February 26th, 2010
While loving the antlers and hunter-gatherer look of the pictures in my previous post, ‘Styled by a Sianach’, I felt a little sorry for the girls modelling the clothes. Willow-the-wisp bodies and unhappy, hungry faces, as if there hadn’t been enough woolly mammoth caught that season or they’d been living on moss and the occasional tadpole.
I had to address the scrawn factor with pictures of the glorious, womanly American model Crystal Renn. She reminds me of why it is I, like many other women, like vintage clothes. Before sportswear became everyday wear, breasts and bellies, thighs and rumps were factored into design. Tailoring and structure accentuated and flattered women’s natural body shape– okay, so they wore corsets, – but curves were accentuated not eliminated. Yes, I know it’s a generalisation, but this is a blog and I get to make generalisations here. All I’m saying is women didn’t eat moss, and were not expected to either.
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February 25th, 2010
I fell for these images straightaway. Not the clothes so much, but the feral styling with echoes of Ice Age shamanism. I’d love a little fur cap with antlers – it could hang in the cupboard next to my bird dress.
Clothes by Topshop,
Styled by Katie Grand
Animal masks & hats by Emma Cook
Wild eyebrows by Hannah Murray,
Hair by Paul Hanlon
all images via Style.com
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February 23rd, 2010
You write a book, get it published and sure as eggs be eggs somebody’s going to ask, ‘how did you do that?’ or ‘why did you do that?’ and a dozen other variations on these two themes.
So, because I’ve been asked a few times, I’m going to blog about it and I’m going to go right back to the start of the venture and explain, not why, but how.
I might address ‘why’ at a later date – it’s more complicated.
I didn’t know if I could write fiction, or more importantly, if I’d enjoy writing fiction. I had a couple of writer friends, but I didn’t want to bug them - they seemed to have their hands full with other people pestering them to read their latest poem on sexual abuse or their PhD on nasal flora or their first shy attempts at autobiography. But one night, after a few drinks, I blurted out my tentative interest in maybe exploring fiction writing possibly. The suggestion of a creative writing course was raised in the course of the evening.
I sniffed around this suggestion, tapped it on the table and tossed it away. I have had enough tertiary education and I am done with it. Besides, four years of part time study – in areas I was not interested in, like business writing or technical writing - didn’t seem worthwhile. I’d know, surely, after four years doing it my own way, if I could write or not. And I wanted the challenge of jumping in the deep end and finding out if I could float - nothing to lose by having a go.
I decided on commercial genre fiction because I wanted to be paid. Twenty years in the visual arts world convinced me that a conventional reward – money – had some really attractive aspects. But which genre? I don’t read science fiction or fantasy, I’m not interested in autopsies or violent crime, so that left women’s commercial fiction or romance/chick lit. I’ve always been interested in women’s lives and how they make a place for themselves in a male dominated society, so women’s fiction seemed like a natural area to explore.
I knew category fiction was not the area for me. Single title books felt like a better fit. The next stage involved going up to my local library, finding books similar to what I wanted to write, and staggering home with bags of them. I sat on my bed and worked my way through these piles, getting to page two or ten and dropping the book on the ‘not for me’ pile. Those that I finished I read again to see why I liked them and what I could learn.
One day I heard an acquaintance tell a story of her attempts at speed dating. She told the story at great length and detail and although she was at her wits end in the mating business, I knew the anecdote was brilliant. I rushed home, sat down, created a fresh new document and pictured in my mind the retelling of that anecdote at an all women’s book club. I made up character names and dialogue and retold the story with comments and urgings from the other women. I wrote about a thousand words and then I stopped.
My next move was to zip over to Amazon and browse their ‘how to write’ titles. I picked two that appeared to be the best sellers and when they arrived in the mail I read them both thoroughly. I then re read them, completed the exercises and I went back to my manuscript – which had grown from a thousand words to about twenty - and tried to critique what I’d written using their advice.
The story moved in other directions as my characters became more solid, but I let this happen, knowing I had to be open to the process and follow the emotional and plot logic of the story. I realised that because I was laughing and snorting away that I was indeed enjoying the make believe of writing. I was having fun – like a puppet master, I could have my characters say and do whatever I wanted. I was smitten. Yes, I decided, I do enjoy this and I want to do it.
I revised and edited, again and again and again. I had three trusted friends read the manuscript and after absorbing their feedback I sent it off to a manuscript development service that subsequently returned it with some very good advice. I re edited and gave it a friend who is also a trained proofreader, and once I felt it was ready to go, I sent it off to a large and reputable agency and, to my surprise, one of their agents asked to read the full manuscript.
She subsequently rejected it, and reading it today I can see why. But for a first effort to be rewarded with a full read on a first query gave me the incentive to keep going. I knew I had something right, but I had to develop it further.
I wrote another manuscript, and then found some online writing sites, posted an excerpt from this manuscript and received such positive feedback my confidence was boosted. I’d read somewhere that it takes at least six manuscripts to really develop and have a chance at publication, so I wrote yet another manuscript – my third in two years - and submitted it to the Hachette Australia/ Queensland Writers Centre Development Program in 2088. A few months later I was offered a contract with Hachette Australia.
There are eight million stories in Writer City – this has been one of them.
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February 21st, 2010
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February 15th, 2010
Most haute couture fashion is beyond the finances of ordinary mortals but it doesn’t hurt to look and marvel and admire. My mother and I used to play a game where we’d look through various fashion magazines and choose the dress we liked the best. This quest was punctuated with ‘oo, I don’t like that,’ and ‘Oh, now that’s elegant,’ or ‘what a get up.’ We made different choices, as one would expect, but it was through this particularly female pursuit – teapot and biscuits handy at all times – that I became familiar with the names of designers in the fashion world.
I followed the careers and collections of a few, as you would a particularly interesting artist or author, but only through photographs I must mournfully add. And the death this week of one whose designs often intrigued – Alexander McQueen – really saddens me. In my imaginary salon I would have bought many of his clothes, particularly his bird dresses. Suicide leaves a feeling of despair in its wake and perhaps more so when such a bruised and beautiful creative soul gives up and leaves this world.
The muse has left along narrow
And winding street,
And with large drops of dew
Were sprinkled her feet.
For long did I ask of her
To wait for winter with me,
But she said, “The grave is here,
How can you breathe, you see?”
I wanted to give her a dove
That is whiter than all the rest
But the bird herself flew above
After my graceful guest.
Looking at her I was silent,
I loved her alone
And like gates into her country
In the sky stood the dawn.
Anna Akhmatova
images via style.com
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February 13th, 2010
Eggplant, melanzane or aubergine – all the same and all beloved by me. If I were allowed two vegetables only for the next year, one of them would be eggplant. It’s a vegetable favoured all throughout the Mediterranean and particularly in Italy. There’s a huge variety, within Italian regions and between, in the preparation and cooking of the eggplant, but the region I am most familiar with is Campania and Naples.
Non Italians sometimes make the mistake of assuming the cooking of the south of Italy IS Italian cooking. It’s not; it is the cuisine the poor Italian migrants took with them when they fled the poverty of the south. Countries like Australia and the US adopted pasta and pizza and now turn out abominations under the label ‘Italian.’ That’s because these foods, particularly pizza, are cheap to make and lend themselves to the modern notion of ‘fast food’. You rarely see eggplant in these pizza/pasta establishments because people go, ‘Eww, what’s that?’ and won’t eat it, preferring vast amounts of cheese and processed ‘meat’.
Eggplant doesn’t yield its beautiful nature quickly, it’s not fast, you need to take time with it. However, if you move up one level from the pasta/pizza cuisine you might find the Eggplant Parmigiana, but you are more likely to find it’s easier cousin the ubiquitous (in Australian pubs, at least), Schnitzel Parma-jarma. This consists of a deep fried piece of beef schnitzel, plonked on a plate and covered in tomato sauce and cheese and whacked under the griller, served with chips and a sad piece of iceberg lettuce. And BIG, half the plate usually.
Again, this is a dish favoured by endlessly hungry young males, although I saw it on a menu at the Parndana Hotel on Kangaroo Island, listed next to their special – the one kilo steak. Yes, a one kilo steak. The publican told me nobody had ever managed to finish one of these, even during shearing season when blokes around twenty, who’d been shearing since six am and had worked up a mighty hunger, came in, sank a few ales, got a bit cocky and ordered this orgy of meat.
But back to the original Eggplant Parmigiana. Its name does not come from the variety of cheese used, as Mary Taylor Simetti explains – ‘Sicilians have a word, palmigiana, that means ‘shutter’ and that stems from the resemblance between the overlapping louvres of a shutter.’* The overlapping eggplant slices resemble the shutters and hence the name. She says Sicilians cannot produce ‘L’ and ‘palmigiana’ became ‘parmigiana’. I love this sort of useless information.
I was taught to make Eggplant Parmigiana by an elderly Campanian woman and the way she prepared it literally took all day – eliminating it from the fast food realm. Her method is a classic example of the cuisine of poverty – take a few cheap, plentiful ingredients and work them hard. She knew about hard work - after raising three of her five children in a one-room house and doing her washing at midnight in a stream at the bottom of the hill. This was a woman who never took her washing machine for granted.
I’ve been around other Italian women, some of that generation, some younger, who butcher pigs and use everything – days of unbelievably hard yakka, grow and bottle their own tomatoes – not as quaint and colourful as the movies would have us believe, and rise before dawn to strip an orchard of olives to take to the local olive press. I’ve been at an olive pick and after half an hour in the sun and wind, wanted to say, ‘Why don’t we just go down to the shop and buy the oil?’ I’d wanted a quaint, rustic experience among the olive trees - a basket on my hip, bare feet, swishing red skirt and smouldering looks exchanged beneath trees ripe with fruit. You know, just like in the movies. But the best thing about picking olives is stopping.
To make the Eggplant Parmigiana, my Campanian friend sliced the eggplant into centimetre thick slices, sprinkled them with salt and left them while the bitter juices were drawn out. Then she’d dry them, place them on racks in the sun for most of the day until a little bit leathery. The next step was to dredge them in egg and flour and fry until golden, making sure there was no excess oil left on the slices. Then she’d layer them alternately with regato cheese and her incomparable tomato and basil sauce, bake in the oven for half an hour then serve. The next day small squares would be served cold as part of an antipasti. It’s a huge effort, one that few people have the time for anymore, but it’s an effort that results, eaten with salad, good bread and wine, in a memorable meal – if you have any energy left to eat.
Pomp and Sustenance: Twenty-Five Centuries of Sicilian Food, Mary Taylor Simetti, Ecco Press, 1989
For more of an insight into life in Southern Italy until relatively recently, I recommend these books – particularly Ann Cornelisen’s two books for her moving accounts of the women’s lives
Christ Stopped at Eboli, Carlo Levi
Torregreca; Life Death and Miracles in a Southern Italian Village, Ann Cornelisen
Women of the Shadows; Wives and Mothers of Southern Italy, Ann Cornelisen
Old Calabria, Norman Douglas
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February 12th, 2010
I live here in a village house without
All that racket horses and carts stir up
And you wonder how that could ever be.
Wherever the mind dwells apart is itself
A distant place. Picking chrysanthemums
At my east fence, I see South Mountain
far off: air lovely at dusk, birds in flight
returning home. All this means something,
something absolute: whenever I start
to explain it, I forget words altogether
T’ao ch’ien
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February 11th, 2010
Strumpet and Pink, Garden of Earthly Delights panties
Photo by Chantal Thomas
Photo by Javier Vallhonrat for Vogue UK
Photo by Chantal Thomas
Photo by Chantal Thomas
Photo by Javier Vallhonrat
Strumpet and Pink, swan's tale panties
Photo by Dirk Messner
Photo by Polly Wreford
Photo by Giorgio Z Gatti
all images via Frou Frou Fashionista, luxury lingerie blog (see links page)
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February 10th, 2010
The first years of an undergraduate course in archaeology are as dry as a salt lake in a drought. This is how they filter the students. Those who understand the serious disciplines involved, and those whose heads are full of lost civilizations, discovery of.
Anthropology is the same. Years ago I joined the happy throng of first years in the Anthropology lecture hall at university, pen poised and eyes bright. But dreams of Margaret Mead type investigations of some isolated human group rapidly dissipated as the first half of the year was devoted to the study of traditional Aboriginal kinship systems. These systems are as complex as their material culture is simple, and for one such as I – firmly wedged into the unrealistic/daydream slot – quite a struggle to come to grips with.
I like the big picture, details trip me up and I increasingly found myself alienated from both subjects. As students it was driven home to us that archaeology is the study of material culture and any speculations on what the remains of the material culture may signify should be left to those who’d studied and worked for years in the field and were able to formulate educated, cautious theories as to what had happened and why. For example, it is impossible to truly know the inner world of a Neolithic farmer from the fossilised remains of wheat seeds.
You are courting ridicule in the archaeological world if you do publish these speculations. Archaeology has aligned itself, in the last hundred years or so, with science and the objective observation model, (there’s a lot more to it than that, but you can read a book about it if you like). I have a lot of respect for that model – it weans out the charlatans who tell people the Pyramids were built by aliens or that Jesus really wore the Shroud of Turin. I like to use my imagination however, and rightly or wrongly, became wildly impatient with the pure, objective fact approach.
I came across the above picture the other day. It mesmerised me and I tried to find out as much as I could about it. The picture shows the skeletons of two individuals buried together around 5000 years ago near Verona at the base of the Italian Alps. They have been identified as adolescent by their teeth. These are the facts. Any other clue as to their identity, or the reason they were buried in this unusual arrangement has not been found. There are only the dry bones. Of course we can’t say who they were, but it doesn’t take much imagination, (by some of us less disciplined types), to see a very moving image of human love and tenderness.
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