Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Dancing, reading and meeting a soulmate ... I think ...
Susie and I are aching: last night, reinforced by beer from happy hour at the pub over the road, we did two belly dancing classes in a row. It's interesting to experience how different teachers have different dance styles and teach techniques in slightly different ways. We're learning to perform with gold and silver canes, but not in a Fred Astaire way - no, we go through our usual hip-swivelling routines but with additional points made by swinging the cane. For part of it, we have to carefully balance them horizontally on our heads - it's surprising, you can be stepping and rotating from the shoulders down as long as you hold your head still.
Laptop hassles continue: ex-boyfriend kept the CD burner. Have borrowed Pete's floppy disk drive to enable me to save work, but this is not really the best way of transferring articles. I love sitting with a mug of coffee, looking out at the garden for inspiration and typing away, living out my Carrie Bradshaw fantasy, but it's little things like my lack of technical knowhow that let me down and make me seem unprofessional!
And I found out today that DB's wonderful music editor, Nina Bertok, is leaving the magazine. This is a real shame - not only is she a great writer and interviewer, but right from the first time I walked in to the office, she always made me feel like my opinions were worth hearing. She taught me how to fix a mysteriously paused cassette recorder, the two questions you should NEVER ASK in interviews* and sharpened my writing skills immensely. Sometimes you need a person to come along and say "Hey! You're not bad at this!" to give you the confidence to continue.
A weird sideline - when I knew I'd be going "read dating", I posted a question on the BookCrossing forums asking what book people would bring along, and what they thought I should bring. I've been without internet access for four days and during that time speculation on the thread has reached fever pitch. I'm a little startled at what people assumed must have happened to me:
Incidentally, my article on the WORD writing festival (and read dating) is published here - and I'm amazed that my sympathetic editor let me include the last sentence! I've also written about Ethiopian music in this issue - Dereb Desalegn is a traditional musician and Nicky Bomba is a Melbourne percussionist who works with all kinds of bands.
* "So, how did you guys meet?" and "So, where did you get your band name from?" Nina rightly states that these questions will have been asked of groups hundreds of times before by lazy journalists "which you're not, cos you write for us."
Laptop hassles continue: ex-boyfriend kept the CD burner. Have borrowed Pete's floppy disk drive to enable me to save work, but this is not really the best way of transferring articles. I love sitting with a mug of coffee, looking out at the garden for inspiration and typing away, living out my Carrie Bradshaw fantasy, but it's little things like my lack of technical knowhow that let me down and make me seem unprofessional!
And I found out today that DB's wonderful music editor, Nina Bertok, is leaving the magazine. This is a real shame - not only is she a great writer and interviewer, but right from the first time I walked in to the office, she always made me feel like my opinions were worth hearing. She taught me how to fix a mysteriously paused cassette recorder, the two questions you should NEVER ASK in interviews* and sharpened my writing skills immensely. Sometimes you need a person to come along and say "Hey! You're not bad at this!" to give you the confidence to continue.
A weird sideline - when I knew I'd be going "read dating", I posted a question on the BookCrossing forums asking what book people would bring along, and what they thought I should bring. I've been without internet access for four days and during that time speculation on the thread has reached fever pitch. I'm a little startled at what people assumed must have happened to me:
"We've been speculating as to how it went: I think you took your piratical book, and met up with someone with a"Spanish for Beginners" book, and went off for a game of bowls together. A verrry long game of bowls, with no computers nearby for updating curiousBCers as to your adventures...."
Covert reckons "She encountered a snaggle-toothed gentleman carrying a copy of Memoirs of a Buccaneer, by "Half-Arse" Le Golif (said to have lost a buttock to a cannon ball). The blackguard swept her away to his barque, at anchor in the harbor. They're on their way to the Solomon Islands, winds permitting."
"But in case you took the spy novel instead, "She was cornered by a lantern-jawed gentleman in sun-glasses who was carrying a copy of Point Blank, by an-author-who-shall-remain-unnamed. The blackguard swiftly and unobtrusively clamped an anesthetic-soaked handkerchief over her face and bundled her off to his waiting black sedan, claiming (charmingly) to their hostess that she'd "over-indulged a bit". Their whereabouts are still to be determined."
Incidentally, my article on the WORD writing festival (and read dating) is published here - and I'm amazed that my sympathetic editor let me include the last sentence! I've also written about Ethiopian music in this issue - Dereb Desalegn is a traditional musician and Nicky Bomba is a Melbourne percussionist who works with all kinds of bands.
* "So, how did you guys meet?" and "So, where did you get your band name from?" Nina rightly states that these questions will have been asked of groups hundreds of times before by lazy journalists "which you're not, cos you write for us."
Labels: belly dancing, BookCrossing, technical stuff, WORD and read dating, world music, writing
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
If your body were a drum kit ...
The pig is finished, save a few coats of varnish! Jane painted his face and belly in different shades of green to really highlight his chubby features. He's grinning so widely and sharing the joy so much that his eyes are squeezed tight shut. (Yes, somewhere along the line he stopped being It and became Horatio, the cheerful soul.) It actually didn't take very long to paste our cut out fruit and flowers across his torso. Originally we'd planned to use footprints, either ours or smaller ones from Jane's kids, to represent our theme, Walking in this World, and show the journey from the fertile earth to the starry skies of the imagination, but they would have added another complication. So we thought we'd trace a path in flowers. But they looked so gorgeous against the green that we just had to extend them, so whichever angle you view Horatio from on the totem pole, you'll see them somehow.
He also has a cheeky strawberry on his tail, and a flower like a bindi on his forehead, which gives him the look of a Buddhist philosopher. Our final idea was to create "grass" with the green raffia Jane had left over from another project. Once soaked in the same wallpaper paste we'd used for the papier mache, it became really soft and pliable, we could wind it around tracing the flower shapes and linking them all together. I got a bit carried away and round it around the legs as well. It was ... therapeutic. Then I took a step back and wondered whether it was a little too much - but the pretty contrast between the mid-green body and lime-green twine! Horatio: half-pig, half-tortoise, all-joyful. He brings a message of love, peace and environmental awareness.
And the brilliant adaptation of a hanging basket thing ...
I went dancing again last night and feel absolutely shattered. I'm getting more coordinated, but moving your ribcage in a diamond shape while stalking seductively across the floor and doing perfect sinuous snake arms is almost too complicated to coordinate. Rubbing my tummy while patting my head, I can do - and tapping one foot on a drum pedal while beating time with one drumstick I can also do - but trying to add in a different rhythm on a cymbal makes it all fall apart.
I've been seeing some pretty interesting movies at the Film Festival, but am sadly behind in writing them up. In DB this week, this article is about the very inspirational Raw Dance Company.
He also has a cheeky strawberry on his tail, and a flower like a bindi on his forehead, which gives him the look of a Buddhist philosopher. Our final idea was to create "grass" with the green raffia Jane had left over from another project. Once soaked in the same wallpaper paste we'd used for the papier mache, it became really soft and pliable, we could wind it around tracing the flower shapes and linking them all together. I got a bit carried away and round it around the legs as well. It was ... therapeutic. Then I took a step back and wondered whether it was a little too much - but the pretty contrast between the mid-green body and lime-green twine! Horatio: half-pig, half-tortoise, all-joyful. He brings a message of love, peace and environmental awareness.
And the brilliant adaptation of a hanging basket thing ...
I went dancing again last night and feel absolutely shattered. I'm getting more coordinated, but moving your ribcage in a diamond shape while stalking seductively across the floor and doing perfect sinuous snake arms is almost too complicated to coordinate. Rubbing my tummy while patting my head, I can do - and tapping one foot on a drum pedal while beating time with one drumstick I can also do - but trying to add in a different rhythm on a cymbal makes it all fall apart.
I've been seeing some pretty interesting movies at the Film Festival, but am sadly behind in writing them up. In DB this week, this article is about the very inspirational Raw Dance Company.
Labels: belly dancing, creativity, Inspiration, Raw Dance Company
