Saturday, March 01, 2008

Antipodes


As those three wise men, sometimes known simply as America, once said: “The ocean is a desert with its life underground.” And maybe Australia is like southern California upside down. Opposites as equals. Sand and sea. The places you go to find yourself, hunt the whale or to be banished. Vast emptiness. Hostile elements. Inhospitable, purifying extremes. Where nothing really stands between the earth and the sky. No sign of man blots the horizon. Bleak ex-hippies in the chronic afterburn of 1972, Scientological magpies, nautical-minded Australians. Follow the melodic thread, braid the rope, hoist the sails. It all comes together. Reminds me of the wonderful book, The Ongoing Moment, by Geoff Dyer, which looks at recurring images in famous pictures – men in hats, benches, empty roads. A structuralist breakdown. (My god, that Beck record sounds amazing on headphones.) The George Byrn track (insert Oh, God joke here) is one step away from fellow Aussies, and my first post, Little River Band.


“Because of You”- Gene Clark

“Guess ‘m Doing Water” - Beck

“Golden Age” - Beck

“Foreign Water” - George Byrne

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