here's a review of a book published locally. it can be found at www.undergrowth.org.au. undergrowth is a friend of mine but the work is great and i'd be recommending it even if i didn't know tim who is a lovely man. enjoy. s
NoMadology- undergowth.org
We are all travellers, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all travellers. From the moment we are pushed out of our mothers’ womb to the moment we are placed in a box in the ground/ sent out to sea/ our ashes are spread/ we are living breathing walking talking travellers. Every moment, every step, we take we travel into another world and become a tourist there. It’s a thought that can be paralysing if one lingers on it too long. Naturally we have ways of making this load easier, of sharing these journeys in order not to get buckled down by the magnitude of this thought. One such way is to share it through art, photography, travelogues, documentary and films. Another, and ultimately more simple and common way, is in the short anecdote. It is the later approach that Undergrowth.org take with their latest book Nomadology.
Originally started as an online blog in early 2005, Nomadology is the seventh and most cohesive publication to date from the Undergrowth crew. The stories are short and sweet (nothing longer than eight pages) and read like little snapshots, postcards if you like, from assorted locations of counter culture around the world. There’s Rak Razam’s reenactment (sans LSD) of the ride that Dr Abbie Hoffman took through the streets of Basel in 1943, Verb tells the tale of booty dancing in Gunbalunya and the effect that boredom and petrol sniffing have on the indigenous youth of that community a recollection which in its pondering and questioning style avoids the moralising tone that others accounts may have travelled down and in so doing is much more confronting and challenging read. Dan writes of teaching English in Indonesia and of the eroticism of riding the Jakarta bus where sardine conditions means a strangers hand can quite easily fondle ones private region. And in the Across the Belly of the beast, the longest story of the collection, Arrow writes about hitchhiking across the guts of America with Curtis a red neck gulf war veteran at the wheel and a book of blotter art in his bag. It’s a tale in which the gulf war veteran launches tirades against niggers, throws a homemade molotov coktail (made out of an empty whiskey bottle) at a 2004 election billboard for George Bush and which ends with Curtis and Arrow taking some of the blotter art, tripping off their heads on the side of the road, and waking up the next morning in each others arms. A poignant image for the need for connection we all have but it is not the most poignant piece of the collection. That title goes to Sam Hoffmans’ Travellers all sort in which he manages to convey the sense of travelling through India not by a description of the place itself but rather through a series of brief descriptions of the people he meets. It's funny, it's surreal (a guy hitchhiking across the mountain spots (at 4500 feet) two Koreans standing on the side of the road eating two minute noodles) and for anyone who has travelled a perfect illustration of what travelling reveals to the traveller: the fleetingness and randomness of life.
And it's this fleetingness that makes Nomadology a perfect illustration of the milleu of the globalised world in which we are living. To read Nomadology is to attend a friends’ party with strangers and acquaintances you barely know but who you once you’ve meet you want to remain friends with forever. It’s a night full of laughs and stories that inspire you to get out there and experience the world in all its shape and sizes. It leaves you with the realisation that there's all these places in the world you haven't visited and a sense of pride in that you've been lucky enough to hear it and can share it with others. More tellingly though Nomadology shows how we are more alike then we imagine at times. How deep down we all want long to hear travelling stories, that we all looking to share and experience the latest journey from some remote area of the world/ our brain. That in spite of fashion, politics, language, religion we're all travelling spirits longing for the connection of another spirit. That even if that connection is fleeting and transitory it’s worth it and in a climate and world that is trying to quell and squash ones spirit it’s these connections that we should cherish and treasure; as fleeting and random as they maybe.
NoMadology- undergowth.org
We are all travellers, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, we are all travellers. From the moment we are pushed out of our mothers’ womb to the moment we are placed in a box in the ground/ sent out to sea/ our ashes are spread/ we are living breathing walking talking travellers. Every moment, every step, we take we travel into another world and become a tourist there. It’s a thought that can be paralysing if one lingers on it too long. Naturally we have ways of making this load easier, of sharing these journeys in order not to get buckled down by the magnitude of this thought. One such way is to share it through art, photography, travelogues, documentary and films. Another, and ultimately more simple and common way, is in the short anecdote. It is the later approach that Undergrowth.org take with their latest book Nomadology.
Originally started as an online blog in early 2005, Nomadology is the seventh and most cohesive publication to date from the Undergrowth crew. The stories are short and sweet (nothing longer than eight pages) and read like little snapshots, postcards if you like, from assorted locations of counter culture around the world. There’s Rak Razam’s reenactment (sans LSD) of the ride that Dr Abbie Hoffman took through the streets of Basel in 1943, Verb tells the tale of booty dancing in Gunbalunya and the effect that boredom and petrol sniffing have on the indigenous youth of that community a recollection which in its pondering and questioning style avoids the moralising tone that others accounts may have travelled down and in so doing is much more confronting and challenging read. Dan writes of teaching English in Indonesia and of the eroticism of riding the Jakarta bus where sardine conditions means a strangers hand can quite easily fondle ones private region. And in the Across the Belly of the beast, the longest story of the collection, Arrow writes about hitchhiking across the guts of America with Curtis a red neck gulf war veteran at the wheel and a book of blotter art in his bag. It’s a tale in which the gulf war veteran launches tirades against niggers, throws a homemade molotov coktail (made out of an empty whiskey bottle) at a 2004 election billboard for George Bush and which ends with Curtis and Arrow taking some of the blotter art, tripping off their heads on the side of the road, and waking up the next morning in each others arms. A poignant image for the need for connection we all have but it is not the most poignant piece of the collection. That title goes to Sam Hoffmans’ Travellers all sort in which he manages to convey the sense of travelling through India not by a description of the place itself but rather through a series of brief descriptions of the people he meets. It's funny, it's surreal (a guy hitchhiking across the mountain spots (at 4500 feet) two Koreans standing on the side of the road eating two minute noodles) and for anyone who has travelled a perfect illustration of what travelling reveals to the traveller: the fleetingness and randomness of life.
And it's this fleetingness that makes Nomadology a perfect illustration of the milleu of the globalised world in which we are living. To read Nomadology is to attend a friends’ party with strangers and acquaintances you barely know but who you once you’ve meet you want to remain friends with forever. It’s a night full of laughs and stories that inspire you to get out there and experience the world in all its shape and sizes. It leaves you with the realisation that there's all these places in the world you haven't visited and a sense of pride in that you've been lucky enough to hear it and can share it with others. More tellingly though Nomadology shows how we are more alike then we imagine at times. How deep down we all want long to hear travelling stories, that we all looking to share and experience the latest journey from some remote area of the world/ our brain. That in spite of fashion, politics, language, religion we're all travelling spirits longing for the connection of another spirit. That even if that connection is fleeting and transitory it’s worth it and in a climate and world that is trying to quell and squash ones spirit it’s these connections that we should cherish and treasure; as fleeting and random as they maybe.
posted by paradigm at 10:53 PM
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