Spicy Chicken

British indie rock bands are as ubiquitous as fast food chicken outlets. Fresh baked from London, Cajun Dance Party offer a spicy selection of indie in their debut The Colourful Life.

Like any good party, the title track starts us off with a light-hearted take about honey and Wrigley's gum whilst commentating on the ups and downs of modern life. We next taste pop radio's The Next Untouchable leading us into the sublime No Joanna. A stripped down arrangement of synth, strings, and electric overlayed with Daniel Blumberg's cockney about a summer break up.

Daniel challenges biology in Amylase, using it to dry up plaster, rather than break down sugars A light-hearted poke on the exchange of body fluids during love to fix soggy feelings from the past? Perhaps. 

We cruise downhill through The Firework and Buttercups with profound lines such as "is that her smiling or a reflection of his own toothed face?"

Landing finally on the The Hill, The View, & The Lights. A background of syncopated unwired snare warms us to Vicky Freund's sassy lounge-bar defiance of gravity. Blumberg returns us firmly down to earth with full drums juxtaposed with airy ride and a distant Freund. Clearly, the highlight of the album.

And what an album. Well structured, brilliant songs, typical indie rock but then with enough variation to make it somehow not. 

Like fast food chicken with a difference. 

I Need You So Much Closer

You could feel it amongst the Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars scattered through-out Metropolis Fremantle. Seattle's Death Cab for Cutie, a champion for disenchanted emo youth had returned to Australia.

Sold out weeks before the event, excitement pulsed through the disheveled teenage bodies like blood through self-harm wounds.

The entree was Brisbane's indie pop duo An Horse. My complete ignorance was pointed out by my concert guest when she told me the "front-man" actually had breasts. Kate Cooper was in fine form with her raw narrative voice ably supported by partner Damon. Their soulful melodies worked well on the right-brained audience although Kate's stories about her flight across from Brisbane didn't have the same effect.

A resonating guitar vibrato signaled the start of Death Cab's Bixby Canyon Bridge. The emo crowd gasped as Ben Gibbard emerged from the dark sans trademark black plastic rimmed glasses. He looked plump and well nourished, disappointing the black shirts in front of him. Bixby swelled to it's beautiful climax accompanied by a strobe light which would've worked better with the other lights dimmed. 

DCFC then stepped back in time playing perennial favourites The New Year, Styrofoam Plates, Title and Registration, and Soul Meets Body which was met by a well deserved roar.

Pop radio's friend I Will Possess Your Heart was unsurprisingly a bit of a let down but remained a crowd pleaser. A short burst of lovable newbies Grapevine Fires and Your New Twin Sized Bed failed to have their desired effect. Perhaps fatigue had set in after a literally exhausting set or these songs had yet to engulf Generation Y. 

I was hoping for a surprise ending but predictably Transatlanticism rounded out the night. It was superb though. Always special watching Jason McGerr playing nothing but continuous quarter notes on ride cymbal and snare. His increase in intensity towards the end of the song epitomised sublime simplicity.

All in all, I'd have to say their first concert was argubly better. More surprise, more spontaniety. They seemed too professional, too polished. The joy of going to a live gig is experiencing things you couldn't possibly imagine. Quoted by Ben Gibbard in Drive Well, Sleep Carefully. 

But do come back Death Cab. I'll have my Chuck Taylors ready.

The Meaning of Life

Richard Hammond:
“James, we are grown men playing conkers with caravans.”

James May:
“That’s ok, it’s better than working in a bank.”

- Top Gear Season 5 Episode 4

Naughty Naughty Boy

“If heaven is such a wonderful place, then how is getting crucified such a big fucking sacrifice?”

- Igby Goes Down (2002)

Writing about religion feels like an animal walking through a game park. There are people waiting to blow your head off, skin it, and mount in on a wall.

No better reason to do it then.

Faith. How much evidence does one need before it becomes truth? If enough people believe, do you doubt your own beliefs because you are the minority?

Peter Joseph’s 2007 documentary Zeitgiest raises some interesting points about Christianity. It shows many similarities with ancient Egyptian theology, a practice based on respect and adoration for the sun.

The sun, which rises every morning to overcome darkness, bring warmth, and nourish crops. That descends in the northern sky during the winter equinox on December 22th, falls under the Southern Cross constellation, stops moving for three days then rises again on December 25th where it is aligned with Sirius - the star from the east, and the Three Kings - the three brightest stars of Orion’s Belt.

The documentary states Egyptians worshipped the sun’s movements so much they personified them into the god Horus. Born December 25th accompanied by three kings and an eastern star, Horus brought light and warmth to the world, conquered darkness, died for three days, and then rose again.

Three thousand years later, Christianity translated the movements of the sun into their own deity – Jesus Christ.

It gives examples of other ancient gods which had similar lives to Jesus Christ. Attis and Dinoysus from Greece, Krishna from India, Mithra from Persia. All had virgin births on December 25th accompanied by three kings and a star from the east, performed miracles during their life, died for three days, and were resurrected.

These figures were simply mythical personifications of the sun.

Now, Zeitgeist is not the world’s greatest documentary but what if it’s true? What if Christianity is nothing more than an adaptation on the ancient Egyptians’ adoration for the sun?

Take two rats in a cage. A box is placed in the cage with a hole in it. One rat crawls into the box and receives an electric shock. The other rat sees this and stays away. The first rat is then replaced with a new one. The old rat warns the new one to stay away from the box because he saw his friend get shocked. Then the old rat is removed and replaced with another new rat. Now there are two rats in the cage that are staying away from the box, based on a handed-down story.

Neither of them saw the electric shock, yet they stay away.

That’s the whole point about faith. We take things as truth even when we don’t know why. We follow obediently without question or rationality, as if motivated by a mystical force.

Maybe the real motivation behind religion can be found back on earth.

Proponents of positive thinking say believing in good things becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What better way to promote positive thinking than believing a higher power is protecting and guiding you? A power that is all-knowing and all-powerful. To have that on ones side must surely be a confidence booster.

Maybe that’s why people choose to be religious. To gain strength and confidence to get through the day. But people can’t admit that. Our highly intelligent minds need two thousand year old handed-down stories to justify things that are scientifically flawed.

It’s ok. Faith is inherently blind, it needs no justification. The more people try to justify religion, the more ridiculous it sounds.

Just believe.

Or don’t.

Plug In Baby

One of the great things about The OC was the ease of the characters’ interactions. Seth popped across to Ryan’s pool house, Summer came over and knocked on Seth’s bedroom door, all and sundry would get past Summer’s evil “step-monster” to enter her pillowed abode.

The degree of social contact was enviable, people would make the effort to spend time with each other. Writer Josh Schwartz took the piss out of “Seth-Ryan” time, but it showed people’s desire for connection and the effort required once established.

To avoid losing credibility, The OC will no longer be mentioned.

It does raise a serious point though. Are people in the real world making the same effort to establish and maintain social connections?

Richard Watson, author of Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years, discussed this recently using “cuddle parties,” gatherings where complete strangers provided each other with non-sexual intimacy. Fast food on demand? Try physical comfort and reassurance on demand.

Sounds ridiculous? How about this. Businessmen in Japan, overworked and stretched to the limit are resorting to intravenous cures for “three-thirty-itis”. Infusions of vitamins and minerals are given by health boutiques to boost energy and provide sustenance for the working day.

Not that ridiculous considering a certain AFL football team decided the best way to treat dehydration was to infuse saline intravenously during the half-time break.

It’s all just too easy.

And this is Richard Watson’s point. Time is money. Efficiency is everything. If we spend less time and money interacting with people or improving our health then we’ve won haven’t we? We’re a more efficient society.

Why bother going over to your friend’s house for a chat, when you can sit in your bedroom and talk to seven friends simultaneously on instant messaging? That’s far more efficient.

Better still, why go to the effort of talking when you can Super-Poke your two hundred “friends” on Facebook to show them how much you care. Social interaction en masse, the pinnacle of efficiency.

We’re better connected than before. High speed broadband, wide mobile phone networks, instant messaging. It’s all bullshit. Where’s the quality in our connections? Human adaptability is an admirable trait, but sometimes works against us. If we don’t need to make the effort, we won’t. We’re too smart for our own good.

However, there’s another human trait that’s as important.

Physical presence provides a degree of comfort and well-being that no amount of intravenous vitamins could compete with. It stimulates on many levels, and is unquantifiable in its ability to invigorate and renew.

So, next time you’re sitting alone waiting to log on to WiiConnect, just stop and think.

Is the internet your only connection that needs upgrading?

Happy Little Vegemites

It’s one of our most basic emotions, yet so fleeting and inaccessible for many. Twenty billion dollars a year are spent on pharmaceutical solutions to treat our chronic lack of serotonin.

Surely there must be a better way.

The problem is, modern man is chronically unhappy. Due to accesibility, he wants too much, expects too much, and wants it all now. If he can get a Happy Meal with five food groups and a toy in three minutes without leaving his car, shouldn’t he expect the same in other areas of his life?

So he tries, he constantly searches for things to make him happy. Successful career, braggable hobbies, supermodel partner, two and a half kids. The perfect life. Surely this will bring everlasting happiness?

Well, there are a few fundamental problems.

Firstly, these sources are external. Our influence is inherently limited, we can only do so much to change things before we are at the whim of other people’s emotions and the fickle hand of fate. You can trim the sails as best you can, but the wind will always direct the boat.

Secondly, all these sources are fleeting and transient. The impermanence of life is reflected in its components. Jobs don’t last, supermodel partner gets a better offer, holidays come to an end. Add unpredictability to impermanence, and the only thing you can guarantee is that there is no guarantee.

Lastly, transient sources of happiness are similar to recreational drugs. The more you take, the lesser the effect. The human body becomes densensitised and tolerant. So we need more. The bigger car, rapid career progression, holidays in more expensive hotels. It’s a unrelenting search for increasing levels of happiness.

So, what’s the better way? Well, take the monk. Wearing a bedsheet, head shaven, under a tree contemplating why that cloud looks like an apricot and the other looks like a squashed pomegranate. He’s not even wearing underwear and he’s the happiest man on earth. How is this possible?

He simply chooses to be happy.

Instead of running around looking for sources of happiness, he increases his basal level of happiness. He achieves chronic happiness independant of external stimuli. It then doesn’t matter what happens, because he is already happy.

On a physiological level, choosing to be internally happy has similar effects to meditation which functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown to increase levels of serotonin in the brain.

Well that’s very cute but we can’t all sit around all day wondering why clouds resemble fruit. It’s shit boring.

And that’s the beauty of it. Because we are running on internal happiness, we no longer need to do things to make us happy. We do them for the best reason of all - because we want to.

We stop becoming hostages of ourselves, demanding we find happiness from everything. We are free to do whatever we want, knowing the outcome is irrelevant. Failure ceases to be a demon of fear. It becomes an undesired outcome that gives up experience, whilst not taking our happiness.

This allows us to enjoy the ride, appreciating things for what they are, not for what we want to get out of them. We don’t need to rush around desperately searching for happiness.

Because we already have it.

All is Full of Love

"I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is."

- Forest Gump (1994)

Wrong. I don’t think anyone really knows what love really is. We know the feelings it provokes, but it largely remains a mysterious force shrouded in chocolates and Hallmark cards.

Maybe love is when you really like someone, think about them all the time and have an inner desire to spend every moment with them. The mere thought of them sends warm shivers up your spine. Whenever they contact you, you shriek in amazement. And you constantly long for anything that reminds you of them.

Well, no. That's limerance. A superficial feeling based on intense romantic desire for another person. A desire that demands reciprocation to be validated otherwise the limerant person experiences immense distress and feelings of abandonment.

Maybe love is when you choose to care about someone, motivated by an inexplicable feeling of concern. To commitedly cater for their every need and want. Psychologist Robert Sternberg's 1986 Triangular Theory of Love yields seven different types of love. Each has a combination of passion, intimacy, and commitment. Only four have commitment as a component, so maybe it isn't that crucial after all?

And is the love negated if the commitment is obligated? It could be argued that the love between parent and child is born out of biological obligation. That a morally sound parent will always care for a child not necessarily out of love, but out of moral duty. Put simply, it’s the right thing to do. Is this love different to the one that two complete strangers create by their own volition?

Maybe love happens when two people simply agree to put up with each other. When they understand each others imperfections and embrace them. When they agree to unconditionally commit to each other exclusively, selflessly providing reliant support that eases them through life’s challenges. When they are held together by an unexplicable attraction, one that our highly intellectual minds are unable to fathom.

“Every asshole says they love somebody, it means nothing. What you feel only matters to you. It’s what you do to the people you say you love, that’s what matters.”

- The Last Kiss (2006)

Enough already. Hand me a bucket.

One for the Road

Bimbo Deluxe, Fitzroy

One of the reasons Perthians make the eastern migration to Melbourne is its vibrant bar culture. One which echoes dingy European cities with bad weather, and allows the disgruntled twenty-something to trawl dark streets for hours on end making discoveries about themselves, the world, and members of the opposite sex.

This right of passage is in jeopardy, with Victorian premier John Brumby introducing a 2am lockout restricting entry to licenced inner city venues after this time. Patrons inside would be denied re-entry if they left, effectively locking them in.

The motivation for these changes are Victorian Police crime statistics such as a 17.5% increase in violent assault over the past twelve months in the inner city.

But is this a really a solution? When implemented in June, it is bound to further suffocate Melbourne's bar industry.

Melbourne City Council has temporarily frozen new licenses from opening beyond 1am, with heavy penalties to existing venues for this privilege. It is a dark sentiment amongst bar industry stalwarts such as Gin Palace owner Vernon Chalker who feels that only the strongest will be able to survive in such a competitive and restrictive environment.

It will discourage the smaller operators from setting up unique niche places, the kind of places Melbourne is synonymous with. 

This is a great tragedy, and reeks of the typical reactionary approach of government to act on the symptoms rather than the root of the problem.

If the disinhibitory effects of alcohol result in interpersonal violence, what does that say about society as a whole? Maybe we are becoming increasingly violent people and the solution is to be found away from the darkened laneways.

There is increasing evidence that introducing conflict resolution programs in high schools has a significant effect on reducing violent youth. Reducing Violence in the High School (Stader/Johnson 1999) presented an eight year conflict mediation program in Missouri which used peer mediators to counsel violent students on how to deal with conflict in a non-violent way. The results were impressive. Suspensions due to violence dropped from an average of 3.6 per month to 1.2. 

More importantly, not a single student who had been through the program was involved in another violent act.

By intervening early in an adolescent's developmental period, they were able to create lasting mechanisms that reduced future episodes of interpersonal violence.

Early intervention is taken further with Hill Walker's First Steps program developed at the Univeristy of Oregon. This is a kindergarten based program which uses screening to identify children at risk. Walker acknowledges the contextual nature of a child's development. Factors such as socioeconomic background, family support, and physical health are all taken into account. A team of childhood behavioural experts including psychologists, social workers, and teachers then work with both child and family to prevent and treat anti-social behaviour. 

This proactive approach has an excellent and lasting effect. A case study which followed program children for five years showed significant improvements in observational ratings such as aggression, adaptation, and social interaction.

Isn't this a better solution to interpersonal violence than destroying an urban sub-culture? 

Conflict resolution and early intervention programs should be mandatory in Australian high schools. Equipping high risk youth with the ability to deal with issues in a non violent way has the potential to yield a better adjusted and less violent society.

Such that when we are disinhibited by alcohol, we do not feel the need to unleash our anger onto other people. 

That's certainly worth drinking to.

Intestinal Faith

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and

I took the one less travelled by

And that has made all the difference"

Robert Frost

I tried that once. Got terribly lost and needed to be rescued by two goat herders and their dog.

Sorry Frosty, not going to agree with you on that one.

There must be a better way to find the right path than rebelliously choosing the unpopular option which leaves you being equally unpopular and lost.

Go with gut, I reckon.

Humans have an innane sixth sense, an untapped resource sitting inside left ignored because we perceive it to be less tangible than our other senses. It's like a crouching tiger waiting to be unleashed.

Many people have been intrigued with the most useful element of our sixth sense, precognition. The first documented theory on precognition was by an Irish guy called William Dunne in his 1927 book An Experiment with Time. He found that he was able to have awareness of future events during his dreams, so much so that he documented them as written evidence of his ability to predict the future.

Now Dunne wasn't some loony leprachaun who downed too many Guinesses. He was a highly educated aeronautical engineer and war hero so this revelation was a huge surprise, especially to himself. Being rational, Dunne wanted to see if others shared his ability so he got his friends and family to also record their dreams. They would document their dreams as soon as they woke in their hyponopompic phase, the transition between sleep and awake.

The results were remarkable. 

His Irish counterparts were able to record dreams that in time became self-fulfilling prophecies. 

Dunne's hypothesis is that the past, present, and future are occuring simultaneously. What we do in the present is dynamically altering the future, however human consciousness can only see linearly. It only perceives what is happening now. When we dream, we lose our human consciousness such that the continuum of time is opened up and we see a combination of the past, present, and future.

We can only capture this during the transition from sleep to waking consciousness. When we are still aware of our subconscious state but are conscious enough to record our subconscious perceptions. It is during this time that we are most able to gain insights into ourselves and perhaps see into the future.

While having this precognition is all very good, it remains useless if we don't act on it. The modern human is a highly intelligent being so when choosing the right path, we feel compelled to make intelligent choices and find justifications for what we do. If this goes against what we feel through precognition, we ignore it because sensible humans don't believe in the intangible feelings experienced through precognition.

This is where we go wrong. We have this great ability inside us to see more than our current state. However, we ignore and suppress until it loses its perceptual strength. Such a waste. 

We don't need to run all our decisions through sub-committees in our minds. Our precognitive perception is already inbuilt to guide us along the way. It sees into the future for us, telling us where we will be and how we should get there.

All we need to do is listen.

Arty Farty

Contemporary art is widely marginalised for being non-sensical, pointless, and appreciated by similarly marginalised fuddy-duddys who are yearning to escape from a prolonged adolesence.

I beg to differ.

The Hatched 08 National Graduate Show is running at the Perth Institute of Contemporary Art. It displays work from current graduates of art schools across the country. One of the most diverse exhibitions showing a cross section of contemporary art in Australia.

Rose Skinner's The Bubblegum Factory (above) is a delicious arrangement of confectionary and toys delivering a multi-sensual experience of sight, sound, smell, and taste. It can be taken as an awe-inspiring composition or one can use the stimulated senses to evoke childhood memories. See the work in the context of modern life and it suggests subtle messages about childhood materialism. You can take whatever you want from it. 

Except of course, the raspberries and sour worms scattered on the floor.

Passing Sally Stewart's Lotus, you come across a clever work about endangered Australian animals. The artist travelled to various outback places where certain species were last seen. He then placed an orange picket synonymous with a road marker and photographed the location. These photographs are arranged as part of his work, and then mirrored in the arrangement of the orange pickets. Two neon signs glow, one saying "extinct" and the other "endangered." However the latter is flashing, suggesting that there is more that can be done now, before the transition to "extinct."

Standing in front of the life size pop art of Suited Rituals by Nick Neilsen is a confronting experience. The sounds of his accompanying video are surprisingly familiar to any office worker. The contrast between his pop art and the video is surreal. He has used two modalities to great effect, portraying the inner feelings of real life suited individuals in the form of a monochromal almost exploding pop art character trying to burst out of the screen. Not an uncommon sentiment.

One of the more challenging works is Exercise #38. Joel Casemore has used his own journey with depression to depict moments of clarity in a series of two plate colour aquatints. It's hard to find the connection between what you see and how the artist must've felt. He talks about the work helping him to simplify, rediscover opportunity, and find a sense of security. You get the impression that Exercise #38 has far more significance to it's creator than any observer could ever appreciate.

But that's the beauty of this kind of art. It has different meanings for different people, with no limitations, and complete freedom of expression, both for the artist and the viewer.

Hatched 08 runs until 25 May.

 

Love You Long Time

"A mighty pain to love it is

and tis a pain that pain to miss

But of all pains, the greatest pain

It is to love, but love in vain."

Abraham Cowley "Anacreontiques"

Unrequited love. Poetry makes it out to be one of the most romantic notions of modern culture.

What a load of shit. 

It's about romantic as smearing your testicles in peanut butter and running into a dog pound.

There tends to be an attraction inequality in every relationship. One partner always loves the other just that little bit more. And everyone wants to be the receiver. Which means there has to be the giver or "the bitch."

"The bitch" is gender independent. There have been many male partners who are "the bitch". 

On first glance, this attraction inequality seems unfair and detrimental especially to the unlucky partner who fulfills the role of "the bitch." It may seem that an inequity of emotion will only lead to one partner being taken advantage of, resulting in rebellion and the demise of the relationship.

But this underestimates the power of inequality.

Inequality allows the relationship to grow. It expands it by it's ability to pull "the bitch" towards the receiving partner. The receiver sets the bar which "the bitch" strives to conform to. Both partners then become closer and the relationship expands.

But how unfair, and how one sided that the bitch is always having to compromise and sacrifice for their partner?

The beauty is, it's a dynamic process where the role of "the bitch" and the receiver is constantly changing. So each person, at different times, will use their individual strengths to nuture and develop both the other partner and the relationship as a whole.

Of course, static attraction inequality also exists. This is where one person is always "the bitch" and gazes at their partner with puppy dog eyes. Whether limerance or love, it usually ends in one way. "The bitch" compromises themselves regularly in order to keep the relationship alive whilst the reciever becomes complacent, secure in the knowledge that "the bitch" will be limerantly attached no matter what.

So while unrequited love can be a positive thing, it more commonly acts as a relationship filter. It ends relationships that are destined for failure due to a unchangeable attraction inequality.

If you are sick of being "the bitch", rest assured that with six and a half billion people on earth, there are high odds of finding someone who loves you more than you do in return. 

And if you haven't found them yet, there's only one thing to do.

Keep looking.

Goodbye Cruel World

At the risk of being discovered and banned from China forever, I feel compelled to make an observation about this so called "emerging first world country." 

First of all, it's not a first world country. It's government quotes achievements such as economic development, urbanism, and the Beijing Olympic Games as signs of it's transition from a lesser developed nation into a rival to the great United States of America.

Really, who are they kidding?

There is a fundamental change that needs to happen and that is a cultural one. China is about as far from democracy as we are from the moon. The government exerts an iron grip over its people, controlling aspects of public life which we in the real "first world" take for granted. 

30,000 internet police patrol the superhighway every day, shutting down sites that express any from of free opinion which differs from the official line. Free speech is considered a threat to internal security and is dealt with in the harshest way possible. Corruption is intertwined in everyday society, a society where class and social standing can mean the difference between a free life and repression.

These are not traits of a first world nation.

At least the hypocrisy of their translated titles can bring some levity. People's Liberation Army? The only thing it's liberating from it's people is their freedom. 

Walk around Tiananmen Square in Beijing and you see streets with names such as Peace and Freedom. The irony is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. Where was the peace and freedom during student protests in 1989?

The Chinese haven't failed to disappointment with the current Beijing Olympic torch relay. Those athletic Chinese men in light blue tracksuits are seductively titled "The Beijing Olympics Sacred Flame Protection Unit." They sound like a high school cheerleading group when in actual fact they are paramilitary soldiers from the People's Armed Police. Highly trained in riot control and maintaining internal security.

Don't be fooled by the blue tracksuit.

And this is part of the problem. China has been fooling it's own people for many years now. People who due to limited education and government suppression take the government's word as gospel.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world isn't going to fall the same way.

Classically Trained

Have you been to Perth Railway Station lately? For quite a while now, the Public Transport Authority have been filling in the gaps between the female robot with a long deceased Austrian. Forget transit officers, Mozart is the new weapon in combatting station violence.

Apparently, ten minutes of Mozart is equivalent to a standard dose of Prozac so maybe it is a useful therapy for both hoody wearing youth and depressed office workers.

More here