As one of my cherished bloggeurs, Ampersand Duck, reminds us, 'remember to breathe'. Whitebait will be back soon but at the moment he is feeling a bit like this signature gif he stumbled across on some forum recently - it has deep resonances in terms of W's ambivalent relationship with inanimate objects and the endless Sisphyean repetition of it all ...
(You might need to click the image to make it work).
In my day job I'm the Postgraduate Research Coordinator in the School at my University. A few days before returning to Melbourne from Vietnam, I received the dreadful news that one of my School's postgraduate students, Minnie Kairu, had been killed in a car accident in Nairobi (her home city) where she'd recently travelled to to conduct some primary research for her PhD on religion, media and globalization (through the specific form of broadcast evangelical crusades in Kenya). Minnie was an older than usual postgraduate student. She'd studied in the USA, worked as director of learning institutions in Zimbabwe and Kenya, and was the proud single mother of her only daughter, a student in our undergraduate program.
I've been struggling to know how to react to Minnie's death; or, more accurately, perhaps, I've had that odd feeling of looking on and monitoring myself--in a curious way--to see how I emotionally respond. Possibly because I haven't had anyone really close to me ever die and frankly the thought of that scares me more than anything else I can think of. And its jarring when you've just turned 40 and you think that life has been good because you've experienced interesting things, coped with getting to that age OK, met great people and so on.
Minnie and I weren't close but we talked every now and then, we bumped into each other in the corridors and said hello. And being away in Vietnam last week I wasn't back in time for the memorial service that many of the other friends and colleagues of Minnie at my University attended. Not of course that grief can be dealt with collectively in a simple service but there is something important about the collective marking of it even though the experience carries on afterwards in a multitude of ways and bodies.
Yesterday I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by the list of tasks awaiting me at work, things going on that I needed to organise despite the fact that one of these postgraduates was suddenly no longer around when I registered Minnie's name on an old spreadsheet and it jumped out to gently sting me after being there in my consciousness for five minutes already . I felt resentful? guilty? that it seemed so easy to simply move on and her death subsumed by the pressures of work and the flow of daily life. When is the appropriate time and where the appropriate space to grieve and/or remember? And how to do it outside of the cliches that we turn to when a death of someone we know occurs.
Later that night I found a way for me, this time, in the blog entry of another postgraduate student, Paul, who is studying in the same general field (media and religion) as Minnie. In the post he recounts walking with her in the streets of Sweden while at a conference together. In just one sentence he helped me by writing one of the most fabulous things you could possibly write about Minnie if you knew her: 'Walking down a street with Minnie was like being reintroduced to the planet'.
My own simple memory that comes to mind is from a couple of months ago at drinks on the roof, music blaring, and Minnie enthusiastically bailing me up and telling me how much she loved music, though I can't remember what kind but I do remember her smile, the way she twisted her hips and did a little dance as she moved off to talk to someone else. So I grieve here for you Minnie in some simple lines of text and some memories of mine and others of a precious individual now gone.
A quick post that follows on from Whitebait updating his blog roll (scroll down the right hand column of this page).
On Friday evening Whitebait went to the book launch of Ken Gelder's Subcultures: Cultural HIstories and Social Practices at a Melbourne institution, Readings bookstore in Lygon St, Carlton. For a long time--before Amazon was popular and before some of the mega-chains like Borders opened up in the city (in fact, one went in right across the road)--Readings was the only place you could go to get a decent selection of books in the humanities area. It had a comprehensive academic section that used to be run by one of my first student friends in the English Department at the nearby University of Melbourne. In fact Readings is one of those places where any number of students and aspiring writers seem to end up working for a while; the more actorly types became waiters at Mario's in Brunswick Street. Anyway, the launch was surprisingly fun, helped immensely by the rather droll and 'anti-launch' speeches of Justin Clemens and Ken himself (both of whom are old colleagues of mine). A whole crew of staff and students were there from Melbourne University - it was rather interesting to check the fashion of the students as it is so radically different from those I teach at RMIT. This lot seemed very boho chic (for want of better adjectives - I really needed the keen fashion analysis skills of A Wild Young Under-Whimsy to decode what was going on there).
The nicest surprise of the evening was running into humanities researcher (aka Stephanie) and being able to tell her that I'd been lurking and enjoying reading her beautifully written and moving blog. Strangely enough I'd had a rare chat with her partner, who is a Professor down at my University, just that day. Though I've known Stephanie since my postgrad days I haven't run into her for quite a while (ie, back before she started her blog) and Whitebait had that weird moment of misalignment between the everyday and the virtually augmented me as I wondered whether to immediately say something about her battle with breast cancer or whether that was 'private' stuff I shouldn't leap into conversation about. After all, I hadn't known her that well previously. Silly really (but also interesting in terms of thinking about differently established social relations that aren't always straightforwardly ready to be articulated together). And as FrauleinDrDr commented to me afterwards, Stephanie was looking great so it probably wasn't going to be one of those times when my foot gets firmly stuck in mouth in a train wreck sort of way. Though Whitebait's capacity in that respect is formidable ...
And Whitebait also wanted to mention a couple of other academic blogs he is enjoying. First of all, Savage Minds, an anthropologist group blog. Always has interesting discussions. I have been particularly enjoying posts on the role of organisational bodies that oversee ethics processes in American universities - not everyone's cup of tea as a topic to be sure but I'm involved in this stuff pretty heavily at RMIT so the comparisons are interesting to me! And also I enjoy the lovely collection of bits and bobs that comes from Purse Lip Square Jaw (aka Anne) who is also the manager and most regular poster at Space and Culture. Anne recently posted one of the best responses I've ever heard or read to the perennial 'When will you get your dissertation done?' question.
Finally, for those interested in the world of web 2.0 check out craigbellamy.net. Whitebait first picked up on Craig's interesting work when someone referred him to milkbar.com.au, Craig's "‘hypertextual history’ documentary about the inner-city suburb of Fitzroy, in Melbourne, Australia" (where Whitebait now lives). A great project - but unfortunately only parts of it are still accessible now. Craig filled in and taught one of Whitebait courses at RMIT last year but has now gone on to better and brighter things(!) at Kings College in London. I hope he is enjoying life there. For those still around Melbourne, and interested in similar academic discussions and upcoming events concerning technology, communication, democracy and the whole shebang you might also want to sign up to my energetic colleague, Terry Johal's RSS feed. Terry (via Mr Brown) also alerted me to this terrific instructional video, which you should watch if a teacher, on the latest crafty strategies being employed to visually lengthen essays.
OK, my posting has been abysmal.
Did you notice the blog is now just 'Whitebait'?
We're heading here for three weeks holiday soon. New cities!
Had a fun time recently playing a three hour set as part of a rooftop party for postgrads and staff at my work. My first straight dj gig. Mostly played a dub and hip-hop mix for the first part, then into some electrohouse andwound down with some tasty electronica. Was particularly pleased that my whole setup was totally stable - Dell lappy, Traktor, M-Audio firewire interface, Evolution uc-33e controller and external hard drive. Will work up to including some more genuinely 'live' elements if I can find time and opportunities to play out more.
Tezza caught some images on his mobile.
Also posted at Psybait.
This is a loose follow-up to that previous post on my online identity bifurcation. That process has been further ramped up by the arrival of another 'Brian Morris' at my University (I'm starting to get his emails, telephone calls and posts).
A bit of googling does reveal that there are some really interesting other versions of me out there (whew!)
My awards:
- Best domain name: http://www.brianmotherfuckingmorris.com/
- Best publication title by me: In Favour of Circumcision (check out the nasty review comments!). This me is also a respected publishing machine.
- The wikipedia listed me(s) - but it isn't a competition ...
- Best review of a musically gifted and follicly challenged me: “Brian Morris' wonderfully expressive and prodigious technical command of the classical guitar gives one pause for reflection as to the beauty and vitality musicians of his caliber give to this world. His presentation of a rich and varied concert for the Michigan Composers Series at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts was memorable in setting sail the audience on a voyage through the fascinating contemporary classical guitar repertoire. An inspirational performer, Mr. Morris captured the essence and spirit of each piece he played and was received enthusiastically by the audience.”
- Only Oscar nominated me - for my outstanding production design work on Evita.
- Creepy business-guy me: 'your customers are mine!'
- Best funky designer me with a beautiful looking website.
Enough already ...
Farscape is one of the TV series that FrauleinDrDr and I have been watching (on DVD) lately. Whitebait saw the occasional episode of the first season some years back and wasn't moved either way by it. Initially he was slightly put off by the strong involvement of the Jim Henson company and the muppets/aliens crossover. However, an academic friend who is writing on the series convinced us to give it another go and hang in there as the show does get interesting in all sorts of ways as the seasons progress.
At one level, it is an interesting and fun watch for Australians (and New Zealanders) as the show is produced in this country and makes use of a good percentage of Australasian actors. Actually, it might be harder to name an Australian actor who hasn't donned prosthetics and appeared (the last episode we watched, for instance, featured a blue-skinned, hobbit-hairy, wheezing Ben Mendhelson while another couple include a suitably hammy Magda Szubanski). For Whitebait, however, the most engaging aspects of the series involves the pyschological dramas revolving around the lead, Crichton, who has at various times in the series has been implanted with a mental clone of his nemesis, Scorpius (a top shelf bad guy), as well as being cloned himself.
Perhaps some of this cloning and splitting is seeping into Whitebait's consciousness as he has been busy setting up some alternative websites for different parts of his alter-ego activities. So first up there is a separate site for all the psybait produced tracks. All of us wanted something additional to myspace which would be easier to build up and control. Please check it out - the best thing is that it has free mp3s for download (a netlabel). It also operates as a podcast so you can subscribe via i-tunes (and other programs) which will automatically update any new tracks (however infrequently they may appear!). Comments/suggestions re content and organisation etc welcome. (BTW, there will also be a separate carsinthesky (that's frauleindrdr and i) website coming some time soon - once we've finished the new track we're working on).
At the same time, Whitebait's other alter-ego, that Brian Morris chap, is also getting his own separate web presence. It is mostly an academic home page (no regular blog) that will link to bits and pieces of his academic research and make some writings available for download. However, one of my current collaborative research endeavours, the Urban Rivalries project(undertaken with she who appears now and again in the comments on this blog as the sheepwoman) will also end up as a collaborative blog. That will be a good one I think - more news here as it develops.
'I'm high on the hill [well, office really]/ looking over the bridge/ to the MCG '.
Today the 'bait is thinking about the notion of cartographic 'mashups' as part of my end of a collaborative paper that he is contributing to. Feeling a bit stymied by where to take some ideas on this topic. (Somewhat symptomatic of this blockage is his decision to take down the platial mapkit that you may have noticed appearing in the sidebar for the past week - I don't think the widget is as ready and user friendly as it could be and seems to slow the loading of the page down too much).
Whitebait is however happy to be still enjoying this audio and video auztralian extravaganza mashup which came to my attention via Ducky and is a product of the combined talents of arty fufkin (aka dorian) and alpha99.
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