sunday morning.

Spoken Word/Slam Poetry

We've all heard the age old adage that "a picture tells a thousand words"; but what can a thousand words tell you, other than also paint a picture?

I cannot bear allegiance to either one medium or the other - art and literature tell truths in their own special way that can not and must not be compromised for the sake of a better sell. It brings to mind the attempts of the Hollywood remake, so often tearing down cultural nuances in the mad rat race for some measly dollars. What good has ever come of it?

We ridicule philosophers, we scoff at the great thinkers of the past, and we mock poets for all their deep emotions. But sometimes, six little words are enough to resonate within us all.

Spoken word, or slam poetry, has an emormous impact on me. I will be the first to admit that my knowledge of it is of a bare minimal level, but I hope my appreciation overcomes that. 

In recent years I have admired Saul Williams, and in recent days I have engrossed myself in his music. Please read, or even better, listen to it...

I've been waiting here for what now seem the better of an hour. I've raised every crippled question from the dead and given power to the abscense of my sanity. The presence of a fear that lies in between forgotten dreams that pile up every year. Up above your highest testaments, down below the wooden floor, there's a gutted room, pitch black at noon, beneath a hidden door. Deep within you'll find the attributes of every sunken man who must bang his head against the dead each day he tries to stand. And he's standing pressed against the very woman that he loves. Kissing eyes and lips, embracing hips, surrendering to her touch and just at the very moment that he touches heart to heart, she pulls from his touch, 'cause it's too much to mend what's torn apart...
Skin of a Drum - Saul Williams


To manifest your dreams before you manifest your fears. To navigate beyond the treachery of self-despair. To find the balance between all you sense and all you see. To find the patience and the strength it takes to let it be. To stand amongst the crowd and have the strength to hold your own. To throw away the pen and pad and simply be the poem. To rise above hatred to love through seeming contradiction. To seldom take a side and learn to compliment the friction. To bring about the change within that we can't live without. To shift and rearrange ideals and learn to deal with doubt. To voice the victory and unlearn ways of self-defeat. To learn the value of "Yo fuck the words, just ride the beat." To leave the comfort zones of all you know to all you feel. To step beyond the void and realize the unknown is real. To re-imagine every obstacle as just a means, of honing craft and learn to laugh at failures funny dream. There has to be some other way to stop the fight!  

Raised to be Lowered - Saul Williams

I have also had the pleasure of stumbling upon a spoken word artist from Harlem, New York who performed the following piece on SBS Insight last week:

We are a persevering people. America, surely you are a tale to be told somersaulting in the voice of a hopeful nation, Lady Liberty singing the blues a relentless heartbeat in tune. A quilted soul humming for change, what a breathing dream in the palm of hard work, you are fireworks set free in the glow of a child's eye. Opportunity inspiring us to reach for the sky dancing, miracles in the midst of adversity, you are a cause worth fighting for. America, you are a country clinging to the future wearing passion ocean-wide like a frantic love. Let us build bridges and not burn them. May we engage a new wisdom, inspire a wandering imagination and live to see our dreams butterfly and take hold.

I have nothing more left to say.

spinning wheels.

I love these photos by John Glassie of bikes locked to poles. There's something kind of sad about them.

[Found at the amazing Things Magazine project site]

pictionary.

I was going through some photos today and came across this: my brother's friend's drawing of "Alien."




God I love Pictionary.

holding onto threads.

Sometimes something I read, or see or hear, makes me see past all the petty things that usually occupy my head and for a fleeting second everything seems startlingly clear.

It's normally just little things, like a line in a song, or a story someone tells me that might usually seem insignificant but for some reason has a huge impact at the time. This week the thing that triggered my thinking about all this was an interview with neurosurgeon Charlie Teo on ABC. He said something about death that really stuck with me..basically that everyone thinks it must be so morose and depressing to constantly be in the company of the dying but that for him it has the effect of perpetually reminding him to appreciate life and not get caught up in worrying about little things. I've heard that sort of thing said about a million times but for some reason this week it just really stood out.

The thing is, with these sort of moments of clarity, for me at least, is that they're always so transient. Within seconds, maybe minutes if you're lucky, all the other thoughts come crowding back and you forget that feeling of clarity just as quickly as you felt it.

I wonder if making a conscious effort to hold onto it makes any difference. I'm going to try and see.


[I don't know why, but I always like seeing this Eternity sign on my inevitably late trips home from the Gong on weekends so one night I stopped and took a photo. It just makes me happy.)

mixed bag.

My mum and her sister dressed up on my grandparent's lawn. Is it just me or does life seem a lot more whimsical in old photos?



Found a great book about zoological illustration and this anatomical horse drawing by George Stubbs (1766) blew me away. He lived in an isolated farmhouse and churned out a whole book of these amazing illustrations..all horses.


Vintage Indian incense packaging. Beautiful.


Oh, Charlotte. (via, a cup of jo)

coloured water.

Whenever I've been needing a break from uni work lately I've been indulging in an old habit that I learnt from the wise Mister Jelle back in Botanical Studies: watercolour painting.

It has to be the most inexpensive form of painting EVER, it takes no time to dry, and there's always a way to turn a watery mistake into something different, which is why I love it. Somewhere along the line it picked up all these negative assocations with "low" art and timid little landscape pictures that were destined for a hanging life in old people's homes and the like, but I, for one, am a huge fan. And the paint always comes in the tiniest little tubes.

I don't think I've ever posted any of my own artworks before (mainly because I'm usually not happy with them) but I was pleased with the way this little bird turned out..



The colour of his heart/circle is called Brilliant Red. Which is, incidentally, my favourite colour.

when the fete rolls in.

Every two years the local primary school holds a big fete to raise money for the school by hawking various jams, bric-a-brac, plants, toys and so on. It's always a great day (provided you don't accidentally buy back something you donated..it CAN happen!) and this year I found some pretty quirky things among the mountains of stuff, which left me pretty chuffed with the bi-annual splendour that is School Fete day.






Chalkboard- 50c.
Little plant- $2
Books + Comics- $3 for all
Dress- $3
Belt- $1
Brooch for a friend- $3



The Tolstoy children's book was worth it not only for the great illustrations (above) but the curious names of the stories; "Masha and the Mushrooms", "Why Wolves are Mean and Squirrels are Frisky" and, my personal favourite, "Better to be Lean and Free than Plump and Chained" (??).

muccibird.

foodhall love.

I was so overwhelmed with love for good food that I had to return two days after my visit to the David Jones Foodhall on Pitt St.

It's certainly not a new thing, but having not been there for years I had actually forgotten just how amazing big delicatessens are. Every type of cheese, olive, fish, fruit, salami and pasta shape you could think of all housed together in a subterranean haven under the city.

My only sadness is that there aren't more of these in Australia. The whole experience (and it was an experience) left me wishing I lived in a country where supermarkets are the minority and delis and markets rule supreme.

Bring back the deli I say.




muccibird.

Ohayo gozaimasu !

I went to the Taisho Chic exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW yesterday (Sunday). I really liked it. I'm no artist so I won't launch into an analytical exercise about the clash of Japanese culture with Western modernity.

Sometimes it's just nice to see things as they are, in all their beauty, without deconstructing every aspect.

Anyway, I didn't come here to preach either. I came to share. This was one of my favourite pieces from the exhibition:


It's called 'Two girls by the sea' by Kafu c mid 1920s.

I think I will have to go back for a second look. Just to please myself more than anything else.

How I miss the place..

-michiko-

Kitsch Crochet

I have this growing interest in knitting and crochet. The deal was pretty much sealed when this lovely lady at my work crocheted me a tissue packet cover. I'm not talking a tissue box cover, but a warm little home for my tissue packet (with 10 tissues in each plastic packet). I think my heart melted on the spot when I saw it.

I decided to type "crochet" in the search engine to see what I could uncover. Uninterested in the boring sites listed in google's top ten I started scouring the images. My (now)-hardened heart skipped a little beat.

There's a lady out there named Alicia Kachmar that crochets the most amazing things.

For instance, here is a s'more she crocheted!



And here is what a normal s'more looks like:


(The internets informs me it's an American thing - marshmallow and chocolate sandwiched in between some crackers. I'm pretty sure they featured heavily in The Baby Sitters Club books when I used to read them.)

Two peas in a pod crocheted:



And some clouds and sad raindrops:



Ms. Alicia sells her crocheted friends on a website called etsy, which itself is worth investigating. It's a website that allows people to set up an online shop and sell their art, clothing and handcrafted items (and other things) online to anyone in the world. It's amazing.

Click here to see Ms Alicia's other items.

I have my beady little eyes on all of them...


-michiko-

Patrolling the Streets

I think Street Art is a highly underated form of expression. I think most governments possess the wrong view in regards to street art. Yes, without question, some graffiti can be terrible acts of defacing. But there are some truly great street artists out there that are making our cities much more vibrant and exciting.

Looking past the ever so famous Banksy, there is a street artist living in Melbourne under the pseudonym of Ghostpatrol that is doing his bit for infrastructure.







He also draws and makes dolls..





He's pretty great if you ask me..


-michiko-

snap happy.

Fecal Face is a pretty amazing art and design blog from San Francisco that promotes young artists from everywhere from Chile to Turkey.

Hands down, the best part of the site is Photo of the Day. A simple premise, and a lot of art/photography sites do it, but the FF archives are just filled with quirky, mundane shots from all around the world.









See more at the FF site.

muccibird.

believing is seeing.

This week I had to give a presentation on Expressionism in my art theory class.

Sounds boring I know, but there's one thing the Modernists had right, and that is- it's not what you see that matters, but how you see it.

This got me thinking.

Now, I live in an amazingly beautiful part of the world, and even though I can see it's beautiful and appreciate it thoroughly, when I get up from my train seat every day and see it through the window it has no effect on me. This is because I know exactly what is there. There's no mystery. I know that behind that group of trees is a redbrick corner shop and a telephone booth. Down that street is a delapidated house with a goat in the garden, and down the next street lives someone I went to primary school with.

I really think this is a huge part of the appeal of travelling to new places that are completely removed from your usual environment. When you are seeing new places for the first time, you don't know what lies beyond your immediate line of sight. Depending on where you are, and the sort of images you mentally link with that place through years of cultural associations, your imagination tends to fill in the gaps.

This photo might be a good example:




If someone told me this was taken somewhere in the countryside in France, not only would I believe them, but everything I associate with France would be invested in the photo. I would probably imagine that in the unseen parts of the photo is a vineyard, and to next to it are some mustachioed old Frenchmen playing chess in the sun (or something equally cliched).

But, I took this photo, and I know that the reality is not half as interesting as that. It was taken on the way to Australia's most boring, round-abouty "state" (Canberra, obviously), and there is not much else around it other than bushland.

For me, it just goes to show that with art, photography, anything visual at all, it really is all about perception. Maybe all that blah about connotations that I learned in first year was right after all.

muccibird.

Furoshiki

There is a catch 22 when it comes to me and Japan.

I enjoy the place so much that I just want everybody to see and feel what I experienced. Yet, when they do, I become extremely envious and wish I had kept my little mouth shut.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this is going to be one of those moments, but here it goes anyway.

A lovely friend of mine and my brother's arrived in Sydney last week from his hometown, Tokyo, and brought presents a plenty. One of these things was a Furoshiki, also known as a traditional wrapping cloth.

My one looks like this:



And is capable of all these things:



The culture of some countries will never cease to amaze me..


-michiko-

map loving.

I think everyone would read maps a lot more often if they looked like this 1960s Czech city map that I found on the Grain Edit site..





It would definitely soften the blow of getting lost.


muccibird.

the first {post} is the deepest.

After a week of pure blog-excitement, and countless ideas, I'm actually a little lost for words.

So i might just start with a picture or two.






I stumbled across the artist, Phil Hale, whilst traipsing around my fellow poster's favourite haunt: Kinokuniya bookstore near Town Hall. He has illustrated a series of [amazing] covers for Penguin: this one is Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.



His works just seem to embody everything I love about painting: it looks realistic but there is actually little detail, the lighting and colours are so dramatic and some of his art is close to graphic comic works.

You can see more of his works at http://www.allenspiegelfinearts.com/hale.html.
I don't think there is one I don't like.

muccibird.