INTRANSIT 2021
MAY
I was high above the ground in a metal thing called a plane watching the sunset and wearing a mask some weeks ago. A lovely view like that happens almost every day at that altitude I believe. We all love a big view. This image was taken during our return trip from Perth. Now we are back in Broome, back in the studio, back in the tropics, back in the studio, back in the reddish pindan dirt and back in some kind of cosy/constricting routine. We are back in Broometime. “Broometime” is a well used term here. A delightful word that refers to the pace of activity here in Broome. Looked at in a negative way it can mean something along the lines of - “I can’t be bothered to do that as it is too hot and humid” Sort of the equivalent of the Spanish “manana” (tommorrow) or it may be more to the tune of. “Just relax it will be done, there is no hurry to do anything at all.” The mellow tropical zen attitude as a response to all is likeable and I do use the term but I hope that I am not regarded as a lazy outback character who avoids chores that need to be done. There is always stuff to do but how to prioritise is the question and must I really wash and paint this shed wall today. Maybe tomorrow or next week or next year.
One thing I did do recently was to go fishing and mud crabbing with friend in a small boat up the mangrove and mosquito infested crab creek. We did get a couple of fish and as well as mud crabs so the expedition was successful. Watching many Snub-fin dolphins cruising about Roebuck bay was also fabulous.
One thing I did do recently was to go fishing and mud crabbing with friend in a small boat up the mangrove and mosquito infested crab creek. We did get a couple of fish and as well as mud crabs so the expedition was successful. Watching many Snub-fin dolphins cruising about Roebuck bay was also fabulous.
Besides the rare fishing excursion I have been in the studio fishing for ideas and once I have located them I spend many hours realising, visualising, reinventing and wrangling with the materials to complete each work. It is a never ending adventure this art hunting.
Soon there will be studio show so I must clean up the space for possible visitors. The studio will turn into a part time gallery for a few days. Interestingly the other week I was sent an image of an exhibition I held at John Batten Gallery in Hong Kong back in 2007. The show was large and included over a dozen 150cm x 150 cm mixed media works. Titled - FINDING YOURSELF LOST that show was 14 years ago when things were different. It was so long ago that the image is in black and white (ha ha ha) but one thing has stayed the same as I am still finding myself while I am definitely still lost in this funny thing call existence.
Soon there will be studio show so I must clean up the space for possible visitors. The studio will turn into a part time gallery for a few days. Interestingly the other week I was sent an image of an exhibition I held at John Batten Gallery in Hong Kong back in 2007. The show was large and included over a dozen 150cm x 150 cm mixed media works. Titled - FINDING YOURSELF LOST that show was 14 years ago when things were different. It was so long ago that the image is in black and white (ha ha ha) but one thing has stayed the same as I am still finding myself while I am definitely still lost in this funny thing call existence.
APRIL
The occasional electrical storm has been grand to watch above my stinking hot studio as such weather brought a small but measurable amount of rain. The sky above can also be far better than watching TV. On the nightly news there seems to be plenty of chaos across the world which makes the telly rather painful to view. We are lucky here in this bit of the planet for many reasons this I know but I also feel that it is extremely surprising there is not more chaos given the population of humans across the planet. Many of those humans are certainly very strange and some very dangerous. The technical term for this population of odd-balls is “batshitcrazy” or as my mother would describe them “silly sausages.” and they sadly grow in numbers each day.
Speaking of silly sausages, one of the first things I managed to do in 2021 was to consume a little too much Russian vodka and subsequently fall off my bicycle on the way home from a local party. I really must concentrate a bit more regarding what to do with the body and how to move it around successfully. Luckily there was minimal damage to body, bicycle and brain so there will be further peddling in the future. The big question is …how far will I be able to peddle to this year? Will Covid be contained and travel as I knew it in the good old days resume? Will I travel interstate? Across international waters or will I stay local for the next year or two and watch my passport go mouldy? Nobody knows.
Speaking of silly sausages, one of the first things I managed to do in 2021 was to consume a little too much Russian vodka and subsequently fall off my bicycle on the way home from a local party. I really must concentrate a bit more regarding what to do with the body and how to move it around successfully. Luckily there was minimal damage to body, bicycle and brain so there will be further peddling in the future. The big question is …how far will I be able to peddle to this year? Will Covid be contained and travel as I knew it in the good old days resume? Will I travel interstate? Across international waters or will I stay local for the next year or two and watch my passport go mouldy? Nobody knows.
Carolina and I have not moved far afield the past year so it is about time we at least got out of Broome for a break. It is not easy being static in body and ultra nomadic in the mind but I have actually survived such an internal battle fairly easily. The mind continues to imagine packing the bags, booking hotels, chasing buses and meeting new people while the body just grunts a mellow mantra - “you-are-here-chill-out.”
Anyway we head south to cooler climes. Time for some dry heat as opposed to the gooey, lumpy tropical humidity I swim through in the studio. This troppo climate has morphed my brain into what feels like a thick, sour smoothy beverage made from lazy nerve cells with crushed organic neuron nuts on top. A concoction that utterly inhibits cerebral and physical movement. It really has been a naughty brain recently as I am sure only about six or seven neurons are actually working properly. The other 90 billion seem to have melted into mentioned goo or gone on holidays. Lucky them.
Holidays! Yes it is time to head to the city of Perth. A city with a population of two million people and a rather easy going climate. A likeable place for many reasons. Isolated in terms of geography but that seems to be a good thing these days. We have a few people to see and a few places to visit. The Art gallery of West Australia, the incredible Kerry Stokes art collection, the very new and impressive Perth Museum / Boola Bardip which is looking good both inside and outside and the charming Fremantle art centre. I managed to catch up with some old Antarctic mates which was loads of fun. We even had a lovely Swan river trip which involved wine tasting and subsequently scenic fuzziness.
Anyway we head south to cooler climes. Time for some dry heat as opposed to the gooey, lumpy tropical humidity I swim through in the studio. This troppo climate has morphed my brain into what feels like a thick, sour smoothy beverage made from lazy nerve cells with crushed organic neuron nuts on top. A concoction that utterly inhibits cerebral and physical movement. It really has been a naughty brain recently as I am sure only about six or seven neurons are actually working properly. The other 90 billion seem to have melted into mentioned goo or gone on holidays. Lucky them.
Holidays! Yes it is time to head to the city of Perth. A city with a population of two million people and a rather easy going climate. A likeable place for many reasons. Isolated in terms of geography but that seems to be a good thing these days. We have a few people to see and a few places to visit. The Art gallery of West Australia, the incredible Kerry Stokes art collection, the very new and impressive Perth Museum / Boola Bardip which is looking good both inside and outside and the charming Fremantle art centre. I managed to catch up with some old Antarctic mates which was loads of fun. We even had a lovely Swan river trip which involved wine tasting and subsequently scenic fuzziness.
We also managed to drive south of Perth to visit Augusta, Pemberton, Denmark, (the one not in Scandinavia) and Albany. All very likeable towns and I must say I do love the WA bush. Especially the fabulous Xanthorrhoea or Grass tree. The fine beaches and the Kauri Forests were not too bad either. Unfortunately we had limited time to see an expanse of land the size of Spain. West Australia is actually larger in size than all of Western Europe so there is plenty to see.
Back to Broome-time and with luck the humidity will decrease as the Dry season is on its way. Back to the studio for a bit more art creation.
JANUARY
Hello 2021. So far I have noticed that it is wet. It is a new year. It is hot. It is sticky. It is wild. It is all a bit fuzzy. It is unfair and it continues. I am sure 2021 will do many things and I know we have a LONG WAY to go. We shall see…or not.
I have below a short essay for anyone in the Northern hemisphere who is wrapt up in some form of winter reading mode as it is much safer in bed with words than anywhere outside or this essay is for those in Southern summer climes who are wallowing about on beaches and totally bored with reading fashion magazines, hard-core comix, pulp fiction, the bible, COVID reports or department store catalogues. Heres a lump of thoughts on travel. Something I used to do quite a lot of and on a large scale…
TRAVELESS
We all travel even when we do not. Even without a passport anyone can have a massive, surprising or shocking experience perhaps while just trotting down to the local shop to buy a loaf of bread or one can have an utterly boring routine time while right in the middle of the adventure of a lifetime far from your homeland. Many things can happen anywhere and at anytime as we move from one latitude to another or from one room to another. Travel normally refers to long distance movement but how long is long? And how far is faraway? Permit me to broaden the term ‘travel’ to incorporate all distances; long, short and in-between. From macro and micro and back again with or without luggage.
Xavier De Maistre (1763 -1852) author of the novel - A journey around my room. played with this fact while locked in a hotel room in Italy. He travelled physically from his bed to the window and from the window to his desk as well as wandering a great deal in his mind. Then he put it all down on paper. Shamanic characters across the centuries who admittedly consumed hallucinogenic potions often went on unusual trips without much movement at all. Travel can be big or small and it is never, ever going away.
Travel is about mobility not just the quantity of distance but the quality as well. Our legs simply want to be used and if legs are not operational then the brain can easily visualise elsewhere. Imagination involves the frantic movement of electro-chemical impulses within our brain which is far less in distance than crossing an expanse of water the size of an ocean but they are both distances that require mobility and navigation. As the saying goes - “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – Lao Tzu. That single step is indeed a journey in itself.
Does anything not move? Movement is normal, not stability. Nothing stays still for too long. It may even be totally impossible to stay ‘dead still’ even when we are dead. Death is travel of sorts. Our cells, gases and DNA all disperse when we die so death is actually the movement of particles and chemicals that used to be us. We cannot feel or see that movement clearly and to consider the thought of mortality is a little tricky I must admit as the concept in itself is rather ‘moving.’
Some humans want to move, some need to move and some in dire situations that require immediate relocation must move fast. So we move, wander, hunt, track, explore, flee, chase, skip or crawl. We love to move and move we do as is very clear throughout the history of our species. From hunter gatherer societies to exploration mission to others planets. The Apollo 13 mission went to the dark side of the moon in 1968 which is about 400,171 km away from Earth to the potential colonising of Mars (54.6 Million kms away) to the unmanned spacecraft Voyager 1 which is now about 21.2 billion km away from home, humankind is in a perpetual state of wanderlust. We are not shy at all of being nomadic it seems.
The concept of stability or staying at home is surely pleasing and comforting in terms of familiarity which certainly creates security but as John A. Shedd declared, “A ship in a harbour is safe, but it is not what ships are built for.” Some ships are capable of longer voyages than others and some have no interest at all in docking at any port but all ships are seaworthy to a degree. Matsuo Basho the famous Haiku poet wrote - “The journey itself is my home.” Basho was fond of trekking across Japan to feed his curiosity as well as his poems while other folk have zero desire to stroll from their village or the port where they were born in order to poke around elsewhere.
Some people do have broken paddles and they cannot move easily and some fear to move too many steps in any direction at all for a plethora of real and/or unreal reasons. (Earthquakes, loneliness, wars, sea-monsters, disease, overpopulation, foreigners eat babies.) Others are not willing to take risks as they have ample food, water, family and shelter to keep them happy and all those basics are close by in a smaller radius. The desire to move further away is just not there and why should anyone if they are in a good position?
Personally I like a good long-haul peregrination. Being “on the road” is normal for me. Strangely after almost forty years of active travel this year (2020) will be the first year since 1981 that I have not used a passport. (Excluding 1985 when I was entrenched in university study in Tasmania and also in 1987 when I spent the year traveling around an enormous island called Australia.)
The fluid adventures and unpredictable situations encountered over those years have all been manageable, stimulating and the process almost automatic as I do possess this terminal, rabid wanderlust. I have been very lucky not to fall into too many horrid predicaments. Usually nothing deters me from walking far from my bed, relocating via some form of transport to a new town or buying a plane ticket to another continent. I reiterate all those forms of movement are indeed just different forms of travel. Of course sometimes peripheral events do stop travel plans just like the current COVID-19 pandemic but even now I am mobile on my old bicycle peddling off to see other parts of the world in the local neighbourhood.
Am I trying to convince myself that I am still wandering and not home-bound? Perhaps, but it does seem that we are all non-stop travellers from any perspective we look at it. Certainly some ramble more than others. Further or longer, shorter, deeper, by accident or virtually; we all still travel in some manner. We are never still. Even if we hold our breath in one place and pretend to be a stone statue the Earth spins us around and around at a wild velocity. We just cannot feel that movement. Or maybe we do unconsciously. Perhaps that wild planetary velocity is responsible for the constant vibrations within us that generate our impulse for an un-still life.
S.E. Broome. W.A. 2021.