Up until a point, today was a really good day. Got up early, lounged about reading the paper, chatted with mum before she headed off to whatever Uniting Church conference had brought her down to town, blogged and generally felt good (partially as a result of my second - especially by my standards - early night in a row).
After watching a documentary about the Krays, which I'd picked up second hand from Smack-Converters, I trammed into the city to the tail end of a planning day for Voiceworks magazine, a fantastic resource and publication for writers under 25. Given that I worked there for five years, the editors (outgoing and incoming) apparently thought that my words of wisdom might be valuable in planning the next 12 months of the magazine's future: I hope they were right!
Next it was on to Madame Brussels, for the relaxed yet decadent 'hen's afternoon' for LadyCracker, who I first met while I was still a member of the programming committee for the Melbourne Queer Film Festival. She's getting married! Not very queer but still very cool. ;-)
Champagne, poets, bloggers (including Elaine, Sublime-ation and MelbourneGirl) queer film festival friends; a delightful convergance of worlds. Lovely. Oh yes, and the obligatory penis-straws, penis-lollies and other cock accoutremonts which are to be found at every hen's night in the world, apparently.
Thence to a tram, to Northcote Town Hall (via Walker Street, to collect an old friend Hugh, who I've known since 1987) for the opening night, piss-take of opening nights, which was the launch of the Darebin Music Feast.
Poets, comedians, musicians, Fringe folk, and more friends, as well as a very clever send-up of all the standard, banal elements of a standard opening ceremony - complete with a (cardboard) flying tram, a choir, a Northcote anthem, and a sumersaulting mayor! Hurrah!
Next, onto another tram (sadly without wings), full of drunk La Trobe students and also bearing a gallerist/curator, as I headed back into the city to Spleen, for the going-away party for another ex-Express Media/Voiceworks person, Lisa. She's off to Paris for a year - not that I'm jealous...
It was here that things went a little sour - perhaps because I was over-tired and hadn't eaten since lunch, but one of Lisa's guests was just a bit too Sydney for my tastes: she came across as supercilious, snobbish and elitist. That's harsh of me I know, but fuck she got on my nerves.
Here for the The Age Melbourne Writers' Festival, she struck me as really patronising towards people who weren't 'real' writers by her media-whore (i.e. writing for everything from the SMH to Dolly - and sorry if I have standards...) definition, as exposed in a discussion I had with her about the National Young Writers' Festival. Apparently most of the people who attend the festival 'aren't real writers'. Perhaps because they write for creative reasons, rather than to pay the rent by churning out banal bullshit?
Anyway, it was a sour note to (almost) finish the night. I have one more party to go to, at midnight, for Ray from Control HQ who's about to head off to London. Hopefully I'll be in a better mood by the time I get to his party!
8 comments:
No wonder you don't drink you have too much to do!
funny. i would have said the real writers are the ones who write for creative reasons. NOT the ones who write for money. but that's just me.
nice to meet you yesterday.
[goes immediately to check out above commenter and his noice arse.]
Lovely to meet you too, MelbourneGirl, and yeah, we're in agreement on that point, I think.
(And as an aside, I don't think that's actually DUP's arse, but it is nice, isn't it?!)
That woman sounds like a nightmare. Must-eliminate-pretentious-Sydney-twats.
Anyway, it was was lovely to talk to you at the hen's - you made me laugh, and boy did I need it.
My pleasure, Rowena - and lovely to meet you too! More and more the blogsphere and the real world are aligning - this is definitely a Good Thing(tm).
No its not my ass, my new pic is me but blogger doesnt want to change it!
Was fun on Sat, wish you could've stayed longer.
Must've been something in the air in the late afternoon, we had a rather unfortunate encounter after you left too.
I would've preferred to have taken on the pretentious writer-y person though. Can't stand arts snobs.
Must I bring up Bukowski for the second time in so many weeks? He brought poetry, that most elite of art forms, to the people, for the people. Stop me before I start ranting...
An unfortunate encounter, sublime-ation? Not a drunk neanderthal bogan, I hope?
As to Bukowski - I refuse to discuss him while sober!
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