Christmas, New Year’s and screaming at French admin
I moved to France mid-2022, but finally gave into living in Paris to properly connect with communities for both work and pleasure. In these first weeks, so much happened everyday. Life can be so poetic, then bam. A number. A bad government website. Something you didn’t know you needed to look up. But also, these shapeless days between Christmas and New Year’s can be so quaint and expectant of nothing. I’m feeling good now, in my new home, looking forward to rhythms, new relationships, and Spring around the corner.
Let's stay in touch (intellectually).
selection of articles, interviews, blogs et al.
Edwina Preston’s Bad Art Mother (2022) is a narrative about motherhood leading to an artist’s withdrawal from the arts industry and vice versa. Veda, an ambivalent housewife and zealous poet in 1960s Melbourne, grants legal guardianship of her young son to a wealthy couple, the Parishes, to allow her more time to write. As implied by the title, this exchange isn’t so simple. She’s a complex figure in a world where sexism and artistic precarity overlap, and motherhood and creative labour remain mutually exclusive. The book is a historical mediation that endures: even if doors look open, gendered expectations still often freeze women out of full participation and recognition in the arts.
“The way I write feels like a stream of consciousness,” says Melbourne-based singer, songwriter and producer Jessie Hill, explaining that she often relies on setting and mood. “It’s like the song already exists and it’s just about channeling it.”
. . . TJAKA are more than ready to celebrate Elevate, the band’s energy-pulsing debut EP, at their upcoming headline tour.
The self-produced EP sees the band – made up of two Fabila brothers, Geoff and Jake, plus their cousin Luke, and close friend Felix Fogarty – put their music into recorded form after years of gigs and festivals.