This essay was made, variously, on unceded Boon Wurrung, Waddawurrung, Dja Dja Wurrung, and Wurundjeri Country. We extend our respects to the ancestors and Elders of these lands as well as to the custodians of the land and waters across Australia more broadly.
A version of this piece was performed as part of the non/fictionLab Public Forum Series on Thursday, 26 August 2021. Together, we, the writers and makers of this text, bring practices in and across poetry, essay writing, theatre, sonic and visual arts towards the essayesque.
Tina
Feels like the world is drooping, sinking, choking, crying, stuck … I’m not heading into a
lament here. Although I feel like from my safety perch with an audience to witness, I hear
millions of voices wailing. This isn’t some convenient metaphor that writers and art
producers use to convey some sort of empathetic credit. All the cv fodder, clever
vaniculations – not sure if being this cynical is helpful but how do we not criticise our own
milieus.
Language nauseates me. Trying to make the sentences fit, some ppl call it craft. Sometimes I
hear it as classist and neurotypical tongues. I feel stuck in between writing-as-power to
writing-as-market protocol as personal fluffing. We (lets omit pronouns ‘we’ and ‘us’) can
still be affirmative in amongst this planetary hospice. I think creative action with others is a
respite. Artist-as-world rather than self–diagnosed extraordinaire.
Shifting through the narrow Universal as humaversal, imagine there was a universal right to breathe. With a large number of people dying of chronic and severe illness in the world – these are the Mn(p)ne(u)monic songs of the contemporary condition. It feels as if this current planetary epoch of relative wellness (I am thinking about the last 10,000 years) is a memory in the making. What are we (this we being us on the page right now and the reader) writing into-reading into? How can writing twirl itself into more-than-market possibilities of sharing stories (rather than more website dressage – circulating within the vacuum of a pat-on-the-back arts culture) embroiled in living states and dying states – where being undone is inevitable and celebrated. Where the creative act is always-in-action and you are just the participant.
In the beginning (never a beginning – only a middle) there was creativity … and creativity created the Catholic church! (Not many people know this, but Alfred North Whitehead belonged to a collective of heavy metal singers in the 30s who began each rehearsal chanting this very saying).
*wax on bubble wrap