Virginia in the desert

I've often tried to account for my intense interest in the USA. As a kid in Australia in the 1960s, I grew up with American TV - Combat (with Vic Morrow), Lee Marvin in M-Squad, The Three Stooges, Get Smart...It was that time in Australia's history when Great Britain was losing its cultural dominance.

But Australia was a long way away from the US then - so far away that in the 1956 Stanley Kramer movie, On the Beach, the crew of an US submarine could survive (for the time being) the nuclear cloud that had descended over the northern hemisphere because they were in Melbourne, far far away, at the time. There were no daily flights to LA or San Francisco when I was a kid, much less Qantas's recently-launched direct flights to Dallas. America was almost exotic.

My interest in the US could have gotten a good kick-along I realise though from having lived in Alice Springs in Central Australia, in the early 1980s.

Looking south down the Todd River (Lhere Mparntwe) towards Mt Sadadeen on the left and Mt John, behind. Photo from Wikipedia, uploaded by Shiftchange. It is Mt John that I first noticed glowing at night (see blog Location, Location, 23 August) while crossing the causeway (foreground) at night in 2006

Alice Springs, frozen in time around 1981-2, would make an interesting sociological study. You had your 'foreign legions', the teachers from Queensland and Adelaide doing their couple of years up north to 'repay' a Commonwealth Scholarship, or the clique of Melbourne barristers and QCs who were doing a stint working in the newly brought-in aboriginal Land Rights (some of them later Victorian Supreme Court judges; Land Rights was their rite of passage).

Alice Springs then was a country town that had to be a city. There were no traffic lights, but all the capital city daily newspapers were flown in from the various coastal cities every morning and you could buy The Age or The  Courier-Mail or The West Australian by ten and catch up with the day's news over a coffee in Todd Street at the same time as people in Melbourne and Brisbane and Perth did.

There was the aboriginal 'tapestry' too, of course - women sitting cross-legged under street trees collecting seed; people conversing in sign language across either side of Stuart Highway (the upward rotation of a loosely-held right thumb and forefinger to denote enquiry and so on...); the various reminders of a network of tracks, the paths of legendary creator caterpillars and dogs and 'uninitiated boys' who had passed this way in the Beginning, pre-dating streets and roads and bitumen; the metamorphosed body of the dog creator, the boulder Akngwelye thirrewe, which then stood chained off in the railway yards, but, with the widening of the Stuart Highway, is now outside a fast food outlet...

But the other element that made Alice unique then was the presence of Americans who worked 18 kilometres (11 miles) away at Pine Gap Defence Base and lived in town. Back then, strolling around Alice, you could often feel that you were walking around in the DC suburbs of Virginia or Maryland, in a little bit of Virginia or Maryland flung out into the desert.

I remember having a conversation at a cocktail party at the home of the chief of Pine Gap. There beyond the balcony was Spencer Hill and everything it reminded me of about Spencer and Gillen and their books, their description of the great engwura ceremony staged at the Telegraph Station in 1896; but my conversation this particular afternoon was about environmental pressures on Chesapeake Bay. I also remember Sallie K coming up to me in the street to exclaim, 'The president's been shot'. This was 1981. The president was Ronald Reagan. But citizens of other Australian towns would not have put the news like this. No-one would have said 'the president'; he wasn't ours. And I remember going to the home of another American one afternoon and seeing a video of last weekend's Washington Redskins-Miami Dolphins game, flown in on Monday by Starlifter (which brought in lots of other stuff as well, of course).

But the Americans also meant American music. Alice Springs had homegrown bands like Bloodwood, say, or Ted Egan accompanying himself on his cardboard beer carton. I'm conscious of the fact that there was once another ancient repertoire for the local hills and gaps and soaks and waterholes. But back in the early 80s, Alice Springs had a Big Band, squeal trumpets and all, full of American personnel. I remember playing old favourites from the Great American Songbook - Tuxedo Junction, arrangements by Sammy Nestico or Nelson Riddle, You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To...The band was in great demand. It even played once at a debutantes' ball up the road in the mining town of Tennant Creek, six hours away.

It's funny to think of the disjunctions that existed in Alice Springs in the early 1980s - videos of American Football games brought in by Starlifter, Left Hand Drives, the people who in casual conversation could share my references to Melbourne restaurants, other people living by campfire in the dry creekbed...

It really was a unique time, but convinced me in a sense that I'd already lived in America - and that if it's so nice to come home to someone, there are several places I can come home to.


If you liked this blog, others of mine on Central Australia are:

Carving up the pie, 17 December 20912
Life-changing statements, 16 December 2012
Ah, Nathanael, 29 November 2012
Victory over death and despair in a bygone age (thoughts on John Strehlow's The Tale of Frieda Keysser), 5 Nov 2012
Drowned Man in a Dry Creekbed - Happy New Year 1993, 6 August 2012
Opera in a land of Song, 29 July 2012
Considering the aboriginal land of Altjira, 20 May 2012

Iconography 4

I wrote recently (Prelapsarian Sydney) of the squat brown blocks of Commission flats that had `been demolished recently in Glebe...[revealing] for the first time in however many years...the sandstone terraces that once stood at the head of Blackwattle Bay...' And in a blog on Sydney's iconography I pointed out the prevalence of honey-coloured sandstone as building material in Sydney's Victorian-era public buildings.

It's not just public buildings either. Every so often you'll come across a 19th century cottage built out of sandstone.

Little cottages like this are so typical of the inner suburbs of Sydney, this being only 3 or 4 kms from the CBD. At the head of Glebe Point Road to the east of here, closer into the city, there is a plaque marking the western boundary of the town of Sydney in the time of Governor Bourke (1831-37). I wonder who lived 'way out here' then?

'...at their several fires...'

I am lukewarm on Thomas Jefferson's politics. Apart from the fact that he kept slaves while 'yelping' (Samuel Johnson's word) for liberty, he regarded himself first and foremost as a Virginian and I always take advocacy of States' Rights with a grain of salt. States' Rights - the cri de coeur of those who would hide from 'a decent respect to the opinions of mankind' (if I may quote TJ's Declaration of Independence right back at him), especially with regard to reforming injustice. Just look at the Civil War and Jim Crow.

I also consider that Jefferson was disloyal to Washington - while serving in the guy's cabinet as Secretary of State! And I reckon he was the godfather of Indian Removal (shunting the Eastern tribes across the Mississippi), although I concede that there might have been some sort of idealism behind his theory that if the Indians could be taught agriculture they would need less of their forest domains, thus freeing up land for the starving of Europe who would soon be seeking refuge in the New World. I remember seeing a jotting of Jefferson's on the Library of Congress website to the effect that life's ideal is for each man (sic) to have a few acres of his own to work. And I do like the fact that many of the American founders were farmers and close to nature; that they would conclude a letter on matters of state with, say, 'asparagus has now come to table'.

In fact, I much prefer Jefferson as a writer, a coiner of immortal phrases. And I am very moved by the fact that late in life, he (the third president) and John Adams (the second), despite having been political foes around the turn of the 19th century, resumed their friendship and re-commenced a correspondence that is now one of the glories of American Letters.

My favourite passage was written from Monticello (the retired Jefferson's home on the hill) on 11 June, 1812. In reply to Adams' questions about Indians, whether 'there [is] any Book that pretends to give any Account of [their]Traditions..,', Jefferson replies:

'So much in answer to your enquiries concerning Indians, a people with whom, in the very early part of my life, I was very familiar, and acquired impressions of attachment and commiseration for them which have never been obliterated. Before the revolution they were in the habit of coming often, and in great numbers to the seat of our government, where I was very much with them. I knew much the great Outassete, warrior and orator of the Cherokees.

An illustration of the three Cherokee leaders who went to London in 1763. Outtasete [Outacity] is on the left.

'He was always the guest of my father, on his journeys to and from Williamsburg. I was in his camp when he made his great farewell oration to his people, the evening before his departure for England. The moon was in full splendor, and to her he seemed to address himself in his prayers for his own safety on the voyage, and that of his people during his absence. His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people at their several fires, filled me with awe and veneration, altho' I did not understand a word he uttered.'

Jefferson went on to say that the Cherokees and Creeks are now well advanced in agriculture and that the Cherokee are now instituting a regular representative government. But those who are not shaping up will fall prey to the British and we will have to drive them into the stony mountains, securing 'our women and children for ever from the tomahawk and scalping knife'.

But the description of Outassete's oration reminds me of another oral tradition. In January 1976 I went to visit some friends at Pipalyatjara in far northwestern South Australia, about a 250 kms southwest of Uluru (Ayers Rock). This was one of the first outstations set up by Australian aboriginal people in order to get out of government settlements. Back then, the only structures at Pipalyatjara were a couple of caravans, a radio shack, store, and a shower 'block' (made of timber). The people lived in wiltjas, their traditional structures. Three years later I went to Kintore (Walungurru) on the Western Australian border and the wiltjas there were made of hessian bags and corrugated iron. Not so in Pipalyatjara then. They were the traditional wood and bark structures. (I've mentioned this before, in the blog about the Lenape wigwam in Inwood Hill Park, New York.)


One day my friend and his new wife had an argument out in front of the store. Most of us standing around, including myself, made themselves scarce, and finally my friend's wife got into their car and drove off.

That night we slept outside. Up till then we had slept inside a caravan. Suddenly a huge argument started in the camp. We coudn't see anything. It was dark, but we could hear a youngfella raising his voice, others joining him in agreement and dispute and finally the booming voice of an old man, one of the tjilpis, several dozen yards away across the wide expanse of the camp, laying down the law.

His speech was rich with serial verbs and I remember particularly the repetition of the word 'walypala' [whitefella] - 'walypala, walypala, walypala, walypala....' Ushma Scales, a Pitjantjatjara speaker, was with us - he'd come across from Amata, 150 miles to the east, for a visit. We asked him what the argument was about. The old man was telling the young people to behave like Pitjantjatjara, not like whitefellas, who had provided him with an example of behaviour he disapproved of today.

But what really got me was how Ushma went on: 'This sort of discussion goes on every night,' he said. 'It's "the news". It's been going on like this in front of people's wiltjas every night for aeons.'  This was what really impressed me.  People discussing the day's events, the old men such as this one this night delivering ornate, almost baroque speeches 'altho' I did not understand a word he uttered'; all this coming at us in the dark, across the wide diameter of the camp while 'the people sat at their several fires'.

Reprieved - Inner West scenes 3

These forthcoming NSW local council elections (Saturday 8 Sep) have got me thinking back to the last lot of council elections in 2008. I was doorknocking for one of the candidates in the Inner West.

Fascinated by the different ways people live... when you get to knock at hundreds of doors you would never normally knock at. At one house, the door opened, a noxious vapour escaped and only after it cleared could I make out the pale and speechless denizen who lived in that hydroponic atmosphere. Very hard to launch into a spiel at a moment like that.

Of course there's always an element of 'sorry to disturb your peaceful Saturday afternoon' in this sort of excercise. At one place I knocked and the front door was swung open by a breathless girl who was hastily pulling a wrap around her bare shoulders. 'Oh, uh...' I began. Behind her another girl, likewise quickly pulling on covering, disappeared up the hall. I pretended my focus had never left the front door frame as I launched into my spiel. 'I'm doorknocking for candidate X in the forthcoming council elections and I wonder...' 'No', the girl said with admirable decisiveness and slammed the door in my face. I think I'd seen an exquisite blend of relief and resentment flash over her face. For a brief second, she must have thought they'd been caught by the cuckolded husband, boyfriend, or girlfriend. Nevertheless...they'd been interrupted!

I went back out into the street to relate my experience to a colleague who'd been doorknocking the 'evens' on the other side of the street. Slightly insulted by my curt dismissal, I quickly recovered my self-esteem when he said, 'Oh, how come I don't get to knock on those doors?'

Sousa and the Sioux

Continuing my series of reprints is this one from the middle of last year:

Last week, walking the maze of streets that made up the old part of city downtown, we came across the Museum of the Native American, or at least the part of the collection that was left in New York after the bulk of it was moved to Washington.

Even so 'depleted', the range of exhibits from all across the Americas pays tribute to the inventiveness of human design, as you compare differences in dress and other artefacts from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego.

I was particularly struck by this outfit worn by British lieutenant, Andrew Foster when he was inducted ('adopted') into the Anishinaabe in the Upper Great Lakes area in the late 1700s

I would wonder about the sensitivities around showing this image except for the fact that the outfit looks like an  'interpretation' of European dress, a tunic with a collar, albeit topped by a feathered headdress.

Which all reminds me that I should check up and see what's happened with Sousa and the Sioux, another story of contact that I mentioned to an orchestra out West some months ago.

In December 1890 , the United States army killed 150 men, women and children of the Lakota Sioux and wounded 51 others (some of whom died later) at Wounded Knee in South Dakota. Ethnologist James Mooney wrote a report on the massacre, The Ghost Dance Religion and the Sioux Outbreak of 1890, which was printed in the Smithsonian's fourteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1896. Mooney located the source of the massacre in army suppression of a religion known as the Ghost Dance which was taking hold in Indian nations in the closing years of the 19th century.The Ghost Dance religion prophesied a peaceful end to white expansion, although the religion's spread at the same time that the government was moving the Sioux onto smaller reservations to accommodate westward expansion, alarmed some settlers.

Mooney's report displays an astonishing sympathy with Native American culture for the 1890s and his empathy is further demonstrated in the fact that the archival cylinder recordings of Sioux and Shoshone songs accompaning the report are not actually by Native Americans, but Mooney himself. Singing them in the Berliner Studio back in Washington must have involved an extraordinary feat of memory.

But what most strikes me most about Mooney's report is that half of the musical transcriptions of the 50+ pages of Ghost Dance chants are by John Philip Sousa - Sousa, the march king, the composer of patriotic, if not tub-thumping, chauvinistic marches, who would produce The Stars and Stripes Forever and Liberty Bell within the not-so-distant future.You wonder how this assignment might have marked him for later life. Where was he in his career at this stage? Did he talk/write about this work? Did he and Mooney correspond/sit down together? Do we know what he thought? After all, he later wrote those patriotic marches.

At the time I was first thinking of this piece I had no answers to these questions. Except that, in a 1920 edition of Theodore Presser's magazine The Etude, there is an article by a Sioux called Red Cloud which says, in part: 'When I came back to America I became more and more interested in music...and finally achieved my great ambition to play [Sousaphone] in the Sousa band. Mr  Sousa must have an inborn feeling for the Indian because in his famous suite Dwellers in the Western World he has an Indian section which, although composed of themes which are entirely original with him, have all the characteristics of Indian music quite as though some departed Indian spirits had inspired him...' Did Sousa and Red Cloud ever discuss their relationship to Wounded Knee?

All these connections suggested music to me. Among other issues, a performance work could try to answer the question: 'how did transcribing the Ghost Dance chants contained in a report on a massacre affect Sousa's sympathies?' The opposite pull of traditional dances and patriotic marches also provides a clue to a musical plan for a piece.

Most recently I wrote to the Sousa Archive in Chicago to see what they may hold in their collection. They told me additionally that Sousa had been named an honorary chief on July 30, 1925 by the Fire Hills Indian Reserve, then by the Ponca Tribe on October 12, 1928, and for a third time by the Pawnee Tribe on May 16, 1931. Were these publicity type demonstrations, or were they expressions of genuine sympathy? Another thread to explore.

The Archive said that unfortunately there was no specific correspondence documenting Sousa's thoughts on Native American music. But there may be interesting references in the Sousa Band press clippings. That it might be worth coming to Chicago to conduct some further research. Indeed it might.

Location, location

I used to say that one of my favourite places on earth was the Alice Springs Drive-In, c.1981. It's derelict now and has recently been slated for subdivision as a new suburb, Kilgariff.

 http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/05/13/2898433.htm

But it was a fantastic place to watch movies back then. Six kilometres from town, you'd sit outside in the desert night. If you were waiting for the movie to start you'd look at the brilliant starry night or the dinosaur shapes of the MacDonnell Ranges glowing in the dark (they do glow), pick up the odd whiff of eucalyptus smoke or snatch of Pitjantjatjara or Arrernte spoken around the campfires of the fringe camps around the perimeter, and then watch Hollywood movies while surrounded by Americans from Virginia or Maryland who worked at Pine Gap Defence base.

I remember seeing The Elephant Man there in 1981. The Victorian-era story of the dreadfully deformed Joseph Merrick, forced to work as a carnival attraction until rescued by the surgeon Frederick Treves and allowed to live at London Hospital for the remainder of his days, is heart-rending enough. But in the past few days I've watched again some of the scenes where Antony Hopkins perhaps first became recognised universally as a great actor. There's the scene where Treves sees Merrick for the first time. Treves, played by Hopkins, steps out of the shadows where he's been cowering and in the light a solitary tear runs down his face. How did Hopkins do that?

There is also that great scene where Treves is trying to convince Mr Carr-Gom, the administrator of the hospital, that Merrick is not an imbecile and that his needs are best-served at their establishment. He has coached Merrick in The Lord is my Shepherd, but Merrick is struck dumb when Carr-Gom visits. I'm sorry, says Carr-Gom, but he will have to go elsewhere. Outside Merrick's room, on the landing, Treves is disappointed and pensive. But he hears Merrick go on. 'Mr Carr-Gom,' he says, 'I didn't teach him this bit'. What bit is it? The bit that always gets me: 'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me'.

But to get back to the Alice Springs Drive In. Here was the other great thing about seeing this movie there. The Elephant Man was in black and white. In the desert night, there was no way of telling exactly where the screen ended and the desert backdrop started. And at the very end of the film, as the sounds of Barber's Adagio stir and Merrick decides to try sleeping lying down 'like ordinary people', though it will asphyxiate him, a huge falling star fell behind the screen and sputtered spectacularly. Everybody, even those out on the perimeter, gasped at that long-ago event timed beautifully for the end of our movie. 

More Australian icons (a third lot)

I had been hoping to get up again to the Blue Mountains, west of here, before returning to the US, and was finally rewarded. It's only two hours away by train, but has a whole other 'feel' to sub-tropical Sydney (on Saturday, for example: freezing).

The Mountains contain Australia's second-best scenery in my opinion (the best being in Central Australia), and obviously the honey-coloured cliffs would always form part of my inventory of iconic Australian images.

But I had to laugh the other day when I looked into a yard and saw a Hills Hoist right on the edge of the cliff. Barrie Kosky recognised the Hills Hoist's status as an Australian icon when he used it to symbolise his Adelaide Festival in 1996, but how quaint to see it juxtaposed with the Blue Mountains' primeval scenery in this way.

All it needed was clothes to be flapping on it, for the dissonance to be complete.