Over in the left-brain part of my heart, namely Peril Magazine, is a coherent and calm encouragement for you to consider submitting to the current Senate Inquiry into the arts budget changes. You may read here.
This is a part of your #democraticrights. The #notsoinnerethnic in me often considers these “democratic rights” like an all you can eat buffet. You already paid for it, so you might as well eat it. Bacon bits, chocolate buttons, coleslaw and all. And if you don’t want to eat, that’s fine, but no sense complaining that you’re hungry. Especially when there are so many without food. I get it if the food is poisoned, but I don’t think it’s poisoned, probably just a little wilted under bain marie lights.
But this is the right-brained part of me, the part that feels equal parts futile and frustrated about the whole democratic endeavour. Come on team, this is a nice place, we have space and peace, and too much education and shopping, and if we can’t be compassionate to those less fortunate, and generous in our expressions of who we are, then sad sad sad boo hoo awful.
There is hardly any time for thinking any more
which is why, surely, we must still need artists and, possibly, art
probably not the damp kind of either sort
those who imagine that their imbibed identities
(latte, chardonnay, coconut water, premium açaí blend)
make any more sense than the kool aid
yet still, while we thirst, and there is so little rain
perhaps we must think a little on it
not just ideas about the thing
or the way that the thing is bought and sold
or the way that things are always passing us by
but the contemplation of the thing with such compressed fury
we can almost lick it – because we are bad Asians
or bad women or bad Samaritans
and in that inner placid evil, we have found something
akin to the jet of blood streaming from the once-kissable throat
pleasure is so fleeting – for example, I will never again
make love to that lover, because they are unpredictable
the non-perturbative regime of another atom unreconciled
but I may again, repeat the cruelty of being loved and then unloved
this is the comforting factory line of our lives:
kindness, so master crafted and unpredictable
ugliness, machine perfect every time
eleanor j jackson 