Moth Music

It's the 2009 ABC Young Performers Award Grand Final. The stage is brilliant with a crimson and bone backdrop and crimson and brain cell wings. The audience is sitting on cerise seats, with their feet resting on polished wooden boards.

The first young performer Bo An Lu begins his piece, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto Number One. Two white moths fly into the stage space, and hover above the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra.

Beethoven!! whispers Moth One. No silly, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto. Weeee! isn't it lovely! cries Moth Two, sailing up into a square of concentrated light. Oowaah! It's HOT! And he sails down again twisting and fluttering his wings on a draft of dazzling notes. Moth One floats gently upwards and swings on an invisible rope, then drops in a breathtaking dive to somewhere behind the first cello.

Now here comes performer number two, David Papp, to play the Oboe Concerto by Martinu. Oooh! Exhilarating! shouts Moth One, dancing madly back and forth before rising with polka-like movements over the heads of the winds. Don't get too excited, the lights are really hot now, warns Moth Two, before being carried away himself in an ecstasy of soulful bucolic bliss. Watch out!!! Too late! Moth One disappears inside the bright square of light and immediately divebombs to the floor landing ignominiously at the feet of the conductor. Followed, moments later, by Moth Two. Sadly there are no moths dancing to the glittering second movement of Martinu's Oboe Concerto.

Finally Ji Won Kim takes the stage. She begins to play the Sibelius Violin Concerto. The two moths ressurrect themselves, and rise sinuously towards the lights but stop short of being sizzled. They dance to the beautiful and heartbreaking notes. They do not hear the deeper oceanic notes played by the ASO. They do not listen to the sounds of polar bears thumping and lumbering from side to side in their own clumsy dance. No, they are in love with the wild heavenly notes emanating from the violin of Ji Won Kim. They think that she will win.

Now it is judging time. The ASO play Mendelssohn's Overture to A Midsummer Nights Dream. The moths are nowhere to be seen. They are somewhere behind the curtain, listening to the conference of the adjudicators.

This is a very difficult decision, says one of the adjudicators. It is, says another. But I am going for Ji Won Kim. I find moths to be an invaluable guide.

Taser!!

Pliny, may I ask a favour?

Certainly.

Will you write my blog today? I feel a little tired.

Tired! That is no......why yes, I will, with the greatest of pleasure.

O thanks, Pliny. What will you blog on?

Let me think... ah yes. I shall blog on the topic of laziness.

No that isn't fair. Think of something else.

Well then, I shall have a look in the newspaper. Here is a story of a most excellent woman. I shall blog about her.

Who is it?

She is Isobel Redmond, the Leader of the State Opposition. This woman has volunteered to have a Taser gun fired at her person, in order to demonstrate that the effects are not harmful. A brave woman indeed. Worthy to be counted as a Roman. Most admirable. Most admirable.

Oh Isobel Redmond. I like her too. But I think that sounds a bit nutty. What do the police think?

They have declined her offer, for some unfathomable reason.

Well, what if she died?

Then she would have still have proved something useful.

The Posse of Ants

When they had finally squashed all the ants the two editors sat back and looked at one another in dismay. Le Bon David picked up the envelope gingerly and peered inside.

Oh look, he said, here's a letter. Let's see what the old genius has to say for himself.

He pulled it out, unfolded it and began to read:


GENTLEMEN! Are you sweating? Are you alarmed? Surprised? Yes, the Divine Dali has more to say than can be conveyed by a posse of ANTS!

So! You let that old reprobate Freud loose on me in your magazine! Do you think I care? No! A Genius does not care what a spiteful old ex-dream interpreter has to say of him. I lie ? Dali does not lie! Dali is ABOVE LYING! And below-lying.

However, a SLUR has been cast upon me, and I shall use it.

I have a passion for bicycles. That much of what the old bumbler said is true. Therefore I demand that you give me equal space in your magazine to write my own column. It will illuminate the BICYCLE, the sweaty drippings, the impotent strivings and the flowing salivations that result when an ARTIST EXTRAORDINAIRE contemplates the bicycle.
If you will not, you may look forward to more Surrealistic outpourings from Daliesque envelopes containing less interpretable and squashable organisms than ANTS!

Now Gentlemen, I know you are going to LOVE,

the scribblings of

The Divine Dali xxx


Le Bon David looked up. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? he said to the VeloDrone.

We have opened up a can of worms, said the VeloDrone, nodding gravely. Goodbye order, goodbye reason, goodbye philosophy, unless we can come up with a plan.

Feedback

The VeloDrone: What's the feedback from the Freud story ? Did they like it?

Le Bon David: They loved it! We've got dozens of requests for Freud to analyse their dreams. I can't understand it. All that ridiculous symbolism. All those obvious interpretations.

The VeloDrone: I know! I laughed fit to pee myself when I read what he said to Dali. You are going on a journey indeed. No wonder Dali stormed out.

Le Bon David: Yes, very funny, but look at this.

The VeloDrone: What is it?

Le Bon David: It's an envelope, and it's addressed to us, see: To the Decomposing Editors of Velosophy. I suppose that means us.

The VeloDrone: Decomposing? What can it mean? Who is it from? Open it!

Le Bon David: Wait! Look at the back. It must be from Dali. See, he's drawn a little caricature of his face, the crazy moustache, the goggling eyes.

The VeloDrone: And he's written his name there as well. Dali, eh? I thought he'd gone on a journey.

Le Bon David: Well, he must have returned.

The VeloDrone: Open it.

Le Bon David: (opening it) Arghh! Eeeuw! Ants! Millions of ants coming out. Quick. Squash 'em!

The VeloDrone: Whack!Whack! Take that, you ants! Whack! Whack! Take that, and that! Whack! Whack!

Le Bon David: Do you get the feeling that the divine Dali is angry?

The VeloDrone: Yes. Oh cripes.

joes kiosk

i'm sitting outside joes kiosk at henley sheltered from the wind and sun

eating a banana icecream in a cone because pat's just bought me one

it's a double-decker and i think about the ethics of throwing half of it away

because i really only want a little one today


the ferry doesn't go from lucky bay now did you know

says pat licking her unintentionally smaller boysenberry cone

that means when sue drives over she will have a lot further to go

but she's like you it doesnt bother her she just goes with the flow


i am going with the flow i'm looking out to the horizon at the light

shining glinting thickly teeming silver fishes all moving to the right

they're undulating on the surface of the water and they're bright

and silvergold and squirming and their sides are nearly touching and they might

Carrots

May I ask, enquired Pliny the Elder, how one hears, or imagines one hears, carrots in a piece of music?

You mean in the Walton at the Lunch Hour Concert? I asked.

Yes. I can understand that you may have heard traffic, chipmunks, bees, and even the motion of curtains, but I fail to understand how one imagines one is hearing something that neither moves nor makes a recognisable sound.

In other words you're asking me what I think carrots sound like?

I am.

Well, you have to understand the process. Do you remember how I became confused because they changed the order of the program?

Yes.

This meant that I never really got into the second, genuine Walton. I was full of chagrin, and self-reproach. The repetition of the chipmunk and bee sounds held an interest for me only insofar as they proved that in music you can hear almost anything you want.

And so you thought of carrots?

No, no, not like that. My mind drifted off. And since I was planning to go to the Central Market at half past three, it drifted towards a shopping list of the things that I might buy there. Not oranges, I thought. Perhaps a pineapple. Not bok choy. Maybe some carrots.

Aha! Carrots at last!

Yes, and I was thinking of the two limp carrots in the fridge at home, and that I might not need a whole bag of carrots but could probably do with about four large ones which I could buy from the Seven Sisters. Four carrots. Then my attention returned to the music. Don't ask me why.

I expect it was guilt.

Maybe it was. And I thought, is it possible that as I'm thinking of carrots I might hear carrots in the music? It had certainly been possible for me to hear other things which hadn't been there.

The reverse process, said Pliny sagely. This time you are thinking of something beforehand and then searching for it within the music.

That's right.

And did you find it?

Yes.

So, the question is, what did it sound like?

It sounded like four orange notes, rounded, but pointy at the end.

Remarkable, said Pliny.

Freud on Dali's Bicycle

What a great pleasure it is for me to be invited by my good friends Le Bon David and the VeloDrone to write a series of articles for Velosophy! Today my subject is The Bicycle and Salvador Dali.

Now, the internet abounds in photographs of Dali's bicycles. These bicycles lean with buckled wheels against picturesque walls, as amusing references to Dali's famous melting clocks. Dali's melting clocks were intended by him to represent the irrelevance of time.

Dali came to see me often in the early days, although this fact is nowhere on the public record. Indeed, why should it be? The relationship between a man and his psychoanalyst is a private affair.

My work on dreams had influenced him profoundly. It was the basis for the movement known as Surrealism, of which he was a leading light. He told me he dreamed of ants, of lions' heads, of fish hooks and of half-opened drawers.

My friend, I told him, these things represent your fears. The ants represent death, the lion's head represents both sexual desire and your fear of the aggression of your father. The fish hook represents family ties, which you are unable to escape, while the half-opened drawer represents female sexuality, of which you are afraid.

Then I shall paint these things until I conquer all my fears, he said grandly.

That is all very well, my friend, but what you really need is a hobby, I told him. Have you ever thought about getting a bicycle?

From that moment Dali became obsessed with bicycles. He painted them incessantly. He painted men in bowler hats on bicycles, men with umbrellas on bicycles, lobsters on bicycles. He bought himself a bicycle. He kept it in his studio, although he never rode it.

He began to dream of bicycles. He asked me what these dreams might signify.

You are going on a journey, I told him.

We had a great debate about the matter. He thought my interpretation was banal. We argued for hours quite heatedly. Eventually I had to tell him that his time was up.

Time! he shouted. Time is irrelevant!

You will not think so when you receive my bill, I said.

He stormed out.

It was immediately after this I believe he dreamed up the story about seeing my bicycle, the red hotwater bottle and the snail, which has plagued me ever since.