Tuesday 22nd january

Tuesday 22^nd January

So now MONAFOMA.  This is such a huge event, so weird, so out there… I didn’t get to many of the performances; Pete saw a lot more, and was mightily impressed, and occasionally bemused.  What I can absolutely say, with great confidence, is that it was a great success and that Hobart was heaving with cool hipsters from all over Australia, and probably from all over the world, all of them saying variations on cool, man. 

My experiences included:

• An exploration of Princes Wharf No #1 shed, divided and transformed.  Pete and I climbed several levels in the first “room”, where there were installations of various sorts.  We stuck our heads up into large sound cones, each of them emitting a peculiar whine or drone, and looked into dark little rooms, all mystifying.  On the top level there was a large foil tent thingy, into which about ten (bemused) people crowded, making happy crinkling sounds with the foil.  A lovely young MONAFOMA employee came up to us and said, “have you been to the bottom two levels?  If not, go there first otherwise this won’t make any sense.”  Ummm…he was right, it didn’t make any sense even though we had been to all of the levels in the correct order…but we just nodded sagely and thanked him.

• We moved on to the next area, with a huge sound stage, and listened to a heart-stopping (LOUD!) band called Dirty Projectors for a while.  Not for a large amount of time…it really was LOUD, and I couldn’t see anything at all.  I watched a father with his little girl, similar age to Zoe, ie three.  She HATED it and was covering her ears and sobbing into his shoulder as he beamed proudly and stayed in the venue with her in his arms.  If he had had Zoe with him she would have turned into Zoe Of Fury and he would have HAD to leave… 

•  We left this noisy venue and went to a very different one…the Baha’i Centre, where there was a concert of lullabies, played on violin by Anna McMichael and on piano by…oh dear I didn’t write her name down.  There were a few beanbags around the edges of the room, and quite a few of the beanbag inhabitants were soon, appropriately, zizzing away contentedly.  Two of the lullabies were very beautiful and melodic; most of them were just a bit odd.  The Axeman’s Lullaby, for example, was not particularly soothing.

On Sunday we had a big MONAFOMA day.  But I think I will pause now and gather my thoughts a bit before I launch into any sort of description…my ears and my brain are still ringing from the Bushfire Relief concert last night – the Hoodoo Gurus, as the closing act!! 

India #73

At 12.30, after our Amber Fort adventure, it was time to go to the airport with the Sharmas.  They were off to Mumbai to do family things.  Their plane was due to leave at 1.20 so we had plenty of time, the airport is not far at all, just a few kilometres.  But oh dear…every road was jammed and gridlocked.  Raj, our driver, was a true hero.  He ricocheted the little van down one-way streets the wrong way, veering over nature strips, and went all the way to the other end of the city and out the back end.  He got us onto the highway with the wind in his hair.  It was actually all quite stressful.  There is a strict speed limit on the highway and he seemed to be crawling along the road.  He was adamant that he couldn’t exceed the speed limit - there is a heavy fine.  Vish leaned forward to Pete, who was in the front seat being Raj’s helper, and whispered, “Tell him to go very fast and I will pay the fine!”  I think Pete was the only person who was totally convinced that we would get to the airport in time.  Hana had completely given up and sat despondently beside me trying to work out alternative ways of getting back to Mumbai by the evening.  We got there at about 1.15 and all three Sharmas left the van as if it was the start of the 100 metres hurdles at the Olympics, with their packs and bags dragging along behind them.  Pete, Raj and I got out of the van and strolled about, waiting to see if they were in fact allowed onto the plane.  Miraculously all was well, and we three heaved big sighs of relief just as I imagine the three Sharmas were heaving sighs of relief inside the Mumbai-bound plane.