September 30

30/9/2003

The Basement with Freyja, Zaf and their gap-toothed eco-terrorist friend for a jazz concert. When I was small I used to have a recurring delirious vision whenever I had a fever : a disembodied spoonful of medicine floating in front of me, the liquid in it shaking slightly as it hovered there. The first half of the performance was the musical equivalent of that vision – repetitive, quiet, disturbing, trembling on the edge of an event that never eventuated. In the second half, it did happen: a frenzy akin to a prolonged bout of teenage masturbation. The three men on stage, eyes closed, sweating and thumping and fingering with single-minded oblivion, and the audience dead silent, some watching but mostly with their eyes closed, each wrapped in their own private hypnosis. Impossible not to listen and impossible not to feel horribly isolated- this is Australia, inarticulate, passive, infinitely thirsty and utterly unproductive.