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Whatever happens … when dealing with computers, you should never forget where the off switch is. Karl Bartos ‘The Sound of the Machine’

The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond is the autobiography of Karl Bartos, best known as a member and co-composer in Kraftwerk. The book begins with Bartos’ early life, capturing life in post-war Germany. He touches on the initial inspiration of hearing the Beatles and British beat music via his sister. He discusses how he came to be involved in music during a telecoms engineering apprenticeship, putting his hand up to be drummer in a work cover band, before pursuing formal training as a classical percussionist at the Robert Schumann Conservatory to the chagrin of his parents. After becoming involved in a number of groups during his studies – The Jokers, Sinus, conservatory orchestra – he eventually found himself invited to join Kraftwerk. He was a member of the band from 1975 to 1990. After making the decision to leave Kraftwerk in 1990, Bartos has engaged in various collaborative projects, produced his own music and been visiting Professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.1

Clearly the book provides an insiders insight into Kraftwerk and their creative process that goes beyond the myth making machine. This includes many musical elements and technical choices. For example, Bartos reflects on the use of the Portastudio when performing live as their music became more complex:

The tracks for our playback were allocated according to a fixed plan: On ‘The Robots’ for example, track 1 – like on all songs – was for the sync-signal, track 2 was Ralf’s recorded Minimoog bass sequence, track 3 was for Florian’s vocoder, and the basic drum pattern was on track 4. As in our TV appearances, Ralf sang along to this semi-playback on stage in parallel with Florian’s vocoder, spoke the Russian part and played the staccato melody live on his Minimoog. I provided the organ live on my synthesizer, Wolfgang switched on a few drum fills on the Triggersumme, and Florian added live vocoder on top. In the Russian part, he shared the sounds of the electric motors with Ralf. By the way, on our 1981 tour, I only played electronic percussion on ‘Autobahn’.

Source: The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond by Karl Bartos

Bartos also unpacks some of the politics associated with being in Kraftwerk, such as the distribution of royalties, the balance between cycling and music, and being barred from exploring other creative avenues. For example, he recounts the way things changed when trying to record Techno Pop, the follow-up to Computer World.

During our production of Techno Pop, we forgot the method we’d used in our writing sessions, where the three of us improvised freely and kept coming up with diverse pieces of music and recording them. We would pick pieces from various sessions – often recorded months or years apart – and blend them into a synthesis, an organic whole. Instead of remembering how our most authentic and probably therefore most successful music had been made, we fixed our gaze on the mass-market music zeitgeist. But comparing our own ideas to other people’s work was anti-creative and counterproductive. We were no longer capable of looking further than the end of our own noses. It didn’t help if we discovered elements of our own musical DNA in other artists’ songs. We weren’t interested any more in inventing our music – all we wanted was to sound better than others, or not worse. We’d forgotten our night-time sound rides, where all that counted was whether the music spoke to us or not.

Source: The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond by Karl Bartos

All in all, Bartos’ exploration is always done in a somewhat dry matter-of-fact manner that never quite veers into the world of gossip. As Chi Ming Lai’s captures:

Born in 1952, Bartos was a happy child and his optimistic disposition is a key aspect of this book. While the bitterness that was apparent in Peter Hook’s NEW ORDER book ‘Substance’ is largely absent, ‘The Sound Of The Machine’ is also not the laugh aloud read that Stephen Morris’ two memoirs or the “sex und synths und schlagzeug” romp of Wolfgang Flür’s ‘I Was A Robot’ were.
What ‘The Sound Of The Machine’ has is informative breakdowns of how iconic pieces of music were constructed, commentary on the frenetic pace of technological development and confessionals on band dynamics. It also documents a very human group of men enjoying football, champagne, dancing, cycling and even taking time out to see The Eagles.

Source: KARL BARTOS the Sound of the Machine by Chi Ming Lai (Electricity Club)

I imagine that this peek beyond the curtain is what would entice many readers, myself included. However, Bartos’ methodical approach also provides an insight into his personal thinking on music and technology distinct from Kraftwerk, and the everyday life of a musician. As the book went, I felt that this was just as interesting if not more so than untangled traces of myth and origin stories.

Some of the topics that Bartos touches on include the relationship between computers, music of the fleeting nature of the moment:

Few will deny that computers have changed the world – but music is still music. And when we listen to it and our brains are flooded with sound, it stimulates regions where ‘social, primeval and abstract emotions’ are seated, as the neuro-scientist and music scholar Daniel Levitin writes. That’s why we have strange sensations, feel moved and often speechless. It’s no wonder; music is a matter of life and death – and of immortality. With music, we experience the fleeting nature of the moment, but also a world beyond time. There is music, after all, that exists only in our thoughts. All that is something computers know relatively little about.

Source: The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond by Karl Bartos

Live music and the ephemeral flow of time:

Playing live corresponds to music’s ephemeral nature. Just like life itself, music takes place in the flow of time. Because time only moves in one direction – forwards – it can’t be repeated. That’s what makes a live performance unique, and the most primordial way to experience music. When we record music, we capture a moment on a medium, rather like film. We can listen to this document of a time over and over. Not unusually, the result is an artistic product of astounding force of expression, but – and this is due to the nature of the thing – it is simply a different animal to the vibrant venture of a concert.

Source: The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond by Karl Bartos

The value of music in an era of streaming:

More and more, one thing is being pushed into the background – the very thing pop music used to stand for: shared human experiences. Music in the streaming age is no longer the medium that connects me up with an idea, gives me an identity, expresses my life and my generation, the way pop music was ever since the days of rock’n’roll in the fifties. It appears that music has become a by-product with no value. In a sound cosmos in which I can listen to all the music in the world, randomly and therefore with no meaning, music loses significance, becomes arbitrary. It becomes muzak.

Source: The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond by Karl Bartos

The book ends with an interesting reflection on the changes associated with electronic music over time and the move into the digital world:

Whatever happens … when dealing with computers, you should never forget where the off switch is. It’s really very simple: we musicians have to play our music the way we think it and feel it, as well and as intensely as we can – that’s all that counts. In my understanding, art is not something that can be subjected to algorithms, but a concept and its marketing can.

Source: The Sound of the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond by Karl Bartos

I was really intrigued with this change from the initial fervor to the corporatisation, especially after reading Dylan Jones’ book Sweet Dreams – The Story of the New Romantics. I think this change can be understood using Gilles Deleuze and Guattari’s discussion of de-territorialisation and subsequent re-territorialisation, where the initial liberation of synth/sampling practices as liberating is then standardized through the move to digital production.

It was interesting to think about this divide between Bartos and Kraftwerk in comparison with Damian Cowell’s podcast associated with his album, Only the Shit You Love. Like Bartos, Cowell provided a deep dive into his life outside of TISM. Although he touched upon some aspects of TISM, it felt strange to talk about a topic that, like Kraftwerk, is so immersed in myth and intrigue. As much as we might think we want to know, I wonder if when it comes down to it that there is something in the longing for something, rather than actually attaining it? The strange thing though is that without Kraftwerk, or in Cowell’s case, TISM, then we probably would not have come to be talking about the topic. With this in mind, by the end of the book I actually felt that Kraftwerk was a distraction. Maybe some myths are best left lying?

Originally published in German in 2017, the updated English translation was published in 2022. I listened to Jim Boeven’s reading on Audible via the Plus Catalogue.

  1. See Chi Ming Lai’s review on the Electricity Club website for a more detailed breakdown of the book ↩︎

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If you tell the truth – and I always do – you shame the devil. Miriam Margolyes ‘This Much Is True’

I came to Miriam Margolyes’ memoir This Much is True for the humour and Margolyes’ reading of the book. However, I got so much more.

I’m quite sure you picked this book up hoping I’d make you laugh. That’s what I seem to have become best known for. I lack the filter others possess and out of my potty mouth pop filthy sexual anecdotes, verbal and physical flatulence on a grand scale. I swear, I fart, I draw attention to things best left unremarked – and it seems it’s made me popular. Please don’t think I’m unaware of my duty to both entertain and shock you, but I won’t allow my book to be just dirty talk. Let me tell you the truth about myself, too.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

As you would expect, as an autobiography, it covers the usual backstory, whether it be Margolyes’ family’s Jewish heritage, upbringing in Oxford, education at Newnham College, Cambridge University, and life beyond, including properties in England, Italy and Australia. She also unpacks her diverse career, working her way through radio, voiceovers, drama, Hollywood and now documentaries.

Gifted with so much confidence, everything is placed on the page. This includes recounting the recording of a soft-porn tape Sexy Sonia: Leaves from my Schoolgirl Notebook and doing black face, twice.

If you tell the truth – and I always do – you shame the devil.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

One of the things that is common with celebrity autobiographies is the incessant name dropping, such as meeting both Queen Elizabeth and Mother Teresa. However, Margolyes takes name dropping to the next level. She has so many friends, with 11,833 names in her phone.

Most people like to pounce on an empty bench, but I long for human communion – that to me is Holy Communion. I love talking to people, and asking them questions. They’re giving me a present of their stories. Talking, listening, learning what it’s like to look through the eyes of another soul.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

On the flip side of this, she also calls out those who are not ‘friends’.

Throughout, Margolyes provides an insight into the challenges associated with being a working actor (or actress). For example, she recounts the story of how they were going to replace Snape after Alan Rickman challenged the contract.

The final, very long, book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was being filmed in two parts. Warner Bros decided that both parts would be filmed together – and therefore he was only due one fee. His gifted agent, Paul Lyon-Maris, pointed out that if the films were separately released, Warner Bros would receive two incomes. Therefore, Alan Rickman should also get two fees for appearing in both parts. Warner Bros refused and said they would have to recast. Recast Snape? Alan smiled. ‘Go ahead,’ he said. The day before shooting was due to start on part two, they agreed to pay Alan both fees. You do wonder sometimes about the mental acuity of Hollywood moguls.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

Like Sam Neill, Margolyes did not attend drama school. She is therefore happy to celebrate the various people who have helped guide her along the way.

How much of it is training, how much of it is innate? A mixture of both. I have no formal training: I didn’t go to drama school, mainly because I was already twenty-two when I left Cambridge and I didn’t want to remain a student for another three years. I read quite a bit about theatrical technique but mainly I have learnt on the job and through observing others.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

Throughout, she gives a masterclass of sorts, explaining how she fashions characters:

When I read a text, I use the bricks of my own personality to fashion a character. It’s the text that gives you the mortar, the other elements of what you’re creating and what you have at the back of your mind’s eye. When I get a play script, I want to see if the character has changed at all during the course of the piece. Is there an arc to the character? Or, if not, does she move in any way from beginning to end? If there is no movement, I have to try to put it there, because it’s boring to know everything about a character from the minute they step onto the stage. The actor or actress must surprise the audience in order to engage them and to entertain them. That’s what I look for in the writing. But the surprise must be organic, from within. Imposing it won’t work.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

A part of this is about being open and available for the moment of discovery:

I try rather to discover what it is that opens the door to a character for me, and it’s always different things – maybe a single line of my script, or something that another character in the play says. I see every rehearsal as an opportunity both to offer and to glean something new from my fellow actors – as long as you are receptive to that dialogue and you open yourself to the moment, the process of finding your way into a character becomes a continual foreplay. Every inch of your skin has got to be sensitive to the moment, and if you’re lucky, the moment comes – but it can go again just as quickly. It is a flash, and you can’t control it and you can’t compel it – you just have to be available. That’s the most important thing: you make yourself available for the moment.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

Intriguingly, she explains why she dislikes people seeing rehearsals as they serve as a space to see what it means to be on the stage:

I think that you see how you want to appear on the stage. And I don’t mean physically: what I mean, rather, is that somehow you ‘see’ what you want to do with your character, how you want her to be. What is her reality? You glimpse it, distantly, and as you rehearse, and with the help of your colleagues and your director, and the costume department and the make-up artist, and so on, gradually, it all feeds into your ‘being’. Then the creation, your character’s being, starts slowly and imperceptibly to take root, and to be there for you to step into on the first night, or whenever the first audience appears.
That’s why I hate it when people ask to watch a rehearsal. Sometimes directors say, ‘Oh, I’ve asked a few people to come in to see how we’re going.’ I can’t bear it, because a performance is a fragile butterfly of a thing – and it has to be coaxed and nourished and soothed. Exposure too early is scary and frightening, because an actor’s nature is to perform – that is what we do. And that’s how we think of ourselves – we are the performers and you are the audience. When we see an audience, we will perform, but if we’re not ready to deliver our performance, then something phony, invented and inorganic is risked being laid onto the fragile structure that is slowly coming into being.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

This has me wondering about how we engage with creative work before it is complete, such as listening to demos or reading drafts.

One of the aspects that expanded my thinkingafter reading Margolyes’ book was the role of males and the place of gender. She shares cases of studied cruelty associated with the Footlights and Warren Beatty’s question, “Do you fuck?” Margolyes highlights the limited interest in feelings from many of the men in her life.

I realise I’m generalising but from my experience I find that the range of thought and conversation in most men is limited. They’re not interested in feelings. Many men react with horror and fear when a woman starts crying.

Source: This Much Is True by Miriam Margolyes

This reminded me of a comment in James Hollis’ The Middle Passage:

Robert Hopcke, in Men’s Dreams, Men’s Healing, suggests that it takes a man about a year in therapy before he is able to internalize and be present to his actual feelingsa year to reach where women are usually able to begin.

Source: The Middle Passage by James Hollis

All in all, Margolyes is a character full of contradictions. This includes: being a left-wing passionate monarchist, with an Order of the British Empire for Services to Drama; an atheist who still embraces her Jewish culture, such as fasting on Yom Kippur, maintaining dietary restrictions during Passover, and never eaten bacon, ham or pork; a Jew who questions the Israeli’s policy towards the people of Palestine; and proudly out, but with regrets about formally coming out to her parents. This leaves us with a intriguing and complicated story.

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My works can be regarded as stations along my life's way. All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within; their source was a fateful compulsion. Carl Jung ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’

I first read in Memories, Dreams, Reflections as an introduction to the work of Carl Jung as a part of David Tacey’s class in university. I am not sure what it says about me, but I had not realised that the book was actually ‘recorded and edited’ by Aniela Jaffé. (Clearly, I skipped the introduction?) It was therefore interesting to return to it again all these years later.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is not an autobiography that captures the events of life, rather it is better consider as Jung’s psychic reflection on the his journey with the unconscious. Edward Glover sums it up as follows:

The title is an apt one, for the main purpose of his recollections, dreams and visions is to illuminate his inner development, to trace the effect of his “confrontation of the unconscious” at various stages of his life, in a form unhampered by the necessity for scientific presentation and valuation. It is a personal testament and, above all, a religious testament.

Source: Illuminations From Within by Edward Glover

Glover also highlights the point that Jung requested that the book was not included in the official edition of his collected works. Eugene Kernes describes the book as a ‘detached autobiography’ that allowed Jung to share details that he would not usually have shared.

This is an autobiography, but a detached autobiography which enabled Jung to relate personal details that otherwise Jung would not have wanted to share.

Source: Review of Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl G. Jung by Eugene Kernes

I wonder if the request to have it excluded related to the fact that the book was co-written with Jaffé?

It had been proposed that the book be written not as a “biography,” but in the form of an “autobiography,” with Jung himself as the narrator. This plan determined the form of the book, and my first task consisted solely in asking questions and noting down Jung’s replies. Although he was rather reticent at the beginning, he soon warmed to the work. He began telling about himself, his development, his dreams, and his thoughts with growing interest.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

With this dual writing experience, it was interesting to read the analogy raised in the Prologue to life as being ‘rhizome’:

Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away–an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

For me, I was reminded of the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

We are writing this book as a rhizome. It is composed of plateaus. We have given it a circular form, but only for laughs. Each morning we would wake up, and each of us would ask himself what plateau he was going to tackle, writing five lines here, ten there. We had hallucinatory experiences, we watched lines leave one plateau and proceed to another like columns of tiny ants.

Source: A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari

Grant Maxwell suggests that their concept is at least partially derived from Jung’s discussion of this concept.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is split into distinct points of reflection, whether it be childhood, coming to analytical psychology, the meeting with and diversion from Freud, confrontation with the unconscious, the Bollingen Tower, experiences of other cultures, and thoughts on the afterlife. It is not necessarily about the people in Jung’s life, whether it be family or those he may have met throughout his life. Although they are a part of the story, at no point are they placed on centre stage. The book touches on this when we are told:

The finest and most significant conversations of my life were anonymous.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

Instead, we get a unique insight into Jung and his world. This includes the idea of being two persons:

Somewhere deep in the background I always knew that I was two persons. One was the son of my parents, who went to school and was less intelligent, attentive, hard-working, decent, and clean than many other boys. The other was grown up–old, in fact–skeptical, mistrustful, remote from the world of men, but close to nature, the earth, the sun, the moon, the weather, a living creatures, and above all close to the night, to dreams, and to whatever “God” worked directly in him.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

Something that has me wanting to re-read Donald Winnicott’s work on the true and false self, especially after reading Winnicott’s review.

Writing as guided by the unconscious:

The work is the expression of my inner development; for commitment to the contents of the unconscious forms the man and produces his transformations. My works can be regarded as stations along my life’s way.
All my writings may be considered tasks imposed from within; their source was a fateful compulsion.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

This reminds me of something that Jon Hopkins said about writing music. In a conversation with Jamie Lidell, he explained that that he wished that he could ‘choose’ the music he writes. Instead, he argues that we have no choice over what we do, the choice is about what our body gives energy for.

Mistakes involved in the path of individuation:

When one follows the path of individuation, when one lives one’s own life, one must take mistakes into the bargain; life would not be complete without them. There is no guarantee not for a single moment that we will not fall into error or stumble into deadly peril. We may think there is a sure road. But that would be the road of death. Then nothing happens any longer at any rate, not the right things. Anyone who takes the sure road is as good as dead.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

This is a reminder of the importance of mistakes and forgiveness.

Life after death through the unconscious:

If there were to be a conscious existence after death, it would, so it seems to me, have to continue on the level of consciousness attained by humanity, which in any age has an upper though variable limit.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

I wonder what Jung would make of the modern world and artificial intelligence? Does our data consumed and sitting on serves somehow add or augment the ‘collective unconscious’?

Loneliness as the inability to communicate what is important:

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.

Source: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung (and Aniela Jaffé)

With so many spaces to broadcast, I wonder if the challenge with ‘communication’ is our ability to not only speak, but also to listen?

It is interesting reading some of the reviews and comments about Memories, Dreams, Reflections online, which explain that some of the medical practices have become obsolete. In addition to this, I was not sure what to make of some of the cultural observations.

Jung does not though come across as a man who is simply enjoying going to these countries, but sometimes can come off as a bit presumptious about the way he deals with other cultures. He can seem like he thinks he is above them, or their better and this does nothing for the autobiography.

Source: Book Review: “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” by Carl Jung by Annie Kapur

All in all though, this book offers an insightful introduction to Jung. Although it does not necessarily provide a clear summary of his work, it does provide context for it. It also includes some letters in the appendix between Jung and Freud, which I am going to assume had not been published before.

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Ultimately, the essence of being a Stolen person is that you’re always trying to find out who the hell you are. Jack Charles ‘Born-again Blakfella’

I was recently speaking to someone about the referendum whether to change the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing a body called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. They complained that indigenous people have had the same opportunities as the rest of us, including the right to vote, therefore they did not know why they needed a special ‘voice’. I must admit, although I disagree with their point of view, I was somewhat lost for the words to say in response and decided to just leave the conversation at that.

Jack Charles’ autobiography Jack Charles: Born-again Blakfella helped clarify to me why the changes outlined in the the Uluru Statement from the Heart are so important to aid in the healing process.

The Uluru Statement from the Heart is an invitation to the Australian people from First Nations Australians. It asks Australians to walk together to build a better future by establishing a First Nations Voice to Parliament enshrined in the Constitution, and the establishment of a Makarrata Commission for the purpose of treaty making and truth-telling.

Source: View The Statement – Uluru Statement from the Heart

A child of the stolen generation, Charles talks about being taken away from his mother at two months age (only because she left the hospital before they could take him away after being born). Instead he was brought up as the only indigenous child in Box Hill Boys Home. There he and the other boys were abused by the Salvation Army officers. The legacy of this experience led Charles to a life balanced between the world of theatre, and a life of drugs, crime and homelessness.

Published in 2019, a few years before his passing in 2022, this book is written with the hindsight of a long life. Although frustrated with politics, the prison system, at Australia’s ‘unique racism’ and the failure to bring about treaty, this is never offered as some sort of excuse to some of the choices made in Charles’ complicated life. Instead, this book can itself be considered as a form of healing.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give to anybody struggling with the trauma of past abuse is to talk about it. It’s difficult to open up, but I try to encourage folks to reflect on themselves during those moments of suffering – without a sense of blame and shame. What you were subjected to is a part of your lived experience and, as unfortunate as it is, it happened. Come what may, you have to relegate it to a section of the old grey matter up top. Leave it there, until you wanna talk about it in a group session or it comes up naturally in conversation.

I think that what makes this book so powerful is Charles’ (and Namila Benson) storytelling. I often found myself unsure whether to laughing or cry. Whether it be writing letters home for fellow inmates in prison.

It was always whitefellas getting me to write their letters. I don’t remember any blakfellas asking me to write for them. I’d make sure to use just the right language and phrases so these unsuspecting women back home would know they were number one. And the payment for my efforts? Tobacco and chocolate. This letter-writing business held me in good stead. I always rolled out of prison having gained a few pounds.

Collecting rent in the form of burglaries.

When I discovered my connection to this traditional land, I started thinking of my burgs as ‘collecting rent’; taking back just a small piece of what had been cruelly stolen from me and my people.

Performing naked at the Opera House in response to sexism.

The Opera House waited until the very last moment before finally calling me and agreeing to pay all the girls the correct fee. I told them, ‘I’m so pissed off with you, ya bastards. Y’know, making those girls wait so long.’ I paused but there was no response. Time to pull out the big guns. ‘Okay, I’ll stay, but I’m going to do Bennelong naked. Fuck yas.’ It seemed like a fair exchange for the stress we’d been put under. And so I did it. Wandered on stage and performed the show with me willy dangling on the Opera House stage.

And faking it as an ‘actor’.

They had to know full well that I, Jack Charles, was too far up meself to audition. It’s true. When it comes to acting roles, auditioning and getting knocked back just won’t do. I’m very lucky to be in the unique position where I’m not forced to audition in order to be seriously considered for roles. The great Australian actor Bill Hunter never auditioned either, so I take my lead from him. He told me once, ‘I get away with it so often, Jack. Thing is, I can’t act but everybody reckons I can.’ It was a relief to hear someone of his calibre say that, not to mention his advice that I should be more assertive. I responded, ‘Well, I’m in the same boat, Bill. So long as we know our lines and create the illusion of being someone else, then we’ll get across the line. You know, if it works for us, it’ll work for the audience.’

Maybe this book was not about me (clearly not, it was about Jack Charles), however I cannot help think about my own experiences and how I might have behaved differently. I was, in hindsight, lucky enough to teach at a Koori school. I remember being frustrated at times with how I was treated. For example, I would walk down the street and hear ‘pinky’ hollered at the top of one of my student’s lungs. In hindsight, I think this was actually there sign of respect. Often having been somewhat rejected by the mainstream school, I imagine there were many teachers they would not have given the time of day to, let alone called out to. Even with my academic awareness of ‘The Stolen Generation’, I feel that autobiographies like this and Archie Roach’s Tell Me Why help to appreciate the ongoing legacy of such a decision and who change is so important.

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Quote from Edward Snowden's Permanent Record

There is something both strange and familiar about Permanent Record, Edward Snowden’s autobiography. The book traces Snowden’s story to now. Whether it is being mesmerised by his father’s Commodore 64, pulling apart a Nintendo as a six year old, growing up online, hacking his education by acing tests, but refusing to submit homework, automating work wherever possible or teaching others about the web, each act recounted is seemingly fated to produce the same extricable outcome – Snowden’s revelations NSA’s surveillance of the world and his life since.

Although raised in a world away from my own, there was something relate-able about growing up during the same time. Whether it be my own hand-me-down Apple IIe and then a Nintendo, I too was lucky enough to grow up with and alongside technology. However, I have never quite taken this fascination to the point where I truly appreciate the ghosts in the machine as Snowden has. Although venturing on the web at school and tinkered with my own computer, my family did not get the internet til late and I did not really grow-up in message boards. There seems to be something privileged about those who were on the early web. This maybe what helped created the close sense of community. (Listen to Howard Rheingold’s interview on the Modern Learners Podcast for an example.)

Although Permanent Record talks a lot about technology, it is far from just another technological book. Even with the discussions about privacy, content and metadata, this is not so much about ‘how to’, but rather a why. For me, the book is first and fore-mostly about humans, society and democracy. Therefore, I think it is best considered as a meditation on the world we want today and tomorrow.

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creative commons licensed (BY-SA) flickr photo by mrkrndvs: http://flickr.com/photos/aaron_davis/16006575977

There is something about the Christmas / New Year break and reminiscing. It seems to be a time of year when everyone stops and takes stock. This year has had its moments. It is my first Christmas since my mother passed away. Although sad, I have found solace in reminiscing the memories I am left with.

Memories are a funny thing, not only can they play tricks on you. Deceive you. Manipulate the past to be as you think it is. There are also many different ways that they can be activated. More often than not, it is things that have become attached with the past. Beyond events like birthdays and Christmas, the obvious to me are people. This is particularly true when I get together with my siblings. Our shared history forces memories out of us. Another is places. In the last few months of my mother’s life, we would meet at a park near the city with my daughter. I can’t help but remember each time I drive past. A colleague told me that he still has the same feeling ten years on when he goes past his local oval where his father watched him play football, week in, week out. A different sort of memory is associated with objects. This maybe a range of different things, from a gift to a letter. One particular item which holds a lot of meaning for me in all facets of life is music. There are certain moments in life which I feel are best encapsulated by music. Here are the songs that remind me of my mum …

We Built This City On Rock and Roll (Starship)

This was the first song that I remember my mum ever playing for me. Who knows how old I must have been. Three maybe? Growing up, she did not have many records and by the mid-80’s they were replaced by compact discs, but I know she had this one and it is what I will always remember. I am sure it wasn’t the first song she played me, but over time it became a point of personal folklore.

Gimme Shelter (Holy Soldier)

Something odd happened when I hit my teens. I am not sure if it was just chance or not, but my mum stopped buying me country music and instead started purchasing metal albums. She would get music from the local Christian bookstore based on what was in the reduced bin near the door. One of my favourite purchases was Holy Soldier’s Last Train. I had never really listened to much heavy metal growing up and loved the melodrama. Ironically though, the track that I went back to again and again was a cover of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Gimme Shelter’. I had no idea that it was a cover and I don’t think mum had any idea that I was listening to the Rolling Stones.

I Do It For You (Bryan Adams)

At the same time as mum was purchasing me Christian metal, she was staving off the attack from popular culture. Saved by the ever nostalgic Gold 104.3 in the car, a station that played the best of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, she took to school to complain about the music that was being forced on me. In Year 7 every class sang a song as a group. The song Mr. Fitz had us singing was Bryan Adams ‘I Do It For You’ from Robin Hood – Prince of Thieves. Mum was furious about this choice and stormed up to the school. Sadly, not because she actually had taste and didn’t feel that it was respectable for anyone to be singing Bryan Adams, but because it was a song about love and in her eyes we were far too young for such things. (The irony of the situation was that Mr. Fitz was actually a writer for the band TISM, while Damien Cowell, aka Humprey B Flaubert, also taught music at the school at the time. I would hate to have know what they thought of the complaint.) To appease her, the song was actually changed to REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’. Pain and suffering was acceptable.

Only You – Live at Roseland NYC (Portishead)

I am not sure if mum stopped buying or I stopped accepting, but as I grew older, started playing guitar, my tastes matured. I am not sure that there were too many fans in the house of my love of alternative rock, especially the more distorted music. Therefore, when I started driving I would have a bit of a selection in the car. Due to my grandparents purchasing a new car, I bought my car long before I could actually drive it. My rule was, you drive my car, you listen to my music. My CD of choice for mum was Portishead’s live album. Although not pop, I thought that mum would at least appreciate the vibe of it. Being who she was, mum didn’t say a word for near on six months until one day she cracked. She could not stand DJ Andy Smith’s incessant scratching throughout. It was just too much, she couldn’t stand it. I stopped playing her Portishead.

The Climb (Miley Cyrus)

I spent the last hours before my mum passed with my sister. To try and liven up her room we mused about what music we could play. My sister told me that they had watched Hannah Montana together and that mum really like the Miley Cyrus song from it. So I jumped on my phone and downloaded it. We left it on repeat next to her bed. I must admit that it was a weird moment when, after clicking to play something else, it randomly started playing in class on iPad a few months later.

A Personal Postscript

I remember when I started blogging, I thought of it as being something professional to capture my thinking and practise. Fine, the act of reflection might be subjective, but I never envisaged it as being personal. However, the more I read of others and wrote myself, the more I realised that there is something missed in being ‘too professional’ and not personal. I was particularly taken by the open sharing from people like Alan Levine, Dean Shareski, Doug Belshaw, Pernille Ripp, John Spencer, Amy Burvall, Jon Harper, Anne Mirtchen, David Truss and George Couros, just to name a few. Whether it be happenings with the family, personal illness or the passing of a pet, each provided some perspective beyond the classroom. David Truss summed this dilemma up best when he stated that, “connected learning is as much about relationships as it is about learning.” This can have its challenges for as Chris Wejr points out, in a important post, not everyone is able to tweet and post who they are. However, I feel that as I have progressively given more to fostering relationships, the more I have gotten back.

So what about you, how are you giving back? I would love to hear.