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Artists Who Stare

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  Artists who Stare into their Creative Self Vignette There is a reckoning in the soul of every artist. It begins as a tremor, a flicker of light, almost imperceptible, yet relentless in hunger. That precise moment when the artist is alone, silhouetted against the radiance of an internal inferno and stares unflinchingly into their creative self. They dwell in the space between inspiration and doubt, bathed in the glow of possibilities and tormented by the fear of mediocrity. To exceed the ordinary, the artist knows, is both a blessing and a curse. Each touch, each word, each act of creation becomes a paradox: an offering to eternity but rooted in the fleeting frailty of the present. What if they fail? What if the light within, so achingly bright, burns them to ash rather than illuminating their path? The act of creation is no longer a choice; it has become a necessity. There is no turning back. Like a lone figure before the furnace of their own making, the artist surrenders to the ...

Melbourne to Darwin November 2019




Melbourne to Darwin


The Shopping Centre

Not knowing whether to be scared or to be content
Make your judgment
Halo or devil 

We describe our persona of creepy
In our religious manifestations
In our children books
In our stories 
In our movies

Our hell on earth
Permitting the dead to guide our fear and vision 



Peter went shopping
In our hallowed place of transaction
To think and talk about probability
To keep the gate open for approved believers
To revoke the others who continue to seek knowledge

Our gatekeeper of the significant fell into a moment
And became lost in thought 
He let his guard down 
There on a humble symbol of power 
Laid down to rest
Control

A situation began to unfold
No-one saw who claimed it

Everyone knows Key 6 was extensively employed to establish Terra Australis Incognita
To support those of divine grace to access the fruits of this new world
To impose those bereaved from grace and imposed to a fate of generational poverty




The moment in which Peter forgot about key 6 
Was not on an average day

The preaching son was lost in his moment
As he chanted God loves you all, a Pontianak stole control
Such is the path of a Saint


Peter's Key inspected St James Cathedral
Melbourne's first cathedral
Of Colonial Georgian aesthetic

Too small for purpose
An insufficient statement for ambitious  Marvellous Melbourne
Saved by key pioneer families



By Royal Charter

We chose not to see 
Our exclusive right
To self fiction 
To mask the horror inflicted

We simply turned a blind eye
And inflicted extermination, genocide, and sickness

Infliction
From begging to missionaries and domestic servants
To an inter-generational underclass


The Settlers Reigned Down Under

With their sheep
And their beef
And their homes
And their wants
And their names
And their beliefs
And their justice

Until  trade and commerce was established
And controls were legislated


Melbourne Town needs a Bishop
1847 A Cathedral City

The establishment of a bishopric requires city status
The Bishop needs a Cathedral

A deterministic paradigm 
Avoid marrying the commoners

You are in a special position
Of controlling the new lands
To terraform a frontier society 
A decent society 

Continually under threat
Containing the deported
All those persons charged as undesirable 
Their depravity
Their madness
Their sexual promiscuity
Their sickness

You are ordained to cultivate a civilization Through your appearance, dignity, and restraint

You are to privilege those who have symbolic capital
Those civic leaders
Those charged with a moral purpose 
Those who value social determinism

Provisioning
Land grants 
Cheap labor
Systems of denigration for those not white enough 
Smoothing the dying pillow

Infrastructure
Cathedrals
Grand public edifices 
Parliament buildings
Art galleries
Libraries 
Theatres

For those who are vagrants, lazy and practice sexual impropriety
You must self-help
You will not be a burden on our prosperity

Our empathy is unfunded 
You of limited political voice
You of limited aspiration

The sorcerer's machine
For ethnographic records
And anthropometric recording
For keep sake

Seeking curiosities 
Seeking exotica
Seeking their  otherness
The aesthetics of novelty 
The values that bring artists distinction

The sorcerer on his wonder-working machine
Stealing their souls and stealing their secrets


Bringing sickness to the New World
Sensing immortality the soul departs
Technology to contain grief
Art fashioning mourning

Posing with the dead
Dead eyes
Eyes of trauma 
Eyes of depression
Rigid 
Expressionless 

Just staring at me
Remember you must die

Tuberculosis
Smallpox
Measles
Chickenpox
Cholera
Whooping cough
Influenza
Diphtheria
Scarlet fever
Rubella



We blame the monster
But not the power hierarchy
Not the prejudices 
Not societal fears 

Our monsters lurk in caves
We are afraid
Of the wrong people 
Of being taken advantage of 

Racial sublimation
Repulsion 
Impulse
Social contagion
Colonialist manifesting depredation

These the artifacts of colonial enterprise

Posing with the dead
His habits were very intemperate 

In the company of the degraded 
Of both sexes
Dead eyes
Eyes of trauma 

Bringing sickness to the New World
They looked out for him 
Trying to contain their grief
To remember their own death


You are ordained to cultivate a civilization 
You are to privilege those who have symbolic capital

By posing with the dead 
In the company of the degraded 
Through the eyes of the dead
And eyes of trauma 


The Sorcerer and his wonder-working machine

Creating art through duress
Treating subjects as curiosities
As exotica
Seeking their essential otherness

For novelty value
Through small bribes

Bedazzling the unsophisticated natives
Stealing their secrets
Stealing their souls

To claim glory 
And recognition from within the establishment


The Sorcerer Joe Byrne Ned Kelly

A flashy writer
A republican sympathizer
The Cantonese speaking bushranger
Strung up and photographed

Victoria as a great and free and independent Republic
The North-Eastern Victoria Republic Movement
Crushed and removed


The Queen, the Business Man and Marvellous Melbourne

Wisdom, Mercy, and Christianity
The biggest
Booming 
Cosmopolitan

Fuelled by extravagant stories of wealth
The empire goes for gold
Prosperity
Opportunity

Enacting penal violence 
Regulating civil force

The divine efficiently mitigated 
Exploitation
Murder
Devastation 

The Bolters who live upon plunder
The unshackled who terrorize
This continent a social laboratory 
Gentrification of class

Our imperial expansion 
Our obligation
We who leveraged the sins of the settler 
We who transposed  a moral economy
We who established colonial governance
We who benefited


Aussie Gold
Mate
Chums
Diggers 

What if the convicts or ex-convicts found gold?

How to regain their submission
Their abject obedience
To retain a class of subordinates 
All of their servile positions

How to regain control
Sycophantic compliance
Debased servitude

Proclamation of Crown Rights
Enforcement of British colonial rule
Establishment of a christian moral discourse

Through license hunts 
Through brutal punishment
Through oppression

Generating prosperity 
Through dispossession 
Through enforcing loss of land
Through exclusion of citizenship

Possession - Royal Metals
Possession - Royal Mines 
By virtue of Royal prerogative
In common law 
Legislated


Free enterprise arrived in Melbourne
Seeking to establish a capitalist hegemony
Lining their pockets
Manipulating values
Convincing the poor of their worth
Building exponential GDP growth
Seeding the wedge of inequality
Fastening systematic colonization


When the Ghosts arrived
The haunting began
To sustain settler superiority
Then the ‘eerie’ silence 
On Government-sponsored ethnic clearances

Gate-keepers of history
Denialism
Terrorem
Oligarchy


The Gold Rush Business Man

Mutual hostages have no claim
Wealth is only for the trusted 
Leave each room empty
To fabricate dependency
And their disposition of inadequacy

Your prompts 
Your punishment
Deny the many from your gain
It is their reward for being passive

Your reward is justified
You are active 
Thrive, survive and succeed
In heaven 
In grace
In silence

Know your demands
Exploit, speculate and expect
Build on their guilt 
Grow their envy
They must know they are monitored
Disregard, destroy and countercondition



Colonial Enterprize 
Goldfields and gold mining
Bringing in the order 

Sectarian rivalry
Anglican supremacy
Autocracy
Convictism 
Corruption

The establishment of
Locked-up lands 
And
Ownership by a small minority





Deep questions 
Deep human questions
The right to be stupid
Traveling in silence and adoration
Discovering innate and unconscious fear
Surrendering to the purposefulness of self
At loss


Let my death be a message
Rubbish and balderdash

The end keeps returning
Suddenly and unexpected

Our normal defensive response
Motivate
Crouch 
Flex

Like-minded people 
Reinforced viewpoints
Extreme opinions
Startled


Gorging on the comforts of technology
Admiring the terrifying beauty of  surveillance
Each and every algorithm forming a nexus of intricate stories

Not no longer a passive electrical device
Armed with an intention to boost transmission
Their digital eyes 
Their artificial intelligence

The enterprise grows 
A booming market
Open closed off on open closed off on
Vision as a service


He rode a horse
He dropped his sword
He took off all his clothes
To be in poverty

In time for equity and rights
Original meanings
The primordial

Being of an exclusive attitude
Of one's own


Library of Might

When the Library opened in 1856 the British Empire was the dominant global power, with colonies and outposts all over the world


Ned Kelly's Library
Now in the State's custodianship
His letters, armor, and deathmask

A green silk sash
Ghostly intimidation

Across the road, Ned was hung
A life of situations beyond his control
There is no claim to objectivity
The impossibility of justice


We share a terrible history of global destruction
Our crown's propensity towards violence
Capital Imperialism 
Driven by the right to reign
At heaven's command, Britain first

Extermination
Mass execution
Murder
Rape
Violence
Plunder
Suppression
Internment
Power is destiny

Glorification and institutionalization of historical benefits
Underlined by imperial knowledge banks
Written by those who are dedicated to logic and rationalization 

Strategic justification 
The order of might
This is what the colonizers know and do


Ned Shadows Melbourne

Subversion
Thousands of supporters 
Rallies 
Petition 
But no reprieve

The lawless frontier was controlled
Make an example of
Through execution
And the keys to heaven



From an earlier time
Venerated and preserved
Heritage and martyrdom in decay

In the house of the proper 
On display 
The behaviors 
The paradox of yesterday

Maintaining academic distance 
A moment not like ours
The power held within
Social Design
Influence
Sanitized discordance 



Prowl Vader Ned Algos
New Gods 
Man Gods 
Ancient Gods
What matters to you
Secret business
Rapid change
Towards complete and permanent cessation


Face of Turmoil

In this building
In this room
Collective memory
Personality trait psychoticism
Bringing together different ideas 
Non-conformist solutions to address new problems



Ned Kelly and the State Library Dome

It was not that long ago
Between history, science, and fiction
This new form of me

Confined by experience
Confirmed by previous learning
Considerations of limits
Clarifications of terms
Conditions made similar

That what is embedded in us to continue forward


State Library Lyre Bird Cage

Our habits 
Our routine
Our prison

Those who walk against the current
They see no cage

But when they are finally imprinted
Their otherness is capture
Their essence is put on display

Until they are finally and undeniably possessed


Ned Kelly State Dome Illuminated

The mutation arose spontaneously
Then everyone was placed under surveillance

Domes of knowledge
Architecture of power
Physical and spatial spaces of influence
A centralized mechanism
To watch over all subjects
Establishment of order

Surveillance for a  moral  purpose
From phase 1 to 3 to 4
From controlled and disciplined
To adaptive 
From central to dispersed 
From mandated to voluntary


The statue outside
The death mask inside
25 minutes is what it took

You are self-accused
Said Redmond to Ned
I will see you there
Said Ned to Redmond


Five Eye Bust and Bound Together
The magnificent conglomerate 
The western anglosphere surging forward and onward
From a colonial advantage
To become the world’s largest economic bloc

Driven by a dysfunctional democracy
An overwhelming military superiority 
Five eyes forcibly protects its economic interests
Forcibly protects its cultural capital

It owns the language of business and science
It instituted a moral justification 
A self-sustaining network of legitimacy Underscored by enslavement,
racism, violence, and genocide


Perpetuating wartime structures 
Through peacetime violence
Maintaining cultures of force
An everyday daily life experience
Simply acceptable
Postcolonial trauma

From royal decree to state legitimization
The removal of customary values 
As basis for social order
Continuous socio-economic upheaval
To prioritize revenue gain
Enforced understanding 
Of where each and every one stands

All for those at the top
Resources
Benefits
For those at the bottom
Lower health status
Political disarmament



Sometime later Saint Peter found key 6 in Melbourne
Impulsive and yet cowardly
Being both hot-tempered and tenderhearted
Insightful and yet ignorant
Courageous and solid after Pentecost
Yet was hypocritical



I didn't know
I simply forgot
And to refind requires divine inspiration 


Forgotten
I forgot how to be prepared
And ignored the uncontrollable me



Once again we separate from one another
And before the night is over
As emotions subdue
I just slip away
Just to feel more at ease


I stumbled and freely fell
Down and in among the standard economy 
With guilt as my gilded suppressant 
Or was it fear
Or was it respect
I patiently waited in place
With everyone keeping an eye on each other
I waited until boarding was called


Learn
That is why you are here
It is not the easy option

Whenever you can find your place
In and between transience
In the ambiance of waiting
Find opportunities to make sense


I'm just waiting in place
Halfway between departure and arrival
A living cultural landscape
Paved and lined for the thousands
From generations to generations
More than myths and magic
No longer a featureless place
500 million years to today



The trepidation of being alone
When in the transition from place to place
Experiencing deep and vital dangers
Venturing into uncertain territory
Racing towards the chance
To experience heightened emotions
Of altruistic happiness
Sometimes I play dead
Then I am not afraid


Sheltered in your shadow
I put my hope in you

Too afraid to stand alone
I hide with the meek and quiet

We love the darkness thrown
Where in 
Here inside 

We safely tremble
This our place
Filtered from harsh light
Far beyond their righteous stone


Sense of transient place
Knowing you are almost home
It is all we have
This biosphere
My reasons for life
My sphere
My region of interaction
This is me as organic life
As atmospheric
In awareness


Red Cloud Passing
178 seconds to live
The time it takes to lose control.
Once inverted
Demand your certainty 
In this world of loss


Thank god for peripheral vision
And our dreams and out-of-body experiences
Always in fear
Justified and bound in chain 
As in splendor 
Alone and just being
Just got to know


Trying to get away
Never knowing where I am going to
Never to know whether I have arrived
How to gain a higher purpose in life
Without reason 
To actually  dream

This is where I am at now
Wanting to sleep
And restless till morning



In our public places
In our shortened term
Together 

In our repetitive behaviour
We created  bonds
Forming reason 
Being 
A bond

To share our emotional identities
Our experiences
Our thoughts
Our feelings
Our memories


Wanting to be here
Caring and treating each other gently
By achieving more than just doing our job
In the sanctity of our biosphere
Of all living beings 
of all relationships
Being at home feeling magnificent


Under the heading destroyed
Francis walked into the night
With a bleak outlook
Borderline and obsessive
And away from the street lights


A Darwin Bougainvillea Christmas
The night before December
In beauty and in pink
Darwin Mall 9:30 pm
It is why I chose this place


It is not the method or magic involved
It is the dream that is imposed
To orchestrate chaos into reason
Questioning why not
Of each livelihood built on inherited death
To continually find beauty 
Through power and resource



Darwin Plastic Night










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