qed’s blog

i’ve got one reason

Originally uploaded by ***YeLLoW***

Apparently the phrase often attributed to Adlai Stevenson in praise of Eleanor Roosevelt - in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in 1962:
“She would rather light candles than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world.” is based on a chinese proverb

“‘Don’t curse the darkness - light a candle.”

There is a plenty of darkness in the world and too few candles. We seem to have decided that raging wildfires have more appeal. It reminds me of a bush saying about campfires, the bigger the fire, the bigger the fool.

Imagine a night, all the lights went out and all that we did was light a single candle. Would the world stop, would the bad things be less bad? The glow of a candle makes it seem so.

I have just finished viewing the first lot of a contemporary Oz drama series called Love My Way and a couple of observations about the production are probably in order.

I think it is a pretty good effort all round, certainly after my initial reservations I found the series rather compelling, the characters did manage to develop some extra dimensions and the plot lines became just a little more sophisticated. Overall the craft value is quite high, it is well shot on some rather good locations, costume and set work is very consistent and the look and feel of the series suits the material extremely well. My gripes initially with the series were the simplicity of some of the characters and the dialog seemed overly stilted. In a way there is nothing really new about this, a lot of Oz drama tends to simple idiosyncratic stories which seem to rely of the audience filling in the blanks with personal experience.

The other thing I found somewhat annoying early in the series was the rather blatant audience targeting. I’m not 30 something anymore, so it was hard to relate to a lot of the characters. Understandably, given the Foxtel heritage, this series established pretty early on that the only lives that really mattered were the rather comfortably well off foursome who had a variety of popular careers/lives in place. No one was really poor, unwell, middle aged or even particularly ugly. The proximity to the surf was another Sydney’ism that I found tiring, but it became less invasive over the life of the series. The problem is that these rather visually convenient props are not the daily bread and butter for a lot of Australians, but they do continue to feed into the mainstream stereotypes.

But the series improved. The acting became more intense and I found myself rather taken by some of the scenarios. However it was the episode that won an AFI award that really rescued the series for me. The story was extremely well directed, the acting was certainly a cut above anything that had gone before and the series suddenly developed some real depth. Again, it was a comfortable, albeit tragic middle class scenario, but the humanity of the situation rescued what could have been a disaster.

I have to say overall, the series, within its limitations is as good as any that has recently graced the small screen here in Oz. It is good to see Foxtel getting into local drama. Unfortunately it is hard to see this series or any other from this source traveling into more adventurous territory. TV drama tends to like winning and known formulas like Blue Heelers, Neighbours and SeaChange, formulas that revolve around pretty middle of the road type personalities and conventional or stereotypical environments. The more left of centre material winds up in comedy or in film which, whilst a fact of life, is still a mark of how conservative TV producers really are.

The day might come when a series finally makes it to air about a bunch of socially disfunctional human beings who don’t have all the middle class trapping and have to deal with all the problems of living in our world in whatever way they can, but I am not holding my breath for it. Love my Way is not that series.

I have been on a short camping holiday. Nothing extravagant, just a week away living in a tent. I ended up spending the last night on the Deau River which gave me something to reflect on. I have been a visitor to the Araluen valley for close to 40 years, in that time the nature of the windy narrow goat track and the immediate surrounding bush hasn’t changed a lot, what has changed fairly dramatically however is the nature of the country that one travels through to get there and of course the river itself is starting to show the inevitable signs of upstream farming.

Traveling east from Canberra, the bush used to stretch pretty much uniformly from the back of Captains Flat across most of the upper Shoalhaven valley with the exception of the river flats and then close back in as you approached the escarpment. The river itself had a healthy tributary flowing from the western end of the valley which prolonged drought and farming has now reduced to a dry bed of stones. Heading onto Moruya was very much an adventure into a land that time seemed to have forgotten.

The 70’s saw a number of counter culture communes established in the valley, some people imagined eaking out a permaculture existence on the small alluvial flats that occur in the valley. Homes were built, gardens created and in a few instances, communities actually flourished. Of course the area is no stranger to population movements, gold was discovered and mined in the 19th century, and farming continues to wax and wane. Still there is something quite sad about the number of abandoned buildings that litter the roadside.

The south coast of NSW has withstood the human onslaught better than the north, no doubt people find the winter just a little too cold. But it is immensely crowded these days, especially at holiday time. The wilderness sanctuaries that littered the far south are pretty much gone, visit Tuross Heads and there are thousands of houses where once only fishermen camped, before that the aborigines would feast on the coastal bounty. Catch a fish these days and if you are lucky it might be barely bigger than the minimum size. Head further south to Bega and Eden and witness the desolation of the forests harvested first for the wonderful spotted gum, then pulped for paper. Where farmers have built dairy businesses, the emerald green fields look postcard pretty, but the cost to the water quality of the district and the changes to local weather patterns have further marginalised the remaining native habitat. Look for a river that isn’t polluted or overloaded with fertiliser, they are hard to find.

I guess what I find hardest to accept is not so much the destruction of this wonderfully unique part of the world, but the complete lack of shame that we seem to have about it. Some people are even proud of the state of affairs. Wilderness doesn’t come out of a bottle and no amount of money will built it from scratch. Once its gone, it gone for good. The fragile nature of our land has never been fully appreciated by white men, they come and conquer but after a while they find no peace within and no life without so they move on to despoil the next patch. It’s not something I can be proud of.

Every country seems to have one. Getting into the nationalistic spirit is somehow meant to demonstrate your loyalty to the nation state, its values and its goals as well as a time to celebrate the birth of the nation itself. But what are they, who decides and does it really matter? In Oz, as with many colonised parts of the world, the modern nation was founded with complete disregard for the indigenous occupants, a sorry state of affairs which remains an ongoing point of contention. The truth is that the early white settlers invaded a country populated by a race of people without a European heritage, so taking the land was justified on the basis of some theoretical genetic superiority, and backed up by some vastly superior technology.

Saying sorry for this would at least acknowledge some of the history of this country but it isn’t going to do much more. Its a starting point and there is a long journey ahead. Who knows, one day we might actually be able to celebrate a day in unity with our aboriginal brothers.

But few people seem to question the general party atmosphere that prevails on Australia Day. Is this a show of support for the concept of a jingoistic festival or is it a case of being easier to go along with everyone else instead of bucking the trend? Perhaps it’s just the famous aussie penchant for a party, but that concept in itself has certain nationalistic overtones (aussie, aussie aussie…). Should we care? And is this really a state of affairs worth celebrating and identifying with? Will we have national days when the oil runs out and the ice caps melt?

the wiring isn’t quite right today

there is a break somewhere

a disconnect, the signals skipped some vital pathway

the button pushed too hard, the machine is broken

now.

Do we have this gift of self

by accident, and who gave it

to us and why

should we bother to try and understand?

should we bother at all…

While Julie Posetti makes some valid points about commercial radio, journalism and the internet, there is I think some lack of recognition of some of the broader issues in play in her post. Certainly 2GB’s entry into online news is an interesting development however it is mostly significant because of its base (commercial radio) and not from the perspective of what changes on the landscape of internet delivered news, which is not much.

Leaving aside the discussion about the impact on journalists who have to deliver content to a variety of mediums for a moment, the development by 2GB is revealing exactly because of its commercial nature. That commercial interests in Oz have been slow to take up the online challenge is history, and can be largely attributed to the rather conservative and risk adverse nature of big money in this country. This is amply demonstrated in the flight of bright young minds to lucrative jobs elsewhere in the world and similarly in the lack of venture capital available to kickstart the amazing crop of ideas and inventions that evolve in this country. Packer and Co were reasonably early adopters of the online “thing” with their NineMSN site but really they were taking no risks by associating their brand with a proven winner, Microsoft. Other TV players most notably Seven, followed suit, but other than capitalise on new ideas and the evolving nature of information delivery via the internet, they opted for an acquisition based process where new ideas were bought up and added to the stable, to be used or not depending on the wisdom of the day.

Perhaps it is overly critical to suggest that 2GB is merely following the pack, but there is not much new in their platform or their content. Is this part of the cycle of acceptance and mimicry that is amply demonstrated in other commercial media? Any new idea that gains a certain level of market acceptance is immediately copied by all and sundry. News is now a formula that commercial interests understand and use to achieve their own ends. It is push communications where those with the greatest weight or spread achieve saturation of the so-called market, this market is of course the marketplace of ideas and public opinion.

Ultimately the most disappointing thing about the LiveNews development is how it represents the interests of a very few with the object of informing or convincing the many of what is appropriate news and what is the public agenda. The slick purposeful web site may be what is required in the 21st century to carry your message to the people, but sadly the message is still the same as it is with all the other traditional media outlets, conformity and control. I don’t need and definitely don’t want a bunch of websites all offering me vaguely different perspectives on virtually exactly the same information, which is pretty much what the so-called news websites are degenerating into and I suggest the the general public is poorly served by such an arrangement. The web is a vehicle which can liberate everyone in terms of information sources, but one which the likes of 2GB and NineMSN would like to dominate to suit their own commercial ends.

It should also be noted how the new media is leveraging new technologies to actually reduce employment opportunities. While it can be argued that without taking advantage of the multi skilled and multiple platform delivery systems such things as LiveNews of even ABC News online wouldn’t get off the ground, there is a distinct danger that as the new mass media models take over there will be a natural reduction in the workforce. The traditional radio journo already is a complete package from acquisition to publication, online journos are similarly a one man band, armed with suitable video cameras and software. Only in TV are craft skills still delineated. The protection of craft is not holy grail, certainly the explosion of material on YouTube for example acts to somewhat counterbalance the monopolisation of video by traditional TV, but the loss of craft traditions and the rationale behind their existence can, to some extent, dumb down the viewing audience. Such simplification is again not an ideal process in a society trying to come to terms with a very challenging new world order.

This really is a poem

not just a few scrambled

lines of code, not that such is

something I’m good at, its just some random

words I thought might work together.

the topic was something I was obsessed with

the sort of thing that

happens now and then, when your imagination

runs away.

So when the real reasserts itself

so rudely interrupting the flow of thoughts

that colour in the black and white and grey

its not the most welcome guest in that corner of my mind.

Leaving is a better choice, I guess

so many of us do

the ease with which we separate the real

from me and you.

The share market is still going down. Banks, particularly US ones are taking a big hit, mainly because they were stupid enough to think they could get away with lending money to people who really couldn’t afford to pay it back. Lots of money. It’s spilling over on to the rest of the market, the underlying confidence that drives a market up is giving way to realism. My simple peasant view of it all is that suddenly everyone will become much more cautious about money and casual credit or friendly easy going sellers will become dinosaurs. Here in Oz we have already seen the local banks hit their customers for an extra bit of interest, with more of the same likely to follow. Keeping the poor poor so that the rich don’t have to suffer is the name of the game. What a world.

The touring Indian cricket team lost, dramatically the other day. The match was seemingly heading for a draw, which, when I was younger was commonplace in cricket. These days it seems we must have a result, someone must win which of course means someone else loses. Winners and losers, no in between.

The nature of the game is simple enough at its heart, the steady rhythm of batting and bowling to each other interrupted by better displays of both, or in a statistical sense, deviations from the norm, good and bad. There is a third party to officiate who in this case seem to have lost the plot a little, but that has happened before in the game and surely will again. What was disappointing was, as the touring captain put it, that only one side seemed to play in the spirit of the game. The spirit of the game was a game between gentlemen, where they did their best and did it truly and honestly. Winning was a bi-product of good play and good luck, it was how you played that mattered. Sadly I agree that in one pivotal instance the character of the Australian team was found wanting and that they went on to win is a hollow victory that does much to damage the good character of the game.

It might only be a game, but it reflects on us all. Sport is often held up as a way of bringing international goodwill, we have seen how easily it can do the opposite.

Gleefully reports that 50 true blue aussies are in the market for a new $580,000 car, whilst at the same time they are running an article that greenhouse gas emissions are soaring. Nice!

If we ever needed a more graphic display of our future doom, there it is all neatly parceled up by the Age. Fancy new cars are still good for prestige, and the global disaster on our doorstep is a problem for someone else.