the ’sham

This is a “key episode” in the sham: in which I depart the neighbourhood for the day. Plenty of ruminations here about the nature of my experience due to having to be blindfolded the entire time.

Listen in here [26 min, 13mb mp3].

Read the original episode here.

in which Lisa Kelly and Bec and I go to the Petersham Bowling Club for Good Friday Brunch. When I read this through again, one year later, I was surprised by how fresh and raw my thoughts about the PBC were. So much has changed with the club since then. See their website for more on that! (I set up the site for them).

Listen here. [8 min, 4mb]

Includes muttering and slight interjections from Lizzie, who is my “live studio audience” in Mystery Bay, where we are camping in a campervan!

Read the original post here.

This is the entry (posted one day before Easter 2006) in which I announce to the readership of the ’sham that I am considering breaking my self-imposed Petersham lockdown to visit my uncle Michael’s Darling Point house for Easter lunch. (The reason being that my dad was in town, and not in too great shape emotionally, and he’d especially asked me to come.)

Thus ensued, in the comments section, a debate on “fam versus sham” or “life versus art”, including comparisons with Joseph Beuys’ work “I love america and america loves me” (where, so the legend goes, he was blindfolded and refused to touch American soil).

Listen in here. [16min, 6mb, mp3]
…or you can hear the reading of this same episode as broadcast from Mystery Bay, down the NSW coast, where I have just travelled in a campervan. TRUE! Listen here. [8mb]

Original post is here.

In which the power goes out in the neighbourhood. I hit the streets looking for answers, and instead I find a fellow called Bruce at the Crystal Street Op Shop. I found, re-reading this one year later, that I enjoyed this story very much.

Listen in here. [8min, 8mb, mp3]

Read the original story here.

This is an off-the-cuff reflection on the process of re-reading the blog, one year later. I muse that it seems that the further away from the date of the actual events depicted in the blog, the more they become like stories…the less it seems important that they were “real events” which actually occurred. Thinking, also, about the regularity of the really “good yarns” - they don’t seem to happen each and every day.

Listen in here. [2mb, mp3, 2.5min]

This is the very popular entry in which Sunny, Luciana, Wolfie and I go rollerskating at the (defunct) Majestic Roller Rink. Plenty of comments from readers excited about the possibility of having events in there. No shortage of entrepreneurial party-makers keen for an unusual venue, which is great, and no shortage, either, of frustration about the way that public liability insurance has changed our lives.

Listen here. (15 min, 14mb, mp3)

Read the original post (with images too!) over here.

…in which I seem to have gotten over my anxiety from yesterday (good grief) and catch up on events from the previous days. A visit from my mum, a visit from my dad, a Petersham pub crawl, a garage sale attended by a priest, a radio interview and a pilates class.

Listen to it here [8 min mp3, 4mb]

or read the original posting here.

…in which I read aloud an amusing letter (a thinly veiled satire of my ’sham project) left on my doorstep by Chris Fleming. It’s a short one, only 2 minutes. Get it here.

The original posting, including a scan of the letter, is here.

In Good Grief, one week has gone by in the ’sham. I reflect on the difficulties I’m having with the flow of the project. I come to a resolution: that I need to be more forthright in demanding what I want, rather than just hoping it will happen and being disappointed when it doesn’t.

I discuss the problem of trying to be “normal”. One idea for the project was to just be a “normal” citizen, neighbour, resident whatever. In retrospect, this obviously is not going to work. In fact, now, a year later, I find it downright objectionable. Who am I to know what the hell “normal” even is?? And what a gall, to think I can lay aside my specific characteristics, the things that make me who I am, in order to try and fit in!

Of course, everyone has their own set of “these things that make me who I am”. In a way, that’s normal. It’s what the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls the “whatever singularity”. I might write more later about this idea of the “whatever”. Essentially, it’s not “whatever” like how, you know, like, teenage girls talk, like. Instead it is (as I (very sketchily) understand it) the idea that the particular characteristics I possess are not necessarily of earthshattering importance - in other words, they are no more important than anyone else’s characteristics - but they are at the same time, vital. The “whatever” of Agamben is not an indifference, but is instead a translation of the Latin term “quodlibet” which in English is roughly “being such that it always matters”. It can be whatever, anything, but that’s not to say that it’s transferrable, equivalent, or insignificant.

This is definitely in keeping with the ’sham philosophy, the idea that the more I look into the details, the more interesting a thing becomes, on its own terms.

Oh, listen to Good Grief, if you like! [6mb, mp3, 6min]

…in which I struggle to hang in with the writing of the blog, reflect on Petersham vs Kellerberrin as places to do the blogging projects, and receive encouragement and suggestions from Lionel, the Camperdowner, and the Cake Lady.

Download it here. [4min30sec, mp3, 4mb]
Read the original posting here.