The Things I Like.

Approximately 70.2% of my thoughts and leisure activities revolve around the art and words I consume. 
The primary reason for this?  I'm a socially inept, immensely awkward square.  I possess friends, wonderful friends at that, but I don't go out very often.  And I spend time with my gloriously irreverent immediate family too, but my alone time is filled with the wonderful words, phenomenal music, incredible acting talent and kick-arse ideas of other people. Said time is typically spent hidden away in my lair bedroom, situated in the catacombs of the house. The particularly rad shit in the creativity-loving world (and the people who bring it to fruition) are listed here:

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE MUSICIANS:

• Placebo.  Like Nirvana, Muse and that smattering of Marilyn Manson, this band is a tad out of place amongst all the whimsical indie artists that grace my iTunes library.  But I will tell you without a second thought that they're my favourite band of all time.  I can relate to a handful of their songs, but the vast majority of them are simply beautiful pieces of contemporary storytelling.  Musically they are gritty, emotive and gorgeous, and I've never seen a more worldly, eloquent frontman than Brian Molko in all my life.  Good God, if I could sit down and converse with the well-read bastard...
• Florence + the Machine.  She's such a fearless, prolific, angel-voiced woman, I am unashamed to say I have a bit of a lady-crush on Flo.  Most recent album Ceremonials is a lot more 'epic' sounding than the eclectic feel of her debut, but wonderful nonetheless!
• Sarah Blasko.  Whimsical.  Aussie.  Auto-tune free.  That is all the description this fine Sydney lass needs!
• Gotye.  A newly-appointed favourite, but no less tear-jerkingly talented.  This man is the epitome of the very word 'musician', he plays instruments I have never even heard of, and does so with impeccable finesse.  Did I mention that he has a voice that evokes a profound desire to weep?  I have yet to actually purchase the prior delights in his back catalogue, I'm just a little low on iTunes moolah at present :,(

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE FILMS:

• Juno (2007).  Juno MacGuff is probably my favourite film character of all time.  She's so cynical, and the immensity of the shit she does not give is astronomical.  Plus Diablo Cody is an incredible screenwriter, the words she puts into the characters' mouths are so unendingly witty and at the same time feel very natural.
• The Elephant Man (1980).  John Hurt.  Based on a true story.  Black-and-white film, despite the existence of Technicolour.  These be the ingredients for a kick-arse classic film!  I don't know what possessed me to rent it, why it struck my curiosity, but I know I more or less went into withdrawls after returning it to good ol' Civic Video.  I sobbed multiple times over the course of the film, it stirred rather strong feelings in me regarding the blatant, cruel chauvinism shown by the upper-class clientle of 19th century England.
• Amelie (2001, France).  A lot of people immediately picture the whimsical tale of the selfless, lovable Amelie Poulain when they think of 'world cinema'.  I encourage these people to delve into the films of other cultures too, but still to drink in the playful, colour-rich 122 minutes of joy that is Amelie.

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE MUSICALS (well, a couple, really):

• Rent (Opened 1996).  Good God, where to start?  First and foremost, it's freakin' groundbreaking!  No piece of theatre exists quite like this one.  It's as contemporary as all hell, drawing upon rock, soul and plenty of other unlikely genres, has no daggy factor to speak of, and everyone likes to find out that their new-found favourite piece of theatre/film/music is a modern interpretation of a classic text (it's based on Puccini's opera La Boheme, which I openly know nothing about).
• Phantom of the Opera (Opened 1986).  So this one might have a bit of daggy factor, but not much.  This show calls for rich, faultless vocals, and the current West End cast certainly brings it.  I love the era in which the scene is set, I love the narrative.  Mysterious half-masked musical genius opera ghost? Yes please.

A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE BOOKS:

• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (1949).  Note that it was written prior to the titular year.  Not a recount of the year, people, a freakin' PREDICTION!  Albeit a largely innacurate one, Orwell has created a quietly terrifying world of surveillance, repression, fear and obedience.  He screwed around with the dictionary, formulated a number of monstrously oppressive laws and regulations, and was actually the creator of the Big Brother that most of us know only from a certain Channel 10 reality TV series.  To be a suck-up to the novel and indulge in the made-up language created by Orwell (Newspeak, in which aforementioned screwing with dictionary takes place), this book is doubleplusgood.
• Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult (2008).  Oh, Jodi, how I love you.  You are without hesitation my favourite author, yes you are.  The flame-haired wordsmith has a penchant for legal stories and the touchy topics in our world.  Change of Heart looks at religion, loss, family, revenge and one hell of a difficult choice.  Almost a modern reinterpretation of The Green Mile, which is also amazing in its own right.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (2003).  This one is less of a book and more of a grown-up, quirky adventure.  It's told entirely through the eyes of awkward 15-year-old Christopher who has Apserger's Synrdome, and his distinctive, complicated style of narration makes the book impossible to simply read and then forget about.  It's literary art.

There.  If you've stayed with me up to this point, you're a legend.  You really didn't have to, you know.  I just wanted to share some of the arty-farty things that have moved me over the years, and I'd be stoked to find out what arty-farty things have moved you, also.

xxo

The Underratedness of Australian Content

So I was trawling the aisles of a sprawling music shop, searching for my friend with a healthy stack of CDs in my hand, when I strolled past the 'World Music' section.  It's not my usual haunt- I'm more often than not hovering around the 'Alternative' section, squealing intermittently in an unhinged manner- but I decided to check out what was on offer.  The albums were categorised by country, there were Jamaican, Italian, Irish titles...  And then, to the left-hand side, I saw something that still haunts me to this day.
A category.
In the World.  Music.  Section.
Labelled 'Australia'.
As in, the country in which we live.  I find this rather ridiculous.  Why is it that Australian content is segregated, and why to the 'World Music' section, of all places?  I know I'm being a bit petty here, but I struggle to fathom why our music has its own section.  It's not as if the UK has its own sections for British music.  Music coming out of Australia should just be 'music'.  It's ours, it's not international and it should always be among the rest of the titles according to genre.
Perhaps I'm exaggerating the situation.  I mean, Aussie albums can be found pretty much throughout the other genres.  I'm sure there's some Kylie filed under 'Pop', there's more Aussie material in the 'Alternative/Indie' section than any other, and the 'Heavy Metal' section probably has small doses of Parkway Drive and Dead Letter Circus.  But the 'Australia' category under 'World Music' housed material by the likes of Indigenous artist Gurrumul, John Williamson, and- God forbid- Angus & Julia Stone, that little brother-and-sister duo that hit #1 on the Triple J Hottest 100 2010 with 'Big Jet Plane', a song that was even played regularly on commercial radio.
Okay, so admittedly, it's possible that this dreaded 'Australia' category was a little sparse because the remaining Aussie content was hidden in the rest of the genre sections, but when I say that Aussie music should be among the rest of the titles according to genre, I mean all of it.
It's as simple as this: this is Australia, so why shouldn't Australia's music be regarded as ours?  Well, it's because we're more inclined to pick something from America because of its material and artists having had ridiculous amounts of pervading reinforcement over the decades.  We're too influenced by American material for my liking, and it's a sad fact that the most part of America's music-listeners probably wouldn't touch music or any kind of mainstream entertainment from somewhere different with a ten-foot pole, yet music listeners over here clamour for American content.  America is somewhere different.
I'm not bagging all the American content in existence, because Americans are capable of producing some damn fine art (think Sofia Coppola's films, Jodi Picoult's novels, and the music of Nirvana, Gossip, The White Stripes and Vampire Weekend), but I loathe what their unfortunately large number of heinously atrocious artists have done to the music we consume over here in Oz.  And the films- at our cinemas, more people flock to get tickets to the latest special-effects-dependent Hollywood epic than even think to go and see an Australian film that could be potentially thought-provoking, tear-jerking, uplifting or all of the above.  Our films are often quite profound, and I sense that people are almost repelled by the thought of seeing something with a bit of meaning, and subsequently go for the predictable films with the pretty pictures, exhausted plot-lines and the primarily rubbish actors.  Surely these people are slowly turning into illiterate piles of mush.
And I do recognise that Australia is also capable of spitting out talent-lacking ninnies who call themselves 'artists'.  At present there's a gap-toothed teenager with a rat's tail and the faintest skerrick of what could be a singing voice.  His one single so far is blared on commercial radio at the approximate rate of every third song, which equates to more than too many times over the course of one day.  I'm not going to name this mystery flop, but I'll just say I'm appalled to think that he might be the only notion people from my generation have of Australian music.
On a lighter note, this is one of the many reasons I adore the theatre.  There seems to be no blatant preference for a certain demographic of performers or performance styles.  Most theatre-goers attend an eclectic mix of performances, probably due to the thrill induced by seeing a story unfold in the flesh before one's eyes, regardless of the story being told or the manner in which the performers go about expressing it.
So basically the long and short of it is that I think we should become a teensy bit more acquainted with the wonderful material that comes out of this country.  If it doesn't resonate, then that's fine.  I just think that a lot of us would do well to venture further than Hugh Jackman films when contemplating Aussie content.
I don't care how sweet his abs are.


*I genuinely have nothing against Hugh.  Or his abs.  I'm merely addressing that he's one of the more widely renowned Aussie screen actors, and that others do exist (*cough*MELISSAGEORGE*cough*).