It’s been a damn busy week, and as I type I’m curled up on the couch, the soothing voice of David Attenborough on the TV telling me the world is weary of all the humanity weighing it down, and I’m all worked up over a TV program which was debating the ban of the burqa*.
It is under these circumstances I bring you my top 5 places I would be this week if I could be everywhere at once.
1. The UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in New York (Sep 20-22). Two of my dreams colliding - watching the sun set over skyscrapers listening to this song, and halving extreme poverty by 2015 - would be about as close to heaven as I could imagine getting this week. Sigh.
2. This is not art festival in Newcastle (Sep 30-Oct 4, Aus) sounds pretty darn cool. Writing, theatre, criticism, sounds and sights and colours and, no doubt, full of people you’d love to have in your phonebook.
3. Not to be outdone, the shiny city of Sydney is throwing up Art and About. I’d make sure I saw the bike bike, probably enroute to the oh-so-Melbourne sounding:
check out the oft-neglected Sydney laneways - a maze of history and urban appeal…Are You Looking At Me? breathes new life into these dark alleyways as nine contemporary Sydney artists inject them with sound, light, imagery and projections.
4.One of my new favourite songs is by a Melbourne band called The Spoils, and they’re playing at Old Bar tonight. I’m not there, but I wish I was.
5. And last but not least, with all the cement in my life lately, I would love nothing more than to get lost among the trees, fall asleep to the sounds of a waterfall, and wake up to a herbal tea and a hike in the Dandenong Ranges. Bliss.
*No, I don’t in any way support the banning of the burqa, in case you were wondering.
p.s. That’s me admiring the sun rising over the Annapurna Ranges in Nepal. More bliss.
