Despite all of the marvelous design specific publications out there, I find myself consistently drawn to a little Victorian publication about fresh Australian writing. Harvest is excellent. It is varied, it is pretty, it is emotive and contains some truly brilliant work and some rather nice illustration. I took Harvest on the train with me to work the other morning and read it with my window seat. The first article was an opinion piece, which you can kindly read here: To Our Generation of Precious Snowflakes and it made me stop. I was struck by either brilliant personal recognition or absolute horror and I couldn’t work it out. It forced me to think about life and about blogging and about youth/my peers.

The opinion piece addresses the thoughts of writer Ted Genoways.

At the same time, young writers will have to swear off navel-gazing in favor of an outward glance onto a wrecked and lovely world worthy and in need of the attention of intelligent, sensitive writers.

By way of overview – this is the opinion piece:

Pardon us for filtering out the unimaginable suffering we watch on live broadcasts with a sickening compulsion and can replay on YouTube. In the chasm between vacuous celebrity and the realities of insidious fundamentalism, perhaps it is only our own lives, logged hourly and picked over, that we can clutch on to for purpose, meaning and creative inspiration, in order to tune out the loud, fast world.

For now, might we be excused our navel gazing? When you have seen men glide down from burning towers on slipstreams of hate, perhaps it’s not too big a leap to conclude that one’s navel is the only safe place to be looking.

And to dear Ted, we are the wrecked and lovely world. It’s there in our writing if you can bring yourself to read it, and while it may not be ‘sterling’ enough for you, it’s as real as the Iraq war, and often as heartbreaking.

I find that I am struggling to hold my intense introverted and internal methods living and processing – my narcissism, with the outward looking life I desire to have. Perhaps this is why this article plucked deep hurt on the strings of my soul.

From letter 89 by Tolkien:
“…I coined the word ‘eucatastrophe’: the sudden happy turn in a story which pierces you with a joy that brings tears (which I argued it is the highest function of fairy stories to produce). And I was there led to the view that it produces its peculiar effect because it is a sudden glimpse of truth…. It perceives– if the story has literary ‘truth’ –that this is indeed how things really do work in the Great World for which our nature is made. And I concluded by saying that the Resurrection was the greatest ‘eucatastrophe’ possible in the greatest fairy story– and produces that essential emotion: Christian joy which produces tears because it is qualitatively so like sorrow, because it comes from those places where Joy and Sorrow are at one, reconciled, as selfishness and altruism are lost in Love…”

Cannot we find some way to correlate our local and personal sorrow and experiences of living with the greater sorrow of this world, to lean on eucatastrophe and hope – wait and live that reconciliation of the overlapping now but not yet.

There is another response (in a more literary sense) to the Harvest piece here: A response to harvest.

Run like a race for family
When you hear like you’re alone
The rusted gears of morning
To faceless busy phones
We gladly run in circles
But the shape we meant to make is gone

Love is a tired symphony
To hum when you’re awake
Love is a crying baby
Mama warned you not to shake
Love is the best sensation
Hiding in the lion’s mane

So I’ll clear the road, the gravel
And the thorn-bush in your path
That burns a scented oil
That I’ll drip into your bath
The water’s there to warm you
And the earth is warmer
When you laugh

Love is a scene I render
When you catch me wide awake
Love’s a dream you enter
Though I shake and shake and shake you
Love is the best endeavor
Waiting in the lion’s mane

Iron & Wine

image via Ffffound!

As you would know (if you read this blog – despite the fact that I seem to post quite infrequently) I am working at Blick Creative full time as a designer. This post is mostly to mark how much I am enjoying it, despite this week being a lot of simply learning the ropes. The people are great, the studio is lovely and the work is varied and fun. In terms of it being a Saturday, it appears the slightly earlier start (and probably the happy-stress of newness) has caught up with me and I am quite exhausted. It will be lovely to get into a proper routine.

Geoff and I were talking the other day about how since we got married 2 and a half years ago we have:

• Lived in three different houses
• Moved from the East to the North (of Melbourne)
• Geoff has had 3 jobs (Including a career change)
• I have had 3 jobs (plus freelancing)
• I have completed my uni degree
• Geoff has been on teaching intensive and has also done some additional study at Tabor
• Two family weddings
• Two family funerals
• Overseas trip to the Solomons
• Three churches (YVV, Ranges, Missio Dei)

Not all these things have been bad, infact on the whole they’ve been a step in a direction toward the better. But we are fairly tired and are both looking forward to some kind of vague stability for a while.

So here we are. Perhaps we’ll have a holiday in New Zealand later in the year, but besides that we’re probably staying put even if you try to drag us. Lets think about actually living for a while.

So… I have now experienced the so called Music Festival. Call me backwards but I’m not a huge gigs person, don’t get me wrong – I enjoy music very much, I just prefer to be sitting. Last week I wandered off to Josh Pyke – which was super excellent except for 4hrs in a stinking hot room with nowhere to sit. (I am remarkably unfit it appears) what is more peculiar is that my lovely mother managed to someone score a ticket off someone who had broken their toe and she came home in raptures. I think it’s the beard. At least Dad has one. It was a truly excellent little set by Mr. Pyke at the classic Rubys in Belgrave – the home of affordable music goodness.

The Big Day Out is something else. I am lamenting a little now that we didn’t hold out and get Laneway tickets – as it’s much more my type of music (think Mumford and Sons – which, thank you very much came in at no.1!) but Geoff told me that I had to experience something of the likes of BDO and so he got us tickets. And I am glad of the experience (How very Gen Y of me). To put things in perspective, the BDO is about 10hrs worth of gigs. We intelligently caught the train and bought plenty of water and food. I got a rather interesting hat from Kmart so I wouldn’t fry – I say interesting because before I even got to use it it wound up drenched in hot-dog water and had to be washed didn’t come out quite as dandy as it started – but that is another story (and it wasn’t super dandy to start with). We scored remarkably good weather – warm but not stinking and fairly overcast/beautiful for the entireity.

We kicked off the event with a wander to the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra and then caught up with Ana, Blair, Marita and co. Checked out some Blue Juice and lamentably didn’t stay as we though Lisa Mitchell would be more worth seeing (Just go buy the CD instead) I mean really, who would miss out on guys in yellow jumpsuits! Then off to Tame Impala – who suddenly got popular (oh yeh, that’s right – someone told me about this good obscure little band but that was 3 years ago) – try a 14 year old with a shirt off – no just put it back on, you’re all ribs and your long hair reminds me of Hanson – well, props to them because they put on a good show. Then for some reason we went to see Dizzie Rascal – here’s where my day hit its’ low. I would possibly be okay with the music if I didn’t have over excited drunk girls invading my personal space and jumping to making the ground shake (I’m picturing a few of you laughing at me right now: ‘oh that’s so Bec’) but he did go for an hour – the ground shaking bit was kinda cool but no thanks – I at least had Marita to share disparaging looks. We off and up decided to check out Passion Pit but the crowds were so insane that it was a sneaky backtrack to sitting and the shade for The Decemberists – glory on all parts! Then back to standing for Mars Volta who don’t know when to end songs or make the last one sound any different from the one before. However our fixed location made for excellent spots for the following: Lily Allen (Who wore an Australian flag and looked a bit like an old woman in her kitchen in a kaftan with a cigarette – I think that’s what she was going for) she was however most excellent, then Powderfinger which allowed for some marvelous old school singalongs (And I possibly enjoy this most of all – knowing the music fairly well does help) and then Muse.

Muse were excellent. Like truly excellent.

And then a prick of a guy pushed forward in between me and Ana and obscured my vision. Apparently Ana punched him and I strategically put my elbow where he would be jumping into it. We should’ve been meaner.

The benefit of this was that I was so angry at this guy that I forgot about how sore my feet were for a good 20 minutes. Getting out was slightly insane, Geoff sourced a magic shortcut and we bypassed several hundred people and were home before midnight (not a bad effort when you live out near the end of a train line).

Despite the apparent whingyness of this post, I did enjoy myself mostly. Would I go again? Perhaps if I loved the line up, otherwise no.

I slept til 12pm the next day.

I’ve been listening to some of my ‘older’ music and was really struck by Relient K’s lyrics of “Maintain Consciousness”. I think it pretty much lays out the reality of the distractions around for today’s teenager (and young adults for that matter). Distractions and lack of depth in particular areas is something that features frequently in my own life. It’s an upward climb to deal with this stuff and if the lyrics below have anything to say the upward climb is not what is in order.

Our conversations change from words to blah, blah, blah
We took prescription drugs
But look how much good that did
Well I think I had a point,
But I just got distracted

Lately it just seems to me
Like we’ve got the letters A.D.D
Branded into our mentality
We simply can’t focus on anything

Because its
17, 18, 19 routine
And here at 23 it’s the same old me
And that one thing of the moment
That we all happen to like will
Only very temporarily
Kinda break the cycle
Of the double edged sword
Of being lazy and being bored
We just want more and more and more
Till it’s all we can afford

To keep out eyes open for just one more day
To keep on hoping that we’ll stumble on a way
To keep our minds open for just one more day
Cause its completely up to us
To maintain consciousness

Well no one can possibly listen to this
More that 4 reps is just monotonous
We’re losing interest,
Losing interest,
Losing interest