wondered what memories lay coiled within the springs. If we were to ask those springs of their past, they would most likely jump up and sting us right in the eye.

"Ow my eye! I'm not supposed to get springs in it!"


The days are slow and grey...and yet before you know it, it's autumn. It's winter. It's spring. It's summer. It's autumn. It's winter. It's spring. It's summer. It's autumn again...and you're already a season older than you last remember.

Everything's the same...and then before you know it,
everything changes.

**************************

I wish I could get some rest in the shade of the tree. I would join the little folk and rejoice under their goddess of the elephant leg- with her finely coiffured head of hair. We could all be happy together- singing, dancing, drinking and eating. Perhaps i would meet a girl and we would laugh and discuss quantum mechanics. She would introduce me to her brother and we would start talking about our love for music. Several months later we could start a band and play regular shows in the shade of the magical tree of idolatry (idola-tree?). We would touch eternity and embrace life in the fullest...but then I remember that it's just a crappy little drawing i made when listening to the new Howling Bells album.

They cancelled their aussie tour.

Here's the drawing.


*********************

As a little footnote unrelated to my emo-ing it out with my stream-of-consciousness drivel, I watched Invisible Children last night. It was incredibly moving not just to see the Ugandan kids' resilience in horrendous situations, but to see how three average american dudes made a simple, honest video 6 years ago about their 'African adventures' and how that completely and utterly magnified into a global call for justice and action. Simply amazing. I recommend you watch Invisible Children if you get the chance. There are currently more than 3000 kids under the rule of Mr. Joseph Kony in northern Uganda. He is fighting a pointless war that has lasted more than 20 years and is kidnapping and terrorising without any sign of stopping. Unfortunately i'm not sure if i can join the rally in sydney on saturday, but it has woken me up to the need for change in this world.

And how one voice can make a difference. If you believe in yourself.

You can achieve anything.


(end cliche here)


Kloo

I <3 Physics

Note: i wrote this earlier today. Even earlier today, i also wrote a long-ish blog about hanging out in the lab and how amusing it was to be blogging on a computer located in a hard science lab and then discovered that windows 95 just ain't what it used to be...and then i lost the post. Let me recap as best I can:

I'm sitting in a small room located in a larger room known as the medical and radiation physics (computer) lab. I am surrounded by a mass of wires and miscellaneous science equipment i will probably never use. In the corner is a small safe containing radioactive sources. Next door, my experiment is running and i check on it every 10 minutes to read a simple voltage measurement. There are 2 PhD fellows also present who up until now have been speaking rapid-fire Italian as they continue to play with their electrical signals. They are strangely quiet now.

And here i sit blogging.

Ah the life of an experimental physicist!

Because that's right guys...after 6 weeks of 'lit review' (basically bludging around at home watching Battlestar Galactica) i have FINALLY started work on my honours project! So it is with great irony that i have done more work in the past two days of my easter holidays than i have in the entire semester! So far so good ay.

As you can tell however, it is nothing particularly challenging and i have time to sit here read a book and work on a sudoku (which incidentally is rated 'tough' today NOTE: i never finished it...). I even read an article about the new Wolverine movie and found myself less cynical about it. (which leads me to my next topid: allow me to 'geek out' for a minute).

My original cynicism was based on the Hollywood mass-popularisation of a much-loved and revered character and his history. Wolverine's comic history took many decades to unfold and his mysterious background is very much part of his allure. Now Hollywood is going to present it to a largely undiscerning audience and everyone is just going to take his Origin story for granted on a simplistic basis. Which it very much is not.

But then again i realised how fanboy elitist this was and now my mind is slowly changing.

Wow i had no intention to write about wolverine. it kind of just came out. As you can tell, this experiment is most definitely taking up much of my mind. Haha.

Here's an awesome picture i'll always remember: Magneto removing wolverine's adamantium by force. A very painful process i assume...

Thanks for reading.

***************

Katoomba Easter Convention was amazing and it was such an enriching weekend and met many interesting people. We're all BFFs by now. Go Ecclesiastes (life is meaningless people)! Check out my photos on facebook. I made them look all pretty and nice. Maybe i'll draw a comic about the weekend.

The Weekend I Indulged My Arty Side

Semi-Permanent is a pretty big and highly regarded design conference that draws relatively big names from the graphics industry to talk. For example, there was a speaker from Digital Domain the company who worked on Benjamin Button and Transformers and POTC, a speaker who does chemical brothers albums covers, and the guy who designed the Abraham Obama image...so thanks Chrisy for the free ticket. Or Matt. Or whoever you are. It was a great day, and i just love any exuse to catch a train to Sydney anyway.

I went to a zine fair today. It was part of the weekend i will keep in memory as the 'weekend i indulged my arty side the most i've ever done for a long long time'. A zine is a little self-published magazine you make about any topic and distribute to others. It's like a blog but in paper form. Very quaint and arty.

I did a comic workshop in the morning and the above image was the result. All the attendees' comics were compiled in a zine. I drew that in 20 minutes. It was an OK workshop, but i felt kind of sorry for the conductor who was a quiet-spoken 'zinemaster'. Kind of the typical bookish type, but he's done well for himself.

I was surrounded by impossibly trendy people all weekend.
I enjoyed it somewhat and made me wonder what life would've been like had i followed my childhood dreams of being a cartoonist/animator. Maybe i'll just have to fulfill my childhood dreams of being a scientist musician instead.

A certain Franz Ferdinand lyric comes to mind a lot lately-
'I love your friends, they're all so arty.'
You know who you are.

:)