A picture of the Dads On The Air radio team at 2GLF
"Champions take risks and pressure is a privilege". Billy Jean King to Sharapova on the eve of her finals match at the Australian Open.
"Bravery is being the only one who knows you are afrraid". Franklin Jones.
"It may take great courage to speak up to a brow beater after a long life of passivity. To expres our honest feelings may make us break out in a cold sweat... We need to stop resenting where we are and start loving ourselves for the daily courage it takes to suit up and show up. We deserve a new start and we can have it if we stop looking backward."
Larsen & Hegarty
The rituals were precious, the darkest rides, the darkest tides; those fleeting descriptions of moss caked walls; in recent days washed away by the luxuriant beauty of the harbour, the savage notion of our own death; the frothing hysteria which he thought might be happiness, so glorious was his sweeping soul, so beautiful was the harbour, the foreshores dense green, the luxury yachts and the antique vessels beating up the waves; the cluttered, chaotic, boat-filled harbour, the dense beauty, I come to you. It was Australia Day yesterday; and I went to a party at McMahons point, around from the northern end of the Bridge, and we snaked in fine exultation; as he smiled graciously through his flawed teeth and the other guests, stern left wing women bearing noble clauses and loneliness like cloaks, their most valuable relationships each other because they slept with no one; and he smiled and he shook hands and despite himself there was lust for the tawdry flesh; Baghdad Iraq land mine expert UN headquarters explosion killing dozens of her colleagues Polly living comfortably ever since on a UN pension Polly, me, almost comfortably in sobreity for once, while she, as always, grew louder and drunker and more opinionated as the night war on, drunk on fancy white wine. No ordinary conversation was possible.
How many fireworks can we have? Henrietta asked, when I told her on the phone I was sitting on the foreshore waiting for the fireworks to go off, the harbour limpid in the after light of sunset, the boats moving up and down, the business and colour of Darling Harbour in the distance, the city skyline etched out in light; the ultimate shades of blue and beauty ours, as I embraced everything, soaring happiness, delight in landscape, God in the branches of the old fig trees twisting up the sides of the sandstone cliffs, the multi-million dollar apartments secure havens, not just of wealth and privilege, but of value and morality, comfort and security; with the wealth came safety.
I read a book called The Tender Bar in Pai in Thailand last year, sitting on the veranda of a bamboo hut, watching the river and the ever-staggering landscape; about a boy who grew up in a bar; frothing to the surface of the mainstream when he briefly worked as a copy boy for the New York Times; and those austere and reproachful voices, of which I was so nearly one; and the lost voices because there was never any reason to be there; and those bars we had loved so much; which had been everything to us. Just as the bar in this lost in time suburb of New York had been everything to the author; I'm writing about you, he told the legendary denizens; and I, too, had tried to write about the bar now gone, the front bar of the Rex Hotel in Kings Cross, which had been everything to me as a youth - a source of money, of entertainment, of friends, and most of all, of alcohol.
But the book I wrote now mouldering in a box somewhere came out as a strange science fiction tale of decaying corrupt filaments flowing from the roof and the diseased, alien denizens who could not find a life of their own, our sterile hearts, the awful consequence of the invaders. Years after these events, I put the large number of pages of confused streams of consciousness up around the house we all lived in in Paddington, and tried to string it into a single story; and instead we all sat around and smoked so much hash we could barely move, and populated another bar, this time the one next door; and no one knew how utterly vulnerable we had been, how close us boys had been to each other as we accepted our jail bait status; how occasionally someone would drive us out to a party in the suburbs, more bait, and we would perform just by being there; magnificently beautiful because we had something they could never have: youth.
And we really did rely then, on the fundamental rule, the kindness of strangers. And we really did care for each other; in a way our contemporaries, in school uniform in school yards a million miles from us; in those remote places where happy families lived and people had futures.
And we would have all died together, fuck the sugar daddies, if only we had been allowed; if only the fountain had stopped flowing; if only we had been barred for being under age rather than courted for the clients who followed us. Didn't any one care? The offers came thick and fast. Oh, they cared alright, they would have done anything to be able to boast to their ancient queen friends that they had "had" us. And I drank and drank and drank and the bar disappeared in a black paste; and the tendrils of corrupt hands, stroking my young skin; they slithered from the roof and rose from the floor, dank, moss covered, and I shivered at the thought: somewhere else there was sunshine, in some distant place lay happiness; a different, unabused life. And we raised the glass from the line of drinks at the table, I couldn't keep up with the drinks they bought, and in the end, because every end of that disconsolate, deathly marginalised group was sad, we raised another glass, of beer, of brandy, of bourbon and coke; and we disappeared too drunk to stand, much less provide a service.
THE BIGGER STORY:
ABC:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/01/27/2147375.htm
Paddy McGuinness dies, aged 69
Former journalist and editor of Quadrant magazine Paddy McGuinness has died in Sydney, aged 69.
Mr McGuinness died yesterday at his home in Balmain in Sydney's inner west.
Mr McGuinness was a former editor of the Australian Financial Review and a columnist for several leading newspapers.
He recently stood down from editing Quadrant after 10 years at the helm.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/entertainment/ledgers-final-journey-home/2008/01/26/1201157739179.html
The Age:
FOR a man who in life was often at odds with the limelight, in death Heath Ledger found no reprieve yesterday.
In an anonymous pine crate, the Perth-born actor began his final journey home amid chaotic scenes, as photographers jostled with police outside a Manhattan funeral parlour.
Police were forced to hold back more than 50 members of the paparazzi and news crews as five employees from the Frank E. Campbell funeral home carefully loaded the crate into a black hearse. "Back up. Back up, please," a police officer yelled at swarming photographers.
Just hours earlier, Ledger's grieving parents Kim and Sally and older sister Kate arrived in New York from Perth to claim the body and attend a private memorial service. Ledger's former fiancee Michelle Williams, mother of his daughter Matilda, 2, also attended the service.
Yesterday the Ledger family and friends went public with their grief in death notices placed in The West Australian newspaper.
"My body aches for the sound of your voice, our chats, our laughs and our life and times together. Your truly varied artistic skills, insatiable desire to improve and eclectic abilities set you apart from any other person on the planet," his father wrote.
It is now five days since the Brokeback Mountain star, 28, was discovered by his masseuse lying unconscious face down on his bed in his Manhattan apartment surrounded by sleeping pills.
The mystery surrounding his death then deepened when the masseuse changed her story.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23112355-952,00.html?from=mostpop
News:
FAR away from the idolised lifestyle of a Hollywood star, tragic Australian actor Heath Ledger lived out his final days as a scruffy loner.
Drifting between acting gigs and fleeting visits from his beloved daughter Matilda, Ledger would wonder the Manhattan cobblestone streets alone, usually wearing ragged jeans, an old jacket and an unshaven chin.
When he returned to the SoHo apartment he rented for $26, 000 a month, a forlorn sight greeted him.
Apart from a few ornamental skateboards, the flat was more or less unfurnished.
Ledger slept on a mattress on the floor, sleeping pills beside his makeshift bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment