Come Fly With Me; The Funny Side Of Air Disasters.

Feb 2010

I really, really like aeroplanes. As a kid, I spent day after day building models of them, and identifying them and reading about them, but I’ve always thought that the most interesting thing about planes is that they sometimes stop flying at the worst possible moment; ie, quite suddenly, when they’re up in the air. The failures of aircraft to make it home is addressed with engrossing detail in my favourite telly program of all time, Air Crash Investigation.

ACI has got everything; horror, drama, thrills and spills, derring-do, technological mindfucks, forensic investigation, mystery, existential near-death (or genuine death) experiences, blind terror and, in one memorable case, a ghost popping into the galley to warn some stewardesses that their plane is an accident waiting, impatiently, to happen. (They made a telemovie about that incident, with Ernest Borgnine as the earnest apparition of the dead pilot. ‘Beware of fire in this aircraft!’ Hey, don’t have a cow, man.)

Not a lot of romance or sex in ACI, I grant you, although there’s plenty of humour, which, of course, couldn’t be less intentional. But when a distracted pilot lets his fourteen-year-old son drive an Airbus A320 into the Siberian tundra, well … can’t you see the funny side?

The Bells! The Bells!

July 2010

A few weeks ago (funny how many articles begin like that) … anyway, a few weeks ago I attended a literary speed-dating event at The Wheeler Centre, a huge and ancient building that stops Melbourne Central from spreading beyond Little Lonsdale Street. It was once a Roman amphitheatre or something. These days, though, it’s where writing happens. They sent me an email. I don’t know how they got my email address, but perhaps they were alerted by the folks who offer me things like ‘CilaisSoftTabs--_someFueIlForTheSexMacihne’.

It was a free event, and they were short on men. Yeah, all right then, I thought, I’ll help you out.

Preliminary instructions were sent: everyone was to take along a book they really dig. Or a book you figure might help you pick up.

There Goes My Hero

Derren Brown is the coolest guy on earth. Way cooler than Keith Richards or David Bowie or … House. Who is he? He’s an illusionist/mentalist/psychologist/sceptic and unprepossessing genius whose TV shows, from first minute to last, teem with drop-jaw, freaky amazements. He’s a guy, yeah, but you have to understand that he is not a regular-human-being-type guy. He is some sort of wizard from the future, gone on holiday to twenty-first century earth to amuse himself for a while, fucking with people’s heads. I can’t prove it but since almost everything he does is plainly impossible, it’s the only conclusion I can draw.

Now, look over there in the opposite corner – that’s American ‘psychic’ John Edward, the biggest douche-bag in the universe. He was voted thus on an episode of South Park. (And there were some mighty big douches from many distant galaxies nominated.) When talking about that episode recently, South Park’s Trey Parker said, ‘We literally did decide this guy was the worst. He was the worst guy in the world. There’s nothing you can do right now that’s worse than this.’

Regrets? I've had a million

Edith Piaf had a pretty shitty life. Abandoned as a kid by an absent mother, brought up in a brothel, a mother at seventeen to a girl who died, aged two, of meningitis, she was smashed about in two bad car accidents, and one very bad one, which shattered bones all over her body. (She was sitting next to Charles Aznavour, a bad scene even before the prang. You simply shouldn’t go driving in France. Albert Camus and Isadora Duncan tried it and paid big time.)

Taking all these bone-breaks and heartaches into consideration, Edith was still proud to declare ‘Je Ne Regrette Rien’, which in English is, of course … hang on, I’ll look it up. Okay, that’s right, which in English is ‘I Regret Nothing’.

But was she serious? No regrets about the car wrecks? None for her doomed lovers? No angst about having seen very little of Marcelle before the child’s terrible death? Non! Mon dieu! Talk about ‘I’m a glass half-full kind of person’. (I’m a glass half-full person too. But it’s hard to drink that much cow vomit in one sitting.)

Falling down where you left off

I did my back on a recent Sunday, picking up a guitar speaker box to put in my car. It wasn’t an especially weighty thing, and most people wouldn’t be troubled if asked to carry it around for a few minutes. Even one handed. My legs, though, began to quiver at about the thirty-second mark, and then started to fold in and lower slowly, like a hydraulic car compressor. You win, gravity.

Having reached the car, I leaned over momentarily, but with poor posture, to put the thing in the back, which was when something went twang.

Were the rock gods trying to tell me something? I haven’t had any active involvement in music for a decade now. An encroaching middle-aged decrepitude, coupled with a general laziness, has pretty much done the trick. I don’t really have anything to say as a songwriter these days, and the theft of my bass guitar was a crushing and terminal blow.

Christ On A Bus

As a person whose atheism is sturdy enough to make Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens sound like men who are not quite sure about the whole God thing, I do like to indulge in one Easter ritual with a connection to the main event, rather than just dribbling crème caramel egg down my chin.1

Every April I turn on Fox Classics and settle in for another re-run of Norman Jewison’s 1973 film of Jesus Christ Superstar. Now, the distaste for anything composed by the twitty Lord (‘muck’) Andrew Lloyd Webber (the face from the Planet Gonad) is justifiable, as the mere mention of pretty much every halitosis-exhaling, dung-steaming musical he has ever composed can shoot puke up into your mouth. Evita, Cats, Starlight Express, The Phantom of the Opera. Burrrrp. Bleeuugh.

But long before all those ‘mum and dad tourist’ horrors, he created Jesus Christ Superstar, which is entirely brilliant, and one of the most erroneously slandered musical works of all time.

Definately Independantly Intelectual

Even if you’re in a grown up relationship and have no plans to ever look at it, you’ve probably heard of the internet dating site RSVP. Maybe you have friends who are members. Maybe you have friends who were members and were driven to throw themselves off the Eureka tower. Perhaps you’re in there yourself.

The dark overlords who control RSVP from their Blofeld-style death bunker have created a monster. RSVP is really big. Big like space is big. I know because I signed up last year and boy howdy there sure are a lot of people searching for someone- special-in-inverted-commas.

Before I start poking fun at RSVP I should disclose that I have been involved in two rewarding but ultimately not quite right relationships (god how I hate that word) via RSVP, and have had plenty of casual and amusing to and fro email contact with witty and friendly sort-of-penpals. I do think internet personal sites are a really good idea and RSVP is not too expensive should you buy stamps with which to contact those who look like they might be goers. (I’d be cautious though about those smutty adult meet sites. When secret threesomes go wrong, loitering around the less than salubrious Adultmatchmaker may lead to your murder Snowtown style. An embarrassment and a waste of stamps.)

Just Add Meatwater

The table sat in a kind of lobby between the kitchen and lounge. A place to check in , get your mail, read the paper. It was always liberally covered in stuff, and the veneered and phoney wood-grain of the surface (1972-1975) would sink, unseen under the detritus, the stuff of everyone’s day. And other stuff, stuff which no-one owned. Little bark and Styrofoam owls, plastic cups, satee skewers, junk mail.

‘Are these yours?’ ‘What are they?’ ‘Bark owls with styrofoam under them … I’ll throw them out I guess.’

‘Who does this notepad belong to? It’s little, with a few groceries written on it.’ A pause as we all stared for a few seconds without recognition and then binned the item.

The Bill

Thanks for chatting with me Bill

Great to be here.

Q:How’s the art going?

Well I’m still presenting a cogent defensive argument about why I photograph kids. But the art freedom angle just isn’t getting through to some people … still!

Q.That was an interesting point you made about consent, about kids consenting to kick balls and fall over and hurt themselves. That photo shoots are”harmless” in comparison.

Yes well kids can make their own decisions of course.

Q.With parental advice?

Sure the parents are cool They’re kinda arty too.

Q.So this consent thing. 11 year olds consent to smoking don’t they? Some engage in unsavoury sexual contact with boys, bullying, stealing. Should we pat kids on the back for being clever and liberal enough to have crafty fags after school behind the sheds? I think you’re being a little disingenuous here Bill. Why kids? Any particular reason?

Kids are beautiful and smooth and soft and I wanted to convey their innocence by getting them to undress so I could poke cameras at them. Haven’t you heard of the expression art for art’s sake?

Q.Yes but I don’t see art when I look at your photos. In fact I think the stuff’s a bit crap. Perhaps art should make you feel disturbed and call you to engage with disquieting themes, but should people be allowed to express their emotions by hanging up a big canvass with “I hate fucking Jews” painted on it?

Of course. The artist is making a statement about anti-semitism. You have to put these things in context.

Q.Yeah the context thing’s slippery isn’t it?

I still regard myself as being fortunate because the people that I’m in contact with are all supportive.I spent quite a time convincing them not to come forward in 2008.

Q.I imagine you would. Was that all the kids in the snaps, the ones you’re in contact with?

I’d have to check. Almost all. Look at Lolita. Banned. And who doesn’t beieve the book is a classic?

Q.Yes a classic, but it’s a book Bill.. There are no real people in it.

The ability to appear transgressive and radically unreasonable is part of the cloud of unknowing that comes with the territory.

Q.Q.Unknown knowns or unknown unknowns?

Both, knowns and unknowns, and truths of course. Truth is what it’s all about.

Q. The truth to my mind is that you are an artist who courts a contrived controversy, and that you are also an old perv who can get away with both.

Yeah … I can see your point.

Pic Of The Day