Rosie's Travels

This is depressing - although I love the headline, which I imagine to be spoken in by Kenneth Williams in a voice of weary ennui. Regent's Park is indeed such a beautiful place to be, the Last Year at Marienbad sums it up perfectly. If you ever have to be somewhere though, don't imagine that you can just walk across it. It is much, much huger than you imagine, even if you check a map first. Especially as the sun is setting and the shadows are lengthening - you feel like Alice Through the Looking Glass, walking faster and faster just to stay in the same place.

This, however, fills me with hope for the future. Up the eco-warriors! One of the more memorable books on construction and development that Dad published was entitled "Who Let Twyford Down?" It was all about the battle against the Tories' road-building through a beautiful rural place which I think was also a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Another of his books which I fondly remember was "Getting Rid Of Graffiti". Perhaps it wasn't the most tactful thing to take him and Mum on a tour of Melbourne's back alleys, enthusing about their amazing and vibrant "street art". Some things we'll never see eye to eye on; but I like to think we respect each other's points of view.

I've never felt so madly busy as the last few days, with the Film Festival leading into the Fringe Festival. This morning I did four interviews in a row!

Here are some of the Film Festival reviews: The Chances of the World Changing was really moving, about a lone crusader for turtles. The Socialist, The Architect and the Twisted Tower should be seen by everyone interested in international collaboration, architecture, and over-budget, divisive projects (hello, London Olympics organisers!) I'd love to see the Turning Torso building for real. And it turns out that my always-modest Dad has actually met Santiago Calatrava - a true brush with fame!

In this week's DB, I was happy with my interview with Die Roten Punkte - I've compared my piece with the interviews they gave other publications, and I think it's more interesting than most. Then again, I would say that, wouldn't I? My Fringe mission is to meet them in person and present Otto with an apple juice with gas.

Their punk thrash CD review is here - it felt a little churlish to advise listeners to see them live instead, but it's honestly what I'd recommend if you can only afford one.

By way of contrast, the Nick Murphy album was dreamy gentleness incarnate. If you like that kind of thing.

The Hannah Gadsby interview had to be edited to within an inch of its life. I had a lot of sympathy with her, as we've both done so many completely random jobs. Let me just say that what I ended up describing as her "lewd parody" of a Pam Eyres poem, she actually recited down the phone to me. And I gasped. And laughed. And thought, "Whoa! We've never met! I can't believe she actually said that!" And then spent 15 minutes wondering how I might include it in the magazine, and if perhaps I just used the first line of the rhyme people would gather the particular word it rhymed with, and if that could also be deemed offensive.

Well, you will not hear that kind of language on this blog. If I feel the need, I will use asterisks to avoid giving offence, as in "Get away from me, you d*** dirty ape!"

The Laura Love interview turned out pretty well, I think. She really took time with her answers, and was completely open about things I hadn't expected. My final question to her, which I didn't have space to include in the piece, was whether there was anything she rarely got asked about which she'd like to share, to which she proudly responded, "I hardly ever get asked if I am gay. I get asked more if I am black than if I am gay. Maybe it's because I'm sort of femmie in a way. Well ... I am."

It's a pretty interesting point - I suppose it's easier as an interviewer to ask about race, which is immediately obvious and also informs the way you're brought up, as opposed to sexual orientation, something unique to that person which they may not feel comfortable "revealing" to an interviewer.

And this was probably the most challenging review I've written so far, of Philip Glass's opera Satyagraha. It took a lot of rewriting to try and interpret the ambiguity of what was going on.

Labels: art, Die Roten Punkte, family, Hannah Gadsby, language, Laura Love, Melbourne, nature, Nick Murphy, Santiago Calatrava, Satyagraha, The Chances of the World Changing, The Socialist