Poem: Oh, monarch

 Oh, monarch

Cut grass underfoot

 

Naked in the backyard as a kid

 

Garden hose offers relief from the summer heat

 

And hidden

 

In the oleander

 

A chrysalis

 

Metamorphosis

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Stereolab Conundrum

Image
  Jimi Hendrix had a problem. He’d broken through with his 1967 Monterey Pop performance, where he closed his set with a raw, confronting version of The Troggs’ proto-punk track  Wild Thing  and, as the song came to an end, he smashed his Fender Strat against the stage, set it on fire and then threw the pieces into the crowd as his rhythm section, bassist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, kept up a syncopated backbeat.    The performance was a statement of intent, and Hendrix’ fame only grew over the next few years before his untimely death on 18 September 1970. The problem Hendrix had is that he wanted to grow as an artist and musician, but the audience wasn’t having a bar of it. They wanted more of the same:  Purple Haze , Hendrix playing his instrument behind his back and with his teeth and, yeah, the guitar smashing. What most of the audience didn’t want were extended jazz-blues fusion jams or collabs with Miles Davis.   And so Hendrix was t...
Read more

I think I’m Comin’ Home

Image
  What dark arts are invoked in the creation of a song that makes you wistful for the person you never were, for a past that never happened? A song able to instantly transport you back to a place you’ve never been and one capable of effortlessly summoning feelings of loss, desire and longing, seemingly out of the ether?    Almost every pop song ever written is either about love, or the loss of that love. Loss is powerful, maybe even more powerful than love, because loss walks in lockstep with hate. But longing is even stronger still, as it leads us to make irrational justifications for situations that are, perhaps, not, as Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham sing in the classic Fleetwood Mac breakup song  Go Your Own Way , “the right thing to do.”   Watch contemporary Fleetwood Mac performances of this song and you can see the loathing Nicks developed for Buckingham in every small gesture she makes, every intonation in the lyrics she’s singing. It was visceral a...
Read more

Fascination: The Buzz Kull Interview

Image
It was in a different life. I was on the back deck of a house I lived in, doing some chores and listening to Sydney community radio station FBI. This track came on. A droning synth followed by pounding drum machine and a haunting voice talking about dreams. I wanted to know more, waiting for the DJ to back announce and eventually they came on and said it was Sydney darkwave artist Buzz Kull. Who was Buzz Kull? Why did their music speak so profoundly to me, someone brought up on no wave guitar bands and stoner rock?   I bought the track on iTunes, I am guessing it was 2015/16 and when Buzz Kull’s debut album, Chroma, came out, I quickly jumped on board. Electronic music seemed like the future.    So now it’s 2023. Buzz Kull – Marc Dwyer – has released two albums since Chroma – 2018’s New Kind of Cross and, just last year, Fascination. Being a fanboy, I wanted to catch up with Marc / Buzz Kull and find out what makes him tick.    “Buzz Kull had a very soft start i...
Read more