Magic Realist Moment

You know, I'm a bit of a fan of magic realism. Not as a genre, really. Its more that I happen to be a fan of both Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jose Saramago, and both authors happen to be - more or less - in the magic realist realm.

And here's a magic realist moment, from my own back catalogue. In 1998, after training a few disability support workers in Toowoomba, I was driving back home, down the mountain towards Brisbane. As I passed through Gatton, or thereabouts, and the only car on my side of the road, a huge cloud of white butterflies emerged from the fields and floated across the highway. Sheets of fluttering white wings in the yellow sunshine. There were literally thousands of them, tossed like flotsam on air currents, a mass folding in on itself, expanding, contracting, swerving, fleeing, like an airborne school of fish.

There were so many of them that after about ten seconds, I could no longer see, and had to switch on the windscreen wipers. Driving at 100 kilometres per hour, wiping away white butterflies like snow.

True story.

Grandfathers and War

I don't know if anything particularly profound will emerge from writing this, but, inspired by Pavlov's Cat, I offer this reflection on my grandfathers. Seen here enlisting for service in 1941.

On the left, my paternal grandfather, who I never met, though he survived the war. A sapper in the 9th Division, he was wounded in action at the 2nd Battle of El-Alamein in 1942. His casualty record blithely states "Cas Sect. 28-10-42 wounded in action. Confusion, hallux. Evac 2/3 AFA". The 28th October was a critical day in battle against Rommel. He had two shrapnel wounds from a shell, and was evidently found disoriented.

More mundanely, and no doubt demonstrating the constancy of stress, his record shows he was sectioned several times with hemorrhoids. Jesus, I can well imagine. By 1943 he was in Port Moresby, having returned on the fleet that Curtin brought home for the Pacific War. My dad recalled hiding under a bed when his father returned in 1946, yellow with malaria, and scary to behold to 6 year old eyes.

His occupation was listed as 'labourer' upon enlistment. He ended up life as a publican, however. According to my Aunt, he rescued a young solider at El-Alamein whose old man was a Brewery magnate. She remembers their family pulling up at their house after the war to give my Grandad a chance at running a pub.

It has occurred to me before that this near random chance event just might be one key reason I was born securely middle class. He certainly wasn't. Born in Bolton, Lancashire, to cotton mill piecers. The twisted sea of fate!

On the right my maternal grandad, the one I knew and loved all my life. He died a few years back at 91. I met his older brother at his 90th birthday, and also met his near-centenarian mother when I was very young. A teacher, and a Captain in the Australian militia (Citizen's Military Forces), he was transferred to the AIF when a friendly doctor reversed an earlier decision on a childhood spinal injury. He served in Bougainville and once fled his tent on instinct in the dead of night to see it explode seconds later. A grenade had been rolled in. He mentioned the war only twice in the thirty odd years I knew him. Once was that grenade story. The other was when he was a bit tipsy and maudlin, and before he shook it all off, quietly let out that he had found himself covered in a dead mate's blood and body parts after one attack.

He was allergic to any and all tropical foods. "Only since the war", said my grandmother.

No wonder they wanted a quiet life.

Boom Boom

Well, muchachos, it's that time of year isn't it. I must admit, I'm quite pro-December. End-of-year get-togethers, and seasonal pissups, as summer's long nights and social calenders collide in that month-long inexorable charge to..... the eruption of barely suppressed family tensions over Xmas lunch.

Its been a splendid time blogging in the company of such fine compañeros this year. Why, I even received my first Viagra spam on the blog today. And they said we'd never make it!

So, here's cheers et salutations saisonnières from BmL, home of the France Gall Appreciation Society (Bureau de l'Australie) wishing all of you un gran latte for the party season. Personally, I've been warming up for seasonal soirees with this track, one of my France Gall faves, and a splendid piece of 60s jazz-pop: Boom Boom (1966).

Entonces, felicidades a todos.

Credits roll until 0.30.

Seasonal Cheer

It would appear one of my local neighbours is somewhat cool on Yule.

Lusobeats#2: Nara Leão sings Insensatez

If you're at all interested in Bossa Nova, you'll dig this clip. First, you not only get to listen to Nara Leão's utterly beschmoozling interpretation of the standard Insensatez (starts at 0.45), but you also get to hear her speak a little of the history and milieu of Bossa Nova. Frankly, the mere sound of her Brazilian Portuguese beschmoozles yours truly - but the history she alludes to is interesting.

Its a softly spoken style of acoustic jazz / samba, pioneered by João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, and herself, among others. Its grew up among the middle class of Rio De Janeiro - and all the genre's proponents speak of a great flowering of Brazilian culture and music from 1957 through to 1964 - until the coup leading to the dictatorship lasting until 1985. Like so many Latin American countries, the populist import substitution regimes of the era created a middle class that was later squeezed by dictatorship (and alternative 'economic medicines') in the years that followed. She is missing João Gilberto (Bebel's Dad, and first hubby of Astrud) because like many Bossa Nova artists, he was in exile in this period.

Anyway, its a beautiful song.

Bargains to kill for

Is there any phenomenon in Western society more demented than massed shoppers on a stampede? Now they've actually trampled someone to death. I struggle to think of the appropriate collective noun. A lobotomy of bargain hunters? I don't know why this bugs me so much. But whenever I see serried ranks of drongos injuring each other in a desperate scramble to buy crap, I truly despair for the future of our species.

Update: More detail here, including market-reassuring news that the blood-spattered horde kept on shopping.

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”

The Triffids: A Reverie

If you cornered me at a party and made me choose my favourite Australian band, you'd get quite bored as I pro-ed and con-ed between the Go-Betweens and the Triffids. On balance, (and well after you'd snuck off to fish beers in the esky), I'd give it to the Go-B's by sheer dint of sharing their hometown. They do mean a lot to Brisbaneiros of a certain vintage, like me.

But my favourite individual Australian songwriter is, without doubt, and without peer, David McComb of the Triffids. And what an extraordinary band. These songs live forever! A soundtrack to the endless sunny middays of edited memory. So many greats... to pick but a few: Beautiful Waste (surely the finest song about the all-encompassing madness of first love ever penned on these shores); Spanish Blue; Embedded; the entire album "Treeless Plain"; Place in the Sun; Red Pony; Jesus Calling; and of course, their only genuine hit, Wide Open Road.

For those who are fans, check out this page. Its full of downloadable early gems, thanks to the Triffids site.

I never did see the Triffids, sadly - though I did see David McComb sometime in the late 90s. It was after his heart transplant, so it was low energy, but the show was magnificent, the songs sublime. McComb died in '99, at far too young an age.

And now that I think about it, it was an old girlfriend of mine, many moons ago, who introduced me to the Triffids. I first heard this song, 'Raining Pleasure', when she played it to me on acoustic guitar, as the rain pattered on a Quinceland tin roof. So, here it is, a reverie.

Film Noir: what's that all about?

Who knows, but its no doubt referred to as "film noor" in certain northern suburbs of Melbourne that shall remain ... mispronounced.

Anyhow, ill-informed, but keen as always, I trundled down the the Carlton Nova a couple of years back and saw Sin City, on various recommendations. Here's a short review of that: 5 lattes, with a biscotti on the side.

And here's a pre-review of what's next: I've got a small stack of vids lined up to investigate further. These include, inter alia, Jules Dassin' Night and the City (1950) and Allen Baron's Blast of Silence (1961). I might go watch one now!

But before that, any other Film Noir recommendations, oh ye denizens of the internet? And moreover, what is the essence of film noir anyway?

A dinner party one-liner will do - I'm that sort of guy. Shallow, with a heart of pure shiny tinfoil.

Lusobeats #1: Bolinha da Sabão (Soap bubble)

Ok, I know I'm doing these posts on the cheap since I worked out how to embed video, but the fact is I'm a big fan of Brazilian music - especially Bossa Nova of the early João Gilberto/ Tom Jobim variety - but also 60s Lusopop outfits like Trio Esperança, formed in Rio De Janeiro in 1961. This is partly because I do believe Portuguese to be one of the best world languages for song. This particular track, Bolinha da Sabão is crazy. I just can't get enough of this upbeat Luso-lounge 60s pop.

So, if you ever see some wired-for-sound cat on a Melbourne train singing "tum plec tum pling" a bit too loud for surrounding passengers' comfort ... well, let's just pretend we don't know each other, sim?

50th Post Celebratory Ramble

Yes, bite up, punters, cos its the quinquagenary latte here at BmL!

How far it's all come. It seems like only yesterday that I tentatively posted my first, er, post, and people were saying, 'oh come on, a blog based loosely on Portuguese Forts in Asia will never take off' yada yada.

How right they were. But hey ..... chuck in a few erratic DVD reviews, a dash of forgotten Europop, a couple of quality regulars, some obsessional Luso-miscellany, all topped off with a systematic failure to reflect on current events (fort management concluded a while back this was best dealt with elsewhere, at a proper blog) - and I've thoroughly enjoyed myself, which is surely the main thing.

And hey, 1200 site visitors from 44 countries can't be wrong (even if a surprising proportion of them can in fact be me - or indeed, other Capitãos on clandestine missions Lisbon hasn't informed me of, in their wisdom).

And so, as the sun goes down over the fort parapet at Solor ('Asia-Pacific region'), and the trade winds flutter the lateen sail in the caravel, in sandalwood I dream once more of..... France Gall.

A rather strange, but scrummy-fab clip from 1964, Les rubans et la fleur. Check the dude, who apparently wasn't told the Algerian war of independence was lost two years earlier. When she sings to herself at 0.45 I go all weak at the knees. Mon Dieu. Vive la France!