Why the Arts Matter

"We believe that the arts are important because they change lives.
 

Art is one of the key ways we have as a culture of seeing ourselves, and of seeing our relations to the world.  Encounters with art - as school students, in further education, as adults - whether they take place in museums and galleries, theatres, concert halls, village halls, street corners, websites or in any of the many many other places that art has made its own -have the possibility to awaken us to new experiences, pleasures and questions.
 

Art is often talked of in terms of affirmation and celebration and just for the record, we have nothing at all against these things. But we're also proud of the role art has to challenge, to provoke and to question. Those experiences are the ones that stay with us - and for us make the most powerful argument for supporting the arts. A healthy society is one that has doubts and disputes, uncertainties and divisions - how we cope with those things, how we give space to discussing and dealing with them is the mark of our success.
 

Art has a double centre - it asks that we look closely at the world we are living in - that we see it, for what it is, with all of its joys, complexities and all of its problems. At the same time art asks us to dream of another space - to imagine things as otherwise, to step outside the limits of our day to day.
 

Art and tolerance go together.
 

Cuts to the arts are cuts to the imagination."

 
Tim Etchells. September 2010.

Source: Forced Entertainment

Just in case you weren't sure...

This is how it's done.

Thankyou Victoria University

M.B.

I would walk barefoot (in pantyhose!) in the rain, if only you'd reply to my email.

I would eat a non-vegetarian burger.
I'd give away my Leonard Cohen tickets.
I'd shave my legs and paint my nails.
If you'd acknowledge that I still exist.

I'd update my blog at night, in a dress which you've never seen, if I thought it might make a difference.

And I'd still think about you.
.............
And think about you.
...................
And think about you.
.........................
And date other men who looked like you.
If it'd maybe make you notice.

But you don't. And you won't. (And it doesn't and you haven't).

And it's taking every piece of my feeble motivation to stop me from contacting you again.

I didn't think it could get any better

I was wrong.

Today, a Gift

You know those songs you love so much you listen to them over and over and then stop listening to them altogether so as not to wear out the magic?
 
This is one of those songs.




You're welcome.

And there will come a time, you'll see

There is an unfortunate state of being that I find myself in occasionally. It doesn't happen often but when it does it's beautifully bittersweet.

I am experiencing it right now, in this moment, as I sit on my friend's velour pod chair in Sydney, post headshot session, suitcase packed and ready to fly home. It is a feeling of intense and exhilarating motivation made tortuously frustrating by my inability to act.

As an actor, I spend most of my time happily waiting for the phone to ring and wildly dreaming up projects I'd like to produce. For the most part, it's a tolerable existence. Occasionally I'm hit with a stab of cold fear that makes me hate my unemployment and question the choices I've made in life. And then, very rarely, something will happen that will fill me with the most overwhelming passion and impatient enthusiasm to be doing something useful RIGHT NOW that it's almost heart-breaking.
I know I am capable of achieving what I would like to and, in these moments, I become painfully aware of just how much more I could be doing to get to where I want to be. It's wonderfully enlivening to have these bolts of positive hyper-reality, but it terrifies me to consider that the people who really do achieve greatness - who succeed - are those who are able to harness this feeling and channel it into the relentless pursuit of their goals, without the distractions of finances, and fashion, and finding love, and facebook.

So now.

All I need to do.

Is.

- Start marketing the crap out of myself
- Save money
- Stay focused
- Marry an American to get a VISA, and;
- Live happily ever after

So hard?

Pfff.

You..

..and your blue eyes should come round and hang out.
I'll make baked beans on toast and pretend we're married.
Then I'll tell you about all the times I've ever seen you from a distance and you'll be a little freaked out but flattered just the same. And you'll love the way I've put old children's books on the picture rails and you'll be impressed by my Hong Kong DVD collection, but you won't say too much because you're not like that, and anyway, that's why I like you.
Yeah. That's what you and your blue eyes should do. And my blue eyes will be glad to see themselves reflected in such a sad and handsome face as yours.

Meta-Blogging

Don't you hate it when you have an idea for something to write about and you start to write it but then realise it sucks and delete it instead?

Yeah. Me too.

See, I was going to write about how I can't finish anything lately or get any of my great ideas off the ground and that I suspect I may have burnt out my creative abilities too early. I was then going to make a list of all the things I'd done before I'd reached my mid-twenties, like running my own zine distribution business, showing horses, working door at a major nightclub, speaking at the National Young Writers' Festival, being a Pony Club instructor and on the State Pony Club Committee, managing a fast-food shop, creating a Fringe show about brothel workers, disappearing into the rave scene, performing in youth theatre, studying psychology and teaching before being accepted into Drama school, and so on and so on, ad nauseam.

Then I was going to make some reference to all the stuff I'd talked about doing recently (rehearsal groups, play reading nights, collaborative shows, magazine articles, performance events) but never completed, and then I was going to bemoan this fact in light of my previous inexhaustible enthusiasm and try to find a reason for it.


But this all seemed SO FUCKING BORING that I gave up.

Sometimes I Do Things that People Like

My, my, my...

Aren't we angsty.

Reading over the last few entries in my much-neglected blog, this is the impression I am left with. If one were to know only the 'me' that is presented here - self-deprecating, intense, lonely - one could be forgiven for finding me a little tedious.

But I am still here, under all those doleful entries, I promise. Eating popcorn in bed and watching Gossip Girl late into the night, making droll comments on friends' facebook pages on my iPhone, and hiding toy wrestlers in compromising positions around the house to be discovered at unexpected moments by my reluctant housemates.

So all is not as it may, at first read, seem.

....

I'm even buying a kitten.