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the Melbourne Grand Prix

Opposition to the Melbourne Grand Prix is a bourgeois plot to denigrate a Working Class sport.  The emphasis on the overuse of a public park for an event with limited class appeal appears to support the rights of ordinary people – class unspecified, and also has an environmental aspect that immediately co-joins this issue with the social groups and ideas that are called ‘the left’.  

It might be argued against this idea by pointing out the elitist domination of the Grand Prix by ‘big, international money’ and the exclusive use of some of its facilities by that small group, and then noting that these people are reviled by opponents of the Grand Prix.  The very small, very wealthy, global elite, the five percent of the population that owns ninety five percent of everything, a ratio that has remained similar throughout human history since Classical times and probably before, are the contemporary version of an Aristocricy, while the Middle Class and Working Class might be approximately be assumed to be forty percent each with a five percent ‘under class’. 

Before the French Revolution there were moves to align the peasantry with the aristocracy against the middle class who were the leaders of the revolution.  Still today, most of our Greens, Socialists and so forth on the ‘left’ are the well-educated children of the old middle class.  Working Class suburbs are always more conservative, for example supporting the Monarchy.  Socialist Governments are mostly run by a middle class sub-class of the highly educated, supposedly on behalf of the Working Class who are assumed to be unable to govern themselves without being led by theorists and activists.  

After the Russian Revolution’s blatant social failures emerged after the first world war, the German left agreed to work with the old upper class for the sake of social stability.  It led to later problems but this is not the place for detailed history of the different class groupings though history.  These two classes share other aspects because they are the two original classes before the rise of the middle class.  They are both ‘earthy’ in the sense of swearing and carnal relationships compared to the middle class’s puritan approach to both.  They are also both public compared to the highly prized privacy of the middle class, because the working class live in crowded, public conditions and the upper class live overt, public lives as exhibitionists, though now days only in private.  It is little wonder that Motor Racing should appeal to the extremes of the Social Ladder: Gasoline Alley and the many motor racing princes.  While the Working Class are powerless to end the negativity towards their sport, the other end of the social spectrum are probably amused that the trendy, bourgeois activists oppose them and laugh at ignorant denigration.

Instead of opposition, the aim should be to take maximum advantage of the Grand Prix.  For example, the much derided pit buildings and temporary facilities for the international, high-paying visitors could be year-round facilities for park users.  Indeed, the effort to preserve the park for public use really only helps a small number of park users, compared to similar areas in other places, and a further criticism could be that if the park is to be saved for anything it is to revive ‘Country’.  

A further suggestion will be ridiculed by those who now oppose the Grand Prix, and that is to make it the Royal Melbourne Grand Prix.  There is a valid criticism that internationally few people know it is the Melbourne Grand Prix and not the Australian Grand Prix, so the City does not earn all the global publicity for which it pays dearly.  Making it the Royal Melbourne Grand Prix would ensure the name was clear and unambiguous, as well as unique.  The way to make the event truly Royal would be to start it with a carriage race.  After all, motor vehicles derive from the horse-drawn vehicles. 

HRH the Duke of Edinburgh helped develop carriage racing as a competitive sport and raced himself until recently.  An approach to be patron of such a new vehicle racing sport in conjunction with motor racing might appeal to His Royal Highness.  How horses galloping down the circuit would affect the road surface might be a consideration of the sort that bursts bubbles.

It would be interesting to make this a truly Working Class festival, unabashedly so.  With interests and advertising that appeal to Working Class people that derive from their own interests and activities, not alcohol and so forth sold to working class people by big middle class companies.  For example, the Churches could be sponsors, because there is nothing ‘sinful’ about cars and working on them is good, honest ‘work’. The end of greyhound racing in NSW is similar, with issues over the well-being of the dogs the excuse to terminate a largely working class sport.  There is an ironic inconsistency in people who eat meat without thinking about the conditions of the lives or deaths of their food but stress over the deaths of dogs, and it is even more inconsistent with a world where millions of people are suffering more than the dogs, including some in Australia: the dogs can only be an excuse.

If we are to have the Grand Prix, it should pay for itself.  Being able to include it in our list of International Sporting Fixtures, to support our claim to be World Sporting Capital, comes at a great cost.  Melbourne remains a car city; while over eighty percent of private journeys in London are on Public Transport, it is less than twenty percent in Melbourne (ref mislaid).  We can’t extend the trams and trains significantly, but we could replace half the cars on the road with buses.  Non-polluting buses that use fuel cells as in many other countries could be built here to replace our now defunct car manufacturing industries, but for some reason we spend more on roads for cars.  We sure do love our cars!

Hi Heather 2,

Hi Heather,

Please don't feel obliged to reply at length.  While of course I delight in your comments and letters as you are one of the few people that have understood me, perhaps about the only one.  I am still coming to grips with the concept.  Your ideas and perceptions make so much sense to me.  I greatly envy you mixing in a milieu of people with such mentalities.  It is my own fault, of course.  I apparently was born with the ability to understand things and hence, with some effort, to become good at something.  Ability?  Now all I have is a Billy, and we drink coffee, not tea.  I have such a different perception of myself since I had all the counselling.  (I still confuse the 'se' and the 'ci'.  My late Father was the latter in the City of Malvern, and totally failed in the former, which is what a Parent ought to be, after milk supply of course.  Now I can understand how other people must have perceived my "intelligence" as I suppose I was mentally precocious, occasionally.)  I suddenly recall * when I was very young, perhaps four or so, after I had "recovered" from being dropped on my head in that very same bathroom, when I delighted everyone, meaning my Parents and all the family and friends they told, when I told someone who asked how I slept that I had "slept like a Mally root:, because I had heard other people say they slept like logs.  How odd that now i can only sleep with chemical help, mostly herbal but sometimes antihistamine; nothing prescription only, drat! * I started this letter in the reply page of "webmail", but suddenly I copied what I have written and jumped into my Blog.  I have written some things as letters, including by hand to Marie, that I should have put in my blog.  I never mentioned anything at all about the operation or is consequences.  I suppose that was part of the closed-mind approach that did me so much harm.  I am improving in some things but not in others.  I call the Blog Minicipality, and it is on Google's Blogger system.  It is nothing to do with Facebook or other 'social media'.  It is mostly snaps from my world and comments about who I am, but sometimes I post personal things, and should post more, instead of writing it all to you, except that thinking that you are reading makes it so much easier to write.  I suppose knowing that there are then thousand people listening to you play the bagpipes or whatever, would be a great incentive to do one's best.  Just playing for oneself is like dipping one's toe in the edge of the ocean, but not bothering to go in because there is no one with whom to cavort, or share the buzz.
[Suddenly, at that point I noticed the time, with ten minutes to put on my shoes, grab the shopping trolly and head to the bus stop, just a stone's throw away, but the other side of the main road.  Anyway, I made it with minutes to spare, and reached Chaddy with nearly an hour to go.  Had a crepe with fromage and Mexican Coffee.  The appointment at OPSM took nearly an hour, but after endless tests in various machines, with all sorts of flashing lights and puffs of air, I ordered the replacement sunnies.  Did I mention that yesterday, or was it the day before, suddenly they had dematerialised and I cannot find them anywhere.  Perhaps taken by Ravens.]
While waiting for the bus, I thought more about the libretto I am writing for another Opera.  It is one of the literary forms I like to play round with.  This one not in hexameter like the great German Poets, but in free form.  I was taken by London Road.  It is now out as a movie, but it was reading about it and seeing that they were going to reprise it at the National that was my inducement for my second trip to London.  I had dinner first on the terrace, reading all about it in advance.  The idea of setting normal conversation to music and making "reality" into High Art was a new direction, that I have wanted to follow ever since.
I was thinking this morning of six voices, three women three men, of course, permitting various combinations.  As a flaneur, I imagine walking though crouds and hearing snippets of conversation that overlap and seem to repeat, or not quite.  The theme I am currently working on is Justice, and how to present the argument that the Criminal Justice System is mistaken to administer Retributive Justice, including "punishment" instead of rehabilitation, and is divisive of society creating us and them classes, instead of being inclusive.
Later, I was thinking about the column in the Age Business section claiming Australia needs to be a Republic so we will be somehow more independent and also it would be better for business, in ways that he didn't seem to be able to elaborate.  Rupert Murdoch was the original 'angry young man/journalist' who never grew up, and he leads the pack.  He must be amused that he is reviled by the so called "left" because he is Fiscally Conservative as well as being Socially Progressive, something the Chinese are now combining to great effect. You might have read all of this.  I am sorry I went on at length just now about nothing much at all.
Please do not feel the need to match me in length, detail or flippancy.  A single character from you would let me know you are thinking of me.
Do you type up any accounts of your experiences?  You are visual, Brett is aural, but I do words.  If I do anything at all, it is string words together.  This is quite a new experience for me as I was semi-illiterate for most of my life due to being sick as an infant and missing crucial, foundation lessons. [Arguably, to my benefit as I also missed the brainwashing and being convinced of falsehoods at an early and impressionable age.]  But I have mostly thought the words to myself.  If only I had bothered to type them up as I thought them, I would have had a shelf of books by now, perhaps a couple of plays and at least one epic opera.  I like Epic as an Art Form.  In India, I saw nearly all the Ramlila, that goes for ten nights at about four hours per night and tells the story of the Ramayana in singing and music, and is traditionally performed every year in many cities and villages all over India.  It is Epic in the true sense of the word.  Wagner's Ring is smaller but of that type, as were the Classical Greek play cycles.  That is why I can write long letters.  This one might never end, now I have started it in this new Blog-format.  I can save it on Google's hardware and retrieve it in an instant to extend or change it.  People who search the labels might find it, but it is just an extension of my thought processes.
Stop.  Stop. That is enough.  Shall I revise it or just send it?  I had the plumber at High Street as the basin upstairs was totally blocked and needed new pipes.  I don't know why we didn't do down stairs at the same time.  Anyway, he did not go in the back or see your paintings.
Cheers, Na'um (previously unknown as e-normus)

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.