The Disaster of the Dingo Proof Fence

Here is another example of long term-Environmental disaster from dumb Colonists not understanding the Australian Ecosystms.
The Dingo Proof Fence

DanceHouse, 12th Tishri

Dear DanceHouse People,

How do I recover my white garment, washed in Murray water?  I don’t like this emphasis on colour.  What are we, the ‘whities’ who need our sins expunged by traditional washing.  I deplore the use of ‘black’ to define Aboriginal people, many of whom do not have very dark pigmentation.  It means the same as ‘nigger’ which has deplorable connotations, yet people like to own ‘black’.

We are coming up again soon to Australia Day, which Aboriginal people deliberately use divisively, by rejecting the general celebration of our nation in favour of a separate mourning of the ‘invasion’.  As long as this persists, Reconciliation will be impossible.  As an all-inclusive  nation, we need to find a different day on which to remember and mourn the tragedies of the past.  This shameful history should be commemorated by all Australians, not just those who can prove genetic, ancestral occupancy of Country since ancient times. 

I see from the DanceHouse Diary that DanceHouse is at the forefront of the divisiveness and internal social dislocation that tragically splits the world’s community of people.  ‘Anti-Capitalism’ is a failed philosophy that is ‘so last century’.  It is the sort of movement that has generated phenomena like Trump.  I notice that you charge a ticket price!  You should make your performances free and include a voluntary donation box at the entrance, where you would most probably take in more than you do selling tickets.  It is fine being an adolescent iconoclast, but it is quite unrealistic in the real world and the predominance of these divisive attitudes of unbridled hatred towards others produces the worst reactions.

In the second performance piece, where two people, apparently with international ‘dance’ experience. Just flopped around for an hour in a dark, undefined space, moving slightly closer and then further from time to time, which was as close to meaningless as anything I have seen.  As to the soundtrack, I think one of the conflicting voices repeated the Moslem declaration of faith, but the other sounds were meaningless to me.  Were they Xian chants?  It was essentially trivial movement to noise.  It was quite hypnotic, and I cannot say I did not enjoy it – on some level, but watching the trees move in the wind, which I often like to do, is just as entertaining.

Better explanation of the first performance piece would have been better.  Fortunately, I read the brief notes that were hidden away in the foyer and which I am sure most people did not read.  I did look at the plates, but there was no time to study them to see if there was hidden significance in what was drawn.  None of us knew what to do when we sat at the table.  I think one person gobbled up their scone without any idea of its significance, while I was horrified by what it all meant and found it very confronting and thought provoking.  I would not eat the bread because I am a vegetarian, let alone not a cannibal, but the shock of thinking about the slavery that used to produce this bread and the symbolism of Aboriginal blood would have prevented me from even one bite.  There was too much waiting without knowing what was happening and that greatly distracted from the experience. 

I liked the idea of the washing, but the projected lists of massacres was unintelligibly written and so spasmodic in its projection that only the idea of it had meaning and its realisation was a failure.  I thought the ratio between the huge, central performance space and the audience space along the dusty edges of the floor said something about your attitude to us, the people for whom you perform.  Clearly, from all this, DanceHouse is all about ‘us’ and I regret that I am an outsider and not one of ‘you’.  Gosh!  I so hate all this divisiveness. 

Please send me back my white garment, randomly numbered ‘1’.  It will become a treasured part of my wardrobe, remembering the context in which it was laundered.  The massacres were a long time ago, but the attitude of inter-racial hatred that is promoted mostly by Aboriginal people and their fellow-travellers is causing a perpetuation of the tragedies.  I understand that now days more Aboriginal babies are being removed from their families than before the Stolen Generation Report.  There are things wrong with our Economic System, but they need to be fixed, and that will not happen while people like you dream of replacing it with some sort of ideal, theoretical utopia, and constantly express this hatred and contempt for other humans instead of working within the ‘system’ to make it work for everyone.  This conclusion is the result of me reaching seventy years of age and having gradually observed the folly of my own youthful rebelliousness.  Fifty years ago I would have agreed with all your mythical anti-establishment values, but now I am just very depressed and disappointed to see that our global society is no closer to harmony than we were in centuries past.  The more things change the more they stay the same.

The Melbourne Festival gives us the opportunity for unexpected experiences.  Some are truly transcendental, but others just make me think, and sadly what I think is ‘same old same old – going nowhere’.  We must not forget the tragedies of the past, but we need a Sorry Day for all of us, not a divisive one from which us ‘whities’ are excluded.  BTW, I studied Aboriginal Cultures with Open University a few years ago and got a High Distinction, so I feel I have a right to comment on these issues, not that anyone listens or agrees. 

Regards,

naum@tered.org

Auntie Fay

A new story about a group of children, or perhaps two or just one,  anyway, they want directions in life and to know how to understand the world around them.  They go off to see Auntie Fay.
She is a witch of a woman who communicates with the fairies and lives in a cottage on the edge of the forest..  Auntie Fay is based on my Mother, whom I never really remembered in vivid detail so I could observe her and see her through my now-adult eyes.
She teaches them the secrets of the universe, like a children's adventure story.  Perhaps she sets them tasks that they must overcome to learn lessons

just angry tody

Listening to ABC radio leads to distress.  Not a good lie-in at all.  Firstly about stolen Aboriginal wages in WA.  Millions stolen, eventual recognition of the problem and a slow process of correcting it, except that the final outcome is a minimal token to the few people who have survived the drawn out recognition of their rights.  The way Aboriginal people were treated is horrific.  It still persists, and worse, many Australians retain the mentality of approval or denial of this horror.  If Tony Abbott thinks Daesh is equivalent to the Jewish Holocaust, then he should look at the continual official treatment of Australia's first nations and the descendants of the long-term owners of this country.

Then came an interview about "drugs".  Portugal legalised all drugs fifteen years ago and since then heroin use has halved, AIDS transmission ceased, all drug use fell, and so forth.  The writer of a new book is speaking in Australia.  The arguments are so persuasive, yet the situation remains in Australia.

No wonder I feel resentment when in the presence of Medicos or Lawyers, the people who should be leading our society but instead are holding it back.  Pace "doctors' wives" the supposed majority component of the "new left" including the Greens and the Socialist Left, whose policies are as extreme, unrealistic and counter-productive as the Right.

I should be posting this publicly, but who listens to me?  I just make enemies, draw attention from undesirables and attract interest from the private, secretive "public" authorities.

I wrote something about public transport, yesterday, that I haven't yet posted to New Whig, that I am thinking of promoting, but my thoughts continue to be about the Nature Strip, and I might write something about that and promote it widely.  If I am to bring about one change in my lifetime, what little is left, then stopping the poisoning of endemic wild-flowers and mowing grasslands, all part of the recognition of Country, will be eternally worthwhile.

Yesterday I felt terrible.  Lunch went really well, but when I returned to Billy's later, I made us canned soup and ended up on his couch, almost asleep and went home early. The problem was partly his choice of programmes.  the Lilly Tomlin sitcom with Riba Macantyer (sp?), Malibu Country, was entertaining to start with, except now it is a total bore, except that the Lilly Tomlin character smokes weed and campaigns for it in the show.  That is good to see.  Marijuana is openly praised on television and normalised into family life in sitcoms.  On the MTV Video Awards show, they did a "3,2,1, Marijuana" cheer and gave their top award to a user and campaigner for drug normalisation.  Today, however, I don't feel too terrible, and will go to the city first for lunch and then tram to St Kilda to see Bad Jews at the new Alex Theatre.

The 

New Play

New Play

About a guy, based on me, married to a woman based on Billy.  She is not on stage at the start but makes an entrance half way through the first act.

He is a moderately successful architect.  Part of the action is his arguments with bureaucrats about a development or extension or something.

Anyway, the wife is an addict.  Notes to the script can suggest that the production make her an addict to what ever is plausible at the time.  I don’t want to lock in a drug.  Perhaps after drugs are legalised and normalised, there will be something of an equivalent.

Anyway, a visit from her supplier occurs in each act.  There is discussion on the virtues of the illegality. 

Perhaps I can make it a vehicle for my Melba Opera House idea.  There should also be a mother in law.  Clearly there is tension between He and Her’s family.  She can be from an aristocratic, Toorak family, old money, with the proceeds of selling the ancestral homestead and property, dating back to Selectors.  No problem knowing who she is based on.

It is a Melbourne play, about identifying with Country.  It is also about retributive justice and using the Law to punish people.  Everyone has secrets.  She about the drugs from her mother.  We later learn the Dealer has imunity and can keep dealing because he feeds information about his clients. It is why He misses out on some contract or tender, or prize.

She may in fact be of aboriginal descent.  Many old families hushed up such a thing long ago.  Opens the debate into what it means to be Australian.

Ok, so the Architectural competition behind the play is for an Opera House for Melbourne.  The winner is a foreign conglomerate design in Port Philip Bay, with a Racing Circuit round it and hotels and wealthy apartments.  Not a people’s place.

There had better be a Grand Daughter, so we have the three phases of womanhood.  Perhaps she can act as a kind of “chorus”.  She might break the fourth wall.  She ruminates on her life and family as if they were a play she was watching or caught up in.  The unreality of it.  When she is left alone with the Dealer for some reason, they can have a big argument.  Good place to put Economic ideas. He would be New Capitalist, she New Anarchist.  

scrap of dialogue

D: You only want to win because you think you can get a knighthood, now. 

H: That is ridiculous.  It is an important competition that I am entering to have my vision for Melbourne built.  I don’t care about the recognition, though I admit that would be nice.  And I am not after a knighthood. 

D: You were very supportive of the idea when it was reintroduced, when everyone else in Australia was ridiculing. 

Perhaps the four scenes can be each week, on the same day.  The play could be called “Tuesday”.  Or else the day could be what ever day the actual performance was on.  I like the idea of changing a performance, perhaps making it time relevant.  Time is cyclical.  This play is cyclical.  Not the same day repeated, like Groundhog Day, or many others, but life repeating another, new day’s, similar activities in similar order.

H: If Aus had become a Republic we would not be having this question.

D: Well, I like the Queen and all the Royal Family.  Why do you want to get rid of them?  They aren’t doing any harm, don’t cost much, what ever you say, and some people say they provide stability to our constitution, and without it we would lose our connection to a thousand years of constitutional development and all that tradition, and become just another new, young republic, whose government is open to any faction that gains power through whatever means.

H: Of course the Royals would be welcome to visit, and you can take just as much interst in them whether they are our Monarch or not.

D: But that is silly.  They are only celebrities because they actually are real royalty.  The world has dozens of deposed monarchs and other nobility, and no one ever hears about them.

H: Don’t be so sure.  The Surbian Royal Family is back in their Palace and filling many of the social activities of their ancestors, like marking important national days, without any political power.  He calls himself “Crown Prince” and is just waiting for his coronation. 

D: That just shows how relevant the Crown is to the Constitution.

Her’s speech, Act 2?

You have no idea what it was like growing up in my family.  The expectations were intense. Failure was ignored after praise for being a good loser.  But no help!  Oh, no! We were expected to do it all by ourselves. 

I saw siblings and cousins receive heaps of praise for their achievements, their ambitions, but anything I did was regarded as trivial.  Worse, any time I did manage to start something by myself, suddenly “he” would destroy everything I had started to do, just so “he” could help me start.  I remember starting to climb a ladder as a toddler, and making it up a few rungs before he saw me and came running.  Instead of praising me for being able to do it, which Marcia, my therapist says a normal father would do, he grabbed me and pulled me off the ladder, put me down on my knees, although I had stopped crawling by then, and grabbed a hand and said he would teach me how to climb ladders.  I just burst into tears, so “he” yelled something at me and walked off.

I felt I was lost in a dark forest, like in my story books, but I didn’t know there was a way out, didn’t know I should try and get out, and no indication of which way to go, anyway.

Perhaps there will be four scenes, two in the first Act.  In each “Dealer” comes in, has conversation with daughter and father separately, perhaps one each time, then “her” comes in, but takes whatever it is out of room.  I don’t want any jeckle/hyde transformations happening on stage.  No demonstration of paraphernalia, or methods of administering.  Anyway, she returns a different person, more “real”, honest, perceptive, etc.  Defensive, vulnerable sad.  Aggressive and in control. Perhaps differently each of the four times. 

The fourth time, she comes back very “natural” and life of the party and efficient, as if she had worked through her other problems, but still obviously with the dependency, but that is now seen as harmless, though costly, and indeed beneficial if kept in control.  This in contrast to “Him”s demise, because this is a tragedy, with the tragic floor of goodness.

New Story, perhaps a play. 

A  group of year twelve people.  When they were sixteen they became sexually active and all screwed around a lot including with each other, and now are bored with sex and certainly don’t want to do it with each other.  The Education System has been made very easy for intelligent children to coast through, with good results made easy, or else their futures are mapped out for them through family obligations or connections or social limitations.  Essentially, they are bored.

They decide to commit the perfect murder.  So the play becomes a debate about the morality of death.  They expect their success will come from the unexpectedness.  It must obviously be a murder, but one that is mysterious and inexplicable.  It has to be someone distant from everyone and they consider a random person, but then decide to ensure the person has no connection to any of them, and to their astonishment , everyone in the whole city has some remote, but not insignificant connection to someone in the group.