Ah, Melbourne, how I love you!
Today was a glorious Melbourne day, sunny and filled with art and light. I love Melbourne coffee, a darker roast, smoother on the tongue than double-shot lattes with weaker roasts in over West (everyone over there calls here ‘over East’, so I’m starting a reverse trend). The other day I had a sweet drop of it from a small espresso bar on Brunswick St, today was a divine cup from the Cellar Bar on Bourke St as I indulged in my other vice, devouring the Good Weekend from cover to cover.
And I love the Fringe Festival and the beautiful bamboo sculpture in Federation Square, enormous and intricate, with swings and seesaws and rope pulls for kids, threaded with speakers playing bamboo music, hollow percussion and gentle tones, while water courses through the pipes and falls from one space to another as the children play.
And the moment Fringe ends, the Melbourne Arts Festival begins.
Fremantle was great and I liked Perth’s art precinct, but I missed the stencil art here, and the street art and the sculpture on top of the shops.
I had lunch with Bonnie and we watched the Soyuz launch on the screen in the restuarant (how bizarre: Sky news played the Lord of the Rings theme triumphantly as the rocket launched). I’m conflicted about this: $25 million for a week in space – what a waste! But then again: wow, our first space tourist! I wanna go!
Then we went down to ACMI and I finally got to see White Noise, the exhibition I was on my way to when I had the scooter accident five weeks ago. It was wonderful: they’ve really transformed the space. At first glance, it looks like a mirror image receding… and some of the pieces are meditative experiments in light and colour. I found it quite wonderful.
And then to find out that Helen Clark will be forming government in Aotearoa! I’m so pleased. (And I loved watching her and the guy from the Maori party greeting each other with a hongi).
A good day. An exhausting day, but a good day.