The art of living…Happy new year

Hope you had a great xmas and may the new year bring you all yer greedy little hopes and aspirations.

After flying into Melbourne, I went to stay with My cousin and her family (The lovely Slingsby’s) in the suburbs and had an awesome 10 days. They have emigrated over as do many british citizens to live the life of their dreams.

They now enjoy a whopping house with swimming pool, home cinema (a la MTV cribs) games room and all importantly a spot of sunny weather. We watched films and played with Bailey their jack Russell, feeding her chicken necks and making her pee with excitement.

Went to see the photographic exhibition of Rennie Ellis who worked for worldwide magazines including Playboy and changed Australian social photography with the ‘Candid shot’ He was asked to shoot flamboyant parties of the rich and famous. http://www.rennieellis.com.au/. Some great hedonistic pictures (tits and arse shots) and a real insight into the days of excess (see how I pinched some of that from the website!)

Melbourne is uber cool in places and is said to be the cultural capital of Australia. The place is alive with great venues, music, restaraunts, vintage clothes shops and galleries. I Played an open mic night at the Blue Tile club in Fitzroy. The host was a bit odd. An embarassing but talented cross between Craig David, Eminem and Barry White. The other artists included a great american stand up comedian who was a little bit Bill Hicks in places and an aboriginal chap who sang about his youth, when he had been taken away from his parents to an orphanage with all the other mixed race kids. That was during the period that the Australian government carried out their right to be a bunch of twats.

Checked out Nouvelle Vague, the mellow French acoustic band who cover Punk classics in a chilled out latin style. Instead of the two French singers in the line up, one had been replaced by a 6ft plus blonde goddess who performed with immaculate cabaret expertise and although at times seemed to be larger than the band themselves, put on a great show. Towards the end of the gig, as the Percussionist charged on with a hip shaking Rumba, the blonde girl jumped down into the front of the crowd shaking the tassles of her 30’s flapper dress and proceeded to head straight towards me. At this point my heart started beating out of my chest with the thought of having to dance with her. She stopped in front of me and put her hand on my shoulder continuing to goad the crowd into joining her in a colossal dance off. Being stone cold sober, its normally difficult to prise my dancing mojo out of the depths of my soul.  As my head swam over the crowd and the beat became distant and muffled I followed her up onto the stage and everyone had vanished leaving us alone face to face. We danced by the light of the moon and then the night was over and what actually happened? Well in MY head thats what happened.

Being in Sydney, you would expect that I went to see one of the greatest firework displays in the worlds best natural harbour setting. No. Instead I decided to spend 10 days in the mountains with 150 other people avoiding eye contact, not speaking a word and learning the art of meditation.  If you say the word meditation to some people, often they immediately think weirdo or magic carpets or any number of other strange things. Now let me just make this plain. Meditating can give you a buzz that is like taking drugs. But guess what. You dont take ANY drugs. Thats right… and furthermore, the type of meditation practised in this course doesnt make you steal from your family, become lazy or have withdrawals. It actually makes you a BETTER PERSON. Now thats a bit difficult for a lot of people to digest including myself but it may become apparent if you check it out. Look at Dhamma.org if you want to know more.

It wasn’t until after this intensive event that I found out a little bit about the people who had sat in silence, within touching distance, cross legged and in pain for 10 days. It was a surge of chattering and information at the beginning which was quite overwhelming. I got a lift back to Sydney with Cameron, the Australian mixed martial arts and NSW thai kick boxing champion. He is a personal trainer in Manly and has an incredible knowledge of alternative medicines and physical awareness. We nattered about psychedelic drugs, shamens and I said I would give him a few good places to visit when he heads to South America later this year. Sam, a vinyl junkie who runs a day care centre, said after the second day he wanted to run over to the microphone at the front of the meditation hall and just start beatboxing and telling dirty jokes. I must say, I fancied doing a bit of half arsed break dancing down the aisle through all the attendees and occasionally felt like shrieking obscenities for the hell of it. John from Harrogate told me about how interesting the activity in the surroundings were whilst eating his spaghetti bolognese in an ethiopian brothel plus how he found different ways of eating camel during his recent motor bike journey a la Ewan McGregor (minus the support team) from England to Sydney.

And seeing as many may have given up booze as a new years resolution, here is the ultimate cocktail recipe from Joel who is a bar specialist and works in 5 star hotels in Mumbai designing cocktail menus.

Crush up some good Chocolate (not milk chocolate) with a couple Cinnamon sticks, add to splash of whisky, splash of butterscotch shnapps, Pure Mango juice, then strain twice onto ice. MMmmmmm….

And we’ll call that one “The art of living”.

oh and this is a great review from Rock n Reel Magazine

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.